Yesterday Jamaica the Island nation,celebrated 50 years of Independence from great Britain, there are more than enough questions regarding our independence, some even maintain that we would have been better off maintaining the colonial shackles.

I will refrain from mak­ing any com­ments on the authen­tic­i­ty of those argu­ments , suf­fi­cient to say that as a child of the new­ly inde­pen­dent Nation I am hon­ored and indeed grate­ful to have been born in such a beau­ti­ful place.

There are many things we will have to look at as we enter the next 50 years with a view to deter­min­ing where we went wrong along the way and take a con­cert­ed stand to ensure that we have a bet­ter sec­ond half than we did the first.

There are present­ly many pos­i­tive things hap­pen­ing in our coun­try , none more thrilling, than the time­ly Olympic games being held in London England and the pride that ath­letes like Usain Bolt, Shelly-Anne Fraser-Price and oth­ers have brought to our country.

This blog-site salutes all Jamaicans, but more-so we salute our beau­ti­ful Island in the sun.

Happy 50^th birth­day Jamaica.

Is the opposition to President Barack Obama purely racial?

Why are Republicans vehe­ment­ly opposed to every­thing that Obama pro­pos­es or try to get done? Is it pure­ly racial pol­i­tics at play ? Is it that they want a sce­nario where Obama’s one term, [their stat­ed goal,] would be a colos­sal fail­ure, which would deter vot­ers from ever trust­ing the nation to a non-white, ever again ?

Is this issue that sim­plis­tic, or is there some­thing else at play here ? Noticeably, every Government pro­gram which offers help to soci­ety’s most vul­ner­a­ble are seen as un-American by the right.

They want to gut Social Security, they want to make Medicaid a vouch­er pro­gram, they want to cut the Food Stamp Program dras­ti­cal­ly. They want to dras­ti­cal­ly pull the safe­ty net from the dis­pos­sessed in their blue-print, the Ryan Budget. The real­i­ty is that most econ­o­mists who have stud­ied the Ryan bud­get have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that it does noth­ing to reduce the deficit , it does noth­ing to reduce the nation­al debt, con­verse­ly it will add sub­stan­tial­ly to both.

Well of course the Ryan bud­get will add to the deficit and the debt, it is loaded with give-aways to the very rich who need no help. Essentially the Ryan bud­get is a dou­bling down on trick­le-down eco­nom­ics which by its con­tent, believes if you give enough to the extreme­ly rich some will fall from their table to the rest of us. Many law-mak­ers are them­selves wealthy peo­ple who have less and less in com­mon with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. In actu­al­i­ty most law-mak­ers do not serve the peo­ple who elect­ed them to office, they serve the inter­est of the cor­po­ra­tions who fund their campaigns.

If Republicans are seri­ous about deficit and debt why are they opposed to a restruc­tur­ing of the Pentagon’s bud­get ? Does any­one seri­ous­ly believe that there is not a lot of seri­ous sav­ings that can be derived from a com­plete restruc­tur­ing of the Pentagon’s bud­get? How can any­one seri­ous­ly argue for more mil­i­tary spend­ing at the expense of feed­ing the poor?

During the Clinton Presidency Republicans in the Congress pushed for Welfare reform, of course there were very few peo­ple who did not feel there need­ed to be action on wel­fare as we knew it, a good idea, which had got­ten woe­ful­ly out of hand. That pro­gram which was cre­at­ed with the best of inten­tions had become a way of life for many who decid­ed they were bet­ter off receiv­ing wel­fare than actu­al­ly get­ting up and going out to work.

This angered many peo­ple and cor­rect­ly so, I was one of those angry per­sons, the wel­fare sys­tem was seen as a drain on the coun­try resources, how­ev­er there was a per­cep­tion that the sys­tem was bro­ken because lazy black peo­ple were ben­e­fit­ting from the work of oth­er hard-work­ing Americans. Of course when the final sta­tis­tics were ana­lyzed, all the T”s crossed and all the I’s dot­ted, the painful truth became known to many who thought oth­er­wise, the largest ben­e­fi­cia­ries were not lazy blacks but mid­dle-aged white women.

THE PLAIN TRUTH IS THAT REPUBLICANS SEE EVERYTHING PRESIDENT OBAMA DOES, AS AN ATTEMPT TO OFFER REPARATIONS TO BLACKS FOR SLAVERY, JIM CROW, AND ALL THE OTHER WRONGS DONE TO THEM IN THIS COUNTRY.

If this is as true as I think it is, does that mean that it is not racial ? I would argue that it is indeed racial, every aspect of Republican pol­i­tics in this coun­try has a degree of racism. During the pri­maries Newt Gingrich called the pres­i­dent quote the “food stamp pres­i­dent” despite the fact more peo­ple were on food stamps under President Bush despite bet­ter eco­nom­ic con­di­tions before the crash. Paul Ryan’s bud­get is much about dec­i­mat­ing pro­grams geared to help­ing the poor as it is at pay­ing off the rich.

Mitt Romney went before the (NAACP) gave a gener­ic speech then went to his low infor­ma­tion friends and dis­re­spect­ed us by say­ing quote,” if they want free stuff they can vote for the oth­er guy” I was unaware that the desire to have free stuff was a unique­ly African-American trait.

These are dog whis­tles aimed at the most racist dubm-ass­es with­in the Republican fringe, those who believe the pres­i­dent is a Muslim, an Arab, a Socialist, a Kenyan, a European Socialist, and every­thing else they can throw at him hop­ing some­thing will stick.

The imper­ti­nent for­mer Governor of New Hampshire , Cuban-born John Sununu stat­ed that he wish­es the pres­i­dent would learn how to be an American. Sununu’s boss Mitt Romney, makes it his busi­ness to state that President Obama is some­how for­eign at every cam­paign stop, that the pres­i­dent does not believe in American excep­tion­al­ism, what­ev­er that means? This fol­lows in the theme their par­ty has used for the dura­tion of Obama’s term, labelling him “oth­er”, not one of us, mean­ing “them”, the right-wing turds.

Recent Supreme Court deci­sion Citizens unit­ed has brought to the fore what has been a seri­ous prob­lem in American pol­i­tics for a very long time, the issue of soft mon­ey buy­ing influ­ence essen­tial­ly dilut­ing the con­cept of one man one vote.

Both Political par­ties rake in huge sums of mon­ey to fund cam­paigns, it is allowed it is held to be free speech, of course those with deep pock­ets invari­ably will get to shout loud­er, or drown out those with holes in their pockets.

If the giv­ing of mon­ey is tan­ta­mount to free speech, it leaves your hum­ble blog­ger to con­clude that those who have none to give, real­ly have no free­dom of speech.

It is no won­der then, that Rich Industrialists who own large cor­po­ra­tions, from oil com­pa­nies to lum­ber, and prod­ucts which Americans use every day, to Casinos, see fit to give huge sums of mon­ey to straw can­di­dates to ful­fill their agen­das, agen­das which have noth­ing to do with the aver­age person.

President Obama  Mitt Romney

Where does this leave the aver­age per­son? Certainly the aver­age per­son under this premise have long lost the right to speak! The right to vote then becomes the only way that an informed pop­u­lace could fight back, informed being the oper­a­tive word. If the pop­u­lace is un-informed, ill-informed, or mis-informed because of the bar­rage of shout­ing from those with free speech, I mean mon­ey… you know what I mean , they are one and the same, Then it behoves those with free speech to shut up the peas­ants by lim­it­ing their right to vote. Am I start­ing to make sense to you yet?

So then, if the only way an informed pop­u­lace may be heard with­out the ben­e­fit of immense wealth/​free speech, is through the bal­lot box, why would the vocif­er­ous élite allow them this loop-hole through which to be heard?

Is it any won­der then that after Citizens United, the par­ty of the vocif­er­ous élite has a launched a scorched earth cam­paign to sup­press the vote in numer­ous States all over this country?

I have long argued that the strength of this great exper­i­ment , the con­tin­ued dom­i­nance of this ever improv­ing exer­cise, is as a result of the con­tin­ued infu­sion of new blood , peo­ple of all class, col­or stripe, reli­gion, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, or any oth­er strat­i­fy­ing cri­te­ria com­ing togeth­er to make this coun­try what it is.

Like a great River cas­cad­ing south, made greater and more pow­er­ful as it sucks in more streams and trib­u­taries, so too is America made great. Not as some would have you believe, that this coun­try which was built on the blood tears and anguish of African-Americans, Native Americans and oth­ers, was made great by only those who came over on Columbus’ Pinta ‚Nina and the Santa Maria , or those who fol­lowed on the Mayflower.

The great­ness of America is in it’s diver­si­ty, its strength is not despite its car­na­copia of cul­tures, races, reli­gions and beliefs, it is exact­ly as a result of them.

The blind­ness of many to the dev­as­tat­ing effects repub­li­can poli­cies will have on them is a direct result of race. Remove Barack Obama from the equa­tion and this would not be a close race between the two par­ties. The real tragedy for poor whites who vote against their own inter­est as a result of their igno­rant hatred of Obama, is that it will have dire con­se­quences for the entire mid­dle and work­ing class in this country.

Shrouded in Romney and Paul Ryan’s plan for America is a secret agen­da which will lit­er­al­ly remove for all time the abil­i­ty of the mid­dle and poor­er class to ever have a voice again. The inter­est of all work­ing peo­ple irre­spec­tive of col­or, are inex­orably linked, mid­dle class whites vote for repub­li­cans who have con­sis­tent­ly shown that their agen­da is the fur­ther­ance of the inter­est of the filthy rich.

White mid­dle and poor­er class peo­ple who are recip­i­ent of medicare, Medicaid, and social secu­ri­ty have aligned them­selves to Tea Party caus­es, some bear­ing signs car­i­ca­tur­ing and demean­ing pres­i­dent Obama, demand­ing he keep his hands of their Medicaid and medicare, at the same time they are denounc­ing gov­ern­ment and all it represents.

Voter sup­pres­sion on the face of it seem to impact the lives and inter­est of minori­ties, the truth is when the votes of minori­ties are sup­pressed , repub­li­cans will invari­ably show their true col­ors, they have no inter­est in poor whites, as they have shown dis­dain and revul­sion to blacks and Latinos, so too is their dis­dain for poor whites. The only rea­son they romance poor whites is for their votes, soon enough poor and mid­dle class whites will real­ize they are in the same posi­tion as the rest of us.

