Jamaica - Commentary

Exposing Public Servants

Margaret Juliet Bailey — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:20:00 UT

There is a growing wave of disrespect for decent, hard working citizens of America in this country by Public Servants. No one is quite sure how it started or where they got their "power" or "bravado" from, however, if anyone has had to deal with clerks, customer service representatives or anyone who provides a necessary service, this article will ring close to home.

Most people who are in sales positions or who provide customer care assistance are trained primarily by books and manuals. Occasionally, they are trained with practical experience, before they are set loose on the general public to perform their tasks. Some of these individuals do not realize that when they are doing their jobs, their major function is to make the customer feel better or at least experience piece of mind when the call or encounter has ended.

Instead, most of these Public Servants would rather be argumentative, accusatory and misuse their authority to belittle the customer. All these tactics make the customers feel aggravated, exasperated and non-productive, because at the end of the calls or encounters they did not accomplish their goals. However, they managed to get their blood pressures soaring at outrageous limits.

I have been in the throes of dealing with such individuals and the task requires an athletic championship mindset in order to deal with their unreasonable attitudes. After many hours of meditation and reflection, I have found the answer to their "impossible" tactics.

The individuals who call themselves "Public Servants", whether they are, phone representatives, member care personnel or customer service representatives, they subject customers to such rigorous mind games because they are poorly trained. It is easier for them to harang, berate and irritate a customer or client, rather than find solutions or just do their job in a pleasing manner. They lack the ability to think outside of the box, because they treat all customers the same, via the teachings of their manuals.

To them, there is no grey area or specialized circumstances. Everyone is lumped into the same "No Help" category and shoved to the side.

They fail to realize that all human beings may have a different set of circumstances and require a little more understanding, special handling, or good follow through.

It has been my observation that the individuals that corporations seek to represent their companies only care about filling up their hours in order to collect a paycheck, however, during the course of the day, the only persons they have helped is themselves.

The little old lady who calls about a dispute on her bill gets the ring-around-the rosey, until she becomes frenetic. Although, she may know that her issues are well founded, they manage to traumatize the old lady so much, that she would rather acquiesce to their billing extortions, as opposed to going into combat with them.

The foreigners who don't speak any english or very little, become downtrodden and worn out from their unprofessional system. They just give up and rather let their accounts go to the dogs. Then we wonder why the economy is in shambles....?

If decent citizens are being ripped of daily in small increments, whether it is a cable, light or phonebill, eventually the wells are going to run dry. I have found that most people would rather put up with their conniving nonsense, instead of standing up and fighting for what is right and true.

The Corporations that are making great strides in today's floundering economy are not doing so in a mode of Integrity. They are surviving beyond their competitors because they have learned the art of extortion and have employed seemingly innocent thugs to do their dirty work for them.

Meanwhile, folks who have worked hard to earn their money and life savings are watching their lifestyles dwindle away because they are being "cowed down" by Public Servant Mafiosos.

Unless you are willing to go the distance with these individuals they will keep bankrupting your lives, mismanaging your financial information and data, and before you know it, your lives will be ruined. It will all seem legitimate and logical because they have managed to finagle paperwork so well, that you, the customer, will come off looking like a raving, stark, mad lunatic and the little men in the white jackets will be waiting to cart you off to a Sanitorium.

As a Jamaican and citizen of this world, I believe there is power in numbers and if each of us stand-up to these ill trained individuals and corporations and say , "We are not taking this disrespectful, callous, unprofessional treatment anymore!"

They will have no choice but to remediate their methods and revert to the "old school" way of conducting business. Therefore, I urge all good citizens of America and the world to rant, rave and misbehave, because that is the only way your fortunes will be saved!

Let's all exude a bit of the "Fighting Irish" personna to conquer these immoral fiends!

Tags: Exposing Public Servants

The Jamaican 1% - CEO'S/Entrepreneurs/Tech Gurus ????

Jane Nina Buchanan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:30:01 UT

How has Jamaica become the land of Entrepreneurs/CEO'S yet almost 20% of the population live below the poverty line?

Who are the 1% in Jamaica? Spend a few minutes surfing the net and you will soon see just how many Jamaicans are self appointed “CEO's and Entrepreneurs”. If we believed every title we'd be led to think we were reading a Zug phone book!

In the States,when you apply for a job corporations now investigate your resume. Everything from your college grade point to the reasons why and when you left each employer. On top of that many will random drug test and check your financial returns. Even if you are applying for the most humble of roles. This has led to the level of accountability within the professional community. There's no margin of error for the words CEO to slip on ones resume if it can't be backed up with fiscal returns and a corporate office address.
Jamaica has become the juxtaposition to this transparency. When job prospects declined there was a tsunami of interest to become an “Entrepreneur”. I know few in Jamaica who want to, nor ever have, 'worked for the man'. I often hear the term 'slave driver' being used when I show potential candidates corporate job prospects in Caricom. The same people who urge folks to 'start your own business' are the same parasites who are afforded the luxury to live off a family member or get wires from abroad.

I applaud true entrepreneurs and their spirit to risk their assets and reputation day after day to get results. I would support any of them to go for their goals. But first objectives have to be founded on solid experience. Where are all these self proclaimed Jamaican “CEOs/Entrepreneurs” getting their knowledge since few I've seen have ever had staff experience with any major brand? Let alone be familiar with corporate responsibilities and fiscal reporting? Yet they preach and teach, blind leading blind.

Tech is the biggest area for this “Get Rich Quick/Be Your Own Boss” scam. It's a huge concern to me; So many new “Tech Guru's/Awards/Social Media” experts, it's become the arena for snake oil salesman. All of these “CEO's” but I don't see that any of them have the experience or true corporate knowledge. But people so badly want to believe and the circle jerks of flossing continues but there's rarely revenue and certainly no recognition from any credible foreign market.

Few foreign technology talents who have real authority have been invited to host workshops, why? Just a handful of 'consultants' and more 'self employed' folks are in the mix to 'teach'. The money in Tech is such that talented people tend to work for hearty salaries and seductive perks for the major brand leaders (if they are good!). Those that are 'consultants' I would even be so bold to say are folks who've never been invited to be a staffer. Plus, outside of the corporate arena it's tough to keep ahead of the curve as they aren't Beta testing with deep pockets. So who are people in Yaad learning from? Would you learn carpentry from someone who can put together a jolly nice IKEA unit?

Is it now time to be realistic and have better expectations for our workforce? Have a level of accountability and transparency? Find modern solutions to gain credibility for all of these “Entrepreneurs/CEOs”, it's all rather Kings New Clothes. (Webinars for schools and groups hosted by major corporate global brands on a variety of platforms could be one idea). If we don't Jamaica will fall so far behind as more an more corporations don't choose Jamaicans for their workforce as so few have worked for 'the man' or are credible in their claims and like it or not it is important to be able to reap the corporate dollar.

About:
Jane Nina Buchanan, Owner stooshpr.com. Originally from Liverpool, England she started her career as producer and presenter of the SONY award winning show "Streetlife" on the BBC. From radio she moved on to television with seasons as Entertainment Producer for the network Granada TV show,"This Morning" and later "Jameson Tonight" on Sky TV. Headhunted from Sky TV by Sir Bob Geldof and Lord Waheed Alli company at 25yrs old, she was appointed the position of US Producer for Planet 24 Productions. Based out of NYC she coordinated and produced all US strands for the controversial show "The Word" and later, Channel 4's "The Big Breakfast".
When Planet 24 relocated to LA to produce the successful "Survivor" reality show, Jane decided to make NYC her home and continues to live and work in the media. She has held staff positions at New Video Group/Docurama (Home Video arm of A&E/The History Channel), Disney Theatrical (Lion King,, Mary Poppins and Phil Collins' Tarzan) Maxim Magazine/Dennis Publishing, and Bad Boy Entertainment with Sean P.Diddy Combs.

The people spoke for Portia

Jean Lowrie-Chin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:30:02 UT

Hearty congratulations to that seasoned campaigner Portia Simpson Miller, President of the People’s National Party, and her triumphant team who reminded us that the PNP are master organisers. Commiserations to JLP President Andrew Holness and his hard-working team. Above all, commendations to us, the people, who conducted ourselves peacefully as we discharged our sovereign duty as electors last Thursday.

I was in the supermarket the Saturday before the general election when I could not help overhearing a political discussion. “I going vote them out!” a woman shouted. “Time too hard!” On Wednesday a successful professional told me that “bad as bad”, he had always supported the PNP – he would not have been able to go to UWI if Michael Manley hadn’t lowered the fees. Out of these discussions, an interesting demographic of the PNP supporter emerged. On the one hand, there was this woman, living on the margin of poverty; on the other, a well-heeled party loyalist.

This supporter was confident of a PNP victory. When I mentioned some of the negatives that were being discussed about the PNP, he waved them aside. “Debate?” he asked. “Middle class people don’t have a clue – the ordinary Jamaican is not interested in that. They are interested in getting a job, getting food on the table, and getting their utility bills paid. People are really suffering – they are going to vote out the JLP.”

In a conversation with Jamaican friends visiting from the US, I realised how deeply they felt about the Manatt-Dudus imbroglio and Jamaica’s reputation for homophobia. “I was so embarrassed over this Dudus thing,” one said. “People kept asking me why the Jamaican government was protecting a criminal.” A relative said she had suggested Jamaica as a vacation spot to a friend who replied that, “They hate gays too much. I am not going there.” Even as we respect the beliefs of the church, we have to remember that only the sinless should be casting stones. I have seen too much anguish and loneliness in my gay friends to condemn them – they do not choose to be gay, they simply are.

I think we have many more pressing national issues to address. We have over 500 children missing in the year 2011. We have waves of new graduates expecting employment in a shrinking job market. We have a growing senior population living on pensions that can barely cover a single utility bill. These issues of safety and survival are crying out for immediate attention.

The JLP had several commendable accomplishments, but spent too much of their campaign funds on negative images. One class of Jamaicans probably thought the ‘no piece of paper’ and ‘don’t draw my tongue’ ads were showing up PNP President Portia Simpson Miller. They did not understand the emotional connection between Portia Simpson Miller and the Jamaican people. We are a matriarchal society and Sister/Mama P is that humble relative who makes the family proud. Contrary to the cartoon portrayals, she is attractive and charismatic. The more sophisticated among us would probably opt for a more articulate leader but her people are quite fine with how she speaks and those bouts of temper only make her more human in their eyes.

When G2K copied media an urgent letter protesting a delay by a television station in carrying an anti-Portia ad, I wrote back, “Enough is enough”. As Kevin O’Brien Chang maintained in his election commentary, the JLP had several significant achievements which were overshadowed by their insistent Portia-bashing. We heard little about reduction in crime and not enough explanation about the importance of a stable dollar to the man-in-the-street. JLP president Andrew Holness said in a post-election interview, “This is a time of introspection – we will rebuild.” In response to a question from the press on how the Manatt Dudus may have affected the results, he replied, “It was always in the background.”

There is also speculation about the unusual timing of the general elections. It was colleague columnist Franklin Johnston who first expressed his dismay at elections being run in Christmas week, ascribing the act to the lack of enthusiasm felt by Mr Holness’ denomination for this significant religious event. An ardent JLP supporter said he felt it was insensitive – “Imagine, I couldn’t turn on my radio on Christmas Day without hearing a political ad!”

In the meanwhile, the master strategist former Prime Minister and PNP president PJ Patterson had been assisting in organizing the party, bringing in well-seasoned heavyweights. Malcolm Gladwell, that gifted writer with Jamaican roots, said that to excel at anything, you need to do it 10,000 times. That is why our most memorable mentors are the seniors in our lives. That is why one should never underestimate the political clout of that grassroots veteran Portia Simpson Miller.

As we perform those tasks, 10,000 times over, we become masters. It happens with a student practising math or a concert pianist practising Bach. And so, as Portia Simpson Miller ascended the stage at PNP headquarters last Thursday evening, flashing her famous smile, and hugging her candidates one after the other, we saw a woman practiced in the way of politics, hitting all the right notes and ensuring that there was “no piece of paper” in her hand.

She started with a well known Bible verse. Then the DJ played Tony Rebel’s song, “Mind what you say to yu sister – she could be the next Prime Minister,” an in-your-face reply to the G2K ads. She thanked among many, “Comrade PJ Patterson”, her helper Marva and Andrew Holness who had called to congratulate her, saying that “he was very gracious”. She referred to the welcome sight we saw more of in this than any other previous election, “PNP supporters in orange and JLP supporters in their green hugging in friendly rivalry.”

On a sad note, Mrs Simpson Miller spoke of her good friend and faithful campaigner, the late Howard Aris as “one sweet spirit that is smiling right now – my friend and brother ‘Fudge’ Aris that left us on the campaign trail.” Significantly, she observed, “Today was a rough day for members of the media … and I want to thank them.” The Prime Minister-designate appealed: “Work with us as we will be working with you. [There will be] consultation and dialogue … we will hide nothing from you. …to all business persons, you have a government that you can trust.”

Let us hold our leaders to their promises by taking active part in our nation’s business. Onwards into 2012 with faith, focus and diligence! Happy New Year!

About the Author:
Jean Lowrie-Chin heads PRO Communications Ltd, an advertising and PR agency, in Kingston, Jamaica. She is a poet, blogger and columnist for the Jamaica Observer. She holds Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in English from the University of the West Indies. You can visit her blog at lowrie-chin.blogspot.com

‘Groundings’: Peacebuilders and the New Mindscape

Craig Dixon — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:30:02 UT

“The maturity of the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation” - Bahá'u'lláh

Perfect peace has no historical antecedents. There has never been a period when the world was not experiencing violent interstate conflicts. More than forty-five (45) or one-quarter of the world’s countries were experiencing wars in 1983 alone, including the small tri-island Caribbean State of Grenada - Carriacou and Petit Martinique. The world’s military budget in 1983 was U.S $ 800 billion, superseding official global development aid forty times over.

The Caribbean is particularly infamous for intrastate violent conflicts. World Bank Economist Jad Channban estimates murder rates in the Caribbean at 30 per 100, 000 of the population annually, the highest in the world. In 2005, Jamaica’s murder rate jumped to 65 per 100, 000, a year in which more than sixteen hundred people died, giving credence to what Jamaican peace activist Horace Levy calls a ‘habituation to violence’.

Community-based and politically fuelled belligerence has thrown Jamaica into a seemingly permanent paroxysm of rage. A wiredrawn web of complexity manifested on a volatile stage of futilitarianism, shadism, classism, obscurantism, provincialism, imperialism, defeatism, mediocrity and accredited idiocy. This is but one facet of the country’s experience, but with eighty per cent (80%) of Jamaicans living without any form of formal certification, it appears to be the major plot in the existential script. Even so Jamaica has historically remained the oxymoronic wonder of the world; concurrently the world’s reject and lighthouse.

The Caribbean is faced with two principal challenges here (as always), first to understand and acknowledge what our historical problems are and second, to devise and implement futuristic recommendations to rectify them. Do we really know where our problems lie? Assuming we do, what can we glean from history about mankind’s appetite for peace and real change?

The problem identification machinery, in every city and hamlet, unfailingly operates at full throttle. It is an undying mindscape, which conventionally lacks fervid intellectual analyses and is marred by a recommendations implementation deficit. Self-interest, avarice, a lack of courage and political will in established ‘change agents’, often result in an aversion to the truth, a studied socio-political posturing, and a non-committal attitude to revolutionary change.

The United Nations (UN), for instance, “envisioned as the peacekeeper of the post World War” II, has been, according to Richard Nixon, “unable to forestall war or to end a war once it has begun”. Of ninety-three (93) major wars between 1946, the year of the UN formation, and 1977, “the UN held limited debate on 40, did not debate at all about fifty-three (53), and did not significantly contribute to the resolution of any” (Nixon, 1983). The UN, arguably, constitutes a confluence of the world’s most advanced minds, and yet a proportion of the population the size of Cyprus died in the Rwandan Genocide under their watch in 1994.

It is apparent that something is amiss; that the signing of peace pacts in war-torn societies, the peace through trade movement, the building of physical infrastructure, the disarmament movement, only provide fugacious and transient relief. The 1922 arms control pacts signed at the Washington Naval Conference between Britain, US and Japan as well as the signed treaty observing the integrity of China for instance, did not prevent Japan from invading China in 1931 and striking Pearl Harbour a decade later in 1941. Neither did it hinder the aggravated US from blasting to bits quarter-million Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945.

To answer the first question posed above, ‘do we really know where our problems lie?’ I wish to posit that the ‘where’ is located in the immaterial domain of our minds, and that the first and singularly most important task for peacebuilders is the considered reconstruction of the infrastructure of the minds of those affected by war or the underlining causes of violent behaviour, such as poverty and humiliation.

The majority of Black Jamaicans, for example, feel immense uneasiness in their own country and in their skins, evident in high emigration rates among the Black educated class, prevalent bleaching of the skin among the Black masses, and almost daily protests against public sector institutions and operatives. It is not just about material deprivation of say, the thousands who live in and eat the refuse of Riverton City dump. It is about minds that have been historically robbed of the notion of selfhood, spirits that have been disfigured by the most rancid forms of national cynicism and supremacist doctrines; it is about disempowered citizens making peace with the worst kind of inveterate wretchedness.

How do we influence this majority to think differently? Should we speak about infrastructural development with people experiencing such hellish indignity? No number of high-rise edifices, I assure you, can wear away this solid build-up of defeatism, depression and create any radical way of thinking!

‘Groundings’ is the first step in the creation of this new mindscape. To ‘ground’ is to come together or consult. It is the most natural form of consultation; of free-spirited anthropological dialogical exchange. ‘Grounders’ from the University of the West Indies for instance, would meet with the denizens of Riverton City, on the terms of the latter. In groundings the group with the conceivably greater challenges must be empowered to lead the encounters. All dialogue would be efforts toward understanding individuals on both sides and the characteristics of the social spaces in which they operate - to dispel myths, understand languages, examine the foundations of our beliefs, provide mentorship and support, share anecdotes and resources, and foster cross-border visitations and staycations.

Mature ‘Grounders’ do not engage in harangues or jeremiads, discrimination, impertinence, looks of disapproval or scorn. It is a simple exchange of experiences, language, feelings and aspirations between rich and poor, unschooled and schooled, lecturer and farmer, grad student and teenage mother, ex-convict and convict, the father and the underage prostitute.

The leaders of Jamaica and indeed the world have long known the instrumentality of groundings in firstly reinvigorating a disenchanted people and secondly, inspiring them to aspire to ambitions that are greater than themselves. In 1968, the Hugh L. Shearer led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government, branded Guyanese scholar, Dr. Walter Rodney as persona non grata, preventing him from returning to Jamaica after participating in a conference in Canada. Dr. Rodney, who was lecturer in History at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, became popular among the masses by speaking to and encouraging them wherever there was a possibility of ‘getting together’.

In “The Groundings With My Brothers”, his inaugural book, he wrote: “I was prepared to go anywhere that any group of Black people were prepared to sit down to talk and listen. I have sat on a little oil drum, rusty in the midst of garbage, and some Black Brothers and I have grounded together...we spoke about a lot of things and it was just the talking that was important...I was trying to contribute my experience in travelling, in reading, my analysis, and I was also gaining...”.

Dr. Rodney’s ban by the JLP, led to a popular 1968 uprising in Kingston, known as the Rodney Riots, inspired the influential Black Power Movement in Jamaica, which was led by the very people with whom he grounded. This does not suggest that groundings lead to violence. As I recall, it was during an impromptu ‘grounding session’ with an American soldier that I first accepted my personal worth and individuality, shunned all thoughts of a criminal life and subsequently found in him a lifelong mentor. Grounding empowers the weak and inspires the strong; it eliminates suspicion that arises from ignorance and misunderstandings between divergent social groups.

Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahia Faith, wrote: “Consultation bestows greater awareness and transmutes conjecture into certitude. It is the shining light which, in a dark world, leads the way and guides...The maturity of the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation”. Earnest consideration must be given to the reality of man’s thoughts, he expressed; “To understand the relevance of this potent reality is also to appreciate the necessity of actualizing its unique value through candid, dispassionate and cordial consultation and of acting upon the results of this process” (To the Peoples of the World Peace, 1986).

Peacebuilding by way of grounding is at once an intellectual activity aimed at breaking down walls of sectarianism and mobilising popular consciousness via a revolutionary consultative ethos. Brazilian educator Paulo Friere expressed that “sectarianism mythicizes and therefore alienates...radicalization criticises and therefore liberates”. Grounding is not a panacea for interstate or even intrastate peace. It is where we begin. It cannot fully address traits such as greed and nefarious human intentions, such as the wish to enslave others. It might, however, inspire resistance in the oppressed. That is its real power, and consequently, resolved opposition to groundings is inevitable. Fundamentally, it deals with the source of all conflicts, the mind, which once stretched by superior reasoning and understanding, cannot return to its original dimension. “Peace cannot be kept by force” Albert Einstein noted, “It can only be achieved by understanding”. In addition to creating a new mindscape of belonging, individuality, erudition, free-though, ambition, self-reliance and self-belief, it closes the social gaps caused by the methodical bifurcation of societies and countries, especially in the so-called Third World. Jamaica has long been seen as ‘two Jamaicas’.

In so doing, it fosters a society of understanding, mitigates the crime of indifference and complicity and reduces suspicion and unwarrantable condemnations by those who make the law and those who are governed by them. In the ‘grounding process’, understanding and identifying the way forward must be the foremost objective; recommendations must entail the fundamental right of each man to attain the fruits of his honest ambitions, to feel and walk comfortably around in his skin and country, to speak his language of choice, and contribute fruitfully to his family and society.

