Author Archives: Mike

by

Crime In Jamaica Part # 4.

This is the fourth seg­ment in a series of blogs titled ” Crime in Jamaica”.In this seg­ment I will attempt to show you how we have got­ten to this point, a coun­try which is now liv­ing off the largess of peo­ple liv­ing abroad..

In this pic­ture is for­mer People’s National Party leader and prime Minister, and (center)Current par­ty leader and Prime Minister por­tia Simpson Miller.

National elec­tions held 1988 saw the return of the PNP to pow­er for what would turn out to be an unprece­dent­ed 18 1⁄2 year hold on polit­i­cal pow­er, a move that to some may have been the sec­ond most instru­men­tal fac­tor as it relates to the con­di­tion of the coun­try today.

Negative eco­nom­ic growth, pur­suance of poli­cies that has zero chance of grow­ing the econ­o­my, mas­sive cor­rup­tion, run away crime, no updat­ing of the coun­try’s archa­ic laws and a pletho­ra of oth­er acts that could only be char­ac­ter­ized as best case incom­pe­tence and worst case criminal.

For exam­ple the Jamaican Police Department, revealed that for a whole decade not a sin­gle dol­lar was pro­vid­ed for train­ing of a sin­gle detective.

Bear in mind peo­ple com­mit crimes if they know they will get away with it. If there is less and less like­li­hood that one will be brought to jus­tice for crimes he com­mit­ted he will nec­es­sar­i­ly be embold­ened to con­tin­ue to do so with impunity.

Of course, true to form crime esca­lat­ed, the “do as you please “seed which was plant­ed dur­ing the 70’s, “take what you want from the cap­i­tal­ists” had now come to full bloom.

During the 80’s under Seaga and the Jamaica Labor Party, 600 mur­ders annu­al­ly were then astro­nom­i­cal num­bers, at least for those of us who were on the fore-front of the war on crime. We thought at the time that in a coun­try then with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.5 mil­lion that num­ber of killings were untenable.

After I exit­ed law-enforce­ment in 1991 I was stunned at the lev­el of incom­pe­tence , com­plic­i­ty, and acqui­es­cence in the Governing PNP gov­ern­ment which saw mur­ders rock­et­ing to in excess of 1600 annu­al­ly. This was dou­ble the num­ber of homi­cides in just a cou­ple of years.

Most Jamaicans liv­ing abroad had one com­mon com­ment, ” I sim­ply do not rec­og­nize the coun­try, it is not a place I would ever live again”

One may argue about the lev­el of patri­o­tism in those com­ments, that’s a legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion to have , I do know this how­ev­er, most peo­ple want to live a long life.

People who built homes intend­ing to return home sim­ply just aban­doned their invest­ments, chos­ing instead to stay alive. The so-called busi­ness sec­tor, (so-called) because of what now remains of that sec­tor, ele­ments of civ­il soci­ety are now grap­pling with the rea­sons the lev­els of law­less­ness are so per­va­sive. They do so while they advo­cate for the very ingre­di­ents that sus­tains, encour­ages and nur­tures anar­chy.

Lenient sen­tenc­ing, giv­ing crim­i­nals amnesty, giv­ing aid and com­fort to crim­i­nals, sup­port­ing crim­i­nal rights over the rights of vic­tims, amongst a pha­lanx of oth­er myopic paths to soci­etal destruction.

If the peo­ple entrust­ed to make the laws are ben­e­fit­ing from criminality,why would they enact leg­is­la­tion that would effec­tive­ly put crim­i­nals in jail where they belong? Why would the soci­ety expect them to train and equip a pro­fes­sion­al police force capa­ble of fol­low­ing evi­dence wher­ev­er it leads,or train any detec­tives at all?

Most Jamaicans liv­ing over­seas pull their hair out won­der­ing why it is that Jamaica can­not arrest the run-away crime prob­lem in the coun­try? The truth is politi­cians from both side of the polit­i­cal divide ben­e­fits one way or anoth­er from crime and in some cas­es many of them are active crim­i­nals. What pass­es for media are real­ly polit­i­cal­ly aligned dic­ta­tion tak­ers who write fluff pieces. They are gen­er­al­ly more com­fort­able writ­ing about dance-hall gyra­tions. The edi­to­ri­als are large­ly advo­cates for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, and noth­ing more.

The coun­try is awash in high-pow­ered weapons, guns have report­ed­ly come from Haiti, in what is called the gun for drugs trade. Jamaicans take to the seas with mar­i­jua­na and return from Haiti with boat-loads of weapons. Information received indi­cate that every­thing , includ­ing food is exchanged by Jamaicans for weapons. Food which includes ‚we are told, the meat of don­keys, dogs and the car­cass of oth­er ani­mals we would­n’t eat in this part of the world

Weapons have come in from Colombia in the cocaine trade, from the United States through the ports, in bar­rels appli­ances and oth­er inge­nious ways.Weapons also enter the coun­try from the United States in air­craft and boats, drug smug­glers bring weapons in and leave with plane and boat-loads of cannabis. This has made many Jamaicans rather wealthy. This includes politicians,police,lawyers and businessmen.

With the recent dra­con­ian depor­ta­tion poli­cies being under­tak­en by the United States, Canada, and Britain the coun­try has seen a seri­ous spike in seri­ous and com­plex crimes which the police force is ill-equipped to deal with. Many of the peo­ple being mass deport­ed are intel­li­gent peo­ple versed in cyber crimes and are cog­nizant of how to breach the rules in coun­tries far more sophis­ti­cat­ed than Jamaica. This pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem for local law-enforce­ment, many of whom are them­selves deeply involved in criminality.

And so the soci­ety calls on the police to answer for the run-away crim­i­nal­i­ty over­tak­ing the coun­try , the police reacts the way they know how, they respond with bullets.

by

Whites Account For Under Half Of Births In U.S.

After years of spec­u­la­tion, esti­mates and pro­jec­tions, the Census Bureau has made it offi­cial: White births are no longer a major­i­ty in the United States. www​.nytimes​.com

That was the first para­graph, title cap­tioned above, in Thursday May 17th New York Times publication.

I ask read­ers to harken to blog post titled Obama’s race prob­lem post­ed May 16th a day before this NY Times report was pub­lished. In that blog I com­ment­ed on the chang­ing face of America and the need for those who tra­di­tion­al­ly wield­ed pow­er to now appre­ci­ate the need for a more con­cil­ia­to­ry approach,based on those very dynamics.

That blog was in no way shaped by any of the infor­ma­tion with­in the NY Times report, and could­n’t have, as it was writ­ten and pre­pared and pub­lished a day before the Times report.

All over the United States in state after state there are laws being enact­ed in state leg­is­la­tures to sup­press votes. Republican major­i­ty in States like Florida, North Carolina have launched all out assault on a prob­lem which does not exist, vot­er fraud.

One state leg­is­la­tor, when con­front­ed by the Reverend Al Sharpton, civ­il rights activist, head of the National Action net­work, TV, and Radio host stat­ed that the laws were designed to stamp out mas­sive vot­er fraud. The mas­sive vot­er fraud he allud­ed turned out to be three cas­es alleged over a peri­od of three years, a grand total of one alle­ga­tion per year out of mil­lions and mil­lions of votes cast.

The rev­erend Al Sharpton.

What that and oth­er instances of deceit revealed was that the laws were a solu­tion look­ing for a prob­lem. Which leads us to ask what is the rea­son why any­one would want to enact laws which would invari­ably lead to vot­er suppression?

Republican rage at an intel­lec­tu­al savvy African-American in the White House has gal­va­nized mas­sive grass-roots efforts in the Tea-Party and oth­er non-tra­di­tion­al move­ments as well as repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tures, to come up with a slew of anti-immi­grant, anti-vot­ing rights bills that are being passed with alarm­ing alacrity and fright­en­ing feroc­i­ty, in states all over America.

Make no mis­take about it, old­er white Americans were used to see­ing things run by whites, now they go to the gas sta­tion they see peo­ple of mid­dle-east­ern ances­try, they look all over their neigh­bor­hoods they see Hispanics all around them. And most fright­en­ing of all, in their White House is a black family.

They are scared stiff, and under­stand­ably so, but how effec­tive a pol­i­cy will it be to dou­ble down on racial poli­cies that exclud­ed and assault­ed racial minori­ties in the past?

Rep. Paul Broun (R‑Ga.) intro­duced an amend­ment to cut all fund­ing for enforce­ment of a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 intend­ed to pre­vent racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. The pro­vi­sion, Section 5, requires a num­ber of states and coun­ties, most­ly in the South, to receive fed­er­al approval before chang­ing their elec­tion laws.(Huffington post .com)

Long time civ­il rights activist and Georgia con­gress­man stepped up and launched a broad­side against Broun’s dis­gust­ing amend­ment. In that broad­side Congressman Lewis had this to say.

Congressman John Lewis Democrat. Georgia.

“It is hard and dif­fi­cult and almost unbe­liev­able that any mem­ber, but espe­cial­ly a mem­ber from the state of Georgia, would come and offer such an amend­ment,” Lewis said, recount­ing the his­to­ry of strug­gles over vot­ers’ rights. “It’s shame­ful that you would come here tonight and say to the Department of Justice that you must not use one pen­ny, one cent, one dime, one dol­lar to car­ry out the man­date of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.” “People died for the right to vote — friends of mine, col­leagues of mine,” Lewis said. “I speak out against this amendment.”

It seem that in the annals of his­to­ry, the repub­li­can par­ty is con­tent to be cast as irrel­e­vant, out­dat­ed racist, and uncom­pro­mis­ing. Forever rel­e­gat­ing itself to a dis­card­ed rel­ic on the dust heap of time. It appears that like wound­ed prey, the repub­li­can par­ty will retreat into out­dat­ed irrel­e­vant poli­cies lit­i­gat­ed and lost decades ago. Content to be the par­ty of south­ern white men, angry, bit­ter, and afraid.

America is great, not despite fresh infu­sion of ener­gy, dynamism, intel­lect, and dri­ve, but because of it.

Cynics and hate mon­gers will try to con­vince you that America’s best days are behind her, not true, the dynam­ic unen­cum­bered free­dom of peo­ple from all over the world , comimg here striv­ing , reach­ing , claw­ing for that brass ring at the top will for­ev­er cast America as the shin­ing city on the hill Ronald Reagan spoke about. The more “United” States of America Dr. King dreamt about.

Like a roar­ing riv­er, fed by hun­dreds of trib­u­taries and streams, so too is this great land made great as a result of the fresh waves of immi­grants who come, bright-eyes, cal­loused hands , ready to work, to dream, to achieve.

Yes America’s best days are ahead of her, for all, black , white, brown, yel­low, for everyone.

by

Obama’s Race Problem:

One thing peo­ple under­stand is when you speak to them in sim­ple lan­guage. Republicans under­stand that. At every lev­el of the polit­i­cal debate Republicans talk to

peo­ple in sim­ple con­cise lan­guage, it mat­ters not that they may be lying. Working class peo­ple gen­er­al­ly do not care too much for elit­ists who talk in super­flu­ous lan­guage, seem­ing to lec­ture them.

