Author Archives: Mike

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A STROKE OF DEVIOUS GENIUS :

The United States Supreme Court today pulled off a stroke of bril­liant but devi­ous genius in the way it han­dled two deci­sions before it. Yesterday June 25⁄2013, the world learned that the United States through its high­est court, struck down sec­tion 5 of the land-mark 1965 vot­ing rights act signed by President Lyndon Johnson.

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President Lyndon Johnson and Dr Martin Luther King

The 1965 vot­ing Rights Act was a fit­ting cli­max to decades of atroc­i­ties vis­it­ed on African-Americans who only wished to par­tic­i­pate in the con­cept of democ­ra­cy, the right to vote. These atroc­i­ties includ­ed the most grue­some mur­ders, rape, and a pletho­ra oth­er crimes. It guar­an­teed Blacks in America the right to take part in the notion pre­sent­ed in the Constitution that all men are cre­at­ed equal.

The right to vote, is the right to be involved in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process of one man one vote. It is the cor­ner-stone of the prin­ci­ple of democ­ra­cy. Yet over the last 4 hun­dred years in America, the white major­i­ty did not allow black Americans to enjoy the dig­ni­ty of being humans in a land they set­tled long before Christopher Columbus even got here.

Many African-Americans Jews, and gen­tile whites died to win that sim­ple right that the white major­i­ty takes for grant­ed as a result of white priv­i­lege. Notwithstanding the US Supreme Court struck down sec­tion 5 of that Act , know­ing full well that the dys­func­tion­al Congress may nev­er be able to fine tune this Act. Ironically, the pri­ma­ry rea­son the major­i­ty sites for changes to the Act through Chief Justice Roberts is that the South of yes­ter­year no longer exist. The shock­ing real­i­ty of this state­ment is that the Right wing of this court is argu­ing that the Act should be changed because it has been suc­cess­ful. It is no sur­prise that John Roberts want­ed that Law changed even as a young lawyer in the Reagan Administration.

In the minor­i­ty dis­sent writ­ten by Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, she argues that the action of the court is tan­ta­mount to throw­ing out your umbrel­la in a rain-storm because you aren’t get­ting wet. It was a shock­ing­ly cal­lous and bla­tant dis­re­gard for the gross injus­tices which has been inflict­ed on African-Americans in this coun­try. Acquiescing to the demands of Shelby County Alabama, when they can shown no harm that the law has done is uncon­scionable. It is a slap in the face to well mean­ing peo­ple all over the world, and an affront to their dignity.

Striking down sec­tion 5 of the Voting Rights Acts in fact say­ing “We know you have been bad but because we made sure you are not bad any­more we will stop ensur­ing that you remain good”. This makes no sense, many of the peo­ple who were around in the ear­ly 1960’s stand­ing in the way of African-Americans right to vote are still alive and a part of the process there.

Even so ‚over the last elec­tion cycle there have been bla­tant­ly overt attempts to pre­vent peo­ple of col­or from vot­ing all across America. How could a court get a deci­sion so bla­tant­ly wrong? Except of course, that the deci­sion of that court is a part of an orches­trat­ed strat­e­gy to return blacks to the pre-civ­il rights era.

STRIKING DOWN THE FEDERAL DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT:

The deci­sion of the Supreme Court the very next day June 26th 2013 which strikes down the Federal Defense of mar­riage act, is a bril­liant yet devi­ous stroke of genius. The Court is patent­ly aware that the eupho­ria of Gays being allowed to mar­ry would be momentous.

The 5 right wing judges which swept away the rights of African Americans just a day ear­li­er under­stands that their shame­ful deci­sion would be over-shad­owed by their lat­est actions , that of strik­ing down DOMA . They gam­bled it would lit­er­al­ly sweep away their cal­lous actions of the day before like a Tsunami, they were right.

All across America gays and les­bians, and those who sup­port mar­riage equal­i­ty are in cel­e­bra­to­ry mode, while the rights of almost 40 mil­lion black peo­ple were set back almost 50 years in one egre­gious and shame­ful rul­ing. They had to know the impli­ca­tions, yet they did it any­way. I often won­dered what it must have felt like to live in the America of the 50’s and 60’s, yes­ter­day I felt like I was right there.

No one will be talk­ing about the grave injus­tice done to blacks in that deci­sion of Shelby coun­ty Vs Holder, it will all dis­ap­pear in the eupho­ria of the rul­ing giv­ing gays and les­bians the right to mar­ry. Once again Black Americans are pawns in the process, a total­ly dis­pos­able and despised people.

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Despicable And Shocking Supreme Court Decision!!

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President Barack Hussein Obama

November 2008 saw this man, Barack Hussein Obama ele­vat­ed to the high­est polit­i­cal office in America, it appeared and for all intents and pur­pos­es should be a sweet and fit­ting cli­max after almost 4 hun­dred years of Slavery, Emancipation, Chain-Gangs,Jim Crow, Separate but Equal, the klu-klux-klan ‚Segregated drink­ing foun­tains, poll tax­es water-hoses, dogs, and bil­ly clubs to that moment. Many black peo­ple did not believe they would live to see a black President in their life-time, oth­ers felt it would nev­er hap­pen at all. I watched both elec­tion vic­to­ries with a bit­ter sweet taste in my mouth. Sweet in hon­or of his accom­plish­ments, bit­ter because of the pain which has been vis­it­ed on black peo­ple in this land called America, even as black peo­ple were here before that crim­i­nal Christopher Columbus brought his brand of dis­cov­ery to these shores.

The entire spec­ta­cle of slav­ery and the road Blacks were forced to trod, rests on the igno­rance of one race. A race which fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that it had a right to dom­i­nate anoth­er. As if the Genocide vis­it­ed on African peo­ple in this coun­try was not enough, I was vis­cer­al­ly aware that Obama’s Victories would mean defeat for mil­lions. Anyone who ever met a bul­ly under­stands the impor­tance of not anger­ing him/​her fur­ther, out of fear he/​she will vis­it even more pain on you. Such is the sit­u­a­tion in America, with the major­i­ty white pop­u­la­tion and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the con­gress and the Supreme Court.

THE BROWNING OF AMERICA.

Did any­one believe that white America was going to roll over and just let the brown peo­ple come in here and take over their coun­try? Ok well it may already be a lit­tle late , minori­ties already make up the major­i­ty. The Democratic Party has lit­er­al­ly snagged all the lit­tle minor­i­ty groups, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Gays, Lesbians, Women,Native Americans. So who is left out of this group? Oh yeah, I for­got.…. white men !! White men the Republican par­ty has posi­tioned itself not just as an impen­e­tra­ble wall of oppo­si­tion of all things Obama, it has estab­lished itself as the par­ty of intol­er­ance racial hatred and vot­er sup­pres­sion. It is well estab­lished that they know they can­not win nation­al elec­tions by mere­ly win­ning the white male vote. Yet what is their strat­e­gy? Voter sup­pres­sion, vot­er intim­i­da­tion, mass-depor­ta­tion, fence build­ing, yes fence build­ing, laugh­able, even as they cham­pi­on Ronald Reagan’s 1980’s speech to Mikhail Gorbachev ” mis­ter Gorbachev tear down this wall” in ref­er­ence to the Berlin wall which sep­a­rat­ed east and west Germany.

On August 6, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, call­ing the day ‘‘a tri­umph for free­dom as huge as any vic­to­ry that has ever been won on any bat­tlefield’’ (Johnson, ‘‘Remarks in the Capitol Rotunda’’). The law came sev­en months after Martin Luther King launched a Southern Christian Leadership Conference.The Voting Rights Act of 1965 bans dis­crim­i­na­tion in the vot­ing prac­tice. Picture

Little did Lyndon Johnson know when he signed the land-mark leg­is­la­tion which gave all Americans a chance to par­tic­i­pate in the deci­sions of their own lives , that the Act would still be under attack in 2013, 48 years lat­er. Can we erad­i­cate all prob­lems on this plan­et? Maybe not. Are some of the prob­lems which bedev­il us avoidable?

You bet.

I just had this nov­el idea. What if there were no white peo­ple who thought that the way for them to suc­ceed is at the cost of oth­ers? What if they weren’t racists ? What if so many Caucasians did not believe that they are genet­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or to oth­er races?

At issue here is the sig­nif­i­cant impact one igno­rant notion has had on the his­to­ry of civilization.

In State leg­is­la­tures all over America Republican majori­ties have used 1950’s type tac­tics to pre­vent blacks and oth­ers they fig­ured would vote Democratic from vot­ing, this is not hearsay , they acknowl­edged that they were doing it to ensure a vic­to­ry by Mitt Romney. In the case of Shelby County Alabama against Holder the American Attorney General, the much esteemed Supreme Court stunned the world with a shame­ful deci­sion, effec­tive­ly over­turn­ing the land-mark leg­is­la­tion signed 48 years ago. In a an impas­sioned dis­sent Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote that gut­ting the Civil Rights Act was tan­ta­mount to throw­ing out your umbrel­la in a rain­storm because you weren’t get­ting wet.

The deci­sion of the Court to gut sec­tion 5 of the Voting Right’s Act was a shock­ing dis­play of judi­cial activism which lit­er­al­ly threw out decades of set­tled law. It was a cal­lous and craven dis­play by the court in demon­strat­ing to the aver­age per­son that they do not count.

Those who thought the Citizens United Decision by this Court was as bad as this Roberts Court could get need to thing again. This is a rad­i­cal right wing court whose deci­sions will have earth shat­ter­ing impli­ca­tions for gen­er­a­tions to come.

It just demon­strat­ed that what 315 mil­lion peo­ple and their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the house and sen­ate decid­ed, does not mat­ter, every­one is sub­ject to their dic­tates. So much for Democracy.

Every time you hear some­one from the Republican Party talk­ing about democ­ra­cy and the rule of law shout shame, they are hyp­ocrites. Where is the moral high ground America once claimed it had, even as it has been a flawed work in progress? Will American Political lead­ers con­tin­ue to lec­ture coun­tries like China and Russia about human rights when right here in America the high­est court and leg­is­la­tures all across the coun­try has demon­stra­bly decid­ed that the right to vote is not sacred?