The task here of the serious peacebuilder is to be researcher and historian, sociologist and psychologist, mediator and facilitator, in short, a resolute academician. Lifting minds from the abyss of imperialistic domestication to the acme of mental liberation is his/her most crucial and taxing task. This is a long and arduous process of education, re-education, empowerment, re-acculturation, conflict-resolution, mediation....He/she must therefore begin this grounding journey by studying the unique history and wills of his/her people, as well as living every essence of the following words of James Allen and George Bernard Shaw:

“A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject and miserable, by refusing to lift his thoughts. Before a man can achieve anything, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence” J. A

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will” G. B. S

About the Author
Craig Ghunta Dixon is a Jamaican youth and peace activist who is presently on internship at ChildFund Caribbean in Dominica via the Caribbean Internship Programme (CIP).

The Hero in our Leaders

Jean Lowrie-Chin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:25:00 UT

When we look back at our leaders throughout our history, including our eight prime ministers, we should be proud of the hero in each of them. Our vibrant democracy has given us Sir Alexander Bustamante, Sir Donald Sangster, Hugh Shearer, Michael Manley, and those still with us, Edward Seaga, PJ Patterson, Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller – our first woman prime minister – and Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

Historian Arnold “Scree” Bertram gave an important interview recently on Jamaica Speaks commenting that too little has been published about our National Heroes. We remember the brave Nanny who stood up to the British army, the spirited Sam Sharpe, the resolute Paul Bogle, the noble George William Gordon, the revolutionary philosopher Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the champion of self-government, Norman Washington Manley and the defender of workers' rights, Sir Alexander Bustamante.
They lay the groundwork for our considerable achievements. Ask a senior about the so-called “good old days” and they will tell you of a time when high school education, piped water and rural electricity were either luxuries or aspirations. Our independent spirit, enduring democracy, our music, sports, superior crops and achievements in almost every field of human endeavour, set us apart.

Indeed, there is enough in our fertile country for every person's need, but it will never be enough for some people's greed. Diligent public sector workers should be identified and rewarded, even as their corrupt counterparts should be identified and discarded. It is certainly unfair that a few bad apples are causing competent professionals to be labeled as obstacles to productivity.

The agonising issue confronting not only this government but also most others around the world is unemployment. In our tiny Jamaica, I regard this as a conundrum because there is a shortage of trained, qualified personnel in so many areas.

With continued excellent opportunities for career advancement in teaching, nursing and the constabulary force, more young people should be encouraged to pursue these worthy careers.

In the hospitality industry, chefs are pulling in higher salaries than are general managers. As the population ages, physiotherapists, pharmacists and optometrists are going to be in greater demand. The financial, distributive and telecoms sectors offer opportunities for management, accounting and marketing professionals who are tech-savvy.

Beware that we look down on jobs that are actually paying good returns like plumbing, electrical and building repairs, home nursing services, agriculture, landscaping and cosmetology.

We need to nurture sound work ethics in our young people so that they understand the importance of patience and perseverance. Every successful professional should find at least one young person to mentor, whether within or outside of your workplace. Think back to that tough boss or supervisor who would accept nothing less than excellence from us. Now it is our turn to give back.

Let us spare a moment on this National Heroes Day to salute outgoing Prime Minister Bruce Golding. Public and private sector officials recall his long hours of work, his exceptional analytical ability and his dedication to efficient implementation. National Road Safety Council convenor, Dr Lucien Jones, says PM Golding as chairman of the council, was deeply involved in the development of the promising “Save 300 Lives” campaign.

We quote G2K leader Delano Seiveright, who outlined some of the prime minister's efforts as he strove to address the corruption that is at the heart of our slow progress:

Appointment of a special prosecutor to fight corruption.
Whistle-blower legislation to aid in fighting crime and corruption.
Independent Commission to investigate abuses by the security forces.
Fiscal-responsibility legislation to, among other things, exert control over our fiscal deficit and accumulation of debt.
Reform of the libel laws to enable greater transparency and accountability in government.
Measures to reverse the institutionalisation of political tribalism and garrisons, as manifested in many constituencies across political lines.

The recent years have had their successes and their challenges. Jamaica and Bruce Golding will emerge the stronger for it.

About the Author:
Jean Lowrie-Chin runs an Advertising/PR Agency, PROComm, in Kingston, Jamaica. She is a writer, poet, blogger and columnist for the Jamaica Observer. She holds Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in English from the University of the West Indies.

Jamaica, the Land we love: Paradise or Hell on Earth?

Audrey Reeve — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:30:02 UT

A society can be measured by the way it treats its most vulnerable. The three groups that are most vulnerable in any society are: the elderly and infirm, the young, babies, toddlers, school age and adolescence, inclusive. Lastly, the mentally ill. For our purpose, vulnerable is the susceptibility of certain groups to physical, emotional, and or sexual injury. For the most part, most countries, developed or developing, usually ensure the safety and security of these groups. This article focuses on the horrendous and inhumane atrocities afflicting our children in Jamaica: abuse, murder and various forms of exploitation.

Once upon a time Jamaica was regarded as one of the safest and best places for child rearing. As a society, we protected our most fragile from falling prey to the demons among us, who often disguise as human. In fact, there was a time when the Jamaican Diaspora in North America and Europe would ensure their children ‘learn the culture” by sending the children to Jamaica to live with relatives. The rationale was that our sense of morality was superior. Gone are those days forever! Most Jamaicans who grew up in the seventies, eighties and even earlier, will attest that Jamaica was amongst the safest places for child rearing. Most families, regardless of socioeconomic status or educational background, instilled certain values such as: respect, honesty, great work ethics, self reliance, and power of resilience and even the notion of being your brother’s keeper.

The community was instrumental in caring for the children and ensuring that their basic needs for food, shelter, safety and love and belonging, are met. If an adult hurt a child in any way that would indicate malicious intent, cruelty, or sexual in nature, the community exercises vigilante justice. Child sexual abuse in these communities usually results in the “death penalty”. Not by the justice system but by the community. As a result, child abuse and especially sexual abuse, was extremely rare. And even taking into account the under reporting by victims and their families. The community as a whole ensure the safety and protection of our future leaders. Whitney Houston sums it up nicely in her mega hit,” The Greatest Love of All.” “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside, give them a sense of pride…….” In today’s Jamaica, it does not appear as our future matters.

Fast track to 2011, here is what Jamaicans are faced with: two month old baby raped and murdered, nine month old baby raped and sodomized resulting in death, the beheading of several children, five year old throat slashed while he was sleeping, seven year old gagged, bound, throat slashed and seven stab wounds to his body. Eight and ten year old girls raped and murdered, children being burnt alive, male raping young boys(most recent in Tivoli Gardens perpetrator shot by police). Young girls been raped and sodomize by women. Another trend in the child abuse saga is mature women raping young boys; some as young as 5 years old. This form of sexual abuse seem to be under reported. According to Dr. McGill, the problem of older women raping young boys is more prevalent than we realize. In one incident, a 6 year old boy was raped and his body cut into pieces and thrown in a ditch. The violence against kids is not exclusive to Jamaicans residing in Jamaica, but also the Jamaican Diaspora in North America. Two Jamaica couples were recently charged with murdering their young kids under 10 years old. One of the couple is currently serving a prison term for their crime. Equally appalling is the fact that young boys and girls are trafficked from rural Jamaica to work in the urban areas in particular tourist areas to work as prostitutes for the pedophile tourists who come to Jamaica to exploit these kids sexually. This is not exclusive to tourists, but some locals with an appetite for such deviant sexual behavior’s a matter of fact, the word is spreading in the pedophile underground world that Jamaica is the place to go for sex with minors without the risk of being caught and persecuted.

In the July 17 issue of the Jamaica Gleaner, Tyrone Reid stated that 1500, kids and teens have been murdered since 2001. Equally frightening, is that since January 2011, 1,600 children have been shot and or wounded requiring medical intervention . For a country with a population of only 2.8 million, this is by far too many. According to Mrs. Carla Edie of the Office of the Children Registry, since 2007, there has been 12,000 reported cases of abuse and assault causing injury . In 2009 alone there were 6,000 cases of child abuse reported . One can surmise that this number is not reflective of the true crime rate against children as those families living in rural Jamaica may not report crimes against children due to various factors; inaccessible resources, ignorance, poverty and fear and adherence to the code of silence. UNICEF has reported that Jamaica is second in the world for child abuse and sexual exploitation. South Africa ranks number one. The issue of child sexual abuse is so rampant that according to UNICF Jamaica, in 2006, 78 % of the sexual assault victims treated in a health care setting were children and adolescent.

Child abuse in Jamaica appears to be escalating at a very rapid pace. According to the OCR, crime against children is escalating at an unbelievable rate.. Take for instance, in 2007, there were 425 reported cases of child abuse, in 2008 that number jumped to 3, 784. This alarming trend is frightening. In her article “Dark Days for Jamaican Children,” Marvia shared with her readers how she wept while writing the article on the plight of our children. She is not alone. I am sure most Jamaicans, both living in Jamaica and the Jamaican Diaspora abroad have a similar reaction. In fact, talking to a fellow Jamaican about the issue, she compared what is happening to Jamaican children to what Adolf Hitler did to the Jews back in WW2. The most salient difference she surmised, is that there was an international outcry for justice against Germany. Sadly, these poor Jamaican kids, do not seem to have anyone/group advocating aggressively enough to effect change on their behalf, hence the escalation in crimes against them over the past few years.
The most blatantly appalling reality this author experienced during the research for this article is the complacency with which a lot of Jamaicans relate to the issue of child abuse. This matter of fact way of relating to such horrendous crimes against Jamaican children is not only shocking but frightening. This is especially concerning when one takes into consideration that we were once perceived as amongst the best care givers on the international scale. In fact, for a while most caregivers/nannies employed in North America were Jamaicans and Philipinos. In light of the increasing brutality of Jamaican children, one cannot help but wonder how it has affected our reputation as excellent care givers on the international scale. Only time will tell.

The demonic beasts that are responsible for committing these horrific crimes against our most vulnerable, are exactly that, ‘Demons’. Most Jamaicans will agree on that. The more troubling question however, is this; why isn’t there more of an outcry from the Jamaican people nationally? Who is really advocating on behalf of these poor souls.? What is being done and will be done to curve the brutality against our children? When will it end? What implications will this abuse of our young have on the future Jamaica? One thing is for sure, there cannot be any positive impact from these atrocities . Consider that children learn what they live vice versa, one can assume that left unchecked, the future generation will be even more vicious and barbaric than the current generation. Why? They have witnessed too much and at too young age and especially victims, who sometimes grow up to be perpetrators themselves. Research indicates that as much as 60 to 75 percent of victims of abuse eventually become abusers themselves. This is especially prevalent in victims of sexual assault.

So where do we go from here? These are complex issues and there is no single answer or solution to this question. In fact, any approach or attempt to curve this evil against our kids will require multiple interventions over a longer period of time. There are some programs that are currently in place but obviously it’s not adequate, to tackle and eradicate the problem. This is evidenced by not only the increase in child murders, abuse, etc. but as well, complacency of the Jamaican public towards the plight of our children.

The Jamaican government and in particular the Minister of youth need to be deeply involved whether its forming a task force to investigate the dept of the problem and realize the incidence of child abuse per capita. As well, advocating for funds to help to tackle the problem. Ensuring an adequate budget allotment for dealing with these issues of child abuse should be a priority for the minister of youth. There is a need for tougher and enforceable laws to punish these heartless perpetrators. The public needs to be held accountable, anyone who witness child abuse and fail to report it should be punished. The Child Care and Protection Act makes it mandatory for persons who suspect child abuse to make a report to state agencies. Protecting children from harm is not an individual responsibility, but a societal one. We need to emulate thy brother’s keeper attitude in particular when it comes to protecting our most precious but yet most vulnerable, our children.

The Only Thing That Separates Us Is Us

Jean Lowrie-Chin — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:30:01 UT

Caribbean leaders got an eloquent telling-off by Sir Shridath Ramphal when he recently gave the Inaugural G. Arthur Brown Lecture hosted by the Bank of Jamaica in celebration of their 50th Anniversary. Sir Shridath, former Guyana Government Minister, UWI Chancellor and three-term Secretary General of the Commonwealth has spoken on this theme for over three decades, but never before has he captured our collective cowardice so accurately.

Yes, it must be cowardice that makes big people stand up at a microphone mouthing fine words of unity, then return to their home countries to resume their backward behaviour, reigning over crumbling fiefdoms.

Did PM Bruce Golding ‘take shame’ when, two days after Sir Shridath’s lecture he asked the region’s public servants to adopt a collective view of our global opportunities? A Jamaica House release quoted Mr Golding as saying: "This is where I think CARICOM needs to make a fundamental change and instead of looking at each other with our separate pair of eyes, we need to put those 14 pairs of eyes together and look at the rest of the world. CARICOM is too small to provide the space that we need to grow, too small in numbers and the effectiveness of its purchasing power."

Sir Shridath touched a nerve when he gave an account of our failed attempt at Federation after the British became enthusiastic about shedding their colonies and granted us our independence: “regional unity was no longer a pre-condition to ‘local control’; so Norman Manley and Eric Williams remained in their home garrisons, declining to dwell in the regional castle that they helped to construct.”

Sir Shridath should know that the garrisonisation of communities within our beloved Jamaica has further nurtured this mindset of desperation. He quotes a Barbadian food vendor who observed, “the only thing that separates us is us.”

Sir Shridath commented drily on a recent statement from a CARICOM conference chairman: “Slow down, the Chairman said repeatedly to the media in explaining how his colleagues felt about ‘integration’ ….Given that we are already at dead slow, how far is that from ‘stop’?”

He warned, “to pause in a rapidly moving world is really to stop; and to pause in mid-flight is really to plummet.” He quoted a study entitled ‘Caribbean Regional Integration’ conducted by top scholars of the region which concluded: “The difficulties facing the region are no longer simply about competing effectively in a globalising economy. Rather, they are 'existential threats' which bring into question the fundamental viability of Caribbean society itself. Climate change, transnational crime, the decline of regional industries, food security, governance challenges, international diplomacy … are becoming increasingly acute in the immediate present; failure to act immediately, decisively and coherently at the regional level could quite conceivably herald the effective decline of Caribbean society as a 'perfect storm' of problems gathers on the horizon.”

In other words, we are looking at a life-and-death situation as if we are already not tearing our hair out over joblessness, crime and the high cost of living. Bemoaning our excruciating inaction, Sir Shridath said that as far back as 300 years ago a French Dominican Monk, Père Labat mused, “You are all together, in the same boat, sailing on the same uncertain sea.”

Representatives of England’s Privy Council must be wondering why we have danced around the issue of establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice as our final court of appeal, even as we so stridently declare our sovereignty.

Sir Shridath was able to point to a fine Caribbean example of unity that illustrates that yes, it is indeed possible for small islands to unite under one constitution and thrive. “There, within our own region, a Commonwealth of some 700 islands, lying off the south-east coast of America, is one state - so administered for over 300 years, the Bahamas is larger in size than any single island state of CARICOM, and its population bigger than any of the OECS islands,” said Sir Shridath. “… it has overcome the separateness that the sea could have engendered. In the result, with meagre natural resource endowment, its GDP is higher than any member state of CARICOM, save Trinidad and Tobago .”

Sir Shridath also gave kudos to former Prime Minister P J Patterson for his role in the formation of the ACP: “We earned the respect of Europe and of our African and Pacific brothers; but it all was rooted in our unity at home.”

Ironically, he quoted the closing lines of an old poem ‘Bruce and the Spider’ to bolster his hope that despite numerous setbacks, we may yet achieve the unity we so love to declare: “That Perseverance gains its meed,/And Patience wins the race.’ Caribbean unity is a fantastic platform for the learned Bruce Golding, many times beaten like "The Bruce," Robert I, King of Scotland in the poem, who after six defeats finally springs to action to win the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 for Scotland against a tyrannical English King.

Folks, it’s not easy: for two years, as president of the PR Society of Jamaica , I tried to forge links for the formation of a Caribbean PR Association. We travelled to Trinidad , Barbados and Curacao , where we were finally able to sign a declaration of intent. It went no further after we were stunned by an unfortunate ego trip. “He pong you!” said my humourous Trinidadian colleague Astra DaCosta, thus expanding my Caribbean vocabulary. He certainly did, but that was a small matter compared to this looming global crunch that no single Caribbean state can fight alone. Can Sir Shridath shame us into action?

West Indian Crickets In The Dark

C. Ghunta Dixon — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:30:02 UT

I. For an intern, I lived and studied in the Spice Isle for an unusually long time – at first, under the auspices of the Caribbean Internship Project (CIP) via the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona and the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (CCSI) together with the Roving Caregivers Programme (RCP) and finally, though briefly, at the Ministerial Complex, alongside a coterie of social development workers and a youth-led-and-oriented advocacy group from T.A Marryshow Community College in Tanteen, St. George. In all I spent roughly twelve months.

Barbadian Novelist and anti-colonialist George Lamming is right to think of the Caribbean as a country with parishes strewn about the sea. A claim that Grenada’s ‘father of the West Indies Federation’ Theophilus Albert Marryshow would have approved were he alive today. I was in a land far from my own, in actuality more than a thousand miles away and I did not know the difference. I did not see it, it was not felt. I was at home and, I admit, I would not have had it any other way.

I was interested in the historicity of Maurice Bishop’s Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement (NJM) People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and what it meant at the time to the Caribbean proletariat; the educated, rising, radical middle-class and in the world context of Third World dissidence. The Grenada Revolution of 1979 was supported, initially, by many in the region, in spirit and in praxis. Many leftists and political activists migrated to Grenada to buttress the Revolutionary Government and to send a clear message of dissent to the purveyors of western hegemonic rule.

My tenure in Grenada began this way, understanding first of all what that moment (March 1979) in history meant to the region: to Jamaica, Cuba, Guyana; to the poverty-stricken and suppressed person everywhere, barely surviving as eternal victims of pitiless and megalomaniacal governments.

The revolutionaries, in high dudgeon, self-destructed in ‘83, inevitably; but the bread and butter spirituals of survival, the natural urgings of life, the poor man’s audacities, the assurance of each man’s right to dream, which gave the revolutionary spirit its wings, continue to soar in Grenada and the region today, and will, perhaps, do so forever.

From as early as the second week of June 2010, I was able, with vague opinions and learning going in, to identify the umbilical cord which connects the region to a common womb and why Mr. Lamming holds his particular view of the indispensible oneness of our existence.

It became clear to me why we need to be together. We are prodigal isles of the same parentage, from the same bedrock through to the topsoil. I mean no offence when I say that Grenada is an extension of Jamaica, like Carriacou is to Grenada and Tobago to Trinidad – save for the obvious geo-political ties and the accent, which are inconsequential. The point herein is that we are so much alike, it smacks of absurdity to be apart.

I discerned too that few things are more important than what I went there to do.

I worked as a media intern with the Roving Caregivers Programme (RCP), which is a non-formal Early Childhood Development (ECD) programme for economically deprived families and their 0-5 year olds. RCP was created in Clarendon, Jamaica, in 1993, by the Rural Family Support Organization (RUFAMSO). In addition to Jamaica and Grenada, RCP operates in St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Belize.

I was, as a son of Jamaica, given the privilege of entering the homes of my brothers and sisters in Grenada, to share with them, in effect, the message that their’s and their children’s existence is evidence that this and future generations need them; that the Caribbean Community cannot advance without their integral input.

In the Eastern Caribbean, the funding, top-level coordination, technical assistance and structural framework of the RCP are provided through the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (CCSI), established in 2002 and headquartered at the Caribbean Centre for Development Administration (CARICAD), situated in Barbados. The CCSI:

...is a creation of the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF - located in Holland) established ‘to address issues germane to poor parenting practices and inadequate cognitive stimulation of young children living in difficult social and economic circumstances....The CCSI represents a departure from (the BvLF) usual approach in the Caribbean with the Foundation opting to work with a thematic focus, have a regional scope, make transition from project programme approaches, build on the merits of networking, and use a local intermediary structure to facilitate implementation[i]

Seventy per cent of children living in the Caribbean have no access to Early Childhood Development (ECD) services. An Early Childhood Policy Scan conducted in 2006, showed that of the infants and toddlers living in Grenada, only 568 out of 6,117 had access to ECD services. Within a seven year stretch commencing in 2004, the RCP in Grenada, has provided ECD stimulation to approximately 3,000 belonging to this fold. Over 2,000 families have been engaged, with about 300 Rovers[ii] and hundreds of other stakeholders and activists. Across the region, in excess of 10,000 children have benefited from CCSI-supported and cost-effective initiatives.

Along with RCP, CCSI has established, via the University of the West Indies, the Caribbean Internship Project, of which I am a beneficiary - as well as close to 200 graduates from U.W.I’s three campuses...in addition to the Universities of Belize and Guyana.

The impressive list of CCSI’s programmes includes: the Regional Youth and Community Advocacy Network (Regional YouCAN); the Early Childhood Health Outreach (ECHO); the Family Learning Programme (FLP); the Spice Island Young Readers (SIYR) project; the Storytelling for Early Childhood and Parent Support (STEPS) initiative; the Regional Radio Project and numerous workshops and community based training programmes have been conducted as well.

