It nev­er ceas­es to amaze me, the brazen dis­dain mem­bers of the peo­ple’s nation­al par­ty and their sleep­er affil­i­ates have for the intel­li­gence of the Jamaican peo­ple. The peo­ple’s nation­al par­ty here­to referred to as the PNP are mas­ters at strate­giz­ing and as a con­se­quence win­ning elec­tions. Their only prob­lem is that they are ter­ri­ble at gov­ern­ing. Their ground game is immac­u­late, leav­ing the Jamaica Labour Party JLP bewil­dered in the dust. Based on their orga­ni­za­tion­al skills the PNP have made the argu­ment that Jamaica is PNP coun­try, with some mer­it. They have plant­ed sleep­ers at every lev­el of nation­al life. Mark you there is noth­ing wrong with peo­ple hav­ing their polit­i­cal views. we all do, the prob­lem with these sleep­ers is that they pre­tend they are inde­pen­dent apo­lit­i­cal mem­bers of soci­ety with no axe to grind. Untill of course they are exposed grind­ing their PNP axes.

Garnet Roper Omar Davis

As a boy I grew up lis­ten­ing to Ronald Thwaites pon­tif­i­cate, prog­nos­ti­cate, and pro­mul­gate on the air­ways. Always try­ing to appear neu­tral, I always told friends Thwaites was a plant. No need to speak any fur­ther on Thwaites. Omar Davis spewed finan­cial gib­ber­ish on radio dai­ly as well, he pre­tend­ed he was a finan­cial guru who was from the intel­li­gentsia. We all know that Omar Davis was a polit­i­cal plant which had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for Jamaica.

Recently G2K the youth arm of the labour par­ty came out after com­plaints by oth­ers in civ­il soci­ety on the issue and spoke stri­dent­ly about the mass of peo­ple who were actu­al plants of the PNP who open­ly opined and pre­sent­ed them­selves as neuter­al mem­bers of the media and oth­er areas of soci­ety only to be revealed as plants of the PNP after the elec­tions. Most if not all of them are now hold­ers of lucra­tive pub­lic sec­tor jobs.

One such plant is Yvonne Mccalla Sobers This lady who looks like any­one’s sweet grand­moth­er, has argued vehe­ment­ly for jus­tice, most­ly against the police , and with lim­it­ed or/​fabricated evi­dence, while at the same time she presents her­self as a friend of the police. By the way Yvonne MCCalla Sobers was just appoint­ed to head the board of E‑learning Jamaica com­pa­ny lim­it­ed. ” Wow”. Garnet Roper President of the Jamaica the­o­log­i­cal sem­i­nary now on a gov­ern­ment board, appoint­ed by the PNP. The peri­od lead­ing up to the last nation­al elec­tions was prob­a­bly the most reveal­ing though, all the rodents start­ed crawl­ing out of the wood-work . Many have since been reward­ed with plum Government jobs,or appoint­ed to boards and giv­en oth­er lucra­tive assign­ments. This gov­ern­ment and it’s oper­a­tives are despi­ca­ble, and down­right shame­less. They are once again uti­liz­ing the pub­lic sec­tor purse as its pri­vate pig­gy-bank to reward loy­al foot sol­diers for putting in the work.

MCCalla Sobers attacked the police in the PNP’s mouth­piece, the Jamaica Daily Gleaner today, in an Article titled “Extrajudicial killings show no com­mit­ment to peace. Read more here”(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

I love Yvonne MCCalla sobers and as such I want­ed to give her Article respect. I want­ed to make sure I under­stood what she intend­ed to con­vey, so I read it twice, and unfor­tu­nate­ly the sec­ond read­ing left me just as baffled:

Quote: If the soci­ety wants peace and pros­per­i­ty, we need to ‘wheel and come again’. The secu­ri­ty tar­get would be win­ning pub­lic con­fi­dence rather than using brute force to cre­ate sit­u­a­tions where com­mu­ni­ties trust crim­i­nals more than police. The pub­lic might then be will­ing to part­ner with the police in solv­ing crime, so the police could rely more on brain than baton or bullet.

Ha ha ha, what utter non­sense, Jamaicans had that.

As a boy grow­ing up in the 70’s in NE. Saint Catherine our police did not car­ry guns, cops patrolled and every­one was on their best behav­ior. Truth mat­ters Yvonne, I refuse to allow you or any­one else to use revi­sion­ist his­to­ry to paint our police offi­cers. Many of Jamaica’s police offi­cers have giv­en detrac­tors more than enough to talk about. But I will keep your feet to the fire of truth in the inter­est of verac­i­ty, and his­tor­i­cal perspective.

