The Jamaican Government said it is work­ing to secure more con­vic­tions in Human Trafficking in the Courts. Chairperson for the National Task Force Against Trafficking in Persons (NATFATIP), Carol Palmer, who made the dis­clo­sure to JIS News, said the Government intends to deal harsh­ly with per­sons engaged in human trafficking.
Palmer made the com­ments against the back­drop of Jamaica gain­ing it’s very first con­vic­tion in the Courts for Human Trafficking.
Palmer laud­ed all the enti­ties , includ­ing the Police and Prosecutor for their work in secur­ing the Conviction of Indian busi­ness­man, Rajesh Gurunani, who oper­at­ed gar­ment stores in down­town Kingston and in St Catherine, was found guilty of traf­fick­ing in per­sons, facil­i­tat­ing traf­fick­ing in per­sons, and with­hold­ing trav­el doc­u­ments between May 2008 and March 2011.

As a lit­tle boy we used to go bird shoot­ing using cat­a­pults (sling-shot), I was a hor­ren­dous shot. Any Bird I fired at was sure to escape I was that bad a shot with a sling-shot. Usually I end­ed up shoot­ing parts of my own hand rather than hit­ting the bird.
I was such a hor­ri­ble shot that on the one occa­sion I actu­al­ly did shoot a bird my entire fam­i­ly laughed at me so bad­ly I was embar­rassed. Everyone said that the Bird must have been sick, on it’s way home from the Hospital in order for me to actu­al­ly shoot it. I was so embar­rassed that I believed that maybe the Bird was indeed sick, I did not eat it despite my love for Bird-meat.

With the Incompetence of the Criminal Justice System in Jamaica it is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that they would actu­al­ly show their faces to cel­e­brate the Nation’s first con­vic­tion in the Courts for some­thing which has been going on for years.
Mister Rajesh Gurunani was the prover­bial sick bird. His lev­el of care­less­ness, incom­pe­tence and maybe arro­gance must have been mon­u­men­tal for the Jamaican sys­tem to fig­ure out his transgressions.
All of these peo­ple Jamaicans or oth­ers, regard­less of where they come from under­stand the inher­ent weak­ness and utter incom­pe­tence of the Jamaican Security and crim­i­nal appre­hen­sion apparatus.
Chairperson Carol Palmer was quick to point out that the Government will be seek­ing to secure more con­vic­tions. This prompts me to ask,“Why does the coun­try need a Task-Force Against Trafficking in Persons”?
Aren’t these Police Responsibilities?
Palmer brags that the Government intends to deal harsh­ly with per­sons engaged in Human traf­fick­ing. How exact­ly will the Government do this?
Will there be an edict from Jamaica House with the Queen declar­ing (“off with their heads”) ? Or are there clear, deci­sive and unam­bigu­ous laws which sends offend­ers to prison?
This is real­ly much to do about noth­ing. It real­ly is not that com­pli­cat­ed to inves­ti­gate these mat­ters. The Ministry of National Security’s Website states that For the peri­od April 2012 to March 2013, two hun­dred and thir­teen (213) police raids were con­duct­ed and 23 human traf­fick­ing vic­tims were res­cued. Over 100 per­sons have also been inter­viewed by the JCF Trafficking in Persons Unit in rela­tion to human traf­fick­ing, 90 of those being since January 2013.

If you thought I was being unrea­son­able in my crit­i­cism of the sin­gle con­vic­tion this alone ought to give you pause.
In one year 213 raids were con­duct­ed by Police.
Twenty three (23) vic­tims released.
One hun­dred per­sons interviewed.

Yet the Government cel­e­brates a sin­gle con­vic­tion in the courts. Many of my for­mer col­leagues in law-enforce­ment crit­i­cize me for being too hard on the JCF with my criticisms.
Those with whom I worked under­stand full well what I am talk­ing about. If crim­i­nals broke the laws we went after them.
When we went after them ‚we got them.
When we got them, rest assured they were convicted.
What the Courts did with them was not our business.
Jamaica’s hopes for a reduc­tion in crime is not based on any real­is­tic , or rea­son­ably-attain­able met­ric beyond Divine Intervention. As a Christian I can tell you, God helps those who help themselves.
The Jamaican Government and it’s lack­eys in the Police Department chased effec­tive police offi­cers from the Force and replaced them with pen­cil-push­ing desk-warm­ing wannabes, main­ly their cronies from the University of the West Indies (UWI) who need­ed work.
Platitudes, Promises and Pronouncements are the order of the day as the Crime wave rages.
As one per­son puts it Nero twid­dles his thumb as Rome burns.

Youth Unemployment is rough­ly twice the National Average in Jamaica . Youth Unemployment Rate in Jamaica decreased to 5.70 per­cent in May of 2015 from 5.90 per­cent in April of 2015. accord­ing to the Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications. According to the same report­ing the very same Ministry reports that Youth Unemployment in 2015, reached an all time high of 13.20 per­cent in March of 2003.
To Jamaicans famil­iar with the num­ber of young peo­ple with absolute­ly noth­ing to do these num­bers are beyond laughable.
Despite this, I am not talk­ing specif­i­cal­ly about youth unem­ploy­ment in the abstract but as one of the rea­sons for the Country’s high mur­der rate.
Youth Unemployment. Deportation. Lack of ade­quate Laws. Lack of laws with teeth. Police Incompetence. Lack of sup­port for the Rule of Law. Lack of sup­port from the Political Directorate to Law Enforcement, are only some of the issues fuel­ing the Nation’s bur­geon­ing crime wave.

WHAT IS COMMISSIONER OF POLICE CARL WILLIAMS SMOKING ?
Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams yes­ter­day gave him­self a per­fect rat­ing of 10 out of 10 as he launched what he said were a num­ber of new and tweaked ini­tia­tives to go after crim­i­nals who are respon­si­ble for almost 90 per cent of the 602 mur­ders record­ed in the island over the first six months of this year , accord­ing to the Jamaica Observer. SEE STORY HERE Perfect 10.

According to the report­ing , that fig­ure rep­re­sents a 19 per cent jump (98 more) in the num­ber of mur­ders com­mit­ted over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year. The Article the­o­rized that Williams is seek­ing to allay the fears of Jamaicans.

I am unsure to what extent anoth­er pro­nounce­ment from the Police High Command offer­ing grand plat­i­tudes and mak­ing promis­es it can­not and has no capac­i­ty to ful­fill will do that.
Williams argues that at the top of the list of ini­tia­tives to stem the tide of dead­ly crimes was a new pro­gram called ‘Get the Guns Campaign’, which will offer mon­e­tary incen­tives to cit­i­zens who pro­vide infor­ma­tion that lead to the con­fis­ca­tion of dead­ly weapons. “In light of this and the increased use of guns in mur­ders, I am here intro­duc­ing the ‘Get the Guns Campaign’,” the com­mis­sion­er told jour­nal­ists at a news con­fer­ence at his office in Kingston. “This cam­paign is designed to one, inter­cept ille­gal guns com­ing into the coun­try; two, seize ille­gal guns in the hands of the crim­i­nals; and three, ulti­mate­ly reduce the num­ber of gun mur­ders in the coun­try,” Williams said.!!!
Call me unin­formed and sil­ly but I have to ask this of Commissioner Williams.
If the pro­gram is to quote : Offer mon­e­tary incen­tives to cit­i­zens who pro­vide infor­ma­tion that lead to the con­fis­ca­tion of dead­ly weapons.!
How will the very same pro­gram quote: Intercept ille­gal guns com­ing into the coun­try; two, seize ille­gal guns in the hands of the crim­i­nals; and three, ulti­mate­ly reduce the num­ber of gun mur­ders in the country,”?
Hence my ques­tion to the good­ly Dr. What are you smoking?

Essentially this is just anoth­er Gun Amnesty which gen­er­al­ly does pre­cious lit­tle to reduce Crime but pro­vides a stream of income to those already immersed in crim­i­nal con­duct and more specif­i­cal­ly those engaged in the gun trade.
Generally, Criminals do not give up their guns, they will turn over unused or unus­able old weapons to the police while hold­ing onto their stash of real weapons.
Probably more con­se­quen­tial, a gun amnesty opens up new oppor­tu­ni­ties for gun traders to source weapons ille­gal­ly then sim­ply sell them to the Police/​Government at a profit.

As a for­mer front line street cop I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly enthused about gun amnesty. They nev­er real­ize the intend­ed results. In the end they offer pay-offs to cit­i­zens who should have called police about their knowl­edge of ille­gal weapons for their own good to begin with.
Good cit­i­zens call police about crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, includ­ing the where­abouts of ille­gal weapons. Jamaicans must under­stand the lives they save may be their very own.
As a sup­port­er of the Rule of Law, and a Jamaican who yearn for the Police Department to be an effi­cient enti­ty which pro­duces results, I am pained at the Commissioner’s statements.
This state­ment is a clear indi­ca­tion that on the mer­its the Police has no real strat­e­gy to push back against seri­ous crimes in Jamaica.

I am aware that the Government has not sup­plied near­ly enough resources to do the Job. We are also aware that to some extent The Administration is heav­i­ly invest­ed in Criminal con­duct through sur­ro­gates who are well placed in crit­i­cal areas of the society.
I am also aware that the Administration has a net­work of Garrisons through­out the Country in which Criminal behav­ior is nur­tured and encouraged .
Despite this, it is impor­tant that the Police employ more stri­dent and work­able strate­gies geared at pro­vid­ing returns on Investments for the Jamaican Nation.
I ful­ly under­stand that the Force is large­ly demor­al­ized as a result of the fore­gone and oth­er issues, how­ev­er the Commissioner must use the tools he has at his dis­pos­al more effectively.
A gun Amnesty is not the answer real and tan­gi­ble strate­gies are ..

(1)Training Detectives to Investigate Crimes.
(2) Using your Office to push the Administration to pass Laws putting crim­i­nals behind bars and keep­ing them there.
(3) Use Officers more effi­cient­ly by hav­ing very vis­i­ble , coör­di­nat­ed pres­ence in high risk communities .
(4) Having your­self and the rest of the Gazetted Ranks stand firm­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly behind Officers until they are proven to have bro­ken the laws. Over the decades Commissioners and the Gazetted Ranks have been noth­ing but boot lick­ing lack­eys when it comes to sup­port­ing police who do the real work.
(5) Be pro­fes­sion­al take no bull­shit from nei­ther the Administration nor the Opposition. In order to effect change the Police must become an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty offend­er in sup­port of the Nation’s Laws.
(6) Stop being sub­servient and def­er­en­tial to Politicians.