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The Mindset Which Killed Trayvon Martin:

I have four sons my eldest is now 26 years old, I guard­ed my sons like a Penguin guard it’s eggs, I nev­er acqui­esce to the argu­ment that moth­ers are more nur­tur­ing than men. I nur­ture my sons, I dis­ci­pline my sons, the two are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

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The Trayvon Martin cas­es com­menced in a Florida court-room today. I watched Tracey Martin use a piece of nap­kin to wipe tears from his eyes as pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys talk about his son, nei­ther men knew Trayvon, yet they will explain to an all white female jury, who Trayvon Martin was. Some women from the very pool have expressed the view that George Zimmerman the defen­dant who killed Martin should go home because he is innocent.

george-zimmermanOne female juror referred to the peace­ful demon­stra­tion of inter­est­ed par­ties who demand­ed the arrest of Zimmerman as a riot.

Many argue women are kinder, gen­tler more con­sid­er­ate, so much for that, I guess they weren’t around for Margaret Thatcher, they have nev­er heard Michelle Bachman’s views, in essence race trumps gender.

Yet, despite all of this, Tracey Martin and Sabrina Fulton are forced to sit there and hope that the American crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem will do the right thing, the very jus­tice sys­tem which was unable to find a black man or woman , or a black judge to hear this case.

They will have to put their con­fi­dence in a sys­tem which did not arrest Zimmerman until there was nation­al out­cry and out­rage. One of the great­est chal­lenge fac­ing young black men in America is their exis­ten­tial fight for sur­vival. Interestingly the threat to their lives does not come from the Klu Kluk Klan as much any more, but from police offi­cers who see them as sus­pects sim­ply on the basis of being black.

It is an out­rage, the record­ings of George Zimmerman’s com­ments to the 911 dis­patch­er and what he mut­tered under his breadth, which the pros­e­cu­tor out­lined in open­ing argu­ments this morn­ing, goes to a deep­er mind­set among police in lit­er­al­ly ever cor­ner of America regard­ing young black men.

There are many who will argue that one of the great­est threats to young black men are, young black men, they will hear no argu­ments from me on that. However peo­ple should not live in fear of police offi­cers who are paid to pro­tect them.

Zimmerman was a vig­i­lante, he is a wannabe cop, like many who joined police depart­ments all over America, he had pre-con­ceived notions about cer­tain peo­ple. Even as Tracey and Sabrina are forced to sit and lis­ten to lying defense lawyers try to demo­nize their son, we must rec­og­nize the men­tal­i­ty which caused them to be sit­ting in that court-room.

It is a mind­set which sees young black men as sus­pects in their black skin.

IMG_0729Sheriff’s Deputies pulled young man over he had slight­ly dark­er than usu­al tint. Observe one cop still in the car , the kid had the dri­ver side win­dow down to speak to him , yet one cop is at the pas­sen­ger side win­dow demand­ing that he open that door, that amounts to a breach of this kids rights, it is an ille­gal search.

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The young man is ordered out of his car and is lean­ing against the Patrol car with one cop talk­ing to him , he is bare­ly vis­i­ble, his view of what’s going on is blocked by the cop speak­ing to him while the first cop is now at the dri­ver’s side dig­ging through his car

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Here’s one cop talk­ing to the young man now vis­i­ble, while the oth­er con­tin­ues to rum­mage through his car with­out his consent.

IMG_0738In the end what did they find? Nothing ille­gal, this whole episode hap­pened in my view as I clicked away, my doing so prob­a­bly saved him a whole lot of headache. As if the ille­gal search was not bad enough, they lost his Registration some­where between the seats in the vehi­cle they drove, they sim­ply shrugged and told him he will have to apply for another.

I saw him the next day he told me he called the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office and was told that his reg­is­tra­tion was lost between the seats of the vehi­cle . They out­lined what it would take to retrieve it, and told him curt­ly, they were not about to do that. Just one more case of racial pro­fil­ing and egre­gious abuse by police offi­cers when it comes to young men of color.

There are nev­er any cries from Amnesty International, none from the Inter American com­mis­sion for human rights about these every-day occur­rences of abuse police vis­it on young African American and Latino dai­ly. They find them­selves in coun­tries like Jamaica where they grand­stand and pon­tif­i­cate about Human Rights

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Trayvon Martin Case Starts Today.

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The Trayvon Martin case start­ed today June 24th. Of note is ‚the jury is made of of all white women. What would have hap­pened if the jury was all black men, would it be allowed? Would it be allowed to have an all black women jury? Never mind that the judge is also a white woman.

Are we to believe that the make­up of this jury is to make sure that we do not get an OJ Simpson type of ver­dict? We will be watching.

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Jamaican Criminals Getting More Sophisticated, Report:

Some mem­bers of the hier­ar­chy of the Jamaica Constabulary force has inti­mat­ed that they are wor­ried about some recent trends. This relates to the num­ber of Ballistic Vests (bul­let proof vests) binoc­u­lars and oth­er para­pher­na­lia they recov­ered over a peri­od of sev­er­al months.

The National Intelligence Bureau revealed that police were shot at on 331 occa­sions by gun­men between January 1 and June 1 this year — an aver­age of 66 attacks per month.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​S​e​i​z​u​r​e​-​o​f​-​m​o​r​e​-​b​u​l​l​e​t​p​r​o​o​f​-​v​e​s​t​s​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​_​1​4​5​1​8​867

Five police per­son­nel were report­ed­ly killed and close to 40 shot and injured dur­ing these dead­ly attacks, the police said. In a series of raids across the island over sev­er­al months, police have recov­ered over 20 bul­let­proof vests from mem­bers of the crim­i­nal underworld.

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Public Defender Earl Witter:

At the rate of 66 encoun­ters per month it trans­lates to over two attempts (2) per day, these are indeed fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics in a coun­try as small as Jamaica. They are par­tic­u­lar­ly galling when they are para­dox­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered with state­ments from Jamaicans for jus­tice head Carolyn Gomes , and pub­lic defend­er Earl Witter’s state­ments sug­gest­ing that cas­es of crim­i­nals killed by cops are not jus­ti­fied because not enough cops are get­ting killed.

carolyn gomesJamaicans For Justice head Carolyn Gomes:

For the record and for the ben­e­fit of my read­ers whom are not Jamaicans, The Public Defender in Jamaica is paid from tax­pay­ers funds, the office is an arm of the Jamaican Government, and answer­able to the Portia Simpson Miller Administration.

But even as the police high com­mand engage in their woe-is-me hand-wring­ing, I sug­gest they suck it up and put their big-boy pants on. In free soci­eties we can­not be in the busi­ness of stop­ping busi­ness from sell­ing what they chose to as long as the prod­uct is legal.

If peo­ple are deter­mined to kill they will use rocks to do so. Even as the gun debate rages in America, Democratic President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult climb up the moun­tain of the sec­ond Amendment to the Constitution which guar­an­tees Americans the right to bear arms.

The United States of America will not law­ful­ly be able to take peo­ple’s guns, so con­gress will have to find oth­er ways to keep guns out of the hands of crim­i­nals. The only prob­lem with that is, a squeaky-clean per­son may pur­chase a gun then com­mits an ille­gal act. Now he/​she is a crim­i­nal, what do you do about that?

The fact is we will nev­er be able to get rid of crime, peo­ple com­mit crimes, what will have to be done is to focus on the per­pe­tra­tors of crime and less on the method­ol­o­gy. A killer may use a piece of cord to kill if he is so inclined.

Jamaican cops will have to find ways to com­bat the scourge of crim­i­nal­i­ty in the face of an intran­si­gent and com­plic­it government.

Even as I sup­port the police’s call for stiffer penal­ties and new leg­is­la­tion for pos­ses­sion of cer­tain items, the com­mis­sion­er of Police Owen Ellington could indi­cate that he at least under­stand the seri­ous­ness of this issue and walk back mak­ing pub­lic the Police week­ly Force Orders to the Public.

As I have said repeat­ed­ly in these posts, the pub­lic has no expec­ta­tion of right of access to this doc­u­ment, which is an inter­nal depart­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion medi­um. This would be a good first step in the right direc­tion, as I have said time and again crim­i­nals have no right to know where police offi­cers are sta­tioned , where they will be moved to , sta­tion strength, or any oth­er crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion which affects the life of officers.

The com­mis­sion­er of Police Owen Ellington must forth­with cease and desist from putting the lives of the men and women under his com­mand at risk to suit and cur­ry favor with Jamaica’s élite and ene­mies of the state, some of whom are locat­ed at the Fagan Avenue offices of Jamaicans for Justice.

The police can­not do any­thing about the elect­ed Government of Portia Simpson Miller, it can­not make her com­pe­tent, it can­not make the gov­ern­ment more focused on erad­i­cat­ing crime, no more than it could make Bruce Golding see the fol­ly of his ways. What the police can do is be more effec­tive, more assertive, more intel­li­gent, more focused. Jamaica is far too small for the hand wring­ing and the com­plain­ing, Police must be police and dic­tate to crim­i­nals that they will not be allowed to have their way, even if the crim­i­nal lives at Vale Royal.

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WEEKEND MUSINGS:

Respect is some­thing earned, you can­not demand it, you can­not buy it, you sim­ply have to earn it. Long before Reneto De. Cardova Adams emerged on the scene and labelled the group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) a Criminal Rights group I was writ­ing about them and call­ing them a crim­i­nal rights group. As a mat­ter of fact when I was run­ning the streets I nev­er heard of Adams, I was shocked to hear of Adams after I had left the force at the ripe old age of 30 in 1991, there I told you all my age. I was nev­er opposed to peo­ple stand­ing up for the rights of oth­ers, as a mat­ter of fact even as a cop I stood up for the rights of peo­ple , even against some of my col­leagues, when they went too far. I would nev­er betray a fel­low offi­cer, but I damn sure ensured that sit­u­a­tions were defused before they got too far.

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Jamaicans for Justice head Carolyn Gomes.

Anyway the Jamaica Constabulary Force has start­ed to hit back at the crim­i­nal rights lob­by (JFJ) .

In a release the Constabulary had this to say to Gomes and the crim­i­nal rights group JFJ. “While we are in no posi­tion to dic­tate to human rights groups how they car­ry out their tasks. It would be refresh­ing at a time when vio­lence involv­ing our youths espe­cial­ly those in school is most pro­nounced, if they would move away from their obvi­ous man­date and use their influ­ence to encour­age these young­sters not to get involved in a life of crime and vio­lence,” the police report said adding that inves­ti­ga­tions by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) were wel­come with the hope that the find­ings are made pub­lic.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​P​o​l​i​c​e​-​d​e​n​y​-​c​l​a​i​m​s​-​o​f​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​s​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​S​t​-​T​h​o​m​a​s​-​b​o​y​s​#​i​x​z​z​2​X​0​D​m​8​6qu.

