Category Archives: Other news

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Happy Birthday Jamaica:

coat of arms

Jamaica turned 49 years old as an inde­pen­dent Nation on August 6th 2011. True to form our peo­ple engaged in a series of activ­i­ties, and sport­ing events to mark the Country’s Independence.

Jamaicans have a euniqe abil­i­ty to make some­thing out of noth­ing , so it was not hard to imag­ine the var­i­ous activ­i­ties all around the coun­try to mark this event. On Sunday a group of church lead­ers , led by the rev­erend Al Miller of (dudus fame) led a march of chris­tians and well wish­ers through the com­mu­ni­ty of Lauriston just out­side the old Capital of Spanish Town. The pur­pose of the march was to give hope to res­i­dents of that com­mu­ni­ty crip­pled by fear, fear of a series of behead­ings that occured over a peri­od of just one week . During which three peo­ple were ruth­less­ly decap­i­tat­ed .The group of marchers , dressed in black report­ed­ly stopped at the gates of res­i­dents to pray and offer com­fort to them.

I com­mend rev­erend Miller as exten­sive­ly as I crit­i­cized him in the Christopher dudus Coke case. Any act of com­mu­ni­ty must be com­mend­ed, I will not begin to sec­ond guess or mon­day morn­ing quar­ter ‑back the actions of any­one who is so involved. As such I salute those res­i­dents who took the ini­ta­ti­ave to march for their com­mu­ni­ties and by exten­sion the country.

I salute the police for arrest­ing and bring­ing 4 sus­pects into cus­tody in rela­tion­ship to the afore­men­tioned killings.

As I have indi­cat­ed in pre­vi­ous blogs this new trend which strikes ter­ror into the hearts of res­i­dents , may have at it’s geni­sis a pos­i­tive devel­ope­ment. I have pre­vi­ous­ly the­riosed that the unend­ing sup­ply of bul­lets may have been dis­rupt­ed. This I the­o­rized is at the heart of this more nean­derthal method of killing , hav­ing spo­ken to sources on the ground ‚this the­o­ry have been some­what confirmed.

Are the Jamaican Police look­ing at this and for­mu­lat­ing a plan for­ward? As I com­mend them for the arrests I must state my absoloute lack of faith that those arrest­ed will even­tu­al­ly be held respon­si­ble for those killings. E ven if they are miracelous­ly found guilty in a Jamaican court, the sen­tence met­ed out to them will be a slap on the wrist and they will be back on the streets in no time.

Lets exam­ine what can be accom­plishe by this and oth­er march­es. They can poten­tial­ly assauge fears , com­fort the bereaved and trau­ma­tized, as well as show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty. none of these things, though admirable, will pre­vent the next killing, whether by decap­i­ta­tion or otherwise.

The les­son this and all com­mu­ni­ties must learn is that shield­ing crim­i­nals , fail­ing to report crim­i­nal activ­i­ties , and choos­ing the side of evil over that of the rule of law, does have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for your health.

There are var­i­ous Organizations oper­at­ing in Jamaica that pur­port to be ded­i­cat­ed to Human Rights. Here are three of them.

Amnesty International: British based with Offices around the world .

Jamaicans for Justice: head­ed by Carolyn Gomes. Given a National honor.

Families against State Terrorism; head­ed by Yvonne Sobers Mcalla: State terrorism?

The most basic and fun­da­men­tal right a per­son has , is the right to life. Neither group was present yes­ter­day , march­ing with those who sup­port the rule of law and those trau­ma­tized by these events. And do you know why they weren’t there?? There is non pub­lic­i­ty to be gained , if the agents of the state are not involved they do not care, what they care about is per­se­cut­ing inno­cent hard work­ing Police Officers and mem­bers of Our Military who risk life and limb to make sure those fraude­lent imposters are safe. As nau­se­at­ed as I am at that con­cept they do have the right to life. And as such we will all have to deal with their hypocrisy and lies.

Jamaicans have a choice to make, the answer does not lie in prayer alone, when we pary we must acti­vate the response by our par­tic­i­pa­tion. God does the big things , we have to do the small things, if women,/mothers wives/​girlfriends /​sisters/​neices/​aunts , con­tin­ue to shield and lie to pro­tect the crim­i­nal men in their fam­i­lies noth­ing will change . As long as a man’s val­ue is deter­mined by how much mon­ey he can give to a girl he likes, then each and every young man will be forced to show his worth and sat­is­fy his lust by rob­bing and mur­der­ing to get those dollars.

As a for­mer Prime Minister infa­mous­ly stat­ed quote “man fi hav nuff gal” it brings into sharp focus the putrid min­d­est that is at the heart of those killigs.

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WAS INDEPENDENCE WORTH IT? Part 3 :


Spurred on by what seem to be a new lev­el of deprav­i­ty in the crim­i­nal under­world , Prime Minister Bruce Golding sug­gest­ed that hang­ing be resumed in Jamaica. The Prime Minister was react­ing to the spate of decap­i­ta­tion that occurred with­in a short peri­od of time. At least two of the vic­tims seemed to have been just ordi­nary Jamaicans whose only trans­gres­sions were that they spoke to mem­bers of the media. The PM whilst mak­ing the sug­ges­tion allud­ed to the debate that was sure to fol­low, I took the lib­er­ty to sug­gest to him in these blogs that there would be howls of con­dem­na­tion from the reg­u­lar quar­ters, rather than a debate.

It is now clear to rea­son­able peo­ple, that irre­spec­tive of the crimes being com­mit­ted ‚there are cer­tain ele­ments in Jamaica that will not be com­fort­able with any form of pun­ish­ment for those crimes. I did use the word “pun­ish­ment” , crim­i­nals should be pun­ished . I am more than a lit­tle pissed at those who lib­er­al­ly argue that what­ev­er course of action soci­ety take regard­ing crim­i­nals, should sole­ly be refor­ma­tive and of reha­bil­i­ta­tion. There must be with­in those frame­works an ele­ment of pun­ish­ment. We should not be in the busi­ness of reward­ing crim­i­nals, reform is reward clothed in a fan­cy package.

The Prime Minister must now decide by his actions , crit­ics be dammed , whether his com­ments were just a knee jerk response to the inci­dents, or he is pre­pared to use his high office to ensure that Jamaica’s laws are upheld. any inac­tion on this sub­ject must now be seen as a con­tin­ued capit­u­la­tion to Carolyn Gomes and Amnesty International, an indi­vid­ual and a for­eign body ‚over the clear and unequiv­o­cal wish­es of the vast major­i­ty of Jamaica’s 2.8 mil­lion people.

The major­i­ty rules in a democ­ra­cy, we pur­port to have a democ­ra­cy , if that be the case the views of the major­i­ty should be respect­ed and adhered to, this is not about some­thing that is yet to leg­is­lat­ed. This is an issue of car­ry­ing out the dic­tates of set­tled law,not capit­u­lat­ing to minor­i­ty views or for­eign Agencies . Agencies that have absolute­ly no pow­er in dic­tat­ing how laws gets enforced with­in their own country.

Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean Islands all, have been occu­pied , and raped by European pow­ers ‚with­in the Caribbean, our African peo­ple who forms the vast major­i­ty of the inhab­i­tants, have ben forced to speak English, French, Dutch,Spanish and even Portugee’s, none of our peo­ple were allowed to con­tin­ue with our moth­er tongues from Africa. Once the occu­piers were done with their pil­lag­ing and dom­i­na­tion they were all too hap­py to cut the apron strings set­ting us adrift ‚as was the case with Jamaica’s sup­posed Independence from England.

There are some in Jamaica that engage in revi­sion­ist his­to­ry, per­pet­u­at­ing the myth that Jamaica had achieved a real coup in gain­ing Independence from England. The truth is,Jamaica was going to be let go whether we want­ed to go or not . England was by then a shell of its for­mer Colonial glo­ry and was in no posi­tion to be patron to an incon­se­quen­tial Island that was not bring­ing noth­ing into the Royal coffers.

My point is, as a result of the fore­gone, Jamaica must embrace its own iden­ti­ty, forge ahead under a new char­ter which must include con­sti­tu­tion­al reform , we are either an inde­pen­dent nation or we are not .

There can be no pledge of alle­giance to our sov­er­eign lady the queen.

I call on the Prime Minister to enforce the laws and let the chips fall where they may , crit­ics be dammed. On this issue the major­i­ty is with you.

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Dow Falls 512 In Steepest Decline Since ’08 Crisis :AP

Gripped by fear of a new reces­sion, the stock mar­ket suf­fered its worst day Thursday since the finan­cial cri­sis in the fall of 2008. The Dow Jones indus­tri­al aver­age fell more than 500 points, its ninth-steep­est decline.The sell-off wiped out the Dow’s remain­ing gains for 2011. It put the Dow and broad­er stock index­es into what investors call a cor­rec­tion — down 10 per­cent from their highs in the spring.“We are con­tin­u­ing to be bom­bard­ed by wor­ries about the glob­al econ­o­my,” said Bill Stone, the chief invest­ment strate­gist for PNC Financial.(AP)

For months the talk­ing heads and pun­dits have been talk­ing of a poten­tial dou­ble dip reces­sion, cable net­works have yapped about the poten­tial for a dou­ble dip. I had not heard the term before the heads on the cable chan­nels kept using it over and over and over , like a bad song until it wakes me out of my sleep, dou­ble dip , dou­ble dip.

I have to con­fess I am not a Harvard MBA , but I believe in self ful­fil­ing proph­esy. The talk­ing heads have final­ly talked us into anoth­er reces­sion. There is admit­ted­ly over a tril­lion dol­lars in sur­plus funds avail­able in the busi­ness sec­tor, that could poten­tial­ly hire a lot of new work­ers , this has not mate­ri­al­ized despite indi­ca­tions that most major cor­po­ra­tions are doing extreme­ly well. Even com­pa­nies like General Motors that recieved a hand up from the President have paid back the major­i­ty of what they were loaned, and are show­ing more than antic­i­pat­ed sur­plus­es in their bal­ance sheets . To GM’s cred­it they have been expand­ing and that means they are hir­ing more Americans.

The Banking sec­tor is slight­ly dif­fer­ent, there is some­thing sin­is­ter going on here , not only are they not lend­ing despite the record prof­its they are rak­ing in , it seem there is a con­cert­ed effort to run out President Obama’s term in office. There is ample evi­dence to sup­port the Administration’s argu­ments that we have seen the worst, yet despite all of those assur­ances, and hav­ing got­ten past the Republican man­u­fac­tured cri­sis of a debt ceil­ing games­man­ship, today there is the mam­moth sell­off of stocks.

Granted this is noth­ing new,and may not be attrib­ut­able to any sin­gle indi­ca­tor , it does gives rea­son for pause and intro­spec­tion. Most major cor­po­ra­tions in this coun­try give mon­ey to both poli­it­i­cal par­ties , with most giv­ing the lion’s share to the repub­li­can party.The President cam­paigned on a plat­form of repeal­ing the Bush tax cuts, he has kept that argu­ment going through­out his pres­i­den­cy thus far. The repub­li­cans on the oth­er hand have stead­fast­ly refused to allow those tax-breaks to be rolled back to the Clinton years.

The rigid refusal of the tea par­ty activists in the house of repre­san­ta­tives has lit­er­al­ly pre­vent­ed any debate for those roll backs to be done , make no mis­take this would result in hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars in the trea­sury over a peri­od of time,this mon­ey would come from peo­ple who do not need the tax breaks and should be asked to share in the sac­ri­fice for the greater good. Republicans have stead­fast­ly refused to allow any debate on the issue of repeal­ing the Bush tax cuts, mak­ing the false argu­ments that there should be no tax­a­tion on any­one in a time of a reces­sion when the econ­o­my needs to grow . This argu­ment has just been turned on it’s head in light of this sell off , the super rich still have their bil­lions, yet they are not hir­ing, and they are actu­al­ly pulling their mon­ey from the market.

The ques­tion is , Is there a con­spir­a­cy to destroy the pres­i­den­cy of Obama irre­spec­tive of the cost to the coun­try ? do not put this past them, many in the bussi­ness sec­tor have pub­licly stat­ed their dis­dain for the pres­i­dent and his poli­cies , poli­cies they char­ac­ter­ize as social­ist. Their under­stand­ing of social­ism is poli­cies that takes care of our sick and indi­gent, the elder­ly and mak­ing sure our chil­dren have schools to attend.

We will watch this and get back to you on this very impor­tant sub­ject, our very exis­tence may very well depend on it.

mike beckles:

have your say:

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SCRAP METAL SAGA CONTINUES:

The saga involv­ing the scrap met­al trade in Jamaica con­tin­ues , this time with new play­ers get­ting involved . As is cus­tom­ary in Jamaica noth­ing works well, so if a pol­i­cy deci­sion is tak­en that actu­al­ly is the cor­rect one, one can rest assured there will be thun­der­ous howls of con­dem­na­tion from all quar­ters . The lat­est play­er to enter the non- debate is Earl Witter the Public Defender.

Now just for trans­paren­cy, let me declare, I was nev­er a fan of that office, and I am absolute­ly not a fan of Earl Witter the head of that Agency. Let me clar­i­fy my rea­sons for feel­ing this way.

(1) The office of Public Defender is a dupli­ca­tion of Government func­tions , a drain on the mea­gre resources of the State.

