WE INFORM YOU DECIDE

London based Amnesty International said there needs to be full trans­paren­cy by the Jamaican Government on alle­ga­tions of human rights vio­la­tions by the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the rea­sons for the sud­den depar­ture of Commissioner of Police, Owen Ellington.

Jamaica’s DAILY GLEANER report­ed Thursday July 24^th that the watch­dog group is demand­ing that the Government obey it’s inter­na­tion­al obligations .

Amnesty demands

*Any infor­ma­tion relat­ed to alle­ga­tions of human rights violations
*The out­come of inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tions into the actions of the JCF
*The nature of the human rights vio­la­tions reported
*The iden­ti­ty of the inter­na­tion­al part­ners and the rec­om­men­da­tions they have made. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​5​4​431

IN THE MEANTIME

Over 800 Palestinians have been slaugh­tered in Gaza by the Zionist state of Israel in recent fight­ing . Less than 50 Israeli’s have died in the conflict.

In response to the wide dis­par­i­ty in the body count between the two fac­tions Ami Ayalon, the for­mer head of Israel’s Shin Bet secu­ri­ty agency said quote:

We do not mea­sure ethics and moral­i­ty by count­ing dead bod­ies. The fact that many more Palestinians than Israelis have died does not mean that our cause, or this war, is not just. Many more Germans than Americans died in World War II. Does that mean that Hitler was right and America was wrong?

There is that moral equiv­a­lence again. America did it so we can too. Israel has used that tact over and over in jus­ti­fy­ing its war crimes against the Palestinian peo­ple for decades. Whether it be WW11 or America’s response to the September 11^th 2001 attacks, Israel has hitched its wag­ons to the moral equiv­a­lence train of America.

This tact is strate­gic for Israel, not just in using America’s mil­i­tary might to fright­en it’s more pow­er­ful ene­mies, but in keep­ing in line, a Democratic American President less than anx­ious to wage war.

Yesterday as I stood in the Departure lounge of a Florida Airport I over­heard on tele­vi­sion that 39 Israelis have been killed since the start of renewed con­flict between the two sides. I asked my wife whether she heard how many Palestinians were killed ? She shook her head no. An elder­ly woman stand­ing close by chimed in “it’s a shame they only report on the Israeli’s as if the oth­er side are not peo­ple too”! I looked at her and smiled, I guessed she saw that what she said encap­su­lat­ed my thoughts result­ing in the ques­tion to my wife. We both watched for a lit­tle while longer then saun­tered off to catch our flights.

Oh by the way I have not heard any­thing from Amnesty International on this wan­ton slaugh­ter, which involves most­ly women chil­dren, and inno­cent families.

ALSO IN THE NEWS

Staten Island res­i­dent Eric Garner was laid to rest yes­ter­day . Garner was killed when NYPD Cops placed him in a banned choke hold as they tried to arrest him. The Police alleges Garner was sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes. The father of 6 chil­dren died on the spot from all accounts. Neither the cops who placed him in the choke hold and cuffed him nor the EMT who arrived on scene did any­thing to help Garner.

The Video was shock­ing, a female EMT per­son­nel who arrived on scene felt Garner’s neck for a

pulse and nod­ded in the affir­ma­tive to one of the cops that Garner was still alive. This was clear­ly a lie . Her opin­ion was not sup­port­ed by the video evi­dence. From all indi­ca­tion Eric Garner died as NYPD cops stood by and did nothing.

EMT per­son­nel clear­ly lied to cov­er for cops who knew Garner was dead on scene. Two EMT’s and two Paramedics have since been sus­pend­ed with­out pay in con­nec­tion with this inci­dent. The tech­niques used to hoist mis­ter Garner’s body onto a stretch­er was clear­ly not in con­junc­tion with their own guide­lines. No Oxygen was giv­en to mis­ter Garner , even after they were told he said he could­n’t breathe. Why would they not give him Oxygen, could it be that they knew he was already dead? http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/funeral-today-eric-garner-article‑1.1877381

The wan­ton killing and abuse of Black men con­tin­ue unabat­ed across America by Police.. Black women are not exempt from the vis­cous testos­terone jack-boot­ed assault, from what now pass­es for Police offi­cers in America. In inci­dent after inci­dent Cops beat peo­ple of col­or mer­ci­less­ly, large­ly with­out con­se­quence. On the International stage Israel kills Palestinians as a mat­ter of course, uncon­cerned with the dic­tates of International law. On nei­ther of these issues have we heard from Amnesty International.

In these Blogs we have con­sis­tent­ly point­ed out these incon­sis­ten­cy in the inter­est of jus­tice. The Palestinian peo­ple do not depend on oth­ers to fight their bat­tles , though out gunned and out maneu­vered they con­tin­ue the fight for their sur­vival despite innu­mer­able odds.

Amnesty International con­tin­ue on it’s path to self imposed irrel­e­vance. Well mean­ing peo­ple the world over now rec­og­nizes that they are for selec­tive Human Rights and cer­tain­ly not about justice.

Despite Hundreds of years of slaugh­ter , first by slavers, then slave own­ers , through Jim Crowe, chain gangs, the KKK and now Police, blacks con­tin­ue to focus large­ly on enter­tain­ment. We have played into the nar­ra­tive that if one wants to hide some­thing from us all they have to do is place it in a book. Even those of us who come from oth­er coun­tries would rather pre­tend that things are fine in America, sav­ing our ven­om for our cops back home.

Things are not fine, many young men of Jamaican par­ents have been abused and killed by Police in these United States. Yet many of us pre­tend that American cops are cour­te­ous respon­si­ble pub­lic servants.

All we are able to do is to con­tin­ue to try to awak­en your con­scious­ness. The rest is up to you.

The Rule of law must be respect­ed, with­out it we have no buffer between us and those who would us harm. It is a fright­en­ing irony when those we employ to stand between us and those who would bring harm to us, are the ones doing harm to us.

We must ask our­selves “why is it that Police Officers feel empow­ered to kill a mem­ber of the pub­lic over some mis­de­meanor offense”?

Every per­son run­ning for office in the United States from Presidential can­di­dates to dog-catch­er runs on a law-and-order plat­form. It is so crit­i­cal that a juiced-up-cop wrong­ly harassed and assault­ed an emi­nent Ivy League Professor, wide­spread con­dem­na­tion erupt­ed from many quar­ters includ­ing the President of the United States. In the end the cop gets invit­ed to the White House for a beer summit.

What is it which makes the American cop untouch­able? What gives the American cop the invin­ci­ble, untouch­able persona?

As a for­mer Law Enforcement offi­cial myself, I under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties of the job. I also under­stand that I am not a God ! Police offi­cers in the United States do not see them­selves as peace offi­cers. In fact watch­ing cops in action in instance after instance, con­vinces me that cops delib­er­ate­ly dis­re­spect some cit­i­zens with the express intent of esca­lat­ing an issue which if dealt with calm­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly would sim­ply dissipate.

There are Ivory Tower dwellers who believe that Urban dwellers hate cops and are opposed to the rule of law. Recently one reporter went on an irra­tional rant about young black men after a young cop was killed. The Network had the good sense to dis­ci­pline him. Having been around inner cities all my adult life , I must con­fess there are cer­tain hos­til­i­ties to Law Enforcement. This is true whether you are in New York or Rio, DC or Kingston.

Police Officers must be trained to under­stand these issues and deal with them appro­pri­ate­ly. Most of these hos­til­i­ties come from some involved in crim­i­nal behav­ior. However the Police are not blame­less. Much of the hos­til­i­ties direct­ed at them are of their own mak­ing. This too runs the geo­graph­i­cal gamut. What is true of many Police Departments , hav­ing spo­ken to friends who are Police Officers, is that offi­cers are actu­al­ly encour­aged to have acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ships with minor­i­ty communities.