This applies to peo­ple in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa,and all across America in so-called work­ing-class neighbourhoods/​blue-col­lar neigh­bor­hoods where peo­ple get up go to work in fac­to­ries, on farms, and in small businesses.

Try telling that to Democrats.

I sim­ply can­not under­stand why those who clas­si­fy them­selves as democ­rats feel that they must show how smart they are by using dou­ble speak; we get it that you have mul­ti­ple degrees from wher­ev­er, but the aver­age vot­er in rur­al Pennsylvania needs to be able to relate to what you are selling.

On the very day he was being inau­gu­rat­ed, a super secre­tive group of right-wing oper­a­tives were meet­ing in an undis­closed loca­tion in Washington DC plot­ting the polit­i­cal demise of Obama.

It mat­tered not that this was a his­toric moment in American his­to­ry, which many would argue, every American should cel­e­brate, if not for Obama, at least for the coun­try they claim to love.

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConell sums up a repub­li­can strat­e­gy that was dis­cussed in that secre­tive DC meet­ing which nei­ther he nor John Boehner were priv­i­leged to attend. QUOTE ” “The sin­gle most impor­tant thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” 

Republicans could not have select­ed a more rep­re­sen­ta­tive repli­ca to nar­rate the cen­tral tenet of their inten­tions, than the old cur­mud­geon from Kentucky.

In McConell’s face is every­thing that America seeks to move away from-hate, dys­func­tion, obstruc­tion, lies,deceit, racism etc.

So lets start with estab­lish­ing what no one wants to say, not even the pres­i­den­t’s sup­port­ers. I will say it however.

None of the dys­func­tion, grid­lock, nas­ti­ness, pet­ti­ness, name-calling,and the inabil­i­ty to get any­thing done in Washington DC is about par­ty polit­i­cal differences.

[The stark real­i­ty is that repub­li­cans wants to ensure that the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama is such a dis­mal fail­ure that this coun­try will not con­sid­er elect­ing anoth­er African-American for anoth­er century]

There ladies and gen­tle­men are the facts,and they do not care what harm they do to the coun­try or its inhab­i­tants in the process. John Boehner speak­er of the house , pow­er­less over his own cau­cus has allowed him­self to be a pawn of the lunatic hate fringe that has cat­a­pult­ed scores of so-called Tea-par­ty freaks into rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al politics.

The prob­lem with the vot­ers who vot­ed these lunatics into office is that they get noth­ing in return. None of these idiots are inter­est­ed in get­ting any­thing done except giv­ing tax-cuts to the rich­est of the rich.

All of the fis­cal pru­dence that has formed the foun­da­tion of the tea-par­ty wing-nuts argu­ments (and I dare­say their very exis­tence) was nowhere to be found a few months ear­li­er when Bush was in the White house, where have all of this fis­cal con­ser­vatism come from all of a sud­den? The strat­e­gy is to roll back even the afford­able care act which they them­selves dubbed “Obama-care”. They got out front of the afford­able care act demo­niz­ing it as rad­i­cal and bad for Americans. Many, includ­ing the pres­i­dent say the afford­able care act is not per­fect, still an oppo­si­tion which cares about peo­ple would work with the admin­is­tra­tion to fix it . Despite it’s per­ceived flaws, this leg­is­la­tion has tremen­dous pos­i­tive impact on the lives of tens of mil­lions of Americans.

How smart is a pop­u­la­tion real­ly if it may be manip­u­lat­ed into believ­ing that leg­is­la­tion which allows their chil­dren who are out of a job to stay on their health insur­ance until they are age 26 is some­how a bad thing?

How smart are a peo­ple who insur­ance com­pa­nies can no longer tell they will not insure them because they have pre-exist­ing con­di­tions? yet they beleive the lie that it is a bad thing?

How smart is a pop­u­la­tion if it may be manip­u­lat­ed into believ­ing that a law which does not allow Health Insurance com­pa­nies to refuse to cov­er ill­ness­es for peo­ple insured by them, a bad thing?

This is the bat­tle pres­i­dent Obama faces. Where else would a pres­i­dent who has accom­plished so much in such a short time be in a tight race? Much less be in a tight race with a guy whose par­ty has done noth­ing but stand in the way of eco­nom­ic recovery?

The mat­ter is sim­ply one of race. Republicans of all stripes, on every issue, whether it’s wom­en’s health, immi­gra­tion, enti­tle­ments, you name it, has stat­ed they want to return to the past. The fact is that America includ­ed, and ben­e­fit­ted only some. This dog-whis­tle to their base is lost on no one. When the play­ing field is lev­el all peo­ple ben­e­fit. Republicans wants to take the coun­try back to a time when only white men were afford­ed full cit­i­zen­ship; African-Americans and oth­er minori­ties, women and gays were not allowed to participate.

It is a seri­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal flaw on the part of those who feel they may only be able to com­pete when the odds are stacked in their favor. This coun­try can ill afford to go back to the age of exclu­sion, dis­crim­i­na­tion, recrim­i­na­tions, and exploita­tions. The intel­lec­tu­al élite must do a bet­ter job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the ben­e­fits of inclu­sion to the blue-col­lar work­ers in the heart-land and those in the south who are still fight­ing the civ­il war, while it repu­di­ate and rub­bish exclu­sion. They must be taught that when one does bet­ter we all do better.

For hun­dreds of years many were allowed to make the rules, every­one else lived in their world and played by their rules. People of all stripes and per­sua­sion are now stand­ing and demand­ing their place in the sun. The pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama will nev­er be removed from the his­to­ry books. The ascen­den­cy to high office by peo­ple like Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton , Hilda Solis, Susan Rice ‚and many more, blacks, women, those who are gay , straight, Asians, Hispanics, Americans all, rep­re­sents the ever-chang­ing face of the American landscape.

It behoves those who want to turn the clock back that they learn to com­pete with every­one else, this is the face of the future.

by

The Arrogance Of The 1%

As America approach­es anoth­er Presidential elec­tion, one of the cen­tral tenets of this cycle is the widen­ing gap between the haves and the have-nots.Today there is data which sug­gest that 99% of the world’s wealth and resources are actu­al­ly owned and con­trolled by less than 5% of the world’s peo­ple. What that means in the reverse is that up to 95% of the world’s now 7 bil­lion and climb­ing inhab­i­tants are actu­al­ly left to fight over the 1 % that falls off the table of the rich and powerful.

The Republican can­di­date for President Mitt Romney, his par­ty and sur­ro­gates, argue that those who seek to talk about these dis­par­i­ties are envi­ous and resent­ful of suc­cess. Romney him­self is report­ed­ly worth a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars and count­ing. I doubt that there are many peo­ple who would not glad­ly trade finan­cial posi­tions with Mitt Romney. How then are Republicans able to make the envy argument?

They do so by con­vinc­ing low infor­ma­tion peo­ple to believe in ideas and ulti­mate­ly vote against their own best inter­est. My focus today is not to talk about repub­li­can deceit , but to frame what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing not just in America but all over the world. The defeat of French President Sarkozy of France may actu­al­ly shed some light into that feel­ing of hope­less­ness the world’s peo­ple are feel­ing at the unmit­i­gat­ed greed of those who have every­thing yet have an insa­tiable rapa­cious desire for more.

In oth­er parts of the globe move­ments are spring­ing up, peo­ple are demand­ing their share of the world’s resources , whilst at the same time decry­ing the immense glut­tony of major cor­po­ra­tions, and what some per­ceive to be their wan­ton dis­re­gard for the lit­tle man. 

Several years ago as a small busi­ness own­er I was approached by a rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a large cor­po­ra­tion called Sprint, Sprint had just launched their pre-paid line called Boost, This new pre­paid line was to oper­ate on the IDN net­work, IDN uses a sim card and allowed Sprint to offer users walkie-talkie ser­vice, a move which was rev­o­lu­tion­ary then.

At the time they would have been hap­py to have a home­less per­son sell­ing the prod­uct. Fast for­ward to today, Boost has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pre-pay indus­try with their $50 per month plan with no con­tract, this plan offers inter­net , unlim­it­ed domes­tic talk and text, and the abil­i­ty with on time pay­ment to shed up to $15 from the $50 plan over an 18 month period.

What’s not to like?

The idea took off beyond the wildest dreams of Sprint and the plan­ners, in addi­tion Sprint offered cheap phones to the con­sumers which they argued they sub­si­dized . Sprint then start­ed argu­ing that small retail­ers should not pur­chase too many phones all at once because they placed much fin­in­cial resources into mass pur­chas­ing of the devices and it was bad busi­ness to have them sit­ting on store shelves. So they cut off sup­plies, some­times for weeks on end , in an effort they argue would dry up mer­chan­dize being held by retail­ers. Never mind that small retail­ers like myself had to deal with cus­tomers who came to my estab­lish­ment and could not find the devices , some­times for weeks on end.

As the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the plan grew so did the desire for more sophis­ti­cat­ed devices com­men­su­rate with the times. In effect con­sumers want­ed all of the trap­pings of the inter­net, talk and text, up to date devices, low month­ly pay­ments and no con­straints of a con­tract. So the big­wigs decid­ed that the prod­uct was now strong enough to sup­port direct stores . So they embarked on entic­ing poten­tial small busi­ness peo­ple to invest in stores car­ry­ing noth­ing but Boost and vir­gin mobile phones and acces­sories, yet Sprint bears none of the cost and over-heads of the oper­a­tional costs asso­ci­at­ed with those stores.

Of course yours tru­ly said thanks but no thanks. One of their reps told me recent­ly quote“Mike we have count­less deal­ers and you are the only one with a Barber shop in the same facil­i­ty as your store.” I told him my Barber shop stays you may go.

What Sprint is seek­ing to do is to dic­tate to small busi­ness peo­ple how they should con­duct their busi­ness, they want to add cer­tifi­cates to busi­ness peo­ple’s com­put­er on the premise they want to dis­cour­age unau­tho­rized retail­ers from sell­ing pre-paid pins, they frame it as a means of dri­ving busi­ness to the door of busi­ness peo­ple like myself, in essence it is a track­ing device. A track­ing device which is sim­i­lar to their attempts to tell retail­ers how many phones they must sell per month , how their prod­ucts must be dis­placed in the retail­ers own store and how much space and mer­chan­dize retail­ers must devote and stock respectively.

The threat?

“Do not do as I say, we de-autho­rize you”. Never mind that Sprint’s name is so bad in cer­tain cir­cles many peo­ple dis­card their Sprint con­tracts to get Boost and Virgin Mobile ser­vices, unaware they are both owned by Sprint. The arro­gance of Sprint in assum­ing that small busi­ness­es will take on over-heads to mar­ket their prod­ucts is stag­ger­ing , yet some small busi­ness peo­ple unaware that I am myself an authroized retail­er, have con­fid­ed in me that it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to oper­ate the direct stores with all of the cost and risks sell­ing only the afore­men­tioned products.