Jamaica has a Justice and Attorney General’s Office ‚that Office is des­ig­nat­ed to take care of the inter­est of the Public.

Earl Witter ? well some con­sid­ered him a good Lawyer , not me this Guy was at best a mediocre oper­a­tive , and this comes from watch­ing him in the Court Rooms of the cor­po­rate area for almost a decade.

Witter , not will­ing to be left off the pub­lic­i­ty train, grand­ly announced that his office would be launch­ing a probe of the Ministers actions .

Here’s the sto­ry cour­tesy of the Jamaica Observer:

PUBLIC Defender Earl Witter yes­ter­day described as unfair the Government’s deci­sion to shut down the local scrap met­al trade, and said his office would be embark­ing on a month-long inves­ti­ga­tion to deter­mine whether the ban is jus​ti​fied​.At a press con­fer­ence at his Harbour Street office in Kingston, Witter con­tend­ed that the move had put legit­i­mate deal­ers out-of-pock­et and that find­ings from his probe would be used to help the author­i­ties cor­rect prob­lems being expe­ri­enced in the indus­try.(Jamaica Observer)

I did tell you this Witter was mediocre right ? well here“s the evi­dence from our friend Jamaica’s Public Defender Earl Witter. If Mister Witter has already con­clud­ed that the actions of the Minister of Industry and Commerce is as char­ac­ter­ized, “unfair” why both­er with an enquiry? , The cor­rect thing to do would be to send a let­ter to Minister Tufton , detail­ing his con­tention and affix the sug­ges­tions he sup­pos­ed­ly have, that will fix the prob­lem as he asserts. This would save valu­able tax dol­lars for the peo­ple’s business.

Secondly , how can any per­son hav­ing an under­stand­ing of how Investigations are done, con­clude with any cer­tain­ty ‚that the inves­ti­ga­tions would last for a spe­cif­ic peri­od of time , one month , accord­ing to Witter ? But Witter was­n’t done.

We are inter­est­ed in the hon­est deal­er, gath­er­er, and hon­est exporter who plays by the rules and who may have been, by this act of the min­is­ter, shaft­ed. And we do that because we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to look into this whole busi­ness,” said Witter, adding that van­dals must be infect­ed with a “dis­ease of the mind”.

“A way has to be found to sup­press effec­tive­ly that kind of activ­i­ty, and under our present sys­tem of gov­ern­ment it is the duty of the Government to do that and to put in place the sys­tem which can work the results that we seek,” he said.

Witter said that he had been in dia­logue with mem­bers of the Scrap Metal Federation — which rep­re­sents licensed exporters and deal­ers — and said that the organ­i­sa­tion has decid­ed to seek legal recourse inde­pen­dent­ly. He, nonethe­less, extend­ed his invi­ta­tion to the body, but not­ed that his pri­ma­ry con­cern was with regards to the gatherers.

“We desire to let it be known to any plain and hon­est deal­er who com­plains to this office that by being put out of busi­ness… by this deci­sion tak­en by the hon­ourable min­is­ter, has the right to com­plain to the pub­lic defend­er, who has the right to inves­ti­gate his com­plaint and seek the appro­pri­ate rem­e­dy,” Witter said.

According to Witter, the find­ings of the inves­ti­ga­tion will be sub­mit­ted to the indus­try min­istry with­in weeks.

In the mean­time, Witter said that he will also be inves­ti­gat­ing the process­es employed by the police in the seizure of goods from hawk­ers and ped­dlers in the Corporate Area. According to him, con­fis­cat­ed items are not being appro­pri­ate­ly logged and secured, and thus unlaw­ful­ly end up in the homes of individuals.

“As regards to these per­ish­ables, what we would be seek­ing to find out from the police is, what sys­tems they have enforced regard­ing the des­ti­na­tion. Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​W​i​t​t​e​r​-​t​o​-​p​r​o​b​e​-​l​e​g​i​t​i​m​a​c​y​-​o​f​-​s​c​r​a​p​-​m​e​t​a​l​-​t​r​a​d​e​-​s​h​u​t​d​o​w​n​_​9​3​6​9​6​3​0​#​i​x​z​z​1​U​4​X​9​N​0k6

Not only has Witter con­clud­ed the out­come of the Investigations not yet done, con­clud­ed how long it would take , with­out know­ing the dynam­ics of whats at stake ‚he already has the solu­tion to the prob­lem ‚a prob­lem that is a source of great con­tem­pla­tion for the rest of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple with­in the country.
This twit Witter, if he is to be tak­en seri­ous, is ask­ing us to believe that his con­tem­plat­ed actions on behalf of scrap met­al gath­er­ers, deal­ers and exporters will be far removed from the actions of min­is­ter Tufton, in call­ing a com­mon sense halt to the trade. The actions of the Minister in this regard was a cor­rect first step in the right direc­tion , one which the major­i­ty of the coun­try applauds, and agrees with.
All of this is lost on Witter who have no under­stand­ing of the con­cept ‚” the greater good” , This lev­el of luna­cy is not conifed or unique to the pub­lic defend­er , it does per­me­ate a vast major­i­ty of the Jamaican psyche.
In a Democracy the well-being of all must be con­sid­ered , how­ev­er the well-being of those who oper­ate at the tri-tiered sys­tem of the scrap met­al trade have seen their inter­ests trumped by the National good. And cor­rect­ly so.
Each and every play­er involved in the scrap met­al trade in Jamaica must have availed him/​herself to the fact that they are involved in an unsus­tain­able indus­try , no dis­re­spect to that indus­try , but it real­ly is not an industry.
The scrap met­al busi­ness is hus­tle that offers those at the low­est end the oppor­tu­ni­ty to scav­enge the prod­uct, pass it on to a col­lec­tor, who pass­es it to the exporter . At nei­ther of the three lev­els is there any con­cern as to where the prod­uct comes from. That is the nature of the trade, all involved are con­ver­sant that it is a finite hus­tle, under­stand­ing that there would be a time when there is no more scrap met­al just lying around.
This means that those at the scav­enger lev­el would turn to steal­ing and rip­ping the Country’s ques­tion­able Infrastructure apart.
As a small busi­ness own­er I can relate to what it must feel like to lose one’s income, par­tic­u­lar­ly if one is an oper­a­tive that plays by the rules. Now I am unaware of what it means to play by the rules in Jamaica , or in any area of dai­ly life, as the lines are so blurred and in some instances non-existent.
Just yes­ter­day I watched a video of a Government Official giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny in a Parliamentary com­mit­tee regard­ing the acqui­si­tion of lands for the con­struc­tion of new roads. I was stunned to dis­cov­er that there was real­ly no clear path­way , with­out equiv­o­ca­tion, sim­i­lar to the laws the United States has called “Imminent Domain” that estab­lish­es the Governments right to devel­op the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture, pay­ing fair mar­ket val­ue to land own­ers for their prop­er­ty when the greater good is at stake, mean­ing putting in roads, rail lines, etc that ben­e­fits the entire coun­try. The Government Official admit­ted there were instances where con­struc­tion began with­out the com­pen­sa­tion process com­plet­ed. but I digressed.
The Country is hav­ing a hard time adher­ing to tough dra­con­ian mea­sures insti­tut­ed by the inter­na­tion­al Fund , just so it can draw down on funds to ful­fill its oblig­a­tions, funds by the way that comes with huge rates of Interest . There is no mon­ey to hon­or pre-exist­ing wage con­tracts , yet there are numer­ous dupli­ca­tion in sup­posed Government ser­vices. The Office of Public defend­er being one of them.
Rather than strength­en the Office of Justice and Attorney General they Authorities in Jamaica went ahead and cre­at­ed anoth­er Agency that is an addi­tion­al bur­den on the poor taxpayers .
So tax­pay­ers are left with anoth­er Agency to fund and noth­ing to show for it, beyond grand stand­ing , pos­tur­ing, and egomania..I will­post here for your ben­e­fit the infor­ma­tion regard­ing the cre­ation of that Office. Ask your­selves , did this impov­er­ished Country need this Duplication.

The office of Public Defender is a com­mis­sion of the Parliament, estab­lished by statute,

the Public Defender (Interim) Act, 1999

(i) (‘the Act’). It is man­dat­ed to pro­tectt and enforce the rights of “cit­i­zens” (ii) (My empha­sis).The Public Defender is appoint­ed by the Governor General after con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. He holds office until the age of sev­en­ty years. His sta­tus (includ­ing remu­ner­a­tion and terms of tenure) is equiv­a­lent to that of a Judge of the Supreme Court. In par­tic­u­lar, he may only be removed from office by rea­son of inabil­i­ty to dis­charge his func­tions due to infir­mi­ty of mind or body or, for mis­be­hav­iour. The process of removal com­mences with a res­o­lu­tion of both cham­bers of the Parliament (House of Representatives and Senate) that the ques­tion of removal be inves­ti­gat­ed. Thereafter, the Governor General appoints a tri­bunal of per­sons who hold (or have held) office as a judge of a court of unlim­it­ed juris­dic­tion in civ­il and crim­i­nal mat­ters, in some part of the Commonwealth. The tri­bunal is required to enquire into the mat­ter, report its find­ings of fact to the Governor General and, advise him whether the Public Defender ought to be removed from office; in which case “the Governor-General shall by instru­ment under the Broad Seal” remove him from office. (iii) He is not, at any time after he ceas­es to hold office, (whether by removal or oth­er­wise), eli­gi­ble for appoint­ment in the pub­lic ser­vice. Subject to the approval of a Commission of the Legislature (iv) the Public Defender may appoint and employ at such remu­ner­a­tion and on such terms as he pre­scribes, such offi­cers and agents as he con­sid­ers nec­es­sary, to assist him in the prop­er per­for­mance of his func­tions under the Act. (v) By the fore­go­ing pro­vi­sions, inter alia, the inde­pen­dence and secu­ri­ty of tenure of the Office are insti­tu­tion­al­ized. The Public Defender is there­fore appro­pri­ate­ly equipped to com­mit, fear­less­ly and unwa­ver­ing­ly, to the con­sci­en­tious dis­charge of his man­date. (vi) The Public Defender replaced an ear­li­er com­mis­sion, that of ‘Ombudsman’, cre­at­ed by an Act of 1978 (vii) (‘the 1978 Act’) and which, clas­si­cal­ly, was man­dat­ed to inves­ti­gate com­plaints of mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion by pub­lic author­i­ties, defined (viii) to mean a Ministry, depart­ment or agency of Government or the police ser­vices. (ix) The juris­dic­tion and func­tions of the Ombudsman were pre­scribed in Part III of the 1978 Act. ( 9 page doc­u­ment which may be found online in pdf format).

As long as Jamaicans are blind­ed by their con­tin­ued igno­rance and over affil­i­a­tion with the green and orange gangs that run the coun­try these dupli­ca­tions will con­tin­ue and the grand­stand­ing by the likes of Earl Witter will con­tin­ue, actions that serves no pur­pose oth­er than to appease those who cre­at­ed him in the first instance. Once again Jamaica loses.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

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Sights From The Ulster County Fair:

I attend­ed the Ulster County Fair in New Paltz yes­ter­day August 2nd with my fam­i­ly. Having vis­it­ed the Duchess County Fair every year I was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed at the Ulster Fair. Truthfully the prod­uct did not live up to the billing.I could­n’t wait to get there , with cam­era slung around my neck, I was like a child on a field trip. unfor­tu­nate­ly there was not much to see , no real exot­ic ani­mals, not much in the way of domes­tic ani­mals either.

One great pos­i­tive about the Ulster County Fair that I must men­tion is the price, Irrespective of the amount of patrons in a vehi­cle, the admis­sion was the same $40.00, which also includ­ed admis­sion to all the rides .This was a wel­come pos­i­tive for me in these try­ing finan­cial times.

The truth is There was real­ly not much for me to shoot. The pig race end­ed as quick­ly as it start­ed, I felt like a loos­er cran­ing my neck to catch sight of a 5 sec­ond pig race ‚so I did not both­er wait­ing around. I uploaded a few shots for your view­ing ‚hope you are not offend­ed by the sight of stuffed ani­mals killed sole­ly for human ogling.

In the end the Ulster County Fair is a Duchess County Fair wannabe. Being a coun­try boy, I got sucked in by the hype of the Ulster Fair billing , implor­ing patrons to come to a real coun­try Fair.

I left feel­ing that Fair would have been much bet­ter off in a dis­tant Country.

mike beck­les:

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ARE YOU MAD?

Dr. Fred Hickling has char­ac­ter­ized the Jamaican soci­ety large­ly as mad. This assess­ment drew howls of con­dem­na­tion from many Jamaicans who weren’t too keen on being char­ac­ter­ized as mad . There was also the pletho­ra of high­fa­lutin  the­sis’ writ­ten, that makes sense only to the writ­ers , all in con­dem­na­tion of Dr. Hickling.

As a lay per­son , not sure whether I am mad or not, I was quite pre­pared to let the two sides of the mad debate duke it out ‚Hopefully the peo­ple who feel we are not real­ly all mad, would win the debate , that I could take back to my wife and say ha ha, see I told you I was not mad! She some­times tries to con­vince me I am a crazy Jamaican. She thinks the mad­ness did not get passed down to her, despite the fact her par­ents are Jamaicans. She was born in the United States, so she gets to dis­par­age me as a crazy Jamaican, while rev­el­ling in the good Jamaican val­ues her par­ents impart­ed into her. I keep telling her that the two are an oxy­moron, she disagrees.

