Anti-gang leg­is­la­tion is bogged down in the Jamaican Parliament, stalled because crim­i­nal sup­port­ers in both polit­i­cal par­ties wants the Bill watered down and even­tu­al­ly scrapped by Jamaica’s crim­i­nal lob­by Jamaicans for Justice (jfj). This is hap­pen­ing even as mur­der is on the increase in the coun­try with over 58 peo­ple report­ed killed in a sin­gle week . On any giv­en day the chance of get­ting killed is 1 in 44’000. Those are not long odds, in fact they are down­right alarm­ing. As I post­ed ear­li­er since the begin­ning of this year over 1’160 have been report­ed mur­dered to police, that num­ber does not mean those are the only peo­ple killed. As far as Jamaica goes there may very well be far more mur­dered and dis­posed of which author­i­ties are unaware of. This brings that 1 in 44’000 num­ber into sharp­er focus, and prob­a­bly makes it clos­er to 1 in 43’000 or less.

The Kern Spencer crim­i­nal trail con­tin­ues in the Kingston Resident Magistrate Court yes­ter­day . Spencer a for­mer Junior Minister in the Energy Ministry was charged joint­ly with his for­mer exec­u­tive assis­tant Coleen Wright almost five years ago with fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing. The case has seen many twists and turns, motions and counter motions specifics of which we have brought to your atten­tion. Yesterday 55 year old Justice of the Peace Everol Orr tes­ti­fied that Spencer gave him checks total­ing 4.5 mil­lion Jamaican dol­lars to con­duct a mon­e­tary trans­ac­tion at the Santa Cruz branch of the Jamaica National Building Society. He was instruct­ed to pur­chase a Money Order in the sum of US$60.000. Orr told the court the mon­ey was not intend­ed to pur­chase goods or ser­vices at his St Elizabeth Wholesale estab­lish­ment.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​980.

This case has gone on long enough . It has sur­vived a motion by the Presiding Magistrate Judith Pusey ‚which would have lit­er­al­ly gut­ted the Prosecution’s case, had the motion being upheld, (see chatt-a-box archives). As we approach the Yuletide sea­son I reflect on what 4.5 mil­lion dol­lars may pur­chase to aid the poor. I am vehe­ment­ly opposed to hand­outs, I am equal­ly opposed to depen­den­cy. All my life I have worked hard for what I want­ed. Yet I believe that Government has a moral oblig­a­tion to those among us who are very young and very old. Our Nation is in seri­ous cri­sis , Jamaicans yet unborn are seri­ous­ly indebt­ed to inter­na­tion­al lenders for mon­ey they nev­er ben­e­fit­ed from, and there are no infra­struc­ture to show for it .

Last week I donat­ed a sin­gle com­put­er from my busi­ness to my old Primary School, the Bonnet Primary School in North East Saint Catherine. I men­tioned it not because I want to be rec­og­nized for that sim­ple act, I do so because the school did not have a sin­gle com­put­er. Essentially it remained the way it was when I was in Elementary School. I was hap­py to do so, and pledged to con­tin­ue to use my com­pa­ny to aid the school going for­ward. I encour­age you all to do what you can to help. Just pri­or to the last hur­ri­cane hit­ting our coun­try , one elder­ly woman was inter­viewed and she told the media all she was able to pur­chase was a lighter and a sin­gle stick of Candle. Tears welled up in my eyes, she was unable to afford the most basic of neces­si­ties, clean drink­ing water and some canned foods. We are bet­ter that that, I nev­er met her yet I cried when I read her sto­ry. As the most junior Politicians fat­ten them­selves from the pub­lic cof­fers, the most vul­ner­a­ble of our peo­ple go with­out the most basis life sus­tain­ing necessities.

Nelson Mandela July 1918 December 2013.

Today the world lost one of its strongest voice for free­dom , Liberty, Equality, and Justice. Nelson Mandela passed away at the age of 95. We will miss you.

Though not the only rea­son, the large num­ber of Jamaican Nationals being deport­ed back to the Country has posed a stub­born prob­lem for law enforce­ment and the over­all growth of the coun­try. Not all per­sons deport­ed are crim­i­nals , nei­ther are all peo­ple deport­ed engag­ing in crim­i­nal behav­ior. The size of Jamaica’s econ­o­my does how­ev­er make it more dif­fi­cult for the coun­try to absorb its res­i­dents in a mean­ing­ful way. There are how­ev­er those who are hard-core crim­i­nals who are pos­ing seri­ous chal­lenges to the coun­try’s already chal­lenged secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus. Some of these crim­i­nals are sophis­ti­cat­ed orga­nized crime oper­a­tives, well versed in first world technologies.

This makes the job of the already sus­pect, ill-equipped, law enforce­ment agen­cies even more chal­leng­ing. First World Law enforce­ment Agencies are well aware of the sophis­ti­ca­tion and deter­mi­na­tion of Jamaican crim­i­nals. The depor­ta­tion num­bers does speak to that fact to some degree! Many of the crim­i­nal ele­ments return­ing to the coun­try have set up elab­o­rate crim­i­nal empires, their activ­i­ties include,though not con­fined to, extor­tion, gun-run­ning, drug-deal­ing, mur­der-for-hire, Lottery-scams, Insurance-frauds and a pha­lanx of oth­er seri­ous crimes. Many of these crimes are not new to Jamaica, and nei­ther are the pur­vey­ors. With these new oper­a­tives return­ing to the coun­try bloody turf-wars ensue with mas­sive blood-let­ting between fac­tions com­pet­ing for turf and influence.

Here in the United States as well as Canada and Great Britain Law Enforcement Agencies are giv­en free-rein to bring crim­i­nals to jus­tice. Jamaican Criminals have felt the brunt of laws specif­i­cal­ly designed toward their demise. Laws like the Rockefella drug laws and the Rico Statue have dec­i­mat­ed their oper­a­tions, fill­ing pris­ons and ensur­ing thou­sands of depor­ta­tions. The reverse is true in Jamaica, rather than beef up the abil­i­ties of the police by .

1)Removing crim­i­nal ele­ments from with­in the ranks of the police. 2)Improve train­ing. 3) Improving the Investigative arm. 4) Toughen and broad­en crim­i­nal penal­ties. 5)Improve the office of Director of Prosecution (DPP). 6) Removing lib­er­al crim­i­nal-lov­ing judges from the bench. &) Replacing them with no non­sense judges. 7) Enact strong anti-gang leg­is­la­tion, mak­ing it bad busi­ness to engage in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty or to be ass­co­ci­at­ed with a gang.

Instead of embark­ing on the afore­men­tioned, the Government embarked on a pro­gram of dis­man­tling the police force by destroy­ing the morale of it’s offi­cers. This they did by. 1) Removing and mar­ganal­iz­ing strong deci­sive street cops from the depart­ment. 2) Create an Agency designed to make crim­i­nals of cops exe­cut­ing their duties. 3) Establish poli­cies from the talk­ing points of spe­cial inter­est crim­i­nal rights lob­by JFJ. 4)Empower the crim­i­nal under­world by default.