Over the years this pub­li­ca­tion has made real and sub­stan­tive sug­ges­tions which if adopt­ed would have seri­ous­ly placed seri­ous crimes in remission.
Many years ago while I was a young Constable sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve crim­i­nals would ter­ror­ize Brook Avenue and oth­er parts of the com­mu­ni­ty of Duhaney Park.
Armed with high-pow­ered weapons they used the high ground at the back of Brook avenue as a stag­ing ground from which to launch assaults on the Community.
A sin­gle Police Unit with four offi­cers, appro­pri­ate­ly armed, strate­gi­cal­ly placed brought those attacks to a halt.
These are not new strate­gies. They worked in the Eastern St Andrew com­mu­ni­ties of Nannyville, at the foot of Wareika Hills, and in oth­er loca­tions all across the cor­po­rate area.
As a young offi­cer I was part of sim­i­lar strate­gies all across the Country as we were air­lift­ed into com­mu­ni­ties like Hayes and adjoin­ing com­mu­ni­ties in the Parish of Clarendon. Flankers in St. James and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties all across our country.
The place­ment of well trained , well equipped offi­cers who are unafraid to take action is the best way to tamp down on seri­ous crimes.
Placing band-aid on gun­shot wounds is a fool’s errand.
Commissioner Williams may have spent too much time behind desks to ful­ly under­stand­ing crime fight­ing techniques.
Empty out the Police sta­tions, flood the com­mu­ni­ties with uni­formed cops .
The best deter­rent against crim­i­nals is catch­ing them when they com­mit crimes.
If offi­cers are placed and their place­ment strate­gi­cal­ly coör­di­nat­ed with appro­pri­ate rein­force­ments crime trends down dramatically.
As I have said before there are struc­tur­al and geo­graph­i­cal chal­lenges to effi­cient polic­ing in Jamaica, despite those chal­lenges, sus­tained ‚coör­di­nat­ed intel­li­gence-based polic­ing is possible.
It’s time the Commissioner and his cohorts above Cross Roads real­ize that PhD’s are good but they do pre­cious lit­tle to impact crime . Flowery goobly-gook sounds good but real polic­ing from real cops has no substitute.
That is the job of real ded­i­cat­ed crime fight­ers who know what the hell they are about.

In a recent (United States State Department) Report on Human Rights the Agency alleged that “The (Jamaican) Government did not restrict or dis­rupt access to the Internet or cen­sor online con­tent. There were cred­i­ble reports, how­ev­er, that the Government mon­i­tored pri­vate online com­mu­ni­ca­tions with­out appro­pri­ate legal authority.”

The United States State Department is in brack­ets because I believe there is a mis­guid­ed notion in the United States that the American State Department is the State Department for the rest of the World.
Last time I checked Jamaica was a small but Sovereign Nation, hav­ing to find it’s own way in the world amidst the inher­ent dis­ad­van­tages it faces against larg­er Nations, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and otherwise.
Jamaican Authorities have angri­ly pushed back against this asser­tion by The United States State Department alle­ga­tions. In a strong­ly word­ed response Junior Technology Minister Julian Robinson chal­lenged the US author­i­ties to pro­vide proof of the alle­ga­tions laid against the Jamaican Government. Yesterday, the American Embassy in Kingston respond­ed with a release say­ing that an inac­cu­ra­cy had been published.
Now lets be rea­son­able it is quite nor­mal for humans to make mis­take. It is cer­tain­ly not Okay or cool for Nations to illic­it­ly obtain infor­ma­tion, then smear and malign oth­er Nations with what amounts to noth­ing but lies. Then to add insult to Injury sim­ply say “whoops we made a mistake”.
What right did you have mak­ing the asser­tion in the first place?
How did you acquire the information?
The fact is, all of this infor­ma­tion, cor­rect and incor­rect are gleaned by CIA oper­a­tives , many of whom are brush­ing shoul­ders with Jamaicans at every lev­el of Jamaican soci­ety. They oper­ate out of the United States Embassy, where they con­duct illic­it and un-autho­rized spying.
It’s not okay to sim­ply say …

The US Department of State has now cor­rect­ed the report and, as part of its process to devel­op these reports, the US Government want­ed “a robust exchange” between civ­il soci­ety, the press, and gov­ern­ment lead­ers on the issue. “We wel­come feed­back on the report, with the objec­tive of main­tain­ing the most author­i­ta­tive, com­pre­hen­sive and fac­tu­al review of the glob­al state of human rights,”

Jamaica is not America’s 51^st state . The United States needs to pay atten­tion to it’s own trans­gres­sions and breach­es of Human Right which are many , var­ied and egre­gious, par­tic­u­lar­ly under the Patriot Act.
Torture.
Extra-judi­cial killings by Police.
Illicit spy­ing on it’s own citizens.
And it’s total un-restrained big Government con­trol of it’s own citizenry.
How dare the United States con­tin­ue to inject itself into the affairs of oth­er Nations under the guise of International Human Rights when right here in America the Government engages in ille­gal and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sur­veil­lance of it’s own cit­i­zens. Engages in Drone Killings(Innocent Casualties be damned).
And oth­er tac­tics designed to silence any­one opposed to it’s operations.
Under the Obama Administration, Whistle blow­ers like Edward Snowden and Wiki-Leaks’s Julian Asange have had to seek Sanctuary in exile to avoid prosecution.
Why ?
Because they dare reveal what the Government is doing against it’s own Constitution, and peo­ple. Under Obama more whis­tle blow­ers have been pros­e­cut­ed than under any oth­er Administration. Those who stand in defense of the Constitution against Government illic­it behav­ior do so at their own peril.
Speaking out against the American Government is not exact­ly advis­able unless one is pre­pared for the consequences.
Where does the State Department gets it’s gall crit­i­ciz­ing oth­er Countries in light of these truths with­out first fix­ing it’s own injus­tices and Governmental intru­sions into peo­ple’s lives?

Could the orig­i­nal Bennifer be head­ed toward a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion? Days after Ben Affleck and wife of 10 years Jennifer Garner announced their split, reports sur­faced claim­ing that the 42-year-old Oscar win­ner has alleged­ly been in con­tact with his ex Jennifer Lopez. “Everyone is talk­ing about J.Lo and Ben and say­ing it’s inevitable they will get togeth­er again at some point,” an insid­er told the UK’s Sun.

“They were pret­ty flir­ty at the Oscars and have stayed in touch over email. Jennifer Garner nev­er liked it.” Despite the claims, sources tell the Daily News Lopez and Affleck “haven’t spo­ken.” The for­mer Hollywood it cou­plemade head­lines at this year’s Academy Awards when they were report­ed­ly spot­ted chat­ting dur­ing a com­mer­cial break in the broadcast.

Affleck approached his ex-fiancée and “whis­pered some­thing” in her ear before she “play­ful­ly” swat­ted his arm, the AP report­ed at the time. While the two seemed to be on friend­ly terms then, the songstress described her 2003 break up with Affleck as her “first real heart­break” in her 2014 mem­oir “True Love.” Fans should­n’t expect a “Gigli” sequel any­time soon as Lopez, 45, was just seen cozy­ing up to her on-again, off-again boyfriend Casper Smart in New York City a mere 24 hours after Affleck and Garner’s divorce announcement.

“After much thought and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, we have made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to divorce,” the par­ents of three said in a joint state­ment Tuesday, just one day after their wed­ding anniver­sary. “We go for­ward with love and friend­ship for one anoth­er and a com­mit­ment to co-par­ent­ing our chil­dren whose pri­va­cy we ask to be respect­ed dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.“Ben Affleck ‘stayed in touch’ with ex Jennifer Lopez in months lead­ing up to Jennifer Garner split: report 

Local Government Elections were con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in Jamaica yes­ter­day June 30^th.…
Nevertheless there were no elec­tions held. Local Government elec­tions in Jamaica are for the elec­tions of Parish Councillors, or more appro­pri­ate­ly (rep­re­sen­ta­tives of cer­tain blocks with­in a Parish. These Parish Councillors tra­di­tion­al­ly live right there in the com­mu­ni­ties and were tra­di­tion­al­ly more acces­si­ble to cit­i­zens than the more elevated[sic] Members of Parliament.

In 2010 the then Jamaica Labor Party Government post­poned Local Government Elections because of the tur­moil in the Country and the lim­it­ed State of Public Emergency sur­round­ing attempts to cap­ture and extra­dite Christopher )Duddus) Coke who was want­ed by the United States Government to face charges.
On the occa­sion of that delay the People’s National Party which refused to grant the Security Forces time to go after crim­i­nals, angri­ly crit­i­cized the Government for delay­ing the elections.
As is the norm for the PNP , the Party was con­cerned about noth­ing but it’s Cultist obses­sion to hold and con­sol­i­date state pow­er at every level.

Yesterday the Government ush­ered two Bills through the House of Representatives post­pon­ing local gov­ern­ment elec­tions by 18 months. This means Local Government Elections will not be held until December 29^th 2016.…
What could be the rea­son for the Government to so bla­tant­ly tam­per with the process with such glar­ing lack of respect or due care for the opin­ions of voters?

Minister of Local Government and Community Development Noël Arscott insist­ed that the rea­sons for the post­pone­ment were: (1) the need to “imple­ment ele­ments of the Local Government Reform pro­gramme”; and (2) the need to “com­plete the revi­sion of elec­toral bound­aries in the Portmore Municipality”.

I am patent­ly aware that this is not new it has been done before by both Parties.
With that said this amounts to bla­tant manip­u­la­tion of the process because polls show they will lose, and lose bad­ly were elec­tions to be called today. Some polls are report­ed to have the JLP ahead by twen­ty per­cent­age points. This despite the fact that the JLP con­tin­ue to give vot­ers a raft of rea­sons not to vote for the par­ty, through it per­pet­u­al inter­nal squabbles.
No Nation can assume to take on the title “Democratic” when the very process of democ­ra­cy can be so eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed and distorted.
The Administration of Portia Simpson Miller was nev­er any­thing beyond a two-bit-Banana-Republic as far as it’s integri­ty and poten­tial is concerned.
Blatantly and thug­gish­ly tam­per­ing with the process places the Kleptomaniac Régime per­ilous­ly close to Dictatorial status.
And reduces our Country that much clos­er to becom­ing a failed state.