Anyway after real­ly look­ing at what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica I might have to admit I’m not sure what to think, absent any oth­er expla­na­tion, I’m sure this will invoke a lot of crow­ing from the wife , but there may be no way around it. Seriously though let’s take a look at some of what Dr. Hickling said.

Professor Fredrick Hickling and clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Vanessa Paisley have con­clud­ed that per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der is preva­lent in Jamaica.Their find­ing is con­tained in a sci­en­tif­ic paper pre­pared for pre­sen­ta­tion at the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture in Seattle, Washington, in June. The paper is titled ‘Population Prevalence of Personality Disorder in Jamaica’. some­thing is wrong . According to Professor Hickling, a per­son would be char­ac­terised as hav­ing a per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der if he or she is show­ing signs of a com­bi­na­tion of the fol­low­ing fac­tors: pow­er-man­age­ment strug­gles, psy­cho­sex­u­al dys­func­tion, and depen­den­cy issues​.Data from the four-stage, strat­i­fied ran­dom-sam­pling method, sug­gest that the rate of per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der — approx­i­mate­ly 40 per cent — in the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion is marked­ly high­er than the inter­na­tion­al­ly iden­ti­fied rate of six-15 per cent. “We have to recog­nise that some­thing is wrong and not brush things under the car­pet,” said Paisley.The sci­en­tif­ic sam­pling was car­ried out by Don Anderson & Associates on a rep­re­sen­ta­tive pop­u­la­tion sam­ple of 1,506 Jamaicans age 18 to 64 years. Extrapolation of the data reveals that near­ly one mil­lion per­sons in Jamaica suf­fer from per­son­al­i­ty disorders.Hickling and Paisley believe the find­ings could explain the high risk of behav­iour­al dys­func­tion in the Jamaican population.“Extrapolating these find­ings to our soci­ety, there is no won­der about the high rates of mur­der and vio­lence, rape, and oth­er sex­u­al atroc­i­ties, and crimes such as theft and prae­di­al lar­ce­ny that are crip­pling our soci­ety,” the aca­d­e­mics not­ed in a joint let­ter to The Gleaner pub­lished ear­li­er this month.According to Hickling, if the find­ings don’t influ­ence pub­lic pol­i­cy, “then we are doomed to repeat­ing the same mis­takes of the last 100 years or since Independence”.He is con­vinced that many of the crime strate­gies employed by the secu­ri­ty forces have failed because this sci­en­tif­ic aspect of the crime prob­lem has gone unad­dressed. “Introspection and leg­is­la­tion will not solve this prob­lem. We will con­tin­ue to fail,” Hickling said.Paisley agrees. “We have a fail­ure in our men­tal-health pro­vi­sion. It is hin­der­ing our abil­i­ty to move forward.“Policies should be geared towards the train­ing of prac­ti­tion­ers and imple­men­ta­tion of effec­tive psy­chother­a­peu­tic moda-lities that can be used to treat per­sons with the disorder.“Proper screen­ing meth­ods should be imple­ment­ed in men­tal health treat­ment facil­i­ties, includ­ing screen­ing of per­sons in sub­stance-abuse facil­i­ties,” she added.

des­tig­ma­ti­sa­tion

Paisley also argued that pub­lic-edu­ca­tion pro­grammes util­is­ing all forms of media should be used to enlight­en the pub­lic about the var­i­ous men­tal-health issues that are preva­lent in the soci­ety and the treat­ment options that are available.“Campaigns should also push to fur­ther pro­mote the des­tig-mati­sa­tion of men­tal ill­ness in Jamaica,” Paisley said.Hickling point­ed to the Cuban and Singaporean exam­ples. “Cuba has imple­ment­ed behav­iour-mod­i­fi­ca­tion tech­niques. Many of them are said to be dra­con­ian. People are crit­i­cal of the Cuban mod­el, but it is effec​tive​.In Singapore, if you spit on the street, you are locked up and put into a behav­iour-mod­i­fi­ca­tion programme.“However, in Jamaica, “the crime plans we have ‚catch a small num­ber of peo­ple and many of them get away,” said Hickling.The pro­fes­sor believes behav­iour-mod­i­fi­ca­tion pro­grammes, crime plans, and leg­isla­tive issues need to go hand-in-hand if Jamaica is to tame the crime mon­ster. “The sever­i­ty of treat­ment and leg­isla­tive pro­gramme needs to be depen­dent upon the sever­i­ty of the prob­lem and the lev­els of the peo­ple who are man­i­fest­ing the prob­lems,” he said.Hickling and Paisley’s find­ings have already attract­ed crit­ics who have sought to dis­cred­it the find­ings. But Hickling has some choice words for his detrac­tors: “Of course they would dis­agree because they know noth­ing about it. If you throw stone in a hog pen, the first one who squeals is the one who gets hit. The peo­ple fight­ing against it are not clin­i­cians; they haven’t done the work.“In this whole busi­ness of men­tal ill­ness, it is the one who it lick is the one who squeals,” said Hickling.tyrone.​reid@​gleanerjm.​com

Treatment

Hickling said per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der can­not be treat­ed with med­ica­tion, but treat­ment can­not be ful­ly explored until the coun­try accepts that some­thing is wrong.“There are two ways to stop it (per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der): by pre­vent­ing young peo­ple from devel­op­ing it, and old­er peo­ple from get­ting worse with the use of behav­iour-mod­i­fi­ca­tion psychotherapy.”

Severity Ratings

Mild Personality Disorder

The per­son knows some­thing is wrong with his or her behav­iour and usu­al­ly seeks help.

Moderate Personality Disorder

This is when you can look at some­one and say there is some­thing wrong with his or her behav­iour. Excessive drinkers, smok­ers and eaters, etc, usu­al­ly fall with­in this cat­e­go­ry. But they are per­son­al­ly unaware of the fact that they have a problem.

Severe Personality Disorder

This cat­e­go­ry is much eas­i­er to spot. Persons who have con­tin­u­ous run-ins with author­i­ty and author­i­ty struc­tures fall with­in this group.

Some symp­toms

Person con­sis­tent­ly has pow­er-man­age­ment problems

Psychosexual prob­lems (mul­ti­ple sex­u­al part­ners, sex­u­al dys­func­tion, abnor­mal sex­u­al prac­tices, etc)

Dependency prob­lems.(cour­tesy Jamaica Gleaner​.com)

Proffesor Hickling’s ass­es­ment aside , the rea­son I write this blog is this, are we real­ly mad despite the neg­a­tive con­no­ca­tion ?,and if we are what are the real rea­sons we are trau­ma­tized to this degree? Or, are we just look­ing for an excuse to avoid avoid fac­ing the dis­func­tion. Let’s face it every day there are more and more evi­dence in the news that would tend to sup­port Dr’s. Hicklings and Paisley’s ass­es­ment. I know it is not a sub­ject we Jamaicans are com­fort­able talk­ing about, but the argu­ments both proffe­sion­als make, seem to have a lot of weight in light of what we see hap­pen­ing today in our society.

Proffesor Hickling did not mince words when he respond­ed to crit­ics of the ass­es­ment he and Dr Paisley made quote: “Of course they would dis­agree because they know noth­ing about it. If you throw stone in a hog pen, the first one who squeals is the one who gets hit. The peo­ple fight­ing against it are not clin­i­cians; they haven’t done the work.“In this whole busi­ness of men­tal ill­ness, it is the one who it lick is the one who squeals” . I find Proffesor Hicklins response refresh­ing and unpre­ten­tious, he actu­al­ly summed up the cadre of high­fa­lutin elit­ists that I allud­ed to ear­li­er in this blog, with­out being high­fa­lutin him­self. In essence Proffesor Hickling spoke to the Academics, and the wannabes , but was also able to reach the com­mon man. There was an absence of pre­tence and grandios­i­ty which as a lay per­son I found quite refreshing.

One of the Really inter­est­ing points of note evi­denced here, is the abil­i­ty of Jamaicans to pre­tend, we pre­tend that Jamaica is nice, while we hide behind lay­ers and lay­ers of iron bars in our own homes.

We pre­tend Jamaica nice while peo­ple are being decap­i­tat­ed. Our rea­son­ing? Well those peo­ple did some­thing to people, .

Question is: How long will it be before you do some­thing to some­one and lose your head ?

We pre­tend Jamaica nice while extor­tion­ist suck the life out of the finan­cial sec­tor , using the mon­ey to pur­chase guns and ammu­ni­tion to keep us more enslaved .

Our ratio­nal­iza­tion: Well the busi­ness peo­ple were mak­ing a lot of mon­ey and was­n’t giv­ing any­thing back​.No mat­ter what is going on we pre­tend that as long as it’s has­n’t touched us it does not exist, or it isn’t as bad as oth­ers say it is.

We have fol­lowed this course of denial to what now seem to be the brink of the precipice. Our friends from uptown , not nec­es­sar­i­ly the old monied inter­ests , but the john­ny come late­ly are the mas­ters of this, they are the most pre­ten­tious, these are usu­al­ly black social climbers who have gained some edu­ca­tion ‚and wants their piece of the Aristocracy.

They are worse than the left over mulat­toes from yester-year, who gen­er­al­ly are more rea­soned, those who hap­pen to fall with­in the group char­ac­ter­ized as old cap­i­tal­ists are lit­er­al­ly marked for death (Douglas Manley for­mer health min­is­ter and broth­er of for­mer Prime Minister Manley can relate to that, he was not spared hav­ing his pri­va­cy invad­ed , his broth­er helped to cre­ate that men­tal­i­ty).

The john­ny come late­ly are to be found in all stra­ta of the soci­ety , media, legal fraternity,medical fra­ter­ni­ty, busi­ness, NGO’s and even with­in the church , as we all know at the head of that pack are the polit­i­cal class. These are the ones who shape pub­lic opin­ion, which is real­ly not hard to do in Jamaica if you have a lit­tle money,.They use the media , their pul­pits, and oth­er medi­ums to push their agen­das, mak­ing our coun­try their fief­dom and the mass­es their serfs.

So as we strug­gle with this state of con­tem­pla­tion of whether we are mad as Dr. Hickling et al said , I hope that it will be set­tled that we are not mad ‚maybe just dys­func­tion­al, but hon­est­ly I do see at least one of the signs the good­ly Doctors point­ed to in myself.

I hate it when my wife is right.

mike beck­les:

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Fruits Of My Labor:

On July 22nd I wrote a blog, encour­ag­ing you my friends, to uti­lize unused lands and spaces to pro­duce food to sup­ple­ment the bud­get and change the way we eat. I uploaded some pho­tographs of pro­duce reaped from my 1x 3 yard garden.

In the pic­tures there are zuc­chi­ni , toma­toes, pep­pers, and let­tuce. My fam­i­ly had already ben­e­fit­ted from green pep­pers, anoth­er type of let­tuce( red leaf), hot pep­pers , calla­lo, and we have been able to bless a friend of ours with some of our boun­ty My fur­ry friend pic­tured below how­ev­er, was not hap­py with me as I decid­ed that I would­n’t allow him/​her to enter my farm and sin­gle-hand­ed­ly eat all my crops , he did get to enter once after that I clamped down . There is plen­ty of stuff that he eats that I do not eat so we agreed to disagree. 

Until next time I hope you enjoy your gar­den­ing as much as I have, .….…..oh , oh, I almost for­got I saw my first water­mel­on yes­ter­day, I am so excit­ed, any­way bye for now.

wood­chuck

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SCRAP METAL SAGA

scrap met­al

The Editorial of the Daily Gleaner of Thursday July 28th read: SCRAP METAL BAN A CONCESSION TO DISORDER: After read­ing the arti­cle I was left befud­dled and dis​ori​ent​ed​.My only response was …huh ? Now let me just say I will not ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty or spir­it in which the edi­to­r­i­al piece was writ­ten. After all the cen­tral theme seem to have been, not bow­ing to crime, at least I am pre­pared to give that to the Editor , But you know me I am always on the side of the rule of law, so I will embrace the the­o­ry of the ene­my of my ene­my is my friend , this once. Well I think the Editor was unpleas­ant­ly sur­prised. All hell broke loose on the online ver­sion of their pub­li­ca­tion, read­ers unleashed an avalanche of dis­gust and con­dem­na­tion at the Article,and on this I must com­mend the mod­er­a­tors for pub­lish­ing 32 com­ments which almost in total­i­ty ripped the Article to shreds. Knowing how the mod­er­a­tors of that forum oper­ate , I won­der how many angry com­ments were actu­al­ly scrubbed. But lets not get ahead of our­selves, lets hear what the Editor had to say.

We are in sym­pa­thy with Mr Karl Samuda’s posi­tion on the deci­sion by his suc­ces­sor, Dr Christopher Tufton, to shut down the scrap met­al indus­try and ban the export of the stuff.