The aim of policy advocacy as articulated by the CCSI is to heighten awareness about, and enhance understanding of child rearing practices and issues; create more demand for quality ECD and family support services, influence policy makers and practitioners, through work and care related topics and issues; consolidate and mainstream RCP-type service model through conceptual ‘buy-in’, marketing and fundraising in public and private sectors[iii]

At the community level in Grenada, the CCSI/RCP has proven to be much more than early childhood education providers. The RCP has managed to galvanize thousands to join the realms of child rights advocacy and youth development activism. In an article entitled ‘RCP’s Philosophical Outlook’ published on February 11^th 2011 in the Grenada Informer newspaper, I wrote:

Bearing in mind that a child’s character is shaped by numerous agents of socialization, the Roving Caregivers Programme has extended its support and philosophy of interactivity to community-based clubs and schools. Rovers are admonished to work with families and communities with the goal of establishing child-rights advocacy groups as well as to urge existing organizations to support RCP’s projects and campaigns.

Writing in the Grenada Informer’s April 8 2011 edition, Angelique Durant, a member of the T. A. Marryshow Community College Youth and Community Advocacy Network (TAMCC YouCAN), in reference to a recently held eight-mile-long walkathon organized to raise awareness for the RCP and its affiliates, stated:

YouCAN was created in January 2010 by the Caribbean Child Support Initiative…and supports RCP in its quest “to reach children birth to three years of age who do not have access to any form of formal early childhood education”…

One of our major objectives included a walkathon aimed at sensitizing the public on the benefits of early childhood development. This took place on the 25th of March 2011 from RCP’s office in St. David to Old Trafford - St. George. The turnout was fantastic! Under the heat of the sun, singing, dancing and pumping tunes decorated the streets. Banners held by students and parents alike waved in unison, information brochures were enthusiastically handed out to onlookers and even to drivers along the route.

The CCSI/RCP not only gives hope, it provides the greatest avenue of hope for the creation of a more educated, active and progressive region. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is the mother-seed of this from which the Caribbean shall redefine herself, integrate and secure her seat in the market place of global competition.

II. I spent most of my evenings in Grenada behind my home at Westerhall Point peering at the vegetation of a tiny island from where an auburn cape staggers into the Caribbean Sea.

Each evening, I hurdled over a silver chain which hang laxly like a rope-bridge from one gate-post to the next; slipped gingerly by a red-inked ‘no trespassing: trespassers will be prosecuted’ sign; strolled over a dishevelled lawn punctuated by yellow-brown Almond leaves, to the rear of a uninhabited house a minute of two from my own.

To my knowledge, there is no better view of the surroundings than this one. No better spot to unwind, muse or peruse profound literature from the ambivalent ‘60s and ‘70s.

I was caught in a triangle of natural beauty, truly. The still island to my left; the swaying guinea grass and leafless morass to my right; the waves surging to the height of the headland straight ahead arrested my attention. These sights and sounds soothed me after a taxing day mountaineering the steep hills in St. George’s Town.

The nightlife at Westerhall Point is not spoilt by an abundance of artificial sounds and lights. So I lingered up to ten some nights to listen to the compelling chirp of West Indian Crickets and watched as they brought life to their mini galaxies, exhibiting great Responsibility, Communality and Purpose (RCP)...these are among the virtues we need to cultivate in this moment of history, as we commit as a people to providing revolutionary and affordable Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for our children.

In Grenada: Island of Conflict, historian and former Prime Minister of Grenada, George Brizan, states that ordinary working people did not play “a continued and dominant role” in the political and social processes of the 1979 Grenada Revolution. He notes that “Grenada’s constitutional experience manifested four major characteristics”: political inequality of opportunity; external dependence; dominance of elitist groups in the socio-economic and political spectrums and no clear outline of a path to development - an observation which condemns fully all but a handful of countries in the region today.

Amidst this and the many well established consequences and implications herein; we have before us a formidable team of West Indian Crickets in the Dark; of very ordinary women and men, organized into an easily replicable, cost-effective, tried and proven, never-seen-before, grassroots early childhood development movement.

This revolution is markedly different from ‘79. It is free from the strident and often inflexible fists of rigid top-to-bottom leadership. In this revolution the real leaders and heroes live and work in and among the most common caste. In this revolution, the people that matter most are providing their own answers and solutions to their problems; using their own resources and talents. Most importantly, they see themselves as the solutions.

There are calls today, everywhere, from Jamaica to Grenada to Belize for more investment in early childhood care and education and here it is, the answer: (RCP) on your neighbour’s veranda, in your neighbour’s yard, in grocery and barber shops and on your streets. I say with full confidence and absolute personal urging, that the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (CCSI) model can create a vast revolutionary uprising in early childhood development services in the Caribbean and beyond.

At the end of this year, the Bernard van Leer Foundation will cease its funding of the CCSI. In response to this, CCSI is evolving into the Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children (FDCC), which was officially launched in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in June of this year.

The FDCC’s Directors are convinced about the compelling need for this foundation. There is sufficient evidence of high levels of poverty...insufficient parental support and significant challenges faced by regional states in allocating resources to early childhood development.

The FDCC will therefore take over the work of the CCSI, providing the region’s only comprehensive response to the needs of disadvantaged children...[iv]

This is an important event in the region’s history. The Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children (FDCC) must now assert itself in the popular imagination of the publics’ concerned, which is impossible without your support and generous giving. We have answers for all your questions. There are riveting stories about the overall impact of CCSI. I write as an example of a life that has been transformed forever, as a witness, as an advocate, as a West Indian Cricket in the Dark, awaiting the promise of dawn.

About the Author:
C. Ghunta Dixon, a youth activist, was an intern with the Roving Caregivers Programme (RCP), in Grenada from June 1, 2010 to April 11 2011. He is now on internship at the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (CCSI), based in Barbados, which is evolving into the regions first indigenous foundation focusing on Early Childhood Development (ECD)-the Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children (FDCC).

iThe Capacity to have an Effect: An Efficacy Study of the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (2010) by R. Eyben and F. Wilson

iiRovers, who receive basic training in delivering ECD services are dynamic young (usually) women who are responsible for conducting the stimulation sessions with children and parents in the home

[iii] The Capacity to have an Effect: An Efficacy Study of the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (2010) by R. Eyben and F. Wilson

[iv] Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children (FDCC) Fact Sheet

Contact:
Caribbean Child Support Initiative (CCSI)
Caribbean Centre for Development Administration (CARICAD)
1st Floor, Weymouth Corporate Centre
Roebuck Street, St. Michael, BARBADOS, W.I.
Tel: (246) 436-8702 - Fax: (246) 436-1709
Email: info@csinews.org URL: www.ffcchildren.org

Addictions

S. M. Williams — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:30:02 UT

In the last few weeks, I feel like the issues of weight are bombarding me on every side. In my attempt to get my weight back under control, I discovered an underlying health issue which I need to address and thankfully am able to do so with diet and vitamins. No matter what I ever do I life, I will always be a food addict. Alcohol and drug addictions are insidious, but the good thing with those addictions is that you can simply remove them from your life and do all within your power to avoid them and you may be able to keep your addiction under control. But food … that’s a whole different story. Here is something that you need to survive … For us food addicts, our issue is controlling volume, quantity, intake time and type of food consumed.

Many addictions, once under control can lead to others. Remember Kojak? He was always sucking on a lollipop – that was his secondary addiction to smoking. Many people who stop smoking gain weight. We seem to replace one addiction for another. For those of us who are food addicts – they often try to convince us to replace exercise for food. Hmmm, great idea, but so NOT fun. Anyway, for me, shopping replaced my food addiction. Thank the Lord, I’m a bargain shopper. However, the other secondary impact of my attempting to manage my food addiction is that my tongue which was sharp before has become rapier laserlike in its ability to slice through the various BS I encounter in life.

About two years ago in an argument with my hubby (you know the ones that when you are in the middle of it, you wonder how the hell you got here and what is the purpose of it? Yeah, that one!) I realized that my attempt to fix my addiction had given rise to yet one more side effect. For many years I’d used food to solve a number of issues. If I was sad, there was also a piece of cake, ice cream or chips that could solve my problem. If I was angry, there was always some piece of candy or pastry that could fix that issue. Now when I was sad or angry, food couldn’t solve the issue and I had to confront them one way or the other.

So what resulted was that I couldn’t push my feelings down any longer. WHOA .. and the person that erupted was a woman who I did not know. She was a brash, loud, in your face, cussing, no-nonsense, take no prisoner all-out Bit*h! And guess what? I liked her! It was surprising how often I’d allowed people to take advantage of me or how I’d bitten my tongue rather than stating my real feelings and opinions. I was the happy, jolly fat girl who didn’t want to do anything to rock the boat or upset anyone. Now I felt liberated and empowered. Now this didn’t mean I felt I had license to hurt anybody with my newfound independence, but it did mean that I didn’t feel like I had to take any and everything that was dished out to me. Who the heck knew that being unable to stuff my face into silence meant that a voice came up from out of inside me instead.

These changes gave me the voice needed to walk away from a job that I’d literally been hogtied to in fear of doing anything else and got me a new job that required me to have a voice and use it often and wisely. My poor husband, however, has been on the receiving end of this new woman I believe more often than he’d care to be. All wives “bite up dem jaw cawna feh nuh upset di apple” cart too often in their marriages. We pick our battles and decide which ones to fight on which day. However, most of us will use gentle persuasion to often accomplish our goal. But this new woman that my nip and tuck had created would come out swinging more often that the former me. I’m still not sure if I’m yielding any more positive results than I was before, but what I do know is that this new woman has irrevocably changed the face of my entire life and how I participate in it.

“Nobody Canna Stop Laughing” - Language, Cultural Anxiety and the Clifton Brown Commotion

Andrea E. Shaw — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:30:01 UT

Several weeks ago, parts of Jamaica experienced extensive flooding after days of heavy rains that rivaled the deluge which set Noah’s ark afloat some millennia past. Bridges, roads, homes and businesses were washed away, leaving residents in various parts of the island stranded, unable to navigate flooded streets, swollen gullies, and overflowing rivers.

Jamaican television station TVJ covered the floods in the Mavis Bank area of Jamaica in the parish of St. Andrew, and reporter Dara Smith’s interview with a bystander and resident of the area, Clifton Brown, is now perhaps the most famous TV interview in Jamaica. In the interview Brown offers an earnest, thoughtful, and passionate explanation of the challenges being faced by residents of Mavis Bank and the surrounding communities, including Robertsfield and Davis Hill, and he elaborates on the dangers posed by the flooded Yallahs River. Brown’s colorful and animated conversation is further characterized by his attempt to speak with a foreign accent (in this case American), known in Jamaica as a “twang.” Here is the most comprehensive version of the interview I could find, despite the unexplainably interspersed images of Bounty Killer:

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWIkX9c23M4

In his now memorialized commentary on the raging Yallahs River, Brown states, “Nobody canna cross it, only a fishermen and a fisherwomen,” (no one can cross the river, only people very familiar with water). Brown’s unique and impassioned description of the difficulties being faced by his community is his effort to illuminate the perils of simply trying to survive and get to work or school in the face of extensive flooding. It is also his plea for help from a government that he perceives as indifferent to his community’s plight.

At another point in the interview Brown utters the second popular phrase associated with his perspective on the flooding when in an effort to explain which types of vehicles are able to navigate the heavy flood waters he says “The bus can swim,” meaning buses can make the treacherous crossing. In fact, the news report revealed that crossing the river had become so hazardous that residents had to pay vehicles and sometimes individuals to ferry them as human cargo from one side to the next.

Next, in the Clifton Brown saga comes Kevin-Sean Hamilton aka “DJ Powa,” a talented young student at Jamaica’s University of Technology who remixed clips of the interview, set these clips to music, and created a catchy music video. DJ Powa’s objectives in all this seem to be primarily commercial and have little to do with Brown or the floods. DJ Powa’s videos expose his talent and create economic opportunities for him. For example, by the time he appeared on television after his video had become super popular, he was wearing a T-shirt (surely available for sale) emblazoned with a line from the video. Watch his original video here:

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hknVoAoyy-k&feature=related. To date the video has garnered over a million hits on YouTube.

The third installment in this unfolding event, and the focus of this article, is a second interview with Clifton Brown after his sudden rise to fame. This interview took place on the popular Jamaican morning talk show Smile Jamaica, where hosts Simon Crosskill and Neville Bell spoke with both Brown and DJ Powa. Here’s that interview:

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13UzMTn-0o

Most striking to me about the Smile Jamaica segment is the overwhelming amusement the hosts found in Brown’s use of language during both the initial interview with Dara Smith as well as during their encounter with him on their show. Often doubled over with laughter to the point of near paralysis and tears, the hosts unabashedly laughed at Brown throughout the show despite Brown’s obvious surprise and discomfort that his speech could provoke such a response.

As I watched Smile Jamaica, I fully understood why the hosts, as well as many Jamaicans, found Brown’s linguistic faux pas amusing. Admittedly, I found the interview quite funny as well. This is no surprise since we Jamaicans are somewhat programmed to find amusement in our countrymen’s (and countrywomen’s, Brown might want me to add) attempts to reinvent themselves through language. For example, in Jamaican advertisements and theatre productions one of the most reliable ways to generate laughter is to have someone “twang.”

However, during Brown’s appearance on Smile Jamaica, watching Crosskill and Bell collapse into uncontrollable laughter in front of the country and an obviously confused and embarrassed guest was quite disturbing, particularly since many of us often privately engage in similarly mean-spirited laughter at people’s failed attempts to speak using some configuration of what they deem “proper” English. Crosskill and even more so Bell were doing precisely what many of us would do, except they were doing it in front of the entire nation. Subsequently, this Smile Jamaica episode has generated an onslaught of comments, including newspaper articles and editorials, social media feedback, and radio talk show discussions, many critical of Crosskill and Bell for their insensitivity, some to their defense.

But perhaps we can use this moment to venture beyond taking sides on the issue to instead interrogate the widespread national response of laughter to Brown’s interview. Why were his comments so humorous, his speech patterns so worthy of attention that they inspired a music video? What is this commotion over Brown?

What Brown engaged in when he set aside his usual patterns of speech and assumed what he understood to be a foreign/American accent is officially known as code switching, something we all do and which simply refers to our use of multiple variations of a language (or multiple languages) in a conversation. So if I am chatting with one of my Jamaican girlfriends, I may speak fairly standard English as I explain how my day is going, like my trip to the supermarket, blah, blah, blah. When I get to the part about a lizard that crawled into my car (while I was driving), I may say something like, “When me tell say me did frighten, me mean say me was a go pass out!” (when I say I was frightened, I mean I felt like I was going to pass out). That’s code switching.

So if this code switching happens all the time and we all engage in it, why are some forms of code switching, like Brown’s, quite hilarious, and other forms, like mine, inconsequential, rarely generating much laughter or notice? Perhaps one reason is because of the anxieties Brown exposes in some of us over our own efforts to successfully traverse class boundaries, which code switching helps us to accomplish.

Brown clearly thought that “twanging” was the appropriate code of choice for the moment. The camera and later the formality of the studio all signaled to Brown that something other than his usual mode of speech was called for, something that made him more understandable to his audience and that favorably situated him in a certain class and social space, perhaps other than the space in which he usually resides.

But from the middle-class eyes of the hosts, these language missteps marked Brown as a failure at faking an accent, an outsider unacquainted with the authentic rhythms of “foreign” evidenced by all of his mispronunciations and awkward cadence. So perhaps Crosskill and Bell’s laughter as well as the chuckles from all of us who found humor in Brown’s interview have less to do with Brown’s missteps but with the opportunity those missteps afford us to separate ourselves from him and what we may see as his lack of sophistication.

In other words, our laughter affirms that we know better than he does and we recognize that his effort to render an authentic foreign accent has failed, suggesting that we know how to avoid such failures and are competent in “proper” speech. In other words, the laughers (the hosts of Smile Jamaica and those of us who found Brown’s interview comedic) are presumably able to successfully speak either American English or English English, while Brown cannot.

In his book, Leviathan, seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that we laugh at other people’s adversity in order to assert our own superiority. “Sudden Glory,” as Hobbes described this feeling of superiority, emerges from “the apprehension of some deformed thing in another.” This laughter, Hobbes contends, allows people to “keep themselves in their own favour, by observing the imperfections of other men.”

Another theoretical approach to humor advanced by psychologist Sigmund Freud has become known as “Relief Theory,” which suggests that we laugh to release pent-up anxieties and aggression. In other words, laughter allows us to express repressed emotion in a more socially acceptable form. With Freud’s ideas in mind, we may be able to understand the laughter generated by Brown’s interview as contempt towards the working class, their poverty, their struggles, and moreover their efforts to transcend their circumstances through acts like skin bleaching or “twanging,” which suggest that they are able to occupy an alternate (and presumably more privileged) social space. Twanging functions in a similar fashion to bleaching, as an effort to alter a signifier of class rank. See my blog post “Coloring with Cake Soap” all about bleaching and Vybz Kartel. I argue that middle-class antagonism towards bleaching has to do with a resentment towards working-class people’s efforts to transcend their social spaces.

So what’s next in the Clifton Brown saga? In an interview with Jamaican poet and talk show host Mutabaruka, Brown claims that he now has an agent! I know that here at Jamaicans.com efforts are underway explore raising money to get a bridge built to prevent residents in the area from being marooned when it rains. Neville Bell, one of the hosts of Smile Jamaica, has apologized to Brown and has subsequently resigned from the show, although supposedly not in relation to the Brown commotion.

If the furor over Brown did in fact prompt Bell’s resignation, I think that was an unfortunate and unnecessary outcome. What this incident presents is an opportunity for us to reflect on our own response to Brown, and to language in general, and perhaps what the Smile Jamaica hosts should have done was a follow-up show that contemplated just why they could not stop laughing about Brown’s commentary.

The Case for and against Big Love

S. M. Williams — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:30:01 UT

So HBO has a series called Big Love which is about a family of polygamists. Now on the series, you get to see all the advantages and disadvantages of living in a blended polygamist family. The clear advantages to this situation is always having help with children. That alone is worth having a whole host of sister wives. And while there are television series and reality shows about this facet of life, there is very little that looks into what allows a woman to enter into this type of relationship and how at the end of the day she truly values herself and this experience she has chosen.

Here is my fascination. All these women married to polygamists chose this option. Interestingly, most of the women I’ve seen are very traditional – leading me to wonder at the choices they had “outside” of this chosen relationship. Women who don’t see themselves with many options will often choose the option available to them in fear of having no option at all. Hence why so many women stay in failing and unhappy relationships. They would rather be in any relationship than no relationship at all.

Second, let us picture the typical “enlightened woman.” She’s educated, accomplished, confident and fully aware of her potential, her worth and the role she plays and plans to play in the world. She has an agenda. She has her choice in relationships and some will work and some won’t. She may get married, she may have children, she will probably have a career, but she’s always aware of her worth. If she’s in an unhappy situation, she usually has a reason and it’s usually a means to an end … a part of her overall plan. How likely is this woman to be a part of a polygamist group?

I fall into the above category. I consider myself to be somewhat selfish and narcissitic. I know who I am, like myself immensely and don’t’ much care if you have issues with me. Self preservation on physical,e emotional and psychological fronts is critical to my existence. Granted it took me 40 years to get here, but here I am! I’ve been married for ten years and have tried to picture myself trying to figure into a marriage with two other women. I suppose the issue is that I AM selfish and don’t particularly care to share. Why would I want anything less than what millions of other women have … one man dedicated to me and me alone. Why would I settle for one-third of him.

And with all the advantages of a polygamist marriage – at the end of day, you are getting 1/3 of your partner. I am trying to see the advantages in that. For so many years men hoodwinked women into thinking that they were lesser beings than they were. It took women forever to become educated, vote, work, control the size of their families, determine if and when they chose to be pregnant, and finally, be recognized as bright and intelligent beings. Men left the running of the house to women while they fathered children near and far without often having any responsibility for raising them – even if they were legally married to the women to these women. Entering into a life of polygamy just seems to me to be a return to this life.

Okay so, why don’t we delve into this whole scenario. Let’s not even bring the children into the argument – because there are huge advantages for childrearing in such large households. This is akin to what occurred in many cultures where there were always aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents to help in child rearing. Instead, I’d like to pose a philosophical question - If you believe that you are a unique and special person who has a right to be valued and honored – why would you accept 1/3 of a relationship or a second best scenario for yourself. What really is the difference between your husband sleeping with a sister wife vs sleeping with your best friend? Your best friend - who probably is god-parent to your child and babysits for you on occasion. Most of us have a female friend who’s our “wife” – she’s the one you talk to about what ails your marriage and she helps you get through the rough spot until you no longer want to take a heavy blunt object to your spouse head. So this woman is as close to you as your sister wife would be. How would you feel if your husband started sleeping with her? Not so great I imagine. So why are we okay with him sleeping with no one of your friends, but a great big whopping two or three.

Interestingly, I’ve always wondered why is it only the man’s prerogative to take multiple wives. He’s a single man trying to support multiple households. Unless he’s a millionaire, at some point, you have to compromise on what you will be able to afford. Even a wealthy man supporting one wife and three children will have less stress than a wealthy man with three wives supporting nine children. What will my child have to given up for the sake of the whole?

Now it would seem to me that if a man can have multiple wives, so too the wives should be able to take another husband. But that’s not how polygamy works – men call the shots which negates the decades that women have fought for equality and the right to be treated with dignity. God judges all of us equally, he doesn’t judge women and men any differently so someone needs to tell me why within polygamy a woman cannot take another husband. Of course that might create some issues with knowing which child belonged to whom if the woman were sleeping with multiple men.