Justice Minister Mark Golding

Justice Minister Welcomes INDECOM Court Ruling:http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​229 Speaking at a pub­lic forum host­ed by human rights lob­by group Jamaicans for Justice yes­ter­day, Senator Golding empha­sised that the pow­ers pos­sessed by offi­cers of INDECOM to arrest, charge and pros­e­cute do not under­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Golding was react­ing to the Court’s deci­sion against 8 Police ofi­cers who chal­lenged the Authority of INDECOM“s pow­er to request state­ments from mem­bers of the force. It is instruc­tive that the Justice Minister’s response was deliv­ered at a forum host­ed by Jamaicans For Justice the nation’s fore­most anti-police aggi­ta­tor. and sup­port­er of those who have com­mit­ted crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and arrest­ed by police.

Head of Criminal Rights lob­by (JFJ)Carolyn Gomes

Gomes has waged a sys­tem­at­ic scorched earth assault against Jamaican police offi­cers who take deci­sive actions against Jamaican crim­i­nals , every year many offi­cers lose their lives in the line of duty scores more are gunned down in their homes, while they social­ize and in var­i­ous oth­er sit­u­a­tions. Police record hun­dreds of inci­dents each year where crim­i­nals have trad­ed gun­fire with their patrols. In many instances offi­cers are shot and injuried. Unfortunately,many also make the ulti­mate sacrafice. It is an affront that Carolyn Gomes is allowed to source large sums of mon­ey over­seas in her scorched earth camapign against Jamaican law enforce­ment and law abid­ing Jamaicans. Her cru­sade has pro­vid­ed cov­er, aid and com­fort to some of the world’s most bar­bar­ic degenerates,she sub­se­quent­ly need not con­cern her­self with her own safe­ty , it is lit­er­al­ly guranteed.

I have kept this issue front and cen­ter in this medi­um, not because I believe in the Jamaican Police. Not because I believe there are no crim­i­nal cops who kill peo­ple undu­ly. I do so because I believe in the inden­spe­bil­i­ty of the rule of law, if our coun­try is to avoid becom­ing a failed state. Gomes has skill­ful­ly stoked the divide between the police and the pub­lic, with the help of for­eign han­dlers, some of whom are impor­tant parts of INDECOM. Just a few days ago she galling­ly called for the res­ig­na­tion of the Commissioner of police. This Commissioner has done more to fur­ther the agen­da of the crim­i­nal rights lob­by than any of his coun­ter­parts. Her call was such an affront that well know Defense Attorney Queens Council Howard Hamilton, with whom I have had my share of dis­agree­ments, blast­ed Gomes stat­ing>The recent call­ing for the head of the com­mis­sion­er of police by Dr Carolyn Gomes of Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) is most unfair and unjustified.

Howard Hamilton QC.

Hamilton went on to say quote: She inher­ent­ly sub­mits that the mur­der rate for 2013 would be a cause of con­cern for even a First-World coun­try, much less for lit­tle Jamaica, but she offers no sug­ges­tion as to what the com­mis­sion­er should have done, or be doing, to stem this haem­or­rhage, short of stop­ping them before they occurred.The real ques­tion Dr Gomes should have asked of the com­mis­sion­er is “Do you have the mod­ern machin­ery and man­pow­er? Are your patrol cars equipped with com­put­ers that can give infor­ma­tion of every licensed vehi­cle on the road with­in sec­onds? Have you got the fire­pow­er that can match what he knows to be on the streets? Does he have under his com­mand the nec­es­sary man­pow­er that he needs to real­ly police this island?” http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​1​2​7​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml.

Jamaicans are final­ly open­ing their eyes to what Carolyn Gomes and her for­eign han­dlers rep­re­sent to Jamaica. I have had my share of argu­ments with Hamilton regard­ing the rule of law, it is good to see that on this issue, he has got­ten it right. What is need­ed is more peo­ple stand­ing with those of us who are say­ing “NO”, we rec­og­nize that the police are far from per­fect, we rec­og­nize that INDECOM is a good idea, just not as con­sti­tut­ed and empow­ered. We will stand with our police and send a strong sig­nal to crim­i­nals and those who give them aid and com­fort, that we are the ones who suf­fer and we will have no more of it. Jamaica’s image has tak­en sig­nif­i­cant beat­ings with tremen­dous con­se­quences for all her cit­i­zens. If we are to begin to reverse these con­se­quences we must begin by stand­ing with the rule of law.

I won­der what would hap­pen if every Jamaican Cop who pro­vide secu­ri­ty for the Prime Minister and her cab­i­net mem­bers and every mem­ber of par­lia­ment would seri­ous­ly fall ill? I won­der what would hap­pen if every mem­ber of the Island Special Constabulary who pro­vide secu­ri­ty to the Country’s Judges were to sud­den­ly fall seri­ous­ly ill. I won­der what would hap­pen if every cop sent to replace their sick col­leagues , sud­den­ly come down with the same ill­ness? I won­der what would hap­pen if every nyamy, nyamy, lick­ie , lick­ie Jamaican cop under­stood that he/​she has his/​her des­tiny in their own hands?

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

It is abun­dant­ly clear both to observers in Jamaica and the International com­mu­ni­ty, that Jamaica is not seri­ous about crime, cor­rup­tion, and the rule of law. It is clear that the Governing Administration is slow­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tling the rule of law in Jamaica. Yet the coun­try’s Prime Minister is on a flight almost week­ly to coun­tries over­seas as far as east Asia, exhort­ing any and every­one to come invest in Jamaica. What seem to elude the Learned [sic] Prime Minister is the fact that every coun­try she vis­its have strong safe­guards pro­tect­ing the rule of law. Even as she treks around the globe and accept every mean­ing­less patron­iz­ing bull-shit of an award and is cyn­i­cal­ly and con­ve­nient­ly allowed to grace cer­tain mag­a­zine cov­ers , peo­ple are run­ning away from Jamaica.

I Know it is an effort in futil­i­ty expect­ing her to under­stand what the con­se­quences for the coun­try going for­ward will be, but when will this far left lib­er­al mad­ness end? Court sides with INDECOM strike down Police appeal.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​217.

Between the crim­i­nal lov­ing lib­er­al courts which nev­er saw a crim­i­nal they don’t want to set free, the politi­cians and the crim­i­nal rights lob­by of Caroly Gomes, the coun­try is roy­al­ly screwed. The few hon­est Jamaicans still liv­ing on the Island would be well served canoe­ing out of there and hope to sur­vive the 90 miles to Cuba. The Castro’s do not tol­er­ate that kind of non­sense in Cuba. For 28 of the last four decades the People’s National Party has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tled the rule of law and Jamaica’s moral com­pass to the point the Island of 2.8 mil­lion is the laugh­ing-stock of the carribean.

Murders abound, the pop­u­la­tion is desen­si­tized to the slaugh­ter. Citizens cow­er in fear hop­ing , wish­ing, that the next time a gun barks they wont be added to the sta­tis­tics. This hap­pens while the Administration strength­ens the hand of killers by shack­ling the police under the guise of account­abil­i­ty. The truth is this Administration does not want account­abil­i­ty or trans­paren­cy. If they were to cre­ate a pro­fes­sion­al police force most of the law mak­ers would be found to be seri­ous law breakers.

Those won­der­ing whats up with INDECOM ? Stop won­der­ing , Those won­der­ing whats hap­pen­ing with these lib­er­al ver­dicts com­ing from the courts , don’t waste your time. This Party in pow­er has oper­a­tives plant­ed in every sec­tor of nation­al life. They are cult-like in their zealotry to the cause of chang­ing Jamaica from the way we knew and loved it . They know full-well what they want to accom­plish. They under­stand that those opposed to their ways have left, or are con­tin­u­ing to leave. This includes their own Senator who bolt­ed for Canada with his fam­i­ly . Those unable to leave are of no con­cern to them.