It smacks, as Mr Samuda says, of “sur­ren­der­ing to the rogue ele­ments”. Put anoth­er way, the move rep­re­sents anoth­er retreat of law and order.We, of course, do not pre­sume that the conun­drum pre­sent­ed to Dr Tufton, the recent­ly appoint­ed invest­ment and com­merce min­is­ter, was to be eas­i­ly tra­versed or solved. Nor did it devel­op under his watch.[dai­ly glean­er] Ok mis­ter edi­tor, we are at a loss here,.….. real­ly? so the min­is­ter decides to clamp down on the pil­lag­ing and plun­der of the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture, he insti­tutes a tem­po­rary ban with a view to fig­ure out a way for­ward and you object ? On what grounds do you object sir? For Mr Samuda had strug­gled with the prob­lem of dam­age to infra­struc­ture and theft by scav­engers, who rus­tle met­al of all kinds to cash in on the high price for scrap on the world mar­ket. Indeed, Dr Tufton esti­mates that util­i­ty com­pa­nies and oth­er legit­i­mate busi­ness­es, includ­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies, have lost up to J$1 bil­lion in mate­r­i­al over the past three years to met­al thieves, who some­times rip down pow­er and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, with neg­a­tive con­se­quences to eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The prob­lem grew worse as the avail­abil­i­ty of scrap met­al declined, as the price of the com­mod­i­ty hiked and more play­ers entered the busi­ness.[glean­er edi­tor] Great point , and I would imag­ine that since you are con­ver­sant with those real­i­ties then you would see the need for at least a halt of this busi­ness. A halt that would allow for a lev­el-head­ed assess­ment to be done. After all one can­not turn around and head in the oppo­site direc­tion from a dead sprint with­out first com­ing to a stop. But no, the edi­tor went on thus>.

Damning Statement on Insecurity

The Government’s deci­sion to shut down the sec­tor ought to give the aver­age Jamaican no joy, no mat­ter the spin of the Administration, and even if it has the desired effect of curb­ing the pil­lag­ing and deface­ment. For the deci­sion is a state­ment about inse­cu­ri­ty in our coun­try; a tac­it admis­sion by the State of its inabil­i­ty to pro­tect either pub­lic or pri­vate prop­er­ty. This is pre­cise­ly the point we sought to make when Mr Samuda, then the respon­si­ble min­is­ter, recov­ered, by pri­vate ini­tia­tive, a stolen price­less bronze sculp­ture by Edna Manley that was report­ed­ly on its way to being scrap met­al export. No one, in so far as we are aware, was ever arrest­ed, charged, pros­e­cut­ed or con­vict­ed for that theft. Mr Samuda, it appears, has come around to an appre­ci­a­tion of the dan­ger­ous con­se­quences of this kind of sur­ren­der “to the rogue ele­ments”. That, notwith­stand­ing, it is dif­fi­cult for us to believe that it is beyond the capac­i­ty of our Government to ensure, with­in the con­text of a sys­tem of free enter­prise, the order­ly oper­a­tion of a sec­tor of a few dozen peo­ple.[glean­er editor]

Truck laden with scrap metal
Truck laden with scrap metal

The Government’s deci­sion to shut down the sec­tor ought to give the aver­age Jamaican no joy, no mat­ter the spin of the admin­is­tra­tion: Ok so I thought the Article was sup­posed to give an hon­est Editorial assess­ment of a very seri­ous prob­lem , one of many plagu­ing our coun­try. But this seem to be anoth­er cri­tique of the Government. Don’t get me wrong ‚that is the Editorial and indeed the Newspaper’s right, but I thought we were dis­cussing the scrap met­al ban. Anyway since the Editor raised the ques­tion of not acqui­esc­ing to crim­i­nal­i­ty , does­n’t the Editor then agree that the move by Minister Tufton is exact­ly what is need­ed to stem the dis­man­tling of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture? I thought that hav­ing said all of that he would real­ize the fal­la­cy of his argu­ments and pull back from the brink, but no he had more to say.

[Bad sig­nal]

[If the Jamaican State can’t man­age this, what ought the mass of the Jamaican peo­ple to assume about its abil­i­ty to pre­serve their safe­ty and to pro­tect the right of indi­vid­ual prop­er­ty and, more impor­tant, the main­te­nance of law and order, which is the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of the State? But sup­pos­ing that Dr Tufton’s fin­ger-in-the-dyke solu­tion suf­fices for now, his longer-term pro­pos­al for the export of scrap met­al seems prob­lem­at­ic. Companies that gen­er­ate scrap met­al will be allowed, accord­ing to the min­is­ter, to apply for per­mits to export that scrap. This sug­gests that these firms will be forced into a line of busi­ness out­side their core port­fo­lio. And what of oth­er scrap met­al gen­er­at­ed by house­holds or by firms that don’t have the capac­i­ty to organ­ise their own export? We, per­haps, can look for­ward to there being plen­ty of scrap with which to block roads while peo­ple demand jus­tice].[glean­er editor]

Mister edi­tor , the coun­try is drown­ing in the blood of the inno­cent , last week 20 peo­ple were report­ed slaughtered,in a coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple , how long do you think it will take to reach you and oth­ers who feel it is some­one else’s prob­lem. The coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces , under-staffed, under-funded,under-supported, over worked, under paid and demor­al­ized, are find­ing it a huge strug­gle just to con­tain the killing spree which obtains in Jamaica.Our secu­ri­ty forces run­ning from one hot spot to anoth­er, it real­ly is as you said stick­ing their fin­ger in the dyke, try­ing to stem the flow of blood. Arguing that the State should be in a posi­tion to stem the infra­struc­tur­al dis­man­tling is a ridicu­lous attempt at pos­tur­ing and bears no rela­tion­ship with an under­stand­ing of the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty capa­bil­i­ty. The coun­try is fight­ing an exis­ten­tial bat­tle between civ­i­liza­tion and out­right anar­chy, the lat­ter, sup­port­ed and fund­ed by pow­er­ful and well-con­nect­ed peo­ple with­in the coun­try. The forces of good are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time in that fight, where are the resources to come from that would secure cop­per wire on tele­phone poles and bridge rail­ings? I under­stand the com­ments in the con­text of what ought to be the prop­er course of action, but the coun­try is sim­ply not in a posi­tion to do this , so we are left with a sit­u­a­tion of deal­ing with what is pos­si­ble. It sim­ply is not pos­si­ble to police all of Jamaica’s infra­struc­ture, that makes it dou­bly impor­tant, what the Minister did.

Handcart laden with scrap metal
Handcart laden with scrap metal

As some read­ers have argued online, Jamaica’s scrap met­al indus­try was nev­er a sus­tain­able indus­try to begin with, it is a oppor­tunis­tic indus­try,[indus­try ]used loose­ly . The coun­try does not man­u­fac­ture scrap met­al, it fol­lows that soon­er or lat­er it would get to this, mean­ing those who sell scrap met­al would inevitably resort to steal­ing the prod­uct par­tic­u­lar­ly when viewed along­side the high demand for the prod­uct. The dilem­ma posed to legit­i­mate scrap met­al deal­ers is not con­fined to that sec­tor, but is rather a greater indict­ment on the Jamaican psy­che. If it’s not scrap met­al it would be some­thing else, if some­how investors set up busi­ness­es to buy old build­ing bricks, in no time Spanish town as we know it would be no more . People would lit­er­al­ly dis­man­tle the old cap­i­tal. The issue here is the lev­el of civic-mind­ed­ness that is inher­ent in our peo­ple, or the lack there­of. I await the howls of dis­agree­ment com­ing from the [“eat a food crowd”] . As far as most of these peo­ple are con­cerned it mat­ters not if they destroy the coun­try, brick by brick and have to tread water in the Caribbean sea to [eat the food], coun­try be damned, eat­ing a food is paramount.

Many years ago as a young Police Officer I was part of a team of offi­cers involved in an ear­ly morn­ing raid in a cer­tain com­mu­ni­ty just on the envi­rons of Spanish Town. At the time we were oper­at­ing under emer­gency pow­ers , which allowed us to enter homes with­out a war­rant. A cou­ple of us entered a shack that had a sin­gle bro­ken down cot , and a, met­al cab­i­net in one cor­ner . That was the total­i­ty of the fur­nish­ings in the hum­ble one room abode. Sitting on the cot was a mid­dle-aged gen­tle­man, who was very accom­mo­dat­ing to our intru­sion and queries, I asked him if I could look at was inside the cab­i­net, he agreed. Inside the cab­i­net was a large amount of what appeared to be machine parts, I inquired of him how he came to be in pos­ses­sion of the machine parts? He told me he took them from the lead fac­to­ry in Spanish Town where he worked . I asked him “do you still work there” ? to which he replied ” no offi­cer due to the steal­ing the fac­to­ry closed down”

This prob­lem is not new , it did not start yes­ter­day, and it will not be fixed imme­di­ate­ly. The min­is­ter did exact­ly what need­ed to be done , in step­ping back , tak­ing a deep breath , with a view to com­ing up with a work­able solu­tion. Jamaica’s devel­op­ment is being ham­pered by Jamaicans , we take one step for­ward , then take two steps back­wards. Our econ­o­my, despite sneezes in the world econ­o­my , could be doing marked­ly bet­ter, we are a small coun­try of under three mil­lion peo­ple. We pro­duce food some­times more that we can con­sume , yet we choose to import the same foods , rather that teach farm­ers how to plant crops on a sched­ule to elim­i­nate glut in the mar­ket ‚as well as to ensure con­ti­nu­ity of supplies.

We Kill busi­ness peo­ple because we were told those who work hard and achieved, are evil Capitalists, whose hard-earned rewards should be tak­en away and giv­en to the poor. We spend enor­mous amounts of for­eign exchange we do not have, rather than encour­age invest­ment in solar and wind ener­gy, two com­modi­ties that are nev­er in short sup­ply in the coun­try, I could go on and on about the crime and exor­bi­tant cost of ener­gy that has all but removed Jamaica from the list of places to do busi­ness. Our peo­ple have lit­er­al­ly been reduced to a Nation of beg­gars, some choos­ing to live way above their means. How can we ever change that dichoto­my when our num­ber two for­eign exchange earn­er is remit­tance? the (largess of peo­ple liv­ing abroad).

The num­ber one earn­er tourism , is an acci­dent wait­ing to hap­pen, any upheaval could poten­tial­ly put and end to that sec­tor. What we need at this time I humbly sug­gest is a change in atti­tude, we must become patri­ot­ic Jamaicans again, unless we return to being Nationalist the destruc­tion of our coun­try will con­tin­ue. At this rate soon there will be noth­ing,.….. noth­ing except the most demon­ic of the mer­ci­less mur­der­ers , and a bar­ren waste­land of blood drenched terrain.

Mogadishu any­one?

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Fear Or Forced ?

I recent­ly saw an arti­cle which sug­gest­ed the cas­es of police shoot­ings are out of fear on the part of offi­cers. This notion is so laugh­able if it was­n’t insult­ing to Jamaica’s hero-cops, I would actu­al­ly laugh.

I must admit I did not read the arti­cle as I was pressed for time. I how­ev­er tried to find the arti­cle again and was actu­al­ly direct­ed to the Mail Online a British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, there I was greet­ed with this head­line. Life and death in the police state of Jamaica: The scan­dal of the offi­cers who dou­ble as state executioners
Read more: http://​www​.dai​ly​mail​.co​.uk/​h​o​m​e​/​m​o​s​l​i​v​e​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​-​1​3​5​2​8​8​5​/​J​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​L​i​f​e​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​d​o​u​b​l​e​-​e​x​e​c​u​t​i​o​n​e​r​s​.​h​t​m​l​#​i​x​z​z​1​T​W​D​S​Y​lsm

This arti­cle which may be accessed at the above link ‚was writ­ten by Johnathan Green. I gen­er­al­ly reserve judge­ment on peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions when they are going through tri­als. However after read­ing the arti­cle I could­n’t help but harken to who owns this tabloid, and the method­olo­gies that they use to get information.I won­der how much they paid these poor souls to get them to sell out Jamaica. This is a para­graph tak­en from that arti­cle: ref­er­enc­ing the shoot­ing the night sergeant Wayne Henriques and anoth­er offi­cer was slaugh­tered, and six oth­er offi­cers ‚try­ing to help a motorist trapped on moun­tain view avenue was vicious­ly ambushed and shot.

The Mail Online is one of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids that uses all kinds of dirty tac­tics to gain a scoop, includ­ing tap­ping phones, pay­ing Police offi­cers to give them infor­ma­tion and oth­er ille­gal means. The British Police Commissioner and one of his lieu­tenants recent­ly resigned over this scan­dal,. These are the cops that are sup­posed to clean up Jamaica’s police Department , we all know how the mark Shields fish­ing expe­di­tion went, girls drinks , low morale in the force . In the end the coun­try has noth­ing to show for his stay in Jamaica. Shields on the oth­er hand has a secu­ri­ty con­sul­tan­cy firm in Jamaica , what he was after all along. Serves the Authorities right , still stuck in the colo­nial men­tal­i­ty , of look­ing to the euro­pean mas­ters for answers to our problems.

Green the author of the epis­tle was pret­ty sold on Shields , in this sen­tence he artic­u­lates the way he felt about Shields.

