I sat through the case of the Central Park Jogger on chan­nel 13, most peo­ple old enough will recall this case involv­ing 4 young African boys and 1 Latino. . Four of the juve­niles charged — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise — offi­cial­ly con­fessed to the crime, and each impli­cat­ed the oth­ers. A fifth sus­pect, Yusef Salaam, made ver­bal admis­sions, but refused to sign a con­fes­sion or make one on video­tape. Salaam was, how­ev­er, impli­cat­ed by all of the oth­er four and con­vict­ed. Salaam’s sup­port­ers and attor­neys charged on appeal that he had been held by police with­out access to par­ents or guardians, but as the major­i­ty appel­late court deci­sion not­ed, that was because Salaam had ini­tial­ly lied to police in claim­ing to be 16, and had backed up his claim with a tran­sit pass that indeed (false­ly, as it turned out) said that he was 16. If a sus­pect has reached 16 years of age, his par­ents or guardians no longer have a right to accom­pa­ny him dur­ing police ques­tion­ing, or to refuse to per­mit him to answer any ques­tions. When Salaam informed police of his true age, police per­mit­ted his moth­er to be present.^{[9]Wikipedia.}

Having been a law enforce­ment offi­cer and a civil­ian it was one of the most sober­ing moments of my life. It brought home to me in a vis­cer­al way just how wrong the sys­tem can get it when most, or all of us believe that the right man is in custody.

The Central Park Jogger case involved the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a female jog­ger in New York City’s Central Park, on April 19, 1989. Five juve­nile males — four black and one Hispanic — were tried and con­vict­ed for the crime. The con­vic­tions were vacat­ed in 2002 when Matias Reyes, a con­vict­ed rapist and mur­der­er serv­ing a life sen­tence for oth­er crimes, claimed to have com­mit­ted the crime alone and DNA evi­dence con­firmed his involve­ment in the rape. Wikipedia. This case was a cul­mi­na­tion of a per­fect storm of events which seemed like it was bound to occur when it did. It involved Racism, Police Impropriety, what undue pres­sure on police can cause, media that accept what it’s told and not try doing a lit­tler inves­ti­ga­tion on it’s own and a cor­nu­copia of oth­er variables.

One of the lessons which should have been learned from this case is just how wrong we can get it, when we all in a knee-jerk way accept what­ev­er nar­ra­tive we have been fed. Sitting there watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to the sequence of events it was rather galling as media clips were played with the media prac­tion­ers being mere spec­ta­tors and mouth-pieces for the Government’s case..

The Police depart­ment com­mis­sioned a lawyer to inves­ti­gate what had gone wrong with the case, the result was that the inves­ti­ga­tions revealed that the police depart­ment did noth­ing wrong. Essentially the police depart­ment exon­er­at­ed itself from cul­pa­bil­i­ty. The truth is the Police depart­ment was too macho and ashamed to admit that as far as the case of the cen­tral park jog­ger case was con­cerned they got it hor­ri­bly wrong. This is not new with police depart­ments, and the NYPD is cer­tain­ly chief among offend­ers when it comes to issues like these. The case res­onat­ed with a crescen­do as the 5 young men were being pros­e­cut­ed, it went out with a whim­per as they were exon­er­at­ed. The law is an ass if the prac­tion­ers are too ego­is­ti­cal to say we were wrong and we are sorry.

To this very day the woman who pros­e­cut­ed the case and made a name for her­self still stands by the con­vic­tions even as all of the evi­dence shows they were in fact inno­cent. The 5 young wen were rail­road­ed with threats and coher­sion and promis­es of free­dom , they were lured into believ­ing that if each per­son rat­ted out the oth­er they would all go home. It was a lie. The police depart­ment should have apol­o­gized to them but the police is nev­er wrong so no apol­o­gy has been forth­com­ing to these men who have been so egre­gious­ly wronged. In 2003 the 5 men filed a suit against the city of New York for the harm done to them. Ten years lat­er the case is still in discovery.

For those who talk about jus­tice and democ­ra­cy, do see this doc­u­men­tary http://​www​.pbs​.org/​k​e​n​b​u​r​n​s​/​c​e​n​t​r​a​l​p​a​r​k​f​i​ve/

Trisha the woman who endured that ordeal of being raped and abused is one of the most sought out inspi­ra­tional speak­ers on the lec­ture cir­cuit. Audiences enjoy Trisha’s ener­gy, wit, and poignant sto­ries about the pow­er of the human spir­it. Through her work, book, and lec­tures, she reach­es out to peo­ple strug­gling through recov­ery from any num­ber of prob­lems, offer­ing Hope and Possibility.

Walk-way over the Hudson Poughkeepsie NY:

I met Jamal (not his real name) when he was a mere boy attending Poughkeepsie High School, like so many boys his age he came to the Barbershop I invested in to get his haircut.

That Barber shop was the new place to be ‚it was dif­fer­ent than the tra­di­tion­al shops, we had a recep­tion area with tele­vi­sion, and a desk com­plete with a com­put­er, new to the block and the busi­ness, I felt it was a good idea to build a data base, and treat our cus­tomers dif­fer­ent­ly. Jamal was one of the first kids to come to my shop, I was not a bar­ber but I had a crew of up to six bar­bers who attract­ed and took care of our cus­tomers. Many of the young boys were rau­cous, loud, some quite, by and large most of these young black boys were no dif­fer­ent than any oth­er group of young men. ‘Despite what trou­ble some of them may have been involved in one thing was cer­tain, these young men were absolute­ly respect­ful to me and the crew which worked with me. None was more respect­ful or more quite than Jamal.

I unof­fi­cial­ly men­tored these young men who would lis­ten ‚nev­er-fail­ing to point out to them that there are pit­falls that are strate­gi­cal­ly laid for them, poli­cies designed specif­i­cal­ly to get them into the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and keep them there.

All the kids lis­tened some applied what they heard, some did­n’t, some are in prison, a few of them have been killed, some are doing fine.

Jamal joined the State Guard after grad­u­at­ing from Poughkeepsie High School, he also enrolled in Dutchess Community College, he con­fid­ed in me that he would like to be a Minister of Religion. He was also active­ly engaged in the local Seventh Day Adventist Church. Most of all, Jamal was proud to have a girlfriend.

Two days ago Jamal walked into my busi­ness-place and told me he just got out of Jail after a week. I was stunned, Jail and Jamal were two words I would nev­er put in the same sen­tence. He explained that he got into a ver­bal spat with his girl­friend and he tossed her cell­phone and kicked her car, he admit­ted he was wrong.

She did what women today do! She called the police.

he was arrest­ed , she obtained an order of pro­tec­tion against him.

He was angry , but noth­ing made him more angry than the shack­les they placed on his legs. He said to me “leg irons Mike”!.

He was charged with mali­cious destruc­tion of prop­er­ty, pub­lic mis­chief, and of course the police piled on two more charges, which the judge prompt­ly and cor­rect­ly tossed. They are offer­ing him a deal.

Get this,.….… for break­ing his girl­friend’s phone and kick­ing her tires, three (3) years pro­ba­tion and thir­ty (30) days in a state men­tal facil­i­ty for evaluation.

This means he will most like­ly be dis­charged dis­hon­or­ably from the New York State Guard. He will have to quit col­lege, he will for­ev­er be seen as a psy­chi­atric case. he will nev­er be able to be a lawyer, judge, or a cop. He will most like­ly find it dif­fi­cult to ever get real or mean­ing­ful employ­ment, which could poten­tial­ly turn this qui­et decent demure and respect­ful 22 year old into a career criminal.

Jamal’s sto­ry is the sto­ry play­ing out in count­less com­mu­ni­ties all across America. Young black boys are not allowed to make mis­takes. The sys­tem is mak­ing crim­i­nals out of good kids, the same mis­takes cops, lawyers and judges made in their younger years.

I write about this because this is a good kid who did not deserve this kind of treat­ment. The hor­ror sto­ries are the same day in day out, girl gets mad, she calls the cops , guy gets arrest­ed, nobody takes a look to see if these com­plaints are all legit or are some of these women using the sys­tem at their leisure?

Domestic vio­lence is a seri­ous prob­lem, as a police offi­cer I saw and dealt with it first-hand. No one’s inter­est is served when one par­ty uses the sys­tem to club the oth­er, it builds resent­ment and anger, and will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences in the future.

Today Jamaica attained another dubious distinction The Jamaican dollar slid to its lowest level yet J$100-US$1.

Technically, it does­n’t mat­ter whether the dol­lar is 98 to one American dol­lar or 100 to one. The larg­er point being that the slide of the Jamaican dol­lar con­tin­ues and the peo­ple entrust­ed to gov­ern has no clue how to stop the destruc­tion.chatt​-​a​-box​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​log

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.:

Every day Jamaicans liv­ing in my neck of the woods com­plain about the fact that their loved ones in Jamaica are get­ting less and less Digicel cred­its when they send cred­its to them back home. To a man they all blame Digicel, even though I under­stand how they would blame Digicel for giv­ing less cred­it for their ten, twen­ty or what­ev­er denom­i­na­tion they chose to send, I mar­vel that not one per­son real­ize that the Government is respon­si­ble, they blame the pri­vate company.

As is the case in Jamaica the peo­ple refus­es to hold this fail­ure of a polit­i­cal party/​Administration account­able. No sin­gle enti­ty has done more harm to our coun­try than the People’s National Party, since it’s incep­tion. Yet the vot­ers return them to pow­er over and over. It may be incom­pre­hen­si­ble to some, as to why they are elect­ed and reelect­ed so many times ‚yet after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion , I have con­clud­ed that peo­ple opposed, sim­ply leave the country.

There are a lot of argu­ments to be made from my last state­ment but many peo­ple sim­ply do not want to live in a coun­try run by the gut­ter rats in the PNP.

Finance Minister Peter Phillips:

The task at hand is big­ger than the Governing cabal is capa­ble of han­dling. Speaking to friends in Jamaica, who are in Government employ, the mood is somber. They fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand that their lives and that of their chil­dren are get­ting hard­er by the day, it is a seri­ous cri­sis to which the Administration has no solu­tion. Today as the Dollar reached that dubi­ous mile­stone, the Administration has noth­ing to offer the nation but plat­i­tudes and promis­es of mon­ey it expects to be made avail­able by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The prob­lem with more bor­row­ing is that it exac­er­bate the prob­lems even as it delays inevitable eco­nom­ic collapse.

As I out­lined in my last blog-post the solu­tion to our nations prob­lems will not be solved by the peo­ple who got us into the mess in the first place. This is an Administration which believes in big gov­ern­ment, social­ist con­trol of the econ­o­my, nepo­tism, padding pub­lic pay­rolls with polit­i­cal hacks, mas­sive pork-bar­rel spend­ing to get votes, cor­rup­tion, high crime rates, spend­ing tax­pay­ers mon­ey on lux­u­ry vehi­cles for par­ty big-wigs, raid­ing the pub­lic cof­fers to fat­ten theirs and fam­i­ly mem­bers pockets.

This is a Government so cor­rupt they should be tried for crimes against the peo­ple, but if the peo­ple don’t know they deserve bet­ter , do they? As the Emperor who parad­ed around naked because no one had the guts to tell him he was naked, so too does our coun­try floun­der rud­der­less, tossed and bat­tered by the vicious waves of crime and pover­ty , because no one will tell the Prime Minister and her band of scalawags that they are in over their heads and it’s time to go.