The Jamaican peo­ple had offi­cers who some even argued were too nice, what did our peo­ple do? They made it an art, a part of the cul­ture to fight and assault offi­cers. To this day this cul­ture of assault­ing offi­cers is great con­ver­sa­tion piece with­in some quar­ters. Many Jamaicans delight in telling tales of unarmed police offi­cers beat­en by local (bad­men) sim­ply for doing their jobs. They nev­er tire of relat­ing those tales to the delight of their cap­tive audi­ences. Many police offi­cers were mur­dered , many crim­i­nals were shut­tled out of Jamaica through Cuba to Canada after killing police offi­cers, some have returned to Jamaica and to date are still immune from fac­ing charges for killing cops. Many cops who passed through the for­mer Beat-and-foot patrol at the bot­tom of West Street in Kingston will attest to the fact that when young cops come out of the Academy fresh and ide­al­is­tic they are not tough. They are not mean peo­ple who are com­mit­ting alleged acts of extra-judi­cial killings. They are your neigh­bours, your sons and daugh­ters, sis­ters and broth­ers, cousins, aunts and uncles and your friends, and yes they are your class mates too.

It is the vile dis­re­spect­ful igno­rance of peo­ple who refuse to con­form to the rule of law which trans­forms them into what many of you think are killing machines. The truth is our coun­try is an incred­i­bly vio­lent place where the kind of polic­ing you advo­cate is impossible.

Winning pub­lic con­fi­dence, are you nuts ? 85 % of the Jamaican peo­ple are deemed to be cor­rupt, who are you fool­ing. How could any­one with a mod­icum of under­stand­ing argue that police offi­cers would try to make peace with crim­i­nals. The police do not have a man­date to make peace, they have a man­date to enforce the laws. No coun­try may make peace with crim­i­nals for the sake of peace. That is called appease­ment, after doing that, no gov­ern­ment. No police depart­ment may do what you pro­pose and claim legitimacy!!!!.

Those who give up their rights in pur­suit of peace and secu­ri­ty end up with nei­ther. No peo­ple should be lulled into believ­ing that mak­ing peace, call­ing off the police will grant them last­ing peace or secu­ri­ty. Where has it ever worked, did it work in Tivoli Gardens, did it work in any gar­ri­son in our coun­try? The answer is no !! Despite the many view-points local­ly or abroad, one strat­e­gy works in Jamaica. People can­not be asked to obey laws, they must be made to obey laws.

We tried it your way.

The new gov­ern­ment of Jamaica missed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty after its vic­to­ry at the polls on December 29^th 2011, to show the coun­try that it had reformed and that it now under­stands the glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions fac­ing coun­tries that were tra­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es like the United States and France, much less small depen­dent coun­tries like Jamaica.Portia could not resist the urge to reward the par­ty faith­ful, so she opt­ed to cre­ate a cab­i­net that was larg­er than the cab­i­net of her pre­de­ces­sor Bruce Golding , which she stri­dent­ly crit­i­cized as too large and exces­sive. What is it that makes her feel that it is quite ok for her to do the very thing she so vehe­ment­ly, and stri­dent­ly crit­i­cized when the shoe was on the oth­er foot one would ask? Well those who under­stand Jamaican pol­i­tics will tell you her par­ty is the par­ty which arro­gant­ly believes that they alone should gov­ern the coun­try, and as such has labeled our coun­try PNP coun­try. On that phi­los­o­phy they are much like the American Republican Party which demands that Democrats irre­spec­tive of their man­date giv­en them by the elec­torate, must acqui­esce to their every demand on pol­i­cy. To them elec­tions have no con­se­quence, such is the men­tal­i­ty of the Peoples National Party.

Swiss finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny UBS has recent­ly warned investors to stay away from Jamaica for now because of the change of Government and utter­ances made by the leadership,and as it relates to its rela­tion­ship with the International Monetary fund. The warn­ing cement­ed what is a well-known fact that this par­ty that has now formed the gov­ern­ment has always been hos­tile to for­eign invest­ments and that it refus­es to hon­or inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions entered into by its pre­de­ces­sors. In a syn­op­sis UBS said, “The debt tar­gets “will require sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tained fis­cal effort through tough tax increas­es, expen­di­ture con­trol, includ­ing unpop­u­lar cuts in pub­lic employ­ment, as well as divest­ing loss-mak­ing state companies,” .

