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Jamaica’s Élite Flawed Argument For JEEP:

A quick obser­va­tion of an expan­sive Article in the Sunday Gleaner of January 29th 2012 authored by vet­er­an Journalist Ian Boyne titled :JEEP: NO LAUGHING MATTER. (jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Ian Boyne has long car­ried the stig­ma of hav­ing sym­pa­thy for the Jamaica Labor Party, of course it is cer­tain­ly with­in Mr Boyne’s right to artic­u­late a point of view irre­spec­tive of the opin­ions of those who dis­agree with him. However read­ing the text and com­ing to grips with the tone of his rather lengthy the­sis, one won­ders if this piece was not an attempt by Boyne to get back to left of cen­ter or in sim­ple lan­guage an attempt to cur­ry favor with the rul­ing party.

Ian Boyne
In his Article Boyne said quote:The ILO’s par­tic­u­lar con­cern is that despite large stim­u­lus pack­ages, these mea­sures have not man­aged to roll back the 27-mil­lion increase in unem­ployed since the ini­tial impact of the cri­sis. Clearly, the pol­i­cy mea­sures have not been well tar­get­ed. Indeed, esti­mates for advanced economies regard­ing dif­fer­ent labour-mar­ket instru­ments show that both active and pas­sive labour-mar­ket poli­cies have proven very effec­tive in stim­u­lat­ing job cre­ation and sup­port­ing incomes.”
Where does this 27 mil­lion num­ber come from? Boyne despite his lengthy epis­tle failed to strike a coher­ent line that the aver­age read­er can attach him­self to, is this a world-wide num­ber? And if it is, how does the International labor Organization come up with this fig­ure, when there are actu­al­ly 10’s of mil­lions of peo­ple all over the world whom are unem­ployed, under­em­ployed and in some cas­es unem­ploy­able? That aside though, Boyne went on to talk about peo­ple who argue for a mar­ket dri­ven econ­o­my in dis­parag­ing terms using slangs like ” neolib­er­al” to describe the Jamaica Labor Party plat­form of a mar­ket dri­ven, mar­ket nec­es­sary, eco­nom­ic mod­el that must be at the cen­ter of growth and devel­ope­ment. Accusing a con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty like the JLP of hav­ing what he char­ac­ter­izes as neolib­er­al sug­gests that Boyne just acquired that ter­mi­nol­o­gy into his vocab­u­lary and is not yet sure what it mean, it is actu­al­ly an oxy­moron .

It does not take this entire bor­ing the­sis to say so very lit­tle . What are you doing talk­ing about neolib­er­al per­spec­tive in the same sen­tence with the JLP? The JLP has nev­er been a lib­er­al par­ty and still isn’t, what coun­try are you liv­ing in? And while we are on that sub­ject, the poli­cies Boyne are espous­ing and laud­ing, giv­ing cred­it to the PNP, was recent­ly revealed to be the brain-child of the JLP.

Austerity as we have seen in coun­tries like Greece Italy and oth­ers is exact­ly the wrong way to go . when­ev­er Government pulls back on expen­di­ture so does the econ­o­my , if the econ­o­my con­stricts there are less job cre­ation that is eco­nom­ics one-o- one. I am unaware of the ori­gins of these voodoo eco­nom­ic argu­ments , of course the mar­ket place is exact­ly the cor­rect cre­ator of jobs and not gov­ern­ment, how are gov­ern­ment jobs sus­tain­able if they are not backed by a sol­id and vibrant pri­vate sec­tor which is the real engine of income gen­er­a­tion? Market econ­o­my requires dis­ci­pline and ded­i­ca­tion ‚it will not hap­pen overnight, but when it does it does launch dis­ci­plined coun­tries like Malaysia, Indonesia and oth­ers to include Brazil into pros­per­i­ty. Many nations like China and oth­ers are now shift­ing away from the failed social­ist big gov­ern­ment poli­cies that have kept their pop­u­la­tions impov­er­ished for gen­er­a­tions. Yet his doc­tor­al the­sis seem to be sug­gest­ing that cheap gov­ern­ment hand­outs cam­ou­flaged as jobs, which by the way are going to be paid for with bor­rowed mon­ey, is some­how a net pos­i­tive for Jamaica. I am sor­ry but if that is the gen­er­al mind­set, and it might be, based on the results of the last elections,then God help Jamaica. I can­not believe any­one would quote bod­ies like the ILO as cred­i­ble orga­ni­za­tions on job cre­ation and sus­tain­able growth . Boyne’s arti­cle is about three decades late .