Prime Minister Miller and her cabinet:

As Jamaica’s Governor General Sir Patrick Allen deliv­ers the throne speech, lay­ing out the raft of new ini­tia­tives the Government plans to under­take for the new fis­cal year, it seems Jamaicans have began to tune out the omnipresent promis­es and plat­i­tudes that are the hall­mark of the People’s National Party, and the Governing Administration of Portia Simpson Miller.

Jamaican media reports that the tra­di­tion­al throng of par­ty faith­fuls that had faith­ful­ly formed part of the land­scape dur­ing the tra­di­tion­al march down Duke street has thinned to a trickle.

The Observer inter­viewed one par­ty faith­ful who summed up this new real­i­ty this way.“Times hard and some peo­ple just can’t both­er any­more. It’s because of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, that affect a lot of per­sons but you have the die-heart­ed (com­mit­ted) who are here rain, shine or hail,” the self-titled “full-fledged sup­port­er of the PNP,” told the Observer.“Times hard and some peo­ple just can’t both­er any­more. It’s because of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, that affect a lot of per­sons but you have the die-heart­ed (com­mit­ted) who are here rain, shine or hail,”
the self-titled “full-fledged sup­port­er of the PNP,” told the Observer.more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​D​w​i​n​d​l​i​n​g​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​-​f​o​r​-​o​p​e​n​i​n​g​-​o​f​-​P​a​r​l​i​a​m​e​n​t​_​1​4​0​0​4​9​9​8​#​i​x​z​z​2​P​e​3​e​J​sMX

Opposition Leader Holness and oth­er MP’s:

The Opposition (JLP) Jamaica Labor Party has char­ac­ter­ized the throne speech as empty.

“I think the gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that there was noth­ing new or inspi­ra­tional in the speech for the aver­age house­hold­er, cit­i­zen or busi­nessper­son who [is] con­cerned about their coun­try. I did not see any­thing to sug­gest hope,” Holness told the Observer at the end of the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing at Gordon House.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​-​M​o​r​e​-​e​m​p​t​y​-​p​r​o​m​i​s​e​s​-​_​1​4​0​0​4​7​9​6​#​i​x​z​z​2​P​e​5​A​c​Mte

I am for­ev­er the opti­mist, I just won­dered to myself, “Are the Jamaican peo­ple com­ing to their sens­es? Could it be that they are start­ing to real­ize that their des­tiny lies with them and only them and not in Portia Simpson Miller and her brand of parochial base pol­i­tics? Many will laugh at me for dar­ing to dream that a peo­ple who char­ac­ter­ize them­selves as born PNP and Born JLP could be com­ing of age, with the real­i­ty that these politi­cians are in it for themselves.

To my doubt­ful friends I remind you that it was­n’t too long ago when blood ran like riv­er as soon as a new elec­tion cycle com­menced, not so any­more. Laborites and Comrades vot­ed and danced in the street togeth­er over the last two elec­tion cycles. Are we where we want to be as a peo­ple ? No! but I will take any­thing, I see this as a sign that the peo­ple are start­ing to real­ize that they have heard this song and dance before, year after year from both par­ties and yet their lives get from bad to worse.

Maybe, just maybe, the stran­gle-hold Miller and the People’s National Party has on the psy­che of the mass of une­d­u­cat­ed is break­ing. Maybe, just maybe hunger, depri­va­tion, sky-high food prices and elec­tric­i­ty bills and stag­nant low wages will break the fever. One won­ders what the vot­ers thought would have hap­pened this time, when after ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years of one par­ty rule and noth­ing good came of it but pain.
The solu­tion to our nation’s prob­lems lie with the Jamaican peo­ple, through hands and heart and com­mit­ment to nation build­ing. It cer­tain­ly does not lie in a pro­tract­ed shame­ful wait on a for­eign lend­ing insti­tu­tion for loans to get by.

It’s impor­tant for the Jamaican peo­ple to real­ize that over half of the coun­try’s income goes to debt ser­vic­ing. That is pay­ing inter­est on the debt the coun­try has already incurred, those pay­ments does not address the prin­ci­pal debt, just the inter­est pay­ments. Even as the coun­try engages in this unsus­tain­able prac­tice , it is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly seek­ing and tak­ing on even more debt, at that rate, soon all the coun­try’s earn­ings will have to go to pay­ing inter­est on its debt obligations.

The con­se­quence of this reck­less behav­ior is inevitable eco­nom­ic col­lapse. One thing is cer­tain, the Government of Portia Simpson Miller does not have the abil­i­ty to turn the coun­try around, sim­ply because they do not under­stand a mar­ket econ­o­my. They fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that it’s up to Government to han­dle the econ­o­my, of course, even if that was a good mod­el , they would be the worse pos­si­ble choice to do so, just look at their track record. The Government believes rais­ing tax­es brings more rev­enue, the reverse is true, it brings less.

Widening the tax base brings in more rev­enue, reform­ing the tax code, dras­ti­cal­ly reduc­ing crime, elim­i­nat­ing gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy, invit­ing and pro­mot­ing invest­ment and elim­i­nat­ing cor­rup­tion and divest­ing all Businesses in state con­trol. In oth­er words adopt­ing a mar­ket dri­ven , mar­ket ori­ent­ed econ­o­my, I will wait to see how long it will take for the peo­ple to come to their senses.

A cou­ple walked into my busi­ness-place, I had seen the man before, a guy prob­a­bly in his 30’s, he had come to pur­chase video games before, the woman seem to be close if not his age. She told me she want­ed to pay her phone bill, as I attend­ed to her the guy picked up a video game priced at $39.00, he asked if I could sell him the game for $30. 00 I told him I could do $35.00 he agreed .

What hap­pened next awoke me to what I had always thought was a bur­geon­ing phe­nom­e­non. He asked her for the mon­ey to pay for the video game. She gruffly told him he could have the mon­ey for the game but the mon­ey would be com­ing from the mon­ey to pay for his boots.

She made no attempt to avoid being heard, if any­thing she want­ed to out him, to embar­rass him, he cosied up to her, she paid for the game and they walked out to the car, he got into the pas­sen­ger’s seat she took the wheel and drove off.

I jok­ing­ly asked my nephew who was stand­ing near­by,” will that be you in the future”, he vehe­ment­ly shook his head absolute­ly not. A few min­utes lat­er anoth­er man entered the store , he spent some time look­ing at movies, on his way to the door I asked him if he had found what he was look­ing for ?

He respond­ed that he was look­ing for movies, he how­ev­er would have to go home to see if his girl­friend would give him the mon­ey for the movies.

Movies are priced at $3.00 .

I know times are hard,I know I may be per­ceived to be over­ly sen­si­tive to this sub­ject, times are hard on men, they are hard on women too, so I think that is a lame argu­ment to make.

I guess my ques­tion is this.

What the hell is wrong with men nowadays ?

Does the uplift­ing of women have to come at the expense of our men?

As women march toward what they char­ac­ter­ize as greater equal­i­ty , it seem that men in gen­er­al are quite hap­py with being rel­e­gat­ed to sec­ond-class cit­i­zen­ship in their own homes.

Women are enrolling in larg­er num­bers in Colleges and Universities than their male coun­ter­parts, in ever bur­geon­ing num­bers, women are head­ing up house­holds. In what seem to be a steady march away from tra­di­tion­al norms, more and more house­holds does not even have a male .

No one denies women the right to earn a fair days pay for a fair day’s work, as a small busi­ness own­er myself , I could­n’t give two hoots who does the job , male or female, what I care about is how well the job gets done.

Some of this is due to the fact that many of what we knew as soci­etal norms, as it relates to “fam­i­ly” have been up-end­ed, many are now the object of ridicule and scorn.

The tra­di­tion­al idea of fam­i­ly, man ‚woman child/​children, is now viewed as old-fash­ioned and not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of present day real­i­ties in this new world order.

“I have two mom­mies /​two dad­dies” is now accept­able part of our every­day vernacular.

Whether tele­vi­sion or on the big screen, be it movies, sit­coms, real­i­ty shows, or 30 sec­ond com­mer­cials, men are depict­ed as bum­bling idiots ‚who nec­es­sar­i­ly has to be shown the cor­rect way to do every­thing by their wives sig­nif­i­cant oth­er or even their pro­fes­sion­al colleagues.

It seem that straight men have been caught in a Tsunami cross-cur­rent, between the com­ing of age of the Feminist Movement and the Lesbian Gay Bi-Sexual and Transgender Communities.

This is not to blame our dimin­ished impor­tance on either of the two afore­men­tioned groups, on the con­trary it does seem that men have had it their way for too long, the play­ing field has been slant­ed in our favor for too long, now there is com­pe­ti­tion in the way the game is played, is it that men are sim­ply retreat­ing from the play­ground refus­ing to participate?

I’m absolute­ly sure that there are a pletho­ra of Scientific stud­ies which will do a bet­ter job than I ever could explain that men are indeed in crisis.

Over the last sev­er­al yes there have been sig­nif­i­cant change, not just in the way we view Feminism, or LGBT issues but Legislatively there as been changes as well. The Obama Administration has end­ed “Don’t ask don’t tell in the Military”, Just recent­ly the Military announced that women will be allowed to serve in com­bat roles for the first time in US history.

As we speak the boys scouts of America are seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing allow­ing Gays to be scout lead­ers. In many States of the Union, same-sex cou­ples are allowed to mar­ry and live their lives like het­ero­sex­u­al couples.

Women have been ele­vat­ed to some of the most senior posi­tions in Business and Government, with the Presidency of the United States being the only glass ceil­ing yet unbro­ken by women.

This is not unique­ly an American phe­nom­e­non, in more and more coun­tries women are get­ting col­lege degrees and there­by posi­tion­ing them­selves for good pay­ing jobs and posi­tions of lead­er­ship, far in excess of their male counterparts.

In Jamaica, the University of the West Indies the Premier Institution of high­er learn­ing is no stranger to this imbal­ance. both in enroll­ment and its gen­er­al stu­dent body.

UWI Mona Campus Jamaica WI.

2009−−−−−−−−−2010 Male 29% — — — -Female 71%

2010−−−−−−−−−2011 Male 30% — — — -Female 70%

2012−−−−−−−−−−2012 Male 30.5% — — -Female 69.5%

The Mona Campus is cog­nizant of the gen­der imbal­ance at the University. A num­ber of new 
pro­grammes in the Sciences, Cultural Studies, and Management Studies have been intro­duced in an 
effort to attract more male appli­cants to the UWI. Modest gains have been made in the per­cent­age of 
male stu­dents at the Mona Campus. The per­cent­age of males now stands at 30.5%, an increase of 1.5
per­cent­age points over 2009-10. (source UWI Website)

In Jamaica the Island Nation, as young women seek high­er learn­ing, young men stand on the cor­ners crush­ing mar­i­jua­na in the cen­ter of their palms, their pants hang­ing off their asses.

These devel­op­ments make 90’s group TLC’s lyrics ” scrub” even more res­o­nant now more so than it did then. As we watch these trends devel­op more clos­er to home in the black com­mu­ni­ty there is a cri­sis of epic pro­por­tion, and it seem that all are obliv­i­ous to it includ­ing those whose mis­sion it ought to be to address these issues.

The Church ought to be the guardian of our moral­i­ty, yet there is an increas­ing rush with­in the church to defend and legit­imize the very vices which are destroy­ing our soci­ety. Either the church is cheer-lead­ing or has remained silent out of fear of being condemned.

In the African-American com­mu­ni­ty the cri­sis is even more grave, as is every neg­a­tive char­ac­ter­is­tic is to our com­mu­ni­ty ‚71% of all babies born in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty are born to sin­gle unmar­ried females.