Now I know the bible is going to be thrown at me because polygamy was popular then; however, so was crucifixtion, the stoning of criminals and human sacrifice. Why do we embrace some standards and not others. Men have happily rammed these issues down the throats of women for years and I would hope that women would be smart enough to see through this smoke screen. But still we have women who engage in polygamy and not all of them are ignorant – many of them should know better. What I’d love to explore is the “why” behind their actions. Do they see something I don’t? Or, are they just like many of the hordes of insecure women out there who will be willing to settle for something rather than have nothing.

On Clifton Brown and Community Justice: Nobody Canna Cross It

Kerri-Ann M. Smith — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:45:02 UT

Photo Credit TVJ

By now, most of us have encountered the viral video “Nobody Canna Cross It (Bus Can Swim)” that has swept the social media newsfeeds in the past two weeks. I, for one, have watched this video over and over again and have shared several versions on my wall. As I was “deading” with laughter, however, I couldn’t help but pause to reflect on the words of Mr. Brown. While his twang leaves much to criticize, Mr. Brown actually exemplifies and amplifies larger issues facing the Jamaican community, to which the government has turned a blind eye.

First, let’s examine his unique way of speaking, better known as his “absent.” As Clifton mentioned in the original TVJ video, his community, Roberts Field, is “in the wilderness” because of the absence of a bridge to facilitate movement to the outside world. When it rains, the river rises and consequently prevents the children from going to school. Of note, is the fact that Mr. Brown also articulates in his “Smile Jamaica” interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13UzMTn-0o) that this issue has persisted since he was a child. Brown also states that the problem has persisted for “sixty odd year.” This being the case, Clifton must have missed many days of school as a consequence of this failed piece of infrastructure. How then can we now listen to his diction and not wonder how much better off he would have been if there were a bridge in his community during his childhood that would have allowed him to attend school more frequently? Also of note is Mr. Brown’s ambition. He states that he is not highly educated but aspires to speak like the “callidge children dem” so he uses that accent. He is attempting to emulate the very class of people who have now made him a laughing stock. And while his “absent” is quite entertaining for those of us who have been able to cross bridges, drive cars, take buses, and walk to institutions of higher learning, Clifton Brown is still hoping to simply create enough noise to call attention to a persisting problem his people have endured for far too long.

Second, we must address Mr. Brown’s plight. He states clearly in his interviews that fame is not his goal. If it were his goal, then the interview on “Smile Jamaica” would have ruined any chances of him getting a big “bus (can swim)” because he was made a complete laughing stock on that show. There were four men present and I couldn’t help but notice that the more elite hosts, along with the college student, Kevin “DJ Powa” Hamilton (creator of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hknVoAoyy-k), were able to poke fun at things that Mr. Brown could not even recognize as errors on his own part. And poke they did. At one point, Neville Bell was so tickled that he laughed uncontrollably and had to wipe his eyes; meanwhile Clifton Brown continued to talk passionately about the problem in his community. The point is simple; Clifton Brown wants justice for his community. He speaks on behalf of a number of people who have been ignored for a number of years. He wants justice, and perhaps a bridge of sorts, for his people. He has become the proverbial lamb to the slaughter for the sake of creating infrastructure for his community and “up to now [he] don’t saw where it [this newfound fame] help [his] life.” He even lashes out against the use of his soundbyte to create economic growth for others and still no bridge for his community.

Third, we must address exploitation of the underclass in this case. Here is a perfect example of how Jamaican people “tek serious ting mek joke.” Even as Brown talks about testing the water to cross and ensuring that there are no holes in the road where people can “fosten” as they cross, Neville and Simon (and certainly all of the viewers) are able to enjoy yet another comedic soundbyte. The U-Tech marketing major, DJ Powa, wears a t-shirt sporting one of Brown’s crafty phrases “Di Bus Can Swim” and has launched a business, using Brown’s phrases. To a certain degree, we can commend DJ Powa for craftily and creatively taking advantage of what can turn out to be a very lucrative opportunity. However, we must consider that the source of this inevitable windfall for Hamilton is the struggle and bane of another man’s existence. And for this, Brown gets no accolades or profits. I will not pretend that I did not laugh uncontrollably as I watched the various videos because, hands down, this is one of the most unintentionally comedic videos of any Jamaican incident I’ve seen in a while. However, it made me consider the way that we Jamaicans treat those who are economically and educationally disadvantaged.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that Clifton Brown has actually displayed more passion and more pride in his community than whoever the Member of Parliament is for that area (at least this is what the evidence shows). At no point have I seen a video of his MP coming forward with him in these interviews to discuss what steps will be or have been taken to rectify the many issues that have arisen as a result of the lack of infrastructure in Brown’s area. For this sake, we must applaud Cliff Brown because although he talks “chakka chakka,” according to him, he wants justice. One cannot watch Brown talk about having to throw ropes to help lift his friends and family out of the water or having to be present at the river to help school children cross and not feel the angst and pain that this man’s tone conveys.

From the first interview, Brown has remained consistent about his reasons for speaking up: He wants a bridge or a thoroughfare so that the children and families in Mavis Bank can “cross it” and carry on with economic and educational growth. Is anyone hearing his plea? Or are we too busy laughing to realize that this man is perhaps one of the best community advocates we’ve seen for a while. Brown speaks to a greater issue, which calls into question the way government officials and public advocates treat the residents of the rural areas in Jamaica. Perhaps if some form of infrastructure is created, these residents can pour more into the economy of their parish, thus allowing for greater quality of life for everyone there and in the seven areas to which Roberts Field Road is linked.

So finally, I ask, who’s gonna “cross it” and give these people some justice? Who will hear the underlying message beneath and above the “absent” and Clifftwanging that seems to overpower the facts in these videos? The people need a bridge and Brown is becoming the voice of the ignored people of his community in east rural St. Andrew. The original news clip shows people in the community working together to divert the water from the roadways. The people of Roberts Field are to be commended. They have called out to the government officials and have worked to fix the problem in their community. Now, Clifton Brown has even sacrificed his peace and his health (he states that since the video has gone viral, he has had to take off time from work because his “head is beatin’ real hard”) to ensure that something is done to fix the issue. We cannot ignore his plea. In all of the exploitation of the situation, the government ought to see the seriousness of this issue and do something so that east rural St. Andrew and surrounding areas can “cross it” and, additionally, justice needs to be served to Clifton Brown for every iTune download and every t-shirt sold. After all, we all have evidence that these are his original thoughts and words in his own “absent.” Until then, nobody canna cross Roberts Field Road and this is both embarrassing and quite sad, particularly for the children who are losing out on their education every time it rains.

We Can Cross It! - Big Up Clifton Brown, he is a hero in my book

Michael Thompson — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:35:00 UT

When poor people in many countries like Jamaica ask their government for necessary amenities like good roads, clean drinking water, bridges or important community services that can make their lives better, they wait in vain and are often times humiliated or ridiculed, sometimes to get attention they must block roads and demonstrate to get the authorities to listen and do something. Humiliation and ridicule is what Clifton Brown got for asking for a bridge. Clifton is from the rural coffee farming community of Mavis Bank on the Island of Jamaica. He and others put their lives in danger to help their fellow citizens of this poor rural district cross the treacherous Yahallas River that often cut them off from the rest of the surrounding communities during heavy tropical rainfall. Clifton was filmed and interviewed by a local television station while providing this important yet dangerous river crossing service. Clifton in the interview tried to draw attention to the plight of the residents who are cut off by the river when it rains heavily in this mountainous Blue Mountains region. A bridge is clearly needed and residents continue to demand that the government build a bridge across the river. The interview was remixed and posted on You Tube and like many videos making fun of others it became viral. You see, Clifton speaks Jamaican patois, the comical reaction came when Clifton tried to explain in proper English the plight of his community and the inconvenience and danger they face.

Later he was interviewed on a popular Jamaican TV show where the hosts continue to poke fun and laugh at him. Apparently Clifton was invited so they could continue to make fun of his accent NOT trying to help him and his community. What is evident is that there is a lack of respect for those who are trying to make a difference and who are from a poor background and cannot speak the queens english like those from the educated upper class. Yes, the edited clip may be funny, but nothing is funny when people are totally ignored and their plight and suffering turned into comic relief. Let us build bridges instead.

I give thanks and support to those on Facebook www.facebook.com/WeCanCrossIt who have decided to take a leaf from Clifton’s book and have begun to do something to help the community of Mavis Bank. I salute them. I Big Up Clifton Brown, he is a hero in my book.

To Floss or Not to Floss that is the Question?

Jane Nina Buchanan — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:30:02 UT

“How come you are staying here?” my client exclaimed when he dropped me off at the Altamont Court hotel in Kingston, JA.

“Because this fits my needs. It’s efficient, safe and clean. I am family when am here plus, it’s fantastic value for money. Why?” I am curious.

“Because someone of your stature should be staying at the Spanish Court Hotel, you should be holding your meetings there to show people who you are. And act more white!”. He replies with open conviction.

Nowhere else is the appearance of wealth and social status more ridge and important for display than in Jamaica in 2011. The need to show ones ability is no longer judged by ones credentials and authority those solid foundations have been replaced with gauche peacock parades of bling and wild grandiose titles they have self bestowed online. “CEO’s” without staff, “Presidents” without revenue and “Tech Guru’s” and “Consultants” who aren’t even bankable by a major brand to hire them as staff. So many, just Kings new clothes….

The diaspora moved to foreign lands and worked hard for ‘the man’ and created the barrel mentality arriving back looking like they’ve been ‘in farin’. But times have changed and as anyone who is abroad can tell you. The life in Jamaica is often a much better quality than the struggle for ‘stuff’ here. There is a lot of hard work to be done and quite frankly many that I know on the Rock couldn’t even stomach the long hours and the tough environments that workers have to make that $. Plenty of times I’ve been approached by people with laundry lists of high end items they want, yet these same people when I have found them work, quit so soon as they “won’t be working for no slave driver!”. Interesting how they would see the long hours I put in and the trudging through the winter snow, hail and rain to be there on time. OK for me to work for the man? But it’s not for them.

Why are so many folks buying into this flossing? This hyperreality that they back up with online gusto? Putting on pedestals the worship of goods and faux social status over value and endurable credibility of solid education and employment resumes. Personally, I think it’s the degeneration of ‘Jamaica the brand’. People are looking to America and having all those brands be the badge of their success. There’s little perceived value to buy-Jamaica or be-authentic-Jamaican anymore. There’s no respect or fair-trade ethos to support anything other than the flash named brands. The disinterest to preserve the vibrant valuable culture is seen in JTBs global campaigns that bolster the glossy All-Inclusive market over the meet the people smaller hotels. The only way we can buy back that trust is to not, hook line and sinker buy into the floss. The more Jamaicans buy into the brand floss like debt riddled America the more negative an impact it will have on the country and culture. Jamaica you don't know what you have till it's gone.

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." -Lost with the seduction of crass consumerism - It’s costing folks their lives, literally.

Jamaica’s Diaspora Representation

Hamilton Daley — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:30:02 UT

Money talks, and with remittance revenues of over US $1 billion dollars per year, Jamaica’s Diaspora should have a loud voice. With the value of the diaspora’s foreign exchange revenue second only to the mighty Tourism industry, no government can afford to leave the proper courtship and engagement of the diaspora community to chance. A dedicated ministerial portfolio is required – no less!

Yes, the diaspora is a government constructed movement of patriotic Jamaicans residing abroad. Some in the disapora object to the involvement of the government any at all, but I say to them; respectfully, it is a mistake to object. Jamaica’s disapora movement is wider than the boundary of any one country. Only the resources of Jamaica’s Consulates and High Commissions across the world could properly serve the full extent of Jamaica’s international disapora. The movement is therefore a more cogent, organised and relevant force because of the fact that the government is involved.

Why should the government want to be involved seems a straightforward question and answer. The diaspora does need the government to support and facilitate it as a movement, whilst on the other hand the government and the country needs the diaspora for its crucial foreign exchange revenue that substantially offsets the trading deficit, assisting Jamaica to keep its head above the water of being plagued with international debt which would carry devastating consequences for every walk of Jamaican life.

Therefore, it is a matter of national security that any government will need Jamaicans abroad to not forget ‘home’, to not completely abandon old Jamaica for a new life in new lands, to not completely divest their interest, to remember family and friends on those special days of the year, and to continue to take pride in the successes of Jamaica as their own success.

The diaspora should not object to the government’s involvement - but use the government’s involvement. The problem with the disapora is that its membership (formal and informal) abounds in passion but lacks cohesion to organize itself into a movement with one democratic voice. It stands accused of being hijacked by commercial concerns and political meddling which turn more people away than attract their involvement.

Jamaica’s diaspora is presently one of Jamaica’s greatest untapped resource. There seems to be a lack of imagination or willpower to beneficially develop this relationship. Successive governments search for the utopia of discovering off-shore oil whilst over-looking Jamaica’s gifted off-shore community which remain a relatively neglected national resource.

Hamilton Daley is an Attorney-at-Law in Jamaica and Solicitor Advocate in England.

Black no Longer Beautiful? What Is Happening To Our Children?

Audrey Reeve — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:30:02 UT

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds” one of the most prophetic statement by the late reggae superstar Bob Marley. Albeit this statement was most likely intended for the international community, for our purpose, let’s assign it to Marley’s native country Jamaica. What signs and symptoms were apparent in the Jamaican culture as manifested by Jamaicans to warrant such a quote? Well, one can only speculate as Mr. Marley is not around to define or elaborate on his quote. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t referring to the institution of slavery in which blacks were enslaved by whites. Additionally, self hate amongst blacks might have been an issue but nonetheless ambiguous and therefore these signs and symptoms could not directly be attributed this common and dangerous plight of self despise within our country and among our black brothers and sisters. But what about the blatant and overt sign of self hate as manifested by certain behaviors such as skin bleaching? Was this even a concern when Marley made the quote? Well, it might not have been an issue back then, but undoubtedly has been wreaking havoc in Jamaica and other parts of the world over the past few years.

What is self hate? More specifically, what is black self hate? According to Webster Universal College Dictionary: Self hate is self despise, self loathing, dislike of oneself, auto phobia…………….Black self hate is hating oneself because of the color of one’s skin, hair texture and facial features such as broader nose and thicker/ fuller lips. How could this be? Black heroes and pioneers fought relentlessly for us to gain acceptance, respectability and equality by and within our black communities and as well by mainstream. Well, we couldn’t say that our heroes: Marcus Garvey, Dr. Marten Luther King, Nanny, Paul Bogle……………fought in vain. No, that would be slanted. Let’s face it, for the majority of blacks, they have a healthy self esteem and self concept but as Montel Williams stated, “self hate is a problem in most all cultures, but appears to be more prominent in the black community”. The problem is compounded by the fact that it is “misunderstood, unaddressed, underestimated and pervasive.” Black self hate is extremely insidious. This is partly due to the fact that many blacks would not actually share with others that they are self haters. This silent destroyer of our people manifests itself in variety of ways and sadly, it appears to cling to and afflict the young and vulnerable among us. This pervasive demon and destroyer of souls come in varying forms: substance abuse, self mutilation, self sabotage, self deprecation, violence against self, violence against others, disregard for societal laws and the most insidious and most widely accepted behavior of all, self bleaching.

The problem of bleaching has become almost an epidemic in certain parts of the world in recent times. Take Jamaica, for example, the problem has become so widespread that they even sometimes have bleaching contest. Because the issues is national, Ministry of health and other health authorities are warning of the health hazards that can result from bleaching one’s skin. For example, Blindness, skin cancer and extreme sensitivity to the sun. The most troublesome aspect of this issue though, is the fact that some mothers in Jamaica are using this toxic concoction not only on themselves but on their young powerless and vulnerable underage children. This is tantamount to severe child abuse and neglect. Skin bleaching is not new to Jamaica but has become more national following the revelation by dancehall artist Vibz Kartel that he has been bleaching his skin. Kartel is very proud of his fairer skin secondary to bleaching. It is not a surprise that music is an excellent medium to communicate a message. Equally effective is the artist stance on certain issues. From its inception in the 1960s reggae has been used to effect change: politics, racism and poverty to name a few. Some reggae artiste are seen as role models, the young and gullible mimic and model certain behaviors exhibited by these artistes. It doesn’t matter the message: positive or negative, violence, drugs, and just about any form of undesirable behaviors practiced by the so called ‘role model’.

Before Master bleacher Vybz Kartel after

Not intending on delving blame, most of these young people who can afford to purchase bleaching cream, they are usually of a maturity level that allow them to decipher right from wrong. Therefore, it’s a choice, albeit a poor and dangerous one. Just like choosing to go to college or break the law or going to church etc. But as an article in the Washington post states, a lot of these girls who are bleaching claim a fairer skin allow for more opportunity. “The browning have more blys than the blackies” (more opportunities are available to lighter skin blacks than their darker counter paths) This is sad, sad, sad. Such a departure from the wisdom and self empowerment messages imparted to us by our freedom fighters and heroes. Marcus Garvey said it most eloquently when he stated, “God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be…” So in this powerful statement, Garvey reminded Blacks that they are responsible for their destiny. The question is, how did we as a people evolve to be such self haters? Is it a spinoff from slavery where the mixed slaves would get more opportunities than the pure black slaves? But wait a minute! Slavery has been abolished over two hundred years ago. The act of enslavement has been abolished but the mental slavery Bob Marley sang about is still very much alive and kicking.

The contributing factors are varied. One of the most salient contributing factors is ones upbringing and the values imparted from parents to children. When children are taught to love and respect themselves, they inevitably grow into adulthood with a strong sense of self and a healthy self esteem. The opposite is also true. The parents are the first and most influential teachers. A friend once shared a very disturbing story with me. I will call him Jeff in the name of privacy. Jeff’s mom continuously praised whites whose eyes were blue and commented that it’s a pity her children didn’t have blue eyes as they would be more beautiful than they were with their brown eyes. So, just imagine growing up in an environment where you are told you are not as beautiful as whites because your eyes are brown. How disturbing! And yet, we wonder why so many young blacks feel inferior. Peers, television and other outside influences also play a major roll in how we perceive ourselves as a people. A handsome, intelligent young man, John (not his real name) shared one of the saddest stories I have heard. He said during his teenage years in Jamaica, he was dating a class mate Madge (not her real name.) he was quite fond of her. He said they got on very well and he thought she would have become his wife. However, she looked at him one day and told him that he was too dark and she preferred his friend who was light skinned. Madge and John eventually parted ways. Nonetheless John’s self esteem took a nose dive. He said this impacted him so much that at one time he thought about marrying someone from another more ‘desirable race’ such as a Caucasian person. John eventually rebuilds his confidence. He left Jamaica and attended University in the US. While he was there he started studying the Rastafarian doctrine with the strong message of self love and acceptance. This way his children would be light skinned and would not be exposed to the kind of rejection such as he has experienced because he is a black male. How does one even attempt to rectify this problem? One thing is crystal clear, the problem of self hate didn’t occur over night and it will take a lot of hard work over an extended period of time to identify, define and eradicate this double edges sword.

In the mean time, how can we attempt to start dealing with this very serious problem? For starters we can remind our kids, grand kids, niece, nephews, brother, sister, granny and just about anyone we can share the message with ‘Black is Beautiful’! Remember what the great one Marcus Garvey said, “The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatest.” Oh! And by the way, Jamaica is home to some of the most beautiful people in the world. If in doubt, look at how many times Jamaica has won Miss World and Miss Universe in the international beauty pageant. It’s also home to the fastest runners in the world and some of the brightest minds. We as Jamaican have so much to be proud of. And one more thing, Jamaica made history as the first (and only) tropical climate country to enter a bobsled race. So let’s remind our young people to be proud of themselves, proud of their heritage and most importantly, love themselves. If the freedom fighters: Nanny, Dr. King, Sam Sharpe, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X were self haters, we would still be an enslaved people to this day.

So come on people, make our fore parents and our freedom fighters proud!

Young People are Leaders of ‘Today’ and Tomorrow

Craig Dixon — Mon, 30 May 2011 12:30:02 UT

Many leaders and protectors of the old-guard habitually spew clichéd epithets about youth development at political rallies and during Youth Month which serve to alienate and degrade rather than integrate and inspire young people. Three of these catch-phrases which have attained universal renown with seemingly unchallenged public approbation are; ‘you (youth) are the leaders of tomorrow’, ‘youth are the future’ and ‘youth are the next generation’. Of course the essence of these is the same and millions have accepted it without cum grano salis.

Most youth activists appear to miss the underpinning message of the exclusion of youth from high level political and social processes which are entrenched in these epithets. To confer young people with the crown of tomorrows’ leadership is in effect robbing them of their potential, their ability and responsibility to be leaders and ideators of today. It is to subject youths to a state of passivity, ineptitude and intellectual servitude to the establishment.

Critics and cynics often rant misguidedly about how apathetic Generations X and Y are but say very little about the extent to which political and business leaders go to keep young people uncritical and politically dispassionate. In which country has there been a compelling and effective charge to make these phrases anything but platitudinous and deceptive?

I overheard a friend from Sri Lanka telling one of our colleagues at a youth leadership conference in Rwanda that young people are not only the leaders of tomorrow but of ‘today and tomorrow’. Today’s unquestioning knowledge consumers cannot be tomorrow’s critical and innovate leaders. This is antithetical to principles of sustainable development; it is an affront to ardent nationalists and is a seething recipe for further leadership crises globally.

The irony is that our fears, after extensive periods of repression, usually come back to haunt us. If leaders fear the free-spirited nature, exuberance and technological savoir faire of young people, the judicious thing to do would be to engage them positively - to provide them with avenues of expression and civic engagement. Failing to do this will give rise to their greatest fear; social bedlam evinced in Egypt and Tunisia or future leadership crises seen in scores of countries across the world.

There are no perennial benefits that can be garnered from condemning youths to silence. To do so is to place the future on columns of straw. “Participation” wrote Steve Burkey “is an essential part of human growth, that is development of self confidence, pride, initiative, creativity, responsibility, cooperation...this process, whereby people learn to take charge of their lives and solve their own problems, is the essence of development”. Any country that fails to or desists from adopting this approach will produce generations of mannequins and mad-nuh-rhatids!

I implore our leaders to begin seeing youth as a distinct group of people with skill-sets and abilities rather than a temporary biological stage in human growth. What we take to market is what we shall have to sell!

The Residence of Dreams

Craig Dixon — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:30:02 UT

My memory of the Graham-mango tree in the boondocks behind my cottage-home in Pellriver will live on ad infinitum. We were kite and tail; aphorism and sage. I would, when angst or distressed by the internal tales of the day, curl like a fetus in her arms. Her arms, dappled with brown and white stains, hung precariously over a ravine. I would lie in her palm and watch Ground-Doves and Pitcheries forage for pickings within the bamboo roots in the gully. On other occasions I listened to the bamboos’ canorous chimes or the little stream hop-scotching over pebbles and stones. I felt a sense of purpose and belonging in my tree. It was during this period, while in her arms, that I first envisaged the residence of dreams.

These were testing times. I was young then, a mere boy of fourteen years, deeply saddened by recent turns in my life which condemned me to solitude. There was much mudslinging and lambaste prior to my banishment from my family, in fact years of it, and I started to fulfil the prophecies of my future threadbare existence. I was a tyrant you see. Look at the tyrant many would say, walking in his absent father’s trajectory to nowhere. I walked alone for a long time, through rivulets, pastures, forests, mountains, searching for peace of mind, while trying to eschew the qualm I often felt on human contact.

In my weakest moments, when overpowered by fear, I would climb and lie in the arms of my tree where I would be consoled, like the psalmists king, by Nature’s harp. I was often afraid because I felt that things would never change for the better and the evidence was everywhere. The queues-of-poverty kept extending in the cane-fields, in the rivers where I laundered, at the public pipes where we gathered for the precious liquid and in the grocery-shops where I inhaled Marijuana smoke. I added one lost soul to each queue I was told.

Gradually, I began to accept my prescribed fate. But one day, everything changed. I had an afflatus – a transcendental impartation of knowledge. It was mango season; I was resting on my back on a limb while eating a graham when I descended into a daydream. In my dream the world appeared to me as a massive labyrinth (maze) with a point of entry and exit point. I entered.

In the maze I saw many roads and countless roadblocks. I felt an inclination to reach the exit but each time I thought I was near, I walked into a dead-end and had to ply another route. Along the way I saw billions of people on route to the exit point and billions more who had given up hope of ever reaching it. I met wealthy and talented people who told me that their journeys began in the middle of the maze or close to the exit and were therefore least unnerved by the labyrinthian twist. I saw women and men carrying the hopes of their families and children on their backs, crawling on their knees, but persisting. I witnessed artists, mavericks, poets, activists contriving to circumvent the maze. Among the fold were those who seemed to have given up hope of ever making the entire journey.

When I reached the exit point, I saw the words– the residence of dreams: beyond the labyrinth of life and below these words, the inscription; it matters not where you were born, you have a right to be here and a right to dream. All dreams, for all men of all seasons, are in one place beyond the Labyrinth of Life. If you persist through the snags of life’s maze with unfaltering determination and purpose, you will find your dream in residence, waiting on you to make your claim.

I felt an air of freedom as the new author of my destiny, which I never thought possible. Things were never the same after that day. I have achieved some of my dreams and for the others it is only a matter of time. If you have ever questioned your right to be here, rest assured that your dreams are in residence too.

THE RESIDENCE OF DREAMS
By Craig Dixon (2009)

Many things inflect and alter with time

Like policies, polities and paradigms –

But the residence of dreams

Is more eternal than time-

Each dream - long ere the dreamer’s thrust to claim-

Has lived in one place beyond the labyrinth of life–and

Every dreamer, rich or poor, was born in

A distinct spot within the labyrinthian twist –

For some dreamers, the course to fulfilment

Proceeds without curves, for others

It’s a meander of hazards and snags –

And still, for others, a mixture of both-

But despite the nature of your course

Your dream awaits you; enduringly-

Strive for your dream therefore, with the same

Desire you have to breathe,

With intensity and courage uninhibited by fear,

Or the rebuffs of men

Who strum silent strings of submission -

And surely, in time, through lowlights and fireworks

Tantrums and meditation,

Star-crossed love and passionate love,

You will find your dream in residence,

Where passion sings a calm silence and

The soul examines the queries of the mind-

Fixed beyond the labyrinth,

Waiting – eternally

Setting the record straight about the Jamaican Diaspora "Convention" and the boycott threat

David Mullings — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:25:00 UT

The Jamaica Observer yesterday finally shed light on the looming boycott of the upcoming Jamaican Diaspora "Convention" scheduled for Ocho Rios, Jamaica from June 15-17 under the theme "One Nation: Jamaica and its Diaspora in Partnership" .

When the Hon. Bruce Golding was sworn in as Jamaica's Prime Minister, he said the following:

“And what are going to be the priorities of our government? Transparency and accountability in government"

This note is my personal attempt to live up to those very same priorities, providing transparency about what has really transpired, subject myself to accountability to those I represent and allow others to be held accountable for their actions or inactions.

The concept of the conference was changed from a "conference" to a "convention" but most definitely was not planned in "partnership" with the Diaspora, despite the stated theme.

The Jamaican Diaspora Advisory Board which I have been part of since the last conference in 2008 where I was asked to serve by the US Advisory Board members as the first Future Leaders Representative for the USA (I was not elected) is supposed to meet twice per year in Jamaica with the Minister of State with responsibility for Diaspora Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade (MFAFT).

According to the terms of reference establishing the board: "The appointed member was envisaged to be a representative of the interest of the group in their respective countries and to convey such interests to the Minister responsible for Diaspora Affairs."

No meeting has been held since January 2010.

At that meeting, the members of the board were handed an agenda for the convention, including the location of Sunset Jamaica Grande, an all-inclusive hotel that would cost some US$135 per night per person.

The board members raised a number of concerns at the meeting:

The location was going to make it prohibitively expensive for a number of delegates to attend and a location change should be considered.
The agenda was too narrow and did not include any discussion on "crime and violence" like eery previous conference despite the dudus extradition matter being in the spotlight at the time. Jamaicans overseas expect to hear about gains in fighting crime as that helps them decide whether to visit, recommend others to visit, move back or invest in Jamaica.
The agenda was changed from one with concurrent workshops to one with consecutive workshops which now reduced interactivity in workshops and forced people to attend areas they were not interested in while completely removing areas from the conference that were of interest to many, like crime and violence or investment opportunities in Jamaica, especially with the upcoming divestments

These recommendations were given to the Minister, at the time Dr. Ronald Robinson. Not a single change was made to the agenda and so the various regions boycotted the 2010 conference scheduled for June of that year.

The Ministry decided to try and register people directly through the Consulates but the CGs were unable to mobilize enough people to fill the 300 rooms and would have resulted in a loss for the Government so the conference was "cancelled" (or "postponed" depending on which article you read).

The public was told that this was so because of the state of emergency which was called after the incursion into Tivoli Gardens in May 2010 but in reality there was barely anyone registered to come.

SELECTION VS ELECTION

The Terms of Reference for the formation and governance of the Jamaican Diaspora Advisory Board clearly states the following:

"The Advisory Board will be required to give advice as it relates to the planning of all Jamaican Diaspora Conferences."

The present JLP administration executed the 2008 Conference with consultation and concurrent workshops. They decided to change the approach for 2010. Don't be fooled if anyone tries to paint any members of the board as simply being against the JLP as the 2008 conference is proof that the diaspora has worked with both parties when they were in power.

Our advice this time has been given and has been repeatedly ignored. The people and organizations we have spoken to who normally attend the conference have been asking us to pass on the suggestions and if changes were not made, they would boycott.

LATE 2010

Since the January 2010 meeting there has been no official meeting but each of us has had our own little private chats with various people.

I was told in 2010 by Minister Robinson that "some wrong people are on the board" and when I asked what was meant by that, the answer was "some PNP people", something that caused great unease because politics was now entering the board in a way that I had never seen before.

Worse, members of the board were ELECTED at a conference to represent the delegates in the regions so how could any member be "wrong"? That would be an affront to democracy.

It was explained to me that there was a fix for it: The Minister would now SELECT who sits on the board instead of individuals being democratically elected either at a national conference or the conference in Jamaica.

This was clearly an attempt to place politically favourable people on the board and take control of the advisory board instead of seeking people to represent the interests of the regions.

I was against it and so were many members of the board as well as many of the people we are supposed to represent.

REPRIMANDING THE BOARD

In January 2010 the board was invited to present to the Joint Select Committee on Diaspora Affairs in Parliament. Some members decided to read a statement about the impending Air Jamaica divestment (I always supported the divestment and did not endorse the statement).

A number of Jamaicans in the diaspora had asked their representatives to communicate to the government their dislike for the divestment without considering the JALPA proposal and the statement was read in Parliament.

Subsequently, members of the board were reprimanded for speaking on the subject and reminded that they serve at the discretion of the Minister.

This, even though these members were merely being "representative of the interest of the group in their respective countries" as per the mandate of board members.

2011

Minister Robinson resigned in late 2010 because of his involvement in the Manatt scandal and no official communication had been sent to the board indicating this. Minister Marlene Malahoo-Forte was subsequently given the portfolio and this was not also communicated. In late March 2011, the Ministry, through the Consulates, sent us a draft agenda for the 2011 Convention.

It was basically the same as the January 2010 meeting and did NOT include recommendations from the advisory board which ultimately had come from past delegates and members of the diaspora interested in attending the conference.

No dialogue had taken place with regards to the 2011 agenda: no emails, phone calls or face to face meetings. Nothing. It stopped leading up to the 2010 conference and resumed in March 2011 with an agenda being sent to us.

No input was requested at first but then the CG in Miami asked for the input of the Southeast Region. Input was provided and the subsequent drafts have not reflected any of it.

location cannot be changed because Government reserved 300 rooms and will lose money - fair
still consecutive sessions instead of the traditional concurrent workshops
still no sessions on security or investment opportunities in Jamaica
no mention of delegate registration fees

After having asked over and over about any registration fees for delegates so that we could have a better idea of the total cost to attend the convention, the Ministry and CGs have yet to provide information.

I was able to find out by visiting http://jamaicadiasporaconnect.com/ where you can get more info.

Delegates must pay US/CAN$120 or £75

The hotel room rate is US$145/Single occupancy or US$165/double (early bird rates) while regular rates are US$155/$180.

In addition, there is a 5% discount on Air Jamaica available for attendees, for those who still have Air Jamaica flying to their location.

A grand minimum total of US$120 (registration fee) + US$435 (3 nights) + US$300 (airfare) = US$855

This money would be spent to mainly talk about health, education and the Jamaica@50 celebrations (investment opportunities in sports and culture) at a "convention" that has an agenda not reflecting any input from the diaspora or the diaspora advisory board.

SELECTION VS ELECTION

Since the creation of the Jamaican Diaspora Advisory Board, members were always ELECTED at the conference in Jamaica or a national conference before. They were confirmed by the Minister of State.

The idea has now been put forward to have the Minister of State SELECT members of the board instead of the various regions electing their representatives. I thought the idea died when Minister Robinson resigned but it has been brought back in the last month.

The UK national conference passed a resolution in April this year REJECTING this idea because it is "dismissive of the democratic process of election by the Jamaican Diaspora in the UK".

CONCLUSION

The conference in Jamaica has ALWAYS included the diaspora in the setting of the agenda and the terms of reference. The Government and local preparatory committee has decided to ignore the diaspora in setting the 2010 and then 2011 agenda, in the planning of the conference to ensure that the potential attendees would find it as beneficial as possible and ignored our requests for transparency.

Both the PNP and JLP have also failed to properly educate the diaspora about the purpose of the Advisory Board or the conferences and so people legitimately ask "who are these people on this board? They do not represent me."

The only way I can support the conference is if the agenda is changed to reflect the many concerns of the potential attendees and the selection process designed to put the "right" people on the board is abandoned.

Some individuals in Jamaica do not feel that the board members represent the people that elected them and should not act as a lobby group even though the mandate clearly states we must represent those in our respective countries.

Representation by definition requires us to lobby and make sure the varied views of the diaspora are heard at all levels of the government. Our role is not simply to parrot what the Government of Jamaica tells us or to be quiet when the people who elected us have asked us to make their views known just because some members of the Government do not like what is being said.

We do not play politics and it must change today if we expect to mobilize more people in the diaspora to meaningfully participate in the betterment of Jamaica.

Add your name to this petition if you support democratic elections, real engagement and actual partnership.

About the Author:

David Mullings is the future leader representative on the Diaspora Advisory Board for the USA. David is also the Co-Founder and CEO Random Media, an integrated media and entertainment company focused on Caribbean music and culture. Random Media works with content partner to identify digital revenue channels. Through its Realvibez brand it is a YouTube partner, allowing it earn money from YouTube placing advertising with video content as well as through the new rentals program. Random Media is also now preparing to sell ebooks of Caribbean origin in the Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks stores.

What is Jamaica, the brand?

Jane Nina Buchanan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:30:01 UT

What are the images your mind conjures when you think of Jamaica? Sunny beaches, ganja and guns perhaps? Or how about laid back work ethic, homophobia or backward banana republic on the brink of civil unrest? Credible words or great misnomers?

An American colleague remarked, “My wife and I have been going to Jamaica now for 8yrs we just love it.” Then he paused, took a deep breathe and said, “But don’t you feel as you drive to the compound and see those shanty huts that any minute now they might rise up with machetes!”

This is ‘Brand Jamaica”? Is this fear of a black planet or fear of the folklorist bravado that Yaad likes to perpetuate; the bombastic bad bwoy Buccaneer. We know this is the media image of Jamaica, search online and you will be floored by the amount of off-balance reporting and negative reports on gangs and drugs. During the time of the Dudus drama you would think the whole isle was ablaze with unrest and uncertainty. A time that cost Jamaica dearly. Meantime in Bangkok street riots took many lives but still Conde Nast placed the city as the Best Place to Visit. Proof that it is perception not reality that reaps the revenue.

Ironically, it’s the tourist beach hustlers who understand Brand Jamaica more than anyone. It’s a symbiotic relationship; the tourist start with their need for drugs or their yearning for sex and it end in a toxic trade and an understanding that the more brazen they are the more most tourists will in intimidation, pay. They understand that the key factor in revenue for Brand Jamaican spending is entrenched with fear and distrust. They have cleverly capitalized on this with lotharian tactics that flip on a dime to aggressive hustling and intimidating swagger.

More sluggish to catch on is the Jamaican Tourist Board. The approach of the JTB is that of a band-aid on a cancer. When your brand image is that of unrest, corruption, danger, drugs and guns, a pretty picture of an exotic beach won’t work. More pretty picture campaigns and a social media push that posts banal “How is your day” posting to the thousands of potential customers. However, it is clear their strategy is to build up “all inclusive” market, (a mainly foreign owned industry). A strategy that shoots the brand in the foot as it fortifies the salient factors that Jamaica is not safe and the locals are not to be trusted.

When there’s negative brand connotations the key strategy is to change that perception fast before it spreads. Deflection is a weak tactic when you are up against a media tsunami of negative misinformation.

Identifing the main issues as fear and distrust in the brand. Knowledge, perspective and exposure to facts will reinvigorate the lost revenue. Steering revenue to the smaller hotels of Jamaica and encouraging tourists to visit Kingston is key towards the transparent drip of trust. The fact that JTB pretty much ignore the smaller hotels and Kingston again strengthen the fear. JTB need to stop herding their social media masses to endless banal clips of reggae artists videos but post human interest stories of real people in real communities doing great initiatives alongside pretty pictures. Show the cosmopolitan aspects of the people and the culture. Applaud the victories in education, industry and the arts. Bombard people with facts and real perspective. During the Dudus drama not one major media put out that Tivoli was the size of Sandals resort in a small contained area miles from any tourist area. When there is a hurricane the story is the same huddles masses of foreign journalists relish in the scaremongering, “A city on the brink of Civil Unrest” I heard last time on CNN. Then there’s other media reports like that video report on the Wall Street Journal about returning Jamaicans who come home for retirement but invariably killed in robberies. Who is managing Brand Jamaica here? Where are the global media watchdogs who protect Brand Jamaica and where are the lobbyist groups who instigate the more truthful real balance in reporting. What litigation surrounds to protect Brand Jamaica when such unbalanced reporting continues.

This re-brand needs to be a cross platform initiative to survive and really reap the potential global revenue. Manufactures of Jamaica need to protect an promote “Buy Jamaica” to rebuild that trust and knowledge that the country has authority and is worthy of investment. Education should have a component in to build back the pride the people have in the land and culture and should also tie into the Buy Jamaica ethos. Politicians need to be mindful of the Brand Jamaica image when they play verbal ping pong throughout each campaign promoting crime stats and the other parties corruption. Jamaica is the only nation in Caricom who print so grandiosely the crime statistics. Meantime, throughout the rest of the world crime statistics are ‘re-classified’. What use is this negative branding?

Local media needs too needs to be held accountable with watchdog monitoring committees. Accountability is key in order to bring back Jamaica the positive brand onto a global stage for revenue potential.

Who is driving this brand and what is their strategy? I think they are asleep at the wheel.

About:
Jane Nina Buchanan, Owner stooshpr.com. Originally from Liverpool, England she started her career as producer and presenter of the SONY award winning show "Streetlife" on the BBC. From radio she moved on to television with seasons as Entertainment Producer for the network Granada TV show,"This Morning" and later "Jameson Tonight" on Sky TV. Headhunted from Sky TV by Sir Bob Geldof and Lord Waheed Alli company at 25yrs old, she was appointed the position of US Producer for Planet 24 Productions. Based out of NYC she coordinated and produced all US strands for the controversial show "The Word" and later, Channel 4's "The Big Breakfast". When Planet 24 relocated to LA to produce the successful "Survivor" reality show, Jane decided to make NYC her home and continues to live and work in the media. She has held staff positions at New Video Group/Docurama (Home Video arm of A&E/The History Channel), Disney Theatrical (Lion King,, Mary Poppins and Phil Collins' Tarzan) Maxim Magazine/Dennis Publishing, and Bad Boy Entertainment with Sean P.Diddy Combs.

Dream-right: What the journey to Rwanda meant to me

Craig Dixon — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:30:01 UT

“Ambition beyond existence is the essential purpose of our being” – Kahlil Gibran

As a child my sleeves were always soaked with liquid flames, which would hang like Jamaican wis-wis (withe) from my facial monuments. I loathed wis-wis because I suspected they strangled fruit-trees and they were always in my way causing nuisance. In later years, I learned to use them as bands to keep firewood together and as skipping ropes. Thereafter, there was never enough wis-wis to satisfy my demands. I used them to guide my box-trucks through dusty potholes in the streets, as belts for my pants while I worked in turmeric fields and yam ‘gruns’… and to hold pieces of wood together on my makeshift pigeon coop. That was one of my first lessons from the open-school of Nature - that if a man looks carefully at himself and his circumstances, somewhere in the thick fabric of frustration is a life-changing lesson and oftentimes a solution. Man must configure his mind’s eye to see these things… and to use them to his benefit and those around him.

Most of my leisure time was spent in the wild – working, teaching myself to read, crying or just observing things. This meant that very little time was left for socialization. I was wary of people because I was only exposed to their more rigid and unfeeling dispositions. It took a great number of years for me to learn another vital lesson form Nature. This time about my solitary existence - Stendhal encapsulated it well - “everything can be acquired in solitude, except character”. In other words - Gods cannot cleanse the world from the heavens. Lame birds on the ground, cannot attend to the needs of fledglings in the trees. And so from an early age, I decided to prepare myself for the entire world. To learn the things that an indolent peer would not and to challenge myself beyond the expectations of those who constituted my milieu. I decided to dream for myself and for millions like me.

I read in Gibran’s Secrets of the Heart that “ambition beyond existence is the essential purpose of our being”. These are words from the fragrant lips of The Ambitious Violet who begged Nature to turn her into a rose and died soon after in a tempest. She said to Nature “turn me into a tall rose, for I wish to lift my head high with pride.” On seeing her demise, one of the violet maidens said “because we (violets) are poor in height the tempest is unable to subdue us”. But the ambitious Violet insisted on her happiness, “I am happy now because I have probed outside my little world into the mystery of the universe” she said. “I have heard the whisper of the firmament through the ears of the rose and touched the folds of Light’s garments with rose petals. Is there any here who can claim such honour?” From this story I have learned that Life has no respect for the Sons of Stagnation - neither the masters of the world nor the slaves, but more so the slaves. In truth, there are no pleasures worth having that are more pleasing and monumental than those which come as fruits of ambition.

This is what the journey to Rwanda meant to me. This is the highlight of the programme, the key thing I learned – man is nothing if he has given up on his dreams – man does not have forever to dream. A man may have to trudge the highlands and lowlands of life’s labyrinth to succeed, but there is no undertaking more deserving of his time. He must try and try until he gets there.

My dream is to inspire the world to dream and I felt as though I was getting there as I walked the streets of Kigali. I want to hearten young women to colour the world with their flair and fancy and young men to see Life as the unfolding of their deepest desires. I believe that this is one the best way to fight injustice…because most of our contentions emerge from insecurities caused by need and ignorance/lack of education. But even so, “education (as we know it) will not take the place of persistence; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” (Calvin Coolidge).

Let us all ‘press on’ today and tomorrow and on the fickle days ahead. And let each take an aspirant along the way– encourage someone; uplift someone; sponsor someone. As for me, the days ahead will be daunting…but Nkabom: Rwanda has made the merit of persistence more evident and I believe now more than ever, that I too have a right to dream, and not only that, but also that the more humanity understands this dream-right and pursues its properties, the closer we will get to desired peace and solidarity.

Call for action - Improve the accountability and transparency in Jamaica today for better business ethics

Jane Nina Buchanan — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:30:01 UT

As a US business owner I often champion new ventures, I was eager to promote the premiere of the Jamaican Blog Awards, which I felt was a great Tech initiative. I pushed the venture to many of my clients as "a great Jamaican project". Pegasus,

LIME and NCB had sponsored so I believed it had integrity. My excitement and anticipation soon morphed into perplexity and then anger at the way a potentially worthy International boost seems to have been turned into an insular self aggrandizing and palm greasing for small coteries.

This letter is a call to action to Jamaica professionals to make changes and demand accountability.At the Top 5 reveal show (1/3/2011), the process has been fraught with discrepancies and anomalies. One category had only four, and no explanation was given for this. One category ended up with two blogs by the same person in the Top 5, giving that individual twice the opportunity of competing blogs. If entries were limited, that would be another matter, but with over 276 blogs initially presented, it simply should not be the case.

This obvious lack of screening was compounded when at the Top 5 Reveal, it was announced that the public would then be subjected to a second round of voting, both online and via text, presumably to allow sponsor LIME the opportunity to recoup funds (text votes cost J$25 a pop). This ran counter to the previously posted procedure on the Jamaica Blog awards site, which did not specify that more than one round of public voting would ensue. Many of the globally popular sites like www.jamaicansmusic.com lost. Even though they collected over 40 million hits on their blog over the past 6 months and boasts roughly 250,000 fans on their facebook page. The feedback was also off the charts racking up over 600 likes, tweets and comments on their voting page, on their first day of promotion. Interesting? (FYI I am not a blogger nor do I have a vested interest in any of the blog in the competition).

January 16, the awards were presented without any summary from the Judges, without the public having any idea who the judges were and without any idea of the final tally of votes. One winner taking the podium smarmily thanked the “Old Girls Association” of her high school alma mater for, in her words, “ensuring that the votes got in.”

Further, the person with two blogs in one Top5 category not only won the category, but went on to take the night’s top honour – Blog of the Year overall.In light of the above, the following questions are unavoidable:-

On what basis were the Judges given an assurance of anonymity and why?- Especially since the JBA had earlier offered, via its Facebook page, to post a list of the Judges?

Why could they not have been presented at the awards ceremony, with the results presumably sealed from public scrutiny prior to announcement?To a foreign investor this is highly suspect, is it because these judges had conflicting interests in the outcome? Is it that they were also sponsors’ representatives and didn’t want their own personal choices to be made public?In virtually all such contests - whether film awards, like Cannes or the Golden Globes, but especially in a new contest, where a qualitative analysis has been done (with or without public vote), a Judges report is a standard procedure. Staid, empty press releases, and constant removal of questions posted from their facebook page are not helping your cause.

If this awards programme is indeed your concept, you would do well to take the appropriate decisions to salvage credibility:

Publish the full list of Judges;
Publish the final tally of online and text votes in each category;
Declare any conflicting positions among either judges or sponsors and issue a full apology for same;
Rescind the awards where such conflicts have been identified;It’s time for Jamaicans to stop this mockery in business now the nation is on the global tech stage.

This is a great opportunity for Jamaican talent to shine and attract revenue this is not the time to for amateur night – major corporations, including the nation’s largest bank and one of the biggest telecoms providers, are involved.As an outside investor, I'm most ashamed to have championed this Jamaican business to my US clients.

I had posted my concerns on the JBA Facebook page which they continually remove.

In order for Jamaica to have a credible silicon valley and revenue (not a self appointed coterie, but people with true global tech authority and experience ) there needs to be transparency, integrity and above all a break down in corruption and nepotism. I believe in Jamaica and the talent of it's people but such issues are holding everyone back from global revenue.

Gibson Relays 2011- Will it happen?

Carole Beckford — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:45:02 UT

The story in the Gleaner, on January 6th, 2010, regarding the possible cancellation of the Annual Gibson Relays is sad. While track and field would surely be affected, it speaks pointedly to the overall management of sport in our country.

Let me tell you some facts

Sport employs up to 27,000 people
Sport as a sector contributes up to 2.4 per cent of GDP
Jamaica has international recognition in at least 10 disciplines, which outweigh any advertising campaign could pay for
Jamaica has been competing at the highest level since 1948
Jamaican athletes are the most sought after (Bolt, Powell, Campbell Brown, Gardener, Fuller, Forbes, Aiken...to name a few)
Jamaica as a destination produces world class athletes and is attracting other athletes to train in the island
The athletes are the face of significant amount of media campaigns
Global trends suggest that sport will grow amidst a recession
...and by the way athletes pay their taxes too (much more than some of our manufacturers)

My point therefore is, why is the Sport Sector treated with such disdain? Why isn't there a policy which serves a blue print for growth and development like all other sectors?

I could get passionate here, but I won't. Someone has to respond to the needs of the industry based on these facts.

The Catherine Hall Sport Complex in Montego Bay has an Olympic track with seating facilities and could host the Gibson Relays, but the CONCACAF football under 17 tourney will be there from February 14 with a final match up set for February 27. Can something be arranged? With lots of hotel rooms that side, that could work.

2011 - World Championship year

2012 - Summer Olympic Games

2013 - World Championship (again)

...with the perceived weakness in relays our top relay festival is at risk. What/Who gives?

About the Author:
Carole Beckford is a journalist with over 22 years experience. She is also an author and a lecturer in Sport Journalism and Sport Management. She is currently the publicist for Usain Bolt and she blogs at carolebeckford.blogspot.com

Why Jamaicans have to migrate to become productive?

Francis Wade — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:45:02 UT

Why is that we all know Jamaicans who migrated, and almost overnight, became productive?

Their accomplishments surprise us when they land on other shores.

Shortly after leaving Jamaica in 1984 to attend university in the United States, I encountered my first success story.

Robert, a fellow Wolmerian, had left after third form and I ran into him again on campus after hearing about his achievements from many other Jamaicans.

He told me quite candidly that if he had stayed at home in
Jamaica, there was no way that he could have accomplished what he did.

He did not blame the school's facilities, the teaching, or his peers. Instead, the mere fact that his family had sacrificed to live in a different country meant that he now had to transform himself from being a bit of a joker into a serious student.

I also had a similar epiphany after arriving at an important campus appointment five minutes late, only to have it cancelled.

I was shocked, and I couldn't believe that they would not give me a 'bligh'.

At the heart of these simple stories lie some core truths that explain why our country's productivity is the lowest in the Caribbean.

CULTURE OF BLIGHS

We have a bad habit, you and I. We accept low standards from ourselves and each other in a thousand small ways, while complaining when major problems crop up that are a direct result of years of accumulated blighs.

It seems that something similar happened in Haiti. Building codes were routinely ignored by both government agencies and construction companies. The result was the January 12 earthquake disaster, and more than 200,000 deaths.

While this example is a graphic one that involved loss of life, our recent floods had the same result, from perhaps the same reasons.

Recently, I noticed a headline in one of our major newspapers: "Jamaca (sic) lose one-day semi-final". Apparently, the writer and the paper itself could not manage to spell the name of our country correctly.

What I learned from living in the US is that the consequences of such an error would be major, and the organisation would never step over the demonstration of such a low standard.

We, on the other hand, would probably be divided on what the next steps should be. Some would defend, excuse, explain, or ignore it.

This gives us a clue as to why Robert could be a mediocre student here in Jamaica, but such a star in the US.

American companies, schools, and institutions demand high standards, and deal swiftly with mediocrity as if it were a dangerous disease.

We, on the other hand, have mediocrity oozing out of every corner of our daily lives, and it is increasingly hard to find systematic examples of excellence, especially in areas that are quiet, or behind the scenes.

Obviously, we now have a reliable way to produce world-class athletes and musicians.

It's no accident that both of these areas feature an exaggerated focus on the individual at either the finish line, or on stage, and both favour showy displays of personal skills.

We are at our weakest when a team or group of Jamaicans need to work together to produce excellence on a sustained basis.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS

We appear to be at a loss as to how to build enduring institutions.

This is where our corporations and schools have not set the bar high enough. Given the fact that Jamaicans abroad are able to reset their goals so quickly, it indicates that we have all the talent we need, but are lacking the environment that consistently calls for top quality via quiet investments.

There are two places that our companies, should start.

The first 'expectations of high standards':

Employees who leave school to join local companies are often disappointed that what seemed to be so 'big' on the outside, turns out to be so ordinary on the inside.

They start off nervously, but when they realise that the standard is so low that even outright incompetence is protected, they relax, knowing that they don't need to excel; just be a bit better than the worst employees.

Little is asked of them, so little is given.

I worked alongside teams at McKinsey & Company, and had the discomfort of 3 a.m.. nights on several occasions.

I suffered; but for them, this wasn't strange. Instead, they knew it to be a part of the job.

There is nothing stopping any local company from creating a similar reputation for itself, reinforcing it in interviews and creating the kind of orientation for new staff that set the tone from the very beginning.

I had a similar experience as an 11-year-old first former at Wolmer's, when the headmaster referred to us as "gentlemen."

Setting initial expectations and a reputation for high standards is critical to achievement.

QUALITY FEEDBACK

The second, 'frequent, quality feedback'. Arguably, it is easier to perform at a consistently high level at school than at work, because there is so much feedback in the form of grades and reports.

In companies across the Caribbean, even those that give regular feedback are weak at making it clear and actionable, and waste a lot of time and emotional energy.

Employees are left in the dark, without a common-sense avenue to improve their performance.

There might be many reasons why this is so, ranging from a management style inherited from the British to our history of giving harsh feedback via the slave whip.

Whatever the reason, the only way to develop better skills is by practising better techniques, until new habits overcome cultural conditioning by the force of sheer repetition.

With higher standards and frequent, quality feedback we can have institutions that achieve high standards.

About the Author
Francis Wade is a consultant on productivity and time management. Francis began Framework Consulting Inc., after leaving AT&T Bell Labs’ consulting unit in 1993. He did so with a twin commitment to bring the best management techniques back to the Caribbean, and to participate in solving issues that impact the performance and well-being of people who work in companies throughout the world.

Today, he’s still pursuing that dream–with a slight upgrade.

Now he lives in Jamaica, after 21 years in the USA, and spends most of his time working directly with Caribbean companies. While he’s worked with clients in Europe, North America and Latin America, he enjoys the challenge of bringing life and possibility to the Caribbean workplace, in spite of the tragic history that brought most of its inhabitants to the region.

He has become a prolific writer since returning to live in the Caribbean, and heads up the research teams that Framework has created to delve into specific issues that affects its clients. The firm has published several white papers, ebooks, websites (Jamaicans.com - Moving Back to Jamaica and Expats Moving to Jamaica), newspaper articles, podcasts , videos and ezines under his thought leadership. In addition to his internal publishing, he has also written for the Jamaica Gleaner, and he has a regular column with the Trinidad Newsday.

Don't Call Me An African

Farouk Martins Aresa — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:30:01 UT

The cost of this self inflicted inferiority complex is enormous. It destroyed our economy and those of African communities in Diaspora. We do not patronize ourselves anymore turning us into consumers of other people’s services and products because subjectively, we see them as superior to ours. The minority middle class we want our image makers to celebrate push many to glaring crime, poverty and meager infrastructure foreigners see.

Many people take pride in being called Native or Indian American, Italian American, Irish American, and Polish American, etc but don’t dare call this black man African or African American. It was only yesterday he was called Negro and later graduated to black. It takes a while, please, to get adjusted to African or African American. A popular singer said: he is an American period; otherwise everybody is African American in man’s origin. Relatively, the denials are not that many but they heavily put Africans at economic peril.

One Trinidadian university student once told Stokely Carmichael all African slaves died in the sea. Stokely, an American Civil right activist born in Trinidad, said his ancestors must be seamen. At the same time, they claim we are all Africans, as long as black, white and green are included going back to the migration of man from the Continent. The comfort in it has to do with lack of inferiority complex attached to African origin of man. Black or African American is based on a sole African relationship. Socio-economic disarray within Africans, West Indians or African Americans disenfranchised us of economic power.

We also have those that just want to be called Nigerian, Jamaican, British, or American period - black, white or green. The complex shows with the way some protest against or how they deny any association with Africa, even in Africa. We have been cautioned that black Australians have never been associated with Africa and they would be mislabeled if called African. This is ignorance on their part since black Australians are fully related to Africans by geo-anthropology. Identity of the minds revolution across waters is overdue.

Informed Africans from Africa or Africans in America or Europe are not free from this form of inferiority complex either. Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba pride themselves as Oyinbo, Fulani, Jews, Aje-butter, Akada or Adaka. So they patronize or kill for the goods, services and religion not theirs. “Colonial mentality” passed on to kids discouraged to speak local native languages at ages best suited for bilingual training. The freed slaves brought back to Liberia assumed different culture to the indigenes. The same is true in East African where some refer to their Arabian ancestors, even with darker skin than Africans.

African freed slaves from Brazilian quarters in Lagos and other coastal cities in Nigeria still refer to countries they have never been while those in the North, Central and South American and Arab world struggle to keep their culture closer to the point of their great grand/parents departure. So it is not unusual to hear an African Diaspora dialect difficult to catch. A perfect Yoruba may sound archived to the new generation in home Country.

Therefore this inferiority complex is not limited to Africans in Diaspora but to some of us at home. We know the basic reason some downplay our association with the so called “Dark Continent”. While the candidacy of Obama in America brought pride to Africans including tiny Basra in Iraq, it created envy between Africans just coming from home and some that have been there before Columbus without their chance to be President.

The factor of inferiority complex and first come first served, in combination, bring out discomfort rarely seen in others from Germany, Poland or Russia. The Irish American welcome Irish from old Country and so do Italians and others but when it comes to West Indians and Africans in America, there is some uneasiness spreading the welcome mat.

Africans in Africa are just the opposite. Their welcome mat for Africans from Diaspora is so long, those who have lived abroad and experience opposite treatment from African Americans become envious. If you wonder why we were so readily taken slaves by the missionaries and re-discoverer, it is because we generally treat strangers well.

The opposite is true in the case of those we patronize even when their products and services are not superior. Until recently American cars are the norm in United States and those buying foreign cars are seen as either unpatriotic or so rich, foreign cars was one of their fleet of cars. Politicians would sell their foreign made cars before contesting for elections. Workers of auto plants could be fired for buying foreign cars for some other excuses. These biases have diminished but are coming back with the recession.

Foreign auto makers got smarter and stated to build and assemble, manufacture car and truck in the USA. Not only has jobs been created in for the locals any bias against foreign cars and services has divided the communities between American makers and foreign plants in the Country. In Nigeria, where foreign contracts reigns, they left local assembly plants to purchased cars overseas until our assembly plants closed. Self hatred is suicide.

From self inflicted inferiority complex to loss of business in the African communities to loss of jobs within consumers of other people’s products that are makers of none. The best contracts in African countries have foreign taste. In African American communities, even sneakers are not made there but the advertisers are African American sport heroes pushing products and services outside their communities like African politicians.

The basis of our economic problems that turns us into consumers of other peoples’ products and manufacturers of nothing was demonstrated as far back in the fifties when African children in the United States prefer white baby dolls to black baby dolls. CNN’s Anderson Cooper replicated the same studies 60 years later and still found the same results. We cannot blame the white society for pushing their products and services in their best interest. The fact that same study still apply to our children in Africa or in Diaspora shows that we do not buy in our own interest. Self-discrimination is economic.

Since we hate what we produce, we pay with the little we are given for raw materials.

The Bare Truth of it all ... according to Elisanne

Elisanne Elisanne — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:00:01 UT

I’ve never gotten the thrill of the whole naked man bit at a strip club. Now do I get it for men? Sure do, men are very very visual and so seeing a semi-clad woman gyrating and simulating sex is appealing. Or so I’ve been told. Also the thrill of a “happy ending” sans hands apparently also has great cache. Apparently, the same holds true for women. Now I’ve been to strip clubs for both men and women. Strip clubs for men are interesting. Now you as a woman can have a woman give you a lap dance if that does it for you; but I find it more interesting to watch the men. I wonder what is going through their heads while there. And of course having watched every Season of HBOs Cathouse and G-String Divas, I’m even more intrigued. But what really did it for me was a few years ago going to one of the seedier of the strip joints in Pompano with my girlfriend and her then boyfriend. He couldn’t believe we wanted to go … but reluctantly took us. They seated us in the “pimp” section – oh yes, there was a pimp section … and then proceeded to ask my girlfriend’s boyfriend if he wished us to “work” out a song or two. Now I was 27 at the time so I nearly fell off the chair – THAT was an experience. He politely declined and told the manageress that he was treating us to some time out. Yeah, he played that one to the hilt!

Men claim they go to strip clubs to relax and have some release. So, let’s examine this shall we? Watch show … choose someone who’s your type or appeals to you … have her give you a lapdance (minimum cost - $20). Now we have … Creation of sexual tension with no hope of release with said person who created tension? Makes no sense to me, but hey, I still have much to learn about life. I keep wondering why don’t they just buy the lady in their lives an outfit (Fredericks, Trashy and Agent Provocateur all have tons of stuff), tell her what they like (this is where wigs come in very handy – if you are a brunette – let him have a blonde or a redhead for the night) – have her learn a few routines and then get the whole strip club thing at rock bottom prices? You can rain money all over your private striptease artist and still put the money back in the bank the following day. Now if the lady in question isn’t up to the task or behaves like this is beneath her – that’s a whole other situation. But there are stripper exercise classes to bring out your inner goddess, passion party sales are through the roof, so I think more and more women are embracing their more sexually aggressive sides … or at least the ones I know over 30 certainly are!!

BUT - I have to admit that in some respects I’m a prude. I like looking at well toned male physiques and their antics with the various ladies both on and off stage at the strip club. I just have no interest in those antics being directed at me. Here’s my philosophy … so you want me to take my hard earned money and give it to you to gyrate on me and then what? Leave me all hot and bothered (if that arouses you)? I also find it really hard to get turned on by these guys. I suppose because (a) I know many of them are gay (b) because I know they are in it for the money and who wants to only be wanted for the money? and (c) I like to have a “connection” with someone before your private parts come grazing close to mine or being dangled in my face. Women have created huge lawsuits against men in the office mentioning anything remotely related to sex … yet here we are having unknown men grind up on us and we gladly pay for the privilege. Double standard? I’d say so.

You know it’s an interesting phenomenon. Most women would be disgusted if they knew that their men were lusting after some unknown woman, then paying her to come gyrate on him almost to the point of climax and then coming home to finish the act. They’d feel cheapened. I’m guessing that some men might feel the same way too. YET, we are fine with this scenario when it entails attending a strip club … especially if it’s part of a bachelor or bachelorette party? Why is this? Are we officially mourning the fact that our days of being bees and sampling every flower are REALLY now OFFICIALLY over with a last hooray full of mega sampling?

Now this is not a judgment call on anyone. I’ve been to strip clubs and will probably go again .. I think it’s a fascinating exercise in social observation, plus the music is great, the liquor is flowing and the bartenders (all men), just about trip over themselves to cater to you – it’s the ultimate in customer service. BUT, I just wanted to throw this whole notion out there. It’s also interesting how when you seem aloof and removed, they make an EXTRA effort to engage you. In my most recent visit to the establishment of unabashed well honed male flesh, my booty was grabbed no less than five times by five different working men. Made me kinda glad I’d gained a pound or two back and that my onion booty was back in good shape (LOL). Because of the five, three were straight. I think ….. hmmmmm……

However, I thoroughly enjoy going to these establishments. It’s interesting to see what women do when they are there. Bride-to-be’s glady lose all their inhibitions and have a series of men lick and shake their breasts, slide their hands betwixt their legs and dry grind them to near orgasm. Recently, I watched one of these patrons rain money all over these guys. I found that I rather liked this whole concept. Take a $20 in one dollar bills and as the young man is working to earn his keep, you simply stand over him and rain cash all over him. Now THIS is a clear reversal. Women have for so long complained about being the ones being taken advantage of … now they are clearly in the driver’s seat … or are they?

They bought me a body shot? Why? I have no clue … but we can’t be churlish now can we? Of course not. After all this is what happens at these establishments and you shouldn’t go if you don’t expect that someone might pull a fast one on you. So I dutifully sat and had the young man (who by the way was clearly gay .. my gaydar went off the minute he entered the room in his cowboy hat – but I digress) do his job and give me the shot. I really needed him to give me the maraschino cherry so that it could be over … but he was doing this whole cat and mouse thing. I think he knew that this was not my cup of tea – so he was dragging it out … okay, I get it … makes for good entertainment. So when he’s done, he whispers to me “ I’m the man here!” So I looked up at him, smiled and went – “you might think so, but I call the shots since I’m paying the bill!” Touche! Right?

A Note To Bruce Golding And Other Leaders In Jamaica

Karl Haughton — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:45:02 UT

The political leaders of Caribbean nations, especially, Bruce Golding and others in Jamaica (both JLP and PNP) must begin to change their levels of thinking as they relate to governing. The leadership styles continue to kindle the flames of lawlessness and civil disobedience in the island. Bruce Golding must stop the perception that criminals are cuddled by lawmakers. Bruce Golding and others, including Portia Simpson, must begin to teach some citizens who are ill-informed that it is the inalienable right of every citizen to vote for any political party that individual chooses.

For too long violence and disrespect of the country's laws have been perpetrated because our political leaders by their words and/or their deeds have encouraged such actions. The many law-abiding citizens of Jamaica who want to live in peace and enjoy their prosperity cannot do so without great fear of losing their lives, their children's lives, and their friends' lives or encounter other acts of crimes against them.

It is time for our leaders (JLP and PNP) to demonstrate that aiding and abetting criminals is not a law of the country. It is time for our leaders (JLP and PNP) to focus on the ills which afflict the country and fix them. The poverty and inadequacies which exist in Jamaica are life issues which should be comprehensively addressed by the leaders of both major political parties (JLP and PNP). These leaders must turn away from the governing styles of the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. The situations that existed during the leaderships of Bustamante, Manley, Sangster, Shearer, Manley, Seaga, Patterson, and Simpson must not continue.

Times have changed globally, we are in the internet age, so why is it that our current leaders in Jamaica are still stuck in the era of counter productiveness. As a nation we have made tremendous strides in many sectors. We have improved our educational institutions and also increased them in reasonable numbers. We have improved our basic infrastructure (roads, utilities, and communications), our commerce, and our relationships with other nations. However, there is a lot more work that needs to be done.

The work that needs to be done will take the efforts of all Jamaicans at home and abroad. These efforts need the spirit of unity and trust of our fellow Jamaican brothers and sisters in order for them to be effective. The effectiveness of unity and trust cannot be achieved by continuing partisan politics as it exists in Jamaica. Unity and trust cannot be attained if we disrespect the civil rights of another person. Unity and trust will not be garnered if we rob, rape, murder, extort, and malign the lives of other citizens.

I am using this forum to express some of my concerns about my beloved Jamaica. I hope that others will express their concerns also. I believe that it is by demonstrating our will to incite change that change happens.

One Love, Let's Come Together and be Allright.

Karl Haughton
240-997-1211

P.S.: I was prompted to write my note after reading an article in the online version of the Jamaica Gleaner titled: Bruce Golding puzzled by graffiti campaign in West Kingston

A Branding Row or Ego Trip for pawns?

Cleon Santania — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:30:00 UT

A disappointing incident was reported as the “Branding Row” dated August 19, by another mediahouse. Tivoli Gardens football team players failed to show against Waterhouse in the sport of the football game for the championship cup.

Permit me to seize this opportunity to share some concerns, questioning the ethics of the game, and relevant leaders who should inevitably be exemplary to tomorrow’s leaders – today’s football players. I am indeed concerned over the culture of my fellow Jamaicans in dealing with disputes, especially where the older involve the younger as pawns. The apparent branding of these youngsters is another point of concern.

It appears that Edward Seaga, once again and now bringing the Digicel group along has been caught up in a game of their own, other than the football sport. That being a game won by the most pockets being filled, where egos are massaged or kicked, on rules of emotions.

Disallowing boys to just play ball and develop with wisdom simply because of a row as to whose brand is to be seen is absurd. It is appalling to read that Tivoli players by the printed account failed to turn up owing to a decision by leaders, based on the failure to allow the promotion of Digicel material being allowed versus that of Claro being in issue. To say the least it is disappointing.

In my opinion the report highlights their (Seaga and a blind-led Digicel) failing to realize that sponsorship of gears and location does not give overriding authority to make demands esp where it is out-of-contract. The very conditions as outlined in the printed article confirms Claro/KSAFA as the ultimate authority, as the sponsors of the league in entirety so in any event respect is far overdue to the highest order.

This raises concerns in my mind that the priorities were not set straight, or actions would have been more responsible or seen to be executed in wisdom in the eyes of the public, rather than a public cass cass over who’s seen. Is this once again the iron hand of dictatorship that led to a stubborn and controlling Seaga being eventually ‘ousted’ from the JLP by annoyed members who were then also prevented from play by the rules. A different brand of politics then, a new brand of football now.

I wish to remind the leaders involved that the intention of the league is to foster good community relations, set exemplary traits, develop the minds, and further but by no means least create an avenue for our your persons, men especially to vent healthily.

I therefore wish to congratulate and encourage Claro team for their efforts to maintain goodwill and foster training beyond a physical nature. The rules are clear -may all leaders humbly without much fanfare seek only to encourage focus on the objectives at hand – for tomorrow’s leaders to recognize the value of teamwork, amicable negotiations, and of course the main prize Championship through persistence and strategy.

WIFE - Wonderful Instigators of Familial Excellence

S. M. Williams — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:00:02 UT

In a recent discussion with a group of young professional women, I think I stunned them with my very traditional view of marriage and being a wife. I think they viewed me as one of the modern women with modern views on everything. I wanted to laugh at and with them and tell them – “Don’t let the Ann Klein and Coach fool you, the fact that I don’t NEED to be a wife, doesn’t mean I don’t WANT to be a wife.” I understand what having a supportive man in your life can mean for a woman’s professional success. If it is so for us, then is doubly so for men. Women have spent so much time vying for equality with men in the professional arena, I believe that some of us might have lost our way, our true calling and our real power.

There is a saying that “behind every great man is a great woman.” I sometimes wonder why we as women forget this. We have spent so much time chasing executive jobs, money, fame, the latest Gucci, Prada and Coach purse and making sure that our man is as cash heavy as we are, that we’ve forgotten one of our primary roles. So many women take on the role of “wife” without really understanding all that it entails. In my life, I’ve seen a multitude of reasons why women have gotten married. Some have married for financial security, being knocked up, needing a green card, wanting a baby, or being lonely and afraid of growing old by themselves. But most of us still manage to say “I do” for love.

But why do some women take on this mantle of “wife” without recognizing some of the inherent roles that it entails? So in my conversation with these younger than me professional women, they asked me how did I manage to balance my marriage with my professional life. As we began to talk, I said the words that I believe stunned them. I talked about the fact that regardless of what my professional status was, my role as a wife was a totally separate entity. They asked me to explain. So I did. Here is a summary of my schpiel.

Wives are not weak people who live in the background. We are powerful forces of nature who support our men to the greatest heights of success or watch them as they plummet to the depths of failure and do nothing to stop the freefall. Our role is to bring out the best in our man, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. We stand behind them when they need to be propped up and shoved forward. We move ahead of them when they fail to see the road clearly ahead and illuminate the possibilities. And we stand beside them to support them when they ask for it, when they need it and sometimes when they don’t even know what they need or want. As I said this, I saw them look at me with new eyes. I have no idea if they believed me or if it changed their lives. I only know this is the mantra that I live by.

But why were these women so shocked? At what point did they fail to get this lesson? Which mother, grandmother, aunt or family matriarch failed to pass this on? And why would they feel that this is something that they couldn’t embrace? Why do women somehow believe that this role of wife is one of shame? It’s almost as if being a wife no longer involved doing – if not, then what is this new wife role? What really is our purpose? To simply be in a unit for the purpose of giving our children a “legal surname” and to get the tax advantages?

When did supporting your man and our marriage become a thing to be reviled? Have you ever heard the Tammy Wynette sang “Stand by your man?” Because of her southern twang – you want to believe it’s about some silly woman “stupidly” standing by her man; but read the lyrics below:

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman

Giving all your love to just one man

You'll have bad times, and he'll have good times

Doing things that you don't understand

But if you love him you'll forgive him

Even though he's hard to understand

And if you love him, Oh be proud of him

'Cause after all he's just a man

Stand by your man, Give him two arms to cling to

And something warm to come to

When nights are cold and lonely

Stand by your man, And tell the world you love him

Keep giving all the love you can

Stand by your man, Stand by your man

And show the world you love him

Keep giving all the love you can

Stand by your man

WOW! This is everything it means to be a wife. BUT at the same time, these are some big scary words. Essentially, Ms Wyntette reminds us that it’s all about the “cleaving” to this person who you’ve pledged your life to – and that is one scary prospect for even the strongest of women. I remember for me the thought of engaging for a lifetime with one person and having to “deal” with all he brought to the relationship and trying to blend that with all I brought to the relationship just make me want to throw up my hands in utter despair. Ultimately, it’s about opening yourself up to the vulnerability of being a wife. But if that’s the choice you make, then encompass what it entails. It certainly ain’t easy and comes with a whole slew of annoyance, pain and aggravation, but as with every rose, there are always thorns.

Few men manage to achieve fame and fortune without the help of some women, be it their mother, grandmother, sister, best friend, wife or lover. Remember, “behind every great man is an even greater woman.” But somehow we have traded this very powerful role for instead wanting to take on equal billing with our men. Why? We already know that we are bright and talented and able to earn megabucks and get the promotions. If we’ve already accomplished this, why then do we feel that we now need to diminish our men? Let’s be honest, their egos are much more fragile than ours. If we know this, then why trample over it with steel-toed timberlands?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I fully understand that sometimes as wives we have to yank up our husbands. I get that! Not one wife hasn’t had to have a discussion with her husband behind a closed door, in the bathroom with the water running or in the car on the way to a function about either something he has done, hasn’t done or refuses to do. But why do we do this? For most ‘wives’ it’s because we have expectations of our husbands. We have expectation of greatness that we expect them to live up to. And rarely are these expectations about money. Sometimes it’s his asking for a raise at work, making sure friends stop taking him for granted, spending more time with the babies he’s fathered that may not be yours, saving more money for the kids college education or our retirement. It could be anything, but ultimately it’s about him being more than he is currently and realizing his full potential.

Now I want to make this clear and reiterate. This article is not about the no-good worthless men out there. Take those out the equation. I’m talking about good men. Those who love their wives, don’t philander, gamble their paychecks away and take their marriages and family life seriously. Yes, those. You know a few I’m sure. I know several. In the last few years, I’ve seen so many of these men diminished by the women who have married them. And while the most obvious way is to emasculate them in public, it is the more subtle forms that I give me pause and cause for distress.

It’s the women who decide to use sex as a weapon and no longer make love with and to their husbands. Not because they’ve done something wrong. Instead women use sex as a tool of manipulation and not in a good way. We know as women that we wield a specific power but to reduce our sexuality to a weapon is a poor trait in a wife. Then there are the women who’s lack of fiscal control derail most marriages into bankruptcy. Then there are the ones I abhor. The ones who are snide about the way they demean their husbands. The ones who make the back-hand double sided remarks that paint their husbands as less than worthwhile men. You know the types. The ones who are always publicly comparing their men with others and their men always end up on the losing end. Why do women do this? I always want to ask them – so what have you done to help him be better and just force them to shut up!

Now I know that all of us have dealt with some sorry ass guy at some point in our lives. And we can all talk about this sorry ass guy and what he did and why he deserves to be the butt of humanity and be treated like the scourge of the earth. But if we take the step of “wife” why does our husband now need to pay for all the things that the asswipe guy did? Now please remember, this is NOT about the deadbeats out there. That’s for a different discussion. This is about the good guys. The ones who work hard, come home, do what’s right and still get treated like trash by the women they call ‘wife.’ And trust me, this happens more than we’d like to see. Women are not the only ones who are emotionally abused. As we wield more political and economic power, women have become just as emotionally abusive as men.

So ladies if we do nothing else today, let’s remember the roles we assumed as wives. If we wish to be treated as queens, then we must then assume that our husbands are kings. And if he doesn’t treat you like the queen you are, gently remind him (well sometimes and with some men it can’t be so gentle, yes ladies I do know that) of our royal status. At a wedding I attend recently, I plagiarized some words from a former wedding where I’d been a guest. As a wife, I struggle with the whole biblical concept of “submitting” to my husband. I have no idea if I’ll ever win that battle because quite frankly I’m not trying that hard. (Confession is good for the soul). However, what I do really believe is that the husband should be the head of the household. But while the husband is the head, the wife is the neck. And what does the neck do? It provides structure, support and quite frankly, the head doesn’t do much unless the neck is engaged?

See ladies? We are necks – we have enormous power as wives. So let’s stop demeaning our men and instead encourage them to success. And for each man it’s different, if you choose to be his wife, figure him out and then set him up for success. Let us ensure that our men know that we have expectations of excellence. Let us be powerful forces in our men’s lives. Because you know what? We can actually do that for them AND still do it for ourselves. Yeah! We are that good!

No to More Prisons, and Yes to More Education & Job Creation in Jamaica

Karl A. Mitchell, B.A., M.A. — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:45:00 UT

Recently, the Jamaica Observer published an article: “Build new prisons to fight crime, says Wayne Chen” ( Mr. Wayne Chen’s proposal). Immediately, I was compelled to respond to said article.

I don't think the US model is the best model for fighting/reducing crimes. Is Mr. Chen going to promote private (for profit) penitentiaries, too, for Jamaica? Yes, he's pushing for privatization of prisons. I recommend that Mr. Chen do further research - researching other countries' models (including those with a homogeneous culture/society); unless, of course, his findings are solely motivated by profits/personal gain versus the public good (Jamaica’s).

Mr. Chen’s ideas could easily lead to abuses such as the “jailing kids for cash” scandal that took place in Pennsylvania years ago.

We need to tackle the problem at its root, in part, the politics (or politricks). If not, Jamaica will end up becoming an island prison due to profitable prison expansions buoyed by foreign investments, of course. We have to find a way to pay (starting with the usurious interest rate) for the loans borrowed from IMF and the World Bank, don't we?

And, of course, Mr. Chen could research on how to create more jobs for the educated jobless youth of Jamaica. Jamaica needs more Penn States (plus job creation) than state pens. The US model is a fiscal failure since it takes more money to finance a prisoner than it would take to educate said prisoner at Harvard ( a scholarly/public policy thesis on education vs. incarceration - liberal source).

Jamaica – my Jamaica – the land of my birth deserves better than Mr. Chen’s half-baked ideas; ideas floating around in New York and California by the growing private corrections business interest group (see Classrooms or Prison Cells? – similar to the above thesis but with less scholarly gravitas and How The Recession Hurts Private Prisons – discussing the growing influence and lobby of the private corrections business). If I’m not mistaken, last February, Mr. Chen was invited to one of these conferences held in Los Angeles, California.

Moreover, according to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, "poverty is the mother of crime." Therefore, let's tackle the mother before tackling the child. If not, the mother will only produce another child and another child and another child. In other words, you tackle the mother with education and job creation, instead of tackling the child with incarceration (only).

Remember, a for profit prison system needs a steady stream of prisoners (year after year) to be successful and profitable for its shareholders. For the public good (Jamaica's good), we don't need a successful for profit corrections system with a very bright future - not in my Jamaica – the land of my birth.

Surrendering freedom in a State of Emergency

Yvonne McCalla Sobers — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 09:00:01 UT

A State of Emergency is intended as a short-term measure to provide short-term respite, such as is evident in the decline in murder figures for June so far. Remaining in the ‘war' mode may give an illusion of strong leadership; however, applying wrong remedies can well worsen the ailment. Extending the State of Emergency seems provide diminishing returns because:

1. A State of Emergency is not intended to address crime. It is meant to restore order when the State is placed under threat. To use this measure where it is not merited is to diminish its effect in a crisis

. 2. The situation that brought about the State of Emergency on May 23 no longer exists. At that time, police stations were being fire-bombed, policemen were being ambushed and shot dead, and a community had barricaded itself in defiance of the State. That crisis has been brought under control.

3. Regulations under the State of Emergency do not increase the policing powers of the police The police, under the Constabulary Force Act, have all the powers they need to cordon and curfew, search and seize, arrest and detain.

4. The State of Emergency gives to the police near absolute power over citizens’ liberties. There continue to be reports of corruption and abuse of citizens’ rights in the police force. Extension of the State of Emergency would strengthen the power of the police to disregard citizens’ rights and would increase scope for corrupt behaviour. As Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

5. Every single citizen (above or below Cross Roads) is subject to Detention Orders under the State of Emergency. Anyone could be detained for breaching regulations of which the person may or may not be aware.

6. Under the State of Emergency, the courts no longer have a direct role in protecting the liberty of the citizen. The right to habeas corpus is effectively suspended.

7. The Minister of National Security has the power to sign Detention Orders that can detain or restrict any citizen.

8. The Emergency Powers Review Tribunal can hear objections from those who think they are detained wrongfully. This tribunal is not yet ready to hear cases. When it does meet, the public will not be able to attend the tribunal’s meetings. The tribunal does not have the power to act. It can merely make recommendations to the Minister of National Security who signed the orders in the first place.

9. The Minister of National Security is free to ignore the recommendations of the tribunal. The detainees must then wait six months before appealing to the courts for a judicial review of the minister’s decision.

10. For as long as the State of Emergency is in force, citizens (especially citizens without the means to mount a legal defence) lose liberties that the courts can normally protect under habeas corpus. The police already have the power they need to address crime. Increased power in the hands of the police, together with increased loss of liberty for citizens (especially the poor) seems a recipe for increased mistrust between the police and citizens. Addressing crime requires that closing gaps between state and citizen.

Addressing crime requires closing gaps between state and citizen.

Africa Cares About The Killings In Jamaica

Farouk Martins Aresa — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:00:01 UT

The crocodile cry of Let My People Go by former Prime Minister of Jamaica Edward Seaga is perpetuating the status quo of African children killing one another in Tivoli. He has never been part of the solution, Edward Seaga has always been part of the problem. He cannot shake off the rivalry between him and Prime Minister Michael Manley that he defeated and took over from. Jamaicans said it was because Manley lied. Well, without Manley, Edward Seaga miracle has not happened since the seventies in Jamaica.

It is not surprising that he is calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister of his Labor Party because Bruce Golding finally resolved to take on Christopher Coke. The Jamaicans that have been terrorized in Kingston by thugs and drug dealers of both political parties still bear the scars. Since the seventies some African/Jamaicans could not return home because of incessant political violence that deteriorated into drugs and gang murders. Those at home resigned to the mercy of ruthless gangster and gun runners.

Seaga used to represent areas that West Kingston including Tivoli where according to the last count, seventy-seven people have died trying to flush out some gangs that have supported his Labor Party. The area is now represented by another Labor Prime Minister, Bruce Golding. Chris Coke is the strongman and a drug dealer wanted by United States but also a supporter of Labor Party. By trying to arrest him, many young African men under the age of thirty years have died.

Golding hired a law firm in the US to lobby with private contribution from Jamaica, so that US can drop their request for Chris Coke extradition. He claimed Coke’s wiretap by US was illegal. When he finally made up his mind to take back Tivoli and dislodge Coke’s gangsters, they started burning police stations and cars, demonstrating that they are ready to die for Coke. Coke was in full control of Tivoli where he controlled crimes, gave clothes, education and gave hopeless young men jobs in gun running or drugs dealing while some innocent women traders shuttling between United States and Jamaica were forced into drug mules. Christopher also sponsored weekly passa passa street dance.

When all negotiations with Coke to surrender failed, Golding finally realized that Christopher Coke has almost taken over the soul of Labor Party without the conscience of Jamaicans. Unfortunately, if Seaga had the guts and had put the Country first instead of political gains, he would have taken back Tivoli from his thugs so that it would not have fallen on Golding’s lap. The feeling in Tivoli is that Golding, the Prime Minister has betrayed them and ready to arrest Coke as asked by United States for trial.

The People National Party, opposition has been reasonable, waiting for another day to debate who started the menace in the first place. They could have gone on attack because Christopher Coke is a creation of the Labor Party. They came out as patriots in a difficult time. Seaga, of all people is the one taking on Bruce Golding asking people in his former constituency now represented by Golding to call him.

This is the problem of Africans. We want power by do or die and raise thugs as supporters against our opponents. The father of this Chris Coke, Lester or Jim Brown, also died under controversial circumstances in prison fire when the Government of Jamaica had enough of him and had to invade his stronghold in 1992. Chris the son, fears the same fate because he knows about all the corrupt politicians.

The father, Lester Coke was not as lucky to die of natural causes as our own strongman Adedibu of Ibadan. But Chris Coke’s father and Adedibu lived a parallel life as thugs turned gangers that became Frankenstein. Their political godfathers lost control of them and they became godfathers themselves. They infested the poor and the young providing succor where the government has failed and use that as a recruiting tool to attract young men they use as thugs.

Where ever there are Africans, we must remember that we are our brothers’ keeper. As much as we have our own problem, Africans cannot not just watch our people inside or outside the Continent engage in self annihilation. We have selfish politicians all over the world and we condemn them whether they are Africans or not. It is even worse when those who never identify with us treat us like crabs in a barrel fighting and pulling one another down.

Most if not all the young men we see fighting and dying on the street in West Kingston looked like us. Very few looked like Edward Seaga and some of us are sensitive enough to note that. We are not sure if Seaga is more Lebanese than African since shades of skin matters there, but he was chosen as the Prime Minister of Jamaica in the seventies after Michael Manley was defeated. He came into prominence as minister who developed his constituency in West Kingston Jamaica. Tivoli was one of the first government housing.

Politics in Jamaica is as fierce as in Africa. This writer almost lost a friend that happened to be a supporter of Seaga in a discussion at an international conference. Oh, not while on Jamaican vacation. She made it clear that if we were in Jamaica this writer could have learned some hard lesson because of his bias for Manley that was Seaga’s rival.

Seaga has since become an elder statesman but like our Nigerian Obasanjo or Ghana’s Rawlings refuse to quit the stage and still want to be relevant. In the middle of a difficult time for Jamaica, when politics should take a back seat, Mr. Seaga said: Let My People Go! Where he wants them to go in Jamaica, we are not sure.