The police were react­ing to Gomes and the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group who wast­ed no time mak­ing claims about threats on the lives of two crim­i­nals the police picked up inter­ro­gat­ed and released.

The CCN said that the boys are broth­ers of the for­mer leader of the Yallahs-based Trendsetter Gang, who was fatal­ly shot by the Police in October last year.

It’s good to see the police push­ing back against crim­i­nal sup­port­er Carolyn Gomes. This lying char­la­tan has made a car­rear out of lies dis­tor­tions and decep­tion, for our part we have been push­ing back at the lies expos­ing to the world who she real­ly is. We applaud the police for final­ly fight­ing back against this ene­my of the state.

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DIASPORA WHAT IS IT REALLY?

Mike Beckles

The Jamaica dias­po­ra is a term we hear bandied about a lot, a quick Yahoo search revealed this about the word [Diaspora] .The term: dias­po­ra is used to refer to any peo­ple or eth­nic pop­u­la­tion forced or induced to leave their tra­di­tion­al eth­nic homelands.

As a Jamaican liv­ing abroad who was­n’t forced to leave my home­land I guess I am not tru­ly a mem­ber of the Jamaican dias­po­ra! Well enough of that, let’s not split hairs. The so-called Jamaican dias­po­ra, what­ev­er that is, has cur­rent­ly been meet­ing in Montego Bay between June 16 – 19 , 2013.

The Biennial Jamaica — Diaspora Conference, con­vened by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, is the glob­al forum that con­nects Jamaicans from all over the world with Jamaicans in the home coun­try every two years. The event seeks to strength­en exist­ing link­ages and net­works, and to build alliances for Jamaica’s devel­op­ment and stand­ing in the world.This year’s re-brand­ed and total­ly revamped glob­al forum, places spe­cial focus on Trade and Investment. It will seek to build on the lega­cy of JA 50 by explor­ing spe­cif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties for the Diaspora, to expand their busi­ness inter­est in Jamaica through increased trade and invest­ment. Participants will also engage in dis­cus­sions about ways to expand the Diaspora’s con­tri­bu­tion to Health and Education in Jamaica, both as indi­vid­u­als and orga­nized groups. Conference 2013 holds spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance as it takes place with­in the cel­e­bra­to­ry peri­od of Jamaica’s 50th Anniversary of Political Independence. This 5th Biennial Conference has been re-cal­i­brat­ed to focus on Business, Trade and Investment, Philanthropy, Social Investment and Diaspora Diplomacy; and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will unveil a new Diaspora Policy.http://​www​.jamaican​di​as​po​ra​.gov​.jm/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​?​o​p​t​i​o​n​=​c​o​m​_​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​&​v​i​e​w​=​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​&​i​d​=​1​0​9​&​I​t​e​m​i​d​=​554

I am a lit­tle mys­ti­fied, maybe some of you my read­ers can apprise me of who makes up this group or any oth­er dias­po­ra group, where are the mem­bers recruit­ed, who does the recruit­ing, where do they meet , what are the require­ments for mem­ber­ship beyond being a Jamaican liv­ing abroad ? Has any­one ever asked any of you to be a part of their dias­po­ra group? No..? Well me nei­ther, so I went ahead and took the lib­er­ty to pro­vide a link for you to judge for your­selves. I would be hon­ored to hear what you think about this dias­po­ra thing because it seem to me it’s just a name giv­en to the monied friends of the pow­er bro­kers in Jamaica. I don’t know for sure so I will await your views on this. Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller in address­ing the con­fer­ence said that there can be no improve­ment in the for­tunes of the coun­try unless there is actu­al­ly active par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Jamaican diaspora.(my words)! Now do you see why I vis­it­ed the ques­tion of what dias­po­ra means and who is a part of it in their con­text? If what I saw is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what they call dias­po­ra, many of you and cer­tain­ly me are not a part of it. Contextually it seem this is just a smoke-screen that is designed to fool Jamaicans liv­ing abroad into believ­ing that we mat­ter. It appears that it’s just a group of peo­ple from upper Saint Andrew, friends of the pow­er-bro­kers, who seek to speak for you and I with­out our say-so.

Having gone through the info on their web­site I believe that the Administration has not even begun to under­stand the vast untapped resource, that is Jamaican liv­ing abroad.

They nev­er will, like many Jamaicans at home and abroad the government(party neu­tral) are still stuck in the caste sys­tem which has defined Jamaica through­out it’s his­to­ry. The true worth of our coun­try are the aver­age man on the streets, not the well to do bourgeoisie.

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How Far Are We From This?

Who Are the Hutu and Tutsi?

The Hutu and Tutsi are two peoples who share a common past. When Rwanda was first settled, the people who lived there raised cattle. Soon, the people who owned the most cattle were called “Tutsi” and everyone else was called “Hutu.” At this time, a person could easily change categories through marriage or cattle acquisition. It wasn’t until Europeans came to colonize the area that the terms “Tutsi” and “Hutu” took on a racial role. The Germans were the first to colonize Rwanda in 1894. They looked at the Rwandan people and thought the Tutsi had more European characteristics, such as lighter skin and a taller build. Thus they put Tutsis in roles of responsibility. When the Germans lost their colonies following World War I, the Belgians took control over Rwanda. In 1933, the Belgians solidified the categories of “Tutsi” and “Hutu” by mandating that every person was to have an identity card that labeled them either Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa. (Twa are a very small group of hunter-gatherers who also live in Rwanda.) Although the Tutsi constituted only about ten percent of Rwanda’s population and the Hutu nearly 90 percent, the Belgians gave the Tutsi all the leadership positions. This upset the Hutu. When Rwanda struggled for independence from Belgium, the Belgians switched the status of the two groups. Facing a revolution instigated by the Hutu, the Belgians let the Hutus, who constituted the majority of Rwanda’s population, be in charge of the new government. This upset the Tutsi.The animosity between the two groups continued for decades.

Slaughter Inside Churches, Hospitals, and Schools

Thousands of Tutsis tried to escape the slaughter by hiding in churches, hospitals, schools, and government offices. These places, which historically have been places of refuge, were turned into places of mass murder during the Rwanda Genocide. One of the worst massacres of the Rwanda genocide took place on April 15 – 16, 1994 at the Nyarubuye Roman Catholic Church, located about 60 miles east of Kigali. Here, the mayor of the town, a Hutu, encouraged Tutsis to seek sanctuary inside the church by assuring them they would be safe there. Then the mayor betrayed them to the Hutu extremists. The killing began with grenades and guns, but soon changed to machetes and clubs. Killing by hand was tiresome, so the killers took shifts. It took two days to kill the thousands of Tutsi who were inside. Similar massacres took place around Rwanda, with many of the worst ones occurring between April 11 and the beginning of May.

Corpses
To further degrade the Tutsi, Hutu extremists would not allow the Tutsi dead to be buried. Their bodies were left where they were slaughtered, exposed to the elements, eaten by rats and dogs. Many Tutsi bodies were thrown into rivers, lakes, and streams in order to send the Tutsis “back to Ethiopia” — a reference to the myth that the Tutsi were foreigners and originally came from Ethiopia.
Media Played a Huge Role in the Genocide
For years, the Kangura newspaper, controlled by Hutu extremists, had been spouting hate. As early as December 1990, the paper published “The Ten Commandments for the Hutu.” The commandments declared that any Hutu who married a Tutsi was a traitor. Also, any Hutu who did business with a Tutsi was a traitor. The commandments also insisted that all strategic positions and the entire military must be Hutu. In order to isolate the Tutsis even further, the commandments also told the Hutu to stand by other Hutu and to stop pitying the Tutsi.* When RTLM (Radio Télévison des Milles Collines) began broadcasting on July 8, 1993, it also spread hate. However, this time it was packaged to appeal to the masses by offering popular music and broadcasts conducted in a very informal, conversational tones.

Once the killings started, RTLM went beyond just espousing hate; they took an active role in the slaughter. The RTLM called for the Tutsi to “cut down the tall trees,” a code phrase which meant for the Hutu to start killing the Tutsi. During broadcasts, RTLM often used the terminyenzi (“cockroach”) when referring to Tutsis and then told Hutu to “crush the cockroaches.” Many RTLM broadcasts announced names of specific individuals who should be killed; RTLM even included information about where to find them, such as home and work addresses or known hangouts. Once these individuals had been killed, RTLM then announced their murders over the radio.
The RTLM was used to incite the average Hutu to kill. However, if a Hutu refused to participate in the slaughter, then members of the Interahamwe would give them a choice — either kill or be killed.
The World Stood By and Just Watched
Following World War II and the Holocaust, the United Nations adopted a resolution on December 9, 1948, which stated that “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.” Clearly, the massacres in Rwanda constituted genocide, so why didn’t the world step in to stop it? There has been a lot of research on this exact question. Some people have said that since Hutu moderates were killed in the early stages then some countries believed the conflict to be more of a civil war rather than a genocide. Other research has shown that the world powers realized it was a genocide but that they didn’t want to pay for the needed supplies and personnel to stop it​.No matter what the reason, the world should have stepped in. They should have stopped the slaughter.

The Rwanda Genocide Ends
The Rwanda Genocide ended only when the RPF took over the country. The RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) were a trained military group consisting of Tutsis who had been exiled in earlier years, many of whom lived in Uganda. The RPF were able to enter Rwanda and slowly take over the country. In mid July 1994, when the RPF had full control, did the genocide stop. * “The Ten Commandments of the Hutu” is quoted in Josias Semujanga, Origins of the Rwandan Genocide (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2003) 196 – 197.http://​his​to​ry1900s​.about​.com/​o​d​/​r​w​a​n​d​a​n​g​e​n​o​c​i​d​e​/​a​/​R​w​a​n​d​a​-​G​e​n​o​c​i​d​e​.​htm.

As I read this bit of his­to­ry my mind wan­dered to my home­land Jamaica, I think of the many young men there some of whom are respon­si­ble for dozens of homi­cide, yet they pay no price for their crimes. One twen­ty year old brags about the over one dozen lives he snuffed out (mek dup­py), no one knows how many lives he will take before he is brought to jus­tice, or jus­tice is brought to him. Even as I pon­der this, I am forced to con­tem­plate whether any form of jus­tice is enough for these demons.

I am not equat­ing Jamaica with Rwanda, but if you famil­iar­ize your­selves with the two sce­nar­ios, you can­not help com­ing away feel­ing that with all the ser­i­al mur­der­ers walk­ing around in Jamaica there are some similarities.