None of the oth­er providers of cel­lu­lar ser­vices I mar­ket in my store have ever approached me with any of the demands Sprint has the audac­i­ty to demand.

I men­tion this sto­ry to high­light the bla­tant dis­re­spect and dis­dain large cor­po­ra­tions have for small busi­ness peo­ple and the ordi­nary man. At the same time they chose this auda­cious path ‚they give away American jobs to poor­ly trained peo­ple in the Philippines and oth­er Countries who are extreme­ly rude and incom­pe­tent , frus­trat­ing cus­tomers who then return to stores like mine to sort through Sprint’s cus­tomer ser­vice problems.

Many large cor­po­ra­tions have come and gone, America needs to con­stant­ly seek to encour­age and facil­i­tate small busi­ness­es in the Towns cities and ham­lets all across the nation, our peo­ple are bet­ter served when we offer inti­mate friend­ly service.

We wait to see how Sprint will even­tu­al­ly evolve.

by

Crime In Jamaica Part # 3:

Once the rich had left the greed and envy was turned with­in. Which leads us to the present crime situation.

Not all of Jamaica’s rich or wealthy peo­ple fled dur­ing the Manley Years„ of course some of them were aligned to the PNP, they under­stood that there was mon­ey to be made even in the unfriend­ly busi­ness envi­ron­ment of that era.

They braved the dan­ger while they held on tight to their US Visas and green cards. The die was how­ev­er cast, Jamaica was now a (trop­i­cal Serengeti) where the strong sur­vived, and the weak gets eaten.

Fast for­ward and we saw crime trend down under Edward Seaga, now this is where the para­dox lies. Many will point to the fact that Seaga main­tained the so-called moth­er of all (gar­risons) Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli Gardens was is the com­mu­ni­ty that was the cen­ter of Seaga’s West Kingston con­stituen­cy. Many argue that any reduc­tion of crime under Seaga was despite him rather than because of him. As some­one who start­ed out in law enforce­ment dur­ing the Seaga Administration I have a more nuanced view of the matter.

Edward Seaga for­mer Prime Minister of Jamaica.

The defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic that will , and has influ­enced opin­ions expo­nen­tial­ly against Seaga is the per­cep­tion that he main­tained Tivoli Gardens as a sort of fief­dom that was hands off for the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces. As I said before my views are as nuanced as the facts allowed .

Seaga did allow Tivoli Gardens to be a fief­dom, he did favor ele­ments of the crim­i­nal under­world, he did inter­fere in law enforce­ment as it relat­ed to that com­mu­ni­ty. Seaga defied con­ven­tion­al wis­dom when he stood at the funer­al of Lester Lloyd Coke a know crim­i­nal and an archi­tect of the infa­mous show­er posse. Coke was no saint Seaga knew it, he deliv­ered the votes, kept the com­mu­ni­ty in line and han­dled the affairs of the com­mu­ni­ty day-to-day. Seaga also knew that Coke was a crim­i­nal want­ed by the Americans, he knew he was a drug-deal­er who had more seri­ous alle­ga­tions lev­elled against him. Yet Seaga stood at the funer­al of Coke and stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that he was a com­mu­ni­ty leader whom the peo­ple loved. When that state­ment is dis­sect­ed Coke may have been a com­mu­ni­ty leader of sort, he may have been loved/​feared. Even if those state­ments were indeed true he was still a criminal.

On the day Edward Seaga made those state­ments about Coke I lost any mod­icum of respect I may have had for him.

However on the oth­er side of the issue he changed the par­a­digm as it relat­ed to crime and the way the issue was approached under the Manley admin­is­tra­tion. Criminals were not being removed from police sta­tions, cops were not being out gunned and there were major efforts to low­er crimes, based on efforts his admin­is­tra­tion devot­ed to the fight against crime. Unfortunately Seaga did not see his baby (sic) Tivoli Gardens being part of that wider need to con­trol crime. In some ways he may have been blind­ed by his decades-long nur­tur­ing of that com­mu­ni­ty, as a mod­el to what urban com­mu­ni­ties may accomplish.

Like a dot­ing par­ent Seaga felt that because he loved his child every­one should feel the same way. He lost sight of the impor­tance of dis­ci­pline in that child’s life.

To this day Seaga believes that his baby Tivoli gar­dens is a per­fect child which need­ed no discipline.

by

Crime In Jamaica Part # 2:

Michael Manley
Michael Manley

On the 11th of May I wrote a blog which sought to lay the foun­da­tion so we can under­stand why crime is such an entrenched prob­lem in Jamaica.
In that Article I out­lined the dif­fer­ence Hugh Lawson Shearer was as a Prime Minister when con­trast­ed with the oth­ers even in his own par­ty, the Jamaica Labor Party.
In this the age of infor­ma­tion and free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws, Shearer’s record as a leader may be accessed and scrutinized.

Hugh Lawson Shearer
Hugh Lawson Shearer

I will not seek to spoon-feed you guys on this. The Manley years which suc­ceed­ed Shearer is also pub­lic record for all to look at and form their own opin­ions. I for one do believe there are good and bad in almost every­thing. The ques­tion is, does the bad out-weigh the good in an endur­ing way that we would most cer­tain­ly have been bet­ter off with­out the good asso­ci­at­ed with them?
We may look at the Manley years with objec­tiv­i­ty, and feel good about min­i­mum-wage increase, no more bas­tards kids, and all the oth­er social pro­grams that he enacted.

We then com­pare them with the phe­nom­e­nal increase in crim­i­nal­i­ty and law­less­ness due to his pol­i­cy of anti-cap­i­tal­ism which taught lazy Jamaicans who want­ed what oth­ers worked for, that peo­ple who had mate­r­i­al wealth were vicious evil peo­ple. A pol­i­cy which rein­forced the notion that what they had should be tak­en from them and divid­ed up among the poor.

Manley fol­lowed up those poli­cies by telling the busi­ness class that if they did not like his socialist/​communist poli­cies they should hop onto one of the five flights per day which were leav­ing for Miami then.
Of course they took Manley’s advice, why would they not?
They were already been set up as ene­mies of the state, many were being mur­dered, so they took flight and they took their mon­ey with them.
They were not going to be vic­tims of Manley’s social engineering>.

The endur­ing lega­cy of Manley’s poli­cies rever­ber­ates through Jamaica to this day.
The coun­try which had a Ministry of (Mobilization) what­ev­er the hell that meant , has strug­gled to rede­fine itself beyond the depen­dent aggres­sive vio­lent abra­sive peo­ple we are seen as , always with a hand stretched out.
That is not to say that was the vision Manley had for the coun­try, the oppo­site is prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth. However once the prover­bial genie was let out of the bot­tle there was no putting it back.

Once oppressed and under­priv­i­leged peo­ple were allowed to move into peo­ple’s homes take them over, take over their busi­ness­es, do noth­ing but col­lect pay­checks the coun­try would nev­er be the same again.
Why would the peo­ple want anoth­er par­ty in the mix? This par­ty is great , “we do as we please, what’s not to like”?

This saw an almost mar­gin­al­iza­tion of the oth­er par­ty, which as some argue is now noth­ing more than a filler party.
A filler Party they argue which is there sole­ly to fill in when the nation is tired of the PNP. Political devel­op­ments over the last three to four decades makes it a bit dif­fi­cult to argue with those assertions.

This aggres­sive nature which was cre­at­ed by the Ministry of pro­pa­gan­da oc> (mobi­liza­tion) was not sim­ply going to dis­si­pate sim­ply because the so-called rich had fled the coun­try, after all, greed and envy ‚like all oth­er preda­tors, needs prey.

Once the rich had left the greed and envy was turned within.
Which leads us to the present crime situation.
Checkmate…

by

Crime In Jamaica Part #1.

Hugh Lawson Shearer
Hugh Lawson Shearer


After the People’s National Party was returned to pow­er in Jamaica on the 29th of December, crime start­ed to trend upward. Jamaica gen­er­al­ly record approx­i­mate­ly 1600 homi­cides annu­al­ly which places her near to the very top of the most mur­der­ous coun­try on earth on a per capi­ta basis. With her pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple and land mass of rough­ly 4’411 square miles, the like­li­hood on get­ting slaugh­tered can­not be far from any­one’s mind. The slaugh­ter of anoth­er Jamaican is nev­er far away geo­graph­i­cal­ly. That includes those who wield polit­i­cal pow­er, of course the stark real­i­ties of that wan­ton slaugh­ter are not of much con­cern to them. Of course not all Jamaicans have large police secu­ri­ty detail at the expense of poor exposed and vul­ner­a­ble tax­pay­ers.

There are con­flict­ing expla­na­tions for the rea­sons crime trends upward under Governments formed by the People’s National Party(PNP) as against the con­di­tions which obtain under Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) admin­is­tra­tions. Like every­thing else in Jamaica this issue is viewed under polar­ized lens. Most Jamaicans are com­plete­ly unable to see things in an objec­tive way, inca­pable of accept­ing facts even when they are borne out with data, as long as it runs counter to their philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal beliefs. Many would rather die in igno­rance than live with the truth.

This is the extent of the polar­iza­tion of Jamaican pol­i­tics, to a large extent there is very lit­tle mid­dle which would allow for objec­tiv­i­ty, free of polit­i­cal taint. PNP sup­port­ers and sym­pa­thiz­ers will argue that the esca­la­tion of crime under their lead­er­ship is attrib­ut­able large­ly to peo­ple from the oth­er par­ty desta­bi­liz­ing the gov­ern­ment by com­mit­ting heinous crimes. It nev­er mat­tered to those mak­ing that argu­ment that there were nev­er one shred of data in sup­port of those claims. In essence they were sim­ply crim­i­nal activ­i­ty which were not com­mit­ted by any spe­cif­ic group, or indi­vid­ual, and were not con­fined to any geo­graph­i­cal area which would bear out those claims. Conversely JLP sup­port­ers and sym­pa­thiz­ers will argue that peo­ple feel free to do as they choose under PNP lead­er­ship , as that par­ty is lax and do not make crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty a priority.

Let’s exam­ine the facts, pri­or to Manley assum­ing office in the 70’s crime was not a seri­ous prob­lem in Jamaica, com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing. Under the lead­er­ship of Hugh Lawson Shearer the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces had a leader who sup­port­ed the rule of law and those who enforced the laws. Everyone was cog­nizant of those real­i­ties, the prime Minister made it known he was not going to allow it.