FINALLY.…. The People’s National Party has moved against Former Lucea Mayor Shernet Haughton. In an unprece­dent­ed move the Party’s National Executive Council (NEC) took the deci­sion to bar Haughton from rep­re­sent­ing the par­ty at the next local gov­ern­ment elections.
This comes after a Contractor General report which unearthed infor­ma­tion that as Mayor Haughton took the art of Nepotism to uncon­scionable lev­els when she award­ed more than $3.7 mil­lion worth of con­tracts to fam­i­ly mem­bers and close friends dur­ing her two years as mayor.

In essence the pub­lic purse became the pri­vate cook­ie-jar for Haughton. Contractor General Dirk Harrison sub­mit­ted his find­ings to the Director of Public Prosecution whose office decide that despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence of Nepotism there was no statute allow­ing her to be charged for Nepotism.
As I said yes­ter­day there needs to be seri­ous over­all of our Justice sys­tem in every quar­ter, includ­ing the Office of DPP.
It appears the only pub­lic body in Jamaica seri­ous about account­abil­i­ty and con­se­quences is the office of Contractor General. It is impor­tant to note that while oth­er pub­lic bod­ies like INDECOM have pow­ers of arrest and are rapa­cious­ly demand­ing more pow­er with lit­tle to show for it, the office of Contractor General has no pow­er of arrest. This is where seri­ous teeth is need­ed most, arrest­ing the creeps and clowns at the top.

The stew­ard­ship of pub­lic funds is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant. For decades Jamaica has suf­fered at the hands of polit­i­cal lead­ers who suf­fer from Kleptomania.
The office of Contractor gen­er­al was cre­at­ed to give the pub­lic a faux sense of secu­ri­ty that the prac­tice of polit­i­cal thiev­ery through the con­tracts awards process was being addressed.

Despite the Act. There was mar­gin­al pow­ers giv­en the office. In essence the Act allows the Contractor General to make a lot of noise and not much more.
With a neutered and incom­pe­tent Police Force behold­en to the polit­i­cal direc­torate and scared shit-less of INDECOM, the inabil­i­ty of the Contractor General to bring charges against the likes of Haughton effec­tive­ly places Politicians out of the ambit and reach of the law.

Jamaicans still unborn are indebt­ed to for­eign insti­tu­tions. The coun­try spends almost one and a half times of GDP a large chunk of that pie goes to ser­vic­ing inter­ests on for­eign debts. Presently the coun­try and the admin­is­tra­tion is focused sim­ply on reach­ing tar­gets set by the International Monetary Fund. As Greece faces default and is will­ing to go to a ref­er­en­dum to decide the way for­ward Jamaica con­tin­ues to pussy-foot around with pub­lic funds much of which is bor­rowed mon­ey, despite being in a far more seri­ous predica­ment than Greece by some estimates.

How could one lit­tle woman in a clown suit have access and author­i­ty to spend pub­lic mon­ey with­out over­sight and account­abil­i­ty? How many Billions of Dollars have been siphoned away with noth­ing tan­gi­ble to show for it.
You decide…
The PNP decid­ed to let Haughton go yet has­ten to say she remains a Councillor for the Green Island Division of the Hanover Parish Council , despite the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Contractor General’s that she resign.
Where is the out­rage from the peo­ple liv­ing in the Green Island Division. Are they so taint­ed by polit­i­cal trib­al­ism that they would pre­fer to have an uneth­i­cal per­son rep­re­sent them in the Council, than demand she go?
Have the peo­ple con­sid­ered that the qual­i­ty of their lives are direct­ly relat­ed to their silence and acqui­es­cence to these unscrupu­lous if not crim­i­nal actions?

MY RIGHT TO MARRY MY GAY LOVER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEF ‚NEITHER DOES IT INFRINGE ON YOUR RIGHT AS A HETEROSEXUAL .

How many times have you heard that state­ment?
Whether you ever heard it or not you will con­tin­ue to hear it for a long time into the future until there is no fur­ther need for them to say it.
Why?
Because it will be proven a lie then as it is a lie now.
So lets exam­ine this lie that mar­riage equal­i­ty is about fair­ness and equality.
The web­site CNSnews​.com report­ed that Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman the own­ers of Sweet Cakes in Oregon who made head­lines ear­li­er this year for refus­ing to bake a wed­ding cake for a les­bian cou­ple sight­ing their Christian faith for not serv­ing the couple’s wed­ding. Since then, the fam­i­ly owned bak­ery has received vicious attacks for polite­ly refus­ing to bake their wed­ding cake, and on August 30 announced they will be clos­ing up their shop, instead choos­ing to bake in the safe­ty of their home. The cou­ple – Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman –filed a com­plaint with the state of Oregon for Sweet Cakes’ refusal to bake their wed­ding cake. The bak­ery will sell to any­one regard­less of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, but will not bake a cake exclu­sive­ly for a same-sex wed­ding, because it goes against their Christian beliefs. The online web­site TheBlaze reports that the bakery’s own­ers – Aaron and Melissa Klein – have received numer­ous hate-filled emails and com­ments fol­low­ing their refusal to serve the gay cou­ple, with one email say­ing, “You stu­pid bible-thump­ing, hyp­o­crit­i­cal b**ch. I hope your kids get real­ly, real­ly, real­ly, sick and you go out of busi­ness.” Comments esca­lat­ed from there, with one per­son even wish­ing that co-own­er Aaron Klein be raped and shot.

Does that sound like equal­i­ty, or does it sound like sub­mis­sion to the dic­tates of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty? You may bury your head in the sand if you chose to. Christians who fun­da­men­tal­ly believe in their hearts that this has any­thing to do with equal­i­ty, fair­ness or jus­tice are way off base.
On this I am speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly to my Christian broth­ers and sis­ters who will fall vic­tim to the tran­quil drug of get­ting along.
This has noth­ing to do with Judging .
This has noth­ing to do with liv­ing and let live.
I implore you take a look at the way those who oppose Homosexuality are berat­ed , threat­ened, demo­nized, ridiculed, and labeled. Do you for one moment believe this is a move­ment about equality?
If you do God bless you , you may remain in your stupor.

HERE’S WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD.
Marriage equal­i­ty is now the law of the land in all 50 American states.
As a pub­lic sec­tor work­er what right does a per­son have to say no I will not mar­ry you because it runs counter to my Christian belief?
Do you believe the State will take kind­ly to it’s employ­ees refus­ing to do their jobs based on their per­son­al reli­gious con­vic­tions? Or do you think they will be fired? What then of their right of dissent.

Revelation 13:16 – 18 ESV /​

Also it caus­es all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the fore­head, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name. This calls for wis­dom: let the one who has under­stand­ing cal­cu­late the num­ber of the beast, for it is the num­ber of a man, and his num­ber is 666.

What about the Church ‚will Pastors be allowed to dis­obey the Laws? Will Pastors who are opposed to Homosexuality as per the dic­tates of Biblical teach­ings be allowed to keep the church’s tax-exempt status?
The Answer is “No”

Christian Preachers who refuse to obey the laws will even­tu­al­ly find them­selves fac­ing legal sanc­tions. Most like­ly Civil lia­bil­i­ties and ulti­mate­ly Criminal sanctions.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous post this is the begin­ning of the per­se­cu­tion of the Christian Church.
The Church itself got lulled into a false sense of secu­ri­ty on this issue, believ­ing that the mes­sage com­ing out of the Political Right was just the ram­blings of weirdos and looneys.
I do agree that when this mes­sage comes from Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Luara Ingram, mer­chants of hate , of course the mes­sage becomes con­vo­lut­ed and los­es it’s resonance.
This how­ev­er is the fail­ing of the Christian Church which fell asleep at the wheel , immersed in preach­ing and teach­ing pros­per­i­ty Gospel, ded­i­cat­ing ser­mon after ser­mon on the issue of “Haters”.
Turn your Television on on any giv­en Sunday morn­ing and you are left won­der­ing whether the Church has giv­en up on preach­ing the doc­trine of our soon com­ing Christ?
Churches are afraid to preach about the con­se­quences of sin. Churches are afraid to warn their con­gre­ga­tions about the impend­ing and inevitable calami­ty which awaits.
What hap­pened to “THUS SAYETH THE LORD”
The Christian Church has out­sourced teach­ing and con­demn­ing sin to Charlatans, Racist Xenophobes and pon­tif­i­cat­ing Pharisees. Is there any won­der the mes­sage is deemed offen­sive which ulti­mate­ly end­ed up dri­ving peo­ple in the oth­er direction?

When the Church is immersed in the go-along to-get-along doc­trine how will any­one be drawn to the faith? When Pastors and Ministers of the Gospel are hav­ing sex with lit­tle boys and mul­ti­ple women where will the pow­er come from in the Church.
When Sunday Morning praise and wor­ship is packed with Homosexuals and het­ero­sex­u­al for­ni­ca­tors and adul­ter­ers where will the pow­er come from.

Is there any won­der that the Lord God has giv­en us over to our repro­bate mind when the Church is more con­cerned about gulf-stream jets and humon­gous Mansions than preach­ing the naked truth about our soon com­ing King?

This did not just hap­pen upon us, we saw it com­ing, they took the Bible out of Schools, they took prayer and all men­tion of God away from our youth. When they removed the Lord from the hearts of our chil­dren the Devil filled the void.
They attacked the Bible as an out­dat­ed Book of Fables which has no bear­ing on con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. As Christians we did not fight back.
Many peo­ple includ­ing myself have argued they have nev­er seen a sin­gu­lar issue take off with such sweep­ing alacrity as the homo­sex­u­al issue has, not just in America but across the Globe.
Where was the Christian Church? Where is the Beacon on a hill which can­not be hid ? Where was the warn­ing about the Calamity which will come when we open the Gates of Sodom.
Now I hear Supposed Ministers of the Gospel telling National Television audi­ences that Homosexuality is not a sin!!!
Are you kid­ding me?
Homosexuality is not the only sin , but lets see what the word of God has to say about homosexuality.
♦ Leviticus 18:22 — Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with wom­ankind: it [is] abomination.
♦1 Corinthians 6:9 – 11 — Know ye not that the unright­eous shall not inher­it the king­dom of God? Be not deceived: nei­ther for­ni­ca­tors, nor idol­aters, nor adul­ter­ers, nor effem­i­nate, nor abusers of them­selves with mankind.
♦Romans 1:26 – 28 — For this cause God gave them up unto vile affec­tions: for even their women did change the nat­ur­al use into that which is against nature:
♦Leviticus 20:13 — If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have com­mit­ted an abom­i­na­tion: they shall sure­ly be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.
♦Mark 10:6 – 9 — But from the begin­ning of the cre­ation God made them male and female.
♦Jude 1:7 — Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like man­ner, giv­ing them­selves over to for­ni­ca­tion, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an exam­ple, suf­fer­ing the vengeance of eter­nal fire.
♦Romans 1:27 — And like­wise also the men, leav­ing the nat­ur­al use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward anoth­er; men with men work­ing that which is unseem­ly, and receiv­ing in them­selves that rec­om­pense of their error which was meet.