Jamaica’s crim­i­nal courts are burst­ing at the seams with cas­es which will nev­er be heard, these are seri­ous cas­es of mur­der, includ­ing cop-killings, seri­ous cas­es of aggra­vat­ed assaults, Rapes, and oth­er crimes. The ones that do get resolved gen­er­al­ly does noth­ing for deter­rence, the coun­try’s Police Commissioner came out stri­dent­ly against this recent­ly.https://​www​.face​book​.com/​p​e​r​m​a​l​i​n​k​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​y​_​f​b​i​d​=​5​3​6​3​0​6​3​8​6​4​3​2​6​8​1​&​i​d​=​1​7​7​0​0​6​5​5​2​3​6​2​668.

As bad as that is , it gets worse. Lack of faith in the jus­tice sys­tem has caused innu­mer­able harm to the coun­try, flight of tal­ent, the mur­der of Thousands of Jamaicans, mob-killings,police cor­rup­tion to name a few. The year 2005 saw the chances of get­ting mur­dered in Jamaica 58 per,100.000 res­i­dents. Jamaica’s mur­der num­bers far exceeds coun­tries which have active civ­il wars raging.

Then PNP Prime Minister Percival James Patterson labeled the sit­u­a­tion a cri­sis of mon­u­men­tal pro­por­tion , yet for a decade under his watch, not a sin­gle detec­tive was trained by the police depart­ment. This helped to exac­er­bate the crime sit­u­a­tion. People are deterred from com­mit­ting crime when they see oth­ers going to prison for inor­di­nate lengths of time, not from police walk­ing around with long guns.

The present lead­er­ship of the coun­try is a mys­tery. One can see if the prob­lems fac­ing the coun­try are iden­ti­fied, we may have a dis­cus­sion about the effec­tive­ness of the poli­cies being employed. In my hum­ble opin­ion there seem to be no recog­ni­tion by the Administration that crime is lit­er­al­ly killing the coun­try, much less to have a strat­e­gy to com­bat it.

We saw the bod­ies in Rwanda, but are we pre­tend­ing not to see the bod­ies in Jamaica?

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Forty Years Later Nothing Has Changed In Bonnett:

Mike Beckles

Bonnet Primary School is nes­tled in the cool hilly regions of North east Saint Catherine. Bonnett District was for­mer­ly a cul-de-sac, you get in on foot or vehic­u­lar ‚then turn around and head back toward Benbow.

As a kid grow­ing up there, life was sim­ple in the 60’s and 70’s most of us were poor, we ran around bare-feet, patch­es of dif­fer­ent cloth in the back­side of our shorts which had seen bet­ter days. We drank from the streams, we swam in the rivers, played soc­cer and crick­et in the school-yard bare-feet.

The Primary school then was one big open room sep­a­rat­ed by calk-boards , at times hous­ing as much as nine class­es, look­ing back it seem strange that any­one could learn any­thing in the din of hun­dreds of stu­dents recit­ing , read­ing and just talk­ing at the same time.

Most times it was like a bee-hive, bro­ken only when teach­ers took us out­side on the grass under the trees. As lit­tle kids we loved being out of the school-room and out in the open. I for one was way more com­fort­able sit­ting on the grass in my khakis, say­ing “me teacher“in that sing song voice we asso­ciate with grade school kids.

As a sec­ondary school stu­dent I lob­bied the mem­ber of Parliament, I called in to Ronnie Thwaites, I wrote let­ters beg­ging that the roads lead­ing in to the dis­trict be paved. It was­n’t until after I had grad­u­at­ed high school, that they final­ly got around to paving the Bonnet to Benbow Road.

Unfortunately the way things stood in the 70’s are the way they remain today.

bonnett4Gleaner pho­to:

This is the uri­nal I used as a kid , it was noth­ing more than a runoff into a hole, it is the same as it was in the 70’s today. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​6​1​5​/​n​e​w​s​/​n​e​w​s​1​.​h​tml

bonnett3

Gleaner pho­to:

The math teacher Althea Bryan (my cousin )is my Aunt’s daugh­ter, she decid­ed to stay and edu­cate the kids, as her mom did for years before she retired.

The teach­ers com­plain there is no piped water, as it was 30- 40 years ago, so is it today. No staff room for teach­ers, no com­put­ers, they say plans have been sub­mit­ted to the Ministry of Education for upgrades to the school, argu­ing that res­i­dents are will­ing to do the work them­selves, yet no mon­ey or mate­r­i­al has been forth­com­ing from the government.

I have already called and pledged the first desk­top com­put­er to the school, any­one will­ing to join me in this wor­thy cause may con­tact me at excellence@​hvc.​rr.​com. Your help would be great­ly appreciated.

When we talk about how gov­ern­ment and par­ty pol­i­tics have failed the peo­ple some are indig­nant. These peo­ple are us, me and you, I grew up here these kids are me and I am they.

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Jamaica, What Next?

Even though I haven’t lived in Jamaica for the past 22 years I am no less inter­est­ed in how our coun­try is run now,than when I left in 1991. I thought about how I could be of ser­vice to coun­try, despite not liv­ing there. Having decid­ed to offer opin­ions and facts on events and hap­pen­ing as I see them, I am also aware of the lim­i­ta­tions involved in get­ting peo­ple to focus on large texts of infor­ma­tion. Those are not the only chal­lenges faced by a blog­ger like myself. We Jamaicans have lit­er­al­ly locked our­selves into two box­es, one orange, the oth­er green. This places us at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage, as far as pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion, even when we are thou­sands of miles removed from Jamaica’s parochial pol­i­tics. We process every­thing Jamaica, with­in the con­text of pol­i­tics, some­times bor­der­ing on the insane. Even in the face of irrefutable facts ‚we balk we yell, using noise to over­whelm truths we find incon­ve­nient. We demo­nize each oth­er ‚we label each oth­er, we dis­par­age each oth­er sim­ply because we dis­agree with their point-of-view.

The Jamaican Dollar is now over 100 to one American Dollar, vir­tu­al­ly worth­less. The coun­try have secured a loan from the International Monetary Fund this was seen as a major vic­to­ry for the coun­try. I wrote in these blogs that you know the coun­try is in trou­ble when secur­ing a loan is seen as a major accom­plish­ment. I also warned that that loan would be sim­i­lar to cot­ton-can­dy, sweet to the taste yet bad for your health.

It did not take long for the sweet­ness of that cot­ton-can­dy to show how bad it can be for your teeth and sug­ar lev­els. Ronald Thwaites recent­ly told prospec­tive teach­ers grad­u­at­ing from col­lege “gov­ern­ment have no mon­ey to hire you”. This state­ment even as he is embroiled in an epic strug­gle with teach­ers already on the gov­ern­men­t’s pay-roll, over issues of study leave.

The rape and mur­der of chil­dren is now com­mon prac­tice. Elderly peo­ple are sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed, none is spared the wrath of Jamaica’s demon­ic killers, includ­ing law-enforce­ment offi­cers. The hous­ing trust tells pub­lic sec­tor work­ers who have paid into that fund and are still employed ‚that they do not qual­i­fy for mort­gages, yet the Prime Minister rolled out her new plan called Urban Renewal which is aimed at pro­vid­ing hous­ing to Jamaica’s urban poor. The prob­lem with this bit of feel good, is that these peo­ple have no mon­ey to pay for the hous­es they are slat­ed to receive.

The coun­try’s inter­est pay­ment oblig­a­tions on for­eign loans gob­bles up almost one-half of its gross domes­tic prod­uct. So they bor­row more to fill the short­fall, which exac­er­bates the prob­lem fur­ther, because with each loan guar­an­tee comes the added bur­den of a larg­er piece of the GDP pie going to debt servicing.

The coun­try has record­ed a 1.5 % growth, neg­li­gi­ble for a coun­try like Jamaica.

Jamaica remains one of the most high­ly indebt­ed coun­tries in the world. Interest pay­ments as a per­cent of GDP were high­er than any­where else in the world in 2011, includ­ing cri­sis-rav­aged Europe. This exceed­ing­ly large debt bur­den has effec­tive­ly dis­placed most oth­er pub­lic expen­di­ture, debt ser­vic­ing has tak­en up near­ly 50 per­cent of total bud­get­ed expen­di­tures over the last four fis­cal years while health and edu­ca­tion com­bined have only been around 20 percent.This sit­u­a­tion is very prob­lem­at­ic for a coun­try of Jamaica’s income lev­el, which should be able to invest in infra­struc­ture and human cap­i­tal, as well as have the finan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty to respond to fre­quent nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and oth­er exter­nal shocks.http://​www​.cepr​.net/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​2​012 – 05.pdf

People are los­ing their prop­er­ty to squat­ters, who invade and erect zinc struc­tures, just like dur­ing the 70’s why not that’s social­ism right?

The coun­try’s clue­less Prime Minister when not embar­rass­ing the coun­try by open­ing her mouth, has decide to stay mute as the titan­ic sinks. She opened it recent­ly to pro­nounce quote “I will not talk myself out of office” . If that moron­ic state­ment was not so rep­re­hen­si­ble it would be worth a laugh. Never mind every­thing is all about her stay­ing in office. You get the lead­er­ship you deserve.

Holness the oppo­si­tion leader, seem absolute­ly clue­less about what path to take to res­cue the coun­try from this immi­nent col­lapse. Those of us who are look­ing for a return of civil­i­ty, or a place where droves of Jamaicans are in a hur­ry to return to may have a very long wait.

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We Are Mentally And Physically Paralyzed To Whats Happening To Us!

It seem we have been lulled into a state of paral­y­sis, I don’t pur­port to know or under­stand the rea­son for this, the world as we knew it has been turned upside down yet we seem to sim­ply shrug and move on.

There are mass killings in our schools, the peo­ple elect­ed to make deci­sions on our behalf ‚make deci­sions which suit their cor­po­rate spon­sors, we move on.

An American cit­i­zen revealed that the Government is secret­ly read­ing our email and lis­ten­ing to our phone con­ver­sa­tions. He argues if the gov­ern­ment is to do those things, the pub­lic ought to say it is com­fort­able with it,that’s all. Before the peo­ple can decide whether it wants the gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue with those inva­sive prac­tices, the media tells us the whis­tle-blow­er is a guy who nev­er fin­ished high school, that he broke both his legs in a mil­i­tary train­ing exer­cise, he had no col­lege degree, he is a low-lev­el employ­ee of an employ­ee of the Government.