Have you ever won­dered how they man­aged to win so many elec­tions? Most well think­ing Jamaicans are liv­ing in oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing oth­er Islands in the car­ribean. Laughable , yes, oth­er Islanders would once do any­thing to be allowed to live in Jamaica. Now they do not want us in their coun­tries. This is what the PNP cul­ture has done to Jamaica.

There has been sev­er­al reports in the news recent­ly of black shop­pers being detained after mak­ing pur­chas­es in Barneys and Macy’s a cou­ple of New York city depart­ment stores. In fact it was seri­ous enough for Barney’s NY. CEO to meet with the Reverend Al Sharpton and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to dis­cuss the issue,at his National Action Network Offices in Harlem NY.

Have you both­ered pay­ing atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing in the United States Congress late­ly? If you haven’t, yet you are find­ing it hard to put food on the table you should be con­cerned. If you are able to put food on your table you should be con­cerned that 46.5 mil­lion Americans are liv­ing in pover­ty. The pover­ty thresh­old in 2012 was an income of $23,492 for a fam­i­ly of four. Reuters new Agency reports while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 16 per­cent on a total return basis last year, includ­ing rein­vest­ed div­i­dends, the Census Bureau report showed medi­an house­hold income slipped to $51,017 from of $51,100 in 2011. The econ­o­my has strug­gled to sus­tain growth rates of more than 2.5 per­cent since the reces­sion ended.

While the amount of Americans liv­ing in pover­ty has increased and the econ­o­my is strug­gling with a growth rate of 2.5 per­cent Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have dou­bled down on efforts to desta­bi­lize the econ­o­my. You may ask whats new ? Well it’s impor­tant to note what they are doing. They just passed a bill which would cut Forty Billion Dollars from the food stamps pro­gram over 10 years. That is Four Billion Dollars less per year to this vital pro­gram. And they have tak­en their 42^nd vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, (Obama care).

Both the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Food Stamps, and the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) pejo­ra­tive­ly labeled, are pro­grams which are help­ing the poor. The ques­tion which ought to be on the minds of all con­cerned is this. Why exact­ly does the Republican par­ty hate the poor this much? The late Senator Ted Kennedy asked the same ques­tion on the floor of the Senate years ago. On that occa­sion Senator Kennedy was talk­ing about Republicans intran­si­gent refusal to allow a vote to increase the min­i­mum wage.http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​S​i​c​F​n​8​r​q​PPE.http: On that occa­sion Senator Kennedy asked, why do you have so much dis­dain for the poor that you keep pil­ing on amend­ment after amend­ment, where does the greed stop?

Senator Ted Kennedy (deceased)

What would the late Senator Ted Kennedy say to what’s hap­pen­ing in this coun­try since he went to rest? Voting Rights gut­ted by the Supreme Court which is the high­est earth­ly body the peo­ple have to appeal to for basic fair­ness and decen­cy. Basic food sup­ple­ments to the poor­est being cut back at a time when data points to increas­ing pover­ty and hunger , par­tic­u­lar­ly among chil­dren and the elder­ly. As a child grow­ing up in Jamaica it was com­mon to see foods in schools with the American Flag, donat­ed to our Government to help feed the most vul­ner­a­ble. This was not con­fined to our small Island, the American Government helped to feed the hun­gry the world over. Today the Republican Party is the par­ty of Oligarchs. The Party is there sole­ly to ful­fill the dic­tates of the mega rich Oligarchs like David and Charles Koch. Today’s Republicans are deny­ing what amounts to just over a dol­lar per day in food sup­ple­ment to Americans, some of whom are work­ing yet unable to make ends meet.

Getting food from the farm to our fork eats up 10 per­cent of the total U.S. ener­gy bud­get, uses 50 per­cent of U.S.
land, and swal­lows 80 per­cent of all fresh­wa­ter con­sumed in the United States. Yet, 40 per­cent of food in the 
United States today goes uneat­en. This not only means that Americans are throw­ing out the equiv­a­lent of $165
bil­lion each year, but also that the uneat­en food ends up rot­ting in land­fills as the sin­gle largest com­po­nent of U.S.
munic­i­pal sol­id waste where it accounts for a large por­tion of U.S. methane emis­sions. Reducing food loss­es by 
just 15 per­cent would be enough food to feed more than 25 mil­lion Americans every year at a time when one in 
six Americans lack a secure sup­ply of food to their tables. Increasing the effi­cien­cy of our food sys­tem is a triple­bot­tom-line solu­tion that requires col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts by busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and con­sumers. The U.S.
gov­ern­ment should con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive study of loss­es in our food sys­tem and set nation­al goals for waste 
reduc­tion; busi­ness­es should seize oppor­tu­ni­ties to stream­line their own oper­a­tions, reduce food loss­es and save 
mon­ey; and con­sumers can waste less food by shop­ping wise­ly, know­ing when food goes bad, buy­ing pro­duce that 
is per­fect­ly edi­ble even if it’s less cos­met­i­cal­ly attrac­tive, cook­ing only the amount of food they need, and eat­ing
their left­overs.http://​www​.nrdc​.org/​f​o​o​d​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​w​a​s​t​e​d​-​f​o​o​d​-​i​p​.​pdf

Multi-bil­lion­aire Oligarchs, David and Charles Koch.

Republicans in the House and Senate open­ly deride the poor , paint­ing them as lazy shift­less dis­pos­able who fail to take full advan­tage of Capitalism and all its virtues[sic] Today I echo the late Senator Ted Kennedy; What do you find so dis­dain­ful about the poor that you lit­er­al­ly want them to starve to death. How much is enough? Charles and David Koch are very wealthy own­ers of Koch Industries.

With his broth­er Charles, who is sev­en­ty-four, David Koch owns vir­tu­al­ly all of Koch Industries, a con­glom­er­ate, head­quar­tered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annu­al rev­enues are esti­mat­ed to be a hun­dred bil­lion dol­lars. The com­pa­ny has grown spec­tac­u­lar­ly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the broth­ers took charge. The Kochs oper­ate oil refiner­ies in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and con­trol some four thou­sand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper tow­els, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lum­ber, Stainmaster car­pet, and Lycra, among oth­er prod­ucts.Forbes ranks it as the sec­ond-largest pri­vate com­pa­ny in the coun­try, after Cargill, and its con­sis­tent prof­itabil­i­ty has made David and Charles Koch — who, years ago, bought out two oth­er broth­ers — among the rich­est men in America. Their com­bined for­tune of thir­ty-five bil­lion dol­lars is exceed­ed only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.http://​www​.newyork​er​.com/​r​e​p​o​r​t​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​1​0​0​8​3​0​f​a​_​f​a​c​t​_​m​a​yer

These two men are behind a range of leg­is­la­tion being tabled and passed in munic­i­pal, state and the fed­er­al Legislature. Their fin­ger-prints are on leg­is­la­tion which weak­ens envi­ron­men­tal laws, on efforts to de-fund and repeal the afford­able care act, among oth­ers. They are the pow­er behind the Tea-Party move­ment which dis­guis­es itself as a lib­er­tar­i­an grass-roots move­ment, and uses the faces of ordi­nary peo­ple to get their destruc­tive mes­sage across. They give huge sums of mon­ey to var­i­ous phil­an­thropic caus­es, leav­ing their names on many land-marks. David Koch in par­tic­u­lar ‚has mas­tered the art of leav­ing a trail of pos­i­tives bear­ing his name . He donat­ed a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars to mod­ern­ize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre build­ing, which now bears his name. He has giv­en twen­ty mil­lion to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. After notic­ing the decrepit state of the foun­tains out­side the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten mil­lion dol­lars for their ren­o­va­tion. He is a trustee of the muse­um, per­haps the most cov­et­ed social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donat­ed more than forty mil­lion dol­lars, an endowed chair and a research cen­ter were named for him.:[new yorker]

Don’t be fooled by these acts of phil­an­thropy, every­thing these two pow­er­ful oli­garchs do are geared toward solid­i­fy­ing and gain­ing more pow­er> They have a will­ing part­ner in Republicans in the con­gress. though by far not the only two of their kind, David and Charles Koch has become the face of excess greed and inhu­man­i­ty toward the poor and dis­pos­sessed. If you haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing in your life and to your life now is a good time to start.