I will leave the Intellectuals to now demo­nize these Scriptures.
They will argue that vers­es from the Bible were used to val­i­date and jus­ti­fy Slavery . They will obfus­cate and attempt to con­fuse you with all man­ner of psue­do-intel­lec­tu­al-goobly-gook which sounds real­ly impres­sive but does noth­ing to dis­prove one syl­la­ble of God’s word.
No per­son who believes in the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of the con­cept of mar­riage being between a man and woman, can tru­ly believe the so-called mar­riage equal­i­ty does not threat­en our Religious freedoms.
When it becomes the law , how can any­one with a brain argue that dis­senter will not face seri­ous sanctions?
They can’t because they know it is a lie.
Barack Obama just a cou­ple years ago said he believed mar­riage was between one man and one woman.
No oth­er American President has broached this issue this far, Obama’s views were an evolv­ing view, one based on pub­lic opin­ion and con­tem­po­rary shifts in pub­lic opin­ions. Gods Laws do not change to match the times. We must change to match God’s words.
Marriage is a sacred insti­tu­tion cre­at­ed by God intend­ed to be between one man and one woman.
President Obama and oth­ers before believed that also,. That is why Obama mar­ried a woman.
The President and the Scribes on The Supreme Court may rule that man may mar­ry man and woman may mar­ry woman but the Supreme God Almighty will have some­thing to say about it.
After all he is the only Supreme author­i­ty, not those six who believe their rul­ing abro­gates God’s will. Who has author­i­ty to change some­thing man­dat­ed by God Almighty?

Christians look out, the State will be com­ing after us., Already some Pastors have capit­u­lat­ed, stat­ing they will Marry same sex couples.
The Christian Church can­not legit­i­mate­ly authen­ti­cate or val­i­date some­thing the word of God describes as an abomination.
They may do what they do but their unions will not be God-sanctioned.
God will per­son­al­ly hold those Pastor-imposers accountable.
Man’s law can­not Usurp God’s author­i­ty, this for all intents and pur­pos­es is the begin­ning of a trend which will see the Bible deemed offen­sive and a book which teach­es hate. They will be com­ing after your Bibles, they will be com­ing after your faith and if thou doth protest you will end up in Prison or worse.

PERSECUTION

You know when Politicians are bemoan­ing the lev­el of cor­rup­tion in your soci­ety that soci­ety is in trou­ble. In recent times Trevor Monroe an Attorney and for­mer head of the now defunct Communist Workers Party of Jamaica has bemoaned the lev­el of cor­rup­tion in the Jamaican society,.
Monroe also heads the National Integrity Action (NIA) a NGO he set up to mon­i­tor cor­rup­tion in Government.
Additionally, there has been calls from oth­er sec­tors of civ­il soci­ety regard­ing the high lev­el of cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism in the Jamaican society.
All of this seem to be falling on deaf ears for the (PNP) Portia Simpson Miller led Administration.
Even with con­tin­ued neg­a­tive reports from International Corruption Ratings Agencies like Transparency International, there seem to be no change or even a desire to cre­ate the impres­sion of change.

Like many oth­ers The Director Of Public Prosecution’s office seem not to ful­ly under­stand that there needs to be an air of account­abil­i­ty and hon­esty in the country.
One office how­ev­er seem to get it, that is the office of Contractor General.
Yet that office does not have pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers to ade­quate­ly put a dent in corruption.
This fact can­not be lost on Jamaicans who are pay­ing atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing in our country.
This Administration has enhanced INDECOM the Bruce Golding brain-child which he cre­at­ed in response to mas­sive cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
INDECOM has tremen­dous pow­ers to arrest those with pow­ers to arrest. Since INDECOM has pow­er to arrest the Police, why is there no pow­er of arrest and pros­e­cu­tion for the Contractor General?
It must be argued then that INDECOM was cre­at­ed with the express intent of not only rein­ing in Police mis­con­duct , but to pre­vent seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions and arrest of the Political directorate.
Just today The Jamaica Gleaner reports that the DPP refused to pros­e­cute the Mayor of Lucea, Shernet Haughton.
Haughton report­ed­ly issued some 22 con­tracts, worth more than $3.7 mil­lion to 11 of her rel­a­tives and per­sons affil­i­at­ed with her. The DPP ruled against pre­fer­ring crim­i­nal charges against her. Director Paula Llewelyn said although the evi­dence of nepo­tism is over­whelm­ing, it is not an offence known to the crim­i­nal law. Paula Llewelyn the DPP said her office will not be directed.
In oth­er words no one tells me what to do.
Talk about a Government Agency with­out over­sight or prop­er accountability.

HYPE
Everything for us Jamaicans is about hype. Everything is done for hype, pre­tense, show off, take your pick. Every office-hold­er is about hype, no one tell me what to do . Is it any won­der the coun­try is in the pick­le it’s in?
Even as a pha­lanx of spe­cial inter­est Groups have waged a vis­cer­al cam­paign to hand­cuff and shack­le the police depart­ment. Even as crime con­tin­ues on it’s upward trek unabated.
There is no out­cry from those spe­cial inter­est groups about the cor­rup­tion eat­ing away at the core of the Jamaican Nation.
Entities like the Norman Manley Law School are more than vocal advo­cates for the com­pre­hen­sive neu­ter­ing of the Jamaican police. They have waged inces­sant lob­by cam­paigns geared com­plete­ly at ren­der­ing the police depart­ment impo­tent, in sup­port of INDECOM.

I am a lit­tle out­raged that despite what is mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the Country’s legal fra­ter­ni­ty the Norman Manley Law School has been con­spic­u­ous­ly silent.
Lawyers trained by the Norman Manley Law School are prac­tic­ing law as pros­e­cu­tors, defense lawyers and ulti­mate­ly Magistrates and Judges.
It is impor­tant that the law school hold their own accountable .
In a recent report it was revealed that every year scores of lawyers are dis­barred from prac­tic­ing law in Jamaica.Additionally some are dis­barred sev­er­al times over , yet they still oper­ate as lawyers before they are final­ly removed from the roles of the Jamaican Bar Association.
The inci­dents which neces­si­tate dis­bar­ment range from pro­fes­sion­al neg­li­gence, fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate with the clients, fail­ing to deal with mat­ters expe­di­tious­ly, accord­ing to chair­per­son of the Disciplinary Committee of the GLC of the Jamaican Bar Association Walter Scott.
Scott was quick to state that less than five per cent of the lawyers who have been sub­ject­ed to dis­ci­pli­nary action involves clients money.
READ STORY HERE Bad Lawyers Banned For Life!

That is plain unfil­tered BS. For years Jamaican Lawyers like Post Office Workers, Custom Officers and oth­ers have had seri­ous cas­es of sticky-fin­gers-dis­ease [sic] when it comes to oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey. It is unadul­ter­at­ed cow-manure to argue that only a small amount of their trans­gres­sions are relat­ed to embez­zle­ment , or oth­er acts of thievery.
Where are the Ivory Tower dwellers who are usu­al­ly quick with the eight fin­gers point­ing to police and oth­ers? The (GLC) General Legal Council is a group of lawyers, their task is to police their own.
Why should the pub­lic be com­fort­able that only 50 of the coun­try’s more than 4,000 attor­neys-at-law have been banned for life from prac­tic­ing law in Jamaica.
What about the thou­sands of Jamaicans who have sim­ply giv­en up because they can get nowhere with the slow-paced almost sta­t­ic so-called inves­ti­ga­tions under­tak­en by the GLC ?
The fact of the mat­ter is that far greater num­bers of the nation’s lawyers are cor­rupt crim­i­nals clothed in noble robes , parad­ing as respectable offi­cers of the courts.
There is no inde­pen­dent over­sight for them as such the peo­ple have to wait on them to police them­selves. In the end hard­ly any­thing is done many are ele­vat­ed to high­er offices .
Lets put this issue of cor­rup­tion in cor­rect perspective.

The United States Supreme Court today ruled, Homosexual cou­ples may now mar­ry any­where in the United States, In a 5 – 4 rul­ing the Court decid­ed that Marriage in the United States is no longer an Institution between one man and one woman.
In oth­er words Gay mar­riage is now the law of the land.
This rul­ing is a huge win for pro­po­nents of the issue they defined as mar­riage equality.The Gay , Lesbian and trans-gen­der com­mu­ni­ty have suc­cess­ful­ly argued that mar­riage equal­i­ty is human rights.
♦The ques­tion then becomes “where will this end will a man or woman be able to legal­ly mar­ry their dog, cat , cow or horse?
♦ Will it now be against Federal law to refuse to offer ser­vice to homo­sex­u­als if that ser­vice is anti­thet­i­cal to their faith?
♦ Will mem­bers of the Clergy now be forced to per­form mar­riage cer­e­monies for Gay cou­ples in con­tra­ven­tion of their faith?
♦ Will min­is­ters who refuse to do so be pros­e­cut­ed as break­ing the law?
♦ Will con­gre­ga­tions which refuse to mar­ry homo­sex­u­als now lose their tax exempt status?
I believe we all know what the answer to these ques­tions will be . This is an issue which has swept the United States and the World like a mas­sive brush fire on a parched prairie. Opposition to mar­riage equal­i­ty has crum­bled and fold­ed like a wet blanket.
This rul­ing will have sweep­ing and far reach­ing con­se­quences for peo­ple under the influ­ence of the United States of America, not just in the United States but across the Globe.
In writ­ing for the major­i­ty Justice Kennedy a Herbert Walker Bush appointee, wrote that the Constitution guar­an­tees a right to same-sex mar­riage.Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the major­i­ty opin­ion in the 5 to 4 deci­sion. He was joined by the court’s four more lib­er­al jus­tices, Ruth Bader Gingsberg,Stephen Breyer , Helena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Smaller Nations steeped in Religious prin­ci­ples and opposed to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty will lit­er­al­ly be choked to death. Loans , grants and aid will be tied to com­pli­ance. Jamaica is one such nation which has been under tremen­dous pres­sure to repeal it’s bug­ger law. In the 4 years since Prime Minister Bruce Golding stepped down for dar­ing to sug­gest he would not have Gays in his Cabinet, in response to a British Journalist’s ques­tion, atti­tudes have also changed on the issue.
As part of that sea-change I spoke about ear­li­er, Jamaicans too, once vehe­ment­ly opposed to Homosexuality, have now soft­ened their atti­tudes sig­nif­i­cant­ly on the issue.
In the African American com­mu­ni­ty, once stri­dent­ly opposed to Homosexuality the walls of oppo­si­tion have crum­bled like a dried-mud-hut in a 7.0 earthquake.
So what has brought about this Biblical-like capit­u­la­tion to Homosexuality?
Here in the United States African Americans and oth­er eth­nic minori­ties have strug­gled for hun­dreds of years for human rights, civ­il rights, and dig­ni­ty. Yet the strug­gle rages some­times with­out any vis­i­ble traction.
Juxtapose our racial strug­gle with the Homosexual strug­gle and we must ask our­selves how come the strug­gle which has been waged for cen­turies is yet to gath­er the appro­pri­ate trac­tion once and for all, yet the strug­gle which hitched itself to the wag­on is close to being won?