Quote ‚People are so des­per­ate and trau­ma­tized that many have lost faith in crim­i­nal jus­tice and the abil­i­ty of the state to pro­tect them,’ says Shields, a sil­ver-haired, prag­mat­ic man who stands at an impos­ing 6ft 6in. He now runs a secu­ri­ty con­sul­tan­cy in Jamaica. Rational, uni­ver­si­ty-edu­cat­ed peo­ple are advo­cat­ing des­per­ate mea­sures which they think are accept­able. They say if a few inno­cent peo­ple get killed, “Well, that’s what hap­pens.”’(mail online)
Well now we know Shields feel that peo­ple who haven’t attend­ed University are irrational.

The bot­tom line about this whole piece of garbage, is that it failed to address the seri­ous nature of urban ter­ror­ism in Jamaica and the seri­ous­ness that secu­ri­ty force mem­bers face day in day out. Does Jamaica have rogue cops ? you bet, should they be root­ed out , you bet, Is this unique to Jamaica ? no! The gar­risons are replete with all kinds of high-pow­ered weapons, some­thing Green , Shields, or Felice do not have to deal with in their coun­try. By his own admis­sion the writer allud­ed to this from some­one he spoke to. quote:

[As dark­ness falls, young men take up posi­tion at key van­tage points, behind low walls. Buried in the ground are guns, loaded and ready. A rau­cous par­ty gets under way. Thumping bass makes the ground trem­ble. I notice a mon­i­tor above the record decks linked to four CCTV cam­eras dis­play­ing entrances to the com­mu­ni­ty. Recently gun­men from that neigh­bour­hood killed the rel­a­tive of a near­by don. Reprisals are expected.‘You are safer here than in a mid­dle-class neigh­bour­hood,’ Andy says with a sly smile We used to have M16s, but they jammed all the time, so now we use AK-47s.’After a moment he adds, ‘When you do good work in the com­mu­ni­ty, peo­ple will kill for you or die for you.’Violence could be trig­gered at any time. Andy is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about the police.The don from the oth­er area has the police in his back pock­et,’ he declares. ‘It’s a time bomb here. We are walk­ing dead.’Many of the young gun­men have reg­u­lar jobs, but they stay up all night to pro­tect the neighbourhood.The police can’t help you here; you have to defend your com­mu­ni­ty,’ says Andy.He makes it clear that while some vio­lence in Kingston is relat­ed to drugs and oth­er crim­i­nal enter­pris­es, it evolved from politi­cians arm­ing com­mu­ni­ties loy­al to them against oth­er neigh­bour­hoods .Some of the vio­lence is due to the fact that the area falls between two polit­i­cal bound­aries, so it has two MPs, which means that res­i­dents can demand new roads, fund­ing and oth­er perks, which make rival areas jealous.The politi­cians have cre­at­ed the prob­lem,’ says Andy. ‘They are play­ing a num­bers game. It’s divide and rule.’]

Reading this drib­ble is tan­ta­mount to an arti­cle Al jazeera did about the dead­li­ness of Jamaican Police; Imagine al Jazeera, where is their report­ing on the Killings of police offi­cers in Pakistan, and Afghanistan,what about the behead­ing and ston­ing being done to women go clear out your own dirty back­yard. I sug­gest the Mail online clean up their own dirty police force and let us clean up and imprison ours .

The arti­cle went on to talk about a man shot in the Mountain View are of St. Andrew.

[It was here that Ian Gordon, 34, came to vis­it the moth­er of his two young chil­dren, bring­ing them food and mon­ey as he often did. Gordon was a hard-work­ing for­mer art stu­dent. He built a small store from bam­boo where he sold fried fish. He wasn’t to know that a few days ear­li­er three gang­sters had engaged in a shoot-out with police after their rob­bery attempt was foiled. Two offi­cers were killed and six oth­ers wound­ed.](mail online)

This moron glossed over the fact that 8 police offi­cers had been shot the pre­vi­ous night, 2 fatal­ly . can any­one imag­ine if black men had shot 8 British police offi­cers killing 2, how they would have react­ed? . Would there be any Jamaicans left in England? that was not the nar­ra­tive he want­ed , what he want­ed was to draw atten­tion to the actions of the Police​.Now let me be clear I have no infor­ma­tion or evi­dence on the verac­i­ty of his state­ments regard­ing the man killed. I hope how­ev­er that he did not loose his life inno­cent­ly as some would have you believe. What I do know is that you real­ly do not want to be caught any­where in the wrath of any police depart­ment when one of their own has been mur­dered, much less when one con­sid­ered the casu­al­ties the JCF takes.

I frankly won­der why any­one would want that job any­more? , then I think about my rel­a­tives and friends liv­ing there ‚who depend on them , so I salute all clean cops and give them my sup­port. I must be clear , because there are some who accuse me of uncon­di­tion­al­ly sup­port­ing the Jamaican police, this could not be fur­ther from the truth, in fact any­one who fol­low my blogs can attest to the fact that I am one of their harsh­est con­struc­tive crit­ic. As an offi­cer I myself brought 3 of my col­leagues to book and had them kicked out of the force. What I will not do is turn to whole­sale con­dem­na­tion, of the peo­ple who risk their lives and die ‚so that I can live in safety.

There are cer­tain ele­ments with­in the soci­ety that are fraud­u­lent hyp­ocrites , and blood suck­ing leech­es , suck­ing the blood out of those who sac­ri­fice, while they sit in air-con­di­tioned offices , made pos­si­ble by the blood and sweat of Police offi­cers. I served 10 years but nev­er worked in an air-con­di­tioned office. The Commissioner of Police still oper­ates out of the same build­ings at 101 – 103 old hope Road in St. Andrew. Yet as the writer Green allud­ed to Justin Felice’s office is luxurious .

quote: Isolated from the killing streets, at the top of an air-con­di­tioned tow­er block with mir­rored yel­low glass, is the JCF’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB). Beyond a bio­met­ric thumb scan­ner near a smoked-glass door, a poster declares, ‘Corruption: it takes two.’I am greet­ed by Justin Felice, head of the ACB, an avun­cu­lar and dap­per for­mer Scotland Yard offi­cer who had great suc­cess work­ing in Northern Ireland. In 2010 his unit removed 184 police offi­cers.(mail online)

I am so insult­ed by this arti­cle, on so many lev­els, but we need to be hum­bled , untill we start respect­ing our­selves and each oth­er ‚we will for­ev­er be the unwant­ed stepchild of the British empire, to be lord over and treat­ed as half wit illiterates .

Just ask Mark Shields what he thinks of us..

mike beck­les :

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15 YEARS FOR BETRAYING THE PEOPLE:

I have long main­tained, that most of the prob­lems real or per­ceived, inher­ent in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is cen­tered around the lib­er­al­ism of judges.

So called extra judi­cial killings,witnesses not appear­ing to tes­ti­fy, the killing of wit­ness­es, cit­i­zens tak­ing the laws into their own hands,citizens not both­er­ing to report crimes, all of the afore­men­tioned ‚has at their Genesis , Judges giv­ing slap on the wrist.This police offi­cer betrayed the trust placed in him.A trust that asked him to pro­tect and serve the Jamaican peo­ple , he betrayed that trust in the most egre­gious , stom­ach turn­ing man­ner. This Supreme court Judge Horace Marsh had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to send a strong mes­sage and he failed. He failed the coun­try , but his great­est fail­ure is to the arrest­ing Officers, who had the char­ac­ter to bring one of their own to jus­tice. He had an oppur­tu­ni­ty to send a strong mes­sage, say­ing once and for all, this will not be tolerated.

He failed.

Sergeant Russel Robinson a mid­dle man­ag­er with­in the JCF must have been aware of the image prob­lems the force had . Over the years Police offi­cers had dragged the name of the once proud Agency through the mud, sub­ject­ing the Agency to ridicule, pri­mar­i­ly by those whose char­ac­ter does not qual­i­fy them to crit­i­cize any­one. And oth­ers who have a vest­ed inter­est in tear­ing down, and dam­a­goging the agency .During my 10 year ser­vice I arrest­ed there cops and charged them with crimes.On each occa­sion the case was prop­er­ly pre­pared, all three were con­vict­ed and even­tu­al­ly boot­ed from the Constabulary. My posi­tion was always that we could not be in the same agency.

Despite the fore­gone, nei­ther of those offi­cers I charged ‚were involved in sell­ing guns nor ammu­ni­tion to criminals.This is one of the most egre­gious and rep­re­hen­si­ble cas­es of police mis­con­duct I have ever heard of ‚9’540 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, and 18 guns , this begs the ques­tion, how many guns and rounds of ammu­ni­tion did Robinson sell? .How many peo­ple died because of those guns and ammu­ni­tion, to include police officers.That is not the only issue here, the guns were sup­posed to be in the pro­tec­tive cus­tody of the police. That by itself make my stom­ach turn. Police offi­cers in the precinct of the court alleged­ly voiced their dis­gust at the sen­tence hand­ed down, I can imag­ine how they would feel from an image stand-point , but I assume those offi­cers were also think­ing about all the cops that were killed over the years. Imagining that they could have fall­en vic­tim to those thou­sands of rounds of ammu­ni­tion, and high-pow­ered weapons Robinson put in the underworld.

Again let me be clear clear , Jamaica is not going to solve its ter­ror­ism prob­lem if Judges con­tin­ue to release crim­i­nals back onto the streets with a slap on the wrists, Interest groups such as the crim­i­nal right Jamaicans for jus­tice and tri­al lawyers have argued vehe­ment­ly that judges must be allowed free­dom to make judi­cial deci­sions based on the spe­cial cir­cum­stances of each case.They argue that Politicians/​Parliament seek­ing to add guide­lines is tan­ta­mount to med­dling with the judi­cia­ry an inde­pen­dent arm of Government​.As a cit­i­zen of this plan­et I agree that Judges must be able to look at mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances in each case and issue their judge­ment accord­ing­ly. What I dis­agree with is, that they should have no guide­lines. Race cars are allowed to go real­ly fast, but they are still required to stay on the tracks, Airplanes have wide open skies , but they have routes, Ships tra­verse ship­ping lanes, despite the enor­mi­ty of the Oceans .Judges must be giv­en min­i­mum guidelines.This removes the prospect of cor​rup​tion​.It removes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of advo­ca­cy from the bench.And it puts crim­i­nals where they belong, in jail.Judges are not elect­ed by the peo­ple, it falls on the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Parliamentarians to in fact estab­lish guide­lines for them to fol­low. Disgusting crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups , and the rapa­cious vul­tures called crim­i­nal Lawyers have their own axe to grind , nei­ther of which includes a safe peace­ful, crime free society.

This is a per­fect case for the over­turn of the Judicial sys­tem. So that the Country can start afresh.

mike beck­les:

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EXPOSING THE LIES:

The fol­low­ing is an inter­view giv­en by Carolyn Gomes to a local tele­vi­sion station.

Dr. Carolyn Gomes OJ (born March 30, 1958 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican human rights activist. Dr. Gomes is also the co-founder and cur­rent Executive Director of Jamaicans for Justice.[1][2] On December 10, 2008, Dr. Gomes received the pres­ti­gious United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.[3] On October 19 of the next year, she was hon­ored with the Order of Jamaica, in recog­ni­tion of her advo­ca­cy for human rights. Notice that Gomes has received one of the high­est hon­or that can be bestowed on any Jamaican.

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​T​H​P​K​7​Y​8​k​Rn4 See Gomes and JFJ at the Inter American Commission of Human Rights hear­ing in Washington DC.

Interviewer ; You said you made a pre­sen­ta­tion to the inter-American com­mis­sion on human rights the report looked at human rights issues in Jamaica since the state of emer­gency last year, now on the set with us to tell us more about that report is Jamaicans for Justice Dr. Carolyn Gomes exec­u­tive direc­tor of Jamaicans for jus­tice, good morn­ing again, wel­come once again to smile Jamaica, 

Gomes: Good morn­ing nice to be here with you>

Interviewer: So you did what exact­ly when you said you made a presentation.?

Gomes: We looked at the data we had in our files over the course of last year and we put it all togeth­er and we made a report, we asked for an oppur­tu­ni­ty to present it in per­son ‚because we could have sent it in and said here’s our report, but we ahem got an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present it in per­son at the inter-American com­mis­sion in Washington there was a pan­el of three com­mis­sion­ers plus the deputy exec­u­tive sec­re­tary and then the Government had an oppur­tu­ni­ty to respond and was rep­re­sent­ed by ambas­sador Marks and a mem­ber of the Consular staff.

Interviewer: And your report sug­gest­ed what? that you did­n’t like what was going on did you give a per­son­al opinion?

Gomes : We said we very upset by the rise in what was already an unten­able num­ber of fatal shoot­ings by the Police, which in fact went up by over 20% last year based on their own fig­ures, year on year, and that does not include the deaths of those killed in Tivoli, or those who the fig­ures acknowl­edged were killed by sol­diers out­side of Tivoli, when you put all of those togeth­er, we were at a rate of almost 400, and in con­text more than one in five peo­ple who died vio­lent­ly, died at the hands of the police.

Let’ just back up right here because I can­not rely on the Interviewer to ask ques­tions backed up by real facts and fig­ures of this per­son who took Jamaica’s name abroad, so let me present some facts.

Jamaica has one of the high­est mur­der rate in the world ‚we com­pete with coun­tries like Mexico and Colombia.

Jamaica’s crim­i­nals are some of the most vio­lent crim­i­nals on plan­et earth,they love to kill police officers.