The coun­try was record­ing its great­est peri­od of growth and devel­op­ment, which by all sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis makes Hugh Lawson Shearer Jamaica’s most effec­tive Prime Minister. Then came demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the great­est peri­od of social engi­neer­ing in the coun­try’s his­to­ry. In 1972 Michael Manley swept to pow­er on what would be the for­mal begin­ning of a pop­ulist mes­sage of “bet­ter must come”.

by

Obama Supports Marriage Equality:

President Obama has stopped dither­ing after he was forced off the fence regard­ing the gay mar­riage issue. Vice President Joe Biden in an inter­view last Sunday stat­ed that he was total­ly com­fort­able with the mar­riage of same-sex cou­ples, and frankly he did not see what the fuss was beyond that. This cre­at­ed a flur­ry of activ­i­ty around the issue, many won­dered if Biden had mis­spo­ken once again, he is well-known as a gaffe machine. The next day Education sec­re­tary Arne Duncan stat­ed on MSNBC that he was also in favor of same-sex mar­riage, Interviewer Mark Halperin asked Duncan if he had ever said so in pub­lic before, Duncan shot back “I have nev­er been asked before”

Cable chan­nels lit up with spec­u­la­tion as to what Obama’s posi­tion would be, as Illinois state sen­a­tor Barack Obama was for civ­il union , his aides argued he was still evolv­ing, this did not slow down the inces­sant 24 hour chat­ter on cable, with many all but demand­ing that the pres­i­dent come out one way or the oth­er on the issue.

Obama like any politi­cian spent time con­sid­er­ing the polit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions either way. This could not have come at a worse time for the pres­i­dent in my esti­ma­tion, the state of North Carolina just this week vot­ed deci­sive­ly by a twen­ty point mar­gin to out­law same-sex mar­riage. North Carolina is an extreme­ly cru­cial state for the pres­i­dent, no demo­c­rat had won that state until Jimmy Carter did in 1976, Obama won North Carolina by a com­fort­able mar­gin in 2008 , owing large­ly to the large African-American com­mu­ni­ty there, which turned out in big num­bers to give Obama the win.

Other swing states like Colorado, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania may fac­tor into how this ulti­mate­ly plays out in November. Many swing states have large chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive pop­u­la­tions who are vehe­ment­ly opposed to same-sex mar­riage or even civ­il unions.

The Hollywood crowd is ecsta­t­ic with the pres­i­den­t’s decision,segments of the media are also hap­py but , it is still left to be seen how actu­al vot­ers will react to this his­toric deci­sion by Obama. (The LGBT) com­mu­ni­ty had long framed this issue as a civ­il rights issue, link­ing their sojourn to the civ­il rights strug­gles African-amer­i­cans waged.

This strat­e­gy has angered some with­in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty who believe that there is no con­nec­tion between the two. African-Americans are actu­al­ly large­ly against gay mar­riage, now coined (mar­riage equal­i­ty) for palat­i­bil­i­ty. These are some of the very vot­ers who just vot­ed unaminous­ly to out­law mar­riage equal­i­ty in North Carolina, and the most loy­al part of the pres­i­den­t’s base.

Many pun­dits argue that blacks are just not gonna aban­don the pres­i­dent on this issue, because of the pride they feel at hav­ing a black man in the white house.I am not so sure, hav­ing lis­tened to the views of some pas­tors who fear that they will be forced to mar­ry peo­ple of the same gen­der against their core chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples. These pas­tors have large con­gre­ga­tions which may not be hap­py with this deci­sion. The ques­tion is, are these vot­ers going to go out and vote for Mitt Romney? Or will they chose instead may just choose instead not to go out and vote at all?

Mitt Romney the repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in response to the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion, stat­ed that he believed that mar­riage should be between a man and a woman. Romney also offered up more extend­ed and nuanced ‚(wishy/​washy) plat­i­tudes, which I will not delve into at this time.

Many hail the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion as a his­toric moment for civ­il rights, the ques­tion is what kind of out­come will it have for his short-term polit­i­cal future? As the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion has evolved it behoves all of us to be cog­nizant of the protes­ta­tions of those who invoke God’s name into the debate, many of them used his name to jus­ti­fy slav­ery, Jim Crowe, to bar inter racial mar­riage, and to gen­er­al­ly dis­crim­i­nate against minorities.

Whether we agree or dis­agree with the deci­sion of the pres­i­dent, those whose rights he pro­fess­es to pro­tect are no less than the rest of us. Even if he and the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty are sin­ful and deserve to burn in hell it still is not up to the rest of us to impose those penal­ties. As the scrip­tures clear­ly states let the wheat and the tares grow togeth­er untill the day of harvest.

God is the ulti­mate judge.

by

Dathan (Duffy) Henry: Rest In Peace My Friend, Rest In Peace.

Yesterday whilst attend­ing a wed­ding I real­ized I had missed a call from my friend George. Despite our friend­ship George does­n’t call often. So I thought it must be impor­tant, I’ll return his call right away.

George nev­er missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind me that I was one of the few peo­ple who always answered my phone when­ev­er he called. I always remind­ed myself that George nev­er answered his phone when I call. I decid­ed to call back as soon as I saw the missed call. He picked up the phone and I hur­ried­ly told him I was attend­ing a wed­ding , hence I had dis­abled the ringer tem­porar­i­ly. He told me “I won’t keep you, I do how­ev­er have some dev­as­tat­ing news”.

My heart stopped..

Then he uttered the fate­ful words Duffy Henry is dead.

Senior Superintendent Dathan (Duffy) Henry

George, (Duffy) Henry and a lot of oth­er good cops served with yours tru­ly at the Constant Spring CIB dur­ing the late 80’s, a great group of guys, hard-work­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, smart. That group includes now Assistant Commissioner of Police Ealan Powell, Superintendent Colin Pinnock, SSP Wilford Gayle, Devon Watkis, Dean Taylor and a num­ber of oth­er men who now make up the upper ech­e­lons of the Constabulary gazetted ranks. Many ben­e­fit­ed from the accel­er­at­ed pro­mo­tions which placed them on a fast track to the lead­er­ship spots they now occupy.

After I emi­grat­ed in the ear­ly 90’s some men left the depart­ment, oth­ers stayed and con­tin­ued serv­ing. I nev­er missed a oppur­tu­ni­ty to ques­tion those who stayed on the occa­sion we speak , ” why do you con­tin­ue to do it”?

Today I mourn the loss of my friend.

Those he served knew him as mis­ter Henry, to us his friends he was sim­ply “Duffy” Broad smile, big laugh, effer­ves­cent, gre­gar­i­ous, affable,available, hon­est , hard work­ing, ambi­tious, , intel­li­gent, car­ing, will­ing to learn, smart, brave, capa­ble. Those are some of the adjec­tives which I assign to my friend, and they do not begin to tell the sto­ry of the man, the friend, the professional.

You were big­ger and bet­ter than any­thing they may say about you from the cor­ner of their mouths my friend . You were sim­ply big­ger and bet­ter than they can ever articulate.

Rest in peace my friend.….….….….….….….….….….. Rest in peace.

by

Welcome To Jamaica,everything Cool Man.

Jamaican police officer stands guard
Jamaican police offi­cer stands guard

Jamaica’s pre­mier news­pa­per the Daily Gleaner since the depar­ture of Oliver Clarke ‚has been on a down­ward spi­ral. The qual­i­ty of the Gleaner’s Journalism mir­rors the dys­func­tion and chaos that has become syn­ony­mous with present day Jamaica. There seem to be no real attempt to ver­i­fy sto­ries for jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty, sen­sa­tion­al­ism seem to trump prop­er jour­nal­ism, as the air­waves have been inun­dat­ed with filth and medi­oc­rity , it seem the once proud Gleaner has now joined the mad race to the bot­tom. Even the read­ers feed­back are manip­u­lat­ed in a parochial small-mind­ed way to suit a nar­row polit­i­cal view, go fig­ure, the trav­es­ty in all of this is the vast illit­er­a­cy which is per­va­sive with­in the society.

May 4th Daily Gleaner’s let­ter of the day :LETTER OF THE DAY — Cops out of control.

On Wednesday, May 2, 2012, I went into the taxi park in Half-Way Tree to take a taxi head­ing to Three Miles. When the taxi was full with the req­ui­site three pas­sen­gers, the taxi dri­ver attempt­ed to leave, but there was a police­man stand­ing in the way. Other taxi dri­vers want­ed that space, but the police­man was adamant that they would not get the space, and he told them to “go dung di road, unnu nah get it”. After look­ing at the taxi I was in, the cop asked the taxi dri­ver if it was a hack­ney car­riage or a route taxi (to my knowl­edge all taxis on the Three Miles to Half-Way Tree route are clas­si­fied as hack­ney car­riage) and said some­thing else to the dri­ver. The cab dri­ver start­ed to dri­ve out, and at this point the police­man hit the bon­net of the car and shout­ed, “Licence and reg­is­tra­tion, yuh deaf?” The taxi dri­ver con­tin­ued to dri­ve the car. Another police­man came by and attempt­ed to open the door to take out the key, while the oth­er cop pro­ceed­ed to clutch his weapon (Some say he actu­al­ly pulled the weapon, but I did not see that because I was appeal­ing to the dri­ver to stop). At this point, the taxi dri­ver sped off with us scream­ing and telling him to stop. He even­tu­al­ly said we should come out of the car on reach­ing the exit of the park, and by the time we got out, he sped off, and one of the young ladies fell in the road. 

Trigger-hap­py policemen.

It was the mer­cy of God that the police did not open fire that night, because I know that I would have been shot (because inno­cent per­sons are nor­mal­ly vic­tims in clash­es between police and taxi oper­a­tors). When I look back at this inci­dent, I see where I could have been like Vanessa Kirkland. Do the police have the right to pull their weapon in the open when no one is fir­ing at them? Do we want these trig­ger-hap­py police­men to pro­tect us? How many more per­sons will die because of the irra­tional actions of the police before some­thing is done about them? I am not say­ing that the taxi dri­ver was right, but he was not dis­re­spect­ful or threat­en­ing in any way to the police, and I do not think that kind of behav­iour from the police was war­rant­ed.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

This is an exam­ple of how this once proud news­pa­per oper­ates now as a dish rag of sen­sa­tion­al­ism. Not only did they pub­lish this non­sen­si­cal piece of garbage , in their infan­tile mind they went a step beyond by mak­ing this non­sense “let­ter of the day” . Then they went one fur­ther, it appeared that all the com­ments were in sup­port of the police offi­cers so they post­ed 4 com­ments and cut off com­ments. This total lack of under­stand­ing but unre­strained gib­ber­ish is not con­fined to this illit­er­ate woman who wrote it, it is a gen­er­al feel­ing which per­me­ates the entire spec­trum of Jamaican soci­ety. A com­pre­hen­sive dis­re­spect for the rule of law and those who enforce them. Certainly this is not con­fined to the total dunce who wrote this.