Boyne seem to believe that the eco­nom­ic boom that China and Brazil has expe­ri­enced was as a result of rigid Governmental con­trol and admin­is­tra­tion over their economies. The oppo­site is true, relin­quish­ing Government death-grip on eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty was exact­ly what large pop­u­la­tions like the afore­men­tioned two had to do to start see­ing eco­nom­ic growth and yes an explo­sion in employ­ment through globalization.

For the record ‚there is no evi­dence that these economies are flour­ish­ing because of gov­ern­ment, in fact there is fac­tu­al evi­dence that because com­pa­nies can do busi­ness with these coun­tries, tak­ing advan­tage of cheap­er labor and less bureau­cra­cy, their economies have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly helped.

The need to put idle hands to work can­not be over-empha­sized, it is rather impor­tant that we find work for our youths. People must have hope, young peo­ple grad­u­at­ing from schools must have some­thing to look for­ward to, I am in agree­ment with Boyne on that, but Boyne is wrong in believ­ing that the coun­try can afford to throw bor­rowed mon­ey away on work that bear no fruits and offers no pos­i­tive return. Boyne had this to say :

FDR cre­at­ed the Civil Works Administration (CWA) in November 1933 as the US head­ed into its fifth depres­sion win­ter. CWA did not offer tax breaks. Unemployed peo­ple were put to work. In a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in the December issue of Harper’s mag­a­zine (‘More gov­ern­ment, please!’), Thomas Frank says CWA “did not wait for grand projects to be fleshed out: It sim­ply sent peo­ple into the nation’s pub­lic spaces to rake leaves, shov­el snow, fix roads, dig ditch­es and so on. The pro­gram­me’s admin­is­tra­tor, Roosevelt con­fi­dant Harry Hopkins, had famous­ly spent more than US$5 mil­lion in his first two hours as a fed­er­al offi­cial. At the CWA, he found jobs for four mil­lion peo­ple in two months.”

News Flash Mister Boyne, America did not bor­row that mon­ey it paid out to its peo­ple, sec­ond­ly America is one of a few coun­tries which can print mon­ey and to some degree hold infla­tion down because of its abil­i­ty to cre­ate goods and ser­vices for oth­ers to con­sume. Secondly monies spent by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was spent on main­tain­ing exist­ing infra­struc­ture and build­ing oth­ers. What JEEP pro­pos­es to do is to siphon off bor­rowed mon­ey des­ig­nat­ed for infra­struc­tur­al devel­ope­ment to unsus­tain­able crash-pro­gramme hand­outs by politicians.

Havent we been down this road before? Haven’t we seen these poli­cies before? Have they made Jamaica bet­ter? Yet in the next sen­tence Boyne turned right around and said this:

It is true that emer­gency pub­lic works pro­grammes are just that — emer­gency, unsus­tain­able work. But no one can accu­rate­ly esti­mate the ben­e­fits of find­ing work, for even a short peri­od, for some idle hands — for whom the Devil can find lots of work.

Clearly Boyne miss­es his own point, on the one hand he seem to under­stand the sim­ple con­cept, that crash-pro­gramme work is unsus­tain­able, and cost­ly , yet on the oth­er he espous­es it argu­ing the neg­a­tive, that no one can accu­rate­ly esti­mate the ben­e­fits of find­ing work for idle hand if only for a short time, whilst in the same breath mak­ing the case for what he him­self said, quote: (“no one can accu­rate­ly esti­mate”).