These num­bers are alarm­ing by them­selves, but when viewed in a par­al­lel prism against the per­cent­age of African-Americans who pop­u­late America’s pris­ons, it seem that these young moth­ers are sim­ple baby fac­to­ries for the Prison Industrial complex.

While all of this is going on the black Church is large­ly preach­ing feel-good ‚pros­per­i­ty doc­trine. The cor­re­la­tion between chil­dren born out-of-wed­lock and raised in sin­gle fam­i­ly house­hold and their prob­lems with law enforce­ment, makes researchers seem like mod­ern-day Einsteins.

As our com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ue to dete­ri­o­rate and den­i­grate, many who posi­tion them­selves as lead­ers of sorts, ask the ques­tion if col­lege is worth it? This while they have cushy jobs made pos­si­ble by mul­ti­ple degrees no one pre­vent­ed them from earning.

Rick Santorum for­mer Presidential Candidate from Pennsylvania, labeled President Obama a “snob” for dar­ing to sug­gest that all young Americans get an education.

Rick Santorum him­self holds a Bachelor of Arts with hon­ors in polit­i­cal sci­ence.He then com­plet­ed a one-year Master of Business Administration pro­gram at the University of Pittsburgh’s,In 1986, Santorum received a Juris Doctor with hon­ors from the Dickinson School of Law.

Yet Santorum a Presidential wannabe, believes that ordi­nary Americans should not have col­lege degrees, and mere­ly sug­gest­ing high­er learn­ing makes the President a snob, while he ben­e­fits from hav­ing three. Ironically the President nev­er stat­ed that all Americans should have degrees, not that there would have been any­thing wrong if he did, he mere­ly sug­gest­ed that in an ever-chang­ing world, every­one should be trained so that they may earn a liv­able wage.

Though Santorum’s pos­tur­ing was repug­nant, that kind of Elitism is cer­tain­ly not con­fined to the Republican Right, there are more than enough peo­ple of influ­ence with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty who will vehe­ment­ly argue for the despi­ca­ble sag­ging pants hang­ing below the under­wear, and will move heav­en and earth to tell you that there is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with the high inci­dences of out-of-wed­lock births.

Thankfully, despite the noise of those pro­nounce­ments, there are more than enough research which shows that kids raised in sin­gle fam­i­ly house­holds are far more like­ly to have prob­lems or drop out of school, and are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to end up in trou­ble with the law.

There is a lot more to say on this sub­ject, I how­ev­er will do so at anoth­er time.

Like every­thing else in Jamaica the Office of Public Defender has been a colos­sal let-down for the Jamaican peo­ple. Like Air Jamaica, the Political Directorate, like the Justice System , The Education System and every stra­ta of National life, the Jamaican peo­ple have paid dear­ly but have got­ten lit­tle to noth­ing for their investment.

The Office of Public Defender’s Act:

Public Defender Earl Witter> DPP Paula Llewellyn

Many peo­ple have asked over the years ‚“how could Air Jamaica be hav­ing finan­cial prob­lems when the planes are always full”? I for one have trav­eled on Air Jamaica coach-class , of course, packed togeth­er like canned-sar­dines, so I see how that ques­tion could have been cred­i­bly posed.

The Answer to that ques­tion is sim­ple. There are International Standards per­tain­ing to the num­ber of employ­ees nec­es­sary for an Airline to oper­ate sol­vent per Air Plane. From the pur­chase of Air Planes to land­ing fees , fuel, mechan­ics , bag­gage han­dlers, etc. What caused Air Jamaica’s fail­ure has been the padding of the employ­ee rolls to the extent of over 100 per­sons per Air- Plane, beyond what ought to be.

Air Jamaica was basi­cal­ly used as a pig­gy-bank of patron­age to pay of polit­i­cal patron­age, and to buy votes. The same is true for the Urban Transport System, peo­ple were col­lect­ing salaries but nev­er had to show up for work in cas­es for years. When a com­pe­tent Manager was hired to get to the bot­tom of it, they slaugh­tered him on the com­pa­ny’s compound.

I say this to say, in every sec­tor of Jamaican life, there is over­load and bloat, there is no con­sid­er­a­tion for the sol­ven­cy of the nation and the Public Defender’s Act was exact­ly that, an over­load, anoth­er “eat a food office” .

If the pow­ers which cre­at­ed this inept dupli­ca­tion were seri­ous about defend­ing the pub­lic, they would have invest­ed in improv­ing the Justice System. This would include the office of the Director of Public Prosecution, which would ulti­mate­ly restore the trust of the peo­ple, that the sys­tem may be trust­ed to dis­pense Justice, which in turn would reduce crime and acts of revenge.

Three years after the Security Forces rout­ed Christopher Coke from his Tivoli Gardens read­out, Witter has not been able to con­clude and present a report to the peo­ple of the coun­try through the Parliament.

Yet Witter has found time to ally him­self with extrem­ists groups like Jamaicans for Justice to give aid and com­fort to Criminals. Witter has gone as far as to sug­gest that Police accounts of fatal encoun­ters with mem­bers of Jamaica’s urban ter­ror­ist groups are inac­cu­rate because, not enough Police Officers are get­ting shot.

Never mind that when Witter and Carolyn Gomez from the extrem­ist group (JFJ) are asleep, Police offi­cers are risk­ing their lives to keep them safe.

It is incum­bent on the peo­ple that they demand that this office be dis­band­ed and that all funds ear­marked for it, forth­with be used to improve oth­er areas of the Justice system.

Witter clear­ly lacks the nec­es­sary integri­ty and char­ac­ter to ful­fill the task he has been giv­en, at best he was a mediocre Lawyer, his dis­dain for Law Enforcement ren­ders him acute­ly unqual­i­fied for the post he now holds, he must be fired.

The following is a letter from Horace levy senior member of the so-called Peace Management Initiative, posted in one of Jamaica’s Daily News Paper January 15^th,2013.

Horace Levy

Some questions for the police, the commissioner of police, the minister of national security, and the people of Jamaica: Does every police encounter with criminals have to involve a shoot-out? Must every police encounter with criminals require the use of lethal force? Are our criminals really so more vicious than criminals in other countries that they can only be dealt with by lethal force? How come our more vicious criminals manage to shoot so few police? How much longer will Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington go on supporting, even encouraging, the killings carried out by his men? How much longer will Minister of National Security Peter Bunting go on endorsing the behavior of Commissioner of Police Ellington? How much longer will our citizens go on tolerating this kind of wanton killing of fellow citizens? Is the blood of only a few of us boiling? If this can happen in the first two weeks of the year, what will the other 50 be like?

My let­ter to Horace Levy:

Jamaican Police Officer on the job in tough inner city community.

I believe that you fundamentally care about what you do at the peace management initiative. I think you are shaped by your experiences, I however must inform you that despite whatever successes you may have achieved from your organization’s efforts, what you do is not a replacement for the rule of law.

Criminals must pay for their crimes, it is through tough punitive measures imposed by society that the delicate balance between anarchy and civility is maintained. You have been known to argue that a large percentage of what the Police characterize as Gangs in our country are in fact what you call ” corner crews”.

With all due respect even if we are to accept your corner-crew designation, as fact, I must inform you that said corner crews and Gangs would not be, and aren’t mutually exclusive. You have a job to do, do your job, stay out-of-the-way of law enforcement.

I know that it is common for those who(“eat the proverbial food”” in situations as yours, feel that the way to continue to eat that food is through the demonizing of the police. I must also inform you that you are not doing neither yourself nor Jamaica any good through your actions.

The rule of law is going nowhere, it will be there ;long after you and I are gone, or I shudder at what will obtain. Do your job and lament the innocent lives lost at the hands of the scumbag predatory monsters who prey on the weak.

You have been at this demagoguery long enough. Just do what you can and let the rule of law do what it is supposed to do, and if that means eradicating murderous urban scum, then so be it. What are the police supposed to do?

Are the police supposed to beg criminals not to shoot at them, are they supposed to refuse to fire back at criminals out of fear that they may kill too many criminals?

Do prepare and make public a detailed proposal that you feel should replace the measures which Police Agencies use all over the World when they are confronted with life and death decisions.Those decisions in most cases must be made in a fraction of a second.

Failing the ability to provide such a detailed proposal, I strongly suggest that you confine yourself to whatever it is you are educated or trained in, if anything.

Of note is your total failure/​refusal to mention the innocent Jamaicans whom have been slaughtered, not just since the start of this year but between the years 2001 to 2008, 2001 – 2008
Reported Cases of
Murder : 10, 836
Shootings : 11,229
Rape and Carnal
Abuse: 9119

Not one word from you about the innocent people killed, I suggest you and your friend Carolyn Gomez be very careful, criminals do not care who they kill, you are not immune, they will kill you too. Take care of what you understand and leave Law Enforcement to those trained and tasked with it.

In my Blog post titled (Court Rebuffs Criminal Rights Group) I ref­er­enced a January 8^th Chicago Tribune Article Titled: JAMAICA’S DEBT HURRICANE:

I have post­ed the Article here for your consumption.

Jamaica House

Americans con­cerned about the impact of pub­lic debt on the glob­al recov­ery have focused — with good rea­son — on Greece. Closer to home, how­ev­er, the tourism mec­ca of Jamaica illus­trates the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of bor­row­ing way too much, and the painful choic­es that fol­low. This saga, less famil­iar than Greece’s, is a les­son for law­mak­ers in the U.S. and else­where. The Caribbean nation actu­al­ly is in worse finan­cial shape than Greece: Jamaica has more debt in rela­tion to the size of its econ­o­my than any oth­er coun­try. It pays more in inter­est than any oth­er coun­try. It has tried to restruc­ture its loans to stretch them out over more years, at low­er inter­est rates, with no suc­cess. Such a move would be risky for its already ner­vous lenders. So Jamaica is try­ing to wran­gle a bailout from a skep­ti­cal International Monetary Fund. Another dead­line for a poten­tial deal just came and went last week, though nego­ti­a­tions continue.

Jamaica is caught in a debt trap. More than half of its gov­ern­ment spend­ing goes to ser­vice its loans. The coun­try can spend bare­ly 20 per­cent of its bud­get for des­per­ate­ly need­ed health and edu­ca­tion pro­grams. Its infra­struc­ture is fal­ter­ing. It lacks resources to fight crime. It has a lit­tle mar­gin to recov­er from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as Hurricane Sandy. To set itself straight, Jamaica needs a restruc­tur­ing, and a bailout with sig­nif­i­cant debt relief. No way can a small econ­o­my that has limped along with growth at less than half the glob­al aver­age for two decades pay back the for­tune that it owes. But as with Greece, as with America, as with the state of Illinois, gov­ern­ment lead­ers have balked at impos­ing the inevitable hard­ships. Saying no to favored con­stituents is no eas­i­er in Kingston than in Springfield.

The poten­tial alter­na­tive is worse: Defaulting on its debt would ruin Jamaica’s prospects for many years to come: It would under­mine the island’s crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant trade rela­tions with the U.S. It would dis­cour­age bad­ly need­ed for­eign invest­ment in its tourism, agri­cul­ture and min­ing sec­tors. The only thing worse than doing what Jamaica must do to live with­in its means would be not doing it. That hard fact is being faced to some degree by debtor nations around the world. Jamaica is an extreme exam­ple of the fate that could befall Spain, Italy, Japan or, yes, the U.S., if debt keeps pil­ing up. The anal­o­gy only goes so far since those much-larg­er economies have bet­ter resources to man­age their finances. Jamaica has few options, apart from beseech­ing the IMF.