So he is depict­ed as trai­tor before you had the chance to decide whether he is, friend or foe, the media took the gov­ern­men­t’s side, no need for a free press any­more! After the media fin­ished paint­ing the pic­ture they want you to see , you are bound to come away believ­ing the 29-year-old is a trai­tor who deserve to be shot in the pub­lic square. That absolves the Government from explain­ing to the American peo­ple why it is doing the things it is doing and doing them in secret.

Never mind that those in the Government, Republicans and Democrats ‚will spend the next sev­er­al months telling you how bad this whis­tle-blow­er is, why not? they are the ones who are ben­e­fit­ing from the infor­ma­tion farmed from phone and inter­net com­pa­nies, and it’s all for your pro­tec­tion right?.…. Right.

The gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance sys­tem feeds on itself it gets big­ger as it con­vinces you the peo­ple to give more of your rights and free­doms . As it takes more of your rights and free­doms, you give it because you want to be kept safe. The prob­lem is, as you unwit­ting­ly shrug and give it ‚you have not stopped to think how the gov­ern­ment uses those rights and pow­ers you unwit­ting­ly hand­ed over, in your quest for an unat­tain­able Utopian sense of security.

Not all elect­ed offi­cials are ine­bri­at­ed lambs to the slaugh­ter, Vice President Joe Biden dis­agrees with whole-sale farm­ing of Americans most pri­vate infor­ma­tion, oth­ers like Senators Bernie Saunders, Ron Widen and Congress-man Keith Ellison are not so sure they want to trust President Obama when he basi­cal­ly said trust us we got this.

It is shock­ing that the American peo­ple are so dis­con­nect­ed from this mon­stros­i­ty of a police state, which has been autho­rized in the Patriot Act. Never mind that many Senators have con­fessed that they did­n’t even both­er to read the bill before they vot­ed “yay”.

Obama for his part, crit­i­cized President Bush harsh­ly for what he saw then as a bla­tant over-reach and a dra­mat­ic infringe­ment on the rights of Americans, speak­ing of the said Patriot Act. Yet he has dou­bled down on fun­da­men­tals of the Act, in fact Obama and his Justice Department has pros­e­cut­ed more whis­tle-blow­ers than all the oth­er Administrations combined.

The prob­lem with the affair is that the con­gress which is sup­posed to offer over­sight and to a large extent about half of the coun­try could not care less whether the gov­ern­ment takes onto itself such sweep­ing pow­ers over their lives.

One Democratic law-mak­er char­ac­ter­ized the gov­ern­men­t’s intru­sion as nec­es­sary, liken­ing it to look­ing for the nee­dle in a haystack. He argued that in order to get the nee­dle they need the haystack! I won­der if we leave the haystack out what remains? Wouldn’t that be the needle?

I stand to be cor­rect­ed but I chal­lenge the American peo­ple to find an instance when total Government con­trol over it’s peo­ple have ever had a pos­i­tive effect for the peo­ple any­where in history.

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WHAT TOOK THE CRIMINAL SUPPORTERS SO LONG?

After Commissioner Ellington’s well rea­soned arti­cle titled (Dealing effec­tive­ly with guns and drugs for improved safe­ty) recent­ly, I wrote a com­pli­men­ta­ry Article in sup­port of the com­mis­sion­er’s stance.

imagesCAP9S0EF

I was in total agree­ment with the com­mis­sion­er, my only prob­lem was, what took him so long? However, even as I com­pli­ment­ed the coun­try’s police chief for what I thought was a seri­ous pol­i­cy doc­u­ment, I was vis­cer­al­ly cog­nizant that the vil­lage lawyers some trained , some not, would be out with their sharp­ened dag­gers ready to lam­poon him into oblivion.

As a result the penul­ti­mate Article I wrote asked the ques­tion “Is this Ellington’s farewell”?

The coun­try did not have to wait long , even as some promi­nent peo­ple have come out in sup­port of the Commissioner’s state­ments, prob­a­bly for their own self­ish rea­sons ‚the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing blood-hounds, are out yap­ping with their now pre­dictable lib­er­al sup­port for criminals.

Peter Champagnie.

As Jamaicans we must shout down peo­ple like these. Generally I am pre­dis­posed to lis­ten­ing to even the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged opin­ion, these frauds must be shout­ed down. Those of us who want to see Jamaica sur­vive must shout down and expose these fraud­u­lent [Benedict Arnold] for what they are.

Peter Champagnie is a guest Columnist at the Gleaner and a lawyer. In the Gleaner pub­li­ca­tion June 10th 2013 Champagnie wrote (Judges Can’t Bail Out Cops) ..http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​6​1​0​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml

I have pro­vid­ed a link for your con­ve­nience, in his dia­tribe Champagnie showed with­out equiv­o­ca­tion that he is square­ly on the side of the crim­i­nals run­ning amok in Jamaica.

Lawyers are offi­cers of the court, as such their duty should be to the process, yet this upstart, obvi­ous­ly feel­ing total­ly insu­lat­ed from the per­ils of crime, launched into a dia­tribe against the police.

Let’s not for­get that these vul­tures feed on the car­cass­es of crim­i­nal­i­ty, no crime no food for them . It’s time we rec­og­nize them for what they are, total oppor­tunist, they ben­e­fit from the actions of these the most vile despi­ca­ble crea­tures on earth. What exact­ly does that make these lawyers?You decide!

The pre­sump­tion of inno­cence is not a mere term of art con­fined to prac­ti­tion­ers of crim­i­nal law but, rather, rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple upon which any civ­i­lized soci­ety exists. It is enshrined in our Constitution. Perhaps Mr Nelson needs to be remind­ed that the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of each and every cit­i­zen must be observed and is not lim­it­ed or ceas­es to exist in one geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion or one’s sta­tion in life.[Peter Champagnie]

I have very lit­tle patience and use for these present day uncle tom n*&^%$* .

” Oh I have some edu­ca­tion I’m going to impress upon the world how smart I am by putting togeth­er a bou­quet of impor­tant sound­ing phras­es , they will believe it makes sense”.

For the record, let me inform Champagnie of some­thing he prob­a­bly did not learn in law school. The ques­tion of bail can­not sole­ly be premised on the fact that it was not designed to be puni­tive. Wrapping sup­port for crim­i­nals in flow­ery words tied with the beau­ti­ful bow called Constitution ‚makes it noth­ing more than shit in a pret­ty package.

Jamaica is a par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent coun­try, the Bail Act makes pro­vi­sions to keep vio­lent crim­i­nals in Jail after they have been arrest­ed for cer­tain types of crimes, the lev­el of deprav­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with said crimes must also be con­sid­ered. This is not a new phe­nom­e­na, it is inter­na­tion­al pro­to­col, which Champagnie would do well avail­ing him­self to.

Criminals may be denied bail because they may flee.

Criminals may be denied bail because they may tam­per with the inves­ti­ga­tions ie: threat­en­ing and or killing witnesses.

Criminals may be denied bail because of the lik­le-hood they may re-offend.

Most of Jamaican crim­i­nals are ser­i­al mur­der­ers, not because of police as this light­weight would have you believe, they kill because Jamaican judges release them over and over and over so they and kill and kill and kill until they are killed eventually.

I sug­gest to the good Peter Champagnie that the next time he wants to write, choose a top­ic with which he may be viewed with more cred­i­bil­i­ty. On this top­ic he has made a total ass of himself.

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Is This Ellington’s Farewell?

Is this Owen Ellington’s farewell?

Former Commissioner of Police Hardley Lewin came out strong against crime and cor­rup­tion. He labeled Tivoli Gardens the moth­er of all Garrisons then he resigned.

Hardley Lewin.

Present police com­mis­sion­er Owen Ellington came out strong against what he saw as the real issues which has sti­fled growth and pre­vent­ed the Jamaican peo­ple from reach­ing their true poten­tial. Ellington’s Observations were refresh­ing yet bold con­sid­er­ing Jamaica’s polit­i­cal system.

Is this a sign that Ellington’s tenure is com­ing to an end? Over the last sev­er­al months there have been calls for the res­ig­na­tion of the Commissioner of Police, some of the most stri­dent calls com­ing from the People’s National Party’s Youth Arm,PNPYO). Not to mis­take the PNPYO with sub­stance, but it seem the Simpson Miller Régime is unable or unwill­ing to keep these young upstarts under control.

Commissioner Owen Ellington.

The PNPYO has nev­er been any­thing but a bunch of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven thugs ‚wait­ing in the wings to hold state pow­er, their claim to fame based on noth­ing more than communist/​socialist dog­ma that has no place in present day pol­i­tics. Nevertheless they are part of the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tion and their bel­li­cose rhetoric may have had an impact on the admin­is­tra­tion of Miller as well as it may have impact­ed Ellington desire to con­tin­ue serving.

Ellington’s con­cise yet forth­right arti­cle, is a rad­i­cal depar­ture from the stan­dard norm for pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­er’s of police. In essence it is a pol­i­cy blue-print which is dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site to the gov­ern­ing direc­tion of the coun­try. Ellington’s Article is a pro­found pol­i­cy direc­tion which if adopt­ed would change Jamaica from the way we have come to know it over the last three decades plus.

DEALING EFFECTIVELY WITH GUNS AND DRUGS FOR IMPROVED PUBLIC SAFETY.
Written by Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington https://​www​.face​book​.com/​p​e​r​m​a​l​i​n​k​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​y​_​f​b​i​d​=​5​3​6​3​0​6​3​8​6​4​3​2​6​8​1​&​i​d​=​1​7​7​0​0​6​5​5​2​3​6​2​668

One of the points the Commissioner advanced most stri­dent­ly was the revolv­ing door crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Judges seem to be a law onto them­selves. Either there are no guide­lines or they do not feel oblig­ed to fol­low set guidelines.

I have writ­ten numer­ous arti­cles point­ing to this almost crim­i­nal dis­con­nect in our coun­try between what law enforce­ment is try­ing to accom­plish and the actions of the courts. Time again crim­i­nals before the court are sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed bail, they kill are re-arrest­ed , grant­ed bail and the cycle con­tin­ues. On one occa­sion one par­tic­u­lar defen­dant who ini­tial­ly killed sev­er­al peo­ple was arrest­ed and was grant­ed bail. He left the juris­dic­tion and was brought back to Jamaica from the United States and was grant­ed bail five seaper­ate times after killing each time he was released.

The ques­tion of Bail may not have been intend­ed as pun­ish­ment, but it should be used to send a strong mes­sage that if an accused or any­one act­ing on his/​her behalf tam­per or attempt to tam­per with the process, the accused will spend the rest of his days locked away.