What’s shock­ing is that some Department heads actu­al­ly encour­age offi­cers to be cold and dis­re­spect­ful to even law abid­ing mem­bers of minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. Let’s not kid our­selves, when large quan­ti­ties of black and brown men are locked away in the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, America’s race prob­lems are half solved. Prisons are big busi­ness­es , many are run by pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies which kick back huge sums of cash to the polit­i­cal cam­paigns of those dogs bark­ing the loud­est on the law and order issue.

You do see how this cycle is per­pet­u­at­ed? Cops and their Unions know this. So the cen­tral ques­tion then becomes,“who will bell the cat”? The sim­ple answer is no one! This is an issue so tox­ic and explo­sive , even the White House will not get involved in a local mat­ter involv­ing Police Departments. At least not a White House where the occu­pant is a black President.

Forty three year old Staten Island res­i­dent Eric Garner was killed by NYPD cops who placed him in a choke-hold, sup­pos­ed­ly to arrest him for sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes. The police claimed Garner was pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed for doing the same thing. 

UN-TAXED CIGARETTES

Whether or not he was arrest­ed before for sell­ing cig­a­rettes, why was it nec­es­sary to place him in a choke hold to effect an arrest? They knew him, why was a tick­et not appro­pri­ate? The offence was not a felony! In fact from some accounts, no offense was even committed.

Why are these tat­tooed Black-water-type mer­ce­nar­ies being allowed to inter­act with the black com­mu­ni­ty? I don’t see any cops look­ing like this in some oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. Look it is impor­tant that if you are told you are under arrest that you sub­mit to being arrest­ed. But is it nec­es­sary to pile onto some­one press­ing his head into the pave­ment for sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes? These are the ques­tions we must ask! Or is the arrest jus­ti­fied , irre­spec­tive of the cost, even at the cost of a life lost? Are these Pyrrhic arrests that impor­tant to the States and Municipalities?

It is a trag­ic irony when death becomes the penal­ty for a minor infrac­tion. When absolute com­pli­ance with the law becomes so fun­da­men­tal a shack­le that it mat­ters not whether you live or die. It is tyran­ny when the State becomes the great­est enti­ty of fear, it is time to be very fearful.

Even as the United States takes it onto itself to dic­tate to oth­er Nations about Human Rights. Cops in city after American city con­tin­ue to kill unarmed black and his­pan­ic men with­out penalty.

Cops in the United States kill peo­ple with a fright­en­ing fre­quen­cy, yet inci­dent after inci­dent gets washed away under the pre­text that the sys­tem is trust­wor­thy and these killings are prop­er­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and jus­tice is served.

Well guess what? Justice is not being served when Grand Juries are con­vened in pri­vate with no input from the pub­lic , and cops are exon­er­at­ed as a mat­ter of course.

Instances of Police Thuggery con­tin­ue unabat­ed, Black man killed by cops, bystanders take a few pic­tures, record a few min­utes of video, peo­ple are enraged, they wash away the blood, it’s back to busi­ness as usu­al. We are told that the mat­ter is being inves­ti­gat­ed, but what real­ly hap­pens is that the cops are giv­en a pat on the back for a job well done, sent home with full pay for a few weeks until those milling around are qui­et­ed down and the cycle continues.

A 400-pound asth­mat­ic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a choke-hold and oth­er offi­cers appeared to slam his head against the side­walk, video of the inci­dent shows. “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, repeat­ed­ly screamed after at least five NYPD offi­cers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beau­ty sup­ply store when he balked at being hand­cuffed. Within moments Garner, a mar­ried father of six chil­dren with two grand­chil­dren, stopped strug­gling and appeared to be uncon­scious as police called para­medics to the scene. An angry crowd gath­ered, some record­ing with smart­phones. “When I kissed my hus­band this morn­ing, I nev­er thought it would be for the last time,” Garner’s wife, Esaw, told the Daily News. Article here: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article‑1.1871486

This was an inci­dent where cops need­ed to walk away. These cops seem to have a God Complex . This man was clear­ly doing noth­ing wrong, all they had to do is leave, they did not they chose to kill this man for no reason.

The rea­son they do these things is because there are no con­se­quences for their actions. The black com­mu­ni­ty will have to make a tac­ti­cal deci­sion whether it wants to con­tin­ue to be a com­mu­ni­ty of casu­al­ties or a com­mu­ni­ty which will send these mur­der­ing punks clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sages that you will not kill our peo­ple and walk away . There were no short­age of super­vi­so­ry offi­cers on scene. The woman with arms akim­bo is a super­vi­sor . She could have stepped in and stopped the gang behav­ior, she did not. This is par for the course, these thugs have no regard for the black com­mu­ni­ty. Yet they will nev­er face up to a black man, man-to-man. This is not Police work these are crim­i­nals in uniform.

It’s “on again” in the “on again, off again” cycle of vio­lence between the Palestinian peo­ple and the State of Israel. 

Western observers to this con­tin­ued cycle of vio­lence have been schooled into believ­ing that Palestinians are vio­lent ter­ror­ists who strap bombs to them­selves to blow up peace lov­ing Israelis who just want to live their lives in peace and har­mo­ny with their Palestinian broth­ers and sisters.

The air­waves of tra­di­tion­al Media bom­bard us dai­ly with pleas and pro­pa­gan­da, extolling the virtues of Israel, while vis­cer­al­ly paint­ing the Palestinians as bar­bar­ic terrorists..

There are year round appeals for mon­ey for the Jewish peo­ple,. Entire net­works are ded­i­cat­ed to replay­ing over and over,the hor­rors the Nazi’s vis­it­ed on Jews. Churches use the Bible to preach that God will deliv­er the evil Arabs into the hands of his peo­ple the Jews.

Not to be out­done the American Federal Government pours approx­i­mate­ly 3 Billion dol­lars of our tax dol­lars into the diminu­tive Zionist State annu­al­ly. Politicians run­ning for office dare not crit­i­cize Israel for fear of being brand­ed anti Semitic. Those not cow­ered by fear have bought into the pro­pa­gan­da that some­how the white Europeans occu­py­ing the lands at the mouth of the Suez Canal ,

dubbed Israel, are some­how a spe­cial peo­ple cho­sen by God. That the land of Palestine was promised to them and that they can do no wrong.

The Zionist State pos­sess Nuclear weapons, out­side the rules which gov­ern larg­er more pop­u­lous Nations. Other Nations are invad­ed because they are alleged­ly sus­pect­ed of pos­sess­ing cer­tain weapons. Israel is allowed to occu­py their neigh­bors using the most sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry, most­ly sup­plied by the United States. Israel main­tains an iron grip of the ter­ri­to­ry they con­trol, dimin­ish­ing Palestinians to mere sub­jects of the Zionist State. Palestinians who rise up against Israeli occu­pa­tion and dom­i­na­tion are des­ig­nat­ed Terrorists.

The term Terrorists is the great neu­tral­iz­er , it is used as a blud­geon­ing tool by the Zionist State, under­stand­ing full well the per­cep­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it, à la September 11^th , 2001 in the United States. Many Western observers are unable to sep­a­rate what hap­pened that September morn­ing in the United States from the vio­lent and uncon­scionable mil­i­tary oppres­sion Israel impos­es on Palestine. No one is more adept at exploit­ing that psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­con­nect than Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister.

Fighting back against Israel’s aggres­sive Apartheid poli­cies brings swift over­whelm­ing pun­ish­ment, incon­sis­tent with what Israel refers to as Palestinian provo­ca­tion. Never mind that Israeli has occu­pied Palestine since 1948. The peo­ple with crude rock­ets, sticks and stones are ter­ror­ists. Those hold­ing the pow­er , made pos­si­ble by the most sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry on the plan­et and pow­er­ful friends, are seen as victims.