No mon­ey equals no free speech that will be true for all poor peo­ple irre­spec­tive of color.

As the United States enter anoth­er elec­tion sea­son the choic­es could­n’t be more stark, between the two par­ties and pres­i­den­tial candidates.

The year is 2012 but lis­ten­ing to some of the rhetoric com­ing out of the mouths of some repub­li­cans, one won­ders if America revert­ed to the 1950’s?

The elec­tion of Barack Obama has peeled away the scab of racism in America reveal­ing the infect­ed, fes­ter­ing wounds many felt were long on the mend.

Did the ele­va­tion of a black man to the most pow­er­ful office in the world mean that final­ly America had put its putrid racial ani­mus behind it? Many felt that America had final­ly turned the cor­ner, as they watched the tens of thou­sands gath­er on the nation­al mall to wit­ness the his­toric swear­ing-in of the first American pres­i­dent who was­n’t a white man.

President Barack Obama Attorney General Eric Holder

Little did the left and the ide­al­ists know that the events play­ing out on the nation­al mall that day would unleash some of the most vapid and vit­ri­olic rhetoric and lead to actions some insists are acts of domes­tic terrorism.

Fifty years after the his­toric “I have a dream” speech Dr. Martin Luther King gave before he was assas­si­nat­ed, a black man is the pres­i­dent and a black man is Attorney General of the United States of America.

How could that not piss off old white men like the US sen­a­tor from Texas John Cornyn,or sen­ate minor­i­ty leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky?

US sen­a­tor John Cornyn ® Texas.

The list of angry white peo­ple mad as hell at what tran­spired November 2007 tran­scend gen­der , don’t for­get Arizona’s shin­ing exam­ple of a gov­er­nor, Jan Brewer wag­ging her fin­ger in the face of the pres­i­dent on the tar­mac as he touched down in that state.

The list of despi­ca­ble moron­ic behav­ior and utter­ances have real­ly revealed to the world the base crass­ness of some of America’s most senior elect­ed offi­cials with­in the repub­li­can party.

We are used to gut­ter behav­ior from the rab­ble at FOX. We have grown accus­tomed to the gut­ter bile com­ing from hate mon­gers like Glen Beck, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and the trash on hate radio. Those are peo­ple so unhap­py with their mis­er­able lives that they have to take out their anger on oth­er people.

What we should not be com­fort­able with is the same tox­ic bile com­ing from those who get paid with our tax dol­lars, the like of Cornyn ‚McConnell and others.

The cur­rent per­se­cu­tion of Eric Holder by the over­sight com­mit­tee in the House is an attempt by the far right to dis­cred­it the pres­i­dent using Daryl Issa . Issa bragged that he would be con­duct­ing hear­ings every week into the Obama Administration, but has thus far had zero to investigate.

In call­ing for Eric Holder’s res­ig­na­tion John Cornyn stat­ed as part of his rea­son Holder’s attempt to pre­vent states from pre­vent­ing vot­er fraud. What that trans­lates to is the Attorney General’s stead­fast defense of vot­ers rights against repub­li­can assault in var­i­ous states.

The ques­tion then is what kind of America does these old white men envi­sion, do they believe that the America of the 50’s will return?

Where do they intend to take the coun­try? because make no mis­take about it, as bad as the repub­li­can par­ty has been in recent decades, America needs the repub­li­can party.

It is imper­a­tive that the repub­li­can par­ty cleanse itself of the ugly graf­fi­ti of racial polar­iza­tion if it intends to com­pete in nation­al pol­i­tics in the com­ing decades.

The exam­ple being set by Cornyn ‚McConnell and oth­ers is bound to rel­e­gate their par­ty to being a south­ern par­ty which would have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the country.

These men if I may call them that, must now real­ize they way things were are no more , and they are not com­ing back, Latinos , blacks and oth­er eth­nic minori­ties now make up the majority.

If they love this coun­try as they say they do, they will put racist idio­cy aside and work to make this an even bet­ter coun­try, not just for some but for all Americans.

Two inter­est­ing devel­op­ments are play­ing out in our coun­try as we speak​.Today as many of us spend time on Facebook talk­ing about noth­ing that mat­ters, we could actu­al­ly read some­thing which has mean­ing and res­o­nance. Many of us who reside abroad claim to love Jamaica , of course the extent of our love is con­fined to a two-week vis­it dur­ing which we vis­it those who are still domi­ciled there. This gives some of us a feel­ing of accom­plish­ment, we run around check­ing on old friends and class-mates , fam­i­ly mem­bers and just when the moment rubs off for them we are back on an air­plane head­ed back to foreign *.

)The com­pet­ing sto­ry is amnesty International; Demand that the Government of the day com­mis­sion a pan­el to inves­ti­gate what occurred in Tivoli gar­dens 2 years ago.Jamaicaobserver​.com

I will not com­ment too in-depth, except to say that If the con­fes­sions of peo­ple in the know , includ­ing those tes­ti­fy­ing in court today are to be believed Christopher (Dudus) Coke is an evil despi­ca­ble crim­i­nal. As result peo­ple were killed at his hands, if we believe them, peo­ple were killed on his orders, and peo­ple were killed try­ing to return Tivoli to the Jamaican state. In a coun­try which respect­ed the rule of the law , this guy would have been arrest­ed , tried , and sen­tenced for all of those deaths.

Actions have con­se­quence, Jamaicans will have to acquaint them­selves to those real­i­ties and start to under­stand that sup­port­ing crim­i­nals is a bad idea, and a regres­sive pos­ture to take if they want to move to devel­oped world status.

On the day when the most infa­mous and pow­er­ful con­fessed crim­i­nal is before the courts plead­ing for clemen­cy, amnesty inter­na­tion­al, a British based group has seen fit to divert peo­ple’s atten­tion away from the real prob­lem of crime and how it affects the lives of our peo­ple. Attempting instead to play up the actions our coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces took to annex Tivoli gar­dens to the rest of Jamaica. 

Once again groups which pur­port to rep­re­sent the inter­est of the poor and dis­pos­sessed with­in soci­ety, have shown that they care noth­ing about the most fun­da­men­tal right giv­en to all humans , the right to life.

The peo­ple of Tivoli Gardens have been freed from the shack­les of tyran­ny and oppres­sion. They have the option now of edu­cat­ing their chil­dren if they chose to, with­out hand-outs from any­one. Many peo­ple were not allowed those rights under the rule of the Cokes and oth­ers before them.

I call upon Amnesty International and its local proxy Jamaicans for jus­tice to cease and desist from attempt­ing to desta­bi­lize our country.

We are not illit­er­ate peo­ple we are able to think on our own and for ourselves.What our nation does not need at this moment as it approach­es 50 years from the shack­les of British colo­nial pow­er is for ele­ments of that same pow­er to dic­tate to us how we should han­dle our affairs.

We are a sov­er­eign nation , we hope that you respect our sovereignty.

The Hannah Town Police Station burns as Urban Terrorists run amok 2 years ago burn­ing police sta­tions and killing police officers.

Do us a favor crim­i­nal-rights AMNESTY, go home. I don’t see any police sta­tions burn­ing in Britain.

These are the indeli­ble images seared into the minds of Jamaicans, par­tic­u­lar­ly those liv­ing in coun­tries where the rule of law is respected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rev­erend Al Sharpton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congressman John Lewis Democrat. Georgia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trigger-hap­py policemen.

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

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

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

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

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

I will see you next time.

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

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

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

Greg ChristieOmar Davies

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

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

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

THE WHAT:

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

THE WHY:

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

THE WHO:

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

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

THE RANT:

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

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

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

A new day is dawning.

I love it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once there was boy called Israel he attend­ed mid­dle east high school in a volatile area. Most of the oth­er kids teased and threat­ened him, he was forced to defend him­self against the oth­er kids in his school , he once took on a whole group of them and beat them square­ly. This act of brav­ery forced some of his ene­mies to make friends with him, yet there were some who were vehe­ment­ly opposed to Israel. Some argued that he had no right to exist, oth­ers argued he had a right to exist , just not in their school.

Because Israel went to a school where he was not liked, a school where many argued he was placed because of his pow­er­ful friends, he was allowed to take weapons to school. Now the rules are that there should be no weapons in that school, but lit­tle Israel had big pow­er­ful friends who insist­ed they want­ed him in that school, and they swore that no mat­ter what they would defend him to the death.

One boy named Iran was par­tic­u­lar­ly pissed at the idea that Israel was not only allowed to take weapons to school, he was giv­en some of the most dev­as­tat­ing weapons by his pow­er­ful friends, and school admin­is­tra­tors nev­er ques­tioned it. So Iran decid­ed to fash­ion his own weapons and take them to school. Now grant­ed that Iran nev­er fought with Israel or was even a part of that group of oth­er guys that Israel had sound­ly beat­en there was still pal­pa­ble ani­mus that sim­mered between both boys.

As a result they con­tin­u­al­ly fought through prox­ies , in oth­er words they both had friends who fought mini skir­mish­es with each oth­er , in many cas­es their fin­ger­prints were all over the skirmishes.

(ronit​baras​.com image.)

Now Iran also has pow­er­ful friends, the dif­fer­ence with his friends was that they were not ide­o­log­i­cal friends ‚they were the type who looked out for their own inter­ests. In oth­er words they were not the type who would defend Iran in a fight, they would cut and run. Iran rec­og­nized that if he want­ed to regain respect for him­self and the respect of those boys who were sound­ly whipped by Israel he must get com­pa­ra­ble weapons to those Israel has. So Iran start­ed devel­op­ing his own arse­nal of weapons and in an effort to get respect he kept brag­ging that he was a bet­ter fight­er than many believe to be true. Now Israel’s pow­er­ful friends made claims that Iran was mak­ing weapons that are dan­ger­ous, with the inten­tion of tak­ing them to school. They argued that Iran not only want­ed to take the weapons to school he want­ed to destroy their friend Israel with them.

Now in all fair­ness, Iran in an effort to seem impor­tant had said that he want­ed to remove Israel from the map. This caused much con­ster­na­tion with Israel’s friends, who argued that based on those pompous boast­ful pro­nounce­ments alone Iran should be emas­cu­lat­ed and not allowed to have any weapons at all. Iran attempt­ed to walk those com­ments back, he argued I do not want to destroy him I just want to remove him from my school. As such the pow­er­ful friends lob­bied school admin­is­tra­tors to strip search Iran every­day he arrives at school because he can­not be trust­ed not to try to destroy Israel with the weapons he does­n’t have.