I watched the movie the “Butler” recent­ly. I don’t usu­al­ly get to catch a movie, I’m always too tired. On the occa­sion that I both­er to drag myself to do so, it’s usu­al­ly to see an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film. I like those films because they usu­al­ly pro­vide a win­dow into the Subject’s life, depend­ing on the abil­i­ty of the Director to cap­ture that sub­jec­t’s sto­ry and trans­late it through the Actors.

The Butler tells a tremen­dous tale about Cecil Gaines a man born and raised on the cot­ton fields of the American South. Young Cecil wit­nessed his father being mur­dered, shot to death. His trans­gres­sion? Having the gall and temer­i­ty to chal­lenge the piece of trash who had just raped his wife. I won’t give away the movie, I would sug­gest though, that every­one who haven’t seen this film, do so. At a time when blacks in America are stand­ing on the side­lines of their own des­tiny, it is impor­tant that we use every tool at our dis­pos­al to kin­dle the dying embers of rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor. A fer­vor which has been doused by our accep­tance of the drug of tran­quil grad­u­al­ism, Doctor King warned against. Not only should all 37 — 40 mil­lion American blacks be mind­ful of the tran­quil drug of grad­u­al­ism, they should ignite that with the fierce urgency of now, cour­tesy of President Barack Obama. (“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”.—Gandhi)

President Obama did not gloss over the need for African-Americans to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own lives in his speech com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50^th Anniversary of Doctor King’s icon­ic “I have a dream speech”.

Raising the issue of personal responsibility is not very popular in parts of our community. It is far easier to blame them, the man,  they, than take responsibility for our own lives . We have to assume responsibility for our own communities and our own circumstances. It ought to be clear by now, no one will fix things for us. We could begin with our men being more responsible by not assuming having multiple baby mothers makes us men. Maybe we could find a way to have our young women aspire to more than just pushing a baby stroller with babies they are ill-equipped and cannot afford to raise. That would exponentially lower that frightening 71% of all black babies in America being born to single black females. I totally get all the arguments about the hurdles which are placed in the way of black upward mobility. Guess what? They are not about to come down, the same forces which placed them there in the first place are still engaged in erecting barriers, they are not into bridge-building. We simply have to find a way around them.

Responsibility come from deal­ing with the prison indus­tri­al com­plex and what it means to our peo­ple, while we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deal with how we raise our young men and women in a way which will keep them out of Courts. Understandably, there are com­plex­i­ties which has to be con­sid­ered inso­far as the details are con­cerned. We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to stand around wait­ing for the grass to grow to eat, cat­tle do not, we can­not afford to either. We could begin by start­ing new busi­ness­es and sup­port­ing them. Every oth­er eth­ic group in this coun­try has done so. It is an incred­i­bly empow­er­ing con­cept. It does us no good to con­tin­ue to be the peo­ple who buy what every­one else pro­duces. yet pro­duces noth­ing any­one buys.( “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”.—Will Rogers).

Every house­hold must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the child/​ren it puts into the pub­lic domain. We sim­ply can­not depend on teach­ers to dis­ci­pline our chil­dren , they are not allowed to any­more , they sim­ply call the Police. We must stop blam­ing the Police when they arrive and cart off our dys­func­tion­al kids, that’s what they are oblig­ed to do by law. We must stop blam­ing the judges who put them in jail, they are doing what the law man­dates. Stop blam­ing the Legislators who drafts those laws, usu­al­ly they tell us what they plan on doing, yet we do not vote. Those who like their poli­cies vote. We Do not vote so they decide to take that right away. They put our chil­dren in pris­ons and they don’t have to wor­ry about us ever. Check mate.

The time for action is now>

EDUCATE:

1)Educate:To devel­op the fac­ul­ties and pow­ers of (a per­son) by teaching,instruction, or schooling.

Synonyms: instruct, school, drill. 2)Educate: To qual­i­fy by instruc­tion or train­ing for a par­tic­u­lar calling,practice, etc.; train: to edu­cate some­one for law. 3)To inform: to edu­cate one­self about the best course of action.(Dictionary​.com) There seem to be a bit of mis-edu­ca­tion among some edu­cat­ed peo­ple about the mean­ing of edu­ca­tion. As such, they are caught in a quandary as to how to han­dle the idea that any­one not schooled in their dis­ci­pline could actu­al­ly them­selves be edu­cat­ed albeit in anoth­er area. As such I went to Dictionary​.com to see what they had to say about “Educate”, as above>

I recent­ly wrote about a dis­cus­sion forum on Okra where alleged Doctors were unable to par­tic­i­pate in a light-heart­ed con­ver­sa­tion with­out telling every­one they are Doctors . https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​5​5​1​6​#​r​e​s​p​ond. To date I have noticed smol­der­ing embers of resent­ment that some­one not schooled at the University Of the West Indies could chal­lenge them on their absolute idio­cy in believ­ing that only doc­tors could make informed con­tri­bu­tions. Oh… did I tell you they were all from Jamaica? Yeah they are !!

So as I said I noticed some smol­der­ing embers of resent­ment around,social media dis­guised as some­thing else. Which leaves me to con­clude that the resent­ment is whol­ly about what many peo­ple believed. That many Jamaicans who ben­e­fit­ed from a col­lege and University edu­ca­tion do so not just for their indi­vid­ual bet­ter­ment, but as a weapon they may use to lord over any­one who dare chal­lenge or engage them. I must say this is not an indict­ment on the UWI , God for­bid, many of my fam­i­ly mem­bers are proud Alums. My broth­er earned his Masters there before com­plet­ing two Doctorates over­seas. My broth­er exhibits none of the traits of inse­cu­ri­ty I saw on that thread.