My friend told me of an expe­ri­ence he had recent­ly at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston. A taxi pulled up to the ter­mi­nal and stopped in an area where he clear­ly must have under­stood he could not park. Not only did they stop but the dri­ver left the car in that restrict­ed area on his return he was in time to see the car being hoist­ed onto a tow-truck. He con­front­ed the spe­cial con­stab­u­lary offi­cer and demand­ed that he release the car,that was not enough he got into the face of the police offi­cer, upon which the offi­cer attempt­ed to arrest him.

Of course in Jamaica every­one wants to inter­vene when cops attempt an arrest, so every­one got involved includ­ing the pas­sen­ger the taxi dri­ver took to the air­port. He alleged­ly grabbed the offi­cer’s hand demand­ing he release his friend. On the arrival of anoth­er cop the pas­sen­ger ran into the ter­mi­nal and dis­ap­peared , no con­se­quence, no inter­fer­ing with gov­ern­men­tal admin­is­tra­tion, no prison , he just caught his flight.

Let’s fast for­ward a lit­tle, most of you have trav­elled from Jamaica through Kennedy International Airport, and you have seen the ICE Agents with the dogs, sniff­ing prod­ding, check­ing, ques­tion­ing, have you ever seen or heard any of the high and mighty Jamaicans open their mouths to protest?

I will see you next time.

Ps. The morons in Jamaica lam­bast the police when they speak patios which is the dialect the vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion under­stands , yet they are push­ing it at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to. They only have a prob­lem when the police use patios.

by

Only The Things Which Are Of God Are Free;

“Politics makes strange bed-fel­lows”. How many times have we heard this state­ment? This say­ing though used a lot, is prob­a­bly a mis­nomer, I believe politi­cians are rather devoid of char­ac­ter, which would rather bet­ter explain why the lat­ter seem to be true.

Portia Simpson Miller Bruce Golding

I will come back to the bed-fel­lows soon but I must lay some foun­da­tion, bear with me please.

Portia Simpson Miller’s pre­de­ces­sor Bruce Golding in an inter­view with the BBC was asked whether he would have Gays in his Cabinet? Golding replied, quote: Not in my cab­i­net> Golding com­mit­ted polit­i­cal sui­cide in that inter­view, only he did­n’t know it then. 

The wheels that would ulti­mate­ly be the undo­ing of Bruce Golding had start­ed turn­ing, Never mind that the Christopher (Dudus) Coke mat­ter would be the prover­bial straw which broke the camel’s back, Golding’s demise start­ed with that BBC interview.

Homosexuals are pow­er­ful , they have pow­er­ful lob­by and they have pow­er­ful friends in high places,some of whom are them­selves Homosexuals. homo­sex­u­als and their friends preach tol­er­ance, how­ev­er they do not sub­scribe to their own doc­trine of tol­er­ance and accep­tance. Those opposed to them are vil­i­fied as out­dat­ed igno­rant Jesus wor­ship­ing relics of the past, who have no place in mod­ern society. 

So much for tol­er­ance and accep­tance.

The die had been cast, Golding had to be defeated.

British Prime Minister David Cameron at the com­mon­wealth heads of gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence in Perth Australia declared that Jamaica and sev­er­al oth­er Commonwealth nations that main­tain anti-gay leg­is­la­tion could be affect­ed by reduced finan­cial sup­port from Britain. Cameron has threat­ened to with­hold British aid from gov­ern­ments that do not reform leg­is­la­tion ban­ning homosexuality.

Cameron

Golding made the same mis­take Michael Manley had made years before him. They both failed to grasp or under­stand the nuanced and intri­cate com­plex­i­ties of geo-politics. 

Golding cacooned in his lit­tle world 4,411 square miles of pow­er-base, epic cen­ter West Kingston, gross­ly mis­cal­cu­lat­ed the extent to which homo­sex­u­al­i­ty has been pro­mul­gat­ed, pack­aged and shoved down the throats of the world’s peo­ple’s, so much so that it had become almost trea­so­nous to be anti gay. 

Neither the peo­ple in Washington DC nor those in London believe that Portia Simpson Miller is a capa­ble leader. It did not mat­ter, Golding would be replaced and so Portia quite unwit­ting­ly sold her soul to the devil.

Portia Simpson Miller is a pop­ulist , and noth­ing much beyond that, the pow­er bro­kers did not need any­thing else ‚she fit­ted the role per­fect­ly. Jamaicans need­ed to be per­suad­ed, they need­ed to be sold on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, who bet­ter to do so than the matron­ly pop­ulist affec­tion­ate­ly called “Sista P”? It came as no sur­prise then that when asked dur­ing the debates whether she would revis­it Jamaica’s bug­ger laws Miller respond­ed in the affirmative.

Jamaica will nev­er be the same again.

Of course “TIME” mag­a­zine would have the clue­less new Prime Minister as one of the world’s 100 most influ­en­tial per­sons, why not? I have an unso­licit­ed word of cau­tion for Sista P, as you bask in the glow of TIME’S dubi­ous recog­ni­tion, do remem­ber the homo­sex­u­al com­mu­ni­ty is not like the peo­ple of Saint Andrew South West, or the oth­er occultists who wor­ship at the Orange altar of ignorance.

Homosexuals will not be used , you will deliv­er what you promised, fail­ing which your fate will be worse than that suf­fered by Bruce Golding. The Gay, les­bian and trans gen­der com­mu­ni­ty will not be used and cast aside, mark my words.

You made a deal with the dev­il, I sug­gest you find a way to make good on your promise. As my dear grand-aunt used to say ” a nuh ever ting weh glis­ten a gold”

Good luck with the yel­low ser­pent you picked up Portia.

Remember at the out­set I allud­ed to the char­ac­ter of politi­cians? Well this is where the rub­ber meets the road, Portia Simpson Miller is now tied to this homo­sex­u­al issue, whether she wants to or not. Let’s see how this self-pro­claimed God-fear­ing woman from rur­al Saint Catherine extri­cate her­self from this tan­gled web she wove. 

by

ELECTION CAMPAIGN BEGINS:

The Obama Administration has announced they are ready to launch their 2012 elec­tion cam­paign, this coin­cid­ed with Mitt Romney all but lock­ing up the nom­i­na­tion for his par­ty. Santorum the last real chal­lenger dropped out before Romney swept all of the five states which were up for grabs last Tuesday. Of course I think we are all aware there are no coin­ci­dences in pol­i­tics, so it’s safe to assume that the launch was intend­ed to coin­cide with Romneys inevitable win in the states which had their pri­maries Tuesday.

President Barack Obama. Governor Mitt Romney

The Obama cam­paign would be well advised that the lev­el of excite­ment which char­ac­ter­ized their first vic­to­ry may not be avail­able to them this time around. The econ­o­my is still only ten­ta­tive­ly recov­er­ing, Guantanamo Bay is still open,The Afghan war is still being waged, even though it seem no one knows why and to what end. Unemployment is high, and there is a gen­er­al malaise in the air. much of the stag­na­tion in the econ­o­my may actu­al­ly be traced to the doorstep of repub­li­cans in con­gress who uni­tary have opposed every pro­pos­al or leg­is­la­tion the pres­i­dent has put forth. Mitch McConnell stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that his only goal is to ensure that the pres­i­dent serves only one term.

Mitch McConnelEric Cantor

One would have thought that as Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell would have had more to do than sub­vert the pres­i­dent ‘s agen­da for polit­i­cal gain. Obviously vot­ers in the state of Kentucky are sat­is­fied with this tired lame excuse of a pub­lic ser­vant so he is allowed to do it with­out con­se­quence, come next elec­tion they will vote him back into office, such is the state of ide­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics in this coun­try that peo­ple like the sen­ate minor­i­ty can sub­vert the will of the vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple who elect­ed the pres­i­dent.

Make no mis­take, the rea­son we have seen this una­nim­i­ty of GOP oppo­si­tion to this pres­i­dent is racial ani­mus. Many of the poli­cies this pres­i­dent has put forth are most­ly car­ry overs from the Bush pres­i­den­cy. Bush enact­ed the Patriot Act, Obama con­tin­ued it. Bush start­ed the stim­u­lus, Obama con­tin­ued it. Bush spent tax­pay­ers mon­ey like a drunk­en sailor, Obama spend to stim­u­late the econ­o­my. Bush mass deport­ed peo­ple, Obama accel­er­at­ed the depor­ta­tion process. Bush start­ed the Afghanistan war, Obama con­tin­ued and broad­ened it. In fact many of Obama’s sup­port­ers are mad at him for exact­ly these poli­cies of Bush which he railed against as can­di­date Obama.

As a con­se­quence Obama has lost sup­port from the left, lost sup­port from the inde­pen­dent mid­dle and gained noth­ing from the right. Many make the case that Obama had to try to work with repub­li­cans, I dis­agree, elec­tions have con­se­quence. President Obama was elect­ed to car­ry out a man­date, if vot­ers want­ed repub­li­cans they would have vot­ed for them, they did not. Democrats had the house the sen­ate and the white house , yet rather than enact the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da they squab­bled and fought amongst them­selves, argu­ing about left­wing, lib­er­al, and blue-dog, and who fit­ted into what cat­e­go­ry. Voters boot­ed them from the house and hand­ed con­trol to repub­li­cans , who have since done noth­ing for the aver­age American.

Republicans in the house and Senate should not have had a oppur­tu­ni­ty to affect this pres­i­den­t’s agen­da, democ­rats were hand­ed a size­able major­i­ty in the house, con­trol of the sen­ate and con­trol of the white house. Given all of that pow­er repub­li­cans would have changed the face of America. President Obama has been forced to play defense and use exec­u­tive orders to get any­thing done, which saw him spend­ing a lot of time sell­ing his plans to the American peo­ple when he should be doing what he was elect­ed to do, govern.

John Boehner 

Paul Ryan

When the his­to­ry books are writ­ten detail­ing this chap­ter of American History, this con­gress will have the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing assault­ed and abused the first African pres­i­dent. Not with water-hoses , guns , dogs and legal thugs , but by una­nim­i­ty of inac­tion, dis­re­spect and deri­sion. This con­gress led by John Bohnear must be remem­bered with the likes of George Wallace, and Bull O’Connor.

Republicans nev­er ceas­es to amaze me, I nev­er quite under­stood how they man­age to get so many peo­ple to vote against their own self-inter­est. The oth­er sub­ject of amaze­ment for me is that they lie bla­tant­ly , some­thing which is a pet peeve of mine , but I digress, I utter­ly loathe liars, yet repub­li­cans as a unit to the last troll, are able to lie bare-faced with­out bat­ting an eye and peo­ple vote for them. Lying is a seri­ous char­ac­ter flaw, to me it goes to the heart of one’s char­ac­ter, or as in the repub­li­cans case, the lack there­of. I won­der if oth­er peo­ple find the act of lying as loath­some as I do?

The repub­li­can Governor of Mississippi recent­ly stat­ed on right-wing radio that all democ­rats and planned par­ent-hood wants is to com­mit abor­tions. Now grant­ed that it is all lies, abor­tions is a small part of the ser­vices that planned par­ent-hood offers to women. The very repub­li­cans who holler and pros­trate them­selves as sav­ior of unborn chil­dren in Paul Ryan’s bud­get would deny the very chil­dren the most basic of neces­si­ties, food.