It will be inter­est­ing to see how this state­ment and the agree­ment in place with the International Monetary Fund squares with the much vaunt­ed JEEP which Miller and her par­ty rode to vic­to­ry at the polls. The eco­nom­ic real­i­ties fac­ing the coun­try is the same as for most coun­tries in Europe and oth­er parts of the world , these real­i­ties require that gov­ern­ments take seri­ous hard looks at their economies and make tough nesc­ssary adjust­ments in order to main­tain some degree of sol­ven­cy. As unpalat­able as these deci­sions are they are nesces­sary and must be insti­tut­ed. Jamaica is a devel­op­ing coun­try still in the pro­cess­ing of estab­lish­ing a work­able tax­a­tion sys­tem, to date the coun­try still has a tax sys­tem that large­ly pres­sures Government work­ers with the bulk of small busi­ness peo­ple pay­ing no tax­es, or at worst cheats the sys­tem blind. My point of dis­agree­ment with UBS is with it’s con­clu­sion that tax increas­es must be part of the solu­tion. Tax increas­es will not solve the prob­lem what we need is a widen­ing of the tax net to bring into com­pli­ance all those who aren’t pay­ing their fair share. Taxing those who are already pay­ing at a higer rate will actu­al­ly con­strict the tax base and result in less tax­es collected.

Other coun­tries like Italy, Greece and Spain are also hav­ing seri­ous eco­nom­ic trou­bles which require some aus­ter­i­ty. Renowned Economist, New York Times Columnist and Princeton Professor Paul Krugman feels that gov­ern­ment have a role to play in inject­ing cap­i­tal into these trou­bled economies rather than adopt­ing belt-tight­en­ing mea­sures that even­tu­al­ly shrinks economies and in his view makes the prob­lem worse.

Bruce Golding Simpson Miller

As was to be expect­ed the Government of Portia Simpson Miller did not learn any­thing beyond a craven and rapa­cious desire for pow­er. Once again the Intellectual Elites and oth­er parts of civ­il soci­ety to include the cler­gy, bar asso­ci­a­tion, media and oth­er groups are gid­dy with excite­ment at the ascen­sion of Miller to the Prime Minister’s perch for a sec­ond time in less than five years. Many are ecsta­t­ic that she has once again tak­en the reins of pow­er, assail­ing any­one who dare sug­gest she is unqual­i­fied for the job, their most read­i­ly avail­able label for dis­senters are sex­ist, and elit­ist. The truth is, Jamaica may very well not be the most sophis­ti­cat­ed coun­try to gov­ern, but irre­spec­tive of the lack of sophis­ti­ca­tion in a coun­try that size, she still is func­tion­al­ly inca­pable of mak­ing the best deci­sions that would give the coun­try max­i­mum chance in any giv­en sit­u­a­tion. Those who wor­ship at the altar of “SisterP” as she is called, have a legit­i­mate argu­ment to make when they cel­e­brate her for climb­ing from the bot­tom of the work­ing class, to the high­est elect­ed office in the land, that is no easy feat in Jamaica, a coun­try still steeped in post colo­nial caste demar­ca­tions. Noble though those argu­ments are they are not qual­i­fi­ca­tions for astute lead­er­ship at that level.

Our coun­try can ill afford to waste anoth­er 18 ¹⁄₂ years while the rest of the world march­es sted­fast­ly into first world sta­tus while we con­tin­ue with failed poli­cies of social exper­i­men­ta­tion. Miller though hav­ing won 42 seats to the LaborParty’s 21 must be very care­ful not to inter­pret her man­date as carte blanche to dis­re­spect the very peo­ple who put her in pow­er, as she clear­ly did with that in your face extra large exec­u­tive. She would be well advised that only forty eight per­cent of the elec­torate even both­ered to turn up at the polls , so the peo­ple who both­ered were those who were solid­ly in her cor­ner to begin with. Voter apa­thy this cycle stemmed large­ly from their dis­af­fec­tion with the actions of Golding who did sig­nif­i­cant harm to the par­ty of Bustamante .

See the achieve­ments of the Jamaica Labor Party at link pro­vid­ed below.

http://​www​.jamaical​abour​par​ty​.com/​b​a​se/

Sir Alexander Bustamante Edward Seaga

In order to take advan­tage of any sit­u­a­tion one must first under­stand that sit­u­a­tion, she hasn’t always demon­strat­ed that she under­stands the issues. After a tumul­tuous two terms in pow­er begin­ning in 1972 and cul­mi­nat­ing in 1980 Michael Manley was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly kicked out of office, for what every­one but the cultist that sup­port that par­ty will tell you was gross in mis­un­der­stand­ing of world affairs. Manley after his lop­sided 51 to 9 seat defeat refused to con­test the snap elec­tions the Labor par­ty of Edward Seaga called toward the end of 1983. This unprece­dent­ed move gave the labor par­ty con­trol of all seats in the Parliament, Seaga was forced to appoint 8 Independent Senators to form an oppo­si­tion of sorts because of the pos­ture of the enti­tled PNP led by Michael Manley, whose response was to label the gov­ern­ment “ bogus”