Jamaica sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to oper­ate this way. It seem that Jamaica’s incom­pe­tent and sopho­moric politi­cians not con­ver­sant with the chang­ing times and the sophis­ti­ca­tion of crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in that geog­ra­phy. It is indeed a graph­ic indict­ment on the char­ac­ter of leg­is­la­tors in that coun­try. Jamaica’s judges oper­ate on the prin­ci­ple that the ques­tion of bail should not be puni­tive. That may be true but there are over-rid­ing facets of the Bail Act which must be considered.

♦ The like­ly-hood of flight, (abscond).

♦ The like­ly-hood that the accused will re-offend.

♦ The like­ly-hood that the accused will tam­per with the inves­ti­ga­tion and or wit­ness­es, being of para­mount significance.

Based on the crime sit­u­a­tion all of these fac­tors are pret­ty much apart of the plans of crim­i­nals who offend in Jamaica.

Yet the coun­try’s far left lib­er­al judges seem to take a sin­gle line from the Bail Act when they con­sid­er Bail. And that is that Bail should not be used as punishment.

The Courts are staffed by judges who are large­ly prod­ucts of the University of the West Indies, not exact­ly a a place where one expects sane thought to emanate from, this is the same University which had Adija Palmer (Vybes Kartel )on Campus doing lectures.

Those who argue about extra-judi­cial killings must focus their atten­tion on the root caus­es of this phenomena.

Just last week the Police were ask­ing two men from Grants Pen to turn them­selves in to them . Hopeton Forrest (o/​c Buck ) and Man-Saw , whose real name has elud­ed me as a result of the pas­sage of time. Twenty Two years ago while I was at the Constant Spring CIB both men were car­rear crim­i­nals . Forrest was from a group of broth­ers who were all felons, they did time over and over for seri­ous crimes to include shootings.

Forrest was broth­er-in-law to a con­sta­ble named Clive Smith who lived in a small com­mu­ni­ty called Ackee-Walk in Kingston 8. When I went to Constant Spring I was told by detec­tives there that Smith was a dirty cop. I nev­er spoke to Smith and he took umbrage, he told me he was a senior cop and I treat­ed him like I was bet­ter than him, I told him blunt­ly, I was bet­ter than him because he was dirty and we would not be stay­ing in the same depart­ment. He reeled off a litany of exple­tives aimed at me which did not both­er me I knew my time would come.

Sometime lat­er I was inves­ti­gat­ing a shoot­ing which occurred in the Grant’s Pen area, the vic­tim was Hopeton Forrest(Buck), I went to the University Hospital to speak to him. Buck had been shot in the leg. Buck told me that Officer Clive Smith loaned him a gun to do a rob­bery, he did the rob­bery but did not share the spoils with Smith, nei­ther did he return the weapon to him, as a result Smith shot him.

Hopeton Forrest was not going to tes­ti­fy against Clive Smith, no one would, I asked Buck where he did the rob­bery and asked him to turn the weapon involved in the rob­bery over to me. He laughed at me and said “misa Beckles cool nuh man”. I knew Buck would nev­er tes­ti­fy against Clive Smith, he would exact his revenge the ghet­to way. I also knew that my hope of find­ing out where he did that rob­bery and find­ing any­thing to link him to that rob­bery was next to nil, so I con­cen­trat­ed on Clive Smith. Buck revealed to me that Smith had stolen goods which he would not be able to account for in the apart­ment he shared with his sister.

We gath­ered a team which includ­ed retired Ruddy Dwyer, and Noël Asphall , also there was now Assistant com­mis­sion­er of police Élan Powell then act­ing cor­po­ral. I was­n’t the only cop who want­ed to get rid of Smith from the depart­ment, DSP Dwyer hat­ed his guts and want­ed him gone. When we hit Smith’s house that morn­ing he could not even remove the Ganga Spliff he was smok­ing from his lips. I took the cig­ar from his lips and put it into an enve­lope. I said to Smith I told you I would get you out of the Force”. He did not utter a word .

Smith plead guilty to all the charges, and was dis­missed from the force, I nev­er saw him again. Despite all the crimes Man-saw and Hopeton Forrest com­mit­ted they were in and out of prison like it was a revolv­ing door. Just recent­ly a Judge in the United States sen­tenced a 9 time felon to 50 years in prison, as a habit­u­al offend­er, and an incor­ri­gi­ble rogue.

For the record there are pro­vi­sions in law for a judge in Jamaica to throw the book at a habit­u­al offend­er much the same way, they just don’t. Twenty two years after I left law- enforce­ment ‚Hopeton Forrest and Man-saw are still orches­trat­ing and car­ry­ing out seri­ous crimes to include armed robberies.

It does­n’t mat­ter how many times they are arrest­ed the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges turn the right back onto the streets.

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Ellington Finally Grows Some Balls.

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At the risk of sound­ing like a bro­ken record I ask again does the Jamaican peo­ple real­ize that the bro­ken Justice sys­tem is lit­er­al­ly killing our coun­try. Some pay lip-ser­vice to human rights because they have an axe to grind, soon enough how­ev­er the truth will lay bare their true inten­tions for those with eyes to see. The tragedy is that even with an abun­dance of truths some still fall for the bull.(Wid an abun­dace of wata, di fool still ded fi thirst.Honorable Robert Nesta Marley)

We sim­ply have to face the facts which are star­ing us in the face, In our coun­try Jamaica a small Island 4411 square miles and rough­ly 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple we kill each oth­er with more fre­quen­cy than all the oth­er coun­tries in the world except about 3 to 5 oth­ers. So we ask our­selves ‚to what is this depar­ture from civil­i­ty attrib­ut­able? Those of us who were raised into believ­ing in God, argues that we have ceased believ­ing in the sov­er­eign­ty of God Almighty. We have turned to our own ways now, because we are way too intel­li­gent to believe in a God we have nev­er seen and who allows hor­ri­ble things to happen.

Some intel­lec­tu­als go fur­ther, label­ing the Bible an old book of fables, anti­quat­ed out-dat­ed and irrel­e­vant to our times. Ironically the Bible did pre­dict that in the end times , man would trust to his own under­stand­ing. It clear­ly states that knowl­edge will be the great­est vice for man and the cat­a­lyst for his down-fall. One truth has evad­ed the intel­lec­tu­als who are turned out of Institutions of high­er learn­ing, from the University of the West Indies to Harvard, Yale and Oxford is that God gave us free-will. So God does not sit around wait­ing for us to mess-up , like an umpire call­ing balls and strikes. You see the Élite have failed to real­ize that the Universe giv­en to us by God oper­ates on set prin­ci­ples. Simply put you chose a life of las­civ­i­ous, hedo­nis­tic plea­sures the end there­of is cor­rup­tion of the flesh and spir­i­tu­al death. If we chose to live our lives lov­ing each oth­er, car­ing for each oth­er, giv­ing to each oth­er, we by our own actions, cre­ate the Utopian par­adise we want. We get to decide, because God gave us free will he can­not and will not take back that free-will, he is not man that he should lie. Having a heart which fears God is not a heart that wants to kill, rape, or hurt any­one, if the world have a heart for God there would be none of those evils. To the Elitists and the pseu­do-Intellectuals, you don’t have to believe in my God, but you will find it impos­si­ble to suc­cess­ful­ly argue against the prin­ci­ples I just laid out. You don’t have to call him God, I will, but the prin­ci­ples are sound. Every day we read of chil­dren being raped and mur­dered, old men and women decap­i­tat­ed, entire fam­i­lies wiped out. Yet there are many peo­ple who ratio­nal­ize those killings as nor­mal. They have a mouth-full of idio­cy to try to make you believe what you see and hear hap­pen­ing is no big deal, crime is every­where. Of course crime is every­where, does that mean we should find com­fort that not only Jamaica has crime? It’s crazy how Satan has pulled the wool over our eyes on issue after issue.

With that said how­ev­er let’s take a look at crime and what dri­ves crime in Jamaica. It was heart­en­ing to see Jamaica’s police com­mis­sion­er Owen Ellington’s arti­cle on Face/​Book deal­ing with the issue. https://​www​.face​book​.com/​p​e​r​m​a​l​i​n​k​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​y​_​f​b​i​d​=​5​3​6​3​0​6​3​8​6​4​3​2​6​8​1​&​i​d​=​1​7​7​0​0​6​5​5​2​3​6​2​668

download (6)Singapore. Singapore

Security ana­lysts describe a failed state as one in which the state has lost the capac­i­ty and the polit­i­cal will to per­form basic gov­er­nance func­tions, such as effi­cient rev­enue col­lec­tion; assure pub­lic secu­ri­ty and safe­ty; build and main­tain crit­i­cal pub­lic infra­struc­ture; pub­lic ser­vices such as secu­ri­ty, pub­lic health, edu­ca­tion; enforce the rule of law and exer­cise sov­er­eign con­trol over the territory.

My only ques­tion to the com­mis­sion­er , even as I applaud him is ‚what the hell took you so long? It can­not be that it took him all this time since he became com­mis­sion­er to real­ize that crime is a busi­ness and the ser­vice he and the depart­ment offers is also a busi­ness. After all Ellington has a degree in Business admin­is­tra­tion that ought to count for some­thing oth­er than let­ters behind names as is cus­tom­ary in our Island home. I was also buoyed and elat­ed that the com­mis­sion­er seemed to have lift­ed the nar­ra­tive from our web­site , the very nar­ra­tive I have been expound­ing for the last sev­er­al years.

Singapore, Singapore.

I have long sought to raise aware­ness of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences crime is hav­ing on the social fab­ric of our country.

♦Politics and Political interference.

♥ An incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt Judicial system.

♣ Waste and theft of tax-pay­ers resources.

♠ Nepotism,corruption and graft.

♦ Abrasive ‚abu­sive and incom­pe­tent polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties which com­prised all the oth­er neg­a­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics laid out in the pre­vi­ous four lines.Jamaica’s politi­cians are large­ly crim­i­nals save and except a few.

Where there is no wis­dom the peo­ple per­ish. Many Jamaicans would read­i­ly give their lives for the two crim­i­nal gangs which runs the coun­try, in fact many will tell you they are born PNP or JLP. Those two acronyms rep­re­sent­ing the Peoples National Party and the Jamaica Labor Party. Between these two polit­i­cal gangs they have ren­dered Jamaica almost a failed state, reduced the coun­try to a International dis­grace and a pari­ah and the peo­ple almost to a man, hus­tlers and beggars.

Kingston Jamaica.