I crave the indul­gence of all on this, both those with much for­mal edu­ca­tion and those schooled through less for­mal means. Also do edu­cate me on the rea­sons behind some peo­ple’s inabil­i­ty to have a con­ver­sa­tion with­out feel­ing the need to inform oth­ers of their aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions. What exact­ly are the inse­cu­ri­ties inher­ent that caus­es edu­cat­ed Jamaicans in par­tic­u­lar to dis­play those inse­cu­ri­ties? Is it that they fear no one will lis­ten to them, no one will pay atten­tion to them? Or is it a phys­i­o­log­i­cal need to dom­i­nate, to intim­i­date, are these clas­sic signs of clos­et bul­lies? Do these peo­ple work hard for their Degrees because for years they went unrec­og­nized? Have they done the hard work because they have an extreme need to be noticed? On this I will await the diag­no­sis of the educated:

During the last National Election cycle in the United States, I was flab­ber­gast­ed when Rick Santorum for­mer Republican Senator from Pennsylvanian referred to the President as a snob. What was galling was not just the dis­re­spect of Santorum toward the sit­ting President, but more so why he called the President a snob. President Obama had dared to sug­gest that all young Americans get advanced train­ing. The President did not say every­one should go to college,but sug­gest­ed rather, that it was imper­a­tive that every­one be trained for some­thing. Whether through four year or com­mu­ni­ty col­leges or trade schools. At the time I thought that every young per­son attend­ing col­lege would have been a noble goal for any Nation, Rick Santorum dis­agreed. Born in Virginia, Santorum was raised pri­mar­i­ly in Butler, Pennsylvania. He obtained an under­grad­u­ate degree from Pennsylvania State University, an M.B.A. from theUniversity of Pittsburgh, and a J.D. from the Dickinson School of Law . Sounds like Education worked well for Santorum so why would he not want every­one to have the same oppor­tu­ni­ties he had ? Politics.

At the time, I wrote a scathing blog con­demn­ing Santorum for want­i­ng to cre­ate two soci­eties, one for the edu­cat­ed and the oth­er for every­one else. I still believe today that col­lege should be a goal for every­one. Not every­one will be a chem­i­cal engi­neer but they should at least have the option to try. Fast for­ward to Saturday August 17^th and it was reaf­firmed to me that not all peo­ple who ben­e­fit­ed from high­er learn­ing are smart. I also learned that some are indis­tin­guish­able from the Degreee/​s they hold. In a sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion on Facebook about Okra it became abun­dant­ly clear that some of the posters who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the forum had pre­cious lit­tle to con­tribute except to tell oth­ers that they are Doctors. It was stun­ning that a con­ver­sa­tion about “Okra“could reveal so much about the inse­cu­ri­ties of some who claim to be edu­cat­ed. As a cou­ple of con­trib­u­tors in-boxed me dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, it was clear these Doctors are noth­ing out­side the Degrees they hold. I did a quick bit of inves­ti­ga­tion dur­ing the dis­cus­sion and con­clud­ed that the com­mon thread which bound every last one of those who claimed to be Doctors was.…. you guessed it, Jamaica.

My per­son­al doc­tor knows my aver­sion to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, he makes it his duty to tell me what nat­ur­al foods to take which are healthy alter­na­tives to big Pharma’s drugs. My wife , does not like to use phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs, but opts instead for nat­ur­al reme­dies wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. She has long main­tained that doc­tors are trained to write pre­scrip­tions peri­od. As I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the forum yes­ter­day I won­dered at the silli­ness of those alleged Doctors. Their closed mind­ed­ness was stunning.

One igno­ra­mus claimed that garbage col­lec­tion was menial work, I wish I knew the men and women who col­lects that jerk’s garbage, or the peo­ple who pre­pare the foods he eats when he vis­its restau­rants. I real­ized a long time that each and every one is vital to our world. College is vital, every­one should have a chance to attend. I also learned that some of the bright­est minds nev­er set foot on a College Campus or attend­ed but dropped out because of the burn­ing desire to unleash the fire of cre­ativ­i­ty with­in them. Bill Gates attend­ed Harvard for a while but even­tu­al­ly dropped out to work on his dream, In his sopho­more year, Gates devised an algo­rithm for pan­cake sort­ing as a solu­tion to one of a series of unsolved prob­lems^[31] pre­sent­ed in a com­bi­na­torics class byHarry Lewis, one of his pro­fes­sors. Gates’s solu­tion held the record as the fastest ver­sion for over thir­ty years. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and many others.

The peo­ple who plants and gath­ers the foods we eat are indis­pens­able. Those who make the beds and pre­pare our foods, make the beds in the hotels we patron­ize are impor­tant. So too are the con­struc­tion work­ers. Our Firemen and Police Officers would not have it any oth­er way, they love their jobs. The mail-man and the UPS deliv­ery peo­ple are vital to what I do. Finally I love the fact that peo­ple col­lect the garbage, deliv­ers the pack­ages which allows me to run a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. Maybe our edu­cat­ed Jamaican Elitists Doctors could learn a thing or two if they would remove their heads from up their stu­pid ass­es, long enough to be remind­ed that the world does not run sole­ly on doc­tors. As I con­tem­plat­ed this Article I was remind­ed of the rea­son our coun­try is so screwed up, these of whom I speak are drawn from the very same pool.

Much more to say on this.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a neu­ro­sur­geon and CNN’s chief med­ical correspondent.

Well know nuero­sur­geon, Sanjay Gupta made a star­tling rev­e­la­tion regard­ing Marijuana which is bound to rever­ber­ate through­out Government, Medical, Law-enforce­ment, and big busi­ness communities.

“Over the last year, I have been work­ing on a new doc­u­men­tary called “Weed.” The title “Weed” may sound cav­a­lier, but the con­tent is not.I trav­eled around the world to inter­view med­ical lead­ers, experts, grow­ers and patients. I spoke can­did­ly to them, ask­ing tough ques­tions. What I found was stun­ning. Long before I began this project, I had steadi­ly reviewed the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture on med­ical mar­i­jua­na from the United States and thought it was fair­ly unim­pres­sive. Reading these papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na. I even wrote about this in a TIME mag­a­zine arti­cle, back in 2009, titled “Why I would Vote No on Pot.“Well, I am here to apol­o­gize”.http://​www​.cnn​.com/​2​0​1​3​/​0​8​/​0​8​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​/​g​u​p​t​a​-​c​h​a​n​g​e​d​-​m​i​n​d​-​m​a​r​i​j​u​a​n​a​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​t​m​l​?​s​r​=​s​h​a​r​e​b​a​r​_​f​a​c​e​b​ook.

This is an eye-open­ing Article, all I can say is “WOW” I applaud Dr. Gupta for the hon­esty strength , and resolve he has shown in writ­ing this piece, even as the sci­en­tif­ic facts came to light. He could have cho­sen to remain silent, exact­ly because of the humon­gous back­lash and push-back that is sure to come from Government, law-enforce­ment, and those invest­ed in the prison Industrial com­plex. Speaking for myself even as a cop, I felt there was some­thing wrong in lock­ing away peo­ple for mar­i­jua­na a mere plant. I nev­er smoked it , but I have seen many peo­ple who have, they seem quite nor­mal, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pared to peo­ple who use cocaine,and oth­er drugs, alco­hol or even tobac­co. It is rather refresh­ing that Dr Gupta has stepped for­ward to tell the truth. Look out Sanjay they will be com­ing at you, count­less lives have been destroyed and side­tracked because Police are allowed to arrest peo­ple alleg­ing mar­i­jua­na use and sales.

It is impor­tant for clar­i­ty, and fair­ness that I include in this Article a com­ment some­one made in anoth­er forum. Quote: I’m sure it’s com­plete­ly a coin­ci­dence that the good doc­tor recent­ly became a part own­er of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar med­ical mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary in CA.(LessThanZero)  For the record we haven’t attempt­ed to find out whether Dr. Gupta has any fidu­cia­ry inter­est in the pro­duc­tion of cannabis. We also do not believe that even if he does, that that would in any way negate what he and many oth­ers have found to be sci­en­tif­ic fact.