Of course the rea­sons for the col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment fed to the world is that Israel’s right to exist is being threat­ened by Terrorist Palestinians ded­i­cat­ed to the destruc­tion of the State of Israel. No one both­ers to men­tion that at best, Palestinians are equipped with crude Rockets with no guid­ance sys­tems, which ren­ders the effect from them more phys­i­o­log­i­cal than phys­i­cal. By Israel’s own account Palestinian Rockets large­ly land harm­less­ly in Israeli fields caus­ing no casu­al­ty. Israel main­tains tac­ti­cal war­fare against Palestinians who dare to chal­lenge them, using sniper fire to mur­der Palestinians they label ter­ror­ists. Similar Palestinian actions against IDF sol­diers is sold as a ter­ror­ist act.

In essence what the Zionist state is telling the world is that the occu­pied Palestinians have no right to self defense or self deter­mi­na­tion. The issue of Palestinian Rockets being fired at Israel is a legit­i­mate issue. No one wants to live under the threat of being anni­hi­lat­ed by explod­ing Rockets. On the oth­er hand the Palestinian peo­ple have a right to live out­side the boot-heels of Israeli occu­pa­tion. The issue is far more com­plex than explod­ing rock­ets and occu­pa­tion how­ev­er. The state of Israel did not just hap­pen as it is in dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry until the United States and Britain saw it pru­dent to place it there in 1948.

Chris Hedges: Israel’s war on American universities

Chris Hedges, whose col­umn is pub­lished Mondays on Truthdig, has writ­ten twelve books, includ­ing the New York Times best sell­er “Days of Destruction. quote: 

Israel has for decades been able to frame the dis­cus­sion about the Palestinians. But its con­trol of the nar­ra­tive is com­ing to an end. As Israel los­es ground it will vicious­ly and irra­tional­ly attack all truth tellers, even if they are American stu­dents, and espe­cial­ly if they are Jews. There will come a day, and that day will come soon­er than Israel and its paid lack­eys expect, when the whole edi­fice will crum­ble, when even stu­dents at Hillel will no longer have the stom­ach to defend the con­tin­u­ous dis­pos­ses­sion and ran­dom mur­der of Palestinians. Israel, by ruth­less­ly silenc­ing oth­ers, now risks silenc­ing itself. — See more at: http://​www​.israeli​-occu​pa​tion​.org/​#​s​t​h​a​s​h​.​j​x​Q​y​c​d​a​n​.​d​puf.

Noam Chomsky: Why the Israel-Palestine ‘nego­ti­a­tions’ are a com­plete farce.

Western opin­ion now fol­lows the ludi­crous assump­tion that mean­ing­ful Israel-Palestine nego­ti­a­tions can be seri­ous­ly con­duct­ed under the aus­pices of the United States – not an “hon­est bro­ker,” but in real­i­ty a part­ner of Israel. — 

In 1948 the State Department, the Defense Department and the CIA regard­ed such an out­come with open con­cern. Opposing this view was President Truman’s spe­cial legal coun­sel, Clark Clifford and his small entourage of sup­port­ers, who strong­ly endorsed US recog­ni­tion of Israel’s inde­pen­dence as in line with US inter­ests. It was Clifford, more­over, who shep­herd­ed the pro­pos­al for inde­pen­dence through the White House insist­ing that the Jewish state already exist­ed and that it remained only to rec­og­nize it before the Soviet Union did. Several points are worth mak­ing in this con­nec­tion. The first is a reminder of con­di­tions in Palestine in the win­ter of 1948 that led US offi­cials and the US President to come close to aban­don­ing sup­port for the UN Partition Resolution. The sec­ond is the US assess­ment of the sta­tus of Arab regimes on the eve of Britain’s depar­ture from Palestine, and the con­tin­u­ing mis­giv­ings expressed by US offi­cials as to risks that Jewish state­hood entailed for US inter­ests. The third point is that, when those mis­giv­ings proved to be false, US oil and defense inter­ests con­clud­ed that the new State’s mil­i­tary capac­i­ty and polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion could pro­tect those inter­ests, US pol­i­cy changed accord­ing­ly. http://​www​.israeli​-occu​pa​tion​.org/​2​011 – 11-09/irene-gendzi­er-why-the-us-recog­nised-israel/

Simply put ‚It’s about oil and oth­er strate­gic inter­est. This unholy alliance between the United States and the Zionist state of Israel has noth­ing to do with Biblical proph­esy as some Evangelical Pastors and oth­ers bel­low from their pul­pits. It is all about black and green. Black oil con­vert­ed into green dol­lars. What’s 3 bil­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly in aid and a few thou­sand dead Palestinians as long as Tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in oil keep flow­ing undisturbed?

Jamaica should exer­cise cau­tion in con­sid­er­ing more appoint­ments to the con­stab­u­lary from the United Kingdom. This com­ment was made by Chris Hobbs. Hobbs said that there is wide­spread lack of con­fi­dence in cops in the chief offi­cer rank in Britain. At the same time, Hobbs, who said he spent 18 months, between 2002 and 2010, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Jamaican police, voiced strong endorse­ment of out­go­ing Police Commissioner Owen Ellington and Deputy Commissioner Glenmore Hinds. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​-​B​e​-​c​a​u​t​i​o​u​s​-​_​1​7​1​3​2​971

Yesterday we came out against the call from the usu­al quar­ters in Jamaica. Those who feel the next Police Commissioner should come from a pool which includes for­eign Nationals. Some of these quar­ters are the reg­u­lar Elites who shape and mis­in­form in our Country . They include the Editorial page of the GLEANER and the so called big-men in soci­ety, you know them .

I want­ed to know which Country sources it’s Security Heads from non cit­i­zens. I have not seen one response , nei­ther in these Blogs nor from Social Media. So I assume that issue is settled.

THEIR ARGUMENT

We live in a Global mar­ket­place where the shar­ing of ideas and tal­ents are inte­gral to growth and development.

MY RESPONSE

Yes, but there must be lim­its on what we out­source. That is why it was not a bad idea to bring in new ideas to help upgrade our Investigative capa­bil­i­ties. That is why it was not a bad idea to bring peo­ple in to help with tack­ling cor­rup­tion. It just is a colos­sal ret­ro­grade step to out­source the head of National Security.

For the media Elites at the Gleaner and in civ­il soci­ety who are push­ing this angle, Let’s not stop there, let’s get rid of Portia and bring in a for­eign­er, let’s start at the very top .

It is time that Jamaicans wake up remove their heads from wher­ev­er they have their heads , and rec­og­nize their future is theirs. Why allow a few peo­ple from uptown to dic­tate what you should do. Frankly I could­n’t care less about either of the can­di­dates in wait­ing . What I care about is giv­ing up sen­si­tive posts to peo­ple who have no inter­est , or loy­al­ty to our coun­try. I mean think about it, it is absolute madness!

Hobbs was effu­sive with his praise of the Jamaican Officers, Quote. The British police, could do with senior offi­cers of the cal­i­bre of both Ellington and Hinds. “British police morale has nev­er been low­er and indeed we could do with senior offi­cers of the cal­i­bre of Mr Ellington and Mr Hinds in the UK. Take care if con­sid­er­ing fur­ther appoint­ments from the UK,”.

It has been a long time since Slavery was abol­ished. It has been decades since we sup­pos­ed­ly gained Independence from England. I pre­fer to think of it as when we were uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped by a dis­in­te­grat­ing power.