Israel for his part , know­ing that his friends wield­ed immense pow­er over the school admin­is­tra­tors and are also finan­cial pow­er­hous­es with­in the alum­ni, demand­ed that Iran not only be strip-searched but demol­ished and made bare for his inso­lence. Now America Israel’s largest and most pow­er­ful backer , was con­flict­ed he sup­port­ed Israel and said so, but he had been in sev­er­al fights, and even though he is extreme­ly pow­er­ful he had come out of a cou­ple of fights scarred, because he unad­vis­ed­ly entered into fights with­out clear­ly defined ene­mies and what win­ning looks like. America did not want to be dragged into anoth­er fight sim­ply put.

This did not sit well with Israel who by now had become accus­tomed to being treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, giv­en a feel­ing of enti­tle­ment if you will. After all he had always done what he want­ed with­out con­se­quence. His pow­er­ful friends gave him carte blanch, they gave him weapons and as much mon­ey as he want­ed. Even when he clear­ly broke school rules his pow­er­ful friends pre­vent­ed admin­is­tra­tors from pun­ish­ing him. To many even some who once sup­port­ed his right to be in that school he was now an out of con­trol bul­ly who want­ed to throw his weight,.….… oh .. well the weight of his friends around.

Despite being allowed to abro­gate all the rules many oth­er kids have been sus­pend­ed and even expelled for, Israel demand­ed that school admin­is­tra­tors stop hav­ing dis­cus­sions with Iran , he vehe­ment­ly demand­ed that Iran should be stripped searched using force. When he did not get school admin­is­tra­tors to do his bid­ding, Israel called them all kinds of deroga­to­ry names, and cas­ti­gat­ed them for being inef­fec­tu­al. Mark you this is the same admin­is­tra­tion which allowed him to defy rules and turns a blind eye to his malfeasance.

Many oth­er chil­dren have felt the over­whelm­ing arro­gance of Israel because of the weapons he had at his dis­pos­al and the pow­er­ful friends who stood by men­ac­ing­ly, ready to defend him with even more pow­er­ful weapons. Many won­dered how his friends could even be peace mak­ers between Israel and the oth­er kids when they state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly they sup­port him, and pro­vide him with weapons even they com­bined can­not match.

Ok this is no sto­ry of a school with bul­ly­ing boys. This is actu­al­ly a grown up sit­u­a­tion between sov­er­eign nations run by men who will tell you they are intel­li­gent lead­ers who know best what’s good for their respec­tive country.

What would Israel do if it had no nuclear weapons, and did not have a pow­er­ful friend like the United States as an uncon­di­tion­al backer?

My gut tells me Israel would do every­thing in its pow­er to pur­sue and secure peace.

Barack Obama was elect­ed to office on a peace plat­form, he cam­paigned against the Iraq war and promised if elect­ed he would end it. He has , his base on the left are not par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilled with him for lit­er­al­ly esca­lat­ing the Afghan con­flict by throw­ing more troops into what many argue is an unwinnable war. Not a war unwinnable because America is weak , but unwinnable because not even the com­man­der-in- chief can artic­u­late what win­ning actu­al­ly is.

Not want­i­ng to seem weak, a charge repub­li­cans use to tar and feath­er demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents, Obama acqui­esced to demands by pen­ta­gon gen­er­als and oth­ers behold­en to the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex in the repub­li­can par­ty by send­ing more troops to the Afghanistan the­atre. The American peo­ple are still not told why blood and trea­sure is still being squan­dered in that coun­try when the rea­son they were told our mil­i­tary was sent there was to top­ple the Taliban and kill Osama Bin Laden. Both were accom­plished yet the United States mil­i­tary is still in Afghanistan.

But back to pres­i­dent Obama. This pres­i­dent is prob­a­bly the least pow­er­ful American pres­i­dent ever. Simply put, he is not allowed to use pres­i­den­tial pow­er in ways oth­er pres­i­dents has.Being the first black pres­i­dent his hands are all but tied, his every move is ques­tioned, his most rou­tine order parsed and ridiculed.

On the issue of Israel the pres­i­dent has giv­en more than he was com­fort­able giv­ing to Netanyahu. Forced to the right by hawks in the repub­li­can par­ty wish­ing to scare off Jewish vot­ers a valu­able part of Obama’s coali­tion. Of course repub­li­can or demo­c­ra­t­ic every can­di­date has to swear their com­mit­ment to the state of Israel, vow­ing to defend her with every ounce of their being if elect­ed pres­i­dent. Don’t believe me ask pres­i­dent Ron Paul.

Former pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter has been vil­i­fied mer­ci­less­ly because of all American pres­i­dents past to the present he has shown the great­est sense of fair­ness. As a result President Carter is vil­i­fied because he rec­og­nizes the right of the Palestinian peo­ple to live as free peo­ple, free from the grind­ing boots of Israeli occu­pa­tion and domination.

Why does Netanyahu not want peace to work ? Many in Israel want peace , even some who head­ed secu­ri­ty agen­cies in that coun­try have stat­ed their oppo­si­tion to war with Iran. Former Mossad head Meir Dagan said he does not think Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear indus­try any­time soon, an attack that would have to include “a large num­ber of tar­gets.” In keep­ing with Mossad’s rep­u­ta­tion, he sug­gest­ed going for “régime change” instead. (pressen­za International press agency)

I am not sure on what basis a coun­try or its oper­a­tives can call for régime change in anoth­er sov­er­eign nation. A nation I might add which has a rich his­to­ry and cul­ture. Who autho­ris­es one coun­try to demand change of lead­er­ship in anoth­er soverign nation sim­ply because they diosagree with them polit­i­cal­ly? My naiveté’ is exposed here but what would the reac­tion be if the two per­spec­tive Iran has for Israel would be bomb them into obliv­ion or change their lead­er­ship by what­ev­er means. This is the kind of dog­mat­ic rhetoric we saw com­ing out of for­mer pres­i­dent George Bush’s white house, spear­head­ed by Dick Chaney, which seem to be the posi­tion of Israel.

While we are on the sub­ject of Cheney , it has become clear to me that evil does not emanate from the heart but rather from the mind. Despite his rather unde­served good for­tunes in receiv­ing a new heart, Cheney has shown that his hatred for pres­i­dent Obama is just as intense when he addressed repub­li­cans in Wyoming stat­ing quote:”“I can’t think of a time when I felt it was more impor­tant for us to defeat an incum­bent pres­i­dent today with respect to Barack Obama. I think he has been an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter to the coun­try,”cnn​.com

As a chris­t­ian I ques­tion myself when I hear this guy make these state­ments, I gen­er­al­ly won­der why decent peo­ple die dai­ly and this man despite the good­ness of God still will not stop lying and sow­ing hatred. Cheney is the author and archi­tect of the débâ­cle we refer to as the Iraq war, he man­u­fac­tured lies and prop­a­gat­ed them accus­ing Iraq of hav­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, he sought to link Iraq to 911 when pro­fes­sion­als in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty debunked those lies. This war­mon­ger who need­ed to get Black water into Iraq still con­tin­ued his drum­beat of lies and dis­tor­tions for war, which the coun­try was even­tu­al­ly plunged into.

The con­se­quences of this war will live with America for hun­dreds of years to come thanks to Dick Cheney. This guy has the nerve to talk about unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter? His very temer­i­ty is an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter. Osama Bin Laden is dead . He could­n’t get him, General Motors is alive , they ran the coun­try into a hole Obama restored it. The Iraq débâ­cle is at an end and no Dick Cheney there were no weapons of mass destruc­tions there , you have been exposed, you are the unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter, and a pathet­ic liar.

It is beyond my com­pre­hen­sion, maybe some of you good folks may enlight­en me here, what gives one coun­try the right to tell anoth­er sov­er­eign nation what they can­not have? Does the United States, Russia, France, England, Israel, China, India, Pakistan own the world? Does the nations that are not nuclear armed pow­ers have the right to demand that those coun­tries named above forth­with get rid of their weapons? Who decides in the world who gets to have arse­nals of weapon­ry that can poten­tial­ly destroy this plan­et a thou­sand times over? And while we are at it how can we argue that one nation can be trust­ed with nuclear weapons over oth­ers , when the United States is the only coun­try ever to have used atom­ic weapons ?

No one wants to ask these ques­tions, because of fear for the United States sen­sors or because of fear of being labeled anti-Semitic by sup­port­ers of Israel. As human beings the only thing we real­ly have is our char­ac­ter, we must stand for some­thing, we live in a world where if one says the wrong thing he could end up in prison just for telling the truth, but we must not be det­tered by what man may do to us, rather we must stand on the prin­ci­ples of our con­vic­tions. Like so many who were demo­nized, mar­gin­al­ized, and vic­tim­ized before us, we must ask the ques­tions that Dr. king, Gandhi. Garvey. Marley and oth­ers have asked , because if we have no jus­tice on this plan­et we call home, all of our efforts at peace are mere futile whis­tles in the wind.

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR ANNOUNCES CHARGE OF MURDER IN THE SECOND DEGREE. GEORGE ZIMMERMAN IN CUSTODY.

There is evi­dence here that heat does pro­vide light, do not be fooled giv­en enough heat we are remind­ed that light does appear. In the inter­est of jus­tice we have lent our voic­es to the cho­rus demand­ing jus­tice for Trayvon Martin. We do not demand jus­tice on the basis of race we demand jus­tice on the basis of fairness.

As we have stat­ed black-on-black crime has been the sin­gle largest killer of young black male in this coun­try. As such we will not be like those on the right who argue this case from the per­spec­tive of race. We under­stand that some are pre­dis­posed to sup­port­ing every­thing that is wrong as long as it fits their narrative.

We salute Angela Corey for her thus far pro­fes­sion­al stance in the way she con­duct­ed this inves­ti­ga­tions and the way she han­dled her press conference.

We will com­ment fur­ther at a lat­er time this is the first step in the right direction.

As one of the nameless/​faceless sig­na­to­ry to the peti­tion demand­ing that law enforce­ment take a sec­ond look. A more respect­ful look at what tran­spired that fate­ful night. We are hum­bled at the thought that when the voic­es of the many are raised in right­eous indig­na­tion the very foun­da­tions of the halls of pow­er tremble.