Dr. Gupta wrote :

On August 14, 1970, the Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Roger O. Egeberg wrote a let­ter rec­om­mend­ing the plant, mar­i­jua­na, be clas­si­fied as a sched­ule 1 sub­stance, and it has remained that way for near­ly 45 years. My research start­ed with a care­ful read­ing of that decades old let­ter. What I found was unset­tling. Egeberg had care­ful­ly cho­sen his words: “Since there is still a con­sid­er­able void in our knowl­edge of the plant and effects of the active drug con­tained in it, our rec­om­men­da­tion is that mar­i­jua­na be retained with­in sched­ule 1 at least until the com­ple­tion of cer­tain stud­ies now under­way to resolve the issue.” Not because of sound sci­ence, but because of its absence. 

As a spec­ta­tor to this process, I am awe-struck at the amount of lives destroyed, the amount of peo­ple deport­ed from the United States, and the amount of peo­ple in pris­ons all over the world because of one rec­om­men­da­tion 45 years ago. A rec­om­men­da­tion which was made not because of sound sci­ence, but because of its absence.

Day in day out the News Papers blare out the head­lines of death and destruction:

Priest found? — Police believe corpse is that of missing churchman Police hold two for priest’s disappearance. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​P​r​i​e​s​t​-​s​-​b​o​d​y​-​f​o​u​n​d​#​i​x​z​z​2​a​Y​1​z​J​0Pc.

Man shot dead at Bull Bay church altar.  http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​M​a​n​-​s​h​o​t​-​d​e​a​d​-​a​t​-​B​u​l​l​-​B​a​y​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​-​a​l​t​a​r​_​1​4​7​8​2​8​9​9​#​i​x​z​z​2​a​Y​2​S​q​zeB

Murder of businessman jolts Sterling Castle.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​M​u​r​d​e​r​-​o​f​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​m​a​n​-​j​o​l​t​s​-​S​t​e​r​l​i​n​g​-​C​a​s​t​l​e​_​1​4​7​8​2​004

Jamaicans con­tin­ue as if noth­ing hap­pened. It is the new nor­mal. “a su di ting set”. They have rel­e­gat­ed them­selves to sur­vival mode, “any­thing a anything”.

Crime and cor­rup­tion has lit­er­al­ly inun­dat­ed the coun­try, cit­i­zens bar­ri­cade them­selves behind lay­ers of grill-work, sep­a­rat­ed room from room. They hope the bars will keep the mur­der­ers away. They hope it will buy them time, the time it will take for the police to even­tu­al­ly come. If them come at all. those caught out­side in a bad sit­u­a­tion becomes a chalk out­line. The Police come and go through the motions, they cre­ate a sem­blance of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, they erect the crime scene tape, yet curi­ous onlook­ers breach the tape and con­t­a­m­i­nate the scene. They would­n’t leave or obey the police even if they are asked nice­ly of threat­ened, this is Jamaica.

In the end, the blood is washed away the peo­ple retreat to their lives , or what obtains as their lives. No one is fooled by the actions of the police, they know they will not arrest any­one for this killing, just like they did not arrest any­one for the one before, or the one before that. It is just for show, the cops do not know what they are look­ing for , but they put on a show. In the end, no one will be held account­able for this mur­der, no one ever is.

Some cal­cu­late it is safer to bad mouth the police, this puts them in good with the killers. They make the most out­landish state­ments against those who enforce the laws, they are bound to be safe. Or so they cal­cu­late, so they think, pret­ty soon it will all come crash­ing down on them, crim­i­nals have no honor.

The coun­try mean­while, lead­er­less like a ship with­out a rud­der, floun­ders along bat­tered by the waves of crime ‚cor­rup­tion unem­ploy­ment, price increases,power-lock-offs, water-lock-offs,and ever esca­lat­ing prices. The Prime Minister does not want to hear the cries, after all why should she? Why not leave her alone to be Prime Minister, let her have some peace to plan her next for­eign trip?

She does­n’t lis­ten to the news she says. I agree with her, if you have that many fools enam­ored with you, will­ing to put you where you do not belong, why would you want to lis­ten to their cries of despair? The tourist board Ad, says “in the Jamaica you know and love noth­ing’s changed”. It is a fee­ble attempt to con­sole, the fact that they say noth­ing’s changed,shows just how much has changed. The Jamaica you knew and loved every­thing has changed, everything.

This is Jamaica “a yah su nice”.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion on a social site with an edu­cat­ed Jamaican woman, who also hap­pened to be an edu­ca­tor. She is con­vinced that patios (pat­wa) is a great teach­ing tool for stu­dents, she elo­quent­ly argues that there is data sup­port­ing her posi­tion that patios enables kids to learn English bet­ter. I dis­agree, let me has­ten to say I am not an edu­ca­tor, and do not pre­tend to be one. I do have com­mon sense. I believe if par­ents had the means to teach English to their chil­dren at the pre‑k lev­el, these kids would arrive at the ele­men­tary lev­el bet­ter off. The first four years are the for­ma­tive years, chil­dren are like sponges, they soak up every­thing they hear and see. In the case of Jamaica, as in the case of African-American com­mu­ni­ties where many chil­dren learn Ebonics, chil­dren are at a dis­ad­van­tage. I believe these chil­dren have to go through a debrief­ing of sorts, and what amounts to a re-ori­en­ta­tion, to acquaint them with stan­dard English. It seem that for both teach­ers and stu­dents that time could be bet­ter spent, ie, learn­ing a legit­i­mate sec­ond language.

Even as my friend and I dis­agree on this issue, Jamaican dance-hall artiste, are com­plain­ing bit­ter­ly that they are being forced to water down their artis­tic tal­ents by cut­ting out  smut or even bleeped out smut. I mean real­ly? The Broadcast com­mis­sion have final­ly come to it’s sens­es, and is cor­rect­ly pro­tect­ing the air­waves from the cor­ro­sive garbage they ped­dle as music, they com­plain they are get­ting a fight. This is what hap­pen when there is a lack of lead­er­ship. A soci­ety sim­ply can­not main­tain it’s via­bil­i­ty if every­one is allowed to do what they want, my grand­fa­ther always told be even hell has rules. What these smut ped­dlers are say­ing is, that they are unable to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly using stan­dard English and with­out the exple­tives-laden-tirades which pass­es for lyrics.

By the way real Jamaican artists have done so long before these char­la­tans killed the music.

The Clarendonians.

Paragons.

Toots and the Maytals.

Freddy Mc Gregor.Gregory, Issacs, Barrington Levy, Sugar Minot,

Dennis Brown. Millie Small, Susan Kadogan,Ken Boothe, Alton Ellis,Delroy Wilson.

Beres Hammond, Wayne Wade, Sanchez, Marcia Griffiths, Carlene Davis.

Skattalites.

I could go on and on, and for those who con­tin­ue to spread the lie that some­how this crap they now ped­dle is music, ask the aver­age per­son on the streets which they would pre­fer, the music of yes­ter­year or what obtains today?People hard­ly dance any­more, they just stand around and look. Between the con­stant stop and start, the pro­fane yelling scream­ing, what pass­es for dance-hall is lit­er­al­ly killing reg­gae music. The so-called Artists and their sup­port­ers are sim­ply too blind to see it.