It fol­lows that what they care about is only what hap­pens in a wom­an’s womb, they care noth­ing about chil­dren, they would cut ser­vices like food stamps, and oth­er basis ser­vices to the poor­est peo­ple who are unable to help them­selves, whilst giv­ing more and more tax breaks to the wealth­i­est peo­ple who do not need the money.

The tried and failed poli­cies of trick­le down eco­nom­ics which Herbert Walker Bush cor­rect­ly labeled voodoo eco­nom­ics has been exposed as a sham and a fraud­u­lent back-door way of pay­ing off wealthy cam­paign donors, cou­pled with recent supreme court deci­sions in cit­i­zens unit­ed , aver­age Americans are in for a very rough ride. The pow­er of the American peo­ple are now cen­tered in the hands of a very few filthy rich people.

The wishy- washy nature of democ­rats, does not allow them to call repub­li­cans out as the flam­ing liars they are. This has giv­en them unre­strained acces to shape the debate based sole­ly on fic­tion. Say what you want about repub­li­cans they under­stand the art of decep­tion, I would nev­er sup­port them but one has to give cred­it to an orga­ni­za­tion that can effec­tive­ly make fools of so many, get­ting them to dis­re­gard their own interest.

Republicans have very strict dis­ci­pline, they all repeat the same lies , and they usu­al­ly do so with­out any push­back from their feck­less polit­i­cal adver­saries. Democrats choose rather to use nuanced terms, giv­ing cre­dence to the lies that they are elit­ists. Rather than speak direct­ly to the American peo­ple, the way repub­li­cans do, democ­rats beat around the bush. With the loss of a straight shoot­er like Barney Frank of Massachuset, democ­rats will be even worse off. Bill Clinton had Carville and Begala, Obama has himself.

If Obama shape the nar­ra­tive with easy and direct clar­i­ty he will win re-elec­tion, con­tin­u­ing to speak in pro­fes­so­r­i­al terms will end up in defeat for him . Based on his record there is no rea­son for him to lose this election.

by

The Predictability Of Jamaican Politics:

Post Tivoli incur­sion , have seen a dra­mat­ic increase in crime in Jamaica , which has effec­tive­ly erod­ed the gains made by the secu­ri­ty force .

Quite pre­dictably , the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) , now the oppo­si­tion , which had con­tributed immense­ly to the prob­lem in the first place , pri­or to the incur­sion , has tried to gain polit­i­cal mileage from an issue which has seri­ous impli­ca­tions for this country .

Instead of engag­ing the PNP in dis­cus­sion on the issue, in an effort to arrive at con­sen­sus ad idem as to the way for­ward and iden­ti­fy solu­tions that could solve the prob­lem , they have sought to politi­cize it and rel­e­gat­ed it to a polit­i­cal football .

In the mid­dle of all this, is the Police ‚who have been giv­en the prover­bial bas­ket to car­ry water , with lit­tle or no resources to deal with a prob­lem ‚that they, the politi­cians them­selves, unwit­ting­ly , might have cre­at­ed and facilitated .

In the con­text of Jamaica, crime is a com­plex issue and has deep roots that facil­i­tate its exis­tence. It gains nour­ish­ment from the government’s, past and present, rel­a­tive inabil­i­ty to arrest the deep socioe­co­nom­ic con­cerns of the poor work­ing class peo­ple of this coun­try. They have instead engaged in a sort of polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion­ism of the polit­i­cal élite, seek­ing more to pro­tect their inter­est as to “who gets what where and how.”

The solu­tion there­fore is quite sim­ple , invest in our social cap­i­tal , stop unwant­ed waste of tax pay­ers mon­ey facil­i­tate invest­ment in this coun­try and imple­ment trans­par­ent mech­a­nisms to pre­vent cor­rup­tion which has starved this coun­try of well need­ed resources .
The ques­tion is though, does this crop of politi­cians have the polit­i­cal will to imple­ment these ini­tia­tives to resolve our con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion? Your guess is as good as mine.

Errol Mc Leish

  • Errol Mcleish is final­iz­ing his stud­ies in Law he hopes to prac­tise law in Jamaica, he also has a wealth of expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment mat­ters and is a guest blog­ger on this site.
by

No To Impotence !.….….…impotence?

The office of con­trac­tor General was cre­at­ed to bring cred­i­bil­i­ty to the awards process of pub­lic con­tracts in Jamaica. This became nec­es­sary because of the high lev­els of cor­rup­tion and malfea­sance that per­me­at­ed that process for decades. Most Jamaicans are acute­ly aware to some degree of the cor­rup­tion with­in the gov­ern­ment con­tract process.

Without re-lit­i­gat­ing the past we move to the present day. The nation’s Parliament draft­ed and enact­ed the Contractor General’s Act. The Office is now head­ed by capa­ble Lawyer Greg Christie. Many who hold polit­i­cal pow­er in the Island nation has very lit­tle use for Greg Christie a man many more see as a breath of fresh air, and much-need­ed integri­ty into the pub­lic sphere.

Greg ChristieOmar Davies

It fol­lows there­fore that it would not be long before the recent­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment of the coun­try’s far left-of-cen­ter People’s National Party Government would have a prob­lem with Greg Christie. The for­mer Jamaica labor par­ty Government at times butted heads with Mister Christie and his office. how­ev­er the new­ly installed PNP gov­ern­ment if its his­to­ry is any barom­e­ter has nev­er seen a scan­dal and a poten­tial for cor­rup­tion it did not dive into. The PNP gov­ern­ment is formed from a pop­ulist par­ty that thrives on promis­es, cheap give-aways, nepo­tism, crony­ism, cor­rupt prac­tis­es, and abuse of State pow­er. As such they are reward­ed with office for extend­ed peri­ods of time , their last stint last­ing 18 1⁄2 years. During which the coun­try record­ed astro­nom­i­cal esca­la­tion in the mur­der rate , ris­ing to with­in the top three places in the world where one is like­ly to get mur­dered. Registering at its height, an aver­age of 1600 report­ed homi­cides annu­al­ly out of a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 mil­lion inhabitants.

Omar Davies the for­mer finance min­is­ter presided over the worst finan­cial peri­od in the nation’s history,at a time when most oth­er car­ribean Islands were record­ing pos­i­tive growth in their economies. His per­for­mance was so abysmal the equal­ly incom­pe­tent prime min­is­ter Portia Simpson Miller could not put him back at Finance this time around. Incredibly telling when Portia find some­one unsuit­able for a task.

It is there­fore not sur­pris­ing that Omar Davies now min­is­ter of trans­port, works and hous­ing would be at odds with the work of the con­trac­tor gen­er­al and the works he does. Davie’s min­istry is the one that han­dles the old cook­ie jar, the pot where the tax-pay­ers got their ass­es hand­ed to them through ille­gal and cor­rupt acts with­in the pro­cure­ment process. So in all his wis­dom here’s what Omar Davies does !

THE WHAT:

In a state­ment to Parliament announced that an inde­pen­dent over­sight pan­el has been estab­lished to expand the frame­work for mon­i­tor­ing the award of con­tracts. The body is to be chaired by Professor Gordon Shirley, prin­ci­pal and pro-vice chan­cel­lor of the University of the West Indies, Mona. He is to be joined by busi­ness­man R. Danny Williams, and Everton McDonald, a retired ter­ri­to­ry senior part­ner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.jamaica​glean​er​.com

THE WHY:

Davies announced the estab­lish­ment of the pan­el while reveal­ing that Cabinet has giv­en approval for the con­tin­u­a­tion of three projects — the com­ple­tion of the north-south link of Highway 2000; the Gordon Cay Container Transhipment hub, and the Fort Augusta Container ter­mi­nal. The OCG, head­ed by Greg Christie, had expressed it was not in agree­ment with the direct nego­ti­a­tions with investors in rela­tion to these three projects. The office had said the projects should be sub­ject­ed to com­pet­i­tive ten­der.jamaica​glean​er​.com

THE WHO:

Yesterday, Opposition Leader Andrew Holness and North Central Clarendon Member of Parliament Pearnel Charles said they were uncom­fort­able with the rea­son for which the pan­el has been estab­lished. Holness ques­tioned whether Davies was seek­ing to replace the OCG with the pan­el.jamaica​glean​er​.com

Here’s the thing , there is noth­ing wrong with this pan­el of Jamaicans, after all in Jamaica one only has to go to col­lege and they are giv­en God sta­tus, so I have no evi­dence one way or the oth­er as to the char­ac­ter of these peo­ple, But they are not need­ed. I total­ly get how this admin­is­tra­tion and in par­tic­u­lar this min­is­ter could have a prob­lem with the integri­ty process that is enshrined in the OCG, after all they are used to mak­ing deci­sions as politi­cians with­out over­sight or any­one dar­ing to ques­tion them.

THE RANT:

“We do not accept impo­tence as an option,” he said.“This admin­is­tra­tion, this Parliament, is very much aware of the knife’s edge in terms of the tim­ing and we would sug­gest that it is not appar­ent that this under­stand­ing of the fact that investors are not going to hang around in per­pe­tu­ity, hop­ing that you may come to a deci­sion,” Davies said. He added: “What we are seek­ing to do is to do the right thing and to ensure that the pub­lic is assured that there are oth­er per­sons … who have accessed what we are doing.” He said: “It can­not be that 63 mem­bers are all so tied togeth­er in a nar­row, focused attempt to deceive the peo­ple and one office is the only cor­rect one.jamaica​glean​er​.com

Clearly mis­ter Davies must have been liv­ing in a dis­tant uni­verse, or he choses to be obliv­i­ous to the fact that peo­ple trust the OCG far more than they do any sin­gle par­lia­men­tar­i­an, or all of them com­bined. Clearly the esteemed min­is­ter is suf­fer­ing from an abun­dance of over con­fi­dence in his and his col­leagues impor­tance and or pop­u­lar­i­ty. I know the min­is­ter finds obey­ing the law a nui­sance, but the law is the law mis­ter Davies, you are not allowed to abro­gate the law or usurp the duly con­sti­tut­ed OCG in your expressed hur­ry to take advan­tage of opportunities.

I sug­gest you get used to shar­ing pow­er, I under­stand what a both­er it must be for you and your col­leagues to obey laws, after all you peo­ple were nev­er held to answer for any­thing. During your last go around you had carte-blanch to do what­ev­er you want­ed and look at the results.

A new day is dawning.

I love it.

by

Has Black America Come Full Circle?