The American “fis­cal cliff” deal was good news for Jamaica, which could not afford anoth­er U.S. reces­sion. The island’s finan­cial stew­ards have tak­en some prac­ti­cal steps to depre­ci­ate the local cur­ren­cy and curb infla­tion. The broad­er solu­tion, how­ev­er, is as obvi­ous and nec­es­sary in Jamaica as it is in Greece and oth­er coun­tries mired in debt: Reform tax­es, curb pen­sion costs, cut pub­lic pay­rolls. In Jamaica, that aus­ter­i­ty-based for­mu­la has, unfair­ly, got­ten a bad name. Critics of trade lib­er­al­iza­tion, pri­va­ti­za­tion and dereg­u­la­tion point to Jamaica as Exhibit A of First World poli­cies gone awry. IMF-imposed fix­es more than a decade ago — after pub­lic debt had bal­looned in the 1990s — made con­di­tions worse, the crit­ics say. What real­ly hap­pened, how­ev­er, is that IMF fix­es gave Jamaica a tem­po­rary life­line, but gov­ern­ment nev­er stopped bor­row­ing and spend­ing. The les­son of Jamaica is not that access to cred­it is bad. It’s that irre­spon­si­ble stew­ard­ship is bad. We’re cau­tious­ly opti­mistic that Jamaica’s cur­rent lead­ers will do bet­ter: Finance Minister Peter Phillips says his gov­ern­ment must do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to reduce its out-of-con­trol debt. Job One: Jamaica must make enough painful progress to win the con­fi­dence of the IMF, and of pri­vate lenders.

While the rest of us wait to see whether the island nation escapes its debt trap, we’ll see whether oth­er coun­tries learn the les­son of Jamaica: Stop dig­ging such deep, deep holes in the beach.http://​arti​cles​.chicagotri​bune​.com

Jamaica’s External debt: $14.7 bil­lion (31 December 2011 est.) (CIA fact-book)

As a Jamaican I’ll tell you, I have a range of emo­tions regard­ing the Article, anger is not one of them.

Well as is to be expect­ed the bone-head­ed politi­cians in Jamaica found it with­in them­selves to crit­i­cize the Article rather than face the real­i­ties doc­u­ment­ed there­in. Special advi­sor to the prime min­is­ter, attor­ney-at-law Delano Franklyn said that Jamaica was not in the same posi­tion as Greece which had to make uni­lat­er­al deci­sions to reduce its stock of debt, while Opposition spokesman on finance Audley Shaw said it was not true that his par­ty balked at impos­ing tough deci­sions to address the debt prob­lem when they formed the gov­ern­ment between 2007 and 2011​.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Delano Franklin left, Audley Shaw right.

Franklyn said the Tribune’s edi­to­r­i­al gave the impres­sion that Jamaica was seek­ing a loan from the International Monetary Fund when it is in fact nego­ti­at­ing with the Fund to get its approval by putting in place the cor­rect fis­cal mea­sures, includ­ing reduc­tion of the debt, in order for Jamaica to approach the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket for fund­ing. Meanwhile, Shaw, a for­mer min­is­ter of finance, took issue with that a state­ment in the edi­to­r­i­al that Jamaica’s cur­rent Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips “says his Government must do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to reduce its out-of-con­trol debt”. Shaw said the edi­to­r­i­al sug­gest­ed that the debt prob­lem was the fault of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. “That is an expres­sion of igno­rance on the part of the Tribune writer. The fact is, it is well estab­lished that our debt prob­lem did not start when I became finance min­is­ter in 2007,” an adamant Shaw empha­sized. Read more:http://www.jamaicaobserver.com.

I want to scream, lets face it,we know­ing these politi­cians are arro­gant morons, we know that they are the quin­tes­sen­tial big fish in the lit­tle pond, a pond by the way which is dry­ing up real fast, but are these clowns for real?

Our coun­try is in seri­ous trou­ble and oth­er than the pre­dictable default igno­rance label they use, because of course no one knows any­thing but them, these two morons could not cred­i­bly refute any­thing in the arti­cle, so they attacked the writer.

This is tra­di­tion­al­ly how they oper­ate , it would be much bet­ter to look at the entire­ty of what was said in the arti­cle and see how the facts stat­ed could be addressed, but that would mean hum­bling them­selves and say­ing “what we have been doing has not been work­ing, we sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue on this path”.

Say what you want about America’s almost 16 tril­lion-dol­lar debt, they can print mon­ey to hon­or their debt oblig­a­tions, yes there would be infla­tion, but the econ­o­my is large enough to absorb some infla­tion with­out wide­spread calamity.

The Americans can point to what they have done with the mon­ey they bor­rowed, whether you agree with how those monies were used is anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion for anoth­er day.

One thing is cer­tain is that they have good roads, good schools and great infra­struc­ture , and yes they have the wars I know , I know, well some Americans will argue that those wars are, and have been in America’s long-term strate­gic interest.

What does Jamaica have to show for the debt bur­den that is eat­ing up more than half of its Gross domes­tic prod­uct, just to pay the inter­est on those loans?

This is an unten­able sit­u­a­tion which is unsus­tain­able, it is guar­an­teed to keep gen­er­a­tions yet unborn enslaved.

This is the heart of whats at stake, yet both sides of the polit­i­cal clown-show is intent on say­ing “who me I did­n’t do it” or “they don’t under­stand what they are talk­ing about”. Of course when it comes to us Jamaicans, no one knows any­thing but us, look where it’s got­ten our country.

Jamaica needs bold lead­er­ship , it will require sac­ri­fice, not nec­es­sar­i­ly severe aus­ter­i­ty which will cause a con­trac­tion of the econ­o­my, or cause even more dev­as­ta­tion to the most vul­ner­a­ble. There will how­ev­er have to be an under­stand­ing that the pub­lic purse will no longer be a pig­gy-bank for whomev­er is in pow­er to do with it what­ev­er they want.

There must be an under­stand­ing that the coun­try can­not get to pros­per­i­ty through bor­row­ing. The coun­try’s lead­er­ship must appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion and fis­cal pru­dence. In short the era of thiev­ery and hand-outs must stop now.

Above all Jamaica needs lead­er­ship which under­stands that above all the sin­gle biggest prob­lem fac­ing the coun­try is it’s excep­tion­al­ly high crime rate.

Leadership must be more sophis­ti­cat­ed than what present­ly exist, we sim­ply can­not get to first world sta­tus by pick­ing up man­goes, the world has sim­ply moved past that kind of parochial­ism and simplicity.

Jamaicans will have to look to them­selves as the source of their own progress and less to par­ty. The choic­es right now must be a sane mix of aus­ter­i­ty, and crime reduc­tion, hold­ing the strain on spend­ing is crit­i­cal to get­ting the debt bur­den under con­trol, reduc­ing to a min­i­mum seri­ous crimes and acts of vio­lence will engen­der con­fi­dence, which hope­ful­ly will result in a return of seri­ous invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to the country.

The prob­lems will not be solved overnight, all stake-hold­ers must be on board if it is to work. Of the stake­hold­ers no group is more crit­i­cal than pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and their unions. Unions will have to learn to stop pos­tur­ing and grand­stand­ing in an effort to broad­en membership.

None of the afore­men­tioned pro­pos­als will come to fruition with the present crop of lead­ers, some of whom could­n’t tell their heads from their asses.

Justice Bertram Morrison has refused an appli­ca­tion by Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) to quash the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Police Service Commission (PSC) for Delroy Hewitt to be pro­mot­ed from super­in­ten­dent to senior superintendent.

In dis­miss­ing the appli­ca­tion, the judge made no order as to costs.
JFJ through its attor­ney Richard Small, how­ev­er, said that they would appeal.
The human-rights group had asked the court to find that the PSC act­ed unrea­son­ably, because it refused to inves­ti­gate sev­er­al inci­dents of shoot­ings and abus­es aris­ing from com­plaints alleged­ly made by res­i­dents against Hewitt and his team. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​0​867

Senior Superintendent Delroy Hewitt JFJ Director Carolyn Gomes

Jamaica : Statistics
on Violent Crime
2001 – 2008
Reported Cases of
Murder : 10, 836
Shootings : 11,229
Rape and Carnal
Abuse: 9119
Sources : Economic
and Social Survey of
Jamaica-respective
years.

Jamaica is a small state in the north­ern Caribbean with a
pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2.69 mil­lion people.
1
The
state faces sig­nif­i­cant social and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges with
chron­ic unem­ploy­ment and under­em­ploy­ment. While the
for­mal econ­o­my remains in a stag­nant state, the trade in
ille­gal drugs, arms and ammu­ni­tion has remained dynamic
and achieved high lev­els of orga­ni­za­tion. The political
envi­ron­ment remains sta­ble although the island has
expe­ri­enced peri­ods of polit­i­cal vio­lence. The persistence
and even wors­en­ing of “the crime prob­lem”, a particularly
high inci­dence of homi­cides and shoot­ings in addi­tion to
rape and car­nal abuse, great­ly threat­ens Jamaican national
secu­ri­ty and the well-being of the entire pop­u­la­tion.(source) Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 42, Nos. 2 – 3. 

Jamaica records one of he high­est mur­der rates in the world !

2005- 1’674 Jamaicans report­ed murdered.

2008 — 1618 Jamaicans report­ed murdered.

2009 – 1676 Jamaicans report­ed murdered.

These num­bers do not take into account the shoot­ings, stab­bings and oth­er means of assault which did not read­i­ly or invari­ably lead to death. It does not take into account the scourge of sex­u­al assaults on women and chil­dren by drug and alco­hol crazed mon­sters who ter­ror­ize our nation.

They also do not reflect, per­haps an even more star­tling num­ber, the num­ber of crimes which go unre­port­ed. Many Jamaicans do not report crimes to the author­i­ties for var­i­ous rea­sons, to include fear for their lives, as well as some new cul­tur­al fallacies.

One rea­son , of the many, which may be attrib­uted to Jamaica’s present socio-eco­nom­ic plight, is the con­tin­ued exo­dus of its peo­ple to oth­er shores, no coun­try may suc­ceed if the best and bright­est con­stant­ly leave for green­er pastures.

The world’s econ­o­my took a beat­ing over the last few years, basi­cal­ly no coun­try or region was total­ly unaf­fect­ed, that includes the great United States of America. One of the truths about America is that when­ev­er there is eco­nom­ic or oth­er down-turn they gen­er­al­ly look for some­one to blame. That usu­al­ly leads to scape­goat­ing, they look at immi­grants, blacks, Latinos,anyone who does not fit the quin­tes­sen­tial white mod­el they cre­at­ed for themselves.

The truth about America’s suc­cess how­ev­er can be found 180 degrees from those stereo­typ­i­cal mis­con­cep­tions. America’s great­ness did not come from its white­ness, it came from its diver­si­ty, like a great riv­er fed by small streams and trib­u­taries, so too did America become great, because the best and bright­est came from around the world to call America home, tak­ing their skill, edu­ca­tion, tal­ents enthu­si­asm and ener­gy with them.

The brain drain affect­ed the Constabulary, as it has, most oth­er sec­tors of the Jamaican econ­o­my, there are var­ied rea­sons behind the explo­sion of crim­i­nal­i­ty in this coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion but the mas­sive attri­tion rate of good cops from the Jamaica Constabulary Force cer­tain­ly has not helped the situation.

This does not mean that there are no longer any good offi­cers in the Constabulary, far from it, there is no short­age of offi­cers with­in the Constabulary who want to make a pos­i­tive impact, I know, my cousin still serve and many of my for­mer squad mates and oth­er col­leagues are still fight­ing the good fight.

Our coun­try owes them a debt of grat­i­tude for their hard work. Police Officers in Jamaica are gross­ly under­paid, of course the coun­try is poor and the argu­ment that there is no mon­ey to pay pub­lic sec­tor work­ers has some legit­i­ma­cy, if of course you can over­look the mas­sive exec­u­tive the PNP cre­at­ed to run the Country after their elec­tion vic­to­ry of 2011.

If you can over­look the expen­sive lux­u­ry sport util­i­ty vehi­cles they pur­chased with tax pay­ers dol­lars for the Prime Minister and oth­er mem­bers of her Régime, then it is a legit­i­mate argument.

Anyway I digress, I was nev­er a friend of Delroy Hewitt, I went to the Mobile Reserve as a young Constable in 1983, Hewitt was a Corporal, he was an exem­plary sub-offi­cer, many cops did not par­tic­u­lar­ly like Hewitt, as a sub Officer he did not par­tic­u­lar­ly have the best work­ing rela­tion­ship with the men who were his juniors.

That less than pris­tine rela­tion­ship was nev­er because Hewitt was a bad cop, he was a dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an who fol­lowed the rules, he expect­ed those whom he super­vised to do the same and when they stepped out of line, he was very quick with a Departmental summons.

Departmental sum­mons­es were hand­ed out by sub offi­cers for infrac­tions com­mit­ted by junior mem­bers of the Force, whom are lat­er brought before a Gazetted Officer for tri­al, Penalties range from rep­ri­mand to the loss of sev­er­al days pay. Many of those Courts were seen as Kangaroo courts, offi­cers coined the term (Joe Reid) to describe the process. Don’t ask me what the term means , suf­fic­ing to say they always felt they did not get a fair hear­ing in those Tribunals.

Hewitt rel­ished bring­ing young cops on Departmental charges o/​c (order­ly room). I stayed clear of Hewitt, in fact many of the things Hewitt espoused I agreed with, being well deport­ed and com­port­ed, hon­esty, being on time, doing what you are sup­posed to do. Many dead-wood cops had a prob­lem with those require­ments, I did not, as a result Hewitt and I got along fine.

Delroy Hewitt was one of those cops who always felt that he should get addi­tion­al edu­ca­tion and he did, after work each day when oth­er cops were out doing the reg­u­lar stuff, Delroy Hewitt was on his way to class­es, he was pro­mot­ed Sargeant before I left the Mobile Reserve for the CIB.

I was not at all sur­prised to learn that Delroy Hewitt had clawed his way up the chain of Command. As some­one who have been on the inside I can attest to the fact that he is of immac­u­late char­ac­ter, and deserv­ing of what­ev­er rank he attains.

With crime at astro­nom­i­cal lev­els, unem­ploy­ment and under employ­ment at record lev­els, the coun­try’s econ­o­my in the toi­let and get­ting worse,there are more than enough rea­sons for Jamaicans at home and abroad to wor­ry deeply for our country.

In fact just recent­ly the Chicago tri­bune had this to say about our country.

JAMAICA’S DEBT HURRICANE:

The Greece of the west­ern hemisphere.

Americans con­cerned about the impact of pub­lic debt on the glob­al recov­ery have focused — with good rea­son — on Greece. Closer to home, how­ev­er, the tourism mec­ca of Jamaica illus­trates the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of bor­row­ing way too much, and the painful choic­es that fol­low. This saga, less famil­iar than Greece’s, is a les­son for law­mak­ers in the U.S. and else­where. The Caribbean nation actu­al­ly is in worse finan­cial shape than Greece: Jamaica has more debt in rela­tion to the size of its econ­o­my than any oth­er coun­try. It pays more in inter­est than any oth­er coun­try. It has tried to restruc­ture its loans to stretch them out over more years, at low­er inter­est rates, with no suc­cess. Such a move would be risky for its already ner­vous lenders. So Jamaica is try­ing to wran­gle a bailout from a skep­ti­cal International Monetary Fund. Another dead­line for a poten­tial deal just came and went last week, though nego­ti­a­tions continue.

Jamaica is caught in a debt trap. More than half of its gov­ern­ment spend­ing goes to ser­vice its loans. The coun­try can spend bare­ly 20 per­cent of its bud­get for des­per­ate­ly need­ed health and edu­ca­tion pro­grams. Its infra­struc­ture is fal­ter­ing. It lacks resources to fight crime. It has a lit­tle mar­gin to recov­er from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as Hurricane Sandy. To set itself straight, Jamaica needs a restruc­tur­ing, and a bailout with sig­nif­i­cant debt relief. No way can a small econ­o­my that has limped along with growth at less than half the glob­al aver­age for two decades pay back the for­tune that it owes. But as with Greece, as with America, as with the state of Illinois, gov­ern­ment lead­ers have balked at impos­ing the inevitable hard­ships. Saying no to favored con­stituents is no eas­i­er in Kingston than in Springfield.

The poten­tial alter­na­tive is worse: Defaulting on its debt would ruin Jamaica’s prospects for many years to come: It would under­mine the island’s crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant trade rela­tions with the U.S. It would dis­cour­age bad­ly need­ed for­eign invest­ment in its tourism, agri­cul­ture and min­ing sec­tors. The only thing worse than doing what Jamaica must do to live with­in its means would be not doing it. That hard fact is being faced to some degree by debtor nations around the world. Jamaica is an extreme exam­ple of the fate that could befall Spain, Italy, Japan or, yes, the U.S., if debt keeps pil­ing up. The anal­o­gy only goes so far since those much-larg­er economies have bet­ter resources to man­age their finances. Jamaica has few options, apart from beseech­ing the IMF.

The American “fis­cal cliff” deal was good news for Jamaica, which could not afford anoth­er U.S. reces­sion. The island’s finan­cial stew­ards have tak­en some prac­ti­cal steps to depre­ci­ate the local cur­ren­cy and curb infla­tion. The broad­er solu­tion, how­ev­er, is as obvi­ous and nec­es­sary in Jamaica as it is in Greece and oth­er coun­tries mired in debt: Reform tax­es, curb pen­sion costs, cut pub­lic pay­rolls. In Jamaica, that aus­ter­i­ty-based for­mu­la has, unfair­ly, got­ten a bad name. Critics of trade lib­er­al­iza­tion, pri­va­ti­za­tion and dereg­u­la­tion point to Jamaica as Exhibit A of First World poli­cies gone awry. IMF-imposed fix­es more than a decade ago — after pub­lic debt had bal­looned in the 1990s — made con­di­tions worse, the crit­ics say. What real­ly hap­pened, how­ev­er, is that IMF fix­es gave Jamaica a tem­po­rary life­line, but gov­ern­ment nev­er stopped bor­row­ing and spend­ing. The les­son of Jamaica is not that access to cred­it is bad. It’s that irre­spon­si­ble stew­ard­ship is bad. We’re cau­tious­ly opti­mistic that Jamaica’s cur­rent lead­ers will do bet­ter: Finance Minister Peter Phillips says his gov­ern­ment must do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to reduce its out-of-con­trol debt. Job One: Jamaica must make enough painful progress to win the con­fi­dence of the IMF, and of pri­vate lenders.

While the rest of us wait to see whether the island nation escapes its debt trap, we’ll see whether oth­er coun­tries learn the les­son of Jamaica: Stop dig­ging such deep, deep holes in the beach .http://​arti​cles​.chicagotri​bune​.com

With all that obtains in Jamaica, a coun­try with a very high mis­ery index, one would think that any Agency ded­i­cat­ed to Human Rights or the civic good would have a mam­moth task attend­ing to the needs of every-day pay people.

The group which calls itself “Jamaicans For Justice” (JFJ) is head­ed by a pedi­atric Doctor Carolyn Gomes, she has received huge sums of mon­ey from for­eign groups like the Inter American Commission On Human Rights, Amnesty International and oth­ers, what she has done with that mon­ey is any­one’s guess.

In case you care to know what obtains with­in that Criminal Rights Group, the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed assault on the char­ac­ter of Delroy Hewitt is a case study of abuse of pow­er and pub­lic trust gone awry.

Counsel for The Police ser­vices Commission had asked the court to dis­miss the motion because JFJ failed to ver­i­fy the com­plaints that Hewitt was guilty of mis­con­duct. Richard Small Counsel for Gomes has been prac­tic­ing law for a long time, he is not a cheap Attorney. In the inter­est of clar­i­ty and trans­paren­cy it is impor­tant that donors to Genuine Human Rights Organizations such as those named above, be aware that their monies are being used to fur­ther the inter­est of crim­i­nals in Jamaica and the per­se­cu­tion of decent hard-work­ing Police offi­cers like Delroy Hewitt, by those who have per­son­al vendet­tas against law enforcement.

It must also be said that nei­ther donors nor the Agencies named above would sup­port such actions in their own coun­tries, yet the monies and sup­port they give are being used for pur­su­ing vendet­tas and unright­eous per­se­cu­tion of Jamaica’s law enforce­ment offi­cers by Carolyn Gomes.

I sug­gest Delroy Hewitt get a real­ly good legal team and take her for all she’s got.

October is domestic violence month.The statistics on domestic violence are alarming, the unintended consequences of domestic violence are even more alarming, when we take into account the damage done to kids who witness domestic violence in the home.

An estimated one in every three women worldwide experiences violence, with rates reaching as high as 70 percent in some countries. Gender-based violence ranges from rape to domestic abuse and acid burning to dowry deaths and so-called “honor killings.”Violence against women and girls — in peacetime and in conflict — knows no national or cultural boundaries. We have made tremendous strides in combating these human rights abuses, but there is still much work to be done.http://​wom​en​thrive​.org/​i​s​s​u​e​s​/​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​?​g​c​l​i​d​=​C​I​S​4​5​s​i​9​g​7​M​C​F​c​m​d​4​A​o​d​v​W​s​Abg

The issue of domes­tic vio­lence is rather seri­ous, more and more peo­ple are becom­ing vic­tims of domes­tic vio­lence, as I write this blog I am painful­ly aware of a 38-year-old woman and her lover who lost their lives in the Bronx, New York . This woman lost her life in a hail of bul­lets at the hands of some­one with whom she report­ed­ly had two chil­dren. How can a man say he loves a woman but is will­ing to kill her?

It’s real­ly sim­ple men should not abuse their women or their kids. As it relates to chil­dren , let me be clear, despite what soci­ety tells you, there is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between dis­ci­pline and abuse.

That dis­ci­pline does not how­ev­er car­ry over to your spouse or loved one. There is no legal or moral basis for men to dis­ci­pline their wives or girl­friends. If you can­not get along, part ways ami­ca­bly and call it a day , you do not own her, she is free to do what she wants, with whomev­er she wants. (Hope my wife does­n’t read this para­graph).

One more thing on this kids issue, the state is quite will­ing to hire police offi­cers , arm and empow­er them to phys­i­cal­ly assault our chil­dren for the most triv­ial trans­gres­sions, and in many cas­es kill our chil­dren. Yet the very state tells you ‚you are not allowed to spank your own chil­dren, you have to decide whether your chil­dren belong to you or the state. For my part, I have nev­er spanked my chil­dren, even though I received more than my fair share of spank­ing, I chose not to do it, not because it was off the table, it was very much in the tool-box of cor­rec­tive tools, my boys just nev­er caused me to go to that extent. It cer­tain­ly was not because some state law told me I could not use what­ev­er rea­son­able cor­rec­tive mea­sure I deemed appro­pri­ate to raise my children.

But back to the issue at the fore here, the issue of domes­tic violence.

Yesterday Sunday October 14^th I was in Church with my fam­i­ly and of course the issue of domes­tic vio­lence was front and cen­ter, and cor­rect­ly so. We had a good chuck­le when Pastor relat­ed that when­ev­er cou­ples come to him for pre-mar­tial coun­selling he would always ask the woman “has he ever hit you”? He inti­mat­ed that he would be able to tell if she is telling the truth in rela­tion to his ques­tion by the length of time it takes for her to answer, or he would sim­ply watch her eyes. Based on her response he argues ‚he would tell her come back in a year; if he does­n’t hit you again, then maybe you both will be ready for mar­riage. Pastor joked that by this time the man would be ready to hit him, the con­gre­ga­tion explod­ed into rau­cous laugh­ter to that last line.

I too found that whole line fun­ny, but I thought there were cru­cial ele­ments miss­ing from the whole debate, pri­or to the Pastors com­ments one female con­gre­gant rat­tled off some fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics on domes­tic vio­lence , which frankly ought to con­cern all of us, we have sim­ply got to stop doing that much harm to the peo­ple we claim to love.

Absent the whole con­ver­sa­tion how­ev­er was a crit­i­cal com­po­nent. That is the issue of women ini­ti­at­ing vio­lence and end­ing up being the worse off for it.

OK, just hold off on the con­dem­na­tion for a while. I am sure many of you will blast me for that state­ment accus­ing me of blam­ing the victim.

Not so fast my friends, there is ample evi­dence out there. In my decade long law enforce­ment career I have heard sto­ry after sto­ry relat­ed to me in my offi­cial capac­i­ty , of women first intro­duc­ing phys­i­cal vio­lence into a rela­tion­ship only to come out on the wrong end of that exchange.

One of the prob­lems in deal­ing with domes­tic vio­lence as with every top­i­cal issue, is the pre­dictabil­i­ty of offi­cials to revert to knee-jerk band-aid reme­di­al fix­es, which does pre­cious lit­tle to fix the prob­lem, but cre­ates a whole slew of oth­er prob­lems on the oth­er end , because they fail to take all points of view into con­sid­er­a­tion, which would lend itself to ratio­nal, well thought out solutions .

It’s like two pow­er-for­wards going for a rebound, the guy who does­n’t get the ball elbows the play­er with the ball, as they run back up-court, the guy who got elbowed retaliate,and is caught doing so by the Referee, he gets a tech­ni­cal foul, he protests , and gets a sec­ond tech­ni­cal foul, he is dis­qual­i­fied from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the game fur­ther. Not only does he get thrown out of the game but that tech­ni­cal foul is added to a sea­son total which fur­ther penal­izes that play­er. The play­er who ini­ti­at­ed it all suf­fers no consequence.

I oper­ate a small busi­ness, and I inter­act with a fair amount of men on a dai­ly and week­ly basis, these men come in and they share sto­ries of issues that are front and cen­ter in their lives, most­ly because I ask what is hap­pen­ing in their lives . Separate and apart from my under­stand­ing of the facts as a result of my for­mer law enforce­ment car­rear, the sto­ries I hear are con­fir­ma­tion that yes many men are abu­sive to their women , but many women ini­ti­ate violence.

Not only do women ini­ti­ate vio­lence against their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er but they use the female friend­ly crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to exact revenge and vengeance on the very men they claim to love.

This oth­er side of this sor­did saga has received atten­tion large­ly satirically.

Cop gets called to the house by hus­band who just gets stabbed, cops arrive , woman is stand­ing above hus­band with knife in hand as he lays bleed­ing on the floor, Cop pulls weapon points it on man bleed­ing on floor, ask woman “did he touch you, did he touch you”?

Satire aside, this is a seri­ous part of the equa­tion which gets exclud­ed from the con­ver­sa­tion in the hur­ry to fix the prob­lem, or prob­a­bly appear to be doing so.

Many men have relat­ed to me their expe­ri­ences of spend­ing weeks in Jail because their girl-friends or wives were mad about some­thing, she calls the police and report­ed that she was assault­ed, the guy gets arrest­ed and spends a week in Jail. In many cas­es the same women are the ones who post bail for the men. After she is sat­is­fied of course, that he has been pun­ished enough in her esti­ma­tion, or when she needs favors from him.

Many of these men end up with expan­sive rap sheets in many cas­es unde­served, but man­dat­ed by a das­tard­ly crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, too lazy to draft real leg­is­la­tion, free from the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of spe­cial interest.

Before writ­ing this blog I spoke to my wife about my thoughts she was stri­dent­ly con­vinced that I am wrong on the mar­gins. She believes that the num­bers speaks for them­selves, she is con­vinced that the num­bers rat­tled off by nurs­es at church­es are indeed legit­i­mate sta­tis­tics com­ing from shel­ters Police and NGO’s.

I am con­vinced those sta­tis­tics tell only a small part of the story.

Absent from those sta­tis­tics are actu­al tes­ti­monies and record­ings of what occurred in each case that made arrest possible,who did what to whom , what we are giv­en are just raw police arrest num­bers, , noth­ing about dis­missal of cas­es, noth­ing about the speci­fici­ty inher­ent in each case.

I spoke to a young man today who for this pur­pose I will call X , he was arrest­ed for domes­tic vio­lence some time ago, after being held in jail for over a week he was released. He came to see me to con­duct busi­ness, he told me why he was in court today October 15^th.

They offered X , 6 months in prison and 5 years pro­ba­tion, his crime ? He got into a heat­ed argu­ment with the moth­er of his child, he got mad, kicked the door of their apart­ment, and threw the phone to the floor.

I asked him if I could tell his sto­ry, he will­ing­ly oblig­ed, he would have had me use his name if I want­ed to.

A real­ly close fam­i­ly mem­ber who has been with his wife for 27 years was arrest­ed on domes­tic vio­lence charge his life was up end­ed , he nev­er laid a fin­ger on his wife, not once in those 27 years.

I was to attend a birth­day par­ty that night, I was tak­ing my wife and he agreed to take his wife , even though they had some dif­fer­ence that day, I sug­gest­ed to him that it would be a good ice break­er and a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for them to patch up their differences.

So he drove home, close to his home he saw his wife dri­ving away with their son, he tried to get her atten­tion by flash­ing his lights, honk­ing his horn with­out success.

He thought maybe she was in dan­ger, he though maybe some­one was in the car with her forc­ing her to dri­ve with­out stop­ping, he did not know what to think , why would she not respond,? Surely she saw him?

So he drove beside her , honk­ing his horns , not know­ing she had called the police, a cou­ple of min­utes lat­er the cops pulled both of them over, he was relieved , think­ing “thank God the Cops are here, what­ev­er the prob­lem, it will be resolved ” .

Well it was resolved but not in the way he envisaged.

She told the police she was leav­ing the mat­ri­mo­ni­al home and he chased her down and she was ter­ri­fied for her life. He was arrested.

They are back togeth­er, but the resid­ual con­se­quences of her actions will haunt and impact their lives for the remain­der of their lives. There are count­less sto­ries, on both sides of the divide, all I am say­ing is that if we are to fix this prob­lem, let us first avail our­selves to the full realities.

Domestic vio­lence affects both men and women, and it def­i­nite­ly has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for chil­dren, let’s fix the prob­lem with­out leav­ing any­one out .

Let’s fix the prob­lem with­out demo­niz­ing any­one, let’s be fair.

I have concluded that some black Americans, were of the belief, before and after the US elections, that saw Barack Obama being elected President, that all their needs would have been taken care of, a perception no doubt, which slowly eroded and evaporated when Obama came into office and their expectations were not realized. This has been substantiated Jamaica​.by the very voice of some ignorant black US citizens themselves and extended families here in Jamaica.

Unfortunately, in their quest to establish reason to dispel Obama as a credible president for all American people and not just for a particular ethnic group, the deluded have blamed an increasingly depressed global economic situation, exacerbated by the remnants of the Bush domestic initiative and his Middle East exploration, as the cause for their stagnant economic situation.

So, the disillusioned , it seems, have decided that they will not be voting for Obama and in some instances high profile blacks have jumped ship and gone to the Republican camp, believing the mendacious , flip flopper Mitt Romney’s plan for economic development , a paln which he has no credibility .

I would advise them to step backwards and look at the bigger picture, and see what Romney has been offering or should I say selling, which is quite obvious from his very pronouncement that his intention is to make the rich richer, by reinstating the very failed policies of the Bush administration and a deregulated management of the country’s economy which favours the rich, indeed, an unbridled capitalism.

Obama’s policy’s have not been effective enough to make serious inroads in addressing the US’ socio-economic woes which are indeed many, and from where I stand, neither does the Grand Old Party (GOP) have a solution to address the economic and foreign concerns of the US, the flip flopper Romney has demonstrated that he is clueless, and has no vision to revive the country’s economy.

If one is faced with one of two choices to decide the way forward to progress, wouldn’t it be prudent to choose the one whose course is plausible, realistic and can make your circumstances a little better. The problem is, with predominantly white America and weary disillusioned blacks not looking at the issues and being objective I will not be at all surprised if a Mitt Romney becomes president , I hope I will be proven wrong come the November election .

Errol McLeish

Devastating news, those of us on the left who support President Obama and the 99% were greeted with the follow-up right hook to the left upper-cut Mitt Romney gave to our candidate in the first debate. Greg Anthony former NBA player has decided to support Mitt Romney.

I’m unsure how the Obama cam­paign will recov­er from this one two punch of the effects of los­ing the first debate to Romney , fol­lowed by the even more con­se­quen­tial loss of the vote of mis­ter Anthony.

Former NY Knick Guard Greg Anthony.

Mister Anthony has been fea­tured in a Romney Campaign Ad blast­ing the pres­i­dent for mak­ing excus­es for the econ­o­my, whilst throw­ing his sup­port to mis­ter Romney.

http://thegrio.com/2012/10/05/greg-anthony-featured-in-new-ad-supporting-mitt-romney/?fb_ref=http%3A%2F%2Fthegrio.com

Anthony played eleven sea­son in the NBA and is most­ly remem­bered for his tenure with the New York Knicks dur­ing the ear­ly 1990s. He was far more suc­cess­ful in col­lege, where he starred with oth­er future NBA play­ers Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon at UNLV. The 1990 team won an NCAA Championship.

In col­lege, Anthony was a nation­al vice-chair­man for the Young Republicans from 1989 – 91. He is cur­rent­ly a bas­ket­ball ana­lyst on NBA TV and CBS Sports.(the grio​.com)

I am sure President Obama is appre­cia­tive of all who voted/​will vote for him, after all the work he set out do is far from fin­ished, to be hon­est we appre­ci­at­ed the fact that Greg Anthony a life-long Republican said he vot­ed for the pres­i­dent the first time around.

But you see you nev­er were a believ­er Mister Anthony, after all your record shows you were an inter­lop­er rather than a died in the wool believ­er in the cause.

Of Racial Justice.

Of Respect for women and all peo­ple , irre­spec­tive of col­or, class, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, reli­gion and any oth­er defin­ing characteristic.

Of the desire for fair­ness, believ­ing in the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that we are our broth­er’s keep­er, that we should not give hand-outs but should always be will­ing to give a hand up to our fellow-man.

Of the desire for peace and har­mo­ny on earth, under­stand­ing that some­one who is dif­fer­ent that we are , are not alien to be bombed, but our broth­ers to be learned and appreciated .

You see mis­ter Anthony, those are Democratic principles.

The very gen­e­sis of your exis­tence was an irrec­on­cil­able oxy­moron. As a black-skinned man who in col­lege was vice-chair of the young repub­li­cans you were already a walk­ing contradiction.

I can see how some­one like you would enter col­lege with­out any strug­gle , gets accept­ed into a sports league, make mil­lions and assume that is the lot of others.

What is real­ly instruc­tive is that you allow your­self to be used by a man, a cam­paign and a par­ty which has zero respect for you , or your race,but find it con­ve­nient to fea­ture you in their AD over 308 mil­lion oth­er Americans.

There is only one way to tear down a black man and that is to use anoth­er black man to do it, obvi­ous­ly col­lege was of lit­tle use to Greg Anthony beyond basketball.

I can total­ly under­stand how Anthony would berate the pres­i­dent, accus­ing him of mak­ing excus­es, for sav­ing the Auto Industry. Killing Osama Bin Laden. Pulling the econ­o­my back from the brink, cre­at­ing over 5 mil­lion jobs in the process. Ending the war in Iraq. Allowing Gays to serve their coun­try in the nation’s mil­i­tary, like any oth­er American. Signing the Lily Ledbetter Act Into Law, afford­ing women equal pay for equal work. Signing trade agree­ments with oth­er coun­tries which cre­ates man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs here in America. Winding down the Afghan war. Restoring America’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and Integrity abroad in the eyes of the world, a sharp devi­a­tion from tor­ture, ren­der­ing pris­on­ers of war to oth­er coun­tries to be tor­tured and God knows what else. Decimating Al Qaeda.Using Executive action to give hope to dreamers. 

There is much more that the pres­i­dent has done that is wor­thy of mis­ter Anthony’s ire.

Conversely I total­ly get Greg Anthony’s admi­ra­tion for Mitt Romney a patho­log­i­cal liar, what’s not to like?

A man who indis­crim­i­nate­ly writes off 47% of the coun­try he wants to lead, label­ing them tak­ers and moochers. A man who says exact­ly what each and every audi­ence in every demo­graph­ic group wants to hear. A man who lacks the char­ac­ter to stand up and say “NO” to the racists in his par­ty. A man who has lied him­self about the pres­i­den­t’s record, and stood spine­less by while his sup­port­ers and con­trib­u­tors use every demean­ing car­i­ca­ture to describe our pres­i­dent. A man who avoid­ed serv­ing in any branch of the mil­i­tary and nei­ther does any of his kids , but is a right-wing hawk with America’s mil­i­tary pow­er, where have we seen this before?

I under­stand Mister Anthony’s admi­ra­tion for a man who nev­er, ever opens his mouth to do what men do, be men, by say­ing enough to the most vile despi­ca­ble racist that now make up a large swath of the repub­li­can party.

There is much more to be said on the issue of Mister Greg Anthony,but when Greg Anthony is eval­u­at­ed it is easy to under­stand his polit­i­cal position.

Greg Anthony was at best a mediocre point Guard who played back-up to Derrick Harper on the New York Knicks. At the zenith of his bas­ket­ball car­rear he was a back­up, as he was mediocre at the thing he does best, we get how his polit­i­cal judge­ment could be this misguided.

Greg we are hap­py to see you go, and while you are leav­ing , take Arthur Davis, and Allen West with you, we do not want the inter­pre­ta­tion of black men any more tainted.

PS:

Listening to Republicans talk about the state of the econ­o­my, if one did not know any bet­ter one would have thought that the last Administration in office which dev­as­tat­ed the econ­o­my was a Democratic Administration.

Republicans do not men­tion the name Bush, but I will say it.

George Bush was the per­son who dev­as­tat­ed the econ­o­my, with huge tax-cuts- give-aways to the rich­est Americans.

Two unfund­ed Wars.

Allowed Wall Street unbri­dled access to do what­ev­er it pleased.

And mas­sive expan­sion of the Federal bureaucracy.

Just though Republicans need some reminding.

Practitioners of Islam do not see their Religious Book the Koran, or their Prophet Mohammed the same way Christians see the Bible and Jesus Christ, as such it is difficult for Christians to comprehend the burgeoning wave of anger and violence that allegations of disrespect directed at the Islamic prophet Mohammed has generated once again.

It is a very dif­fi­cult sub­ject for all of us, Christians and Muslims alike , on the one hand, we desire that all humans would be respect­ful of the reli­gious choic­es of oth­ers, yet on the oth­er it can­not be that those who feel dis­re­spect­ed, use vio­lence and mur­der as a rem­e­dy to any such per­cep­tion of dis­re­spect, real or perceived.

Some Muslims do not respect the Bible, some Muslims destroy Bibles, some Christians dis­re­spect the Koran, some Christians destroy the Koran. Some Muslims deface and destroy edi­fices with which they disagree.

Is it legit­i­mate then for non-Muslims to react they way some Muslims react under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances when the shoe is on the oth­er foot ?

The truth is there are idi­ot­ic peo­ple who pro­fess to be Christians, Muslims and all oth­er Religions, they are with­in the ranks of Agnostics and Atheists too.

The ques­tion we must ask is sim­ply this “As reli­gious peo­ple, is it the right thing to do when we kill oth­ers all because our sen­si­bil­i­ties are offended”?

As occu­pants of this ever shrink­ing Planet we must avail our­selves to the real­i­ty that we all have to live here, as such it must be of para­mount impor­tance that all of us, irre­spec­tive of our dif­fer­ences , find the ties which bind us rather than strain the dif­fer­ences which divide us.

It can­not be that ever time some idiot with an Axe to grind have some­thing stu­pid to say, irre­spec­tive of how offen­sive it is, that the response is the killing of oth­ers and the destruc­tion of property.

If Islamic Countries can­not or will not guar­an­tee the safe­ty of American Nationals liv­ing and, or work­ing in their coun­tries, why should they expect that their pro­fes­sion­als and oth­ers doing the same in America and oth­er Western Nations be protested?

There are more than enough bone-head­ed Racists liv­ing in Western Nations includ­ing the US to make trou­ble for all of us, but equal­ly, the Neanderthal mobs who kill, maim and destroy in the name of Allah, cer­tain­ly do not occu­py a supe­ri­or moral perch.

Irrespective of pre­vi­ous teach­ings Muslims Must devel­op a greater tol­er­ance to views opposed to theirs, the penal­ty for dis­sen­sion can­not be death.

The reac­tion to the stu­pid ‚unin­formed opin­ions of a few agent provo­ca­teurs, can nev­er be jus­ti­fied with the shed­ding of the blood of the innocent.

I am not a stu­dent of Mohammed, I am how­ev­er inclined to believe he would be opposed to this course of action.

As the United States gears up for another Presidential Election, we are once again exposed to just how nasty and undignified those who seek political power can be.

The Republican par­ty oper­a­tives who refer to them­selves as Conservatives have long adopt­ed the pos­ture of the Daddy Party, they took on the mantra of pro­tec­tor of American val­ues and ideals, they pro­mul­gat­ed that farce to the extent that Democrats retreat­ed and did not con­test even the premise of that fraud­u­lent notion

Democrats resigned them­selves to being the Mommy par­ty, look­ing out for the poor and dis­ad­van­taged in the areas of Civil Rights in the 60’s and 70″,fighting to ensure that Government gave a hand up to those in need or down on their luck, they labored to pro­vide Health Care with­out suc­cess until the emer­gence of Barack Obama.

Republicans were con­tent to wrap them­selves in the American Flag and wage wars, to the detri­ment of the country.

The prob­lem with the posi­tion of Republicans is that their very premise was a farce, they are and always were Conservatives only when Democrats had the reins of Government.

Ronald Reagan the name that gets bandied about as the holy grail of mod­ern Republican Conservatism, yet Reagan raised tax­es, ran deficits , start­ed a war, and did every­thing Republicans rail against today. Ronald Reagan would have been ran out of the Tea Party dom­i­nat­ed repub­li­can par­ty of today, much the same way they are chas­ing out Olympia Snowe, they got rid of Arlen Spectre, and tried to run Dick Lugar and oth­ers out.

The Republican Party of Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel does not exist any­more, it is pop­u­lat­ed by the likes of John Bolton , Rudolph Giuliani , Dick Cheyney, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin,Sean Hannity and oth­ers of that ilk, gen­er­al­ly the rabid dogs of racial hatred.

I mean, you can­not make this up , how can one polit­i­cal par­ty have so many intel­lec­tu­al­ly bank­rupt indi­vid­u­als, where do all of these retards come from? Why are they all lumped into that par­ty which is now a cesspool of lies and racial hatred, ?

They have latched on to a demo­graph­ic with­in this coun­try who wax nos­tal­gic about the past when peo­ple not like them were not con­sid­ered peo­ple. Not all of them are white ‚some are inbred self hat­ing mon­grels, how­ev­er all of them are dis­eased, rabid charlatans.

This is the par­ty Mitt Romney now leads, a par­ty which has lurched vio­lent­ly to the right, a par­ty which must pose grave con­cerns for all those who love this coun­try, Independents and intel­lec­tu­als . Everyone so mind­ed must be con­cerned for this democ­ra­cy if this is the path this par­ty of Lincoln is going to con­tin­ue on.

The American racial make­up is chang­ing and it is chang­ing to brown,not white, the poli­cies and utter­ances of the repub­li­can par­ty func­tionar­ies are syn­ony­mous to a wound­ed ani­mal being hunt­ed in a habi­tat being destroyed around it daily.

It risks being a Southern Party of fear­ful white men who long for the days when they had total con­trol of every­one and everything.

Many elect­ed offi­cials in the repub­li­can par­ty has more alle­giance to the State of Israel than they do to the United States, at least while Barack Obama is president.

They gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a stand­ing ova­tion in the US House of Representatives after he over­stepped his bounds and got cheeky with the pres­i­dent of the United States in the White House.President Obama should have ordered him out on that instance but he didn’t.

Republican Candidate for President, Mitt Romney and Netanyahu worked togeth­er and are great friends, it is no won­der that Netanyahu has inject­ed him­self in a most brazen and dis­re­spect­ful way in the American elec­tions on behalf of Mitt Romney.

Netanyahu is a bul­ly who believes that the only opin­ion that mat­ters is his opin­ion, he also knows the Mitt Romney is an emp­ty suit whom he can manip­u­late to do his dirty work.

Benjamin Netanyahu knows that pres­i­dent Obama will not be manip­u­lat­ed into anoth­er war, much less a war on Israels’s behalf. Netanyahu wants a war with Iran, he knows he has less than two months lever­age with pres­i­dent Obama, either way that lever­age is out the door after the American elections.

Netanyahu lashed out at the American pres­i­dent for not estab­lish­ing clear red lines for Iran, the truth is the Israeli leader wants Obama to make threats which will inevitable force him to take mil­i­tary action against the Iranian people.

President Obama has estab­lished that he will not be drawn into a war that the American peo­ple have no appetite for, and damn sure will not start a war because Benjamin Netanyahu says so.

I have always won­dered what was the source of the influ­ence Israel has on the United States, sep­a­rate and apart from the talk­ing points of our” our great­est ally in the mid­dle east”?

How can 7. 7 million people have such control over 308 million ?

Our tax dollars are commandeered and sent to Israel, they have nuclear weapons yet no other country are allowed to have them outside the major players , the United States, England, France, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan.

Benjamin Netanyahu wants to force President Obama into a war which they will then condemn him for later.

On the event of the 11^th year of the Anniversary of the heinous slaughter of thousands of innocent Americans on September 11^th 2001, Americans are once again grieving the cowardly murder of US Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three others in the Embassy compound in Benghazi Libya.

For American and Americans this is lit­er­al­ly like the scab being torn off a wound that has­n’t healed. We are remind­ed that we live in an increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous and unpre­dictable world. Americans of all stripes, every polit­i­cal per­sua­sion, cor­rect­ly stood with President George W Bush as he raised that bull-horn and told the world that those who tore down the Twin Towers would soon hear from all of us, and they did.

Ambassador Christopher Stephens President George Bush and a first responder.

Last night even before the facts were out regard­ing what had tru­ly tran­spired, even before the present Republican Candidate for President Mitt Romney even knew that Ambassador Christopher Stephens was killed, Romney and his cam­paign released a state­ment crit­i­ciz­ing the Administration for apol­o­giz­ing for America, even with­out a grasp of what was tran­spir­ing on the ground in what was still a very flu­id situation.

This move by Mitt Romney was prob­a­bly the worst thing that he could have done in a long line of craven rapa­cious mis­steps, which have char­ac­ter­ized this unfor­tu­nate excuse of a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and more so the pathet­ic can­di­date that par­ty has nom­i­nat­ed to lead this great country.

http://​legalin​sur​rec​tion​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​9​/​r​e​m​a​i​n​-​c​a​l​m​-​a​l​l​-​i​s​-​w​e​l​l​-​i​n​-​e​g​y​p​t​-​a​l​l​-​i​s​-​w​e​ll/

This is the state­ment issued by the US Embassy in Cairo Egypt, as the sit­u­a­tion unfold­ed, in an attempt to head off a poten­tial firestorm of vio­lence all across the Arab World and pos­si­bly min­i­mize or elim­i­nate any loss of life. The Embassy staff was cor­rect in issu­ing that com­mu­nique as that com­pound was also attacked the American Flag ripped down and shred­ded and replaced by a black Islamist Flag.

The American Embassy in Cairo issued that state­ment to defuse a sit­u­a­tion which may have saved many lives includ­ing their own, that did not pre­vent Mitt Romney from blast­ing them and the Obama Administration,accusing the Embassy staff of grave impro­pri­ety in mak­ing the statement,even as they faced attacks in a for­eign country.

This attack on the US Embassy staff, even as they faced dan­ger and were still in arms way, has got to be the straw which breaks the Camel’s back for this imposter called Mitt Romney.

This fraud­ster has demon­strat­ed that he will do and say any­thing, to tear down Barack Obama, irre­spec­tive of the cost.

The American peo­ple have a choice to make, this guy who hides his mon­ey in for­eign coun­tries and berates this coun­try’s hard-work­ing for­eign ser­vice offi­cers , has dis­qual­i­fied him­self from being tak­en seri­ous­ly, and must be seen as the dan­ger­ous per­son he real­ly is.

This is effec­tive­ly the most glar­ing and defin­i­tive exam­ple for the American peo­ple as to who Mitt Romney is, he is inher­ent­ly unqual­i­fied to be pres­i­dent. Mitt Romney“s tem­pera­men­tal oppor­tunis­tic and self-serv­ing state­ments are the most reveal­ing to date that he will do any­thing , say any­thing to gain the pres­i­den­cy. This makes Mitt Romney a dan­ger­ous per­son, who should nev­er be giv­en that power.

The flare up in Cairo and Libya are sup­pos­ed­ly over a lit­tle viewed web video sup­pos­ed­ly by a Florida Pastor, who is even less known. which is alleged to have insult­ed Mohammed the Prophet.

This Pastor, it is report­ed was the same per­son who threat­ened to burn the Koran some time aback , and to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion even­tu­al­ly did so.

However there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what hap­pened either in Libya, or in Egypt, the notion that dis­re­spect­ing some­one long dead, or even some­one alive, is cause to kill inno­cent peo­ple, is beyond out­ra­geous. It is time for the entire world and peo­ple of all reli­gious belief includ­ing Muslims, to say to Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ists that this will not be tol­er­at­ed. This kind of behav­ior will not stand in the name of God, period.

Mitt Romney dou­bled down on his mis­take September 12^th, he had nowhere to go he had paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner , Mitt Romney want­ed to take some of the shine off the pris­tine Foreign Policy Credentials of Barack Obama, he may have lost the General elec­tions on this day.

I listened and read some of the unfortunate statements that has surfaced from some quarters, after the brilliant performances of Jamaica’s athletes at the Beijing and more recently the London Olympics.

As I age, I seek to be more objec­tive, less impetu­ous, I make greater effort to seek out com­mon ground with those with whom I dis­agree, or con­verse­ly those who dis­agree with me, with a view to at least under­stand­ing how peo­ple who dis­agree with me feel, or at least walk away with an under­stand­ing of how they arrived at their perspective.

Carl Lewis

As such, the com­ments of for­mer American Olympian Carl Lewis, is the most unfor­tu­nate and painful,of all the chat­ter. Lewis’ state­ments are the most trou­bling for me, because on the face of it ‚we could argue he is bad-mind­ed, envi­ous, angry, jeal­ous, what­ev­er. We may find a whole slew of expla­na­tions for Mister Lewis’ out­burst at the Jamaican con­tin­gen­t’s suc­cess, and par­tic­u­lar­ly that of world recorder hold­er Usain Bolt.

Following Bolt’s per­for­mance in Beijing, Lewis told Sports Illustrated: “Countries like Jamaica do not have a ran­dom pro­gram, so they can go months with­out being test­ed. I’m not say­ing any­one is on any­thing, but every­one needs to be on a lev­el play­ing field​.Read more: http://http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/10/bolt-no-respect-for-carl-lewis/

“If you don’t ques­tion that in a sport that has the rep­u­ta­tion it has right now, you’re a fool,” Lewis said. “Period.“http://​www​.latimes​.com/​s​p​o​r​t​s​/​s​p​o​r​t​s​n​o​w​/​l​a​-​s​p​-​s​n​-​u​s​a​i​n​-​b​o​l​t​-​r​i​p​s​-​c​a​r​l​-​l​e​w​i​s​-​m​a​y​-​l​o​s​e​-​s​o​m​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​-​2​0​1​2​0​8​1​0​,​0​,​4​6​6​3​0​8​1​.​s​t​ory

I feel a cer­tain sense of sor­row at mis­ter Lewis’ state­ments because of the deep­er under­ly­ing rea­sons I believe we are still wag­ing this war against each oth­er as great , great grand-chil­dren of slaves. No one was more proud when Carl Lewis was win­ning his medals in the 80’s, for me his vic­to­ries were our vic­to­ries, all Jamaicans cheered Lewis and Riddick and Williams and all oth­er American ath­letes of col­or who rose above the vicious assault of Jim Crowe in America, to dom­i­nate track and field the way Mohamed Ali Had per­se­vered to dom­i­nate and inspire the world even after being imprisoned.

Shelly Anne Fraser-Pryce , fastest woman in the world.

Our unique Jamaican-ness makes us iden­ti­fy with peo­ple wher­ev­er and when­ev­er they strug­gle for free­dom jus­tice, and basic human rights,and dig­ni­ty. As our lead­ers have fought to get Nelson Mandel released from that hor­ri­ble prison-cell on Robin Island in South Africa, so too did we cheer for mis­ter Lewis when he won, his vic­to­ries were our vic­to­ries, he was one of us.

Even though we had our own ath­letes in those Olympics, Lewis’ vic­to­ries rep­re­sent­ed some­thing big­ger for us, it was more that sports, those vic­to­ries were polit­i­cal state­ments to the for­ti­tude and the indomitable spirt of oppressed peo­ple to per­se­vere to sur­vive and to triumph.

Jamaican Olympic team.

Comments com­ing from the usu­al sources do not both­er me much, after all those who were for gen­er­a­tions used to hav­ing unfair advan­tages ‚were not going to believe oth­ers can com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly and win with­out the ben­e­fits of those advan­tages they were used to having.

Chairman of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO), Professor Winston Davidson, is describ­ing claims by a mem­ber of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), that it is dif­fi­cult to find and test Jamaican ath­letes, as “a vicious attack on a small coun­try”. Davidson’s com­ments came moments after he emerged from a meet­ing with JADCO board mem­bers who spent the greater part of yes­ter­day comb­ing through their data­base to find evi­dence to back up the claim by the IOC offi­cial.

Professor Winston Davidson:

No evi­dence

The mem­bers turned up emp­ty-hand­ed in their search.“What Mr (Dick) Pound said was bla­tant­ly false. We knew it was spu­ri­ous, but we spent the whole day try­ing to find evi­dence of it,” Davidson said.“We don’t think they would do this to America and oth­er big­ger coun­tries. It is a vicious attack on a small coun­try,” Davidson fumed.http://http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120814/lead/lead1.html

The eupho­ria on the faces of Shelly Anne Fraser-Pryce and oth­ers messers Lewis and Pound, is not that which you are used to see­ing from some of your own coun­try-folk and col­leagues, these are the expres­sions of pure unadul­ter­at­ed ‚joy from accom­plish­ing against all odds.

Veronica Campbell-Brown.

The thrill of vic­to­ry from hard work, per­se­ver­ance, and suc­ceed­ing when you are told you could­n’t , you are not good enough. That gen­tle­men is what you see on the tracks and in their per­for­mances and the indeli­ble joy etched in their indi­vid­ual faces, that gen­tle­men is not from dope, that is pure accomplishment.

You both should try it sometime.

It is sad when a black man allows him­self to be a tool to those who would destroy his broth­ers, and sis­ters. Carl Lewis has fur­ther rel­e­gat­ed him­self to the dust-bin of his­to­ry, anoth­er (Benedict Arnold) , anoth­er Uncle-Tom who is too self-absorbed in his own fail­ings too con­sumed in his own mis­er­able life to acknowl­edge and cel­e­brate the suc­cess­es of those who have gen­uine­ly earned it.

For that I tru­ly feel sor­ry for Carl Lewis, a man who has accom­plished ter­rif­ic feats in track and field, but who has allowed self-cen­tered nar­cis­sis­tic ego­ma­nia to ren­der him a mere foot-note in history.

Jamaica have through­out the London Olympics,demonstrated that it is one of the most suc­cess­ful nations in the world of ath­let­ics. This how­ev­er has not gone with­out sus­pi­cion and innu­en­dos from some. They either hate the fact our dom­i­nance had no assis­tance from them or, are just bad-mind­ed and jeal­ous of our achievements.

Recently Carl Lewis, who had ques­tioned whether our ath­letes were indeed drug-free sub­se­quent to the Beijing Olympics, renewed that pronouncement .

We must, how­ev­er, not be too con­cerned about this nar­cis­sist who has no moral author­i­ty to point fin­ger at any ath­lete as a drug cheat, because he him­self was test­ed on two occa­sions pri­or to the 1984 Olympics.

Carl Lewis then and now 

Unlike oth­er Sports per­son­al­i­ties Lewis did not attract lucra­tive endorse­ment con­tracts, many argue this lat­est sal­vo from him is an oppor­tunis­tic attempt to gar­ner some atten­tion. A crass attempt at re-ener­giz­ing his non-exis­tent career. Others point to plans Lewis has to run for the US Congress as a rea­son for his self serv­ing out­burst. It does­n’t stop there , recent­ly International Olympic Committee mem­ber Dick Pound in an inter­view with Reuters Television claimed that the (IOC) was expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties find and test­ing Jamaican athletes.

Of course the local Anti Doping body in Jamaica, The Anti Doping Commission (JADCO) debunked those assertions,through an exec­u­tive mem­ber won­dered whether such sus­pi­cion would have been direct­ed at a devel­oped coun­try like the United States. Dick Pound is a white male from Canada.

Jamaica is a proud Nation which have stamped it’s pres­ence on the world stage, detrac­tors ‘who seek to gar­ner atten­tion from our suc­cess by cast­ing asper­sions should know that this lit­tle rock of 2.8 mil­lion is as we say (“wi likkle but wi tallawa”) trans­la­tion , we are small but we are a force to be reck­oned with.

Errol McLeish.