Norman Manley Michael Manley

Manley for the most part between 1983 and 1989 trav­elled and did speak­ing engage­ments in the United States and Britain. He returned to con­test the Elections of 1989 and was prompt­ly returned to Office after soft­en­ing his social­ist rhetoric. Manley’s win in 1989 was the begin­ning of an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ year unbro­ken hold on pow­er that saw him step­ping away and hand­ing the reins to his deputy Percival James Patterson because of ill-health.

• That 18 ½ year PNP run saw crime esca­lat­ing to a stag­ger­ing pro­por­tions, each year seem­ing worse than the one before record­ing an aver­age 1600 mur­ders annu­al­ly. This does not mean that Manley did not have an impres­sive pro­gres­sive agen­da of accomplishments.
• The low­er­ing of the min­i­mum vot­ing age to 18 years.
• The intro­duc­tion of equal pay for women.^[3]
• The intro­duc­tion of mater­ni­ty leave.^[3]
• The out­law­ing of the stig­ma of ille­git­i­ma­cy.^[3]
• The abo­li­tion of Masters and Servants Act.^[3]
• A Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act which pro­vid­ed work­ers and their trade unions with enhanced rights.^[3]
• The estab­lish­ment of the National Housing Trust, which pro­vid­ed “the means for most employed peo­ple to own their own homes,” and great­ly stim­u­lat­ed hous­ing con­struc­tion, with more than 40,000 hous­es built between 1974 and 1980.^[3]
• The intro­duc­tion of free edu­ca­tion at pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, and ter­tiary lev­els.^[4]
• The intro­duc­tion of sub­sidised meals, trans­porta­tion and uni­forms for school­child­ren from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds.^[4]
• The intro­duc­tion of spe­cial employ­ment pro­grammes.^[5]
• The intro­duc­tion of pro­grammes designed to com­bat illit­er­a­cy.^[5]
• Increases in pen­sions and poor relief.^[6]
• The intro­duc­tion of a work­er’s par­tic­i­pa­tion pro­gramme.^[7]
• The pas­sage of a new men­tal health law.^[8]
• The intro­duc­tion of the fam­i­ly court.^[8]
• An increase in youth train­ing.^[8]
• A reform of local gov­ern­ment tax­a­tion.^[8]
• An upgrad­ing of hos­pi­tals.^[9]
• The intro­duc­tion of free health care for all Jamaicans.^[9]
• The estab­lish­ment of health clin­ics and a para­med­ical sys­tem in rur­al areas.^[9]
• The estab­lish­ment of var­i­ous clin­ics to facil­i­tate access to med­ical drugs.^[9]
• A sig­nif­i­cant increase in spend­ing on edu­ca­tion.^[9]
• An increase in the num­ber of doc­tors and den­tists in the coun­try.^[9]
• An expan­sion of day care cen­tres.^[9]
• The intro­duc­tion of Project Lend Lease, an agri­cul­tur­al pro­gramme designed to pro­vide rur­al labour­ers and small hold­ers with more land through ten­an­cy.^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of a National Youth Service Programme for high school grad­u­ates to teach in schools, voca­tion­al train­ing, and the lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme.^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of com­pre­hen­sive rent and price con­trols.^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of sub­si­dies on basic food items (1973).^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of pro­tec­tion for work­ers against unfair dis­missal.^[7]
• ^{List tak­en from Wikipedia}

^{These are difficult times , excesses, waste, and pay for play can no longer be the order of the day, politicians cannot fatten themselves at the expense of taxpayers while further condemning generations yet unborn to a life of poverty. I urge this Administration to empower the Office of Contractor General in the interest of the Jamaica people. I will not hold my breath however for this administration to do anything but fatten itself and it’s friends as it has always done with a spirt of entitlement.} 

