Readers of Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner the mouth­piece for the People’s National Party, and JFLAG the homo­sex­u­al lob­by group in that coun­try woke up to this sub­tle manip­u­la­tion in that once pres­ti­gious medi­um, under the title.

PNP COMEBACK

The art of sub­tle manip­u­la­tion, but manip­u­la­tion nonethe­less, por­traits of Simpson Miller and Andrew Holness not after an election,but before the elec­tion. Yet this medi­um claim to be fair.

Take a look at the por­trait of Holness, con­tem­pla­tive , sad, deject­ed, con­fused, tired,bewildered, any of the afore­men­tioned adjec­tives would have been appro­pri­ate in describ­ing this pro­file. Conversely look at Miller, hap­py, con­fi­dent, vibrant, com­posed, all of the lat­ter adjec­tives would also be appro­pri­ate in describ­ing her. This medi­um takes you all for fools, they believ­ing you are inca­pable of under­stand­ing the sub­tle art of visu­al manip­u­la­tion, or the impact a pic­ture has on the brain which is wired to rec­og­nize these vari­ables and store them. An unde­cid­ed vot­er going into the vot­ing booth will remem­ber both por­traits and make their deci­sion on which per­son they feel will win based on their demeanor. This is the kind of dis­dain that the élite has for ordi­nary Jamaicans, one nev­er knows when this lev­el of dis­re­spect will ever stop.

As a boy grow­ing up in Jamaica I could­n’t wait to get my hands on the Gleaner, this was the only news­pa­per in Jamaica at the time of course, there was the evening tabloid, the Star. The paper was brought into my District by the Postman, who either rode a bicy­cle or walked, with a sack of mail which he deliv­ered to our Postal Agency , “Posie” as we lov­ing­ly called him, deliv­ered the Gleaner to one of our com­mu­ni­ty’s most respect­ed elders who oper­at­ed a shop close to the Postal Agency. Mister Small would read the paper from cov­er to cov­er, allow his cus­tomers to also read it, but he would take great care to save the paper for me so that on my way home from Primary school I could read it. He under­stood how much I loved to read, he also under­stood my keen inter­est in pol­i­tics and every­thing current .

RIP Mister Small !

Under the lead­er­ship of Oliver Clarke the Gleaner weath­ered many storms and endured, to be revered as the pre emi­nent news-paper not just in Jamaica but in the entire Caribbean. One thing the Editorial Board rec­og­nized from ear­ly , was that the path­way to a bet­ter Jamaica was not through pan­der­ing to the base desires of the moment , but was hinged on lay­ing the foun­da­tion for edu­ca­tion and strong nation build­ing, the frame-work for a bet­ter future. As a result the Gleaner was crit­i­cized for its con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tion. As such for years many accused it of being sup­port­ive of the Jamaica Labor Party, the truth is, what the Gleaner sup­port­ed was a sus­tain­able path to nation build­ing, not a path of depen­den­cy . This how­ev­er did not deter Michael Manley from lead­ing a rabid mob of his sup­port­ers in the 70’s to the Gleaner’s offices on North Street threat­en­ing with clenched fists “next time, next time” No oth­er Political leader has ever been so brazen as to overt­ly threat­en the press and the func­tion it has in pro­tect­ing our free­doms, and ensur­ing our democ­ra­cy is pro­tect­ed from tyrants.

Those who choose a path of revi­sion­ist his­to­ry has skill­ful­ly omit­ted to men­tion these and many oth­er trans­gres­sions of Michael Manley, cast­ing him as an icon­ic mata­dor of demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples and ideals,as a teenag­er grow­ing up under his rule I was a wit­ness to his­to­ry, I was there, I don’t need to be told what hap­pened I saw for myself, I saw the good of his intentions,But I also saw for myself his naiveté ‚and mul­ti­ple mis­takes. Being a rous­ing speak­er does not qual­i­fy one to be a good leader, ideas imple­ment­ed improp­er­ly does no one any good they are just ideas. Michael Manley under­stood his frail­ties as a leader, he under­stood his mis­takes, some­thing his cult fol­low­ing does not. Hence Manley’s mea cul­pa when he came back to con­test the elec­tions that saw the back of Edward Seaga.

The Gleaner through all the grow­ing pains of our coun­try main­tained it’s integri­ty as the true source of infor­ma­tion for the Jamaican peo­ple . as a peo­ple who did not have many choic­es when we thought about news­pa­per we thought about the Gleaner , when we thought about tooth­paste it was Colgate, when we thought about Beer we thought about Red Stripe, those were ours, proud­ly Jamaican prod­ucts, irre­spec­tive of what came after those were the names that were indeli­bly seared into our souls.

Oliver Clarke has unfor­tu­nate­ly passed the torch to some­one else, of course all good things must come to an end, and as such we have seen a dra­mat­ic decline in the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. Despite tech­no­log­i­cal addi­tions to the Gleaner’s prod­uct, like it’s web­site which pur­ports to allow com­ments, a good thing, if not manip­u­lat­ed to push agen­das. This has opened the prod­uct to the world bring­ing Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra into the con­ver­sa­tion, allow­ing every­one the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground. Those advances if used prop­er­ly has tremen­dous poten­tial for inform­ing the dias­po­ra, sell­ing Jamaica to the world, and reap­ing untold finan­cial wind­fall for the Gleaner.This would how­ev­er require informed vision­ary lead­er­ship devoid of myopia or chained to local polit­i­cal preferences.

Instead what has steadi­ly been hap­pen­ing at the Gleaner is a small-mind­ed manip­u­la­tion of it’s read­er­ship, through slant­ed report­ing , and in some cas­es out­right cheer lead­ing, and sub­tle manip­u­la­tion using imagery all toward a nar­row parochial sup­port for the People’s National Party. Editors like every­one else are enti­tled to their opin­ions, what they are not allowed to do is to dis­tort facts to suit their polit­i­cal agen­das. Jamaicans large­ly do not agree with homo­sex­u­al­i­ty that is their right, Neither Britain nor any­one else have the right to tell Jamaicans what to think . nei­ther does any­one or any coun­try have the right to threat­en to use eco­nom­ic black­mail to ter­rorise us . We are a free peo­ple all 2.8 mil­lion who live on the Island and the mil­lions more who live across the globe, gay or straight, black or white, chris­t­ian or Muslim, athe­ist or agnos­tic, male or female.

Let me be clear no one who is gay should be killed, dis­crim­i­nat­ed against because they are gay , denied any ben­e­fit that is avail­able to oth­ers of oth­er sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, nei­ther should any gay per­son be denied the right to be gain­ful­ly employed in any dis­ci­pline to which he or she has appro­pri­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tion because of their sex­u­al orientation.

However Gays are in the minor­i­ty and we live in soci­eties that embrace major­i­ty rule, until we go to a for­mu­la of minor­i­ty rule I will not be told by any homo­sex­u­al that I must embrace that lifestyle as nor­mal , or moral, no homo­sex­u­al will con­vince me that I must sur­ren­der my chris­t­ian val­ues on the altar of car­nal­i­ty by sup­port­ing their cause. My God cre­at­ed a man and woman to fill the earth , I will for­ev­er believe his word, and will nev­er bend to elit­ist dog­ma which pro­fess­es that who do not embrace homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, or share their views are beneath them. I will respect their right to be what they are , but they must respect my right to believe that their car­nal immoral lifestyle is an abom­i­na­tion to my God,and as such I will call it for what it is,.….… an abom­i­na­tion !

The Gleaner’s cam­paign to pro­mul­gate homo­sex­u­al­i­ty on the Jamaican nation is an affront to our dig­ni­ty and our val­ues , the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us are opposed to this repug­nant counter-cul­ture, and even though we believe in fair­ness we are opposed to any­one push­ing what they believe on us.

The Gleaner’s Editor if he is gay should have the courage to come out of the clos­et and declare his sex­u­al pref­er­ence to the nation, instead of hid­ing behind his Editorials pre­tend­ing to cham­pi­on the rights of homo­sex­u­als when he may very well be defend­ing his own sex­u­al­i­ty. The finan­cial argu­ments he has used has fall­en flat as they have not tak­en into account the poten­tial dis­as­trous con­se­quence to the health sec­tor from dis­eases derived from homo­sex­u­al indul­gence. As such his cru­sade should be seen as the cru­sade of a pos­si­ble gay per­son who is afraid of his own homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, too much of a cow­ard to declare who he is or stand by what he is .

Whatever the out­come of the elec­tions on Thursday December 29^th, a day that just hap­pen to be the date of my birth, Jamaicans will have to live with the choice they make. Whether the win­ner is Miller or Holness that lead­er’s deci­sions will decide Jamaica’s course, pos­si­bly for gen­er­a­tions to come, we get the gov­ern­ment we deserve. Jamaicans will have to decide if the way for­ward will con­tin­ue to be one of hand­outs from friends and rel­a­tives liv­ing abroad or they will once and for all take their future and that of their chil­dren into their own hands,understanding that hand­outs and cheap polit­i­cal pork bar­rel pro­grams will not get them to eco­nom­ic free­dom. Economic free­dom will only be achieved through hard work, Education and sacrifice.

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:

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

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

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

Damning Statement on Insecurity

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

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

[Bad sig­nal]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mogadishu any­one?

have your say:

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:

On the 13^th of July 2011 The Daily Gleaner Editorial Titled, SSP BAILEY’S MOUTHFUL OF MADNESS AND MISCHIEF.
On July 18^th 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 13^th and 18^th 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.