All the great ones who cre­at­ed the music, did so with­out the filth, no one should believe the lie that music must or should be filled with degen­er­a­tive smut. Let them learn to com­mu­ni­cate with­out the smut or find some oth­er pro­fes­sion. The notion that they should be allowed to prop­a­gate that garbage on soci­ety is laugh­able it is an indica­tive of the deep­er rot which is eat­ing away at society.

JORDAN DAVIS :

Jordan Davis:

Jordan Davis, an unarmed black teen the same age as Trayvon Martin. Davis, 17, was shot to death by Michael Dunn.

Dunn told police that he asked Davis and three oth­er teens, who were parked next to him at a gas sta­tion, to turn down their music. Dunn claims he heard threats from the teens and saw a gun in their car. He says he feared for his own safe­ty, and that’s why he grabbed his gun and fired into the vehi­cle. Police say they found no guns inside the teens’ vehi­cle and that Dunn fired his gun eight or nine times.

Michael Dunn:

Dunn has been charged with first-degree mur­der in Davis’ death and also faces three counts of attempt­ed first-degree mur­der for shoot­ing at the three pas­sen­gers in the vehi­cle who survived. 

Robin Lemonidis:

Dunn’s attorney,Robin Lemonidis, has told CNN that her client was react­ing to what he claims was a gun being drawn. “When all the evi­dence has been flushed out, I believe that it will be extreme­ly clear that Mr. Dunn act­ed as any respon­si­ble firearm own­er would have under the same cir­cum­stances,” Lemonidis said.http://​www​.hlntv​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​1​3​/​0​7​/​1​5​/​j​o​r​d​a​n​-​d​a​v​i​s​-​m​i​c​h​a​e​l​-​d​u​n​n​-​z​i​m​m​e​r​m​a​n​-​t​r​a​y​v​o​n​-​m​a​r​tin

The Trayvon Martin killing has gen­er­at­ed nation­al atten­tion. Fair mind­ed peo­ple all over the world are out­raged, they are not ready “to get over it” as Maryland Republican con­gress­man Andy Harris demands.

There are mul­ti­ple com­po­nents to this killing, which can­not be ignored as I argued before. As trag­ic as this case has been for Tracy Martin, Sabrina Fulton, the black com­mu­ni­ty and black peo­ple in gen­er­al, there is a more seri­ous aspect to this which must be considered.

What embold­ened George Zimmerman to take the actions he took?

Why do Police depart­ments tar­get, pro­file harass and abuse men of color?

Did the pros­e­cu­tion in Sanford Florida do a bad job, or did they even have a chance of gain­ing a con­vic­tion , irre­spec­tive of the enor­mi­ty of the evi­dence against Zimmerman ‚with a jury which did not reflect Trayvon Martin?

Let me say first, as a peo­ple ‚African-Americans sim­ply can­not afford this to be anoth­er “we shall over­come” moment. African-Americans have con­sid­er­ably untapped lever­age ‚they need to use it to access the kinds of leg­is­la­tion they need. Not by expect­ing the first African-American pres­i­dent to save them, but by pres­sur­ing their demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors and con­gressper­sons to push through mean­ing­ful leg­is­la­tion which the pres­i­dent will then sign. The Zimmerman case was not an iso­lat­ed incident.

Black men are assault­ed dai­ly by police depart­ments. There are innu­mer­able cas­es of police offi­cers barg­ing into hous­es owned by African-Americans assault­ing and killing even 80 odd year old women, and they enjoy the same lev­el of def­er­ence Zimmerman was afford­ed by white juries. In new York City over 90% of stop and frisks result in no arrest. Over 90% of the peo­ple stopped and frisked are young black and brown men, some of whom are bru­tal­ized. Their only crime being the col­or of their skin. These actions does noth­ing to engen­der trust between police and cit­i­zens. It strain rela­tion­ships and puts offi­cers lives at risk, it is sim­ply bad pol­i­cy which the New York City coun­cil have final­ly come around to recognizing.

It is rea­son­able to con­clude then, that part of any solu­tion must be to impan­el diverse juries which reflect the diver­si­ty of the coun­try. As we seek to use the leg­isla­tive process to dis­man­tle laws which empow­er scared white men to kill the object of their fears.

In the news now is the Trayvon Martin case, yet lit­er­al­ly every day all-white Grand-Juries fail to indict police offi­cers who act con­trary to law, kill or abuse peo­ple of col­or , and are not held to account. On the rare occa­sions they are indict­ed by grand juries they are always exon­er­at­ed despite the evi­dence against them.

How can this not embold­en cops to act as judge jury and exe­cu­tion­er? How can police offi­cers trans­fer their fear to some­one else , mak­ing it a life and death sit­u­a­tion every time the aver­age per­son of col­or gets pulled over in a traf­fic stop?

This can­not be the way police depart­ments oper­ate, the peo­ple empow­er the police to pro­tect us, all of us, no one should live in fear of the very peo­ple they pay to pro­tect them.

This sim­ply has to stop !!!

There is a lot which needs exam­in­ing, as a result of the George Zimmerman acquit­tal. Zimmerman was a 28 years old at the time of the shoot­ing. Trayvon Martin was 17 years old. Zimmerman had a gun. Trayvon Martin was unarmed. Zimmerman saw Travyon Martin as a sus­pect. He called the police, fol­lowed him in his truck as he talked to police. Trayvon was on the phone with his friend Rachael Jeantel, she was the last per­son Trayvon Martin spoke to before George Zimmerman put a bul­let dead cen­ter into his heart. Trayvon told his friend Rachael Jeantel that a creepy crack­er was fol­low­ing him.

She advised him to run, he obvi­ous­ly took her advise, a deci­sion which may have cost him his life. Zimmerman exit­ed his truck, the police dis­patch­er heard sounds which indi­cat­ed that Zimmerman was chas­ing after the teen, she asked Zimmerman whether he was fol­low­ing Trayvon? Zimmerman answered in the affir­ma­tive. The dis­patch­er told him ‘we don’t need you to do that” Zimmerman said “ok”, yet he did anyway.

I believe Zimmerman exit­ed the truck he was dri­ving and chased Trayvon Martin. Trayvon was scared, he told Rachael Jaentel he was scared of the creepy crack­er fol­low­ing him. She advised him to run, he ran out of fear of his life. Zimmerman, embold­ened by Florida’s stand your ground laws. His posi­tion as watch cap­tain with­in that com­mu­ni­ty, his desire to make sure that the per­ceived crim­i­nal does not get away. Remember his com­ments heard on the tape “these ass-holes always get away”.

Zimmerman was going to make sure that this one did­n’t get away, he exit­ed his truck , chased 17-year-old Trayvon Martin down ‚Trayvon Martin was a lanky 5 feet 11 inch kid , he must have been faster than Zimmerman , but he did­n’t know the hous­ing devel­op­ment the way Zimmerman did. I believe he chased the young man down cor­nered him, I believe there was a fight, I believe Trayvon screamed for help, Zimmerman shot him point blank range and the scream­ing stopped.

I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe Zimmerman’s super­fi­cial wounds were staged to cov­er up his crime. I believe he had help cov­er­ing up the crime from peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er because of his father’s con­nec­tions. I believe the inves­ti­ga­tion was mis­han­dled from the start, they had no idea the case would gar­ner such nation­al attention.