Is every­one around us fake and pho­ny? Putting up a front? Lying to themselves
and oth­ers? Is every­one real­ly rude,self- cen­tered, depressed, and just
down­right angry indi­vid­u­als? Even more impor­tant­ly… Am I?!!!??? For as long
as I could remem­ber these were the type of peo­ple I’d see and just emulated.
Thinking its ok to have an atti­tude, roll my eyes, and be sar­cas­tic because
some­one said “the wrong thing to me”, or some­thing I did­n’t want to hear (but
maybe need­ed to hear). I would think peo­ple who were “hap­py” all the time were
lying to them­selves or thought they were bet­ter than me ( since of course at the
time I thought no one was bet­ter than me)! I would say to myself, when are they
going to snap? When are they going to go off because I can’t wait to see it. I
always was excit­ed to see the dra­ma it excit­ed me, I was like a drug addict
look­ing for my next fix. Well did I ever get a rude awak­en­ing when these people
nev­er went off, nev­er got angry, nev­er gave an atti­tude. As I got old­er I
under­stood more and more the world does not and will nev­er revolve around me (
nor does the sun or moon!) Its called grow up and mature. Pray more complain
less is what I learned, which is those “hap­py” peo­ple are tru­ly hap­py and have
plen­ty of joy. It may be more work to be nicer to peo­ple and not give an
atti­tude, but it feels bet­ter because who real­ly wants to be rude.… I DON’T!

By: Astarr Mahogany.

The sil­ly sea­son is here once more ‚accord­ing to the Jamaican papers Prime Minister Andrew Holness will report­ed­ly announce the date of the Elections on Sunday December 4^th. According to the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion elec­tion must be called by the Government , and must be held with­in three months of the dis­so­lu­tion of Parliament which itself has a life-span of five years. We fer­vent­ly hope that Jamaicans who are prone to vio­lence when the adren­a­line rush begins, will be able to con­trol them­selves from killing and maim­ing each oth­er, it would be too much for me to even both­er to expect matu­ri­ty from the bump heads that are up for elec­tion/re-elec­tion, from those at the top down to the young aspi­rants the rhetoric is the same inflamed bel­li­cose non­sense that we have all grown accus­tomed to, squash it please .

There is a lot in the news these days, the Leader of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion refus­es to walk with the new Prime Minister in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty toward the dis­man­tling of gar­risons, she claimed that a sym­bol walk will not enhance the process of dis­man­tling gar­risons, this may be true that a mere walk will not break down decades of men­tal brain­wash­ing, but Portia, can it real­ly hurt ?

DEBATES

Then there is the issue of debates , the Prime Minister said he want­ed to debate the oppo­si­tion leader, there has been much back and forth about this with Portia seem­ing to favor a team debate , at one point it seem there prob­a­bly would be no debates since they are not bound by law so to do, but from all indi­ca­tions Portia seem to have come out of hid­ing and has agreed to a series of three debates with Holness, this after the crit­i­cisms seemed to be get­ting loud­er that Portia real­ly was afraid to debate the younger well-edu­cat­ed Holness. We find this odd and less than kosher since Portia has been in rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics before Holness was born, but we may be wrong.

ACKEE THIEF GETS PRISON TIME

Also in the news is a mat­ter that all Jamaicans should be hap­py about , but pre­dictably many are cry­ing foul. A man who breached the secu­ri­ty of the grounds of King’s House the res­i­dence of the Governor General and stole ack­ees from a tree was sen­tenced to three months in jail by a judge. There are howls of con­dem­na­tion from sev­er­al quar­ters of the coun­try , not least of which is the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group Jamaicans for Justice and their char­la­tan leader Carolyn Gomes. They argue that the GG should inter­vene and grant clemen­cy to the con­vict­ed thief. The GG for his part has come out artic­u­lat­ing just under what con­di­tions he could inter­vene, which I will not go into here because I do not think any­one should inter­vene in the court’s deci­sion. For those who argue for lenien­cy by the GG, espe­cial­ly the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing JFJ liars, here’s a lit­tle bit of infor­ma­tion for you, you argue that you want an inde­pen­dent Judiciary yet when the Judiciary act inde­pen­dent­ly you want well placed peo­ple to inter­vene to free crim­i­nals( oonuh teefin fren) you cant’ have it both ways. What you real­ly want is a sys­tem that works the way you want it to work, when you want it to work, for whom you want it to work. Well that won’t work , we moved away from the British Monarchy a long time ago, we do not want any inter­fer­ence in the affairs of the courts by any­one, no more gov­ern­ing by decree, we now have a gov­ern­ment by consent.

Jamaica is a coun­try swim­ming in a cesspool of crime, not quite sure how to claw its way out of that morass, yet on the rare occa­sion that a crim­i­nal is pun­ished the crim­i­nal sym­pa­thiz­ers are out in full force con­demn­ing the courts for doing exact­ly what it should and with­in the frame­work that it has. One per­son com­ment­ed in anoth­er forum that there was no theft because the ack­ee was recov­ered at the scene , I asked him whether some­one who cuts his throat killing him, and is appre­hend­ed at the scene is guilty of mur­der? We Jamaicans are a spe­cial bunch, we refuse to allow facts or truth to get in the way of our opin­ions. As such many deci­sions are made in a knee-jerk man­ner with­out due dili­gence in think­ing them through. As if the calls for the ack­ee thief was not galling enough, the court has capit­u­lat­ed and grant­ed him bail, banana repub­lic any­one? You see I have no spe­cial beef with the ack­ee thief , what I have a prob­lem with are those who agi­tate for crim­i­nals, and the ensu­ing break­down in the jus­tice sys­tem that is beyond the scope of com­pre­hen­sion of those who agitate.