Horace Chang General sec­re­tary of the Jamaica Labor Party waxed euphor­ic in an Observer Article “Titled ‚JLP on the road to vic­to­ry; will win next elec­tion with com­fort­able mar­gin”. In the Article Dr. Chang laid out an artic­u­late argu­ment detail­ing why the Jamaica Labor Party will win the next gen­er­al Election. Chang pre­dict­ed that Labor will cruise to a com­fort­able vic­to­ry. He also inti­mat­ed that from the Party’s polling and oth­ers to include the Administration’s own polling the gov­ern­ing PNP is poised to lose big in local Government Elections now due.
This assess­ment by Chang is not new , we have heard from very good sources that the PNP’s inter­nal polls have indi­cat­ed they will lose.

While we are on that sub­ject I again use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to call for fixed elec­tion dates. Regardless of who is in pow­er, it should not be left up to politi­cians to decide when to call elections.
With that said there is just so much time left, soon Portia will be forced to call Elections, both local and General and she will have to face the vot­ers. As I have stat­ed in these pages , pass­ing IMF tests can­not be the barom­e­ter we use to mea­sure Government’s per­for­mance . If the Nation is forced to bor­row from the fund or oth­er lenders to pay it’s bills, it’s impor­tant that tar­gets set by lenders, whomev­er they may be , are met.
However the Government has a moral respon­si­bil­i­ty, and an oblig­a­tion to find ways to ease the bur­den of Austerity which gen­er­al­ly accom­pa­nies meet­ing those targets.
Some of those things includes find­ing ways to reduce crime and cor­rup­tion, elim­i­nat­ing bureau­cra­cy, low­er­ing tax­es, so that poten­tial investors may be influ­enced to con­sid­er our coun­try for invest­ment, there­by cre­at­ing more pri­vate sec­tor jobs.

The PNP oper­ates like a well oiled machine when it comes to win­ning elec­tions, as such despite the polls, Chang and the Labor par­ty should not count their chick­ens before they hatch.
If National Elections were called today what would the JLP do dif­fer­ent­ly if they won ?
It is absolute­ly not accept­able to sim­ply wait for the PNP to screw up then win the elec­tions only to con­tin­ue the very same poli­cies and con­tin­ue with the same degree of corruption.
What we need to hear now are sub­stan­tive and detailed pol­i­cy dif­fer­ence that the JLP would admin­is­ter which would have pos­i­tive effects.
It is impor­tant that the Labor Party now lay out exact­ly what it intends to do par­tic­u­lar­ly if it intends to shed the IMF .
Where will it source alter­na­tive funding?
The Government and it’s lack­eys speak about the cri­sis fac­ing the coun­try as if that cri­sis was cre­at­ed by some­one oth­er than themselves.
They speak about debt being 145% of GDP.
They talk about debt ser­vic­ing eat­ing up a huge chunk of the nations bud­get leav­ing pre­cious lit­tle to pay wages and ful­fill oth­er obligations.
What they sur­rep­ti­tious­ly omit is a “mea cul­pa” and a con­fes­sion to the Nation over the hor­ri­ble harm the Party has wrought on the Nation and it’s people.

SEE CHANG’S STORY HERE.JLP on the road to vic­to­ry; will win next elec­tion with com­fort­able margin

A lot of water will flow under the Bridge between now and when­ev­er Queen Portia decides to call National Elections which are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due between 29 December 2016 (the day of the pre­vi­ous elec­tion in 2011) and 16 April 2017.
It per­fect­ly good to be exu­ber­ant about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of win­ning, but that is not enough.
The JLP has devel­oped a knack for self destruc­tion, a fact not lost on Chang.

Quote :(1) We accept that there might still be some lin­ger­ing issues from the lead­er­ship race, but this is not unique to the JLP and is typ­i­cal of all par­ties that cleave to demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples. The team that is coa­lesc­ing for the next General Elections, how­ev­er, is strong, high­ly moti­vat­ed and a good mix of youth and wisdom.
Quote: (2) The leak­ing of par­ty infor­ma­tion by a select few, while trou­bling, serves more as a les­son about the chal­lenges change agents face when enact­ing reform than any­thing else. This is not abnor­mal to organ­i­sa­tions going through sig­nif­i­cant change and forms part of the teething pains that will even­tu­al­ly be soothed. These actors must even­tu­al­ly rec­og­nize that they do not only hurt the tar­gets of their dis­com­fort, but the wider organ­i­sa­tion of which they are a part.
Quote: (3) Because of our his­to­ry, it is under­stand­able that some mem­bers might be jit­tery, but the JLP of 2015 is far dif­fer­ent from how it has been in pre­vi­ous times. This time all the fac­tors are com­ing togeth­er to ensure that the par­ty is ready for vic­to­ry at the polls. Several fac­tors will con­tribute to this victory.

I am not a mem­ber of the par­ty and I am jit­tery for Jamaica’s sake. Clearly there is much more work to be done, not just in con­vinc­ing the pub­lic , Dr. Chang seem to need some con­vinc­ing himself.
Whether or not this Essay from Chang is an attempt at reverse psy­chol­o­gy aimed at his own par­ty and to some degree at mem­bers of the PNP is not important.
What’s impor­tant is that Labor pre­pare, mak­ing itself once again a viable alter­na­tive, elim­i­nat­ing that hat­ed mantra that (Jumeka a pnp kuntry)

It can eas­i­ly be argued the Jamaica Constabulary Force cre­at­ed (INDECOM),the inde­pen­dent Commission of Investigations. Those mak­ing that claim would not be too far off.
It is not out of the ordi­nary to have over­sight of police depart­ments, in fact it is high­ly advis­able in a Democratic soci­ety that no one body oper­ate with­out oversight.

INDECOM came into exis­tence under the Bruce Golding Administration as a result of tremen­dous pub­lic demand for over­sight of the police depart­ment. The Government was respon­sive to those calls and INDECOM was born.
Naturally police depart­ments are nev­er hap­py about oversight.
Surprisingly many mem­bers of the force I spoke to are un-opposed to what they call “Pressure groups”. What they are opposed to is that their con­cerns are not con­sid­ered in the mix as it relates to the dif­fi­cul­ties inher­ent in their job.
The actions of many offi­cers of the (JCF) made the cre­ation of INDECOM an absolute neces­si­ty . The year was 1991 I was sit­ting in a class room at the Jamaica Police Academy on an in-ser­vice course. The instruc­tor asked what offence in our mind did we feel police offi­cers had not been engaged in committing?
The class­room was silent for sev­er­al min­utes as we all tried to think of any crime mem­bers of the depart­ment had not been accused of .
No one answered.
No one could.

Bunting

That was 24 years ago, since then mem­bers of the (JCF) has done almost irrepara­ble harm to the depart­ment , prompt­ing many to call for it’s disbandment.
The Jamaican Parliament debat­ed and passed the INDECOM Act.
Like every­thing that they engage in they did a ter­ri­ble job of for­mu­lat­ing the Act.
The law was draft­ed with­out ade­quate con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to the con­cerns of police and mem­bers of the (JDF) Jamaica Defense Force. Conversely the Act. was large­ly influ­enced with taint­ed rhetoric from forces with­ing the Jamaican soci­ety which were large­ly hos­tile to police for per­son­al and oth­er reasons.
Entities like (JFJ) and it’s head Carolyn Gomes. Families against state terrorism[sic] (FAST) . The Norman Manley Law School and oth­er far left spe­cial inter­ests groups were allowed to taint the process with cor­ro­sive ant-police influences.

The result is a bad law. Not bad in intent , bad in content.
There is no need to to inves­ti­gate every instance where police use force.
There is no need to give INDECOM Agents pow­er of arrest, we have a Director of Public Prosecution.
When police offi­cers are to be charged they are duly charged and face the courts like every­one else as it should be.
Many are quick to point to the American Federal Bureau Of Investigations as a template.
The FBI does not have pow­er to arrest offi­cers. They inves­ti­gate and sub­mit their find­ings to the pros­e­cu­tor. Congress was smart to under­stand the impor­tance of morale, as well as the need to reduce the like­li­hood of conflict.
They also under­stood the need for a del­i­cate bal­ance between sup­port­ing local law-enforce­ment and hav­ing oversight.
Some Jamaican “Joe-Blows” have likened INDECOM to the FBI. That par­al­lel could not be any more wrong as the role of the FBI is not to inves­ti­gate Police Abuse , it is to inves­ti­gate and enforce Federal Laws.
Some American law enforce­ment Agencies have active over­sight , some do not.

Many with­ing the Jamaican soci­ety have vary­ing opin­ions on the role and even the rel­e­vance of INDECOM.
On Wednesday Raulston Nembhard a priest and social com­men­ta­tor, jumped into the fray in a lengthy Article for the Jamaica Observer in which he assailed the Ministers of Justice and National Security for dar­ing to want to add some degree of over­sight to INDECOM. Said Raulston Nembhard . “INDECOM exists to restrain the heart­less, wicked and cor­rupt cop who will harass the ordi­nary cit­i­zen or even kill with impuni­ty. It exists to restrain those who would kick down the poor man’s door and use obscen­i­ty in the pur­suance of their duties. Bunting and Golding, why would you want to place any hand­cuff on such a body”?