The notion that things for­eign are bet­ter is still a shack­le, not on our feet but in our minds. Jamaica can­not progress when it’s lead­ers are still shack­led to regres­sive ideas about the abil­i­ties of it’s own peo­ple. No one will build Jamaica but Jamaicans. There is noth­ing wrong with look­ing at what oth­ers do to see if we can use some things. We can­not give our coun­try away to for­eign­ers and expect to still have it.

Enough harm has already been done. Learn more about Chris Hobbs here. http://​www​.vig​i​lance​-secu​ri​ty​magazine​.com/​i​n​d​u​s​t​r​y​-​n​e​w​s​/​v​i​e​w​p​o​i​n​t​s​/​5​1​8​0​-​t​h​e​r​e​s​a​-​m​a​y​-​b​r​a​v​e​-​a​n​d​-​c​o​u​r​a​g​e​o​u​s​-​y​o​u​-​m​u​s​t​-​b​e​-​j​o​k​ing

Chief among the spec­u­la­tion regard­ing Owen Ellington’s depar­ture is.

1) The Americans took his Visa because of associations.

2) That Ellington fell out of favor with Portia. Imagine that.

3) The Americans want­ed Ellington gone because of nag­ging ques­tions of Human Rights abuse and the Americans are unwill­ing to sell arms and ammu­ni­tion to Jamaica as a result.

Let’s jux­ta­pose the lat­ter with the new call from cer­tain quar­ters in civ­il soci­ety and the Media , chiefly The Gleaner’s Editorial page to look over­seas for a Commissioner.

First lets put things in con­text. America has no moral author­i­ty to lec­ture any Country about Human Rights. Every day black and brown peo­ple are killed and abused by law enforce­ment offi­cers all across America with­out a whis­per from the Federal Government.

Now it would be a major irony if the Americans called for Ellington’s head when it was they who called for the extra­di­tion of Christopher Dudus Coke.

If the Americans believed that it was easy to get Coke, sure­ly they could have vol­un­teered to go get him them­selves. They were far bet­ter equipped to remove him with min­i­mum col­lat­er­al dam­age. Yes col­lat­er­al dam­age , it was a war.

How then could they demand the Commissioner’s head for doing exact­ly what they wanted?

Lets give cre­dence to the nar­ra­tive that it was nag­ging Human Rights alle­ga­tions which pre­cip­i­tat­ed Jamaica’s inter­na­tion­al Partners (America & England) alleged demand for Ellington’s head. How could that demand be legit­i­mate in light of Ellington“s body of work in root­ing out cor­rup­tion and abuse from the JCF? Experts and non-experts alike will argue Owen Ellington has been the best Commissioner of Police in mod­ern times.

If this is cor­rect, both Ellington and the coun­try has Carolyn Gomes to thank for the defam­ing of our Countrty. This in addi­tion to cor­rupt­ing young peo­ple with counter-cul­ture teach­ings and lit­er­a­ture, which were once alien to our Nation.

If there is truth to the alle­ga­tions America and Britain had some­thing to do with Ellington’s depar­ture, then the push by some in soci­ety to get a Commissioner from over­seas plays direct­ly into the plans Carolyn Gomes and Susan Goffe laid, using a gullible and naïve Ellington in the process toward remov­ing Police pow­ers from Jamaicans.

We did warn about this for a long time.

We did ask what did these for­eign Governments want for the mon­ey they gave to Gomes?

We did ask for account­abil­i­ty. We did warn that once the Police were demor­al­ized they would bring in for­eign cops. They have, and they want to bring in a cop to head the Department.

I did warn they would do these things in these very blogs. The Homosexual Agenda demands total acqui­es­cence and capit­u­la­tion of our cul­ture. There has been numer­ous alle­ga­tions that Jamaican cops are not help­ful to gays. Commissioner Ellington grant­ed a per­mit for the Churches to ral­ly against a Gay Jamaican counter-cul­ture. A few days lat­er he was gone, now they want for­eign­ers to head our Police Force.

Failing to con­nect the dots will com­plete­ly over­whelm our culture.

Christopher Zacca President of The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica argues that to build our Country , peo­ple should buy Jamaican. He then does a 180 degree turn dip­ping his snout into the Conversation about the need for a new Commissioner of Police , sug­gest­ing that it is per­fect­ly kosher to look for a new Police Chief from overseas. 

The police Force has many edu­cat­ed well capa­ble offi­cers at all lev­els . These peo­ple have worked tire­less­ly to earn their edu­ca­tion with the belief that if they earn their degrees play by the rules they have a shot at accom­plish­ing their goals.

The last time the JCF tried this mad­ness the results are still being felt. Morale is impor­tant , if this lit­tle Country want to total­ly wreck the rule of law , pick a Commissioner from over­seas and live with the results. It’s time Jamaica stop with the NEGRO men­tal­i­ty . What oth­er Country out­sources it’s National Security to non cit­i­zens? What these Elitists are say­ing is that black Jamaicans are inca­pable of get­ting the job done. What exact­ly did Mark Shields etal accom­plish except his flair for the cock­tail cir­cuit? The Gleaner depict­ed Zacca’s hypocrisy appro­pri­ate­ly in a cartoon.

It goes to show that in Jamaica every­one knows how to do every­one else’s job but their own. I don’t see any­one run­ning back to Jamaica to invest. Maybe Zacca and the Country would be bet­ter served if he paid atten­tion to what he was hired to do leav­ing the Commissioner search to the peo­ple tasked with doing so.

Predators and prey, as it is in the Animal Kingdom so too is it with humans. Animals instinc­tive­ly react vio­lent­ly out of the need to eat or when they are threat­ened. Humans on the oth­er hand sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cal­cu­late how to prey on oth­ers . The defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic which sep­a­rates the two species is the abil­i­ty of humans to rea­son. Since we are able to rea­son , it fol­lows there­fore that when we decid­ed­ly kill some­one, we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly give up the right to expect clemency.

Opposition Senator Merlene Malahoo Forte made an absolute fool of her­self in her con­tri­bu­tion to the debate on a Bill which seeks to expunge the Record of Jamaicans con­vict­ed for pos­sess­ing small quan­ti­ties of Marijuana. In her con­tri­bu­tion the Opposition Senator sug­gest­ed that the record of mur­der­ers should also be expunged as every­one deserves a sec­ond chance. Forte went on to say quote: “In some coun­tries peo­ple are reha­bil­i­tated for the offence of mur­der. Our own Privy Council has stat­ed that not every­one who kills and is con­victed of mur­der should be regard­ed as a mur­derer, in the tra­di­tional sense.

I believe I am miss­ing some­thing here, but what? What am I upset about ?

.….….….…..Everything!

1) I would like to see the data on reha­bil­i­tat­ed mur­der­ers, and the coun­tries from which they come.

Not every­one who kill and is con­vict­ed of mur­der should be regard­ed as a mur­der­er in the tra­di­tion­al sense?

News for the good­ly Senator/​former Magistrate. If some­one is con­vict­ed of mur­der, that per­son is a mur­der­er. I under­stand that many of the Liberal Elites in Jamaica would like to call vicious killers some­thing else , but they are murderers.

If there are mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances in the com­mis­sion of the offense then the offend­er most cer­tain­ly would have been con­vict­ed of a less­er offense. If it isn’t mur­der the evi­dence may point to Conspiracy. It may point to Manslaughter, It may be mur­der or even manslaugh­ter in a less­er degree based on said spe­cial circumstance.

There is no way how­ev­er to make mur­der pret­ty ‚it is the killing of a human being by anoth­er human with mal­ice aforethought.

If the evi­dence does not sup­port this cri­te­ria , then it was not mur­der. Now I’m not sure what coun­try the Senator is ref­er­enc­ing. Some Scandinavian nations are very cre­ative in the way they approach Punishing crim­i­nals. I am yet to learn whether they actu­al­ly expunge the records of con­vict­ed mur­der­ers. In fact their approach to pun­ish­ment cou­pled with their eco­nom­ic bouyan­cy may be a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in their extreme­ly low mur­der rates.