Lennox Campbell in the clown suit

Just recent­ly a Supreme Court Judge Lennox Campbell released a group of Cop killing mag­gots back onto the streets to kill more police offi­cers, sim­ply because he was inca­pable of empan­el­ing a jury, there is no prece­dent for Campbell’s actions and if allowed to stand it sets a dan­ger­ous mes­sage to the already too pow­er­ful crim­i­nal lawyers, frus­trate the process and the case gets thrown out of court.

For those who cry blue mur­der when the mur­der­ing scum bags are sent to meet their mak­ers , what do you think will hap­pen when cops see these punks again, do you think they will end up in a court of law, let me tell you, they will meet anoth­er kind of Judge, and that judge will have no sym­pa­thy, care­ful what you ask for.

Appeals court upholds bail for Patrick Powell.

As we have pre­dict­ed on this site the alleged killer of young Khajeel Mais, Patrick Powell would be released on bail . Powell who was grant­ed bail in the home cir­cuit court by judge Carol Beswick, but who remained in cus­tody because of a motion filed in the Appelate court by the pros­e­cu­tion, which object­ed to bail based on the fact that Powell had indeed fled the coun­try after killing 17 years old Mais as he rode in a cab to a fête being held at a promi­nent St Andrew High School.

Jamaican law clear­ly states that a sus­pect may be remand­ed in cus­tody if he/​she is a flight risk, mean­ing that per­son may not turn up for tri­al, or if the per­son may be a threat to poten­tial wit­ness­es. Powell demon­stra­bly is a clear and unequiv­o­cal flight risk , from what we hear he is an American cit­i­zen and he ran after the shoot­ing , he was lured back to the Island after one of his off­springs was arrest­ed on a seri­ous felony charge which was pend­ing. The Appeals Court now rules that Beswick did not act improperly.

THE BAIL ACT BE DAMMNED

Once again Jamaica’s mini gods have struck a blow for the con­nect­ed and well-heeled, but against the com­mon man when aggriev­ed, as we have sought to do we bring this to your atten­tion for your eval­u­a­tion and assim­i­lat­ing , you decide if these acts are in the best inter­est of Jamaica. Powell pic­tured here in hand­cuffs, not only ran from the coun­try after shoot­ing the young man but he brazen­ly refused to coöper­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tions, and refused to hand over the weapon which at the time of his arrest was report­ed­ly a licensed firearm. In any oth­er Country that would have land­ed him in prison straight away with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion of argu­ments from defense coun­sel, not so in Jamaica they let him out on the streets.We are well aware that law enforce­ment offi­cers are giv­en no respect in Jamaica so not coop­er­at­ing with the inves­ti­ga­tions is noth­ing, peo­ple who phys­i­cal­ly assault or wound offi­cers in the exe­cu­tion of their duties face no penal­ties, they are gen­er­al­ly sent home with­out even a conviction.

Since Jamaican Authorities refuse to uphold our laws it becomes expe­di­ent there­fore that we lob­by the Us State Department which sure­ly believe in the rule of law, and ask that they take a more detailed and seri­ous look at peo­ple com­ing out of Jamaica in the United States.Wit a view to ensur­ing that a more rig­or­ous and com­pre­hen­sive back­ground check be done to ensure that crim­i­nals who attack Jamaican offi­cers and com­mit oth­er crimes does not enter the United States to do the same , after all there is more than enough cas­es of these assaults hap­pen­ing to war­rant a seri­ous look by US author­i­ties. If change can­not hap­pen from with­in then we must ensure change hap­pen from without.

MIKE HENRY RESIGNS

glean­er photo.

Transport and works Minister Mike Henry has resigned in the recent rev­e­la­tions of gross cost over­runs and work report­ed­ly com­plet­ed to the tune of 23 mil­lion dol­lars yet those works are yet to be iden­ti­fied. damion.​mitchell@​gleanerjm.​com

This lat­est devel­ope­ment does not bode well for the rul­ing Jamaica Labor Party, Henry fol­lows close­ly behind Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding who stepped down over lin­ger­ing rum­blings and dis­con­tent from some quar­ters about his han­dling of the Christopher Coke extra­di­tion case. With Elections con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due soon and Prime Minister Andrew Holness desire to gain his own man­date, these devel­op­ments could not come at a worse time. Holness had just pulled to a vir­tu­al tie with the PNP in the polls , pri­mar­i­ly due to what vot­ers saw as his youth and per­ceived lack of ties to old school style politics.