I extract­ed this one state­ment because I believe it offers a poignant syn­op­sis of the self right­eous hyp­ocrites in Jamaica.
On the one hand he makes an impas­sioned argu­ment for over­sight of the police, while on the oth­er he does the exact oppo­site when it relat­ed to the Agency he is in favor of.
What a hypocrite.
INDECOM has at it’s head a pow­er-hun­gry Napoleonic nar­cis­sist , at every turn he demands more and more pow­er yet he is opposed to over­sight of his agency argu­ing that the agency is already answer­able to Parliament.
This is exact­ly the rea­son why there ought to be over­sight of INDECOM as there is a need for over­sight of the JCF .
As we march to a more trans­par­ent soci­ety, one in which we adhere to the dic­tates of laws, let us nev­er put pow­er into the hands of a few with­out the nec­es­sary checks and balances.

We should nev­er allow our Country’s laws to be dic­tat­ed by the few who live above Cross Roads. For too long we have allowed the self right­eous grandios­i­ty of the prover­bial” big man” to hold sway, we must not allow it anymore.
Lets have over­sight of INDECOM.
Lets not shack­le our police with threats of arrest when they place their lives at risk for us.
Hypocrites like Raulston Nembhard are blessed to live in soci­eties where the sac­ri­fice of police offi­cers are ignored and demeaned with­out pay­ing a price for it and that should change.

See Observer sto­ry here: Do not strait­jack­et, hand­cuff INDECOM

For a long time this Blogger has strug­gled with the issue “Racism”, won­der­ing large­ly why African-Americans tol­er­at­ed it for so long. I looked at Race rela­tions in the Country of my birth which ulti­mate­ly default­ed to a caste system.
It became clear to me as the years pro­gressed that African Americans had it expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult that peo­ple in the Caribbean.
Simply put, the slave-mas­ter left Jamaica and oth­er Islands leav­ing the infra­struc­ture of light skinned supe­ri­or­i­ty in place, but he left.
In America he nev­er left.

Having lived lived most of my life in Jamaica in which I eschewed and reviled the caste sys­tem I moved to the United States . It was then that I start­ed won­der­ing why the Building blocks of Racism were allowed to remain intact while America got away with bad-mouthing and strong-arm­ing oth­er coun­tries on issues of Human Rights , Justice and the like.

I also thought that since Black Americans would not engage in a war to claim their dig­ni­ty , a choice they made from Kings days, why did they not use the next best thing, the pow­er of their money?
Being a small busi­ness own­er who oper­ates two enti­ties , one offer­ing ser­vice the oth­er sales. I observed over the years that African-Americans would only spend mon­ey on the ser­vice end of my busi­ness, that ser­vice being some­thing they gen­er­al­ly do not like to sources but from any­one oth­er than blacks.
However as far as the out­let side is con­cerned the store was a mere Museum to be admired, they would not make a purchase.
At first I was tempt­ed to just write it off as envy. Of course why not? Guy come to their Country act­ing like a busi­ness­man who the hell does he think he is right ?
Then I start­ed talk­ing to some of my cus­tomers with whom I had a good rap­port. The con­sen­sus was that the ser­vice I offered they did not want from whites or oth­ers, but when they want­ed to pur­chase things they went to oth­er peo­ple and that’s how they grew up.
Yeah I know “Wow”!

They nev­er quite fig­ured out that their mon­ey is their pow­er. African Americans have allowed them­selves to be mere con­duits for mon­ey, retain­ing pre­cious lit­tle of the resources they earn. Of all groups in the United States the Black dol­lar cir­cu­lates with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty the least, less than once. The clos­est group to African-Americans are Hispanics , their dol­lar cir­cu­lates eight times with­ing their com­mu­ni­ty before it leaves. It cir­cu­lates count­less times in the white community.
Hispanics will be chang­ing the num­ber of times their dol­lar cir­cu­late quite rapidly.
As a group they are open­ing more start-ups than any oth­er group.
African-Americans con­tin­ue to be huge con­sumers of goods and ser­vices oth­ers pro­duce with­out start­ing and sup­port­ing their own.
This year 2015, it is pro­ject­ed that African-Americans will spend between 1.3 and 1.5 Trillion dol­lars on goods and ser­vices, yet hard­ly any of that mon­ey will remain in our community.

One of the things I strug­gled with was, why haven’t big busi­ness­es stepped in and say no to racism met­ed out to Blacks in America ? Then it occurred to me they did not need to. Many of America’s largest Companies were built on the backs of slaves. In fact America was found­ed and built on the com­plex­i­ties of the slave trade, and slave labor.
Blacks were always going to walk into their stores and plunk down their mon­ey grin­ning like Cheshire cats ask­ing to pur­chase flat screen Televisions and Cadillacs. Where else would they go.
Now after the Church killings at moth­er Emanuel , Companies like Walmart , Kmart, Sears, Amazon , and oth­ers are join­ing the cho­rus demand­ing the despi­ca­ble Confederate flag be removed from in front the State house. They have gone far­ther sug­gest­ing they will no longer car­ry any mer­chan­dise with that sym­bol of hate in their stores or on their websites.
Removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state house will not end Racism. Neither will Racism stop because com­pa­nies no longer car­ry their products.
However as it was when the Government went after the KKK and con­fis­cat­ed their monies when they were proven to have com­mit­ted crimes against oth­ers, soon atti­tudes will change when we speak with no uncer­tain terms that Racism will not be tolerated.

Despite this cue Black suits on Television still do not real­ize that this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put the ped­al to the met­al. Instead as always they are engaged in ask­ing for jobs and ameni­ties like afford­able housing.
How about you band togeth­er do star­tups and spend with your own kind? Then you won’t have to ask for afford­able hous­ing, you will be able to afford decent housing.
How about final­ly fig­ur­ing out that you can effect mean­ing­ful change if you with­hold your mon­ey from com­pa­nies which pro­mote and sup­port Racism and Government poli­cies which are harm­ful to your communities?
In order to fig­ure that out Black Americans would have to deter­mine that they will read and stop being coons only inter­est­ed in being enter­tain­ers and being entertained.

Many peo­ple angry over the actions of 21 year-old Dylan Storm Roof have stat­ed that fam­i­ly mem­bers ought not for­give him for his das­tard­ly actions.
Many peo­ple opine that as Black peo­ple we are too quick to for­give and return to our cor­ner, no mat­ter how dark those cor­ners may be.
I read one Article today from some­one who believe for­give­ness from fam­i­ly mem­bers to Roof is “Immoral”.
The writer quot­ed old Testament Scriptures which teach­es an “eye for an eye”.
At the risk of sound­ing cliché, I wrote that, were we to fol­low those laws we would end up with a World full of blind people.

We are not liv­ing under old Testament laws which dic­tates an eye for an eye. We don’t want a world full of blind people.
Jesus came and died so we do not have to live that way.
Now I do agree that their Forgiveness may have been pre­ma­ture accord­ing to Biblical teach­ings, but it is per­fect­ly okay for those left to grieve, to unbur­den them­selves of hatred and offer forgiveness.
Forgiveness how­ev­er is not an enti­tle­ment, it is some­thing earned and there are predicates.
The Bible teach­es that in order to receive for­give­ness the trans­gres­sor must .….…..
Recognize that he did wrong.
Repent.
Ask for forgiveness.
Yes Dylann Storm Roof has not done any of the above as far as we know, and so on the at basis their actions may have been premature.
The larg­er issues of Racism in America is a recur­ring dec­i­mal. It nev­er goes away, this learned behav­ior in a large cross-sec­tion of white Americans is per­va­sive and can­cer­ous. President Obama speak­ing on a pod-cast spoke about it being in the DNA of many white people.
I agree that this most despi­ca­ble of lie told to them­selves has actu­al­ly fil­tered into their genet­ic code to the point it is now a part of who they are.
For God’s sake we are liv­ing in the year 2015, how dumb and illit­er­ate can one be in assum­ing some sort of supe­ri­or­i­ty over oth­ers based on skin pig­men­ta­tion, or any oth­er nat­u­ral­ly defin­ing characteristics?

In his infi­nite wis­dom God cre­at­ed every specie with dif­fer­ent hues and oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics. It is all part of the beau­ti­ful cor­nu­copia of col­or and excellence.
Yet for some rea­son a sec­tion of one race have dis­tort­ed God’s cre­ation , lied about it and used the dis­tor­tion they cre­at­ed to cause untold pain and deaths prob­a­bly to the tune of bil­lions of peo­ple look­ing dif­fer­ent than they do.
It is time for decent peo­ple of all col­or, to shout down the Bigots. They should have no hid­ing place to grow their hatred .
As Black peo­ple we have tol­er­at­ed this Genocide on our peo­ple for far too long.
Over 50 years ago on a Sunday morn­ing 4 lit­tle girls died in a church base­ment in Alabama, their only sin was that they were black. A dement­ed, moron­ic demon decid­ed to snuff out their lives, yet the so-called-con­science of the nation was not shocked, yes I said it.
A few days ago anoth­er imbe­cile snuffed out the lives of nine peo­ple again in a church. They took him in showed him kind­ness and he turned on them like the rabid dog he is.
How many more Black lives are we will­ing to sur­ren­der on the Altar of get­ting along?
When will enough be enough?
The Nation’s con­science was not shocked fifty years ago because it is stu­pid to expect the descen­dants of rapists ‚Robbers and Genocidal mur­der­ers to feel empa­thy for doing what comes nat­ur­al to them.
Martin Luther King spoke about the “drug of grad­u­al­ism”, over fifty years after they took his life Black America is still drunk with the drug of grad­u­al­ism, believ­ing change has come , when in fact not much has changed .
It’s time for this igno­ble Blithe called Racism to be forced deep into the sub­ter­ranean cav­erns beneath our feet, those who believe in it should quake in their boots at the thought of the con­se­quence attached to even think­ing it.
Now is the moment this is the time.

Why did he not issue the order to arrest Coke? Remember he said  Lewin indi­cat­ed that the sur­veil­lance would allow for a “soft” deten­tion of Coke and avoid poten­tial unrest should the extra­di­tion request reach the Jamaican authorities.