Jamaica has one of the World’s high­est inci­dence of mur­der. Criminals kill with wan­ton dis­re­gard for life. Why would any­one in a posi­tion to influ­ence and shape Policy want mur­der­ers to walk around with pris­tine records. What is the moti­va­tion then for those who decide not to take life.

In Christian Theology it is report­ed that two thieves were cru­ci­fied with Jesus Christ. Jesus did not inter­vene, he did not try to change the penal­ty imposed on them by law. He offered one eter­nal life because he repent­ed. Despite the belief that that thief found solace in the Lord , he still paid the price for his crimes. Actions have consequences.

There is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with redemp­tion for killers after they pay their debt to soci­ety. We sim­ply do not expunge their record. You get to have a clean record by not com­mit­ting crimes. What is the reward for those who play by the rules? What is the idea behind the con­stant desire to reward the most despi­ca­ble and brutish among us?

Just recent­ly two men report­ed­ly walked into a Car deal­er­ship and sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed a man­ag­er on Maxfield Avenue. Thanks to Technology one of the killers has been appre­hend­ed. This case is no dif­fer­ent than the hun­dreds of homi­cides com­mit­ted in the tiny Caribbean nation annu­al­ly. It is just one where the killer was iden­ti­fied. On the rare occa­sion these dement­ed cretins are caught and con­vict­ed , how could any sane per­son want their record expunged?

I was stunned beyond belief when I saw this sto­ry in the Jamaica Observer attrib­uted to Opposition Senator Marlene Malahoo Forte a for­mer Resident Magistrate, and now the per­son who occu­py the Air chair of the late Wilmott Mutty Perkins.

Opposition Senator, Marlene Malahoo Forte’s sug­ges­tion that expunge­ment of con­vic­tions under the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Bill be extend­ed to per­sons con­vict­ed of all forms of crimes, includ­ing mur­ders, failed to get any sup­port in the Senate on Friday. Speaking in the debate on the Bill, which pro­vides for expunge­ment of con­vic­tions for using small quan­ti­ties of gan­ja, after between 30 months and 10 years of reha­bil­i­ta­tion, Senator Malahoo Forte, a for­mer Resident Magistrate, said she made the sug­ges­tion in the con­text that every­one can be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. “It doesn’t mat­ter where you have wronged, over time you can be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. It may sound far- fetched, but it is not impossible,”.

Jamaican Politicians have a propen­si­ty to let their mouths gal­lop in front of their brains. This is one case where it begs the ques­tion, “did she do any home-work in prepa­ra­tion for her sub­mis­sion to the debate?

We are talk­ing about expung­ing the record of con­vict­ed Criminals here. The Senate is con­sid­er­ing a Bill, which pro­vides for expunge­ment of con­vic­tions for using small quan­ti­ties of gan­ja, after between 30 months and 10 years of rehabilitation. 

I think this is a good piece of leg­is­la­tion which shows good will to peo­ple who have offend­ed but have man­aged to stay out of trou­ble. No one should be con­demned for life because he/​she was con­vict­ed for a lit­tle weed.

Forte went on to say ” “In some coun­tries peo­ple are reha­bil­i­tat­ed for the offence of mur­der. Our own Privy Council has stat­ed that not every­one who kills and is con­vict­ed of mur­der should be regard­ed as a mur­der­er, in the tra­di­tion­al sense.

This is a shock­ing lib­er­al tes­ta­ment com­ing from some­one who once was a Magistrate. The issue is one of the expunge­ment of records, which has noth­ing to do with the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of mur­der­ers.

This state­ment how­ev­er illu­mi­nates what I have writ­ten about for some­time now, that Jamaica Judges are crim­i­nal lov­ing left­ists who sup­plant the rule of law with their own per­son­al opinions.

How can any­one sug­gest that Society remove from record, the fact that some­one was Convicted of Murder, irre­spec­tive of the cir­cum­stances? Have Forte cal­cu­lat­ed that she is in jeop­ardy of no longer be tak­en seri­ous­ly? Assuming she ever was !

Jamaica is awash in crime and cor­rup­tion, many will legit­i­mate­ly argue that expung­ing records is not the way to go at this time. I believe how­ev­er that it is always the right time to be merciful.

We send mur­der­ers to prison to do time, then they are released back into soci­ety. That is for­give­ness. That is hav­ing a sec­ond chance. We do not wipe the slate clean, we keep a record of their deeds to inform and edu­cate us going forward.

Clearly Melhado Forte has shown her­self to be a feath­er-weight who is not wor­thy of seri­ous consideration.

A few days ago a young man walked into my busi­ness inquir­ing about what it would cost at a bare min­i­mum to have a cell phone. I asked him a few qual­i­fy­ing ques­tions, all the time refer­ring to him as sir. He could­n’t have been more than 23 years old. He was big, with a boy­ish, almost child­like look.

To my sur­prise he retort­ed ” Mike why you call­ing me sir man?I ain’t nev­er done any­thing to you, you know me man , you know my Mom , if I did some­thing to you I apol­o­gize man”.

Then he said some­thing even more shock­ing . Man I miss my father , I haven’t seen my dad for so long Mike” !

In shock, I looked at anoth­er cus­tomer stand­ing close by. I was unsure how refer­ring to him as “Sir” could be con­strued to be an indi­ca­tion that I was mad at him. I was even more con­fused as to what him miss­ing his dad had to do with the foregone.

I con­clud­ed one thing , he was hurting.

The male cus­tomer stand­ing close by chimed in , “Sir is a sign of respect man” , to which he nod­ded his head in obvi­ous under­stand­ing and smiled. I was­n’t con­tent to let him walk away with­out at least try­ing to learn a lit­tle about him. After explain­ing to him that refer­ring to him as Sir was a sign of respect and cour­tesy, he smiled broad­ly then told me he had not seen his Dad in years. I had no solu­tion, so I told him I loved him. He pur­chased the ser­vice he could afford and left.

So what’s the moral of this spiel? Well… I’ve want­ed to talk a lit­tle about some of these very issues for years now. Having worked a decade in Law Enforcement I saw a whole bunch of young peo­ple whom I believed would have been expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter off had their par­ents made the right decision.

Many of the prob­lems of our Society today may be traced back to the doorsteps of each and every home on this Planet. Whatever the prob­lem, they begin with deci­sions we made.

That deci­sion may be an emo­tion­al deci­sion to vote for some­one who should nev­er be elect­ed to office, or an ill-advised deci­sion by a woman to have sex with a male she knows will nev­er be a father to a child, in the event she becomes preg­nant. The deci­sion may be even more sim­ple, how about not tak­ing the chance of hav­ing a child, in the event she can­not forego sex?

This is a sub­ject we have tip-toed around for far too long, large­ly in def­er­ence to women. There is a rea­son most female Animals mate with the strongest male, The Alpha male. It is a built in defense against the break-down of the Specie. Imagine if Lionesses mat­ed with the weak­est most fee­ble Lion, pret­ty soon Lions would be hunt­ed by domes­tic Dogs. But seri­ous­ly you do get the pic­ture right?

The Human specie is not all about the need for brute force to sur­vive, notwith­stand­ing women are not absolved of their respon­si­bil­i­ty to be judi­cious with their bod­ies. I am in no way lay­ing the entire­ty of the blame at the feet of women, nei­ther will I shy away from ask­ing women to be more account­able because it is unpop­u­lar to do so.