Marcus Mosiah Garvey is Jamaica’s first National hero. He is rec­og­nized as the father of black nation­al­ism and black con­scious­ness. It was Garveyism which formed the foun­da­tion of the American civ­il rights strug­gle of the 60’s. It was Garveyism which awak­ened the con­scious­ness of the Black Panther Party, The Nation of Islam,and even the non-vio­lent move­ment spear-head­ed by Martin Luther King and oth­ers. Others like Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and many oth­er heroes of that era who sac­ri­ficed much so that many may now reap what they did not sow.

President Obama sits in the seat Rosa parks sat in, on the very bus ‚December 1st 1955

Barack Obama the President of the United States sits in the very seat that Rosa Parks sat dur­ing a vis­it to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan this week, President Barack Obama took a moment to board one of its big attrac­tions – the Montgomery, Ala. city bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.

President Obama lat­er reflect­ed on the moment at a fundrais­er in Suburban Detroit Michigan, Quote:“I just sat in there for a moment and pon­dered the courage and tenac­i­ty that is part of our very recent his­to­ry but is also part of that long line of folks who some­times are name­less, often times didn’t make the his­to­ry books, but who con­stant­ly insist­ed on their dig­ni­ty, their share of the American dream.” 

This for me was a pow­er­ful moment in American his­to­ry, and a par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant com­ing of age of peo­ple of African-American her­itage. This was the result of Ms. Parks defi­ance. Rosa Parks lat­er stat­ed there was no truth to the notion she refused to give up her seat because she was tired, if any­thing she was tired of being rel­e­gat­ed to being sec­ond class citizen.

As we eval­u­ate just how far we have come since that December day,we rec­og­nize there are sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for peo­ple of African-American ances­try in America. The prob­lems of our com­mu­ni­ty are not the same as it is for oth­er groups.

Unemployment is high­est in our com­mu­ni­ty. We have the high­est rate of chil­dren being born out-of-wed­lock a fact which puts our chil­dren at ele­vat­ed risks of school drop-out, prob­lems with the law, among a raft of oth­er neg­a­tives. We are more prone to cer­tain dis­eases than oth­er groups. Our men are pro­filed, arrest­ed and more dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly incar­cer­at­ed than oth­er groups. When charged with crimes our peo­ple are more like­ly to be incar­cer­at­ed at a much more alarm­ing rate than oth­er Americans, and they get much longer and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly more severe sen­tences than oth­er Americans. In Schools our chil­dren are more like­ly to be sus­pend­ed expelled or oth­er­wise penal­ized than whites or oth­er groups. When com­pared with white chil­dren who com­mit sim­i­lar infrac­tions our chil­dren are penal­ized much more severe­ly , even when they are not the aggres­sors, and the infrac­tions are com­mit­ted togeth­er with white children.

The dis­ad­van­tages we suf­fer are too numer­ous to men­tion here. At the same time there are also a sig­nif­i­cant amount of things that our com­mu­ni­ty must change.

There are many intel­lects in our com­mu­ni­ty who argue that we should not have to change our swag to please any­one, I agree. Many argue that wear­ing our pants low is styl­ish and we should­n’t change it , I agree.

I wear my jeans low, I walk with a swag, I am a proud black man, no one is going to tell me what to do. However what I see on the streets in my city, and in oth­er cities with young black men and boys is not low rid­ing pants, it’s not sag. It is dis­re­spect­ing one’s self.

There is noth­ing cul­tur­al or black about wear­ing one’s pants around one’s thighs, with under­wear where the pants should be ‚and in many case show­ing the crack of one’s ass. Forget about oth­ers and what they might think, it is down­right dis­re­spect­ful to one’s self, fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty and race. Neither my sons nor my nephews dress that way, it has noth­ing to do with the fact that they care what white America think, they dress prop­er­ly because they respect themselves.

So lets start by respect­ing our­selves while we demand respect from oth­ers. Lets stop cut­ting class, lets stop going to prison if we can, lets stop killing each oth­er. Lets start mar­ry­ing our baby’ moth­ers, lets stay in our chil­dren’s lives, let’s stop sell­ing drugs which destroy our own peo­ple, lets stop allow­ing our­selves to be car­i­ca­tured as igno­rant vio­lent prone idiots when we enter peo­ple’s busi­ness places. Lets start­ing to re-eval­u­ate our pri­or­i­ties, let us start plac­ing more pri­or­i­ties on edu­ca­tion, rather than the newest sneak­ers , and clothes. Lets stop stand­ing on the cor­ner try­ing to get with every girl, who are them­selves more than hap­py to be irre­spon­si­ble with their bod­ies. Women who then head to court ask­ing for child sup­port. The out-of-wed­lock babies are sig­nif­i­cant , but more press­ing are the out-of-wed­lock babies with­out fathers . Within those sce­nar­ios are the prison data con­fronting our community.

The ascen­den­cy of Barack Obama has demon­strat­ed to African America that the more things change the more they remain the same.With the bad econ­o­my blacks have suf­fered greater than oth­er groups, being large­ly at the bot­tom of the lad­der the black com­mu­ni­ty has a high­er unem­ploy­ment rate than whites. You may ask why? The answer is large­ly to be found in the fact that blacks most­ly do not own busi­ness­es, and gen­er­al­ly work at Government jobs. This means that in an eco­nom­ic down-turn busi­ness­es let peo­ple go , gen­er­al­ly last hired, first fired. Of course the same applies to gov­ern­ment jobs, dur­ing crunch time munic­i­pal­i­ties are forced to downsize,which dra­mat­i­cal­ly affects blacks directly.

Long before Barack Obama knew he would ever be pres­i­dent, I joked with friends that for a black man to attain the pres­i­den­cy he would have to be so anti-black he would be a dis­as­ter for the black com­mu­ni­ty. I made that judge­ment call from one per­son alone Clarence Thomas and the incred­i­ble dis­as­ter he has been for the African-American com­mu­ni­ty. I must say that I was wrong, this pres­i­dent though a pres­i­dent for all Americans, cer­tain­ly has­n’t been the colos­sal dis­as­ter oth­er blacks whom have attained high office has been.

So why do we see so much ven­om direct­ed at this pres­i­dent? And cer­tain­ly it is hard to invoke racism when there are peo­ple like Florida con­gress­man Allen West say­ing the things he is! Many peo­ple includ­ing blacks felt that Barack Obama born in Hawaii did not have the cre­den­tials of a true grit black from the cities, town and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties of America. Jesse Jackson took umbrage before the elec­tions with Obama call­ing out blacks on the respon­si­bil­i­ty ques­tion. It fol­lows there­fore that it would not be hard to see how even some blacks would feel a lack of con­nec­tion to Obama.

The fringe nut hate mon­gers on the right have no com­punc­tion about mak­ing Obama oth­er than the oth­ers, what I find objec­tion­able is that oth­ers, some who share the same col­or as the pres­i­dent some­how feel insu­lat­ed from the hate they direct at our pres­i­dent. As I stat­ed before there will be a lot of garbage hurled at the pres­i­dent before it is all over, win or lose this will be a dirty election.

Black America has just got to change the way we present our­selves, not for what oth­ers think about us , but for what we feel we need to do for our­selves. We must seri­ous­ly start to feel hap­pi­ness for the accom­plish­ments of oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly oth­er blacks, rather than being envi­ous and resent­ful. We must begin to con­duct our­selves with deco­rum, which will attract respect rather than revul­sion. We must begin to sup­port our own busi­ness­es and learn how to take bet­ter advan­tage of the American dream by get­ting an edu­ca­tion, not nec­es­sar­i­ly col­lege, but edu­ca­tion to do some­thing. We must start­ing tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the chil­dren we par­ent, chil­dren live what they learn, it is incum­bent that we are good exam­ples to our children.

We must start to com­mand respect, rather than demand it.

And final­ly, African-Americans must stop act­ing like they are inter­lop­ers in their own coun­try, our peo­ple must stop being the peren­ni­al vic­tim that con­tin­ue to need sym­pa­thy. African-Americans must assert their right to this land. No one has more right to this land more than our peo­ple. Our fore­fa­thers have paid the price like no oth­er, our peo­ple must act like it.

by

Huge Water Reserve Under Africa,scientists:

There is incred­i­bly good news com­ing from the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty this week, British sci­en­tists revealed they have con­clud­ed a study which revealed large quan­ti­ties of ground water under the con­ti­nent of Africa. I applaud the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty for this excit­ing news, how­ev­er I have instant trep­i­da­tion as to the motive of those who fund­ed the research. As the world pop­u­la­tion increas­es rapid­ly , now esti­mat­ed to be over 7 bil­lion it is imper­a­tive that we real­ize the need to pro­tect the world’s water and seek to source new sup­plies. Already to some degree , water cost more than gaso­line depend­ing on the pack­ag­ing. As alter­na­tive green ener­gy sources are devel­oped it is becom­ing clear­er that the new pre­cious com­mod­i­ty will be fresh clean drink­ing water. Several fac­tors will man­i­fest them­selves cul­mi­nat­ing into seri­ous con­flicts for this now scarce and pre­cious com­mod­i­ty. Global warm­ing, drought, defor­esta­tion, drilling for oil, coal and minerals,and oth­er abuse of the envi­ron­ment will con­tin­ue to increase the demand and influ­ence the impor­tance of this all impor­tant product.

See sto­ry here: “This research, which the British Government has fund­ed, could have a pro­found effect on some of the world’s poor­est peo­ple, help­ing them become less vul­ner­a­ble to drought and to adapt to the impact of cli­mate change.” Scientists say the noto­ri­ous­ly dry con­ti­nent of Africa is sit­ting on a vast reser­voir of groundwater.They argue that the total vol­ume of water in aquifers under­ground is 100 times the amount found on the sur­face. The team have pro­duced the most detailed map yet of the scale and poten­tial of this hid­den resource. They stress that large-scale drilling might not be the best way of increas­ing water sup­plies. Across Africa more than 300 mil­lion peo­ple are said not to have access to safe drink­ing water. Demand for water is set to grow marked­ly in com­ing decades due to pop­u­la­tion growth and the need for irri­ga­tion to grow crops. BBCNEWS​.COM

There is much more to be said on this issue, I do hope that with the afore­men­tioned said the forces which rav­aged the con­ti­nent will not see this as anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for exploita­tion, rape and pil­lage. People on the con­ti­nent have seen not much but pain over the last sev­er­al cen­turies. Even in instances where the colo­nial­ists pow­ers have left the African has not know peace , much of the war and atroc­i­ties vis­it­ed on the inno­cent have been insti­gat­ed and car­ried out by peo­ple whom are their broth­ers and neigh­bors. Essentially the African con­ti­nent have been divid­ed and sub­di­vid­ed into groups and sub groups , pit­ting broth­er against brother.