Any momen­tum gained could eas­i­ly evap­o­rate for Holness if he fails to act quick­ly and deci­sive­ly to ensure that this mat­ter is aired out , with no inkling of coverup, but let­ting the chips fall where they may,. This is not the first time Mike Henry has been in the news as it relates to reck­less or extrav­a­gant spend­ing of tax­pay­ers money.

Vybz Kartel gets bail

Jamaica dance hall DJ Adija Palmer aka (vybz Kartel) who is in cus­tody charged with a whop­ping five mur­ders has been grant­ed bail by Supreme Court judge, Justice Bertram Morrison in rela­tion to the case involv­ing the mur­der of St. Catherine busi­ness­man, Barrington Burton. Bail was grant­ed in the sum of $3 million.

inter­est­ing­ly bail was grant­ed at an in cham­ber meet­ing between the judge and defense lawyers Tom Tavares Finson and Christian Tavares Finson. Palmer will be unable to take up the bail offer right away because of the oth­er cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es against him that are yet unre­solved. Of course reports indi­cate his lawyers are prepar­ing to take their win­ning argu­ments to the oth­er judge/​s in those mat­ters with a view to hav­ing him released on bail. You can then rea­son­ably con­clude that he will be out on the streets to direct­ly or through prox­ies threat­en and ter­ror­ize wit­ness­es involved in these pend­ing cases.

Great job Justice Bertram Morrison[sic] you have now entered the Jamaican judges hall of shame.

JamaJaJamaica’s elec­tions are called by the gov­ern­ment of the day and must be held with­in three months of the dis­so­lu­tion of Parliament which, itself, has a life-span of five years. Administratively, the coun­try is cur­rent­ly divid­ed into 60 con­stituen­cies, each hav­ing one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Parliament. Constituencies increased from 32 in 1944 to 45 for the 1959 elec­tions, then to 53 in 1967 and in 1976 to its present num­ber.maica’s elec­tions are called by the gov­ern­ment of the day and must be held with­in three months of the dis­so­lu­tion of Parliament which, itself, has a life-span of five years. Administratively, the coun­try is cur­rent­ly divid­ed into 60 con­stituen­cies, each hav­ing one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Parliament. Constituencies increased from 32 in 1944 to 45 for the 1959 elec­tions, then to 53 in 1967 and in 1976 to its present num­ber.ica’s elec­tions are called by the gov­ern­ment of the day and must be held with­in three months of the dis­so­lu­tion of Parliament which, itself, has a life-span of five years. Administratively, the coun­try is cur­rent­ly divid­ed into 60 con­stituen­cies, each hav­ing one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Parliament. Constituencies increased from 32 in 1944 to 45 for the 1959 elec­tions, then to 53 in 1967 and in 1976 to its present numJamaica’s elec­tions are called by the gov­ern­ment of the day and must be held with­in three months of the dis­so­lu­tion of Parliament which, itself, has a life-span of five years. Administratively, the coun­try is cur­rent­ly divid­ed into 60 con­stituen­cies, each hav­ing one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Parliament. Constituencies increased from 32 in 1944 to 45 for the 1959 elec­tions, then to 53 in 1967 and in 1976 to its present num

Today’s Jamaica Observer Cartoon shown to the right 

summed up suc­cinct­ly the modus Operandi of Jamaica’s Human Rights Organizations.