Barring sex­u­al assaults, and oth­er events which takes away a wom­an’s right to choose a part­ner, It begins with a wom­an’s deci­sion to have sex with a man. It begins with her to decide to have unpro­tect­ed sex. It is her deci­sion to have sex with a man who has no job and nev­er had one. It is her deci­sion to have sex with a man who has sev­er­al women. It is her deci­sion to main­tain a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a man who can­not stay out of jail.

Ask your­selves this, how will a man be a suit­able father to your kids if he is a shift­less , lazy man who does not work and can­not stay out of prison? I’ll take it a bit fur­ther , why would you want a man who is in and out of Prison to be the father to your chil­dren? What kind of role-mod­el will he be? Is that even impor­tant to you women? This is a con­ver­sa­tion we need to have with­in the black community. 

We can con­tin­ue to bemoan what the “Man” did , or even con­tin­ue to do. We can con­verse­ly get up and change our cir­cum­stance. We can­not con­tin­ue to blame oth­ers for deci­sions we make. We can­not con­tin­ue to exco­ri­ate and vil­i­fy those in our com­mu­ni­ty who speak to these truths. No one owes us a liv­ing, not our par­ents, not the coun­try, not the President.

It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to seek knowl­edge. There are places called Schools, no one owes it to us to get us an edu­ca­tion. Why does an American Citizen not have a piece of Identification? Is it an unrea­son­able request to ask that you iden­ti­fy your­self in order to vote? Why do you think those who would do us harm make it so we have to show ID? Don’t you real­ize it’s because they know we sim­ply refuse to go get a piece of identification?

Why do you women con­tin­ue to have sex with unwor­thy men you know will not stick around if you get preg­nant? Why do you then turn the male child from that union into that man who walked away from you, call­ing him your baby? Have you ever won­dered why he calls your home his Crib? If you enable him to live off you, not get an edu­ca­tion, not get a job. How will he be a man to the women he inter­acts with? How will he be a father to the chil­dren he will most cer­tain­ly sire?

It will be anoth­er hun­dred years and noth­ing will change for us if we shack­le our­selves to the belief that some­how it is up to some­one to teach us things. To give us things, to make deci­sions for us.

How much longer can we hide behind the fal­la­cy that some­how young women are to be pitied because they made con­scious deci­sions to have unpro­tect­ed sex which results in preg­nan­cy? Does any­one real­ly believe young women today do not know that sex leads to preg­nan­cy? On what Planet is that notion plau­si­ble ?I humbly ven­ture to say that in the case of young girls in High Schools who have kids , they actu­al­ly active­ly plan those preg­nan­cies, some­times with their friends so they may all have babies around the same time.

Those are the rea­sons 71% of all black babies born the US are born to sin­gle unmar­ried women. Whose fault is that? Is that the white man’s fault? I made this argu­ment recent­ly in a con­ver­sa­tion and some­one accused me of “judg­ing” the women.….….…

I was told that these women do not know they should not have unpro­tect­ed sex. Because they are not taught that they should­n’t. My ques­tion was, “whose fault is that”? How much longer are we going to pre­tend it is some­one else’s fault that a large num­ber of that 71% , are mere­ly fod­der for the Prison Industrial Complex?

We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue with the non­sense that they are build­ing Prisons to house black peo­ple. It rather is that we con­tin­ue to have chil­dren we refuse to care for that invari­able end up in the pris­ons. The so-called- man is all too eager to prof­it from our mis­takes. It is the American way , it is called Capitalism.

It’s incred­i­ble what pass­es for com­mon sense and intel­lect these days. Take Conservative Icon and reg­u­lar FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion pun­dit Anne Coulter for exam­ple. Here’s what this much revered opin­ion mak­er of the right had to say about the game of soc­cer. (America’s inter­est in World Cup soc­cer is a sign of “moral decay.”

Coulter went on to say quote, “Soccer is a team sport that doesn’t rec­og­nize the indi­vid­ual achieve­ment that has made America great”. 

Okay I got­ta real­ly lean on my Conservative friends here, real­ly? So the Xenophobic Coulter cer­tain­ly nev­er heard of Pele, Diego Maradona , Socrates Jurgen Klinsmann the American soc­cer coach and count­less others.

What does it take to be a Conservative these days? Does one have to be the most racist Xenophobic , irra­tional moron? It cer­tain­ly appears that way !

The American pas­time Baseball, is a Team Sport. So is American Football, which by the way fields a lot more play­ers than Soccer does per game. What about Basketball , last time I checked it was a team sport or maybe it’s a one-on-one in Coulter-land. Most Organized gamed are played at the team lev­el , includ­ing Boxing, Tennis, Golf, Swimming, and even Gymnastics.

This has got to be the most ridicu­lous state­ment yet com­ing from this hair-brained Racist ide­o­logue. It behooves her and her acolytes at FAKE news to rec­og­nize that America have not done well in Soccer because America did not put the nec­es­sary resources into the game which would make her com­pet­i­tive like oth­er Nations which have done so.

The entire World Plays Soccer and Cricket , America is slow com­ing to that real­i­ty, to that we say wel­come America. Note to Coulter, America did not become great because of peo­ple like you and the FOX crowd, she did so despite you.

Here’s hop­ing America will have a bet­ter show­ing at the next World cup in 2018 despite the nean­derthal rem­nants like Coulter etal.

There is obvi­ous moral decay for sure here, I hope Coulter gets help before it’s too late.

Over the suc­ceed­ing days ‚weeks and months, the abrupt depar­ture of Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington will invari­ably be the top­ic of many discussions.

Ellington’s sud­den Exit is not nov­el in the way Commissioner’s of Police have left their jobs in the Island Nation. Of course as Jamaicans like to say “if sup­pem nuh gu su it nealy gu su” .Translation , if what you heard is not total­ly true, it has some truth to it.

Owen Ellington could nev­er have been the first choice for the PNP Government. After all Ellington was appoint­ed Commissioner of Police under Bruce Golding and his JLP Administration in 2010. Anyone with knowl­edge of Jamaican pol­i­tics, knows that plum jobs are hand­ed out to die-hard par­ty loy­al­ists, some­times, irre­spec­tive of qual­i­fi­ca­tions or talent.

This is gen­er­al­ly true of both Political Parties. However the PNP hav­ing held elect­ed office for 28 of the last 40 years, have lit­er­al­ly trib­al­ized the entire pub­lic sec­tor from top to bot­tom. No area of nation­al life has been spared the cor­ro­sive insid­i­ous can­cer, which is the People’s National Party Agenda.

Ellington posed a prob­lem for the new PNP Administration how­ev­er. He was edu­cat­ed. He was well loved by the men and women under his com­mand. He also had the respect and admi­ra­tion of the pub­lic. Ellington’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with the pub­lic came large­ly from his stat­ed com­mit­ment to remov­ing rogue cops, restor­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to the Agency and reduc­ing crime.

Hardly any oth­er Commissioner came to the top job with such a clear-eyed focus, on what need­ed to be done. How do you replace some­one with Ellington’s Resume, and game-plan? 

So the Directionally chal­lenged, moral­ly bank­rupt, crime lov­ing Administration was stuck with Owen Ellington. This does not speak to Ellington’s Politics far from it. In fact he may be a sup­port­er for all we know. Just not a died-in-the-wool PNP trib­al­ists like a Roy Thompson or a Francis Forbes. Or a poten­tial mem­ber of Parliament in wait­ing like a Lucius Thomas for that matter.

Ellington is no fool, he must have had his res­ig­na­tion ready in his desk draw­er from the day the new Administration stepped into Jamaica House.They did not give him a sin­gle vote extend­ing the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency when he went into Tivoli Gardens to get Dudus Coke.