General Stewart Saunders this morn­ing tes­ti­fied that Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke “hur­ried­ly” left his upper St Andrew home and drove to his west Kingston strong­hold of Tivoli Gardens near­ly five min­utes after he and the Police Commissioner at the time briefed then Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

I am uncer­tain how this bit of news is rel­e­vant in the con­text of the ongo­ing Inquiry been con­duct­ed into events which occurred when the Military and Police entered Tivoli Gardens to arrest Coke who was want­ed for extra­di­tion to the United States .
Unless there is evi­dence that someone(Golding) for exam­ple alert­ed Coke. How is it rel­e­vant when Coke could sim­ply and coin­ci­den­tal­ly be head­ing to Tivoli the epic-cen­ter of his operations.
Saunders told the com­mis­sion that then Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin request­ed the sur­veil­lance of Coke, indi­cat­ing that he had become aware of a like­ly extra­di­tion request for the for­mer Tivoli Gardens strong­man. According to Saunders, Lewin indi­cat­ed that the sur­veil­lance would allow for a “soft” deten­tion of Coke and avoid poten­tial unrest should the extra­di­tion request reach the Jamaican authorities.

If this evi­dence is true… If Lewin believed Golding to be the source of the leak.
Then it appeared Lewin want­ed to dam­age Golding more than to do his job.
It would appear that Hardly Lewin failed dis­mal­ly as the head law enforce­ment Officer to uphold his sworn oath to pro­tect and serve.
Lewin had always referred to Tivoli Gardens as the moth­er of all Garrisons. If Tivoli was the moth­er then the intri­cate web of PNP Garrisons across the Nation were cer­tain­ly grow­ing chil­dren as far as Garrisons are concerned.
Of course those seemed to have elud­ed Lewin while he was head of the JDF and as head of the Constabulary.
It is shock­ing that Saunders could assert that both he and Lewin were aware that Coke would be want­ed for extra­di­tion and did noth­ing , even though they claimed he was under sur­veil­lance. The state­ment of Saunders opened up both the JCF AND JDF to con­dem­na­tion of being incred­i­bly incompetent.
If they had Coke under surveillance.
If he knew the order to extra­dite was com­ing down the pipe.
If he had infor­ma­tion that Coke was head­ed for Tivoli Gardens soon after he briefed the Prime Minister,and if Lewin was told Coke was alert­ed . Why did Lewin not use his author­i­ty to do what he said he would do? According to Saunders, Lewin indi­cat­ed that the sur­veil­lance would allow for a “soft” deten­tion of Coke and avoid poten­tial unrest should the extra­di­tion request reach the Jamaican authorities

That was the moment for Lewin to do his Job and he did not.
On that note Lewin should be seen for what he real­ly was a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who did not do his job.

A fed­er­al jury sen­tenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death. Tsarnaev, 21 and his broth­er Tamerlan were accused of plot­ting and car­ry­ing out the Marathon Bombing using a pres­sure cook­er bombs as their weapon of choice. Tamerlan was killed in a shoot out with Police while Tsarnaev was cap­tured and charged with mul­ti­ple Terrorism charges for which he received the death penal­ty in Massachusetts, arguably the most lib­er­al state in the Union.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faced 30 charges relat­ed to the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, the killing of MIT police offi­cer Sean Collier, and the ensu­ing Watertown fire­fight in April 2013. The Marathon bomb­ing killed three peo­ple and injured at least 264 oth­ers.
Dylan Storm Roof tar­get­ed the African American com­mu­ni­ty. He took all the steps nec­es­sary plan to exe­cute African Americans even as they wor­shiped in Church. Clearly these peo­ple were killed because of their col­or. Reports indi­cate Roof said he had to car­ry out his “Mission” even as the kind­ness of his vic­tims forced him to rethink the das­tard­ly act he was about to commit.

“MISSION”
Who was involved in Radicalizing Dylann Storm Roof ? The term “Mission” sug­gest he had co-con­spir­a­tors. If not in exe­cu­tion cer­tain­ly in it’s devel­op­ment. Who autho­rized the “Mission”? Does any­one believe this sil­ly look­ing lit­tle mis­cre­ant thought out, planned and exe­cut­ed that plan, even as he wore and dis­played sym­bols of Racism?
I do not?
“TERRORISM”
“Terrorism is the use of vio­lent acts to fright­en the peo­ple in an area as a way of try­ing to achieve a polit­i­cal goal”.
How does the Act com­mit­ted by Dylann Storm Roof dif­fer from that com­mit­ted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

“OUTRAGE”
Where is the nation­al out­rage sim­i­lar to that we heard when the Tsarnaev broth­ers took those inno­cent lives in Boston?
When Anglo-Soxons kill peo­ple of col­or here in America there is a sys­tem­at­ic effort to nuance and mod­i­fy the ter­ror­ist intent of the killer, talk­ing instead about Guns, men­tal-health, pover­ty and oth­er periph­er­al issues. Obama too , in his con­tin­ued effort not to offend, tip­py-toed around this mas­sive Act of Terrorism choos­ing instead to talk about gun-control.
This has noth­ing ‚to do with gun con­trol, (did­ly squat), this is Terrorism based on race.
Nowhere in the def­i­n­i­tion of Terrorism does it say acts of ter­ror are con­fined to Islamist’s alone.

“INCONSEQUENTIAL TOOL OF HATE”
Dylan Storm is a 21 year-old incon­se­quen­tial instru­ment of hate. A liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of the hate which hate produces.
The source/​s from which Dylan Storm learned to hate are very much in place today as they were before he gunned down 9 mem­bers of the community.
♦The Confederate bat­tle Flag still flies over the State’s Capital Building.
♦ South Carolina boasts (19) rec­og­nized Hate Groups, more than any oth­er State in the Nation.
♦ South Carolina is one of just five States which does not have a a Hate Crime Statute.
♦ South Carolina pro­duced Joe Wilson the imbe­cile Congressman who shout­ed out “you lie” at Barack Obama as he addressed the Nation in a state of the union address.

The lit­tle hate­mon­ger who took the lives of 9 peo­ple was arraigned on Friday on nine counts of mur­der .That’s all good but where are the Terror charges, what am I miss­ing? The Judge allowed dece­dents fam­i­ly mem­bers who so desired to speak at the arraign­ment. Literally all who spoke told the accused they for­gave him.
It’s their right to free them­selves of hate but for­giv­ing and going back to the way things were isn’t working.
Forgiveness is a prod­uct of repen­tance and sup­pli­ca­tion. It does not pre­ced­ed these Acts it suc­ceeds them…

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…..

HISTORY BEHIND MOTHER EMANUEL CHURCH.

As we’ve been hear­ing, Emanuel AME Church in Charleston was well-known long before it became the site of a mas­sacre by a sus­pect who’s linked to white suprema­cy. The church has a deep his­to­ry in the civ­il rights move­ment. And yes­ter­day, President Obama not­ed its roots in an ear­li­er bid for freedom.

PRES BARACK OBAMA: This is a church that was burned to the ground because its wor­shipers worked to end slavery.

MONTAGNE: The pres­i­dent was speak­ing about an event in 1822. One of the church’s founders, a freed slave named Denmark Vesey, was con­vict­ed for plan­ning a slave revolt, a revolt that was nev­er car­ried out. He was exe­cut­ed. The tree where it’s believed he was hanged still stands in Charleston. Historian Douglas Egerton wrote a book about Denmark Vesey.

DOUGLAS EGERTON: He had one of those amaz­ing sto­ries that if it were a movie or a nov­el, one would not believe it. When he was about 13, he was pur­chased to be sold into the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which is mod­ern day Haiti. He liked the cap­tain who had bought him, a man named Joseph Vesey, who had used him briefly as a cab­in boy. And Vesey set­tled in Charleston as an importer of nau­ti­cal goods.

MONTAGNE: All right, so he was skilled. And as I under­stand it, he bought his freedom.

EGERTON: He played the lot­tery, and he won about $1,800. And so he bought his free­dom, and the deed was signed on New Year’s Eve 1799. So he went to sleep that night and woke up in the new cen­tu­ry as a free man, but his wife and his chil­dren remained slaves.

MONTAGNE: So as the rare free black man among most­ly black peo­ple who are slaves, what was his role exact­ly in con­coct­ing a plan for a slave revolt?

EGERTON: The plan was ini­tial­ly to rise up on July 14, 1822, that was Bastille Day. And the idea was that as church bells tolled mid­night, urban slaves would slay their mas­ters as they slept and then fight their way to the docks and sail the next morn­ing to Haiti.

MONTAGNE: And Haiti, it must be not­ed, had been freed through a slave revolt.

EGERTON: Yes, so this made Vesey’s plot unusu­al in North America in that it was not kind of a typ­i­cal rebel­lion. It was a mass exo­dus. It was a mass escape. Vesey under­stands that non­com­bat­ants — which is to say women, chil­dren, aged — are going to die when his men rise up. But of course, their goal is not to kill whites. Their goal is to get away.

MONTAGNE: Tell us about the tri­al itself.

EGERTON: It was essen­tial­ly a kan­ga­roo court. There was no chance that Vesey was going to sur­vive this alive. And they read a sen­tence to him they had obvi­ous­ly writ­ten in advance. It was very long and pre­pared. And his only response was to look at them and say the work of insur­rec­tion will go on. They could hang him, but they could­n’t kill the idea.

MONTAGNE: How, though, did his case affect what is now Emanuel Church?

EGERTON: After the con­spir­a­cy col­lapsed, the church was raised, prob­a­bly burned to the ground. And so the build­ing that’s there now is the third-gen­er­a­tion AME Church in Charleston. And of course, Vesey has nev­er been for­got­ten by the black com­mu­ni­ty in South Carolina, who worked long and hard to get the stat­ue erect­ed that went up in 2014. And of course, white Carolinians have always regard­ed the church as kind of a hotbed of activism, which is why this tragedy was undoubt­ed­ly no acci­dent. This has been a tar­get for a very long time.

MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talk­ing with us.

EGERTON: Good to talk to you, a sad day.

MONTAGNE: Douglas Egerton is the author of “He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives Of Denmark Vesey.” He’s also an his­to­ri­an at Lemoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our web­site terms of use and per­mis­sions pages at www​.npr​.org for fur­ther information.

There is renewed con­ver­sa­tion in JAMAICA about giv­ing the Diaspora the vote.
As with any oth­er issue there are peo­ple lined up on either side of the debate.
Personally I did not give much thought to the issue until recently.
Opposition leader Andrew Holness who recent­ly returned from trips to England and the United States, said it would be impor­tant to give mem­bers of the Diaspora a con­stituent vote. Holness went on to say that the con­stituent vote would mean that the Diaspora have a vote in the Parliament,rather than being spread out over all con­stituen­cies which would have the pow­er to decide the out­come of elec­tions from overseas.
Recently one of the Portia Simpson Miller pro­pa­gan­da Organ the Daily Gleaner Editorial page exco­ri­at­ed the Opposition leader for dar­ing to sug­gest that Jamaicans liv­ing abroad be allowed to vote in nation­al elections.
The Editorial dia­tribe nev­er both­ered to rec­og­nize the dis­tinc­tion Holness made that a Constituency vote would not and could not change the Government.