These are the same tired old argu­ments which have been used time and again by elit­ist lazy social­ists who want noth­ing but scraps to fall from the table of the rich to the floor so that the under­class may fight over them. They con­tin­ue to argue for the most labor inten­sive of employ­ment even as the indus­tri­al age has passed and we are in a com­plete­ly immersed in a dig­i­tal age. So Boyne and the pro­po­nents of crash pro­gramme argues for tem­po­rary de-bush­ing of gul­lies while the peo­ple who do the work floss with their iPhone’s. The pro­po­nents of crash pro­gramme work fail to come to terms with the stark facts in our coun­try. Jamaicans have more cell phones and oth­er tech-gis­mos than most peo­ple in indus­tri­al­ized devel­oped coun­tries, where do they get the mon­ey to pur­chase these devices, does any­one seri­ous­ly believe giv­ing bor­rowed mon­ey to polit­i­cal hacks will solve our prob­lems,? If they want to make a dif­fer­ence with bor­rowed mon­ey how about spend­ing it on skills train­ing? That way the coun­try may see some returns on it’s invest­ments. Jamaicans con­tin­ue to pre­tend that our coun­try is march­ing toward first world sta­tus when the reverse is true, we are try­ing to build a 21st cen­tu­ry coun­try on a 20th cen­tu­ry econ­o­my. The Soviets tried build­ing a 20th cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary on a 19th cen­tu­ry infra­struc­ture, his­to­ry is replete with instances like these . The def­i­n­i­tion of a fool is some­one who does the same thing and expects a dif­fer­ent result.

Sorry Ian Boyne you do make sense on occa­sion, this is not one of those occasions.

Those who sup­port (JEEP) are sim­ply try­ing to relieve their con­ciences of the guilt they feel at see­ing the poor­est of our peo­ple strug­gle to sur­vive, unable to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies through the dig­ni­ty of work. That is a tragedy, I’m just not sure if reliev­ing one’s con­science will be enough to com­pen­sate for the cries of the poor this time around.

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Did He Overstep His Authority?

The Editorial page of the Jamaica Gleaner of late seem to have under­gone a transformation. 

It is hard to tell who is the person/​s behind the edi­to­r­i­al , is it male or female? is it one per­son or a group of peo­ple, do they share the same phi­los­o­phy or do they oper­ate as inde­pen­dent indi­vid­u­als opin­ing based on prin­ci­pled gut convictions?

The afore­men­tioned is dif­fi­cult to estab­lish because the writer/​s have the lux­u­ry of anonymi­ty. We would hope that based on that lux­u­ry edi­to­r­i­al page writer/​s would be respon­si­ble , objec­tive, fair, respect­ful, thought­ful, and care­ful. just rec­og­niz­ing that to whom much is giv­en , much is required. 

Such is the pow­er of the pen ‚par­tic­u­lar­ly in a soci­ety like Jamaica where peo­ple put sig­nif­i­cant stock into the views of cer­tain peo­ple over that of others.

It has become notice­able to this blog that of late the Gleaner’s Editorial page has shown a marked change from the more cir­cum­spect rea­soned approach we had grown accus­tomed to for decades, to one that seem to want to push alien views on us that sure­ly have no res­o­nance or hold any sway with the vast major­i­ty of the Jamaican pop­u­lace. As if that was not bad enough, we have also detect­ed a snarl of elit­ist con­den­sion in the spir­it of the afore­men­tioned Pages.

It is the right of the Gleaner to pub­lish what it choos­es on it’s edi­to­r­i­al pages . We would not want to pick a fight with some­one who buys ink in a bar­rel, After all we do speak our minds on these blogs. What the Gleaner must appre­ci­ate though, thanks to the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy , is that we will push back hard when they choose to be con­de­send­ing and dis­re­spect­ful to peo­ple who sac­ri­fice for our country.

We speak par­tic­u­lar­ly of todays Editorial titled: “The police are not the executive”.

In the edi­to­r­i­al the anony­mous writer blast­ed Senior Superintendent of Police Radcliff Lewis for what it char­ac­ter­izes as Lewis’ attempt at exec­u­tive deci­sion-mak­ing by allow­ing robot taxi oper­a­tors to oper­ate after Licensed taxi oper­a­tors in Spanish Town decid­ed to strike this week over dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the way they have been reg­u­lat­ed and for oth­er per­ceived grievances.

We have no quar­rel with the writer about blast­ing Lewis for his alleged state­ments refer­ring to the scabs as quote “reserve soldiers”. 

Frankly I do not know on whose author­i­ty Lewis was oper­at­ing, there is no prece­dent in law or oth­er­wise where the police may take such steps, we agree that if those mea­sures are to be tak­en those are to be tak­en by exec­u­tive action,.