During the time that this so-called report was pre­sent­ed the coun­try was expe­ri­enc­ing one of the most tur­bu­lent peri­ods in its his­to­ry, police sta­tions were torched , offi­cers mur­dered, to include eight offi­cers shot in one ambush on moun­tain view avenue , two offi­cers died that night at the hands of ter­ror­ists includ­ing the pop­u­lar sergeant Wayne Henriques.

Members of the mil­i­tary were killed.

Members of the ISCF were killed.

Untold num­bers of peo­ple were slaugh­tered by urban ter­ror­ists loy­al to alleged drug and gun run­ner Christopher( dudus )Coke.

The report made no men­tion of any of these facts.

Let’s read some more.

Interviewer: Does it nec­es­sar­i­ly mean an abuse of human rights when when.….

Gomes: Police kill? No absolute­ly not!and that is one of the things we have con­tend­ed from the very begin­ning Simon that the police are in fact on e of the only groups in the coun­try that are allowed to legal­ly kill some­body in defense of them­selves or oth­er peo­ple.…… the point becomes what are the legal­i­ty of a shoot­ing one of the things we have said from the very begin­ning is that the sys­tem put in place aren’t able to cred­i­bly clear police­men of act­ing absolute­ly with­in the law,and right­eous­ly, they call it a right­eous shooting.…

Interviewer inter­rupt­ing; so does that mean the process or the pro­cess­ing of each inci­dent is not suf­fi­cient and suit­able to give you a prop­er deter­mi­na­tion as as …

Gomes jump­ing in: the whole thing from the begin­ning com­ing right up to the end. the begin­ning is the preser­va­tion of the crime scene,or the shoot­ing scene if you pre­fer, don’t move the bul­lets so that you can make a deter­mi­na­tion, don’t move the spent shells, don’t move the dead per­son, take pho­tographs etc etc.

Let me just jump in here , what a load of crock.Every time a killing occur it falls on some­one to inves­ti­gate that killing, irre­spec­tive of who does the shoot­ing there are peo­ple called Police that are required to do the inves­ti­ga­tions, if Gomes does not believe that Jamaican police are capa­ble of polic­ing Jamaica, then she should come out and say so , clear­ly she some­how feel that a coun­try that is over 90% black is inca­pable of polic­ing itself , is Carolyn Gomes push­ing for for­eign inter­ven­tion in our coun­try , from the lies with­in this report,?

Where does Carolyn Gomes get her crime scene inves­tiga­tive skills from? last time I checked she was a pedi­a­tri­cian, I am unaware that being a baby doc­tor qual­i­fies one on crime scene man­age­ment , but then again this is Jamaica where every­one knows how to do every­one else’s job but can­not do theirs, , let’s go on.

Gomes: then there’s the bal­lis­tics and you know we must be the stu­pid­est coun­try in the world because we have the high­est rate of gun crime and we have inad­e­quate bal­lis­tic test­ing facilities..

I am going to jump in here because I am get­ting real­ly mad right now, did I hear right,? did she call my coun­try stupid?

Now this is real­ly telling, she has no respect for the peo­ple she pur­ports to be con­cerned about, this is about Carolyn Gomes and her ego, and what­ev­er moti­va­tion she has for the anti police cru­sade she is on, but trust me she will be exposed. I have always believed that if an inves­ti­ga­tor real­ly wants the truth , just let the sus­pect talk „ let the sus­pect tell their ver­sion of events , then when he or she is fin­ished ask them to repeat what they had just relat­ed to you, the lies will be exposed.

So we know Gomes thinks our coun­try is stupid, .!

Was this the rea­son she opt­ed for a face to face meet­ing with her for­eign han­dlers with­in the inter-American com­mis­sion in Washington? or did the object of the face to face have a more sin­is­ter motive, say financial ?

Who funds Jamaicans for jus­tice? where does the mon­ey gets spent? does the Lobby group pay tax­es on the monies it takes in from over­seas, that influ­ences, and shape pol­i­cy with­in Jamaica ? who does over­sight of the Groups finances? the group hires high-priced lawyers , what rate are they paid,? what ser­vice do they pro­vide for the monies paid to them? Is there an inde­pen­dent audit of the groups books to deter­mine fideli­ty? , Is the lob­by group in com­pli­ance with all aspects of Jamaican laws par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to accept­ing funds from out­side the coun­try? .how much does Gomes and staff gets paid if any, sep­a­rate from the lawyers?

Now did she say we have the high­est rate of gun crime? yes she did say that , and again she is wrong , even when she tries to be objec­tive, we do not yet have the high­est per capi­ta rate of gun killings and I hope we do not attain that dubi­ous distinction.

Interestingly enough she made no men­tion of that in the report she took to her handlers.

She then moves on with the ram­bling unsub­stan­ti­at­ed attack , this time aimed at the office of the DPP.

Gomes:Then there’s that and all the way through to the chal­lenges of the office of the direc­tor of the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tion, it’s more than a year to get a rul­ing out of that office, she her­self acknowl­edges that she has a back­log of 700 cas­es of police fatal shoot­ings, and from there we get to court , we have cas­es that takes twelve years to pass through the coro­ner’s court, twelve years…

At this point one of the two men that made up the pan­el inter­view­ing Gomes ‚who kept chuck­ling , , mark you he had no notes nor any kind of doc­u­ments to coun­ter­act the bile she was spew­ing , chimed in to Gomes claims.

Interviewer; Which is absolute rubbish!

Gomes: At the end of it and the when the coro­ner’s jury says that the police man must be charged for mur­der you back in court , supreme court, wait­ing on a trial.

Here are some impor­tant infor­ma­tion that Gomes should have her lawyers check. Jamaican law allows the DPP to file crim­i­nal charges against a police offi­cer to quell pub­lic out cry.Gomes may be unaware of this but the crim­i­nal Dons are well aware of it,hence the ever-present demon­stra­tion and pha­lanx of paid mourn­ers after every fatal shoot­ing by mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces.This accom­plish­es three things for the crim­i­nal under­world, (1) It gets front­line cops out-of-the-way, (2)demoralize oth­ers, and (3) cre­ates more oppor­tu­ni­ties for their crim­i­nal empires.

For those who won­der why so many cas­es of police shoot­ings dies before they leave the DPP’s office ‚and some gets dis­posed of for want of pros­e­cu­tion , the rea­son plain and sim­ple is that there was no evi­dence of wrong doing in the first place, .Gomes her­self allud­ed to that fact, right here in this inter­view, check your laws.

Interviewer:In your report you said it means that one in five homi­cides , and I use that word delib­er­ate­ly, com­mit­ted in Jamaica in 2010 was com­mit­ted by the secu­ri­ty forces.

Gomes: Correct. correct,homicide does­n’t say whether it was a right­eous , I mean jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide or not, it say that it was a fatal shoot­ing one in five shoot­ings were com­mit­ted by the secu­ri­ty forces.

At this point both ques­tion­ers chimed in .

But that’s inflam­ma­to­ry language.!

Gomes : Only to the lay per­son! It has tech­ni­cal mean­ing that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean mur­der, it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean manslaugh­ter either , you have vehic­u­lar homi­cide, which can be you know.…..

Vehicular homi­cide? what or how does vehic­u­lar homi­cide fac­tor into this con­ver­sa­tion , in what con­text is it applic­a­ble, I thought the inter­view was about the lies she took to Washington , which by the way the Golding Administration called her out on , to which she had no response. Serve Golding and his friends right they are the ones who con­tin­ue to cheap­en National hon­ors on every char­la­tan that comes around , ignor­ing Jamaicans who sac­ri­fice for country.

Interviewer; but again it con­jure up ‚.. isn’t that a sug­ges­tion that they were doing this deliberately’?

Gomes : no it’s not !!!!! We are not say­ing that police are doing it though there is some ques­tion marks about what occurred in Tivoli and some of the shoot­ings that come to us.

Interviewer :Even the num­bers you don’t agree with , I think they said 73 you are say­ing   …

Gomes: We don’t have any evi­dence of more than 73, but in, we don’t ‚that 73 does­n’t take into account 3 peo­ple who have dis­ap­peared since being seen in the com­pa­ny of the secu­ri­ty forces , they can’t be seen since can’t be found so if you add that it’s 76. and the peo­ple dis­pute the 73, and so that is the rea­son we stand with Earl Witter for a com­mis­sion of enquiry, because there are a num­ber of things that needs to be clar­i­fied for Jamaica includ­ing how many peo­ple died.

What? the same lay per­sons that are from the stu­pid country?…but arent these the peo­ple you care about , and on whose behalf you are wag­ing this cru­sade, are you say­ing they are too stu­pid to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between a jus­ti­fi­able killing and a case of exces­sive police force?I will bet my life every­one knows the dif­fer­ence but Carolyn Gomes does not have too much con­fi­dence in the intel­lec­tu­al capa­bil­i­ties of the Jamaican peo­ple, the not-lay per­sons in Washington I am sure under­stands the dif­fer­ence, how insulting!

At this stage I was through with this non­sense I watched the rest of the inter­view which offered no more sub­stance or sense than the fore­gone , it was a love fest of sorts between her and the two males con­duct­ing what passed for an interview,basically a pletho­ra of issues, with Gomes gen­er­at­ing a lot of heat and absolute­ly no light.

Pictured top left is Jamaicans for jus­tice Carolyn Gomes receiv­ing a National hon­or for her work defend­ing criminals.

Top right is Sergeant Wayne Henriques who was slaugh­tered along with anoth­er offi­cer on moun­tain view avenue ‚.Six oth­er offi­cers were shot in that Ambush that night. Wayne who was on leave, was cel­e­brat­ing his 17th wed­ding Anniversary and was called away to ser­vice . He left his beau­ti­ful wife and fam­i­ly, they would nev­er see him alive again. Gunned down by Jamaica’s urban terrorists. 

Those who lob­by on their behalf receive National Honors.

Wayne’s fam­i­ly mem­bers (center)gather to mourn their loss.These are the good guys, those who play by the rules,obey the laws and sac­ri­ficed their loved one in defense of our Nation. (pho­tos cour­tesy of nation­al forum)

Where is their National honor. 

mike beck­les:

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WE IGNORE THIS AT OUR PERIL

Recent Wikileaks cables report­ed on, in Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner ‚sug­gest­ed that 84 Jamaican Nationals have been put on US ter­ror watch list.

All over social media peo­ple are putting their two cents in , mak­ing their voic­es heard , inter­est­ing­ly, most Jamaicans seem to think that the US ter­ror watch list, is a wide net, that scoops up fish, crabs, as well as old boots, there is valid­i­ty to such argu­ments, Congressmen, busi­ness­men and even babies have been blocked from board­ing air­planes because they were sup­pos­ed­ly on a watch list of sorts, right here in the United States.

It would seem that if one does not live in the United States , or does­n’t wish to trav­el there, they should not care what the Americans think. At least those are some of the sen­ti­ments on social media. The legit­i­ma­cy of those argu­ments I will not address here today , but let’s look at what the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are for Jamaica.

Two of Jamaica’s most noto­ri­ous crim­i­nal Gangs the Clans man and One order Gangs are affil­i­at­ed with the two major Political Parties in Jamaica . Last May things came to a head when mem­bers of the Security Forces stormed the Garrison of Tivoli gar­dens the redoubt of Christopher (dudus) Coke who was want­ed by the Americans on alleged Drug and Gun run­ning charges .

When the dust cleared over 70 peo­ple from that com­mu­ni­ty lost their lives, as well as a mem­bers of the Security Forces . One of the Cops who paid the ulti­mate price was a pop­u­lar Police Sargeant Wayne, Henriques ‚both the JCF and JDF were left mourn­ing their dead col­leagues who paid the ulti­mate price in defense of Jamaica.

Harkening back to the report of pos­si­ble links of Jamaicans with ter­ror­ism, the actu­al rea­son I decid­ed to write this blog .

Jamaicans run a great risk of not see­ing the for­est for the trees, irre­spec­tive of whether one like the United States is imma­te­r­i­al , Jamaicans fail to look at this bit of infor­ma­tion with fear and tre­pidi­tion at their per­il. Trinidad a Caribbean neigh­bour has Radical Muslims who have demon­strat­ed that they will use any resource at their dis­pos­al to achieve their polit­i­cal or reli­gious goal​.It is there­fore not beyond the pale to imag­ine that if Jamaican Terrorists have access to explo­sives and oth­er means of mass destruc­tion they are apt to use them and with dev­as­ta­tion consequences.

This brings us to the most recent ter­ror tac­tics that gangs have employed in recent times, that of decap­i­tat­ing their vic­tims, to some who fol­low events around the world this is a favourite method used by Taliban and Al-que­da Terrorists to send a mes­sage to their ene­mies, this strat­e­gy is designed to dri­ve fear and instill ter­ror into the hearts of dis­senters, ( wel­come to jam­rock) This heinous method of killing has been vis­it­ed on three mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty of Lauriston out­side Spanish Town.

On July 18th a 62-year-old farmer Austin George was found dead in a pool of blood in his home ‚neigh­bours had called the Police when they became sus­pi­cious after observ­ing cer­tain things that seemed out-of-place, the method of killing was report­ed­ly the same , he was alleged­ly shot, and his throat slashed.

I have no infor­ma­tion on whether these killings are relat­ed, what seem to be a com­mon thread how­ev­er is the method of killing.!