This divide and con­quer has left Africans open and unable to defend or feed them­selves, in coun­tries like The Sudan, and Nigeria, the plight of the African peo­ple have not improved despite nat­ur­al resources like oil under their feet. In fact the reverse is true, pre­cious met­als and oth­er nat­ur­al resources has been a curse rather than a bless­ing to Africans. Let us hope that this will not mean anoth­er assault on the African peo­ple from those who pro­fess to come as friends. We have heard this song and dance before.

by

Jamaica, A Leaderless Nation?

th_JamaicaFlag

(1)

Eternal Father, Bless our Land,

Guard us with thy mighty hand,

Keep us free from evil powers,

Be our light through count­less hours,

To our lead­ers, great defender,

Grant true wis­dom from above,

Justice, truth be ours forever,

Jamaica, land we love, Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica, land we love.

(2)

Teach us true respect for all,

Stir response to duty’s call,

Strengthen us the weak to cherish,

Give us vision lest we perish,

Knowledge send us Heavenly Father,

Grant true wis­dom from above,

Justice, truth be ours forever,

Jamaica, land we love, Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica, land we love.

To Portia Simpson Miller

To the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller, please note, above are two things I would like to intro­duce to you.

(1) The Jamaican flag:

The most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol of our nation, it is the sym­bol that we hold dear, irre­spec­tive of par­ty or oth­er affil­i­a­tions, it is the sym­bol of our nation-hood. It evokes pride in us wher­ev­er we are domi­ciled, it is the sin­gle most com­mon thing that ties all of us togeth­er and cor­rect­ly so. 

Madam Prime Minister our flag is not JLP , it is not PNP . It does not belong to you or any­one else, it belongs to us, all of us.

(2) The nation­al anthem:

The nation­al anthem I would like you to acquaint /​re acquaint your­self with it, we the Jamaican peo­ple want our coun­try to be for all Jamaicans, not for JLP, and cer­tain­ly not for PNP. Our coun­try Mrs Miller does not belong to you, it damn sure isn’t PNP coun­try. We are tired of you and your min­ions divid­ing our coun­try into polit­i­cal enclaves, inorder that you and your cronies may fat­ten your pock­ets. Have you no shame?

A PNP hack defaces the Jamaican flag , a Councillor lies impugn­ing the char­ac­ter of a hard-work­ing busi­ness man and all you have to say is this.

However, speak­ing at a ground break­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Hellshire, Portmore, St. Catherine this morn­ing, she said her par­ty has already addressed the issue and she has noth­ing fur­ther to add.
She point­ed out that she gave instruc­tions for a state­ment to be issued by the par­ty and that was done.
Simpson-Miller said as a leader (jamaican​glean​er​.com)

Madam prime Minister I am sor­ry to dis­abuse you of your view that the PNP speaks for the Jamaican peo­ple. Yes you won the elec­tions and it mat­ters not that you won with the low­est vot­er turn out in the his­to­ry of our coun­try. It mat­ters not that most peo­ple are so fed up with the polit­i­cal par­ties in the coun­try that they stayed home. None of that mat­ters, what mat­ters is that you are the elect­ed leader of Jamaica, for bet­ter or worse. You need to under­stand that the des­e­cra­tion of the Jamaican flag is a seri­ous issue no one wants to hear from your damn moron­ic par­ty , you were elect­ed to lead. Don’t you think that you should.….….. lead? You have a propen­si­ty in the face of major foul ups to inso­lent­ly tell peo­ple to talk to the PNP. You have a lot of mouth when you are seek­ing pow­er, now when there are issues which requires lead­er­ship you are con­ve­nient­ly silent. As was the case with Trafigura, your enor­mous cab­i­net, and now this dis­grace­ful dis­play by your cult fol­low­ers, you have the gall and temer­i­ty to sug­gest that you gave the par­ty instruc­tions to address the mat­ter and you have noth­ing to add. Who the hell do you think you are? Just a few months ago you were run­ning around beg­ging for votes but now you are above address­ing a mat­ter of impor­tance to our peo­ple and our coun­try. We know you are not very smart, actu­al­ly we know you are not smart at all, but you damn sure owe the nation some respect , you owe the nation an expla­na­tion why your fol­low­ers think it is okay to deface and dis­grace our flag and anoth­er min­ion lie on a mem­ber of the pub­lic to cov­er his ass.

Your party,and all of you are noth­ing but a colos­sal dis­grace, 100 days since you took office and what piece of leg­is­la­tion have your gov­ern­ment passed? Nothing!!! Ask your­self this ques­tion, “Have I earned the salary I took since I have been in this office I am not qual­i­fied to hold”?

by

JFJ’s CASH CRUNCH.

It seem that Jamaicans for Justice was unable to secure a $35 mil­lion dol­lar International grant, as such JFJ has inti­mat­ed it may be forced to slash ser­vices it now offers. In a Jamaica Gleaner Editorial bemoan­ing this fact it was revealed the so called human rights agency will be forced to re eval­u­ate how it does busi­ness in light of its cash flow crunch. The Editorial bemoans the lack of sol­ven­cy of JFJ as it indi­cates that most Jamaicans do not under­stand what human rights real­ly mean.

Since an esti­mat­ed 38 per cent of Jamaicans have no sense of what human rights real­ly mean, the val­ue of the work being under­tak­en by JFJ and oth­er such rights groups may not be read­i­ly appreciated.However, the work of these vol­un­teers reflects a whole­heart­ed com­mit­ment to bet­ter the lives of their fel­low cit­i­zens, and it takes much time, ener­gy and spir­it to accom­plish this.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

There are very few caus­es more noble than ser­vice to oth­ers. Human Rights vol­un­teers who ded­i­cate their lives to the ser­vice of oth­ers are indeed a spe­cial bunch. They deserve all the pro­tec­tion and sup­port we can give, the rights they fight for are also our rights, and god for­bid we may need them to fight direct­ly for us in the future, sep­a­rate from the gener­ic ben­e­fits we derive from their efforts. 

But before we talk more about the finan­cial and oth­er woes beset­ting JFJ I would like to dis­abuse the Editorial writer of the notion that quote: “Thirty eight per cent of Jamaicans, have no sense of what human rights real­ly mean”

Jamaicans are some of the smartest and intel­lec­tu­al­ly savvy peo­ple any­where, even when they are unable to read or write they are ful­ly capa­ble to artic­u­late how they feel if one is able to relate to their ver­nac­u­lar. Ordinary peo­ple unable to read or write who put their pen­nies into banks, have been known to chal­lenge bank offi­cials cor­rect­ly on incon­sis­ten­cies on their bal­ances. They are able to dis­cern and com­pre­hend the most minute details even with­out the ben­e­fit of for­mal training.

Jamaican trades­men, from masons to con­struc­tion work­ers, from plumbers to car­pen­ters have done incred­i­ble work in build­ing our coun­try, and yes many of them are unable to read, yet they are incred­i­bly intel­li­gent and astute.

It is an insult for an opin­ion writer to sug­gest that these peo­ple do not know what human rights real­ly mean. He/​she owes the Jamaican peo­ple an apol­o­gy. None will be forth­com­ing how­ev­er, that elit­ist atti­tude is derived from the University of the West indies, the place the late Wilmot (mutty)Perkins so apt­ly char­ac­ter­ized as the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to. The ben­e­fi­cia­ries of that ghet­toiza­tion are the new slave mas­ters the “nev­er sis cum si” Their dis­dain and con­tempt for the com­mon man is the same as that which was prac­tised by the colo­nial­ists to black Jamaicans. they are now prac­tised on a caste basis.

THE REAL REASON JAMAICANS DO NOT FULLY SUPPORT JAMAICANS FOR JUSTICE.

Jamaicans like fair­ness, they want to be respect­ed, even as they strug­gle with deal­ing with Governments that are insen­si­tive to their needs. They under­stand balder­dash when they see it.

Jamaicans for Justice appoint­ed itself as guardians of the human rights of Jamaicans, let me be clear this was not some­thing the Jamaican peo­ple vot­ed for, Carolyn Gomes appoint­ed her­self the moth­er Theresa of that move­ment, yet that agency and oth­ers like it are pop­u­lat­ed with elit­ists like Gomes and Hilaire Sobers to name a few who have no con­nec­tion to the com­mon man ‚oth­er that to use them to secure over­seas fund­ing . Most Jamaicans do not asso­ciate with these peo­ple, some of whom do not share our val­ues. This may seem incon­se­quen­tial to the crit­ics but they deny it to their detriment.

Jamaicans for Justice like oth­ers before them have sought to demo­nize cer­tain sec­tors of the pub­lic sec­tor, rather than embark­ing on a nation­al edu­ca­tion cam­paign which would pre­vent most of what they com­plain about in the first place.

What would the result be if Jamaicans for Justice and oth­er agen­cies which source large sums of mon­ey abroad use these resources to edu­cate the 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple on how to obey the laws of the coun­try? What would be the result of a sus­tained cam­paign to build bridges between the Police and the pub­lic? Is it pos­si­ble that a strat­e­gy of that nature would reduce the num­ber of peo­ple look­ing to JFJ and oth­ers for help? Food for thought!!!!!!!!!

Jamaicans for jus­tice like oth­ers before them who took on the man­tle of rights in Jamaica have cal­cu­lat­ed that the way to get rec­og­nized is to demo­nize the police. Carolyn Gomes time and again has been exposed for using alle­ga­tions, innu­en­dos, and down­right fab­ri­cat­ed mate­r­i­al to argue that her mis­sion is just and her cause moral , even as she seek more funds to car­ry out that mission.

As I have writ­ten in pre­vi­ous blogs , dur­ing the last Administration Gomes did incal­cu­la­ble harm to Jamaica in Washington DC at the con­fer­ence of the Inter American com­mis­sion on human rights. In these forums Gomes and her min­ions pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion ques­tion­able and unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions as facts. Even as those claims were truth­ful­ly debunked. Gomes was not going to allow facts to get in the way of sen­sa­tion­al­ism, she con­tin­ued to paint the gov­ern­ment of the day as neg­li­gent in stop­ping what she char­ac­ter­ized as mount­ing police excess­es and instances of extra judi­cial killings, using the name of indi­vid­ual police offi­cers, with­out sup­ply­ing one shred of evidence.

The Jamaican peo­ple are not fools, they know what they see, if it walks, talk, and quacks like a duck it is a duck. Jamaicans for jus­tice is not a cred­i­ble human rights agency it is a anti-police arm of the élite, pop­u­lat­ed and tasked with cre­at­ing enmi­ty rather than solv­ing prob­lems. What is need­ed is a com­plete audit of JFJ’s books , they have received a lot of over­seas fund­ing, that is where the spot­light should be.

Speaking as some­one who believe in human rights and jus­tice I will do what­ev­er I can to sup­port legit­i­mate indi­vid­u­als and agen­cies which are in the busi­ness of pre­vent­ing human rights abus­es, Jamaicans for Justice is not such a group. I am sor­ry to burst the bub­ble of the Editorial board of the Gleaner which has flow­ery praise for JFJ, maybe it’s time for you to get out of your air con­di­tioned offices and see what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing on the streets instead.

And while you are at it you might also get a glimpse of the gov­ern­ment you cam­paigned for and the ear­ly con­se­quences on the country.