This is all Tracey and Sabrina asked for, that their son receive the dig­ni­ty and respect fit­ting of a human being no more no less. This fam­i­ly as shown that no mat­ter what the crit­ics say class and dig­ni­ty can­not be bought with mon­ey , it is not affil­i­at­ed with social stand­ing, it is not gen­e­sised in edu­ca­tion. It comes from an entrenched god­ly incul­ca­tion from youth, instilled by par­ents endued with decen­cy and purpose.

We want to reg­is­ter our admi­ra­tion for Tracey and Sabrina, for the stead­fast and dig­ni­fied fight they have waged for jus­tice for their son Trayvon Martin.

WE SALUTE YOU SABRINA AND TRACEY:

On January 20^th 2009 Barack Hussien Obama was sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States of America. Administering the oath of office to the new pres­i­dent was chief jus­tice John Roberts an appointee of George W Bush the 43^rd pres­i­dent whom Obama suc­ceed­ed. Roberts opt­ed to admin­is­ter the oath from mem­o­ry and botched it, every­one laughed off the man­gling of the oath,no one was pre­pared to allow any­thing to cloud that fate­ful day many peo­ple thought they would nev­er live to see.

America appeared jad­ed, the coun­try want­ed some­thing inspi­ra­tional to cheer about, we were engaged in two wars that were still drag­ging on with no end in sight and no under­stand­ing of what vic­to­ry would look like .Many were already invok­ing the word Vietnam into the war dis­course. America’s image abroad was in tat­ters , the coun­try and it’s pres­i­dent were lit­er­al­ly seen as a cow­boy with a bad atti­tude. The econ­o­my was in a reces­sion, the mag­ni­tude and scope of which experts gross­ly underestimated.

Despite the bad econ­o­my, two wars, the ter­ror attacks of September 11^th 2011, there was a gen­uine feel­ing of antic­i­pa­tion in the coun­try. America seemed to have crossed that divide, it had final­ly come of age , it had elect­ed a black man president!

It was awe­some to see the new first cou­ple as they held hands and basked in the glow of what must have been a sur­re­al feel­ing of “this is not real­ly not hap­pen­ing to us”.

Many of the over 3 hun­dred mil­lion Americans basked in the glow of the moment, blacks and whites, Jews and gen­tiles, for a moment we were all Americans. If the feel­ing in America was pal­pa­ble, the images on tele­vi­sion depict­ing the absolute joy on the faces of hun­dreds of mil­lions the world over, on every con­ti­nent, told an elec­tri­fy­ing tale. They were cheer­ing for Barack and Michelle, but one got the feel­ing they were cheer­ing for America, that they were cheer­ing for the good­ness and decen­cy deep with­in human­i­ty. A good­ness and decen­cy that had final­ly worked its way to the sur­face. It had tak­en hun­dreds of years, many tears but final­ly our human­i­ty had final­ly worked its way to the sur­face . Somehow we had final­ly come to the real­iza­tion that the super­fi­cial dif­fer­ence of skin col­or was all that sep­a­rat­ed us. That the blood that flowed with­in our veins was all the same blood irre­spec­tive of the col­or of our skin.

We were for that moment in time, all God’s children.

But as we are well aware, there are oth­er forces with­in the uni­verse. We were brought crash­ing down to the ran­cid real­i­ties of the oth­er side of what we had all wit­nessed . The oth­er side of what we all felt. We were brought back to the pre­em­i­nent feel­ing that we should not have indulged in that moment, because there would be pay­ment exact­ed by the uni­verse. The oth­er shoe would drop. We became painful­ly aware that those euphor­ic feel­ings we expe­ri­enced have sim­i­lar con­se­quences to the tem­po­rary high derived from a drug abuse indulgence.

All of us ‚as we allowed our­selves the lux­u­ry of that euphor­ic indul­gence, were painful­ly aware that not every­one shared in our joy. We were con­ver­sant based on the his­to­ry of this great coun­try, that there was a dark shame­ful side, that did not dis­ap­pear the day Obama was elected.

What I cer­tain­ly was not pre­pared for is the scorched earth return to Jim Crowe in the year 2012 in America. A scorched earth that not only scooped up African-Americans but threat­en to engulf oth­er groups who felt they had over­come in America.The avalanche of hate swept up women , immi­grants, Gays and lesbians,Labor unions, work­ing poor, the mid­dle class, and pret­ty much any­one who was­n’t a mem­ber of the white male club.

Even though we expect­ed that there would be a back­lash against blacks for Obama’s breach­ing of the last bas­tion of white suprema­cy, we were large­ly unpre­pared for the Tsunami of hate that was to follow. 

We nev­er antic­i­pat­ed the return of Jim Crowe. We did not antic­i­pate the Senate Minority leader say­ing his pri­ma­ry focus was to make Barack Obama a one term pres­i­dent. No one fore­saw Jan Brewer Arizona Governor stick­ing her fin­ger in the face of the pres­i­dent of the United States, Or rook­ie Supreme court asso­ciate jus­tice Samuel Alito shak­ing his head and mouthing “not true” to his oppo­si­tion to their recent cit­i­zens unit­ed deci­sion. A colos­sal bad deci­sion, the effects of which are already being felt in the fight for America’s Democracy. Maybe we should have seen the likes of South Carolina’s con­gress­man Joe Wilson shout­ing “you lie” at the pres­i­dent, as he deliv­ered his state of the union address.

In fact those of us mes­mer­ized by the ascen­sion of Barack Obama, were naïve in our euphor­ic trance. How could we not see the pos­si­ble attempts at dele­git­imiza­tion of the lunatic right in the form of the birther non­sense. How could we not rec­og­nize that some mis­guid­ed ele­ments in the mil­i­tary would refuse to take orders from the pres­i­dent, argu­ing that if the order is unlaw­ful they have a right to dis­obey? How could we not see that Obama’s ascen­den­cy would not cre­ate a con­fla­gra­tion of hate groups? In fact how could we not see a total and uni­fied com­ing togeth­er of repub­li­cans , house and sen­ate in oppo­si­tion of Obama that would vir­tu­al­ly clog up the works, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to get any leg­is­la­tion of mean­ing passed .

There is noth­ing beneath the lunatic igno­ra­mus fringe of the right that they deem too offen­sive to hurl at the pres­i­dent. Even those who were once con­sid­ered reasonable(sic) have now fall­en vic­tim to the genealog­i­cal defi­cien­cy called racism. So it is now accept­able for Iowa US Senator Charles Grassley to refer to pres­i­dent Obama as stu­pid. Race aside, I would read­i­ly throw my hat into ring for Obama when it comes to intel­lect, over Chuck Grassley. No group is above the gut­ter behav­ior. We have seen that the pow­er struc­ture of the dom­i­nant white male is feel­ing uncer­tain of itself. High court judges, and top actors with­in the catholic church have not seen fit to main­tain the thin veneer of faux respectabil­i­ty that once obtained in their enclaves. A veneer that masks a sore that refus­es to heal, a sore called racism.

President Barack Obama won the pres­i­den­cy with­out win­ning the white vote. This is scary for white men who have seen the last bas­tion of their lies torn down and laid bare for all to see for what it was for cen­turies, a damn lie. All men are cre­at­ed equal under God, by god. The infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex inher­ent in some, that caus­es them to vis­it all types of unimag­in­able evil on oth­ers dif­fer­ent from them­selves in order to show them­selves supe­ri­or has been exposed and they are scared to death. The very lies which gave them legit­i­ma­cy has been stripped away, and they have been exposed to be just like every­one else, ordi­nary peo­ple , not supe­ri­or, not from a mas­ter race, just a pile of mat­ter like every­one else.

This aspect of white suprema­cy has served white men for cen­turies they are not about to roll over and die. As a mor­tal­ly wound­ed ani­mals can be par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous, so too is the van­quished lie of white suprema­cy. Obama rep­re­sents all that they hat­ed in oth­ers, he rep­re­sents what they feared for cen­turies, the results of remov­ing the glass ceil­ing and the sticky floor. Despite the vile putrid attacks lev­eled at him this pres­i­dent and his wife con­tin­ue to smile and be grace­ful , exud­ing the grace and charm that many could only hope to emu­late. This White house thus far, despite snares from their ene­mies has been scan­dal free. There is no talk of infi­deli­ty, no talk of impro­pri­ety, as such the hate mon­gers are left dis­parag­ing the Obama’s for being the prod­ucts of ivy League edu­ca­tion. You know you are doing good when your ene­mies can only con­jure up lies and dis­tor­tions in order to attack you.

President Obama has stead­fast­ly sought to advance the equal­i­ty of all ‚just as he promised as can­di­date Obama,he signed

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is an Act of Congress enact­ed by the 111^th United States Congress and signed into law by on January 29, 2009. The bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stat­ing that the 180-day statute of lim­i­ta­tions for fil­ing an equal-pay law­suit regard­ing pay dis­crim­i­na­tion resets with each new dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pay­check. The law was a direct answer to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion hold­ing that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for pre­sent­ing an equal-pay law­suit begins on the date that the employ­er makes the ini­tial dis­crim­i­na­to­ry wage deci­sion, not at the date of the most recent pay­check, as a low­er court had ruled.(source wikipedia​.com)

He has appoint­ed two women to the United States Supreme Court. Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor the first Hispanic to be appoint­ed to the high­est court in the land. His Administration has sided with wom­en’s groups in their fight against Republican assault on their repro­duc­tive rights , one which start­ed out in repub­li­can cir­cles as an Obama’s assault on reli­gious free­doms. That shell game did not sur­vive the smell test and was rather quick­ly revealed to be an attack on the repro­duc­tive rights of women.

His cab­i­net is remark­ably rep­re­sen­ta­tive of women.

Hillary Clinton Secretary of State:

Hilda Solis Secretary of labor:

Kathleen Sebelius Secretary of Health and human services:

Janet Napolitano Department of home­land security:

The fol­low­ing equiv­a­lent to cab­i­net positions

Lisa P Jackson envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion agency:

Susan Rice Ambassador to the United Nations:

Karen Mills Small busi­ness administration:

By all accounts this is an impres­sive array of pow­er­ful women,the pres­i­dent has demon­stra­bly shown his com­mit­ment to women and what’s impor­tant to them. Republicans may bury their heads in the sand , but this is exact­ly the rea­son Mitt Romney’s 4 point lead over Obama with women was wiped out and the pres­i­dent up in some polls by 12 – 15 points. Women are pay­ing attention.