Lewis a prag­mat­ic cop may have over­stepped his bounds dramatically.

Jamaica requires unusu­al and prag­mat­ic approach­es to get­ting solu­tions, the Police have always sought to use its pow­ers to help the Jamaican peo­ple, unsung. In his effort at prob­lem solv­ing he over­stepped his author­i­ty, a move that was sure to draw the ire of the usu­al crit­ics like our friends at the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Gleaner, who are always going to be unable to see the for­est for the trees.

The ques­tion is, as wrong as Lewis’ actions are, had he kept his mouth shut, would the unli­cenced cab oper­a­tors have stayed home? what impact did Lewis’ actions have in actu­al­ly enhanc­ing that action.

We note the writer was very con­cerned about the safe­ty of rid­ers , whilst at the same time reg­is­ter­ing relief at the fact that no one was injured in this Lewis Executive grab. We do see how the writer could feel total relief that no one was injured , after all this notion of ille­gal taxi oper­a­tion is a total­ly alien phe­nom­e­non in Jamaican cul­ture (sic).

We do not dis­agree with the let­ter of the Article, what we dis­agree with is the spir­it . The writer used terms to describe SSP Lewis that at best are con­de­scend­ing, and at worst bla­tant­ly demean­ing. Colourful, rough cut, Our newest ad hoc and unelect­ed law­mak­er, scan­dalous, uncom­pli­cat­ed ‚rus­tic.

Rustic?

Those char­ac­ter­i­za­tions are elit­ists code words, aimed at bring­ing Lewis, or any oth­er unfor­tu­nate soul they are aimed at into know­ing their place, SSP Lewis made a mis­take in what he is alleged to have done, and for this Ellington must have some seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions with him. His gravest error is that of not under­stand­ing the vicious caste sys­tem that still per­sists in Jamaica to this day.

Good inten­tions on the part of SSP Lewis does not mean actions that are legal. His actions lead us to ask if he may not have been pro­mot­ed above his capabilities.

mike beck­les:
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Total Nonsence

Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner Editorial page of Sunday August 14 was cap­tioned thus. (What the Jamaican police can learn from the UK riots)

The Editor went to lengths to com­mend the British Police for their restraint in the way they han­dled the riots that in his own words Quote, left six per­sons dead many build­ings destroyed or dam­aged and hun­dreds of mil­lions of pounds of eco­nom­ic loss, end quote. Obviously this tremen­dous loss of life , the destruc­tion of prop­er­ty and the eco­nom­ic fall­out to the coun­try was small pota­toes to the esteemed edi­tor, after all what’s a few lives lost and a cou­ple hun­dred mil­lions pound ster­ling ‚in the greater scheme of things? as long as the police do not put a stop to the anar­chy all is well.

I“ll tell you this I am ashamed for him for hav­ing put this piece of crock out . However it is easy to do this in Jamaica . These peo­ple are looked at as one would look at God Almighty, they put out the putrid garbage and the mass­es of low infor­ma­tion or mar­gin­al­ly intel­li­gent peo­ple buy into the non­sense, can any­one see why Jamaica is a declin­ing soci­ety, these are the opin­ion mak­ers , these are the peo­ple who actu­al­ly shape pop­u­lar per­cep­tions and influ­ences nation­al debate.

He was not fin­ished he went on to point out these statistics.

Quote:Indeed, last year, the Jamaican police shot dead 309 per­sons, com­pared with 263 in 2009, and 224 the year before that ‚end quote. These are exact­ly the talk­ing points of the crim­i­nal rights Amnesty International and Jamaicans for Justice, notion­al hon­oree Charlatan Carolyn Gomes. Policing in Jamaica is dif­fer­ent from any place else in the world, 10 years and a bul­let in the ass lat­er I am express­ly qual­i­fied to shout down this load of garbage. I get par­tic­u­lar­ly pissed when these Elitist morons pre­tend to know what the hell they are talk­ing about from their high perch­es in air con­di­tioned offices at the top of North Street. If you want to draw com­par­isons get out of your office and ride with the hero­ic cops that patrol the Garrisons and by-ways of the city some refer to as (killsome)sic, I guar­an­tee after one expe­ri­ence you will piss your pants.