The PNP showed their hand when despite being chief cheer-lead­ers against Bruce Golding,they would not sup­port the secu­ri­ty forces. In a Country pop­u­lat­ed with rea­son­able peo­ple that par­ty would have been banned to polit­i­cal obscu­ri­ty. They were con­verse­ly reward­ed with the reins of Government just months lat­er. Golding for his part, was the one banned to obscu­ri­ty for stu­pid­ly inter­ven­ing into what clear­ly was a mat­ter for the coun­try’s courts.

It’s now 2014 this Government has been a colos­sal fail­ure by every met­ric. National Elections are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due between  December 29^th 2016 and 16 March 2017 . It is impor­tant that the cor­rupt Simpson Miller Administration have trust­ed loy­al­ists in place in time to exe­cute their game plan.

We do not yet know what the true rea­son was, why Ellington was shown the door. He may have been asked to do some­thing anti­thet­i­cal to his beliefs and prin­ci­ples. He may have been put in a ten­u­ous posi­tion ren­der­ing it impos­si­ble for him to con­tin­ue . Whatever the rea­son, the nar­ra­tive put forth by Bunting and his Ministry amounts to noth­ing more than a load of crock.

I was nev­er a great fan of Owen Ellington, I am a huge fan of Jamaica, With Miller and the band of thieves run­ning the gov­ern­ment and Ellington run­ning the JCF it was always a sit­u­a­tion out of cor­rect order.

It must have been hard for him to dumb down for his polit­i­cal boss­es. Ellington gained my respect when he wrote an arti­cle trum­pet­ing the Indonesian mod­el and it’s suc­cess­es. I thought the writ­ing was on the wall for his tenure, I said so then.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​?​p​=​4​990

We sub­scribe to Time Warner Cable for our Business and Home . We hard­ly watch Television, so for both Accounts we asked for basic Cable. Subscribers of Time Warner Service in the Hudson Valley are famil­iar with the Triple Play . Phone , Internet and Television bun­dled togeth­er , Generally adver­tised for $33 per ser­vice. The total month­ly cost being $99 plus Taxes. Of course the phone is a total waste of mon­ey these days, no one ever uses the phone in our home. The one in my Business is fast becom­ing obso­lete also.

Of course every month the billed amount for the very same pack­age increas­es, while Channels on it’s Cable Television sur­rep­ti­tious­ly dis­ap­pears. A call to the Company gen­er­al­ly elic­its a pack­aged response ‚which goes some­thing like this.

“Oh, we are sor­ry the Channels you ref­er­enced should­n’t have been a part of your pack­age to begin with”.

The same thiev­ery is part of Time Warner’s argu­ment when you sign up and ask for a fixed IP Address. You pay for a fixed IP and is giv­en a Dynamic IP Address. Their argu­ments are always the same it’s the fault of the Sales-per­son who took the order. Never mind that the Sales-peo­ple work for Time Warner Cable. They nev­er accept responsibility.

Yesterday Wednesday June 18^th I arrived at work , of course it’s World Cup Soccer time so I had 3 Televisions on ESPN so cus­tomers who are inter­est­ed in the Soccer may watch the game if they chose to. I have had ESPN as a part of my basic Cable pack­age for years, on both accounts. Sometime in the ear­ly after­noon the cable froze and even­tu­al­ly all screens went black . I wait­ed believ­ing that some­thing was wrong with the feed and it would be restored in due time. After a while I real­ized that was­n’t hap­pen­ing, so I called Time Warner.

The Customer Service Rep on the line com­menced to tell me “Oh we’ ” I cut him off,” what­ev­er you do , do not tell me ESPN was not a part of my pack­age”!! He went on I’m sor­ry sir that is a fact.

I blew a fuse, are you kid­ding me I have had the ser­vice for years. If ESPN is not a part of it why did you not take it from the time you took all the oth­er chan­nels, why wait for the World Cup, the most watched event?

He pro­ceed­ed to go around in cir­cles after I lam­bast­ed him and his Company for being decep­tive, unscrupu­lous and dis­hon­est . I told him that straight away, I would be can­celling both accounts and going with Fios or Optimum TV, their com­pe­ti­tion, then I hung up the phone.

Thursday morn­ing I arrived at work and for good mea­sure I turned the Televisions on to ESPN chan­nel 21 and what do you know , ESPN was back up and running.

Time Warner has been involved in these decep­tive and unscrupu­lous prac­tices for years. In fact they have lost a big part of their mar­ket share. They don’t even both­er to mar­ket the triple play any­more . More and more sub­scribers of Cable TV are look­ing else­where for ser­vice. The afore­men­tioned two are com­pe­tent alter­na­tive providers as well as Direct TV.

Time Warner unscrupu­lous prac­tices are well doc­u­ment­ed with cus­tomers as far as California com­plain­ing of the Company’s unscrupu­lous bait and switch and oth­er nefar­i­ous prac­tices.http://forums.timewarnercable.com/t5/Channels-and-Programming/Enjoy-Better-NOT/td‑p/11599

Time Warner’s jin­gle ask cus­tomers to “Enjoy bet­ter” , you take a gam­ble on them, you are gau­rant­ed worse. I will still dump the Company, if for noth­ing more that its unscrupu­lous attempt to get me to pay for a chan­nel I had for years all because it’s being heav­i­ly watched. This was not my first bad expe­ri­ence with the Company, this time I have had enough. The Company’s efforts to weasel a few dol­lars out of me , like a com­mon street thug ‚will result in two lost accounts.

Soon many more cus­tomers will catch on and do the same.

For the first time this evening I got involved in the muck of local pol­i­tics. I joined many oth­er busi­ness owners

who are less than pleased with the way the new Parking

pay sta­tions were shoved down our throats

Literally every busi­ness own­er who tes­ti­fied, yours tru­ly includ­ed, point­ed to pre­cip­i­tous drop-offs in busi­ness since the new Pay sta­tions were installed.

Many also point­ed to the fact that the pay sta­tions are notably absent from the cir­cle at the bot­tom of main street close to the Hudson River. They argued there are busi­ness­es peo­ple in that area that are friend­ly with peo­ple of pow­er in City Hall. This Blogger is unable to sub­stan­ti­ate those claims . What I know is that there are no pay sta­tions in that Area . Which is clos­er to where the Mayor’s father has his business.

Coincidence ? Maybe , but it smells to high heav­en. Restaurant own­ers are com­plain­ing they will be forced to lay off work­ers . They com­plain of what they char­ac­ter­ize as a tick­et­ing blitz under­way. I thought it was real­ly iron­ic that we the busi­ness own­ers who pay the tax­es to hire these cops and tick­et agents, are unable to make a liv­ing because they write tick­ets which keeps our cus­tomers away .

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea if we can­not afford the tax­es, maybe then they may be forced to cut some of the dead-wood.

Just maybe.

Truck Driver Kevin Roper 35 employed to Mega Company Walmart appeared in a Middlesex County Court House Wednesday June 11^th. Mister Roper plead not guilty to vehic­u­lar homi­cide and assault by Auto.

Roper, the Walmart truck dri­ver involved in the New Jersey Turnpike car acci­dent Saturday morn­ing that claimed the life of one per­son and crit­i­cal­ly injured four oth­ers, includ­ing come­di­an Tracy Morgan, has plead­ed not guilty to vehic­u­lar homi­cide and assault by auto. He remains free on $50,000 bail. No new court appear­ance was sched­uled. Middlesex County pros­e­cu­tors accuse Roper, 35, of not sleep­ing for 24 hours pri­or to the crash. He turned him­self in to police imme­di­ate­ly after the acci­dent and has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave by Walmart.The com­pa­ny has vowed “to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the acci­dent if it’s proved that Roper caused it. http://​gma​.yahoo​.com/​t​r​a​c​y​-​m​o​r​g​a​n​-​c​r​a​s​h​-​w​a​l​m​a​r​t​-​t​r​u​c​k​e​r​-​k​e​v​i​n​-​r​o​p​e​r​-​p​l​e​a​d​s​-​1​9​5​9​3​6​516 – abc-news-celebrities.html

Laws gov­ern­ing Truckers are strict these days, in fact dri­ving with­out ade­quate sleep is tan­ta­mount to dri­ving while intox­i­cat­ed . It is trag­ic when mem­bers of the trav­el­ling pub­lic are injured or killed.. We pray for the fam­i­ly of the deceased as well as those injured, includ­ing Tracy Morgan 45, who con­tin­ue to bat­tle for life in a New Jersey Hospital.