Republican can­di­dates did not do them­selves any favors when they remained silent or at best mouthed mealy-mouthed ratio­nal­iza­tion of loud mouth Rush Limbaugh’s attack on a George Town University law stu­dent Sandra Fluke. Limbaugh in tra­di­tion­al style ref­ered to miss Fluke as a whore and a pros­ti­tute. Her crimes? tes­ti­fy­ing to a demo­c­ra­t­ic Congressional com­mit­tee on the prob­lems fac­ing young women in get­ting con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age in their health insur­ance. Limbaugh’s boor­ish attack saw dozens of adver­tis­ers on his radio show run­ning for cover. 

Republicans in state after state have draft­ed leg­is­la­tion that seeks to strip away rights once believed to be set­tled laws. Many women are now won­der­ing whether in light of recent devel­op­ments, Roe:vs Wade is set­tled law.

Republican hate and hypocrisy has no lim­its, for the dura­tion of Bush 43^rd Presidency we were del­uged with the term “judi­cial activism” from the pres­i­dent, nei­ther the supreme court, the gods on the fed­er­al 5^th cir­cuit nor their polit­i­cal coun­ter­parts had a prob­lem with the pres­i­dent blast­ing the high court.

Of course all of the afore­men­tioned have a prob­lem with President Obama stat­ing that the supreme court has no busi­ness strik­ing down a law passed by a con­gres­sion­al major­i­ty. In fact what the pres­i­dent meant was that the supreme court should, if there are con­sti­tu­tion­al issues with a piece of leg­is­la­tion, send it back to the con­gress for fine tun­ing. But that aside, is the supreme court above crit­i­cism? Where is it writ­ten that no one may crit­i­cize the supreme court, least of all the President of the United States of America.

What the last three years plus has shown is the entrenched racism in this coun­try, cement­ed large­ly around white male. This elec­tion will be like noth­ing the world has ever seen before, it seemed they did not believe that Obama could win in 2008 , now they are not about to have him serve anoth­er four years. They will pull­out all the stops, the results will be like none we have seen before . That is how hate­ful repub­li­cans fight, by using lies innu­en­dos dis­tor­tions and cater­ing to peo­ple’s fears .

It is time that decent peo­ple stand up and repu­di­ate the hate mon­gers and the wares they are ped­dling. America is stronger because of its diver­si­ty, not despite it. America was not built by white men alone, it was built on the blood sweat and tears of blacks , native Americans, and all of the oth­ers who toiled to make this coun­try what it is. No one has a monop­oly on her, it belongs to all that have come and gone. Those who believe they own America will have a hard time defend­ing that posi­tion as this coun­try gets more and more diverse. Their fear is palpable.

Amnesty International has released its 2011 death penal­ty report. In its report Amnesty crows that the Caribbean is what it calls an Execution free zone. At the same time Amnesty International is cel­e­brat­ing the fact that not one mur­der­er has been exe­cut­ed in the entire car­ribean which is becom­ing a mur­der zone, it’s sur­ro­gate Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) held a ral­ly denounc­ing the Jamaican Police for killing heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals who con­front them in vio­lent encoun­ters from day-to-day.

Death penal­ty 2011: Alarming lev­els of exe­cu­tions in the few coun­tries that kill 

Countries that car­ried out exe­cu­tions in 2011 did so at an alarm­ing rate but those employ­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have decreased by more than a third com­pared to a decade ago, Amnesty International found in its annu­al review of death sen­tences and executions.
Only 10 per­cent of coun­tries in the world, 20 out of 198, car­ried out exe­cu­tions last year.
People were exe­cut­ed or sen­tenced to death for a range of offences includ­ing adul­tery and sodomy in Iran, blas­phe­my in Pakistan, sor­cery in Saudi Arabia, the traf­fick­ing of human bones in the Republic of Congo, and drug offences in more than 10 countries. 
Methods of exe­cu­tion in 2011 includ­ed behead­ing, hang­ing, lethal injec­tion and shooting. 
Some 18,750 peo­ple remained under sen­tence of death at the end of 2011 and at least 676 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed worldwide.
But these fig­ures do not include the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions that Amnesty International believes were car­ried out in China, where the num­bers are suppressed.
Nor do they account for the prob­a­ble extent of Iran’s use of the death penal­ty – Amnesty International has had cred­i­ble reports of sub­stan­tial num­bers of exe­cu­tions not offi­cial­ly acknowledged. 
 “The vast major­i­ty of coun­tries have moved away from using the death penal­ty,” said Salil Shetty Secretary General of Amnesty International. 
“Our mes­sage to the lead­ers of the iso­lat­ed minor­i­ty of coun­tries that con­tin­ue to exe­cute is clear: you are out of step with the rest of the world on this issue and it is time you took steps to end this most cru­el, inhu­man and degrad­ing punishment.”
In the Middle East there has been a steep rise in record­ed exe­cu­tions – up almost 50 per cent on the pre­vi­ous year. 
This was due to four coun­tries – Iraq (at least 68 exe­cu­tions), Iran (at least 360), Saudi Arabia (at least 82) and Yemen (at least 41) – which account­ed for 99 per cent of all record­ed exe­cu­tions in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise in Iran and Saudi Arabia alone account­ed for the net increase in record­ed exe­cu­tions across the world of 149, com­pared to 2010. 
Thousands of peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in China in 2011, more than the rest of the world put togeth­er. Figures on the death penal­ty are a state secret. Amnesty International has stopped pub­lish­ing fig­ures it col­lects from pub­lic sources in China as these are like­ly to gross­ly under­es­ti­mate the true num­ber. The orga­ni­za­tion renewed its chal­lenge to the Chinese author­i­ties to pub­lish data on those exe­cut­ed and sen­tenced to death, in order to con­firm their claims that var­i­ous changes in law and prac­tice have led to a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the use of the death penal­ty in the coun­try over the last four years. In Iran, Amnesty International received cred­i­ble reports of a large num­ber of uncon­firmed or even secret exe­cu­tions which would almost dou­ble the lev­els offi­cial­ly acknowl­edged. At least three peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in Iran for crimes that were com­mit­ted when they were under 18 years of age, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. A fur­ther four uncon­firmed exe­cu­tions of juve­nile offend­ers were report­ed there, and one in Saudi Arabia. The United States was again the only coun­try in the Americas and the only mem­ber of the G8 group of lead­ing economies to exe­cute pris­on­ers – 43 in 2011. Europe and for­mer Soviet Union coun­tries were cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment-free, apart from Belarus where two peo­ple were exe­cut­ed. The Pacific was death penal­ty-free except for five death sen­tences in Papua New Guinea. In Belarus and Vietnam, pris­on­ers were not informed of their forth­com­ing exe­cu­tion, nor were their fam­i­lies or lawyers. Public judi­cial exe­cu­tions were known to have been car­ried out in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, as well as in Iran. In the major­i­ty of coun­tries where peo­ple were sen­tenced to death or exe­cut­ed, the tri­als did not meet inter­na­tion­al fair tri­al stan­dards. In some, this involved the extrac­tion of ‘con­fes­sions’ through tor­ture or oth­er duress includ­ing in China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Foreign nation­als were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by the use of the death penal­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. 
But even in those coun­tries that con­tin­ue to exe­cute on a high lev­el some progress was made in 2011. 
 In China, the gov­ern­ment elim­i­nat­ed the death penal­ty for 13 main­ly ‘white col­lar’ crimes, and mea­sures were also put for­ward to the National People’s Congress to reduce the num­ber of cas­es of tor­ture in deten­tion, strength­en the role of defence lawyers and ensure sus­pects in cap­i­tal cas­es are rep­re­sent­ed by a lawyer. In the USA, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly from a decade ago. Illinois became the 16^th state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. A mora­to­ri­um was announced in the state of Oregon. And vic­tims of vio­lent crimes spoke out against the death penal­ty “Even among the small group of coun­tries that exe­cut­ed in 2011, we can see grad­ual progress. These are small steps but such incre­men­tal mea­sures have been shown ulti­mate­ly to lead to the end of the death penal­ty,” said Salil Shetty. “It is not going to hap­pen overnight but we are deter­mined that we will see the day when the death penal­ty is con­signed to his­to­ry.” Amnesty International oppos­es the death penal­ty in all cas­es with­out excep­tion regard­less of the nature of the crime, the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the offend­er or the method used by the state to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion. The death penal­ty vio­lates the right to life and is the ulti­mate cru­el, inhu­man and degrad­ing punishment. 
 Regional sum­maries The Americas The US was once again the only exe­cu­tion­er in the Americas. A total of 43 exe­cu­tions were record­ed in 13 of the 34 states that retain the death penal­ty, a drop by a third since 2001, and 78 new death sen­tences were record­ed in 2011, a decrease by half since 2001.
The Caribbean An exe­cu­tion-free area, with the num­ber of coun­tries impos­ing new death sen­tences appear­ing to be in decline. Only three coun­tries are known to have hand­ed down a total of six death sen­tences: Guyana, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. Asia-Pacific Positive signs ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment were evi­dent through­out the region in 2011. Not count­ing the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions that were believed to have tak­en place in China, at least 51 exe­cu­tions were report­ed to have been car­ried out in sev­en coun­tries in the Asia-Pacific region. At least 833 new death sen­tences were known to have been imposed in 18 coun­tries in the region. The Pacific sub-region was death penal­ty-free with the excep­tion of five death sen­tences hand­ed down in Papua New Guinea. No exe­cu­tions were record­ed in Singapore and, for the first time in 19 years, Japan. The author­i­ties in both coun­tries have pre­vi­ous­ly shown strong sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sub-Saharan Africa Significant progress in 2011 — Benin adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion to rat­i­fy the key UN treaty aimed at abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. Sierra Leone declared, and Nigeria con­firmed, offi­cial mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. And the Constitutional Review Commission in Ghana rec­om­mend­ed the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. There were at least 22 exe­cu­tions in three coun­tries in sub-Saharan Africa: Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. Only 14 of the 49 coun­tries in the region are clas­si­fied as retain­ing the death penal­ty. Middle East and North Africa At least 558 exe­cu­tions could be con­firmed in eight coun­tries. At least 750 death sen­tences imposed in 2011 could be con­firmed in 15 coun­tries. The con­tin­u­ing vio­lence in coun­tries such as Libya, Syria and Yemen made it par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to gath­er ade­quate infor­ma­tion on the use of the death penal­ty in the region in 2011. No infor­ma­tion was avail­able about judi­cial exe­cu­tions in Libya, and no death sen­tences are known to have been imposed. Extrajudicial exe­cu­tions, tor­ture and arbi­trary deten­tion were often resort­ed to instead. Four coun­tries – Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – account­ed for 99 per cent of all record­ed exe­cu­tions in the Middle East and North Africa. 
 The author­i­ties of Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco/​Western Sahara and Qatar imposed death sen­tences but con­tin­ued to refrain from car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. Europe and Central Asia Belarus was the only coun­try in Europe and the for­mer Soviet Union, and apart from the USA the only one in the Organization for Security and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe (OSCE), to have car­ried out exe­cu­tions in 2011, exe­cut­ing two men.[Amnesty International]

You will ask , and cor­rect­ly so, why are you post­ing Amnesty International’s data on your blogs don’t they have their own web­site? Well yes they do and you are quite right in ask­ing, but there is a rea­son that I do . I hope that you have read the entire report and as you do I ask that you look at crime sta­tis­tics in coun­tries like Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Then ask your­self what com­po­nent is miss­ing from this equation?