One need look no fur­ther than the present lead­er­ship of the coun­try, as well as the actions of Bruce Golding before this blind Bartimus at the helm, to get an idea why Jamaica is what it is today. We may chose to bury our heads in the sand of time and pre­tend, or we may face the truth. if we do not act fast we will not have a Jamaica the way we knew it, many say it’s already too late. Jamaica is fast becom­ing a failed state, even the peo­ple in gov­ern­ment are run­ning, the crim­i­nals have the police depart­ment issu­ing bul­letins to offi­cers to pro­tect their own lives. That my friend are the ingre­di­ents of a failed state. I encour­age you, as you read this, to read what Owen Ellington argued con­sti­tutes a failed state. I have pro­vid­ed the quote below and the link above for your information.

Security ana­lysts describe a failed state as one in which the state has lost the capac­i­ty and the polit­i­cal will to per­form basic gov­er­nance func­tions, such as effi­cient rev­enue col­lec­tion; assure pub­lic secu­ri­ty and safe­ty; build and main­tain crit­i­cal pub­lic infra­struc­ture; pub­lic ser­vices such as secu­ri­ty, pub­lic health, edu­ca­tion; enforce the rule of law and exer­cise sov­er­eign con­trol over the territory.

By those defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics you tell me if Jamaica is a failed state or not!

Kingston Jamaica.

In Jamaica, con­vict­ed gun offend­ers can walk out of court with a sus­pend­ed sen­tence or pro­ba­tion. Some pay a fine. Last year, for the peri­od January to September, 75 per cent of con­vic­tions in the Western Regional Gun Court result­ed in non-cus­to­di­al sen­tenc­ing, even as St James was record­ing twice the nation­al mur­der rate. In one case where a police raid net­ted four high-pow­ered rifles, over 1,200 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, bul­let­proof vests, tele­scop­ic lens and oth­er war-like equip­ment — enough to start a small war — the accused per­sons who plead­ed guilty were fined $80,000 and giv­en three years’ pro­ba­tion. This approach does not sig­nal any pol­i­cy intent to improve pub­lic security.(Owen Ellington com­mis­sion­er of Police).

Through the incep­tion of this pub­li­ca­tion I have labored to expose these truths , I am thrilled to see that Jamaica’s police com­mis­sion­er has final­ly grown the balls to call out the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment and the crim­i­nal cod­dling courts and crim­i­nal rights lob­by . Let me be clear they may fire Ellington for lay­ing out such broad-based pol­i­cy direc­tions as a civ­il ser­vant. I have asked him to do so in these blogs, in the news papers , chastis­ing him to step aside or speak out . I have no such fear, as such I have called them the thieves and mur­der­ers that they are, from the high­est office on down to the (dut­ty foot bwoy pon di street). Enough is enough.

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Respect The Wishes Of The People:

Falmoth Police Station
Falmoth Police Station

Majority of the peo­ple liv­ing in the Caribbean region sup­port the death penal­ty, yet many states lead­er­ship have decid­ed that they are smarter that the peo­ple who elect­ed them to office, so they have decid­ed not to hang murderers.

The Jamaica Labour Party resisted the full powers of the CCJ on the basis that it was a hanging court.[citation needed] In February, 2005, the Privy Council declared that the CCJ-related companion bills passed by the Jamaican Parliamentin 2004 were unconstitutional and therefore void. The bills would have established the CCJ as the final court of appeal in Jamaica.[citation needed] The Privy Council sided with the appellant, including the Jamaican Council for Human Rights, the Jamaica Labour Party and others, ruling that to establish the CCJ as the country’s final appeal court, without it being entrenched in the constitution would undermine the protection given to the Jamaican people by Chapter Seven of the Jamaican constitution. The court concluded that the procedure appropriate for an amendment of an entrenched provision — a referendum — should have been followed. In January 2012, the new People’s National Party government of Jamaica stated that it would be moving to have the CCJ serving in both the original and appellate jurisdictions for Jamaica in time for the 50th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence in August.[14] The Jamaica Labor Party, now in opposition, stated it has no issue with the government’s plan and seems set to support the move despite strident objections in the past.[15] In February, the foreign affairs minister of Jamaica has also called on Trinidad & Tobago to sign on to the court’s appellate jurisdiction to mark that country’s 50th anniversary of independence.http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​a​r​i​b​b​e​a​n​_​C​o​u​r​t​_​o​f​_​J​u​s​t​ice

The Jamaica Labor Party ini­tial­ly object­ed to the Caribbean court, on the basis that it was a hang­ing court. Even though the par­ty lat­er seemed to side with the People’s National Party’s plan to have the Caribbean court as the final arbiter in orig­i­nal and appel­late juris­dic­tion for Jamaica’s 50th anniver­sary of it’s independence.

Attorney General Patrick Atkinson has reit­er­at­ed that there is no need for a nation­al ref­er­en­dum on whether Jamaica should adopt the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as its final court of appeal.  Legislation has already been tabled to amend the con­sti­tu­tion to replace the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final appel­late court. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​5​305

I dis­agree with Atkinson, the mat­ter should be put to a vote, yes the peo­ple elect­ed the gov­ern­ment to make deci­sions for them, but on a mat­ter of this sig­nif­i­cance it is impor­tant for pos­ter­i­ty that the peo­ple get their say.

The peo­ple in Barbados Belize and Guyana have already ful­ly adopt­ed the CCJ as their final court.

The Labor Party nev­er stat­ed what issues it had with hang­ing , out­side of its claim that the CCJ was a hang­ing court. The par­ty obvi­ous­ly had it’s come to Jesus moment and saw the light. However there are still lin­ger­ing trep­i­da­tion on the part of the Jamaican gov­ern­ment to car­ry out the will of the peo­ple and put vio­lent crim­i­nals who have exhaust­ed their appeals to death.

Putting these crim­i­nals to death is not a panacea that will fix the coun­try’s crime prob­lem but it is one more way the gov­ern­ment, act­ing on the wish­es of the peo­ple can sig­nal to crim­i­nals, that it is seri­ous about deal­ing with crime and ter­ror in the coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion people.

The long over­due police sta­tion in Falmouth Trelawny is a wel­come change for the men and women who were forced to work in the dilap­i­dat­ed dump they pre­vi­ous­ly had. But build­ing police sta­tions are just a tiny part of what needs to be done to fix our coun­try’s bur­geon­ing crime problem.

The issues that some raise about human rights in Jamaica are legit­i­mate issues, what dis­qual­i­fies lob­bies like Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) from legit­i­ma­cy is their sin­gle-mind­ed focus on what they per­ceive human rights abus­es to be. In the case of the group JFJ their under­stand­ing of human rights abuse is con­fined to alleged abuse com­mit­ted by agents of the state.

I believe that the issue of human rights are not con­fined to pro­tec­tion from excess of state agents, but are uni­ver­sal. I par­tic­u­lar­ly believe the rights of vic­tims of crime far out­weigh the rights of those who have con­scious­ly decid­ed to break the coun­try’s laws, then turn around and demand respect for their rights.

People like Carolyn Gomes and Susan Goffe of JFJ and oth­ers who believe that fight­ing for the rights of the most despi­ca­ble crim­i­nals is a wor­thy endeav­or are well with­in their rights, we dis­agree. What we will be doing here is to tell the Jamaican peo­ple what they real­ly stand for , even as we ask them to obey the coun­try’s laws, which is one way of reduc­ing the risk of vio­lent con­fronta­tions with agents of the state.

Let me be clear, I spent lit­er­al­ly 10 years as a front line cop, serv­ing both on the high-inten­si­ty for­mer Ranger squad, and as a mem­ber of the CIB in the lat­ter part of my ser­vice. I have removed many weapons from the streets and put scores of crim­i­nals in jail where they belong, to include cops who decid­ed to be crim­i­nals. I have been shot in the line of duty, yet I have nev­er had the need to pull the trig­ger on any­one in the capac­i­ty of judge and jury.

Killing crim­i­nals regard­less of their crimes, extra-judi­cial­ly is crim­i­nal and serves no one. There are those who say they were police offi­cers who are now jump­ing on the band-wag­gon against police offi­cers, I will with­hold my com­ments on those.

Police offi­cers should have no com­punc­tion about tak­ing out crim­i­nals who try to kill them or has killed some­one and refus­es to sur­ren­der. Neither Carolyn Gomes, Horace Levy, Susan Goffe, Earl Witter, or Terrence Williams have the right to make that call for you. They are grand-stand­ing Elitist, do your jobs.

The crim­i­nals lob­by called JFJ is the mouth­piece of Amnesty International and the Inter American Commission of Human Rights, these agen­cies do good work in their base coun­tries , Britain and the United States respec­tive­ly, yet nei­ther agen­cies can alter or pro­pose leg­is­la­tion which will inter­fere with the rule of law or the actions of police offi­cers doing their law­ful duties.

In fact, despite con­tro­ver­sial killings of minor­i­ty men all over America and in Britain by police, both these groups are nev­er heard from. These mat­ters are left up to duly autho­rized inves­tiga­tive bod­ies, at either the local, state or fed­er­al lev­els to do what they are trained to do, then the courts do what they are sup­posed to do.

The gov­ern­ment may crow about the build­ing of the new police sta­tion in Falmoth Trelawny, but unless there are con­crete mea­sures in place to deal with crim­i­nals these facil­i­ties are noth­ing more than win­dow dress­ing , band-aid on gun-shot wounds.

Put the mat­ter to the peo­ple let them decide, they will decide to move ful­ly to the CCJ. There is no rea­son we should be ask­ing England to decide our cas­es for us. It is a silent but embar­rass­ing acqui­es­cence to the argu­ments that we are not smart enough to gov­ern ourselves.

Moving to the CCJ will allow the peo­ple’s wish­es to be car­ried out and mur­der­ing crim­i­nals can get their just deserts, right labor party?

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When Merely Securing A Loan Becomes A Major Accomplishment , You Know The Country Is In Trouble.

I find it instruc­tive that when Transparency International labels Jamaica 84% cor­rupt no one gets angry. When the Chicago Tribune bears out the stark fact that Jamaica’s debt bur­den is worse that of Greece no one gets angry. You know what ?We should all be angry, not at the mes­sen­gers who show these truths, we should be pissed at the peo­ple who got us there.

jamaica-debt-to-gdp

The same peo­ple who have been in elect­ed office(elected used liberally)have been in pol­i­tics since I was a child , they still hold polit­i­cal pow­er today, not because the peo­ple are stu­pid, but because they have bor­rowed tremen­dous sums of mon­ey from over­seas lenders,and have through the decades cre­at­ed zones of polit­i­cal exclusions.