Hearing Juror B‑37 account of how she per­ceived the case was a chill­ing reminder to me , just how deep racism runs in America. The vic­tim Trayvon Martin did not get any ben­e­fit of the doubt. It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that any­one of sound mind could empathize with a grown man who ignored the com­mands of author­i­ties chased down an unarmed kid and shot him in the heart.

The kid was doing noth­ing wrong.

Many peo­ple con­tin­ue to ped­dle the crap that women are incred­i­ble nur­tur­ers ‚who are far more emphat­ic than men. My friend told me today , “maybe she is emphat­ic if it’s her kid”.

Maybe my friend, just maybe !!!

Two days ago I wrote an arti­cle in which I dealt with the issue of peo­ple who have time to cri­tique and crit­i­cize the work of oth­ers while not pay­ing atten­tion to their own jobs. The sub­ject of that arti­cle was the head of the new Investigative over­sight agency, the inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion of inves­ti­ga­tions, or INDECOM)for short.

Terrence Williams:

I believe com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams would be far more effec­tive in his duties, were he to desist from mak­ing inflam­ma­to­ry state­ments against the police force. He would gain greater coop­er­a­tion from (the police) which would make his job much eas­i­er. Williams has gone out of his way to seaper­ate him­self, and his office from the police depart­ment, through reck­less and care­less utter­ances and asso­ci­a­tions. I won­der how long the crim­i­nal ele­ments will con­tin­ue to make that distinction.

Williams would poten­tial­ly gar­ner greater sup­port ‚were he to use what­ev­er inves­tiga­tive and man­age­ment skills he has build­ing bridges, rather than be run­ning around with anti-police group JFJ, mak­ing unsa­vory com­ments against the police depart­ment. He could do him­self and the office he holds a greater ser­vice, were he to have more pro­fes­sion­al tact in what he says.

Criminal Rights Advocate Carolyn Gomes:

He could do the office he holds greater ser­vice, if he spends less time in front of cam­eras beg­ging for more pow­er. Terrence Williams is about Terrence Williams, clear­ly he has gar­nered the skills of police bash­ing, a key com­po­nent to suc­cess in Jamaica.

Many police offi­cers who have spent time on the front-lines fight­ing Jamaica’s urban ter­ror­ists have a dif­fer­ent view about crime. This is true of even oth­er police men/​women whom have served for decades. Make no mis­take about it Jamaica’s homi­cide num­bers are demon­stra­bly high­er than even nations with active civ­il wars.

There are many peo­ple who get behind com­put­er key-boards and extol the virtues of Jamaica, point­ing to what they believe is the nice­ness of Jamaica. Without tak­ing any­thing away from these Utopians, I don’t share your views, of course Jamaica is a nice place, no ques­tion, but some of the peo­ple ? That’s anoth­er matter .

Yea, yea , yea , I know there are good and bad every­where I have heard that spiel a thou­sand times, today I am talk­ing about Jamaica. Please do not both­er me with your state­ments about Jamaica’s vir­tu­os­i­ty, you may chose to ignore the prob­lems, under a fog of white rum and jerk pork and denial, my crit­i­cism defines patriotism.

While I’m on the sub­ject of patri­o­tism, there are some of you sup­posed-Jamaicans, some of you live abroad, some of you live in Jamaica, you have a habit of act­ing like you are more Jamaican than oth­ers whose world-view dif­fers from yours. I wish some of you would come to me with that non­sense, as if you know what it is to sac­ri­fice for country.

I’m good now, glad I got that off my chest, so back to the sub­ject Terrence Williams. Having spo­ken to many police offi­cers at var­i­ous lev­els of the JCF, I heard the same refrain, “we have no prob­lem with pres­sure groups” pres­sure group being those respon­si­ble for over­sight, and even those that out­ward­ly sup­port crim­i­nals like JFJ.

What they have a prob­lem with is Williams mak­ing inflam­ma­to­ry and counter-pro­duc­tive state­ments aimed at bol­ster­ing and enhanc­ing his own pro­file. Williams was back in front of a bank of cam­eras yes­ter­day in a press con­fer­ence he called at , you guessed it, INDECOM head­quar­ters to bemoan the fact that mem­bers of his so-called inves­tiga­tive team came under intense and sus­tained gun­fire on Red Hills Road, which pre­vent­ed them from doing their duties.

Williams was speak­ing dur­ing an emer­gency press con­fer­ence held at INDECOM’s head­quar­ters yes­ter­day in response to the inci­dent. He appealed for all per­sons to “show good sense”.“When you are angered by these shoot­ings, we are there to inves­ti­gate and to ensure that as much as pos­si­ble, the truth comes out,” he said. “It is not helped when you pre­vent us from doing so by block­ing the roads or [employ­ing] oth­er hos­tile actions.“Williams not­ed such inci­dents were rare, but said this was the sec­ond time in two months INDECOM mem­bers had end­ed up in hos­tile sit­u­a­tions.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​7​1​0​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​3​.​h​tml

I won­der where would the coun­try be, were police offi­cers to run back to 103 – 105 Old Hope Road and call press con­fer­ences so they may cry like lit­tle bitch­es every time some­one fired at them? You see it’s easy to make state­ments from air-con­di­tioned offices, or from a hotel lounge dur­ing cock­tail hour. Policing Jamaica’s streets is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. That is where the rub­ber meets the road. To date, almost a dozen brave police offi­cers have been gunned down yet the police depart­ment have not called a sin­gle press con­fer­ence to whine and bitch.

News to Williams, you want to be an inves­ti­ga­tor, if you can’t take the heat get the hell out of the kitchen. Frankly I believe the peo­ple fir­ing were real­ly poor shots. Police offi­cers face that hos­til­i­ty every­day, yet Williams nev­er miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer grandiose opin­ions, orders and advice, as if he knows some­thing about polic­ing the streets.

Much more to come fas­ten your seat belt Terrence Williams, char­la­tans will have to run away. Pretty soon the forces of evil will make no dis­tinc­tion between you and the JCF .

Rigen, Natty Morgan, Sandokan, Copper,Feather Mop, Jim Brown, Dudus. What is the com­mon thread which ties these peo­ple together?

CRIME IN JAMAICA:

These names are just a few of the more rec­og­niz­able in the annals of infamy in the Island nation. These mis­cre­ants should have been shunned, not so. In many com­mu­ni­ties in our coun­try we see larg­er than life murals depict­ing ser­i­al mur­ders and rapists under the ban­ner “Don“who have caused immea­sur­able harm, yet they occu­py place of pride in these com­mu­ni­ties. To their cred­it the Police have recent­ly moved to remove some of these murals, and cor­rect­ly so.On the issue of Policing the reverse is true, author­i­ty fig­ures are ridiculed and dis­missed chil­dren are taught to con­front cops, peo­ple do so to prove their street credentials.

In fact if you want to be some­one in Jamaica make sure that you have an acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ship with cops,or demo­nize cops. Ask Barbara Gloudon, Ronald Thwaites, and oth­ers who built a career in talk radio on the back of cops. So why do we won­der why there is so much crime in Jamaica? Let me be clear, we Jamaicans are a free­dom lov­ing peo­ple, the last thing we want is some­one telling us what to do and what not to do. That is part of the rea­son one may argue that we are so opposed to police actions in our lives. However we have not demon­strat­ed the nec­es­sary restraint and sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty in doing our part to avoid bring­ing a law enforce­ment into our lives.