Anyone fol­low­ing my blogs will notice the dif­fer­ence in the way I char­ac­ter­ize them today.Generally I refer to them as crim­i­nal rights Organizations. I guess it required the satire of the car­toon­ist to bring me to actu­al­ly address them seri­ous­ly.The car­toon­ist used satire to show the dys­func­tion­al pri­or­i­ties of those agen­cies . There we see them run­ning to the defence of homo­sex­u­als and mur­der­ers (shat­tas) while the men­tal­ly hand­i­capped are total­ly ignored.Lets begin by look­ing at the role real human rights orga­ni­za­tions play in look­ing out for those who can­not speak for them­selves . One can­not overem­pha­size the need for inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions to be on guard against gov­ern­men­tal oppres­sion of peo­ple the world over, the val­ue of the work they do in secur­ing the rights of dis­pos­sessed , dis­placed, and dis­en­fran­chised is incal­cu­la­ble, and invalu­able.The United Nations com­mis­sion on human rights cov­ers the gamut of human rights abus­es irre­spec­tive of geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion. Other small­er agen­cies also do their share of heavy lift­ing in address­ing the bur­geon­ing array of ways peo­ple are abused . Enough can­not be said about those agen­cies that ded­i­cate their time to look at abuse and high­light them in an effort to make our world a bet­ter place , not just for us but for gen­er­a­tions to come.Jamaica like every­where else , has it’s share of chal­lenges. This blog com­mends any indi­vid­ual , or agency that steps up to the plate to defend the cause of rights and jus­tice for those who have no voice.We must how­ev­er also look at the pri­or­i­ties of those who pur­port to take on those chal­lenges local­ly. We must ask whose inter­est do they serve, if pub­lic sen­ti­ment is any indi­ca­tor we can read­i­ly agree they are an abject fail­ure.Every years Jamaican police report over 1600 homi­cides . This does not take into account the numer­ous cas­es of shoot­ing vic­tims. Rapes, Arson where entire fam­i­lies are dis­placed, car­nal abuse, and a pletho­ra of oth­er seri­ous crimes that affect the lives of Jamaicans dai­ly.When homi­cides are looked at with­in the prism of the con­se­quences they wreck on soci­ety it is mind-bog­gling. The rip­ple effect on soci­ety can­not be denied in terms of trau­ma and down­ward drag on scarce resources of the state and Non gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions.In many cas­es the vic­tim killed is the sole bread-win­ner, in the form of a father ‚who hap­pens to be a cab dri­ver or some­one engaged in work try­ing to take care of their fam­i­lies. This leaves a des­ti­tute fam­i­ly that has no viable means of sup­port, in addi­tion to hav­ing to deal with the trau­ma of loos­ing a loved one vio­lent­ly and need­less­ly.This gives well-inten­tioned indi­vid­u­als and agen­cies a nev­er-end­ing list of indi­vid­u­als and groups to give sup­port to. In addi­tion any such rights groups have the gov­ern­ment of the day to scru­ti­nize, hold­ing their feet to the fire , mak­ing sure no one’s rights are vio­lat­ed. These are mon­u­men­tal tasks that needs the involve­ment of more of us.Those who are vic­tims of crime, deserve to be at the head of the line for help and sup­port. They deserve our sup­port and wher­ev­er pos­si­ble a hand-up in get­ting back on their feet.Conversely, those who choose to destroy the most pre­cious gift we have received from God , the gift of life, must be the last to be rep­re­sent­ed , and looked after. Even then, look­ing out for their rights must walk hand in hand, with a mix of reha­bil­i­ta­tive options , but a heavy dose of puni­tive sanc­tions.Why then does the rights groups in Jamaica choose to rep­re­sent the rights of crim­i­nals?Are we to con­clude there is not enough spot­light to be hogged if we ded­i­cate our efforts and atten­tion to the plight of the poor and dis­pos­sessed? Is it fair to argue there is more noto­ri­ety to be gained by attack­ing agents of the state, some of whom deserve the attack?Is it fair to ask whose inter­est is served by the ener­gies Jamaica’s rights groups expend in their defence of crim­i­nals? I will con­cede not all crimes are equal, not all crimes are pre-med­i­tat­ed, and as such , not all crimes deserve the same sanc­tion. Two guys involved in a fist fight , one punch­es the oth­er, he falls over hits his head on a stone and dies. This is a case of homi­cide, how­ev­er it was not pre-med­i­tat­ed, and as such does not war­rant the penal­ty of cap­i­tal mur­der. It how­ev­er does not pre­clude him from fac­ing the con­se­quences of manslaugh­ter since the act he was involved in (fist fight) was an ille­gal act ‚and could have led to some­thing more seri­ous, as it did . This crime is marked­ly dif­fer­ent from some­one who forms part of a group, or who is indi­vid­u­al­ly involved in pre­med­i­tat­ed crim­i­nal­i­ty. Murdering and com­mit­ing oth­er felonies as a way of life.When the two sce­nar­ios are eval­u­at­ed I could clear­ly see how some­one or an agency would argue on behalf of the guy who finds him­self in trou­ble with the law because he was involved in a fist fight.What I do not under­stand is , what is the ratio­nale for the defence of the mur­der­ing despots that destroy lives, and fam­i­lies?Why do they fudge num­bers , and plain lie, to defend known urban ter­ror­ists, and demo­nize cops?These are the ques­tions Jamaicans must ask them­selves before they jump on band­wag­ons, whose side are you on ?mike beck­les:have your say: