No amount of con­dem­na­tion and dis­gust would be enough in respond­ing to what we wit­nessed on an ama­teur video shot by a stu­dent in a Columbia South Carolina Schoolroom as school offi­cials and stu­dents stood and sat in numb silence as a state trained , paid and sanc­tioned Thug assault­ed a 16 year old girl in the most vicious way pos­si­ble under the guise and author­i­ty of law enforcement.
As nau­se­at­ed and dis­gust­ed as the world is at this vicious dis­play of bar­barism is, if stu­dents had not tak­en out their cell phones and record­ed this inci­dent no one would have been any wis­er, this stu­dent and her class­mates would have been assault­ed, trau­ma­tized and vic­tim­ized with­out con­se­quence to the offend­er. Life would have gone on as usu­al as it always has.

Life would have gone on as usu­al because for almost four hun­dred years this is exact­ly how black peo­ple have been treat­ed in this coun­try. As I said in pre­vi­ous articles,whatever hap­pened in that class­room which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the call­ing of the police, can­not be dis­cussed in the same con­text in which we dis­cuss what hap­pened after the police entered the room.
If we do so we unwit­ting­ly give tac­it sup­port to the bru­tal crim­i­nal bar­bar­i­ty and dis­gust­ing dis­play of dis­re­spect we all witnessed .

So when the head of the FBI James Comey comes out and blames cit­i­zens for video­tap­ing atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against them by these bru­tal thugs in uni­form as the rea­son for the rise in crime this is what he wants to keep from you.
Clearly this was a crime and it should be pros­e­cut­ed if and when it is pros­e­cut­ed it will in fact add to the crime statistics.
The only thing James Comey did not say to the Police Chiefs and the Nation is that much of the crime is being com­mit­ted by those who are sworn to pro­tect and serve.

It was a telling moment at least for the 47 mil­lion Black cit­i­zens of this coun­try when the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations came out and blamed them for non-vio­lent­ly record­ing police abuse against their per­sons , rather than speak to the atro­cious behav­ior we are wit­ness­ing in front our eyes.
For those in our com­mu­ni­ty who have his­tor­i­cal­ly seen the FBI as Savior against the forces of tyran­ny Comey’s speech must give you pause.

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS

As we sort through this shock­ing event which hap­pened to the abused teenage girl and every oth­er stu­dent par­tic­u­lar­ly stu­dents of col­or we do a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice to them if we do not view what hap­pened to her in the greater con­text of the school to prison pipeline which the states have been run­ning in this coun­try essen­tial­ly turn­ing reg­u­lar dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters into crimes and our school age chil­dren into criminals .

They start­ed with the sleigh of hand by not accept­ing that what they have done is mil­i­ta­rize schools with police. Somehow they fig­ured smart peo­ple would not be par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with hav­ing gun-tot­ing cops hav­ing any­thing to do with their chil­dren inside their classrooms.
So what they did was to place gun-tot­ing cops into the class­rooms among your kids, only they cre­at­ed a more palat­able name for them. All of a sud­den the juiced up sher­if­f’s deputy is no longer a cop he is a school resource offi­cer.

What resource does he/​she bring to the school you decide ?
Students around the globe attend class­es at dif­fer­ent lev­els with­out hav­ing armed cops in their schools and they do just fine that’s the way it’s always been.
America cre­at­ed it’s own night­mare with it’s insane insa­tiable appetite and affin­i­ty for guns.
But as insane as that is that is not the big­ger issue. The real issue is the Country’s con­tin­ued obses­sion with crim­i­nal­iz­ing and incar­cer­at­ing its minori­ties by attack­ing stu­dents of col­or in the places where they should feel safest.

Make no mis­take about it there is a tac­tic yet explic­it accep­tance of this class­room to prison approach by the states and by a large sub­set of the white population.
Did I say a large sub­set of whites?
Yes a large per­cent­age of the white pop­u­la­tion is so hate­ful of Blacks that they will sup­port every harm which is brought about on the per­son of black people.
It is nev­er about their sup­port for police , in fact they are abused just as bad­ly by police . The fact is that they have devel­oped a pol­i­cy of “the ene­my of my ene­my is my friend”.
They are not sup­port­ing police they are sup­port­ing assault on Black peo­ple, it does not mat­ter whether it’s the police, the Russians or ISIL any­one who hates and is will­ing to assault Blacks are friends of theirs.

We see it in the data as it relates to how black stu­dents are dis­ci­plined with­in the school systems.
It is evi­dent in sus­pen­sion and expul­sion rates even though there is absolute­ly no data which sug­gests that black stu­dents are more dis­rup­tive in school.

We waste our time talk­ing about the action of the cop if the con­ver­sa­tion is not cen­tered on why state gov­ern­ments are turn­ing schools into police posts. Cops ought not be in class­rooms unless some­one pulls a gun or oth­er weapon on some­one else and they are called.
This act of Government which places cops in schools is designed to intim­i­date young peo­ple into acqui­esc­ing to Government’s demands or else. It has noth­ing to do with safety.

Most of us attend­ed schools in which there were no cops or any­where on the prop­er­ty , how many oth­er nations engages in this prac­tice oth­er than the United States?
I can tell you not many if at all…
Black America wise up the fir­ing of this cop alone will change nothing.

It is gen­er­al­ly not my habit of com­ment­ing too much on low down politi­cians because writ­ing about them gen­er­al­ly have the oppo­site effect of sham­ing them, it usu­al­ly brings them more atten­tion. For most politi­cians there is gen­er­al­ly no bad pub­lic­i­ty they are gen­er­al­ly extreme nar­cis­sists who take what­ev­er atten­tion they can get good or bad.

On this occa­sion I will break with that rule sim­ply to talk about the low down loud-mouth bul­ly who serves as Governor of New Jersey.
Chris Christie defies log­ic , It nev­er quite dawned on me what log­ic Jersey Democrats used in vot­ing for this retard­ed loud-mouth school­yard bul­ly in a total­ly blue state?
The guy is noth­ing but a Rudolph Giuliani 2.0 on steroids. He is uncouth, abra­sive, arro­gant and a down­right liar.
Maybe it can be chalked up to the sup­posed rough and tum­ble notion of the New York/​New Jersey per­sona “feg­gud about it”.
But even so the vot­ers them­selves are get­ting tired of this punk and many are ask­ing him to resign . I mean he is nev­er there he’s always out chas­ing the elu­sive dream of becom­ing President of the United States.
No one begrudges the fat man the right to chase his dream but when a police offi­cer gets shot and he goes on National Television to blame the President of the United States for the shoot­ing it is beyond disgraceful.

I total­ly get that Christie needs trac­tion in a 16 per­son field in which he hard­ly gets to answer a ques­tion. What bet­ter way to try to gar­ner some atten­tion than attack­ing the President of the United States?
But to bla­tant­ly lie to gain shock val­ue shows the depths the over the riv­er over­weight thug is will­ing to go to to boost his wan­ing pres­i­den­tial ambitions.
As I said he is exact­ly like Giuliani, both were Federal Prosecutors who lack the intel­lect to be objective.
Neither of these bul­lies are capa­ble of mak­ing ratio­nal dis­tinc­tions between wrong and right as far as cops are concerned.
For these two Cops can do no wrong .
It was part of the rea­sons no one is talk­ing about President Giuliani. The so-called “America’s Mayor” is now a mere footnote.
Like Giuliani Christie will crash and burn. There is no way either of these two school­yard thugs could be allowed anywhere

near the nuclear codes. It is that same arro­gance which got him boot­ed from a Amtrak qui­et car .

Chris Christie was report­ed­ly kicked out of an Amtrak train car Sunday for yelling on his cell phone in one of the train service’s “qui­et cars.”The Garden State gov­er­nor, known for his blunt and at times loud style, was spot­ted by fel­low pas­sen­gers in the qui­et car on a 9:55 a.m. Amtrak train trav­el­ing from Washington, D.C. to New York, accord­ing to Gawker. The strug­gling 2016 can­di­date “got on last minute yelling at his two Secret Service agents I think because of a seat mix-up, sat down and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed mak­ing phone calls on the qui­et car,” pas­sen­ger Alexander Mann told Gawker. Christie appeared to be in the midst of an intense con­ver­sa­tion and was heard repeat­ing phras­es includ­ing “this is frickin’ ridicu­lous” and “seri­ous­ly?” accord­ing to Mann.
‘This is frickin’ ridicu­lous’: Chris Christie gets boot­ed from Amtrak qui­et car for being too loud while on cellphone 

We salute Amtrak for putting this bul­ly in his place imag­ine this guy hav­ing pow­er to use the world’s ‚most pow­er­ful military?
If he is yelling at Agents now as a fad­ing can­di­date imag­ine if he was to ever become President.…

This assault hap­pened yes­ter­day October 26^th to a stu­dent in her Columbia South Carolina class room …
Reports indi­cate the girl was asked to leave the class after using her cell­phone she did not, upon which Administrators were called and she still sat in her seat.
That is when they brought in the Thug and this was the result. Judge for your­selves whether you would allow this to hap­pen to your child.
This hap­pened in a class­room involv­ing a female stu­dent . This was not a ter­ror­ist about to blow up some­thing . If a girl can­not be safe in her own class­room from the thug­gish assault of the State where can she be safe.
Does any­one see where we are as a peo­ple in what is clear­ly a police state gone awry?
FBI DIRECTOR: VIOLENT CRIMES ARE UP BECAUSE POLICE OFFICERS CAN’T BE AS ABUSIVE WITH CELL PHONE VIDEOS EVERYWHERE

Just two days ago the FBI direc­tor James Comey had the nerve to blame peo­ple who video­tape cops abus­ing oth­er cit­i­zens for the rise in some cat­e­gories of crime in the country.
To begin with he cit­ed absolute­ly no data which sup­ports his argu­ments but that did not stop him from mak­ing the ridicu­lous and uncon­firmed state­ment anyway.
What makes Comey’s com­ments more omi­nous and dis­turb­ing is the fact that the FBI is count­ed on at the fed­er­al lev­el to inves­ti­gate inci­dents of police abuse of cit­i­zens. The ques­tion now is what is the qual­i­ty of the Investigations being done by the FBI in cas­es where police com­mit crimes against citizens?

Personally I always won­dered about the basis for Black peo­ple’s faith in the FBI to be impar­tial or thor­ough in light of the Agency’s his­to­ry in deal­ing with the community.
The FBI has con­sis­tent­ly had an adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ship with the African-American com­mu­ni­ty despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Just recent­ly in Ferguson Missouri as African-American peo­ple were in the streets demon­stra­tion sys­tem­at­ic Police abuse White Anti-African-American mer­ce­nar­ies were walk­ing around heav­i­ly armed the FBI was there spy­ing on the demonstrators.

James Comey, direc­tor of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) admit­ted to the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) that his agency spied on the Ferguson protests with aer­i­al craft because of the requests from local law enforce­ment. Comey clar­i­fied his rev­e­la­tion by stat­ing that the FBI does not “fly planes around America look­ing down to see if some­body might be doing some­thing wrong”; how­ev­er that is exact­ly what the FBI did at Ferguson. And because of this, the FBI did not obtain war­rants before engag­ing because of a loop­hole in the process that rests on the notion that “planes do not cap­ture or record the con­tents of any com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the ground.” Comey added: “The law is pret­ty clear that you don’t need a war­rant for that kind of conversation.”

The planes used by the FBI appar­ent­ly were tasked with watch­ing spe­cif­ic sus­pects who were alleged­ly thought to be involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and under inves­ti­ga­tion for ter­ror­ism and espi­onage when the Ferguson police depart­ment asked the FBI to assist them in “devel­op­ing situation[s]” such as riots. Comey vehe­ment­ly stat­ed that the planes were not con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance, and yet the FBI sent air­craft to Ferguson in August of 2014 to watch over the protests against police because of the shoot­ing of Michael Brown. And then the FBI helped out again in Baltimore dur­ing the Freddie Gray protests. The direc­tor of the FBI explained that his agency will be deployed “if there is tremen­dous tur­bu­lence in a com­mu­ni­ty, it’s use­ful to every­body — civil­ians and law enforce­ment — to have a view of what’s going on. Where are the fires in this com­mu­ni­ty? Where are peo­ple gath­er­ing? Where do peo­ple need help? And some­times the best view of that is above rather than try­ing to look from a car in the street.” Director Admits FBI Spies on African Americans & Muslims From the Sky

Whenever Police abuse cit­i­zens we hear the con­stant drum­beat about what hap­pened before which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the incident?
Let me explain some­thing on that issue, police do not have a right to mete out pun­ish­ment , it is the duty of a court of law to make that determination.
There is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion which is prac­tised by police and their apol­o­gists in the main street Media when­ev­er inci­dents like these occur . Which is to cre­ate a smoke screen, cre­ate a nar­ra­tive that some­thing else may have occurred which we are not aware of.
This sideshow is intend­ed to deflect atten­tion away from what we saw with our eyes so we may wan­der off into the weeds of hypotheticals.
That is where they want the dis­cus­sion to be cen­tered, away from what we saw with our eyes, delv­ing instead in “maybes and what ifs”.
What we saw in that clip is inde­fen­si­ble regard­less of what may or may not have tran­spired pre­vi­ous­ly. It does not require an inves­ti­ga­tion he should be fired forthwith.

The main stream media will of course engage in a process of char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion on the stu­dent, and char­ac­ter san­i­ta­tion of the cop.Any attempt to dis­cuss what this female stu­dent may have done pri­or to the assault on her with­in the con­text of the cops actions is a grave dis­ser­vice to what he did and must be seen as a clear attempt to jus­ti­fy his thug­gish bru­tal behavior.
In this medi­um we speak to the dis­re­spect too many cops have when they are deal­ing with peo­ple of col­or and black peo­ple in general.
They sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly refer to grown black men as “bud or guy” while refer­ring to white men as ” sir”.
Many cops are a mere hair trig­ger from using force when they deal with peo­ple of col­or. In many cas­es they active­ly esca­late sim­ple things so they can law­ful­ly assault Black cit­i­zens . Whatever they do or say pri­or to using force is mere­ly a “cov­er your ass” in the event of scrutiny.
The FBI of course will Investigate and this guy will be found to have act­ed law­ful­ly and the police state’s assault will continue.
This is the state which hate and fear built.

One of the things I learned over the last 24 years liv­ing in the United States is the absolute arro­gance of white men . Whether it is a ques­tion of invad­ing the sov­er­eign Iraqi Nation and cre­at­ing ISIL in the process or whether it is their response to the Black Lives mat­ter move­ment as it relates to police exces­sive behav­ior their atti­tudes are the same.

Most of us oth­er peo­ple argue points based on mer­its , pros and cons, we defend our posi­tions based on the inher­ent feel­ing that we are right and justified.
Not so with the American white male.
He nev­er quite got around to explain­ing how Christopher Columbus man­aged to dis­cov­er land peo­ple were liv­ing on in orga­nized soci­eties before he hap­pened upon those lands.
He makes no attempt to explain or address the fact that the “Moors” Black Africans had arrived set­tled here beside Native Indians and lived peace­ful­ly with the Natives since around the 12^th century.
The ques­tion of his lack of fideli­ty to the numer­ous treaties he signed with the Indians and dis­hon­ored is nev­er broached or discussed.

So it’s no sur­prise that when he refers to America in the con­text of Immigration or the Black Lives mat­ter move­ment he nev­er both­ers to speak to the strug­gles of either group he sim­ply dou­bles down on what he sees as his right to the land and his right to do with the world what he sees fit.
It’s not just his right to do with the entire United States as he sees fit. He also believes in his absolute right to con­trol the entire globe.

He speaks about remov­ing and replac­ing Governments and Administrations as if it’s his duty and job to do so , the unspo­ken under­stand­ing being America’s right to dic­tate to every­one else.
Just last Sunday Tony Blair the Conservative Former British Prime Minister speak­ing to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria took the unprece­dent­ed step[ of apol­o­giz­ing for his role in the Iraq war.
The apol­o­gy was not with­out the ever present white male arrogance .….…..
Quote ‚“I apol­o­gise for the fact that the intel­li­gence we received was wrong. “I also apol­o­gise for some of the mis­takes in plan­ning and, cer­tain­ly, our mis­take in our under­stand­ing of what would hap­pen once you removed the régime.”
You won’t get even that from Bush or the war crim­i­nal Dick Cheney.
On that note I salute the Canadian peo­ple for rec­og­niz­ing and demon­strat­ing that the rea­son peo­ple respect their coun­try is not because it throws its weight around the world in wars of choice but because it has a his­to­ry of not doing so.
The unmis­tak­able rejec­tion of Stephen Harper speaks vol­umes about the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the Canadian vot­er on this par­tic­u­lar subject.

FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY STILL UNSURE IF WHITE SUPREMACIST’S ATTACK IN CHARLESTON WAS TERRORISM

But the gall of them, who gives them the right to decide who rules in these coun­tries ? They nev­er quite got around to explain­ing that either . So we are left to assume and maybe more defin­i­tive­ly con­clude that the col­or of their skin gives them that authority.
The FBI Director says Police are feel­ing scared they don’t want to get out of their cars that’s the rea­son some crimes are trend­ing up is that Police are scared to do their jobs because they are under more scruti­ny because cit­i­zens are video­tap­ing their activities.
The infer­ence being that Police can­not do their jobs unless they abuse and kill peo­ple indis­crim­i­nate­ly despite hav­ing access to the best and most sophis­ti­cat­ed sup­port struc­ture prob­a­bly of any nation.
The tragedy in all of this is that for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple of col­or who have been abused by the sys­tem the FBI and the Federal appa­ra­tus was seen as a Savior of sorts. I nev­er quite rec­on­ciled that notion con­sid­er­a­tion the his­to­ry of the FBI and the divi­sive, dis­rup­tive and down­right dan­ger­ous role it has played in the African American Community historically.
I guess when you are a drown­ing man you clutch at straws.
Simply put Black peo­ple’s faith in the FBI as an inde­pen­dent inves­tiga­tive Agency was always mis­placed. Blacks plac­ing their faith in the FBI as an impar­tial play­er between them and the police was always an exer­cise in stu­pid­i­ty and futil­i­ty. Comey sim­ply con­firmed what I always believed.

Whites take own­er­ship of America and the world , blacks can­not even say this is my coun­try and not blink, in fact they sim­ply nev­er say it. Guess what if you don’t take own­er­ship the oth­er guy will. As such white men con­tin­ue to tell them do not look up at me , don’t you dare look in my eyes and there­in lies the problem.

Speaking at a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Area Council One meet­ing in St Andrew Opposition spokesper­son on jus­tice Delroy Chuck cau­tioned oppo­si­tion sen­a­tors against embar­rass­ing them­selves by sup­port­ing the Simpson Miller Administration in mak­ing the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) the final court of appeals for Jamaica.

In address­ing the crowd of laborites Chuck said “If one, two, or eight [JLP] sen­a­tors make the error [and vote for the bills], not only would they be embar­rass­ing them­selves, but what they would do is cause the Labour Party to expend mon­ey to take these three bills to the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, [and the] Privy Council,”.

Chuck argues fur­ther ‚“Let me make it even fur­ther clear. If one, two, or all eight of them go ahead and sup­port the bills, the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, the spokesper­son on jus­tice, and the Jamaica Labour Party will take those three bills to the Constitutional Court, right up to the Privy Council, to show that they are a mock­ery to the Jamaica Constitution,” “The only way the CCJ can be the final appel­late court is when we put it to the peo­ple and we say to the peo­ple ‘do you want the CCJ or you want a final Jamaican court’ and let the peo­ple of Jamaica make that decision,”.

I am no fan of Delroy Chuck but even a bro­ken clock is right twice dai­ly, the only way the CCJ should be rat­i­fied as the final court of appeal for Jamaica is to put it on the bal­lot and let the peo­ple decide. I have very lit­tle con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the Jamaican elec­torate to make sound deci­sions but it is their coun­try they should own the decision.
I agree with Chuck on this and I have said so pre­vi­ous­ly it should be placed on the bal­lot so the peo­ple can own the decision.
I believe accept­ing the prison deal with Britain should also be a bal­lot issue. I know that some will be quick to remind us that lead­ers are elect­ed to lead . My response to that is that no one per­son or group of peo­ple has all the answers as such large deci­sions such as the Prison deal and the (CCJ) deci­sion should be the deci­sion of voters.

The Jamaicagleaner​.com is report­ing that one Jamaica Labor Party Senator is lean­ing toward sup­port­ing the Government motion>When asked about it Arthur Williams is report­ed to have said Chucks state­ments will have no impact on the way he will vote. Big sur­prise there [sic]
Delroy Chuck warned if the issue is passed the next JLP Administration would sim­ply reverse it.
If they put the CCJ in sec­tion 110 of the Constitution, the next JLP gov­ern­ment, which will be in pow­er lat­er this year or next year … when­ev­er the elec­tions are called, we are going to use a sim­ple major­i­ty to remove it,”

It is remark­able that the PNP would be seek­ing to push the CCJ on the Jamaican peo­ple in light of the con­di­tions of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the country.
One does not have to be a legal lumi­nary to rec­og­nize that what Jamaica should be work­ing on at this time is improv­ing the con­di­tions of court build­ings, upgrad­ing and invest­ing in equip­ment which will ensure bet­ter deliv­ery of ser­vice and most impor­tant­ly improv­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of the police so that a greater per­cent­age of crim­i­nals can be removed from the streets and placed where they belong.
I have not heard a mean­ing­ful argu­ment for the removal of the Privy Council as the final appel­late court beyond the one about sov­er­eign­ty and independence.
On that issue I say, look how well we have han­dled our affairs since our so-called independence[sic].

Since we have not heard any mean­ing­ful argu­ments for the CCJ beyond that, one is tempt­ed to ascribe sin­is­ter motives to the PNP’s push for it.
Less and less peo­ple have rea­sons to believe in the Government’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er fair and ade­quate jus­tice to them. One of the issues I have raised on this sub­ject is that part of the prob­lem with our sys­tem of jus­tice on the Island is that Prosecutors , Defense Lawyers and Judges all pret­ty much come from the same farm.
They are large­ly all part of the very same small club, from post­grad­u­ate to grad­u­ate stud­ies. Does any­one in their right mind believe phone calls are not made which have seri­ous impli­ca­tions on verdicts?

The CCJ which is based in Trinidad, does not have Trinidad as a mem­ber to date, that ought to say some­thing about the idea in and of itself.
Thus far only Barbados, Belize and Guyana retain the CCJ as their final court of appeals .
I am not sug­gest­ing by any mea­sure that the CCJ is cor­rupt or inca­pable. What I am say­ing is that for those with mal-intent it is much eas­i­er to get to, and I do not mean geographically.
Jamaica can­not afford to have any fur­ther ero­sion of trust in its abil­i­ty to deliv­er jus­tice to it’s cit­i­zens. The con­se­quences will be dire and far reach­ing if we go down this path.

Irish-American actress Maureen O’Hara has died. She was 95.

The Parent Trap star’s fam­i­ly con­firmed to The Irish Times that she passed away from nat­ur­al caus­es in her sleep on Saturday.

The FitzSimons fam­i­ly (O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons) issued a state­ment, say­ing, “Maureen was our lov­ing moth­er, grand­moth­er, great-grand­moth­er and friend. She passed peace­ful­ly sur­round­ed by her lov­ing fam­i­ly as they cel­e­brat­ed her life lis­ten­ing to music from her favorite movie, The Quiet Man.”

Per the Irish Times, the fam­i­ly praised O’Hara, who received an hon­orary Academy Award in 2014, for hav­ing brought “unyield­ing strength and sud­den sen­si­tiv­i­ty to every role she played.”.

“Her char­ac­ters were feisty and fear­less, just as she was in real life,” the fam­i­ly’s state­ment con­tin­ued. “She was also proud­ly Irish and spent her entire life­time shar­ing her her­itage and the won­der­ful cul­ture of the Emerald Isle with the world.”

O’Hara’s fam­i­ly not­ed in their state­ment that while she “cher­ished her pri­va­cy, she always appre­ci­at­ed the expres­sions of good will from peo­ple around the world and from all walks of life. She espe­cial­ly loved it when chil­dren recog­nised her from her role in Miracle on 34^th Street and asked her: ‘Are you the lady who knows Santa Claus?’ She always answered: ‘Yes I am. What would you like me to tell him?’ ”

The late actress’s fam­i­ly, which includes her daugh­ter Brownyn FitzSimons, said, per The Irish Times, “While we mourn the loss of a very won­der­ful woman, we also cel­e­brate her remark­able life and hope that it serves as an exam­ple to young peo­ple around the world, espe­cial­ly in Ireland, to work hard to make their dreams come true and to always have the courage to stand up for themselves.”

The fam­i­ly not­ed, per The Irish Times, that for those wish­ing to hon­or O’Hara, they “have a sim­ple request: vis­it Ireland one day and think of her.”
See more here : Actress Maureen O’Hara Dies at 95

Eighteen (18) infants have died between June and September this year from health­care-asso­ci­at­ed infec­tions at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) in Kingston and Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay accord­ing to the Jamaican media.

No one knows more about the unbear­able grief which comes from los­ing one’s child than this writer . The immea­sur­able grief is so much that many com­mit sui­cide, oth­ers are ruined emo­tion­al­ly for life and oth­ers sim­ply quit after their child has died.
It is against that back­drop that this medi­um wish­es to asso­ciate with the pain and suf­fer­ing of those par­ents as they grieve this loss and suf­fer a pain that cuts to the core.

In most soci­eties the per­son who heads the health sec­tor would resign as a mark of respect for those par­ents and for not fig­ur­ing out that some­thing was amiss.
There has been a sig­nif­i­cant amount of calls for the Minister of health Fenton Ferguson to step aside in light of these deaths which clear­ly could have been avoided.
He has stead­fast­ly refused to step aside claim­ing he could not have fixed a prob­lem of which he was unaware.
This is not the first time that Ferguson a Dentist by trade has come under scruti­ny and for his lack of aware­ness of what ails the nation’s health care deliv­ery system.
Many of his crit­ics did so against the chick v out­break which plagued the Island just months ago. Some argue that the fact that he is a den­tist and not a med­ical doc­tor has some­thing to do with what they char­ac­ter­ize as his incompetence.
I dis­agree that one has to be a med­ical doc­tor in order to be a good min­is­ter of health which is an admin­is­tra­tive job.
Ferguson has at his dis­pos­al a vast cadre of com­pe­tent med­ical doc­tors with whom he can consult.

In fact we under­stand that a recent audit was done of the health ser­vices and Ferguson hid the results from the country.
Additionally it has been report­ed that a promi­nent young Doctor Alfred Dawes who head­ed the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association (JMDA) has been black­list­ed by the Portia Simpson Miller Government because he spoke out about the con­di­tions in the health sec­tor on the Island.
The Medical Doctors Association report­ed their experiences .

“We have flies in the oper­at­ing the­atre. We have to reuse sin­gle-use instru­ments that aren’t dis­posed of but [are] washed and placed in antibac­te­r­i­al solu­tion and used on anoth­er patient,”. Pads and pen­cils used with elec­tro­sur­gi­cal machines, which sends elec­tri­cal cur­rent to blood ves­sels to stop bleed­ing, are also reused. “The pen­cils are soaked in dis­in­fec­tant and reused till they stop work­ing,” the doc­tor said. However, he point­ed out that the reused pen­cils run the risk of burn­ing the patient and caus­ing elec­tri­cal fires. Another doc­tor said they often prac­tise what they term ‘social­ist med­i­cine’ as left­overs from an indi­vid­u­al’s surgery are used on some­one else. “We have a mesh that is used to fix her­nias. We ask patients to buy them as the hos­pi­tal always runs out. When we don’t use all of the ster­ile mesh in the surgery for the patient who bought it, we soak it in dis­in­fec­tant and use the left­over on a patient who could­n’t afford to buy their own,” According to the Jamaicaobserver​.com.

The Prime Minister thus far has been nowhere in sight, in fact the only time she is heard from these days is when she shows up to cozy up to Foreign lead­ers, latch on to the suc­cess­es of sports stars, or curse out the Opposition. In her absence the People’s National Party’s Youth Organization the “Comrade farm” or “D league” of the Governing admin­is­tra­tion has stepped to the fore attempt­ing to address the issue of the deaths of the infants.

PNPYO ACCUSES JLP OF POLITICISING HEALTH CARE

The Opposition “must imme­di­ate­ly remove their favourite polit­i­cal­ly coloured lens­es and call a spade a spade”. Kledsiella is well known as one of the most com­mon hos­pi­tal bugs, caus­ing pos­si­ble fatal ill­ness­es world­wide. “Kledsiella’s spread among neonates does not aver­age above six per cent in Jamaica, includ­ing the deaths this year, and while sta­tis­tics will not bring back the lives of some of our youngest Jamaicans, we still fare bet­ter than some more eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful coun­tries, such as Brazil with a 50 per cent affect­ed rate of its neonates”

In oth­er words as the Party leader usu­al­ly say to those who oppose her igno­rant non­sense, “Shut up”.
It could have been much worse.
If ever there was any doubt where Jamaica is head­ing under the stew­ard­ship of the present Administration and its sub­sidiaries there need be no fur­ther questions.
The met­ric used in Jamaica is the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, as such our coun­try does not mea­sure itself against the suc­cess of oth­ers we rate our­selves against the fail­ure lev­els of others.
Notwithstanding this glar­ing lack of vision, wis­dom and car­ing, hun­dreds of Thousands of Jamaicans will dress up in orange col­ored cos­tumes like “junkanoo” per­form­ers and they will jubi­lant­ly march into polling sta­tions come next nation­al elec­tions. Some may go even fur­ther, they will wound and even kill those who have oppos­ing polit­i­cal views.
In fair­ness the oth­er side will do the very same.
In the end the slow yet steady slide below the pover­ty line will con­tin­ue. Soon Jamaicans will be run­ning away to Haiti. They sim­ply do not know they deserve better.

Like so many oth­ers David Simmons arrived in Kingston with pre­con­ceived notions about the things he heard about Policing in Jamaica. Simmons from Barbadoes was hired by the Simpson Miller gov­ern­ment to chair the Commission look­ing into the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces when they went to arrest Tivoli Overlord Christopher (Dudus)Coke on an extra­di­tion war­rant in 2010.

SEE ALSO INQUIRY SHOULD BE ABOUT PNP’S REFUSAL TO SUPPORT SECURITY FORCES

It’s impor­tant to have account­abil­i­ty in Government . Government cor­rup­tion across the Globe has lit­er­al­ly oblit­er­at­ed peo­ple’s trust and con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of their Governments to serve their best interest.
Jamaica a small devel­op­ing Nation has done more than it’s fair share in destroy­ing the faith of it’s cit­i­zen­ry that their best inter­est are being addressed in mean­ing­ful ways.

So no well mean­ing Jamaican can seri­ous­ly say that in the inter­est of trans­paren­cy a com­pe­tent pan­el should not be empan­elled to exam­ine events which occurred which result­ed in the deaths of over sev­en­ty Jamaicans.
Jonah believed the peo­ple of Nineveh was unde­serv­ing of God’s love and car­ing because of their wicked ways , so he dis­obeyed God’s com­mand to go and issue them a warn­ing to turn from their wicked ways.
Many of us are like mind­ed, we saw the peo­ple express­ing their undy­ing love and devo­tion to Dudus Coke and pledg­ing to lay down their lives for him.

It is not out of the realm of ratio­nal­i­ty to say well they had their wish.
nev­er­the­less as a peo­ple we can­not allow vengeance or pet­ty polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences to destroy our coun­try for our chil­dren and our chil­dren’s children.

Critics with an under­stand­ing of Jamaica’s pol­i­tics say the Enquiry is being under­tak­en with a view to gain polit­i­cal points. This may be true but it’s still nec­es­sary to have these enquiries in a demo­c­ra­t­ic society.
I too share that view I believe the over M$140 spent so far could have been put to bet­ter use.
In the end noth­ing new will emerge which most Jamaicans don’t already know .

SEE MORE HERE : Vaz blasts Tivoli com­mis­sion chair­man over damn­ing state­ment; demands apology

David Simmons arrived in the Island and right off the bat he formed opin­ions and expressed his bias­es against the Police and Military. In the con­text of his func­tion I believed he over­stepped his bound on sev­er­al occa­sions in a forum which requires tact, dis­cre­tion, cir­cum­spec­tion and most impor­tant­ly impartiality.
Simmons failed dis­mal­ly in his utter­ances and has been chas­tised by sev­er­al for shoot­ing off at the mouth with­out ade­quate­ly engag­ing his brain.

After spend­ing just a lit­tle time in Jamaica and see­ing the crime sta­tis­tics dai­ly David Simmons have had a “come to jesus moment” , an awak­en­ing if you will.
Responding to media reports that the num­ber of mur­ders report­ed this year has sur­passed the num­ber report­ed for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
Simmons said , “This is a nev­er end­ing spi­ral, it has to stop. Jamaica has to pull back from this,” 
Oh, what’s this I hear? It’s not as peachy and rosy as you thought?

It’s always easy to com­ment and pass asper­sions when you don’t have to face the bullets.
Imagine if you were a mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty forces who faced those mili­ti­a­men who risked life and limb for that ungrate­ful unde­serv­ing nation?
I guess your com­ments would be lot more mea­sured , cir­cum­spect and respect­ful , but then again when you don’t have to face the bul­lets because oth­ers have vol­un­teered to do it on your behalf it’s easy to criticize.

This is the third Article in a row in which I am respond­ing to events in Jamaica which involves mem­bers of the Bar Association.

During the years I served in the (JCF) Jamaica Constabulary Force I became friends with sev­er­al decent and hard­work­ing mem­bers of the Legal Fraternity.
In fact a cou­ple of my good friends kind­ly assured me they would defend me “pro-bono” if ever I need­ed to be defend­ed legal­ly as a result of the pur­suits out my duties as a police officer.
Those assur­ances will for­ev­er remain in my heart. The kind­ness and thought­ful­ness of those assur­ances still warms my heart even though I left law enforce­ment over two decades ago.

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Such was the extent of the friend­ships which devel­oped as a result of the mutu­al respect and admi­ra­tion we had for each oth­er from work­ing togeth­er though work­ing at dif­fer­ent ends of the spectrum.
I also built rela­tion­ships with some mem­bers of the bench who are still serv­ing today and I am indeed proud of those asso­ci­a­tions as I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe those pro­fes­sion­als were of the high­est cal­iber and still remain so.
From my per­spec­tives oth­ers were sim­ple bul­lies who hid behind the clown cos­tumes and hurled abuse at those who could not defend themselves.
Those abus­es con­tin­ue to this day and in many cas­es have increased exponentially.

Over the years we have seen sit­u­a­tions in which mem­bers of the Legal fra­ter­ni­ty have brought the once proud and pris­tine fra­ter­ni­ty into seri­ous ques­tion. Some mem­bers can­not seem to avoid com­mit­ting lar­ce­ny as ser­vants, fraud­u­lent con­ver­sions, or mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing their clien­t’s monies.
Every year as I have point­ed out in recent arti­cles sev­er­al are struck from the list of those allowed to prac­tice law on the Island.
The General legal Council pro­vides a detailed list which pro­vide the names of those so dis­barred . One must bear in mind that list includes only those bad lawyers who have been caught and found to have com­mit­ted seri­ous and egre­gious breach­es of their sacred trust.
Disbarred Attorneys

The same is true of the Police ser­vice in which I spent 10 of my for­ma­tive adult years.
As we seek to look at the behav­ior of some mem­bers of the Bar it is impor­tant to observe that Lawyers become Judges. No one goes to School to become a Judge.
Judges are appoint­ed from the pool of lawyers which prac­tices law both on the side of the Prosecution and the Defense.
Most Western Industrialized nations tend to pick their Judges from the Prosecution side, the same can­not be said for Jamaica.
This may or may not have some­thing to do with the per­cep­tion that it is almost impos­si­ble to gain con­vic­tions in Jamaica’s crim­i­nal courts, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the accused is connected.

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I made the afore­men­tioned obser­va­tions against state­ments made by President of the bar Association of Jamaica Donovan Walker and an alleged Investigation which has been com­menced by Zaila McCalla the Island’s Chief Justice into an inci­dent in which an Attorney was arrest­ed at the Supreme Court in Kingston.
In his state­ment Walker said he spoke to the Commissioner of Police and the Minister of Justice about the arrest which he saw as problematic .
Stating quote : “Arresting an offi­cer of the court with­in the precincts of the Supreme Court build­ing sends a bad sig­nal ‚the action may be seen as an act of con­tempt, the dig­ni­ty of the courts must be observed by all offi­cers of the court, includ­ing the police”.

This writer main­tains that the laws of the Country must be upheld and respect­ed indeed by every­one in the coun­try. In a Democracy no per­son is greater than the oth­er. As such the laws must be applied fair­ly and equi­tably across the board.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe there is no bet­ter place to arrest a per­son than in the very halls of jus­tice , if the Supreme Court does con­sid­er itself a hall of jus­tice as it once was.
The President of the Bar Association has from the report­ing been able to secure the com­mence­ment of an inves­ti­ga­tion into what is clear­ly a jus­ti­fi­able and prop­er arrest.
He argues that the arrest in the con­fines of the court could be viewed as con­temp­tu­ous with­out pro­vid­ing one iota of evi­dence in sup­port of that scur­rilous assertion.
The enforce­ment of Jamaican laws can­not be con­fined to the poor­est of the poor and the least con­nect­ed only, and it cer­tain­ly can­not be sub­ject to the whims of a gen­tri­fied Bureaucrat.

The great­est imped­i­ment to our sys­tem of Justice is not where alleged crim­i­nals are arrest­ed it rests with the appli­ca­tion of the law. Most impor­tant­ly it rests with the per­cep­tion the pub­lic has of the peo­ple who are sworn to uphold those laws.
Judges, Attorneys and Police offi­cers have a duty to com­port them­selves in a dig­ni­fied manner.
Allegations of Police mis­con­duct is well doc­u­ment­ed based on their numbers.
Instances of mis­con­duct by Lawyers are not as well know or ampli­fied, prob­a­bly because their num­bers are not as voluminous.
Judges engage in unlaw­ful con­duct how­ev­er their num­bers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the num­ber of prac­tis­ing lawyers.
Juxtapose that with the fact that the high­er a per­son is posi­tioned in Jamaica the less like­ly he will ever be accused much less charged or con­vict­ed of a crime.

I will now intro­duce to you a let­ter which appeared in the Jamaica Daily Gleaner of Oct.22^nd 2015 ..
This let­ter was writ­ten by one of the Country’s pre-emi­nent legal minds whom from his let­ter believes fun­da­men­tal­ly in the quote: world class qual­i­ty of the nation’s legal minds.

In a let­ter to the Editor pub­lished on October 19, Glen George Wilson gives as a rea­son for keep­ing the Privy Council as our final Court of Appeal that the lawyers of the Caribbean will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from par­tic­i­pat­ing in delib­er­a­tions with oth­er world-class legal minds. The objec­tive of hav­ing Caribbean lawyers exposed to world-class legal minds will be more read­i­ly achieved by the accep­tance of the CCJ’s appel­late juris­dic­tion because at present only a very lim­it­ed num­ber of lawyers have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appear in the Privy Council so as to have delib­er­a­tions with oth­er ‘world-class legal minds’. Since there are world-class legal minds with­in the Caribbean, the CCJ as an itin­er­ant and more acces­si­ble court would offer more and bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties for that participation.

Power To Legislate

The sec­ond rea­son Wilson gives is that the CCJ will use its pow­er to leg­is­late from the bench and so the vot­ers could be ignored. He has giv­en no basis for this sur­mise and there is no evi­dence in the CCJ’s 10 years of adju­di­ca­tion to sup­port it. But why does Williams feel that the CCJ would be more prone to leg­is­late from the bench than the Privy Council? Certainly, the CCJ will be in a bet­ter posi­tion to sense the will of ‘the vot­ers’ than the Privy Council, as Lord Hoffman, an emi­nent Law Lord and Privy Councillor advised us.

Lloyd G. Barnett .
Attorney-at-law

This let­ter is a clas­sic demon­stra­tion of what we have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly main­tained in this medi­um , that at the high­est lev­el in Jamaica it is all about self and not the long-term wel­fare and well­be­ing of the country.
Of course Jamaica has no short­age of world ‑class legal minds that is nev­er in question.
Jamaicans are over­achiev­ers, what­ev­er we set our minds to we excel at it even when we seek to self-destruct.
That is not the issue, the issue is that bright legal minds like the Goodly Dr Lloyd Barnett is will­ing to cajole and coax our coun­try into get­ting rid of the Privy Council and replac­ing it with the CCJ.

It is clear from this let­ter that what’s upper­most and of para­mount impor­tance to the Author Dr Barnett as indeed many oth­ers is not the future of our nation and the rule of law but the pro­mo­tion and aggran­dize­ment of the legal fraternity.
No Jamaican lawyer can rea­son­ably pick up the phone and call the Privy Council in England with a view to influ­enc­ing a rul­ing one way or the other.
Can we say the same about the crim­i­nal Justice sys­tem in Jamaica?
if we dis­card the Privy Council will Jamaicans be able to say to them­selves they are com­fort­able that the process is untar­nished and with­out collusion?
Are Jamaicans con­fi­dent they are get­ting jus­tice at home when Prosecutors, Defense Lawyers and tri­al Judges were trained at the same law school, attend the same func­tions and are mem­bers of the same social clubs?
If Jamaicans believe they are get­ting untar­nished jus­tice I have a bridge I would like for them to con­sid­er purchasing.
These are just a few of the pow­er­ful voic­es lob­by­ing for the CCJ which ulti­mate­ly will be a grand old social club for the good old boys.
Jamaicans need to see this for what it is and eschew it.