Mister Roper is alleged to have bragged in a tweet quote: Trying to win more than lose, dri­ving trucks for a liv­ing, move or get hit! #Walmart.

This has set off a firestorm of hatred of mis­ter Roper in the Main stream Media .

Really?

Are we going to con­demn a man for a tweet he made which had noth­ing to do with the crash? Does any­one believe this dri­ver will­ful­ly crashed his rig into the vehi­cle trans­port­ing Tracy Morgan and others?

Does that tweet mean mis­ter Roper is a mani­ac who was a tick­ing time bomb wait­ing to take some­one’s life? So far there is no evi­dence of that. What we have is a hard work­ing man try­ing to earn a liv­ing. Sure he needs to face the Courts , that’s where inno­cence and guilt are decide.

In fact Fox news reports .Walmart released this statement.

“With regards to news reports that sug­gest Mr. Roper was work­ing for 24 hours, it is our belief that Mr. Roper was oper­at­ing with­in the fed­er­al hours of ser­vice reg­u­la­tions. The details are the sub­ject of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and we are coop­er­at­ing ful­ly with the appro­pri­ate law enforce­ment agen­cies. The inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing and unfor­tu­nate­ly we can’t com­ment fur­ther on the specifics.

“Federal law requires dri­vers to work no more than 14 hours for any shift and 11 hours of driving.” 

We sim­ply have not reached that stage where an informed con­clu­sion can be arrived at. This is not the case of a drug deal­er fir­ing a weapon, hit­ting an inno­cent bystander. What we have it seem, is a hard work­ing man who is involved in an auto­mo­bile crash. It behooves every­one includ­ing those in the Media to take a step back and let the sys­tem play out before they con­demn this man to be stoned to death.

As users of the road we should be care­ful how we react in con­demn­ing oth­ers. We nev­er know when we may be involved in a crash or acci­dent, find­ing our­selves accused of vehic­u­lar homicide.

Virginia Congressman from the 7 Congressional District Eric Cantor has suf­fered a stun­ning pri­ma­ry defeat at the hand of Dave Bratt. Without bela­bor­ing the point of Cantor’s defeat , it bears men­tion­ing that Cantor became a vic­tim of his own conspiracy.

Cantor was one of the con­spir­a­tors who gath­ered in a secret loca­tion in Washington DC the very night Barack Obama was cel­e­brat­ing his inauguration.

Robert Draper’s much-dis­cussed and heav­i­ly-report­ed new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 peo­ple in total) includ­ed Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-law­mak­ers present includ­ed Newt Gingrich, sev­er­al years removed from his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican word­smith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R‑Ohio) — who, Draper writes, had an acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ship with Luntz.

Read the rest of the Article here.

Robert Draper Book: GOP’s Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration

Republicans had no inter­est in America, what they cared about was Party over Country . Their sin­gu­lar goal is to main­tain pow­er at all cost . They were deter­mined that Obama would not be allowed to Govern. The acri­mo­ny and ran­cor which char­ac­ter­ized the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment in Washington DC since the President took office was, and still is the strat­e­gy of the Republican Party.

Their goal is to trans­fer wealth from the 99% of Americans to the wealth­i­est 1%. To do that they have to main­tain pow­er at all cost. Eric Cantor was a dar­ling of the T‑Party , the front group of Charles and David Koch, Billionaire Industrialists.

Gerrymandered Districts cre­at­ed by Republicans to ensure safe re-elec­tion for their incum­bents, actu­al­ly cre­ate a bunch of hard­ened overzeal­ous ide­o­logues like Dave Bratt. In essence Eric Cantor the right wing hard-ass,eventually was not hard-ass enough, he fell on his own sword.

In my last Blog I high­light­ed the dis­par­i­ty in the way the city of Poughkeepsie was being run. I talked about the lack of Sanitation ser­vices in some parts of the city while oth­er parts are kept in pris­tine con­di­tion. I also

made clear that the Mayor needs to do a bet­ter job as all res­i­dents of the City deserve the same treatment.

I must also add that it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty or res­i­dents to take care of their com­mu­ni­ty. Eating from a paper plate and then sim­ply drop­ping it on the side­walk after fin­ish­ing the meal is com­mon sight here. The notion of walk­ing and eat­ing a full meal is prob­a­bly an alien con­cept to some of you , not so here. In some instances piz­za box­es are strewn on the side­walk, left exact­ly where the piz­za ran out or where the wind dis­card­ed it .

The dif­fer­ence in the life of the city is very sharp. Poverty, drugs , vio­lence, guns and sol­id mid­dle class life coex­ist togeth­er. Yet as if miles apart. It occurred to me today as I had brunch with my wife, that at the risk of sound­ing arro­gant or grand, life is large­ly depen­dent on the choic­es we make. We can decide to com­plain about the things which are wrong in our lives. Just how poor we are, just how bad­ly we have been treat­ed, or we may use those adver­si­ties as cat­a­lysts to empow­er ourselves.

Our city is infest­ed with drug users and push­ers. A few days ago a young man Shiquan M. Krouser, 27, was shot and killed by Police. It is alleged that he attacked and injured a female police offi­cer. Police respond­ed to a report of a man who was “dust­ed up” — high on angel dust or PCP — “caus­ing a dis­tur­bance, stop­ping cars, yelling and scream­ing,” at the inter­sec­tion of Main and Academy streets ear­ly Saturday morn­ing, “all they (offi­cers) know is the per­son they encoun­tered,” Chief Ron Knapp said. http://​www​.pough​keep​siejour​nal​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​c​r​i​m​e​/​2​0​1​4​/​0​5​/​2​7​/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​n​a​a​c​p​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​/​9​6​4​7​1​75/

One could argue that the chal­lenges fac­ing the City Of Poughkeepsie are no dif­fer­ent than any oth­er city. There may be some ele­ment of truth to that.

I believe how­ev­er, that in a city this small , the dis­par­i­ty is pret­ty wide. Walk the streets of this city and you get a feel for what I’m talk­ing about. Drugs can be sourced on almost every cor­ner. Prostitutes roam the streets night and day and shoot­ings are nev­er far away.

Inside the Shadows Restaurant the Sunday after­noon crowd enjoyed fine din­ing in a com­fort­able and ele­gant atmos­phere. It does seem we chose to live the way we live . We are not bound by our present cir­cum­stance. How we react to adver­si­ties will impact what hap­pens to us going for­ward. Truly Poughkeepsie is a lot like oth­er American cities, she has some chal­lenges not found in oth­er cities how­ev­er. Residents of this Mid ‑Hudson City can do bet­ter to remove this stig­ma that our city is just a drug town where peo­ple go to get high, or as one crit­ic told me once ” a place where old peo­ple retire” .

This is a city where one is nev­er far from the Hudson River. The new­ly ren­o­vat­ed Walk-way over the Hudson is one of America’s newest and most scenic National Parks. We have two fab­u­lous Colleges here, State of the Art Hospitals and great din­ing. This lit­tle City on the Hudson can be a great place to live, it all depends on we the people.