What that means is that both polit­i­cal par­ties have cement­ed their pow­er in cer­tain geo­graph­i­cal areas of the coun­try, mak­ing it impos­si­ble for them to be vot­ed out of office. One par­ty has been expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter at it than the oth­er, nation­al elec­tion results have borne this out .

It is called ger­ry­man­der­ing here in the US. It isn’t ille­gal but it’s immoral and dis­hon­est. What we end up with is over one tril­lion Dollars US dol­lar of debt, well over half of the coun­try’s gross domes­tic prod­uct is spent on debt ser­vic­ing. Meaning pay­ing on inter­est on these loans , not on the principal.

Jamaica-waterfront-properties

The down-side to doing this is that in order to fill bud­getary short­fall they have to bor­row more mon­ey to run the coun­try which sends the amount need­ed for inter­est pay­ments sky­rock­et­ing through the roof .

At that rate pret­ty soon the entire gross domes­tic prod­uct will be required and then some, to ser­vice inter­est pay­ments. And did I men­tion that the prin­ci­pal loans will still be there?

That will leave noth­ing to run the coun­try. That my dear friends is called eco­nom­ic col­lapse. As we have seen lenders like the IMF are very reluc­tant to board a sink­ing ship, this last time around they were very reluc­tant to free up any more loans to Jamaica.

When lender Agencies do free up loans , they come with mul­ti­ple strings attached. Those mea­sures fur­ther com­pli­cates the prob­lem by adding pain to an already over-bur­dened peo­ple and con­stricts the econ­o­my through lay­offs and spend­ing cuts.

When the econ­o­my gets small­er the gov­ern­ment rais­es tax­es to fill short-falls which in turn gives them a tem­po­rary quick-fix of cash but that is like cot­ton-can­dy it invari­ably leads to much less cash in the econ­o­my as peo­ple have less mon­ey to spend , there­by tight­en­ing the econ­o­my even fur­ther. The prob­lem is syn­ony­mous to a snow-ball careen­ing down-hill, get­ting big­ger with each rev­o­lu­tion, it will crash and when it does it will be cataclysmic.

The Jamaican peo­ple must stop berat­ing each oth­er while those they elect­ed to lead them build mam­moth man­sions as soon as they enter office and dri­ve around in import­ed lux­u­ry vehicles.

The time has come to hold their feet to the fire and demand to know where the mon­ey comes from to fur­nish the lifestyle they are liv­ing. We must stop giv­ing them a pass while Rome burns.

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The Crime Situation Is Not Getting Better.

In these blogs I am par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal, in my com­ments direct­ed at peo­ple I per­ceive to be sup­port­ive of crim­i­nal behav­ior. Whether they do so express­ly or implic­it­ly. What I’ve found, hav­ing been away from law-enforce­ment for over 2 decades, is that our coun­try’s secu­ri­ty has not improved over that peri­od. Conversely the crime sit­u­a­tion has got­ten worse, stud­ies have con­firmed that in the last 10 years the amount of Jamaicans return­ing home to live has dropped by fifty per­cent, we have com­ment­ed here about this as we seek to height­en aware­ness to the prob­lems that have beset Jamaica.

Dorian Dixon: Ronald Thwaites :

There is a mind­set that is a part of the prob­lem, we Jamaicans sim­ply wor­ship politi­cians and oth­ers we believe “the big man”. In an ongo­ing dis­pute between the Jamaica Teachers Association and the Minister of Education Ronald Thawaites, over study leave ‚Dorian Dixon prin­ci­pal lec­tur­er and head of Mico’s Social Sciences Department com­pared the asso­ci­a­tion’s dis­pute with the Ministry of Education to a fight between “a mon­grel dog” and “a lion-heart­ed cat”.

There are calls com­ing from many quar­ters for mis­ter Dixon to be canned. I mean are you kid­ding me? He did­n’t even call Thwaites a mon­grel dog, the term mon­grel dog char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was inher­ent­ly designed to dri­ve home his point and to make a state­ment, but it was a metaphor peo­ple. Ronald Thawaites, as a radio talk show host for many years, was cer­tain­ly not hes­i­tant about call­ing peo­ple names and using metaphors, as he fooled many into believ­ing he was an inde­pen­dent voice and not just anoth­er PNP shill. I’m vin­di­cat­ed on that one!

Father Richard Holung:

The irony of the brouha­ha sur­round­ing mis­ter Dixon’s com­ment is even more laugh­able when we think of what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try. When we think of the things which comes out of the mouths of lit­er­al­ly every­one from the Prime Minister on down. The moral rot in Jamaica is pal­pa­ble. Well know Roman Catholic Priest father Richard Holung spoke to the moral decay in the coun­try in an arti­cle recent­ly.Jamaica: Conversion From Christianity To Paganism.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​5​2​0​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml

One of the rea­son the Constabulary Force have not been tak­en seri­ous­ly through­out the years is that the agency was divid­ed into minia­ture groups. Each with dif­fer­ent goals and objec­tives. The Police Officers Association, made up of mem­bers of the gazetted ranks are civ­il ser­vants, they are gov­erned by dif­fer­ent rules than rank and file mem­bers who are rep­re­sent­ed by the Federation, but which is still behold­en to the gazetted ranks whose strings are pulled by the politi­cians the chief pur­vey­ors of crime in Jamaica. The ISCF and District Constables Association also have their own rep­re­sen­ta­tive bod­ies and sub­se­quent­ly dif­fer­ent aspirations.

The prob­lem is to get these groups to adhere to a com­mon prin­ci­ple which would mean that all involved would be bet­ter off. Many mem­bers chose the safe way, which was to lay low, not stand for any­thing. They saw oppor­tu­ni­ties in being per­ceived as com­pa­ny guys, who does­n’t ruf­fle feath­ers. The police hier­ar­chy is filled with these men and women who are there because of boot-licking.

Even more laugh­able are some who are out of the depart­ment but are quite con­tent with things as they are today. They join groups which calls them­selves Ex-Police-Associations, but when the thin veneer is peeled back, they are noth­ing more than glo­ri­fied rum-drink­ing-rem­i­nisc­ing-fra­ter­ni­ties, which are pow­er­less to do any­thing to effect change.

I know I will be exco­ri­at­ed for say­ing this but I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about what police thought about me. I don’t care about pol­i­tics or their lean­ings, many are unable, even after they have left, to untan­gle them­selves from the cor­ro­sive ten­ta­cles of JLPNP.

I believe there are hun­dreds, per­haps thou­sands of for­mer Jamaican Police offi­cers, who could poten­tial­ly form a pow­er­ful lob­by which would have a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive impact on Jamaica going for­ward. Yet even when we meet on social sites like Face/​Book all we are capa­ble of doing is tear­ing down each oth­er, not much has changed.

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WE IN THE DIASPORA ARE CALLING FOR SUPPORT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND POLICE OFFICERS IN JAMAICA.

1394741170E_VEHICLEThe Independent com­mis­sion of Investigations (INDECOM)was cre­at­ed to inves­ti­gate civil­ian com­plaints against mem­bers of Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces. The Commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations, (INDECOM) Terrence Williams says he has asked the Minister of National Security to review a sub­mis­sion on the use of gear cov­er­ing the faces of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel while on oper­a­tions. The Independent Commission of Investigations is to under­take inves­ti­ga­tions con­cern­ing actions by mem­bers of the Security Forces and oth­er agents ofthe State that result in death or injury to per­sons or the abuse ofthe rights of per­sons; and for con­nect­ed mat­ters. The Independent Commission of Investigations Act, repealed the Police Public Complaints Act on April 15, 2010. http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​p​l​a​y​e​r​_​e​m​b​e​d​d​e​d​&​v​=​R​M​U​z​o​L​r​j​-uU Posted for your infor­ma­tion as to what the role of this Agency is as well as the lack of sup­port that is giv­en to the rule of law in Jamaica.http://www.japarliament.gov.jm/attachments/341_The%20Independent%20Commission%20of%20Investigation%20Act,%202010,.pdf 5:02 am, Sun December 18, 2011 Commissioner Williams says he has writ­ten to the Police Commissioner, ask­ing that he desists from per­mit­ting his offi­cers wear­ing masks as it is ille­gal. Mr Williams says the JCF’s Book of Rules does not pro­vide for the wear­ing of bal­a­cla­va or ski masks cov­er­ing the faces of offi­cers He notes that the rules can­not sim­ply be changed by the Commissioner, but by the Minister of National Security. Mr Williams point­ed out that while he under­stands that there may be cir­cum­stances when an offi­cer may need to wear a mask, t his need to be done under set pol­i­cy. The Indecom head wants the Minister of National Security to exam­ine the pro­pos­als pre­sent­ed and make rec­om­men­da­tions re the wear­ing of masks​.Mr Williams says he has giv­en the Commissioner of Police 60 days to reply to sev­er­al oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions made to assist the pub­lic in iden­ti­fy­ing secu­ri­ty forces.“The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber of police offi­cers should be worn on bal­lis­tic hel­mets and all out­er cloth­ing includ­ing high vis­i­bil­i­ty vests so the pub­lic can iden­ti­fy the police offi­cers they are deal­ing with. We have giv­en the Jamaica Defense Force six­ty days to respond to our rec­om­men­da­tions that where the JDF is involved in oper­a­tions in sup­port of the police so that the JDF sol­dier and Officer can be iden­ti­fied by the per­sons they are deal­ing with” said Mr Williams.

This is the Independent Commission of Investigations at the table with the adver­sar­i­al JFJ , address­ing their Press con­fer­ence even as the com­mis­sion is sup­pos­ed­ly active­ly engaged in inves­ti­gat­ing a case that involved fatal shoot­ing by the police the pre­vi­ous day, and which he referenced.

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​F​H​G​g​l​c​S​h​pkU

We would like to know what it was that the com­mis­sion­er of police Owen Ellington said to mem­bers that made them decid­ed to halt their calls for Williams to step down.The three police groups had called for Commissioner Williams to step down, fol­low­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a press con­fer­ence host­ed by crim­i­nal rights lob­by group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ).We in the dias­po­ra want to know what did the com­mis­sion­er say , did he threat­en mem­bers with sanc­tions, what did he promise them, if any­thing? We live in coun­tries where the rule of law rules, we do not advo­cate that police run rough-shod over cit­i­zens rights, but we cer­tain­ly do not want to see reac­tionary forces spear­head­ed by Gomes and Goffe and Horace Levy to derail the rule of law and turn Jamaica over to crim­i­nal Dons or (cporner crews are whatever)as have been the case.