The com­po­nent miss­ing from the equa­tion is any men­tion of the vic­tims of crime!!!

Every year rough­ly 1600 peo­ple are con­firmed mur­dered by crim­i­nals in the Island of Jamaica , in a coun­ty 4,411 square miles and a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion these mur­der sta­tis­tics are alarm­ing. Even though Amnesty International’s num­bers do ref­er­ence the United States , of note is the fact that a large num­ber of American States do uti­lize the death penal­ty. Most states of the unit­ed states are com­pa­ra­ble and in many instances exceed the size , econ­o­my , and pop­u­la­tion of most nations in oth­er parts of the world , and many of the 34 states that do retain the death penal­ty actu­al­ly do exe­cute mur­der­ers for their crimes.

The United states based on the afore­men­tioned can­not be glossed over as a sin­gle nation , but has to be seen as 50 sep­a­rate states with dif­fer­ent sov­er­eign gov­ern­ments, even so the Federal gov­ern­ment do exe­cute crim­i­nals whom are con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in fed­er­al courts. Despite argu­ments to the con­trary States like Virginia, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida that has the death penal­ty do have few­er crimes than states like New york ‚New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia that defies the will of the major­i­ty and does not car­ry out the death penalty.

The United States has thou­sands of law enforce­ment agen­cies, police depart­ments from Compton California to the south side of Chicago, from Little Rock Arkansas to New york city engage crim­i­nals every day. Police depart­ments do not con­sult human rights agen­cies and lob­by groups about how to do their jobs, many peo­ple are killed in vio­lent con­fronta­tion with law enforce­ment each day in the United States.

Yet there are no dic­tates from Amnesty International to law enforce­ment. Why do I use the United States as ref­er­ence? The United States is the nation most look to as the bas­tion of human rights and jus­tice, the barom­e­ter by which oth­ers are judged. Yet despite mon­ey and oth­er resources law enforce­ment agen­cies are forced to kill vio­lent crim­i­nals every day. Are there instances where Jamaican cops are care­less or have engaged in instances of extra-judi­cial killings we sus­pect that there may be evi­dence of that. We have no evi­dence of it, nei­ther does JFJ and nei­ther does Amnesty International.We do know that offi­cers must do a bet­ter job with ensur­ing that no inno­cent per­son is injured at their hands.

As I write this blog there is yet to be an arrest made in the killing of 17 years old Trayvon Martin of Sanford Florida. Young Trayvon was gunned down over a month ago by a vig­i­lante for no oth­er rea­son oth­er than the col­or of his skin. There was the case of Sean Bell killed by NYC police offi­cers , Bell was out cel­e­brat­ing his bach­e­lor par­ty the night before he was to get mar­ried. The cas­es of police abuse and oth­er atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against blacks in the United States is mind-blow­ing, yet Amnesty has nev­er made one sin­gle soli­tary state­ment about the rights of those victims.

What we are say­ing to the peo­ple at Amnesty International is this poor dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple are the same irre­spec­tive of where they live. If you don’t find abuse of the inno­cent objec­tion­able in America , Canada, and Britain , then you have no cred­i­bil­i­ty to point out any per­ceived injus­tice in Jamaica or any oth­er devel­op­ing coun­try. Thanks but no thanks .

We refuse to let the argu­ment of extra-judi­cial killings be dom­i­nat­ed by those whose motives are demon­stra­bly in the inter­est of criminals.

As we have artic­u­lat­ed those who talk about extra-judi­cial killings have zero evi­dence of what they speak, their only met­ric is num­bers , which is absolute­ly not a means of mak­ing those deter­mi­na­tions. One has to be eye-wit­ness to a killing to make that deter­mi­na­tion and just being a wit­ness does not qual­i­fy one unless he/​she puts him­self in the shoe of a police offi­cer tasked with mak­ing those deci­sions of using lethal force.

There is a rea­son crime weary Jamaicans have sim­ply tuned out Carolyn Gomes and the oth­er far left bleed­ing hearts. That is the rea­son almost no one turned out for their car­ni­val act, it was a sick cir­cus and the Jamaican peo­ple treat­ed it as such , this side=show was timed to coin­cide with Amnesty’s report and it end­ed up being a colos­sal flop.

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY

Jamaicans for jus­tice issued a state­ment to the press claim­ing that they were intim­i­dat­ed because of the pres­ence of the police at the event armed with rifles»»»» Not all of the atten­tion seek­ers aligned to that groups was as out­ra­geous with their claims. The offi­cers were there for their pro­tec­tion of the same peo­ple who are per­se­cut­ing them, such is the job of police officers.

This ludi­crous state­ment bared the soul of the lead­er­ship of JFJ as a psy­chot­ic des­per­a­do group that the major­i­ty of fair and bal­anced Jamaicans final­ly and cor­rect­ly already tuned out.

Courtesy of the Jamaica dai­ly Gleaner:

As I have stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, Jamaicans do not hate police offi­cers. Our peo­ple are warm recep­tive and engag­ing , even those peo­ple with­out the ben­e­fit of for­mal edu­ca­tion are decep­tive­ly intel­lec­tu­al with incred­i­ble rea­son­ing pow­er. They demand fideli­ty and hon­esty from their pub­lic offi­cials, pub­lic offi­cials includ­ing politi­cians and police. We have a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple most offi­cers are chil­dren of decent rur­al work­ing peo­ple. The atti­tudes of peo­ple out­side the cor­po­rate area of Kingston and Saint Andrew are vast­ly dif­fer­ent from those who reside in those areas.

My point in all of this is that our peo­ple want to sup­port their law enforce­ment offi­cers, I have been away from law enforce­ment for 20 years but I still mar­vel at the lev­el of sup­port I received when I served. Support which result­ed in the removal of many weapons and crim­i­nals from the streets and in oth­er cas­es may have pro­tect­ed my life from those who wished me harm for no oth­er rea­son oth­er than the fact that I was a law enforce­ment officer.

What the Jamaican peo­ple are not going to tol­er­ate is any group destroy­ing one of their insti­tu­tions which is pop­u­lat­ed by their chil­dren. They know that like their chil­dren who go astray and require guid­ance, some­times they have to hold their police feet to the fire. What they will not have, are for­eign fund­ed groups telling them their chil­dren are no good and should be dis­card­ed. Jamaicans are trau­ma­tized by crime, they need results, they will not have any­one destroy those who stand between them and those who sow death and destruction.

Officers have a duty to uphold the fideli­ty of their office,they have a duty to the oath they took, they have a duty to them­selves , their coun­try and their col­leagues to bring back respectabil­i­ty to the JCF. As we charge them to respect the rights of each and every indi­vid­ual, I chal­lenge them to refrain from brute force but to use their pow­ers of arrest to make the state­ment they chose to make. You do not need to beat some­one sense­less if he com­mits an offense, briskly apply hand­cuffs inform them of their rights and cart them off to jail. No one wants to be in jail. Use your pow­ers of arrest on all who break the laws, with­out fear or favor, but before you do that offi­cers , please know what the laws are!!!!! I urge my fel­low Jamaicans to respect the rule of law, sup­port your law enforce­ment offi­cers, if you see some­thing say some­thing, the life you save may be your own.With that said send a strong mes­sage to the for­eign inter­lop­ers that Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of gov­ern­ing them­selves, we will enact the laws we see fit and we will treat crim­i­nals the way we see fit.

The killing of Trayvon Martin by self-appoint­ed neigh­bour­hood watch Captain George Zimmerman has sparked out­rage across America, and has brought to the fore, the ran­cid prob­lem of race rela­tions in this coun­try. Racial ani­mus are like sores that refus­es to heal, every time that the scab is removed it lays bare the ugly sore that pre­cludes the limb from doing all it could poten­tial­ly do. America great as it is, still has not seen the heights of its poten­tial great­ness because of its stead­fast reluc­tance to dis­card racism.

What makes a per­son sus­pi­cious ? George Zimmerman’s 911 call described 17-year-old Trayvon Martin as sus­pi­cious look­ing. Mister Zimmerman’s lawyer has since stat­ed over and over again that race had noth­ing to do with his clients actions that night. Understandably Zimmerman’s attor­ney under­stands the Federal ram­i­fi­ca­tions for his client, in the event inves­ti­ga­tors deter­mines that race was a fac­tor in young Trayvon Martin’s death.

ABOUT GEORGE ZIMMERMAN

So lets look at a few key fac­tors in this case, at least as far as the infor­ma­tion that has been made public.

(1) We know that Zimmerman sat in his truck and called 911 about what he char­ac­ter­ized as a sus­pi­cious person.

(2) We know that he com­menced to fol­low Trayvon while he spoke to the 911 dispatcher.

(3) We know that the 911 dis­patch­er asked Zimmerman if he was fol­low­ing Trayvon, to which he answered in the affirmative.

(4) We know that the 911 dis­patch­er told Zimmerman quote“we don’t need you to do that“end quote.

(5) We know that Trayvon’s 16-year-old girl­friend affirmed that she was on the phone with Trayvon as he described that he was being stalked by a man, and that she told him to just run on home.

(6) We know that Zimmerman mut­tered quote “fuck­ing coons always get away” after he was told by the dis­patch­er not to fol­low Trayvon Martin.

(7) We know that Zimmerman pur­sued Trayvon Martin after he was told not to by the 911 dis­patch­er and that a scuf­fle of sorts ensued , and that some­one was yelling for help.