Do not sit there and act like you know some­thing when you don’t . not one British Cop lost his or her life in all of those riots, not one. Jamaica pos­es a unique chal­lenge to law enforce­ment, its crim­i­nals are blood thirsty , doped up lunatics that have absolute­ly no com­punc­tion about killing cops, you want to draw com­par­isons about polic­ing ? spend some time look­ing at some you tube videos of British cops in oper­a­tion in the Ghettos.

The irony is that this edi­to­r­i­al lauds the British police for restraint when the very match that lit the fuse was the alleged unlaw­ful killing of a black man by British Police. Of course under the cir­cum­stances they must try to put out the fire they them­selves lit . What bet­ter way to defuse the sit­u­a­tion than to lay low, which is exact­ly what they did while the cities burned , which he allud­ed to. Quote Prime Minister David Cameron and the police chiefs in England have sparred over police tac­tics dur­ing last week’s riots across Britain and own­er­ship of the strat­e­gy that caused the unrest to sub­sidee.

What is it that keeps our peo­ple men­tal­ly chained to the slave mas­ters, who beat and raped our women and chil­dren , slaugh­tered our men, and still do it through eco­nom­ic and oth­er means to this day? This Editorial , rather than uplift our Officers who toil day in day out under the most extreme con­di­tions with mar­gin­al com­pen­sa­tion and despi­ca­ble work­ing con­di­tions, fac­ing down heav­i­ly armed urban ter­ror­ists at the per­il of their lives , he finds it fit to com­mend the very cops that are accused of killing black peo­ple in England. The crock goes fur­ther, quote: there is con­sen­sus in Britain that polic­ing is by con­sent, enshrined in an unwrit­ten, but clear­ly under­stood, com­pact between the con­stab­u­lary and the com­mu­ni­ty. Even when that rela­tion­ship is strained, as was the case last week, the con­stab­u­lary remains part of, and not sep­a­rate from, the community.

This is laugh­able, first vis­it the com­mu­ni­ties of Brixton, or any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty of col­or and tell me the police is a part of those com­mu­ni­ties. the con­cept of polic­ing by con­sent is a con­cept sim­i­lar to the con­cept in busi­ness that the cus­tomer is always right, it is a great con­cept from which to oper­ate, much like the sub­ject head­ing in an essay. The British Police you are so in awe of recent­ly saw two of it’s top lead­ers step aside due to cor­rup­tion charges, accu­sa­tions of graft and bribe tak­ing, and oth­er crimes, Their glar­ing incom­pe­tence was on pub­lic dis­play to the world, when Rupert Murdoch and his son were assault­ed in a hear­ing room as they sat being grilled by British Parliamentarians about Murdoch’s news of the world phone hack­ing scan­dal. Grand total amount of peo­ple in the rooms 50. Yet a man was able to saunter in with a bag con­tain­ing what has been described as a plate full of shav­ing cream , which he used to attack Murdoch. Murdoch’s wife showed the nec­es­sary grit need­ed in the defense of her fam­i­ly. Again take a look at the you tube video . The incom­pe­tent British Police were left with egg on their faces as usual.

You big fish in your lit­tle pond, who advo­cat­ed for the British police to come to Jamaica and show how it is done, have still not explained to us, how Mark Shields helped our Police Force after he fin­ished his lucra­tive Expatriate tour. What we do know as fact, is that crime trend­ed north under his watch ‚and con­tin­ued that Way untill the police put their feet down in Tivoli Gardens.

Jamaican police are not per­fect, in far too many instances some of them makes one want to put a foot up their rear ends, how­ev­er they are some of the most ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als any­where in the world, they put their lives on the line every day they step out onto the streets, or whether they are in the con­fines of their own homes, such is polic­ing in Jamaica. I don’t need to be told I lived it. What gets my blood boil­ing is garbage like this edi­to­r­i­al that is not worth the paper it’s writ­ten on. Unfortunately even this edi­tor ben­e­fit from the blood sweat and tears of police offi­cer’s sacrifice.

This one real­ly made me mad.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

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Fear Or Forced ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just ask Mark Shields what he thinks of us..

mike beck­les :

have your say:

by

JAMAICA DAILY GLEANER GAY ADVOCACY:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This brings us to the sec­ond pos­si­ble conclusion:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike beck­les:

Have your say.

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