Is it ritualistic?

Is it designed to instill terror ?

Or are the crim­i­nals run­ning out of bullets?

As a for­mer street cop I am inclined to not take Jamaican crim­i­nals for grant­ed , but I am also not going to give them too much cred­it either.

Law enforce­ment has been slight­ly bet­ter since Coke’s empire was toppled,this is not to sug­gest that he was the only leader of a crim­i­nal empire there ‚far from it , in fact there are still a sig­nif­i­cant hard-core clique of crim­i­nals affil­i­at­ed and sup­port­ed by peo­ple in high places in Jamaica .

I am aware that Jamaican crim­i­nals are blood thirsty dement­ed demons, but I find it inter­est­ing that they would resort to throat cut­ting just to make a point, I believe we are wit­ness­ing some­thing impor­tant here , and I think bul­lets are becom­ing scarce , hence the beheadings.

I have been shout­ing for years to all who will lis­ten that what we have been see­ing play out on the streets of Kingston, Spanish Town, and oth­er killing fields ‚were not sim­ple acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty, but inher­ent­ly, a more sin­is­ter pat­tern of Criminality called Terror.

Under Percival Patterson’s stew­ard­ship Jamaica dete­ri­o­rat­ed to a place most Jamaicans liv­ing abroad are skep­ti­cal to vis­it, and cer­tain­ly will nev­er retire to.Through sys­tem­at­ic incompetence,and gross neglect the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces were reduced to what they were in the 1970’s under the stew­ard­ship of his men­tor Michael Manley.The secu­ri­ty forces were there in name only.Criminals were allowed to run ram­pant , all sec­tors of pub­lic life became con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with cor­rup­tion, The Americans in the afore­men­tioned cables ‚allud­ed to this lack of will on the part of Patterson to do any­thing about the ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion that was engulf­ing the country.

We now know that Patterson was too busy feath­er­ing his nest to care about what was hap­pen­ing. Most peo­ple in oth­er parts of the world would laugh if they knew these men have titles of hon­ourable and most honourable.Information from the Constabulary revealed that not a sin­gle Detective was trained for over ten years ‚under the stew­ard­ship of Percival James Patterson and his pro­tegé, Portia Simpson Miller.The total free pass giv­en to small time crooks has yield­ed dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for Jamaica. Other fac­tors impact­ed what was hap­pen­ing on the ground in Jamaica, America was deport­ing peo­ple back to Jamaica as if there were no tomor­row, and con­tin­ue to do so, some sea­soned and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, as well as oth­ers who did noth­ing to deserve depor­ta­tion. Either way they all need to eat.

One deter­rent to crime, is the like­li­hood of get­ting caught. In Jamaica the like­li­hood of get­ting caught , or ever appre­hend­ed for a crime is rather slim. October 1991 I walked away from law enforce­ment , at that time we had a clear up rate of over 70 % in all major crimes, in the 20 years since I left, the JCF by its own admis­sion, only clears up about 7% per­cent of all major crimes . Seven,of that clear up rate the con­vic­tion rate is next to nill . Those who wring their hands and won­der how we got to what is now hap­pen­ing , need look no fur­ther than this para­graph for answers.

Not being held account­able for crimes embold­ened crim­i­nals who have more than enough sup­port from all quarters .

Politicians,dance hall,human rights,clergy,non gov­ern­men­tal Organizations, moth­ers girl­friends and the media to a less­er extent, the lat­ter through either fear, or incom­pe­tence, allowed itself to become pas­sive cheer­lead­ers to the carnage.

The Don cul­ture deliv­ered votes ‚the crim­i­nals in the Parliament kept the Police at bay. The Police large­ly start­ed to care less ‚and many became involved in despi­ca­ble forms of crim­i­nal­i­ty, unimag­in­able to ever asso­ciate with law enforce­ment officers.Outside groups like Amnesty International and their local pro­tegé Jamaicans for jus­tice con­tin­ue to use sub­tle coer­cion to desta­bi­lize the coun­try through a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of attack against the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces, as the streets con­tin­ue to run red with the blood of inno­cent adults and children.

The European Union has made funds avail­able to Jamaicans for Justice. Under the guise of human rights, the local groups have led a sus­tained and con­cert­ed cru­sade against the secu­ri­ty forces , sup­port­ed by some with­in the JLP Administration and the entire oppo­si­tion party. 

One would think that the way for­ward would be through a sys­tem­at­ic build­ing up of the capa­bil­i­ties of the law enforce­ment appa­ra­tus, and the jus­tice sys­tem, allow­ing for the time­ly and ade­quate dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice. This in tan­dem with mod­ern­iza­tion of the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture and com­mu­ni­ty devel­ope­ment, that would put peo­ple to work, expand the econ­o­my, and reduce crime, which encour­ages invest­ments which in turn cre­ates more jobs.

In a coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple we con­tin­ue to lose almost 2’000 to homi­cide annu­al­ly, oth­ers to migra­tion and it seem that the inno­cent are stuck with nowhere to go , pover­ty, igno­rance , illiteracy,hopelessness, and a rapa­cious oppor­tunis­tic polit­i­cal class that prey on their dis­ad­van­taged state.

If we do not begin to seri­ous­ly take a no-non­sense approach, that includes prison with­out parole,and deal­ing with it as a mil­i­tary mat­ter, with a mil­i­tary solu­tion ‚yes a mil­i­tary solu­tion !!, there will be no future for our coun­try ‚there are no real vic­to­ries with­out sac­ri­fice, the soon­er we as a peo­ple real­ize that the rule of law must be adhered to, and that those who defy the major­i­ty’s desire to live in a civ­i­lized way will be removed one way or anoth­er from soci­ety, the bet­ter our chances will be for a halt on the pre­cip­i­tous slide we are in.

The bleed­ing heart crim­i­nal sup­port­ing char­la­tans at Jamaicans for jus­tice who show up like ambu­lance chas­ing lawyers ‚sniff­ing around at every shoot­ing involv­ing police , look­ing for rel­e­vance, must be made to under­stand that we as a nation will not allow a lob­by group to decide when it comes to our safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, Patterson and Simpson Miller offered our coun­try up on the altar of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, allow­ing crim­i­nal rights to take cen­ter stage over the rights of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, Cops who do their jobs erad­i­cat­ing ter­ror­ists from the coun­try are side­line and demo­nized ‚so that Jamaicans for jus­tice and Carolyn Gomes can receive for­eign funds and a nation­al award, on the blood of war­riors like Wayne Henriques,and all the oth­er cops and mem­bers of our nations military.

This week our coun­try has come full cir­cle we now see the trend of behead­ing take cen­ter stage. Out of shame , and fear of a back­lash, the crim­i­nal serv­ing group, Jamaicans for jus­tice, has come out in con­dem­na­tion against the grue­some behead­ings, this is what peo­ple like myself and oth­ers have been say­ing for years,” when you sup­port them they get emboldened” .

Carolyn Gomes this is now your baby, you and the talk­ing heads on tele­vi­sion, and the idlers who offer noth­ing but hot air like Perkins and oth­ers , this is your baby.

mike beck­les:

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Backyard Gardening;

I recent­ly adopt­ed a new hob­by, back­yard gardening,it is a hobby now, but dur­ing my high school days it was a means of putting food on the table and mon­ey in my pock­ets, any­way, I digress.

Times are a lit­tle hard right now and many peo­ple are strug­gling just to make ends meet, peo­ple in Jamaica and oth­er parts of the world are hav­ing to be inge­nious in stretch­ing their gro­cery dol­lar to feed their fam­i­lies, hav­ing lived in both Jamaica and the United States I have a lit­tle bit of expe­ri­ence on what it feels like to be with­out mon­ey, or at least enough of it, in both countries.

I would like to stress to my friends who access these blogs, that it is real­ly isn’t that dif­fi­cult to pro­duce fresh veg­eta­bles and fruits to sup­ple­ment the fam­i­ly’s dietary needs, and maybe add a lit­tle bless­ing to some­one else.With very lit­tle space and a few dol­lars at the right farm store, you would be sur­prised what you can accomplish .

This spring I ven­tured into a farm store a short dis­tance from my home, I pur­chased a vari­ety of seedlings , includ­ing two vari­eties of let­tuce, two vari­eties of water­mel­on, cucum­ber , green pep­pers, squash ‚(or what we in Jamaica call pumpkin),hot peppers,tomatoes , zuc­chi­ni . Supplemented by egg­plant and Callalo seedlings a friend blessed me with.

So I pro­ceed­ed home with my seedlings , along with some peat moss, a small bag of organ­ic fer­til­iz­er, and some top soil, to the side of our house and there I did my thing.Well it’s been over fifty days and my fam­i­ly have ben­e­fit­ted from green pep­pers ‚plum tomatoes,callalo,hot pep­pers, and our let­tuce are almost all gone thanks to my wife.

I am in total and utter fas­ci­na­tion at the good­ness of God in pro­vid­ing food for my fam­i­ly from such a con­fined space and I thought I would like to share that with you wher­ev­er you may be​.You too can do the same in a wood­en box or an old tire, or a small area where there is at least six hours of after­noon sun,a lit­tle less would not be catrostrophic.

You can find good top soil any­where in Jamaica or oth­er parts of the Caribbean and you may be sur­prised that here in the USA the leaves you rake and bag in the fall , may be stored and used as valu­able mulch in the spring.Places like Kingston Jamaica pos­es a slight­ly big­ger chal­lenge for ten­e­ment dwellers , for those in high-rise dwellings this may not be for you, but for those peo­ple liv­ing on ground lev­els , even rent­ed ten­e­ments, you can pro­duce some toma­toes , pep­pers , callalo,and even cucum­bers and cab­bage to bol­ster whats served at the din­ner table, the weath­er is good and you may do this year round in Jamaica, peo­ple in the New York do not have the lux­u­ry of year round gar­den­ing but should take full advan­tage of the warm months.

Happy gar­den­ing.

mike beck­les:

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Was Independence Worth It.? Part 1:

Jamaicans, whether we reside at home or abroad, take a keen inter­est in the hap­pen­ings at home, we want to know see Jamaica doing well .
Wherever we are to be found we live like Jamaicans ‚eat Jamaican, and social­ize as we did back home.
I have lived away from home for a while,and still our pantry is stocked with Jamaican food, my wife and I would have it no oth­er way.
I do feel a sense of guilt every time I vis­it this sub­ject know­ing as I do the strug­gles the Jamaican peo­ple face on a dai­ly basis, grow­ing up the poor­est of the poor I am par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to the tra­vails of the peo­ple, in their dai­ly strug­gle just to make ends meet .The guilt I feel is not one of wrong doing , it is a guilt a con­sci­en­tious human being should feel know­ing that peo­ple do not have enough to eat and chil­dren are going to bed with­out the most basic neces­si­ties of life, food, and clean drink­ing water!!

In a mat­ter of months Jamaica will cel­e­brate 50 years as an inde­pen­dent Nation, The ques­tion that ought to be para­mount in our minds must be “what have we accom­plished as an Independent Nation”? .

This will form part of a series of blogs I will write ‚and one in which I will be ask­ing you to par­tic­i­pate from today henceforth.

mike beck­les:

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JAMAICA DAILY GLEANER GAY ADVOCACY:

On the 13th of July 2011 The Daily Gleaner Editorial Titled, SSP BAILEY’S MOUTHFUL OF MADNESS AND MISCHIEF.
On July 18th 2011 the Gleaner Editorial was Titled,JCF IN SHADOW OF SSP BAILEY.
The com­mon thread tying these two Editorials togeth­er ‚was the unadul­ter­at­ed sup­port for Gays in Jamaica, their lifestyle, and their Right to com­mit crimes with­out being held to account.
One thing was obvi­ous ‚was the desire of the Editor to see SSP Bailey dis­ci­plined for his free speech, which from threads allowed on the Gleaner’s own web­site, indi­cate that SSP Bailey made a more than ade­quate expla­na­tion of, and sup­plied the con­text in which he made the assertions.

Last time we checked the Editor of the Gleaner was not a Police Senior Officer, not privy to sen­si­tive Police Data, and as such is speak­ing from a posi­tion of big­otry toward SSP Bailey or, is him or her­self a clos­et­ed mem­ber of the Gay community.

Lets deal with the vit­ri­olic Bile spewed out of the mouth of this Editor :

Jamaica’s rigid caste sys­tem has always dic­tat­ed that dark­er skinned peo­ple not from upper Saint Andrew , who make up the mid­dle class, should be seen but not heard, that group includes Teachers ‚Firemen ‚Nurses, Police . it has always been obvi­ous they were more both­ered by the Police ‚than they were of the oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers aforementioned.

While I served in the JCF we often joked that the ran­cor was as a result of the pow­er of arrest vest­ed in us, oth­er work­ers posed no threat to them.The Colonial pic­ture of the Night Watchman, dressed in short pants , walk­ing around with a heavy spiked hel­met, sym­bols of a time some in Jamaica are yearn­ing for , is far divorced from the real­ties of Police Officers with Masters in Busssiness Administration and oth­er dis­ci­plines, the trans­for­ma­tion has not yet trans­formed from the Caterpillar to the Butterfly in the heads or psy­che of Jamaica’s Élite, to include the Gleaner Editor.