(8) We know that Trayvon Martin’ moth­er has said that she rec­og­nizes the voice on the 911 tapes as that of her 17-year-old son yelling for help.

(9) We know that George Zimmerman fired a shot killing Trayvon Martin on the spot, Trayvon Martin had a pack­age of skit­tles and a bot­tle of iced tea . Snacks he went out to get before the start of the all-star game.

(10) We know that George Zimmerman has not been arrested.

ABOUT THE SANFORD POLICE DEPARTMENT

(1) Why was drug and alco­hol test done on the corpse of Trayvon Martin and none done on George Zimmerman, despite the argu­ments of Sanford police that none was done because Zimmerman was not arrested.?

(2) Why did police not hand over the 911 tapes to the fam­i­ly as requested?

(3) Why despite claims of self-defense by Zimmerman did police not cor­don the scene and treat it like any oth­er scene of crime , includ­ing gath­er­ing foren­sics, tak­ing pho­tographs, con­fis­cat­ing the mur­der weapon , look­ing for spent cas­ings if it was a semi auto­mat­ic weapon which would have dis­card­ed spent casing/​s?

(4) Why did police not ques­tion wit­ness­es and secure affi­davits from wit­ness­es and the shooter?

(5) Why did the police not try to reach the last person/​s Trayvon spoke to on his cell phone to deter­mine who he was and who were his parents?

(6) Why did police not com­plete a file with all evi­dence and sub­mit it to the prosecutor ?

(7) Why did police sim­ply take Zimmerman’s word for it that it was self-defense ?

(8) Is the Sanford police empow­ered to act as judge and jury in deter­min­ing guilt or inno­cence or is that the duty of a court of law?

I am par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by the smile on this kid’s face, I have four boys and a nephew who is like my own son. I see the shirt he is wear­ing and I see my own 18-year-old son who worked part-time at that retail­er , proud­ly wear­ing his Hollister shirt. That kid could have been my kid , it could have been your kid. As President Obama said if he had a son he would look like Trayvon, I think what the President was say­ing was that if it was his kid walk­ing there that night he would have suf­fered the same fate.

This leads us to the ques­tion of why are black men so reviled and feared, so much so that any black man is auto­mat­i­cal­ly deemed sus­pi­cious ‚based sole­ly on the col­or of his skin? Why do police all over this coun­try refuse to inves­ti­gate crimes against black peo­ple. Why don’t they treat black peo­ple with the same respect they give to oth­ers. Why do pre­dom­i­nant­ly white police depart­ments con­tin­ue to abuse and treat peo­ple of col­or in this coun­try with impunity,without attract­ing any con­se­quence for their actions?

Mister Zimmerman’s lawyer claims that his client is not a racist, mis­ter Zimmerman’s father we are told has stat­ed that he is Hispanic, as if racism is sim­ply a white against black thing. One is judged by the words that emanate from one’s mouth, it is by our words we decide on who some­one his, the spo­ken word tells a great deal, it opens the soul to scruti­ny from the out­side. If some of us would just speak less we would find our­selves in way less trou­ble. I am inclined to believe that George Zimmerman will rue the day he uttered the two words “fuck­ing coon” 

As we have heard since the killing of Young Trayvon Martin came to the fore, many young black men have spo­ken artic­u­late­ly about sur­vival skills they are forced to devel­op in order to sur­vive. Critics will argue that young black men are the great­est threat to the sur­vival of oth­er black men,those argu­ments can­not be seri­ous­ly dis­card­ed with­out seri­ous­ly look­ing at the sta­tis­tics of the wan­ton slaugh­ter of young black men by their peers, oth­er young black men.

In cities all over America LA, Kansas City, Newark , Jersey City, Philadelphia,Little Rock, Chicago the sit­u­a­tion is the same young black men con­tin­ue to mur­der each oth­er at an alarm­ing rate, Even in small­er cities like Newburgh and Poughkeepsie New York it is the same every year the killings continue.

As we are appaled at the killing of Trayvon Martin and the lack of an arrest, experts from University pro­fes­sors to par­sons lament the cau­sa­tion behind the fear oth­ers have of us. How can we seri­ous­ly and cred­i­bly won­der why oth­ers fear us when we are so prone to killing each oth­er? As we seek to address the prob­lem of sys­tem­at­ic racism in America, blacks must also embrace the real­i­ties that we are a part of the problem.

As we tell our sons:

Do not run from the police.

Stop if you are pulled over.

Don’t do this , don’t do that we are left won­der­ing when will black peo­ple ever be afford­ed full cit­i­zen­ship in their own coun­try? I have four sons and sev­er­al nephews, I too tell my sons and nephews what oth­er black fathers and moth­ers tell their sons, but even if they do all we tell them, does it pro­tect them from the sus­pi­cions oth­ers have of them? Trayvon Martin from all indi­ca­tions did not do any­thing that would have caused a rea­son­able per­son to be sus­pi­cious of him. Trayvon Martin’s prob­lem was his black skin. That black skin made him an auto­mat­ic sus­pect in the mind of George Zimmerman.

President Obama rec­og­nized this when he artic­u­lat­ed “if I had a son he would look like Trayvon” Blacks are ask­ing for a con­ver­sa­tion on race. A con­ver­sa­tion? Really? Prominent black peo­ple are ask­ing for a con­ver­sa­tion? How many con­ver­sa­tions are we going to have regard­ing this issue, every time there is a killing which sparks nation­al out­rage, black élite ask for a nation­al dia­logue. A nation­al con­ver­sa­tion, I believe the time for a con­ver­sa­tion is over. It is time for solu­tions, words mat­ter very little.

Black America must under­stand as Jews have, that it’s sur­vival rests in its own hands, How can a nation of approx­i­mate­ly 40 mil­lion allow oth­ers to treat it this way? The time has come for the Black nation to rise up and take its right­ful place in a nation that was built on the backs of its fore-par­ents. It is time that Black America take to heart the creed that all men are cre­at­ed equal by their cre­ator. It is time that black America stop ask­ing oth­ers to respect it , it is time to demand respect.

Supporters of George Zimmerman argue that Trayvon Martin attacked him from behind, knock­ing him to the ground, alleged­ly break­ing his nose, and leav­ing him blood­ied. This new piece of infor­ma­tion does noth­ing to advance the case in favor of Zimmerman, at least to my mind. The ques­tion here is this, does a per­son have a right to defend him­self from an armed assailant who unau­tho­rized stalks him for no reason?

You bet. !!!

Even if this cam­paign by Zimmerman is accept­ed by those who seek every pos­si­ble excuse oth­er than to see this case for what it is, we believe that Trayvon Martin had a fun­da­men­tal right under Florida’s law to stand his ground in the face of being attacked by an armed assailant.

It does not serve Zimmerman’s friends and sup­port­ers to try to attack this child’s cred­i­bil­i­ty, this will not sit well with black peo­ple in this coun­try, we are aware that there are now plans under­way to besmirch Trayvon’s char­ac­ter, they would be well advised not to try this tact.

A quick com­ment com­mend­ing Contractor General Greg Christie on his res­olute stance regard­ing the PNP’s much tout­ed Jamaica Emergency Employment Program(JEEP) . Contractor General Christie expressed con­cerns about the integri­ty of that pro­gram a day after a team from his office raid­ed the offices of the Transport and Works Ministry where JEEP is based :Link here .jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Greg Christie

I will once again state, as I have always done for his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, that Greg Christie is a phe­nom­e­nal pub­lic ser­vant . Many have argued that Christie is a pub­lic­i­ty hound, they have called him par­ti­san, they have called him over zeal­ous. The truth is Greg Christie oper­at­ing in a coun­try where the rule of law is sacro­sanct, in a coun­try where peo­ple want­ed what’s best for their coun­try ‚would have accom­plished won­der­ful things for that coun­try. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed by Christie’s call for all the agen­cies tasked with root­ing out cor­rup­tion to be merged as one unit. I say Greg Christie for Prime Minister and Jamaica would be a total­ly dif­fer­ent coun­try, a bet­ter country.

Greg Christie faces a pop­u­la­tion resis­tant to the rule of a law, unwill­ing to do the things that would lead to bet­ter life for them­selves and their chil­dren. The Police are encoun­ter­ing the same push-back, a lot of which they cre­at­ed for them­selves. Our coun­try will great­ly miss Greg Christie. Mister Christie has indi­cat­ed to the Governor General that he will be leav­ing office toward the end of this year. I strug­gle to see how mis­ter Christie will be replaced with some­one com­pa­ra­ble to his integri­ty, and enthusiasm.

PNP RIGHTS COMMISSION WANTS END TO MILITARY STYLE POLICING:

Every time the peo­ple’s nation­al par­ty take over the reins of Government we see dra­mat­ic upsurge in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. Their takeover after the December 29^th 2011 win has been no dif­fer­ent. Spin doc­tors aligned to that cult gov­ern­ment unashamed sug­gest crime upsurge are the works of the oth­er par­ty. Trouble with that assess­ment is that even as they strug­gle to tell that lie, they cringe under the glare of the truth, the fact being that crimes in Jamaica no longer has polit­i­cal stripes.

The PNP on its return to pow­er estab­lished an unusu­al­ly large exec­u­tive gov­ern­ment , despite crit­i­ciz­ing the for­mer gov­ern­ment stri­dent­ly for hav­ing what they said then was a too large cabinet,Miller went ahead with an even big­ger one. Portia Simpson Miller bold-faced argued that the large cab­i­net stacked with her rel­a­tives and friends was com­men­su­rate with the amount of seats her par­ty won in the elec­tions . Her Party won 41 of the 63 seats in the House of Representatives.

Miller by her rea­son­ing revealed that she takes us for fools, or as some sug­gest she sim­ply do not know any bet­ter. I will leave you to decide.

The issue I want to address here is the PNP affil­i­at­ed groups get­ting involved in law enforce­ment . Jamaica can­not be allowed to go back to the days when PNP gun­men did as they pleased, because their par­ty is in pow­er. I sug­gest the lit­tle mon­grels in the PNP affil­i­at­ed groups and JLP affil­i­at­ed groups stick to their pol­i­tics and leave polic­ing to the pro­fes­sion­als. (Rest in peace Motty Perkins).