Having thought about the issue and read some of the pros and cons I do believe mem­bers of the Diaspora should be allowed to vote but not just in a nar­row con­stituen­cy vote.
If every mem­ber of the dias­po­ra , not a for­eign cit­i­zen return to their homes come enu­mer­a­tion time , reg­is­ter to vote then vote come elec­tion time whats to stop them?
This would also be a ter­rif­ic way to dis­man­tle Jamaica’s mul­ti­ple Political Garrisons.
There are no laws to my knowl­edge which pre­vents Jamaicans liv­ing abroad from doing so. Does Geography then become the pre­clud­ing factor?
If so why?
Many mem­bers of the Diaspora work under severe­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions to send mon­ey back to Jamaica. One report indi­cates The Jamaican dias­po­ra sent 16 Billion US dol­lars home over the last decade. That Infusion of cash is sec­ond only to the resources derived from Tourism.
Monies sent back to Jamaica impacts the Jamaican econ­o­my in more fun­da­men­tal ways that even tourism does. People imme­di­ate­ly put monies they receive direct­ly into the Jamaican economy.
Sixteen Billion Dollars inject­ed into the econ­o­my and no equi­ty share?

Wednesday’s Gleaner Letter of the day was Titled “Tread Cautiously With Diaspora”. The title by it’s very word­ing sug­gest­ed that mem­bers of the Diaspora are not Jamaicans but Alien crea­tures who should lay no claim to Jamaica, The dis-qual­i­fi­er being that they live abroad.
Many Jamaicans return­ing home to vis­it and to be rein­te­grat­ed into Jamaican soci­ety have com­plained of being treat­ed like outsiders.

Many have been tar­get­ed along those lines for Robberies and even worse.
That aside, the let­ter laid out what I thought was the true intent of the let­ter when the writer stat­ed in the end …
If the idea is ‘to gath­er the intel­lec­tu­al and mate­r­i­al capac­i­ties of Jamaicans, wher­ev­er they are’, there are many ways to do that which do not require any form of eli­gi­bil­i­ty for rep­re­sen­ta­tion. As sug­gest­ed often, one can have ‘funds’ or ‘bonds’ that clear­ly allow the dias­po­ra to make finan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion in nation­al development.

In oth­er words we will be hap­py to take your mon­ey but you get no say. That mind­set is can­cer­ous. It is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al ero­sion which has per­me­at­ed our coun­try for decades now. Every per­son who invest in a com­pa­ny or coun­try buys equi­ty share with that investment.
When you pur­chase equi­ty-share you do get to have a say. For years Jamaica has ben­e­fit­ed from Diaspora mon­ey with­out giv­ing any­thing back. That has to stop, whether they like it or not.
All mem­bers of the Diaspora must demand our decade long 16 Billion Dollar equi­ty share in our homeland.
Its not up to the recip­i­ents to decide, it’s our call to make and we should make it.

If you lis­tened to JAMAICA’S Finance Minister Peter Phillips” speech Tuesday dur­ing his address to the nation and you just hap­pened to have been in a Coma , or maybe too young to know, you would cer­tain­ly come away believ­ing that the PNP was an inno­cent observ­er to the last 40 years.

Phillips told the Nation .…

“Funds were not avail­able at afford­able inter­est rates. Even grant resources were denied us,” Phillips said. “Our reserves were dwin­dling and investor con­fi­dence was declin­ing.” He said the most telling sign of “our near bank­rupt­cy, as a coun­try, was the high lev­el of pub­lic debt which stood at approx­i­mate­ly 145 per cent of Gross Domestic Product by March 2013, with­out any mul­ti­lat­er­al sup­port, and had become a mill­stone around the neck of every Jamaican”. The finance min­is­ter said to ser­vice this debt, in the 2010 fis­cal year, it took 60 cents out of every dol­lar of the budget.“In addi­tion, to pay pub­lic ser­vice wages, it took anoth­er 21 cents of every dol­lar,” Phillips explained. “This meant that 81 cents of every dol­lar spent by the Government went to ser­vic­ing the debt, and pay­ing the wages of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.” He said these oblig­a­tions left the Government with only 19 cents out of every dol­lar to fix roads, improve health ser­vice, build schools, pro­vide water and hous­ing, meet nation­al secu­ri­ty costs and clean drains, among oth­er things.
What Peter Phillips omit­ted is the fact that his Party, the PNP was in charge of the econ­o­my for all but 12 of the last 40 years. Phillips said the telling sign of “our near bank­rupt­cy”, as a coun­try, was the high lev­el of pub­lic debt which stood at approx­i­mate­ly 145 per cent of Gross Domestic Product by March 2013, with­out any mul­ti­lat­er­al sup­port, and had become a mill­stone around the neck of every Jamaican”.
Simply put, the Country was spend­ing rough­ly 50% more that it was earning.
Despite the caus­tic nature of Jamaican Politics, Phillips could not lay blame at the feet of the Opposition Labor Party. This was rather telling as Jamaica inch­es toward National elec­tions due in about a year.

National Polls not yet released are report­ed to show the Jamaica Labor Party increas­ing it’s lead over the PNP to a whop­ping 20 point deficit. Additionally the Election Commission is telling the Nation that Local Government Elections will be pushed back.
Minister Phillips despite his impas­sioned argu­ments that his Government have pulled the coun­try back from the brink of bank­rupt­cy ‚nev­er took respon­si­bil­i­ty for his par­ty’s ter­ri­ble mis­han­dling of the coun­try’s affairs.
Additional the Minister said there would be no mon­ey to offer pub­lic sec­tor work­ers increas­es beyond the 7% already offered by the Administration.
It will be inter­est­ing to note the reac­tion of the mas­sive pub­lic sec­tor work­force come elec­tion time.

In the end Phillips took no respon­si­bil­i­ty for his par­ty’s four-decade long man­gling of our coun­try’s finan­cial affairs. He

mere­ly chron­i­cled the near-miss of total eco­nom­ic col­lapse. There was no I’m sor­ry, can we have anoth­er chance to do it right. Omar Davies was mere­ly shuf­fled to anoth­er port­fo­lio after pre­sid­ing over the most cat­a­stroph­ic and incom­pe­tent han­dling of our nation’s econ­o­my in history.
The People’s National Party has no solu­tion for Jamaica beyond the plans laid out by the International Monetary Fund. Of course the Funds plan bal­ances the books on the backs of the nations peo­ple to the extent bank­rupt­cy is avert­ed and they receive mas­sive returns on their funds in excess of that loaned to us.
The Government cel­e­brates meet­ing the Fund’s tar­gets as a sign they are on the right path. It’s about time the peo­ple wake up and real­ize pass­ing IMF tests means bad news for for them.
The rul­ing PNP is sim­ply engaged now in shuf­fling and reor­ga­niz­ing the deck-chairs on the sink­ing Titanic.

Recently we report­ed on a trend which is hap­pen­ing in the Tourism sec­tor in Jamaica.
Many pas­sen­ger sim­ply stay on boat when they dock in Jamaica.
This noth­ing new. I have seen tourist harass­ment up close and per­son­al as a young police offi­cer who spent count­less hours bat­tling that scourge.
The issue of harass­ment can­not be con­fused with ven­dors polite­ly offer­ing their wares for sale in a non-threat­en­ing or aggres­sive manner.
For the most past that can­not be said of the sit­u­a­tion vis­i­tors face when they enter our shores.
I recount an inci­dent relat­ed to me by a female police offi­cer in my city here in the United States. She and her hus­band nar­row­ly escaped death by ven­dors in Montego Bay, thank­ful­ly they were res­cued by oth­er ven­dors. Their crime ? Daring to turn down an aggres­sive man who offered unwant­ed wares.

Tourism Minister Dr Wykeham McNeill is report­ed as telling del­e­gates attend­ing the sixth Biennial Diaspora Conference in Montego Bay yes­ter­day that cruise vis­i­tors are shy­ing away from get­ting off their ships when they get here because they are being harassed. The upshot, Dr McNeill point­ed out, is that the prob­lem is pre­vent­ing small busi­ness oper­a­tors from earn­ing from tourism. According to the Jamaica Observer.

I’m unsure about the upshot, as Dr, McNeil sees it but we have report­ed on this very issue time and again point­ing to the loss to legit­i­mate busi­ness­es and the econ­o­my in general.
The truth is that even as Dr. McNeil points to this age old prob­lem, his Administration is allow­ing it to hap­pen. Not only have they allowed it to hap­pen in Tourism towns, they allow hig­glers and hus­tlers to sell wares in front of stores all across down-town Kingston and oth­er major cities across the Island. Business own­ers com­plain to their own detri­ment, they are either killed or wake up to smol­der­ing ruins the next day.
This is the luna­cy which has per­me­at­ed our coun­try. Yet as a friend told me on the phone from Jamaica recent­ly it does not mat­ter what the PNP does to Jamaicans , Jamaica is PNP Country and the peo­ple will return them to power.
My friend laugh­ing­ly told me nev­er­the­less ” if yu cut mi, mi bleed orange blood”.
My friend a rather intel­li­gent man under­stands the dynam­ics of the sit­u­a­tion, he is more resigned to the real­i­ties on the ground than he is a dyed-in-the wool-comrade.

McNeil believes that both polit­i­cal par­ties should con­sid­er it their duty to repeat­ed­ly remind their base of the dam­age that tourist harass­ment does to Jamaica. This age old prob­lem will not be fixed one bit by beg­ging peo­ple not to. In the same way we can­not beg dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to refrain from com­mit­ting crimes , we can in no way expect hun­gry broke peo­ple to stop ped­dling their wares.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly, the prob­lems fac­ing the Jamaican peo­ple will not be fixed by this Administration. The meth­ods which are need­ed to effec­tive­ly turn around the mind­set of Jamaicans are not part of the strate­gies of the PNP.
The PNP does not aggra­vate voters.
They win elec­tions by mak­ing promis­es that effec­tive­ly any­thing goes, all one has to do is run ‑wid ‑it [sic]