How else could any­one view this ran­cid cor­ro­sive bile of an attack on a ded­i­cat­ed Public Servant, this cow­ard­ly attack using space usu­al­ly reserved for impor­tant Editorial mus­ings, has now being reduced to a tool of het­ero­sex­u­al bashing.

This brings us to the sec­ond pos­si­ble conclusion:

Is the Gleaner Editor a clos­et Homosexual ? This writer has no judge­ment call to make regard­ing those of my broth­ers and sis­ters who prac­tice this lifestyle,I will not say I have gay friends, I don’t have gay peo­ple com­ing to my house , not because I try not to have them , but because I do not apply a lit­mus test on peo­ple with whom I asso­ciate , the truth is what some­one does in the pri­va­cy of his or her home is their busi­ness, as a small busi­ness own­er I deal with peo­ple dai­ly ‚gay and straight , they are equal to me , as a Christian God charged us to love the sin­ner, but hate the sin,I am a sin­ner, who come short of the glo­ry of God dai­ly, this dis­qual­i­fies me to deter­mine who is going to Heaven or Hell.

What SSP Bailey did was not to deter­mine who goes to hell or heav­en , he was speak­ing to the ques­tion of peo­ple whom are known homo­sex­u­al that are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly involved in a cer­tain kind of criminality.There is a false argu­ment being made about pro­fil­ing, as a Police Officer it is your duty to profile,determining in an effec­tive and sur­gi­cal way who is doing what.

Most of the Village Lawyers (some trained) in Jamaica who would open their mouths about Policing have no clue what they are talk­ing about, and these Editorials fall with­in that category.

So let me say Yes SSP Bailey you are indeed a Police Officer wor­thy of your pay , you do under­stand the val­ue of pro­fil­ing., it is an effec­tive tool in the tool box that shows that you know whom you are tar­get­ing , rather than be feel­ing around in the dark.When Police use large drag­net to coral large groups of peo­ple ‚then sift out the peo­ple of inter­est and those want­ed to answer to crim­i­nal charges , those now talk­ing out of the side of their mouths are the first to cry foul, they are th first to argue for a more intel­li­gence based type of Policing, now they get that type of Policing they have a problem.

I would argue that what they want is a Criminal Empire, a safe haven for crim­i­nals, this seem to be the desire of these talk­ing head hyp­ocrites, damned if you do , damned if you don’t .I sug­gest the Police enforce the exist­ing laws, archa­ic and use­less as they are,criminals break them wil­ful­ly , know­ing obey­ing the laws are more often than not more detri­men­tal to them than break­ing them.(see the alleged shoot­er of kha­jeel Mais refus­ing to turn over his weapon to the police,and the poten­tial penalty.

If SSP Bailey has data to back up his claim, which I am sure he does have, since he is the per­son on the ground, trained , and charged with those respon­si­bil­i­ties, and not the Elitist Editor, then he should not be detered by cheap ‚cow­ard­ly attacks from those who are too chick­en to face him , but rather throw stones and hides behind an Editorial.

Commissioner Ellington on this issue is as wrong as wrong can be, there comes a time when one has to draw a line in the sand , stand up and say I will back up no fur­ther. Lions, Tigers, and count­less oth­er species do this, they find a tree uri­nate on it, and define their ter­ri­to­ry, inter­lop­ers beware.

On his ascen­sion to the Office of Chief Constable I wrote a let­ter ‚which the Gleaner was gra­cious enough to publish.

In the let­ter I charged Ellington to be wary of those on the cock­tail cir­cuit who would invite him to their functions,I remind­ed him that they mere­ly tol­er­at­ed him .(see com­ments on Jamaica’s caste system)

As a police Officer I was acute­ly aware of the fact that some peo­ple were hap­py to be around me because of my val­ue to them , no more,no less, this is true of an offi­cer, irre­spec­tive of Rank,the Chief Constable being no exception.

The Chief Constable by step­ping in to give an expla­na­tion of what SSP Bailey meant, was as gaso­line to fire to this Bigoted Editor, rather than serv­ing as water. The truth is, no amount of truth in what SSP Bailey said will be allowed to get in the way, if this Editor has his/​her way, as I have indi­cat­ed Gays do not seek par­i­ty or equal­i­tyy, what they seek is to forcibly shove their way of life down our throats ‚mak­ing us crim­i­nals for dar­ing to speak out against homosexuality.

In the unit­ed States they real­ized they would not be able to get to mar­ry, or receive ben­e­fits that are accord­ed to mar­ried het­ero­sex­u­al peo­ple in one fell swoop , what they did was splin­ter and attacked State leg­is­la­tures , tar­get­ing indi­vid­ual leg­is­la­tors who cow­ard­ly capit­u­lat­ed , going against their moral beliefs, sac­ri­fic­ing their morals on the altar of job security.The result? more and more States are rolling over to the Gay lob­by , there­by enact­ing the Gay Agenda.

Jamaica is no dif­fer­ent, there are Gays in posi­tions of pow­er , and as can be seen from these two piles of garbage of July 13th and 18th on the Gleaner’s Editorial pages they have immense power.

What they want is for SSP Bailey to be put in his place , any­one who dare speak out against them, wrong or right, they adopt a scorched earth pol­i­cy of destruction.

What the Gay Lobby in Jamaica is say­ing we are above scruti­ny, we are are the new untouch­ables, so far they seem to be get­ting away with it.

If the writer(s) of the two Articles is/​are homo­sex­u­als the Gleaner, and Editorial board, owes the Jamaican peo­ple an expla­na­tion , not because they are gay and should under­go a lit­mus test, but the Nation needs to know that the garbage being spewed from that Editorial page is not an objec­tive assess­ment of facts, but rather a bla­tant unmit­i­gat­ed attempt at Gay Rights Advocacy.

Mike beck­les:

Have your say.

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ALL ABOARD , THE TRAINS ARE BACK.

The re-emer­gence of Train ser­vice to some areas of Jamaica is a wel­come relief to many, sep­a­rate and apart from the fact that the trains fill a sig­nif­i­cant trans­porta­tion need of many, it is a charm­ing addi­tion to the Tourism product.
This medi­um would like to salute the JRC for this ini­tia­tive , whilst in the same breadth I chal­lenge the Agency to make this ser­vice to the peo­ple afford­able and safe.
The Jamaican peo­ple are hurt­ing , as are most mid­dle and low-income peo­ple around the world, this means of trans­porta­tion goes a long way in alle­vi­at­ing some of the trans­porta­tions needs of thou­sands of our people.
Going for­ward we hope that Government, irre­spec­tive of which Party forms the Government, will not only con­tin­ue this ser­vice, but find ways to expand it .This will sig­nif­i­cant­ly stitch the coun­try togeth­er , a move that will ease some of the urban sprawl in Kingston and Montego Bay.
We hope that the pet­ti­ness and tit-for- tat that has char­ac­ter­ized Jamaica’s Political iden­ti­ty will not be allowed to cause this new inno­va­tion to die again.
MAKE FERN GULLY A NATIONAL PARK
I implore the pow­ers that be, to des­ig­nate Fern Gully a National Park ‚and a National attrac­tion, this should mean divert­ing vehic­u­lar traf­fic to an alter­nate route as soon as possible.
According to Scientists ‚some of the vari­eties of Fern found there are found nowhere else in the world , this infor­ma­tion by itself ought to inspire us as a Nation to want to pre­serve this National treasure.
However due to exhaust fumes from vehi­cles tra­vers­ing through the Gully,certain species are dis­ap­pear­ing , nev­er to be seen again.
This Information ought to moti­vate us to want to arrest this destruc­tion and hur­ried­ly seek to estab­lish order and san­i­ty in pre­serv­ing our National trea­sures for the next generation.

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JFJ’S PREDICTABLE HYPOCRISY

By now most peo­ple in Jamaica and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Jamaicans liv­ing out­side the Country are famil­iar with the mur­der of 17-year-old Kingston College stu­dent Khajeel Mais .
Young mis­ter Mais lost his life under the most egre­gious of cir­cum­stances ‚infor­ma­tion from the Jamaican Media and the Police sug­gest young mis­ter Mais was a lone pas­sen­ger rid­ing in the back seat of a cab to a fete being held at the Meadowbrook High school in Saint Andrew, the cab report­ed­ly rear end­ed a lux­u­ry BMW ‑x6 Sport Utility Vehicle , upon which all hell broke loose.
The reports alleged the dri­ver of the Sport util­i­ty, alight­ed from his vehi­cle gun in hand and opened fire at the cab , the dri­ver real­iz­ing he was being shot at ‚turned his cab around and sped off in the oppo­site direc­tion, he lat­er real­ized his young pas­sen­ger was dead.
Shot through the head.!!
This shoot­ing has evoked a firestorm of con­dem­na­tion and anger from all quar­ters of Jamaica , and the Jamaican com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing in oth­er Countries,the blog sites and social media has lit up with almost every­one call­ing for a swift res­o­lu­tion to this case .The demands are clear, find the shoot­er and bring him to Justice.!!
Most peo­ple read­ing the reports on a dai­ly basis were infu­ri­at­ed upon learn­ing that the shoot­er cow­ard­ly high­tailed it out of the Country after the shoot­ing, as more infor­ma­tion trick­led in it was report­ed he was an American Citizen , since then the shoot­er has report­ed­ly returned to the Island under the advise of his high-priced Attorney Patrick Atkinson, was detained by the Police, who up to the time of this post still has not released his name.
This has inflamed anoth­er fire storm of con­dem­na­tion, with most of those demand­ing more Information, claim­ing spe­cial treat­ment is being afford­ed the alleged mur­der­er. Despite how we feel about the actions of the Police ‚one thing we all share, is a com­mon out­rage that this young man’s life was snuffed out in this man­ner, now every­one has a right to due process, to the ben­e­fit of the doubt, and despite our out­rage I am sure the accused man has a sto­ry to tell, and so we await his day in Court, when hope­ful­ly we will get a chance to hear his ratio­nale, to what most peo­ple char­ac­ter­ize as a bar­bar­ic act. Now despite the National and International out­rage ema­nat­ing from this inci­dent, we have heard not one word from the car­ing peo­ple at Jamaicans for jus­tice, not one iota,not one peep of com­ment , no con­dem­na­tion, noth­ing that would assuage some of the hurt and pain the fam­i­ly of young Khajeel Mais must be feel­ing at this time. Yet true to form,as is their modus operan­di , despite expla­na­tion from oth­ers ‚and the Commissioner of Police, regard­ing the rea­son his Agency has made the deci­sion not to release the sus­pec­t’s name, the peo­ple at JFJ fear­ing irrel­e­vance, jumped onto this issue . Despite all the out­pour­ing of love and sup­port for the fam­i­ly of Khajeel Mais the peo­ple at Jamaicans for Justice has decid­ed that rather than con­demn the shoot­er , they would rather crit­i­cize the Police.

michael beck­les:

Have your say:

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SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Jamaica’s Police Commissioner has suc­cumbed to pub­lic pres­sure and has final­ly bro­ken his silence in the mat­ter in the mur­der of 17 years old Kingston College stu­dent Khajeel Mais.
Young Mais a pas­sen­ger in a taxi-cab, on his way to a fete at anoth­er High School, lost his life when the cab in which he was a pas­sen­ger was involved in an acci­dent, the cab alleged­ly rear end­ed a lux­u­ry BMW-x6 sport util­i­ty vehicle.
Reports are that the dri­ver of the BMW emerged from his vehi­cle gun in hand, and com­menced to fire on the cab,the dri­ver real­iz­ing that he was being shot at, turned his cab around and fled in the oppo­site direction.
He lat­er real­ized that his young pas­sen­ger was dead, a bul­let to the head, the cab dri­ver escaped phys­i­cal injury.
The state­ment from the Commissioner yes­ter­day defend­ing his Department’s han­dling of this mat­ter was an intel­li­gent, well thought con­cise and delib­er­ate Thesis on Policy and pro­ce­dure, A state­ment I would have been proud of, if the cir­cum­stances of its deliv­ery were different,.
However, despite all of what Mister Ellington has explained he still has not giv­en a plau­si­ble rea­son for the fact that to date the name of the sus­pect has not been released.
We can under­stand the expla­na­tion he gave regard­ing the fact that the sus­pect is a cit­i­zen of the United States and the poten­tial prob­lems releas­ing his name could have caused,we get that, how­ev­er the sus­pect by the Commissioner’s own admis­sion is back in the Country, and in his cus­tody, by all indi­ca­tions the sus­pect will be charged crim­i­nal­ly with the death of young mis­ter Mais,if this is cor­rect, whether he will face an Identification Parade or not there is no log­i­cal rea­son for the pub­lic to be kept in the dark as to his identity.
And while we are at it let’s hope that the JCF is not build­ing a case on the evi­dence gleaned from a poten­tial ID Parade alone.
The Commissioner , despite his expla­na­tions knows ful­ly well that the deci­sion he and the oth­er prin­ci­pals he named made to keep the pub­lic in the dark is one that is disingenuous,and does noth­ing to engen­der trust or respect for an Agency floun­der­ing from lack of both.
When all is said and done the charges made by the pub­lic about a per­ceived dou­ble stan­dard in the Police han­dling of this case still stands , when all the plat­i­tudes are peeled back, what we are left with is noth­ing more than smoke and mirrors.
How say you?
mike beckles