Jamaica’s police are far from per­fect. On too many occa­sions some cops shoot when they do not need to, this can­not be allowed, it can­not be stan­dard pro­ce­dure and the com­mis­sion­er of police will have to look to remov­ing cops whom are involved in fre­quent shoot­ings from the streets. I will not as some would sug­gest, say remove some­one if they are involved in a shoot­ing, Jamaica is far too vio­lent for that.

What we don’t need are incon­se­quen­tials like the PNP lit­tle mutts in wait­ing , mak­ing state­ments when most of them are them­selves involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. I call on Simpson Miller to rein in her lit­tle rabid chi­huahuas, no one elect­ed them to any­thing.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

“Too often the police in the exe­cu­tion of their duties do not appear to be care­ful enough to ensure the preser­va­tion of lives; and too often engage in shoot­ings when it may have been more strate­gic to with­draw or change tac­tic,” Commission Chairman, Clyde Williams said. “The pur­suit of crim­i­nals must not pro­vide the con­text for the death of the innocent.”
Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​P​N​P​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​-​w​a​n​t​s​-​e​n​d​-​t​o​-​m​i​l​i​t​a​r​y​-​s​t​y​l​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​#​i​x​z​z​1​p​u​H​Z​l​J46

(Clyde Williams PNP human rights com­mis­sion chairman.)

What is this fool smok­ing ? Portia needs to muz­zle this lit­tle mon­grel and let him crawl real quite­ly back under the cel­lar where he belongs. No one elect­ed this moron to anything.

These state­ments are blood boil­ing, where is this clown when these shoot­ings are hap­pen­ing? And if he is not there, how can he make the state­ment he did? Suits many of the licky licky police who run behind this cult and helped to put the PNP in office. Many of these cops are noth­ing more than ser­vant boys for them anyway.

I wish all Jamaicans liv­ing abroad and well think­ing ones at home see what the PNP is advo­cat­ing for our country.Withdrawing from crim­i­nals, allow­ing them to return them to the days of the last PNP gov­ern­ment. Where in the world does police with­draw from crim­i­nals? The PNP with its mul­ti­ple gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties must explain to the coun­try and the world why it is ask­ing police to with­draw from con­fronting crim­i­nals. The PNP is large­ly respon­si­ble for our coun­try being in the state it’s in, due large­ly to 1970’s poli­cies, 18 ¹⁄₂ years of being at the helm , and an unmit­i­gat­ed desire to main­tain gar­ri­son pol­i­tics as the cor­ner­stone of Jamaica’s existence.

Is the answer because of the thou­sands of crim­i­nals they have in their zones of polit­i­cal exclusions?

Or is it because of the fact that with­in the par­ty itself there are crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in broad daylight.

The Following is the full edi­to­r­i­al com­men­tary from the Jamaica Daily Gleaner regard­ing the impasse involv­ing INDECOM’s Terrence Williams and the Police Federation

MR TERRENCE Williams must stand his ground and resist those in the con­stab­u­lary, and its aux­il­iaries, who want to see him go.

Until there are cred­i­ble rea­sons for us to do oth­er­wise, Mr Williams has the sup­port of this news­pa­per. We expect, too, that he will find sim­i­lar sup­port from Mr Owen Ellington, the reform-mind­ed police chief, whose efforts have, up to now, found favour with us.

More impor­tant­ly, the Government must reject any pres­sure to act against Terrence Williams.

Additionally, Constable Franz Morrison, the chair­man of the Police Federation — the union for the rank-and-file mem­bers of the con­stab­u­lary — if he har­bours notions of him­self as a pro­gres­siveleader, would wel­come aggres­sive over­sight from an agency like INDECOM, which Mr Williams heads. Apparently, we expect a high­er qual­i­ty of lead­er­ship than Mr Morrison demands of him­self, or which he seems to believe his con­stituents deserve.

INDECOM (Independent Commission of Investigations), it is recalled, was estab­lished by Parliament in 2010 to inves­ti­gate cas­es of shoot­ings, as well as oth­er com­plaints of abuse against cit­i­zens by the secu­ri­ty forces. It was the out­come of years of accu­sa­tionsof extra­ju­di­cial killings and oth­er mis­be­hav­iour, par­tic­u­lar­ly by the police, and loss of pub­lic con­fi­dence in the con­stab­u­lary’s abil­i­ty to impar­tial­ly inves­ti­gate itself.

Unsurprisingly, in its short life, INDECOM has had an uneasy rela­tion­ship with the con­stab­u­lary, and some in the judi­cial process, over its attempt to assert its inde­pen­dence in ful­fill­ing its mandate.

Mr Williams has, for instance, com­plained of attempts by police offi­cers to mus­cle his inves­ti­ga­tors out of crime scenes where there have been police shoot­ings and the death of civil­ians, and where INDECOM ought to have prime author­i­ty. Such actions are apart from the test­ing in the courts by the Police Federation, the Police Officers’ Association and the Special Constables’ Association of INDECOM’s pow­ers of arrest.

Judicial chal­lenges are one thing. What Mr Morrison’s crowd is now attempt­ing is quite anoth­er. They are attempt­ing to rile the pub­lic and mem­bers of par­lia­ment into a mood of no con­fi­dence in Mr Williams so as to have the gov­er­nor-gen­er­al rescind his appoint­ment. Or, prefer­ably, he resigns.

The ‘offence’

Mr Williams’ ‘offence’ is that he recent­ly appeared at a press con­fer­ence, host­ed by a human-rights group, to express his con­cern at the spate of police homi­cides — near­ly two dozen in less than a month.

According to the Police Federation’s Mr Morrison, such a con­cern ren­dered Mr Williams inca­pable of “impar­tial­ly inves­ti­gat­ing any inci­dent involv­ing police offi­cers”. So, accord­ing to Mr David White, the fed­er­a­tion’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary, they have writ­ten to the prime min­is­ter, the gov­er­nor-gen­er­al and the Parliament to have Mr Williams “removed”.

The real aim of the cam­paign is trans­par­ent­ly ludi­crous. It has lit­tle to do about Mr Williams’ atten­dance at the press con­fer­ence or the remarks he may have made, and every­thing to do with a wish to elim­i­nate any body that would hold the con­stab­u­lary account­able for its behaviour.

If it was­n’t these com­ments, it would be some oth­er, and who­ev­er replaces Mr Williams will face the same chal­lenges until there is a change of the cul­ture of impuni­ty that per­vades the police force.

Jamaica’s high crime rate and the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by the con­stab­u­lary notwith­stand­ing, 951 police homi­cides in four years is unac­cept­able. With that, Mr Morrison should agree.jamaica​glean​er​.com

Terrence Williams

Here’s my response:

The Editorial board from its recent utter­ances, includ­ing this one, and the nar­ra­tive it advances, fur­ther demon­strates that the cul­ture it sup­ports is an alien one far removed from real­i­ty. As such, no respon­si­ble par­ty need take any of the utter­ances made by this board seri­ous­ly. On every issue to include this one, you are wrong. Clearly it can­not escape any­one with a mod­icum of intel­lect, that the Commissioner of INDECOM in his capac­i­ty as inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tor ‚must be judi­cious with whom he appears and/​or asso­ciates. Particularly on top­i­cal , sen­si­tive issues like the cas­es his office or he will have to inves­ti­gate. Taking into account the per­cep­tion around JFJ, as a crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group, whether one dis­agrees or not. Let me inform you and your friends who feel com­pelled to tell offi­cers what is right for them. Justice must not only be done it must appear to be done. Police offi­cers will no longer allow elit­ists to tell them how they should go about look­ing out for their inter­ests. Your argu­ments are disin­gen­u­ous, and are intend­ed to mis­lead . You should be ashamed to use this well-regard­ed medi­um to spout lies, innu­en­dos , and mis­in­for­ma­tion to fur­ther your indi­vid­ual agen­da. You are a disgrace.

ONE MORE THING:

Let me instruct you on what is con­sid­ered ludi­crous. As a stu­dent in detec­tive train­ing I was told that no greater task could any per­son be giv­en than be asked to bring to jus­tice the ille­git­i­mate killer of anoth­er human being. I took that charge seri­ous­ly as a detec­tive. Any per­son charged with inves­ti­ga­tions must not only be impar­tial they must also appear to be impar­tial. As such an inves­ti­ga­tor can­not stand with those on the out­side shout­ing extra-judi­cial killings when he is the one tasked with mak­ing an informed deter­mi­na­tion as it relates to the facts. By your utter­ances here you have zero under­stand­ing of how inves­ti­ga­tions are done, yet you have not felt restrained from tak­ing sides despite your demon­strat­ed igno­rance of such sub­ject. Investigators must approach each case with an open mind , and fol­low the evi­dence wher­ev­er it leads, a real inves­ti­ga­tor knows that if one is biased one way or anoth­er, one may find evi­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate any mind­set, as such it can­not be overem­pha­sized that inves­ti­ga­tors have an open mind, even when it seem that there is over­whelm­ing evi­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate the call for blood. As inju­di­cious and just plain wrong as Terrence Williams’ appear­ance with JFJ was, your attempt at obfus­ca­tion and dis­hon­esty is dan­ger­ous­ly decep­tive and unpatriotic.

This juve­nile attempt at opin­ion shap­ing fell flat,succeeding sole­ly in reveal­ing the writer to be an elit­ist who did not both­er to do any research before attempt­ing to shape pop­u­lar per­cep­tions. The prob­lem with the writer of this spiel is one that is now prov­ing to be one that many in Jamaica is hav­ing a hard time assim­i­lat­ing at this time.I speak of a more edu­cat­ed, force­ful police depart­ment even at the low­est rank who are deter­mined they will not be told to sit down.

Traditionalists like the writer of this piece of garbage, now find them­selves in a quandary deal­ing with the chil­dren of the poor­est of the poor, who are pre­pared to stand their ground and test every­thing in the courts. And by the way they have the pow­er of arrest. This was not in the game-plan, the cod­ed writ­ings of this per­son, whom one could rea­son­ably con­strue to be a fool , drips with ven­omous anger at the temer­i­ty of the police to chal­lenge them and their friends. The rigid caste sys­tem is unrav­el­ing in front of their very eyes, those aspir­ing to the upper lev­els , have a vest­ed inter­est in main­tain­ing that sys­tem, now that they have climbed to the top of the heap. And they do not want change in Jamaica. After all, if the poor is giv­en a chance to free them­selves from pover­ty, and illit­er­a­cy who will they lord over?

Ha ha I love it ‚.