Fortunately, Nigeria has always supported Jamaica. If they need peace-keeping force on the street they can apply through the usual United Nation channel or directly to Nigeria. In spite of our problem in Africa, Nigeria is always there to help and internationally recognized for its peace-keeping force.

Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

Joy L. Campbell — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:40:00 UT

On June 4, a youngster approached a non-Jamaican man at a fast food outlet in Mandeville. The boy asked the man for money. According to news reports, the man gave the boy $500.00 and told him to go to the bathroom. He followed him there.

Security personnel grew suspicious. On investigating, they found the boy bent over, and the man behind him with his pants down. Someone called the police. The man was jailed and went to court yesterday. He was charged with gross indecent assault and remanded until June 22.

Subsequent news reports still have me confused. The boy was first reported to be under 10 years. Last night, the anchor said he was 13. The size of the boy I saw-with his face blanked out-confirmed that he might be as old as that.

The accused has been mentioned as a Columbian national, as well as a Dominican national. Who knows?

A relative of the boy was vocal about what had happened to him. I shared her concern; however, I had some questions, the sort that the judge presiding over the case asked of his mother.

Why was the boy out begging, and worse at 11:00 at night? Where was she at the time? I asked myself what the child was thinking. Was it right to give in to the stranger? Which also raises the question of whether the boy is mentally competent.

The whole incident highlights some of what is wrong with us as a country. I’ve been wracking my brain, wondering how and when we got to where we are now. I’m not so old that I cannot remember a time when we were a more civil and gentle lot.

When word got out that the jailed man was to appear in court, a crowd gathered. I could use ‘mob’ to describe the group, but I’ll let you decide. These bystanders rushed the police vehicle transporting the arrested man. The police hustled him up the steps of the courthouse with the people baying at their heels.

The same thing happened when the session in court ended. The police made several attempts to get man off the premises and had to get their guns out to ensure they got him out safely.

Now I know we have a big challenge with unemployment in Jamaica, but it boggles the mind that people have so much time to waste. Why would I want to stand in the blazing sun and wait to hear the outcome of something I never knew about until I heard a rumor in the street? Why would I want to beat someone to death because he committed a crime? I admit I might feel differently if this boy was my son, but then I could make the excuse that there is no way my son would be out at night begging. I’d like to think I could restrain myself from committing murder if he was assaulted. I need to think about it some more though.

There was another incident months ago, wherein a group of men broke into a church and stole some items. The residents of the village blocked the getaway car and caught one of the four men. They beat him, chopped his hands off, trimmed his locks, cut off his head, and threw it into a field of ginger.

Most would agree the men had no right to desecrate the church, but having caught one of them, why not turn him over to the police?

So he might escape or get off lighter than people think justified, but was taking his life the right thing to do?

And if any of those people who killed him attend church, did any of them think twice about sitting up in there praising God with blood on their hands?

My gripe is with the way we are doing things these days. Our first reaction is Jungle Justice. My question is - what does that say about us as a people? When did we get to this stage where our first reaction to a wrong is to lash out in a malicious and destructive way? What do we say to non-Jamaicans about the way we react? (The other members of the team the accused man was with said they feared for their lives) Do we have any excuses for why we behave the way that we do? And is there any way to return to a time when we each were our brother’s keeper?

About the writer:
J.L. Campbell lives in Jamaica and is always on the lookout for story-making material Her short stories and articles have been published in Bookends, the literary pages of the Sunday Observer When she isn’t plotting and researching new projects, she enjoys cake decorating, gardening, and reading. Her action/adventure/romance novel, Contraband, will be published in April 2010 Visit her at http://thejamaicanwriter.com

Tags: death, family, obeah, relationships, romance

All My People Say: REVOLUTION!

David Franklin — Mon, 31 May 2010 08:45:01 UT

“Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” - Anonymous

When Great Britain granted us our political Independence in 1962, we showed such promise and potential as a new Nation. In 1961, we voted on the West Indies Federation which failed miserably. In hindsight we, as a Caribbean people, could possibly have been an economic powerhouse who could hold our own against the likes of the European Union, the countries in North America and the different Trading Blocks around the World today. It was because of shortsightedness and downright ignorance by certain people and reactionary forces why we are so behind economically, socially and politically in this Globalize 21^st Century World today. We would have been, arguably, better off than we are today.

All the Caribbean Nations went their own separate ways to fend for themselves which was a colossal mistake. We are bearing the fruits of our collective shortsightedness and ignorance. All hail to a true legend that is Norman Manley. He was a man who did not do things for short term political gains as we saw with the West Indies Federation. He was indeed a true Statesman, in every sense of the word. My question is where are the Statesmen (and Stateswomen) in Jamaica today? I am talking about the ones who will stand up for principles even though they may face electoral demise.

“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” - Aristotle

From 1962 until now every Government we ever elected have ruled with a divide and conquer mentality. As the saying goes “it is a fight for scarce benefits and spoils for only the chosen few.” We would not have this mess if we were mature and disciplined enough as a people to get our Independence in the first place. Successive leaders have squandered the potential of our Nation to grow because of political expedience and that same shortsightedness I mentioned earlier in this piece. Some politicians, on both sides of the political divide, pitted Inner-City Communities against each other to the detriment of Jamaica in the long run all for political power BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. We are seeing the effects of it today with the latest State of Emergency called because of violence. When SOME of these politicians gain the power they dispose these same people, MY PEOPLE, like garbage. This makes me sick to my stomach! These same Inner-City “Community Leaders” have since grown and expanded, building a worldwide empire fueled by drugs, gun and prostitution. They have gotten bigger than the politicians who once had bankrolled them.

“All who have meditated on the art of governing Mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of Youth.” - Aristotle

Instead of giving books and the tools necessary for a solid education some of these politicians fueled them with drugs and gave them guns to do their dirty biddings so as to gain political power. Now it is biting them all in the behind while Jamaica at home and abroad suffers for it. I hope they are happy with themselves. These gangs have morphed into unstoppable juggernauts who are uncontrollable and holding many law abiding, decent citizens hostage. It is as if Jamaica has turned into a quasi-military society where suddenly every man is a bad man. We have turned into a gun worshipping country which is not good at all. This is a tragedy of the highest proportions because the mostly good, law abiding Citizens are under siege because of just a few rotten apples (politicians included). How the tables have turned! Having said that, I want to say this. Mr. Golding, based on what is coming out slowly but surely, if you have a shred of decency or integrity, please resign? YOU HAVE FAILED SIR! You are an embarrassment to the people of Jamaica just like your opposite Portia Simpson-Miller who is way in over her head. Jamaica deserves…NO! JAMAICA DEMANDS… inspired young, bold, innovative leadership independent of the politics of old which is destructive. The people have gone through hell and it has reached such a breaking point that if something is not done radically to reform our system then we will become like Haiti or, God forbid, worse.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” - Book of Proverbs 29:18

The two political leaders should be ashamed of themselves as their leadership has led Jamaica down a path of definite destruction and ultimately death. You Mr. Golding are a failure. Please, look for other work because obviously you cannot handle being Prime Minister for the most beautiful country ever created. You sir, when launching the National Democratic Movement, blasted the “Power Elites” of having a strangle hold on power and not truly representing the people. You sir, were the one who said that we needed Electoral, Constitutional and Structural Reform in every facet of Government. You sir, turned your back on what you so self-righteously preached against what is ailing Jamaica. When you finally gained power, like Portia Simpson-Miller and eighteen years of PNP rule, you sat and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change the culture. No more sir! Do what is right. Have a little integrity and decency and resign. If anyone wants to use this piece as a beating stick for Mr. Golding it is meant for all those incompetent politicians out there who are just as bad (probably worse). Your incompetence knows no bounds and Jamaica deserve much better. You never gave second thought as to who you hurt or had to step on going to the top and gain power at all cost. You have all, for the most part, been horrible, incompetent failures. Do Jamaica a favour and go. Do not make promises you know that you cannot keep, do not bother with the long, tearful goodbye speeches because Jamaica has had it with your collective mediocrity and stupidity. So, Portia Simpson-Miller you have neither the moral authority nor the judicious capacity to say a word in criticism. You are a part of the problem so, if you are tempted to say anything please, SHUT THE HELL UP! You should pen your resignation also. You are the queen of incompetence madam. Hopefully the people will not riot so much that the whole thing finally collapse beyond repair. We are sick and tired of all the nonsense by our elected officials but, we as a people are strong and will get through this latest crisis. We are strong and we shall overcome. Bruce Golding and Portia Simpson-Miller do us all a favor. We want nothing more from you because you both have shown your ineptness and mediocrity to lead. For the love of God and everything that is good in the world please, RESIGN!

David A. L. Franklin, Jr. is a business owner/operator who currently lives in New York.

Latest News - Jamaica State of Emergency, Dudus extradition, Protests, Violence

Mon, 24 May 2010 08:55:00 UT

Latest News - Jamaica State of Emergency, Dudus extradition, Protests, Violence

Jamaica’s moral and ethical comeuppance

Brian Richardson — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:55:00 UT

Is the motivation based on ideas of wrong or right (ethics) and the distinction between good or right conduct (morality) dead in Jamaica?

In this, some believe Jamaica’s darkest hours, we have come to completely understand that the truth is relative and not absolute (relativism) and that an expression of agreement is not supported by real conviction (hypocrisy). Both of the foregoing typically brings an individual or individuals to this: the belief that there is no universal truth or underlying reality that under-girds moral values (nihilism).

Let us think about this for a moment. There are two fairly good methods to finding out what people ethically and morally care about. One is to ask them, and gauge their sincerity of the response and the plausibility of what they say. The other is to see what they do and try to do it (would we do it the way they did it).

Ordinarily, we Jamaicans can cope with fallibility by shrinking the likelihood to a mistake. We can check what people say by seeing what they do. A man may present himself as a dutiful and nurturing father, and believe himself to be such. But if he never makes or takes the opportunity to be with his children, we must have our doubts.

Suppose, though, he does make himself available for such opportunities, and gladly takes his children and dutifully nurtures them and shows few or no regrets. Then the thing is settled: he cares about his children. However, in other cases as the one before us, the diagnosis of smoke screen and hypocrisy beckons.

Over the past eight weeks we have been through a whirlwind of emotion and reflection as we collectively watch in these darkest of hours as smoke screens, relativism, hypocrisy and nihilism dog ethics in the ”land of our birth”. Our government would have us believe that our sticking to our duty as citizens or insisting on our rights as the electorate
on matters of simple principle are groundless.

Many are afraid that the situation on hand has unmasked us on the world stage as creatures fated by our recent political history to be selfish, hypocritical and tribalistic. And that future outcomes for OUR country, based on this tribal history, are too difficult to contemplate given the “ethical macka” we are now in. We have been brought up to believe that that if they do it, then we have a right to do the same or be against them.

Many people will say it is ‘just us’. But I beg to differ.

We have all seen through our history men and women of honour and principle, from the late Professor Rex Nettleford, to Hugh Shearer, to Nanny, to Paul Bogle, to Sam Sharpe, to Sir Alexander Bustamante, to Norman Washington Manley and Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Our very soul as a nation was built on the very fight for ethics and morality.

Keeping our feet on ground, we should all ask ourselves: What distinguishes us from them? Is this the kind of country we wish to be a part of? Is this what we should demonstrate to our children and their grand children? What will they think of us on reflection if we sit by and collectively do nothing but talk?

It is what we do in the coming days that we will be judged by our future Jamaicans. Will they say of us: “Lesser things were of greater importance?”

Jamaica’s moral and ethical comeuppance: is the motivation based on ideas of wrong or right (ethics) and the distinction between good or right conduct (morality) dead in Jamaica?

Johnny lands Abroad

Kharl Daley — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:30:02 UT

Whether you are a visitor or a returning resident the moment you step off the plane a wretched life slowly unravels. In time, your mind will swing like a pendulum dying to go back home and yet wanting to stay. All your once happy-go- lucky views of Canada will soon be lost in the great misery that surrounds you.

I write this story for simply one reason. It would be treason against my conscience if I didn’t, for I would not be me anymore, at least, I would not be who I am.

As you inch your way forward to the immigration desk, unknown to you is the fact that undercover cops are watching you, suspicious of whether you are carrying ganja strapped to your body or hidden in your luggage.

No one is immune from this scrutiny not even those among us that presently work as their civil servants. Oh what a contrast to how we (Jamaicans) welcome them to our shores.

The immigration personnel greets you with ‘skin teeth’ then drill you with questions from the assumption that you are entering ‘their’ country illegally, presumably under someone else’s identity.

If all goes well, you are then release from your interrogation to the waiting arms of family members and relatives, but they too in time will come to treat you no better than the defendants of colonial powers that you have just pass through.

Here the propaganda machinery professes to the new comers how Canada is a multi-cultural society, yet the system expects you to conform to the norms of their dominant culture and not your own. Before long, if you’re not careful you loose yours or at least adopt there’s.

Canada’s way of life is a complex system of existing polices base on insidious racist tendencies of prejudice, discrimination and injustice with impose State intervention.

No where is this more evident than in the guidelines set out to raise your children. Fail to comply and you'll land in judicial hot water.

The persistent colonial relationship of taking your children should you apply Jamaican style discipline serves to feed their lily white employment establishments. First the child becomes a ward of the state and you become a prison bud.

The punishment of criminalizing is to them served as a lesson to be learned rather than an injustice to undo. There polices are not focus on the reason why a child is misbehaving or getting low grades but primarily on the parents behaviour in trying to curve the child.

Seek employment in the field of work you did back home and they'll tell you, you have no Canadian experience. Here there are no equal employment opportunities. Let me say it as it is, that's just 'so so' horse manure. Those who are lucky to find employment work day and night for practically nothing. Every single penny earned goes to the bill collectors be it rent, mortgage, car insurance, taxes, phone, food and clothing.

Many of our women find jobs in the healthcare industry as personal support workers cleaning the backside of some old folks for niggardly wages, while the men fear no better, working in factories night and day with hardly nothing to show for it.

Drive a car and you will no doubt be pulled over by Babylon for no apparent reason. As soon as you express rage of disaproval they radio for back-up. Your rage is seen as nihilistic rather than a demonstration against their oppressive folly and if you dont play it cool, you'll find yourself in the back of their crouser or a hearse. No wonder it is often said that predjuice is maximum hatred for minimum reasons.

As months turn to years you'll be choking in the midst of confusion. Paralysed with hardship in so many ways that only the jubliant memories of your homeland keeps you alive.

Immigrant - Loud and Proud!

S. M. Williams — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 08:45:01 UT

I have been ranting about the Republicans and this whole health care debacle to my circle of friends (online and offline). In the same way that it is taboo for me as a black person to talk critically about black people, apparently, there is the same feeling that those of us not born in this nation having no right to talk about this nation. In the same way that it is taboo for me as a black person to talk critically about black people, apparently, there is the same feeling that those of us not born in this nation having no right to talk about this nation. A bigger load of drivel and poppycock I’ve yet to see. Guess what, I have as much right if not more to criticize. You know why? Because unlike those who just happened to be born here, we who are immigrants made a conscious decision to come and live here. We unlike native born citizens, had to fight for the right to be here and be screened like criminals for the right to call the US home. Every legal immigrant is finger printed, TB tested and made to take a series of shots in order to qualify to become a resident. We are probably healthier and less prone to disease than US born natives because we undergo such close scrutiny. As such I object to anyone calling my loyalty to this country into question. While Jamaica will always be the land of my birth, I had a choice to return to my birth country but I chose to live here and contribute to this nation. AND before anyone gets on their high horse, my Jamaican friends, who live on the island, live a much better lifestyle than I do. I can’t afford to have a housekeeper or send my son to private school in this country; had I lived in Jamaica, I probably could have. So let’s keep this in proper perspective shall we. Good.

Now back to this healthcare issue. We have spent in excess of $30 billion dollars on the war following 9-11. Do you feel any safer than you did before? Every day we hear about new terrorist plots foiled and sneaker bombers captured, and people gate crashing the white house parties. So really how safe are we? Yet, people are balking at spending 10 billion over 10 years (not today people, over 10 years) to ensure that we have a healthy nation, children are insured, medication is cheaper and some 32 million people will have insurance. And since I’m a taxpayer AND a homeowner and pay significantly more into the tax base than many US born citizens, and actively support many US born citizens with my tax dollars, I believe I have a right to say exactly what I feel like saying. If you don’t want to hear, stick your fingers in your ears, it seems to be something that many of us who were both born and elected to live here seem very apt to do. Wimps.

The new health bill is by no means perfect. It does not solve all issues; but at the very least, it’s a start. Can we not all agree to this. Can we not all see how this will benefit us in the long run. We need to take a leaf out of history and realize that this is how we got Medicare, Medicaid and Social security and look how we rely upon these tools as critical to our nation. Healthcare reform will be similar to these measures. We need to accept responsibility to take care of those who are unable to take care of themselves. And if you consider that democratic socialism then so be it. That is the nation that we all were born into an inherited… a nation that has these programs to take care of others..why then are we balking at one more?

A few weeks ago, I railed against my race for their behavior, why would anyone think I wouldn’t rail also against my adopted nation. No-one loves America more than I do. But loving something means being able to admit it’s good things as well as its flaws. And how dare anyone question my loyalty or my dedication just because I’m able to be an adult and see the good, the bad and the ugly. Because I love America, I feel it is my right to defend it against enemies BOTH foreign and domestic. A friend of mine objected to us saying that there are many of our leaders (read Republicans) are currently an embarrasment. She felt that we didn’t love the nation, because we were critical…since when does criticism equate to dislike or disloyalty. We are critical because we are very unhappy and dissapointed in this land that we have adopted as our home. That is not determined by birth, but by the simple ability to look and made critical decisions. It doesn't matter where you are born...this is our home and we are taxpayers and contributors to this nation and we have a right to call a spade a spade. ...

She also advocated that we pray for our nation and those who fight to destroy it (read foreigners). Okay, so I understand and get that. But right now the ones destroying the nation…are the enemies…domestic NOT foreign. Also prayer without purpose is useless. We need to stop asking God for help when we aren't doing anything to help ourselves. God will only step in when we at least attempt to try to help oursevles. The poor (and I use this term not literally) deity must be rolling his eyes in disgust and annoyance that those who are made in his image and spend so much time finding ways to degrade others also made in his image. This makes us not only a disgrace to ourselves and our nation, must more importantly, we are a disgrace to our maker.

So I don’t care whose corn I mash in the next few weeks. I plan to yell from the mountain tops when these yokels who are throwing rocks and calling in death threats and generally behave like assinine toads are encouraged by the equally stupid republican leadership. I plan to berate them for not berating those who are advocating violence and perpetrating said violence. There is no country that needs education more than this nation; because those who are behaving with the collective age of their shoe size need to spend some time studying the history of this nation and realize that there is nothing happening today that hasn’t happened before. What amazes me is that it is those less privileged who are raging against the machine. We who can afford to shell out hundreds a month in healthcare are calm, yet they who will benefit are behaving like the sky has suddenly fallen in. Idiots!!!

But as a democrat, all this hoopla kinda makes me happy because what the Republicans don’t seem to realize is that Obama is not the usual democrat. He’s going to use this misbehavior as leverage to counteract and counterbalance every single thing he wishes to accomplish. He’s pushed through what no-one else could do in the last 20 years. The man is amazing – not perfect – but amazing in his ability to stay the course and not get distracted by the rhetoric and the slings and arrows thrown at him. Now for him I will pray because he’s going to need A LOT of it to make it through the next two years.

Double Standards...boiling it down to Black and White

S. M. Williams — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:00:02 UT

You know black people sometimes aggravate me and I realize that I’m breaking the holy grail of keeping all negative speak about my race in silence; but really sometimes they are just plain silly. Today I’m getting my nails done and watching HLN ( a network I only ever see at the nail salon) and there’s a story about a step team (white) that has to share the winning award with another step team. So this seems simple right? Hmm, so not so. “Stepping” is a black sorority and fraternity tradition. I learned about it when I moved to this country and it was one of the best parts of college. I had no interest in joining a sorority (but if I had to make a choice, I’m a Delta kinda girl), but I certainly did love a step show. And we would travel long distances to watch step shows. We went to school in N Miami but would travel to UM and FAU to watch our favorite step teams. Because stepping is traditionally and “all black” thing, it’s almost viewed as if these girls could not possibly win the competition. So I watched their performance and truth be told, they were FLAWLESS. The advantage that they might have had over the sistas is that they’d probably trained in both dance and gymnastics and so rather than their steps being raw and dynamic, they were sharp, clipped and precise. They moved perfectly in unison and I saw no flaws in their routine. However, because they were the wrong race, there was this whole debate and it ended up that even though they WON, they were later told about “scoring discrepancies “ which meant they shared the award with another team – an “all black” team. Both teams got the scholarship money; but I’m sure they still felt slighted. The good that came out of this I suppose is that these white children finally felt the sting of unfair treatment because of their race….that whole thing about walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins.

However, on the flipside is the utter hypocrisy of my black folks. If I’m gonna call out others, then I need to be willing to call out my own. AND THAT is a cardinal sin in the black community. We are never ever supposed to say anything to “drag down” our race. It’s not like we have to say anything, our stupidity and our often inability to focus on the big picture does that for us daily. However, we need to stop with the hypocrisy. We cannot be pissed with white people who refuse to let us into their golf clubs, schools, businesses and organizations if we choose to padlock the doors to our own. Black people want to drag down the walls of every “white” establishment and conqueor new vistas. I have no complaints with this; but if we are going to demand that “whitey” open up all of their previous all white bastions to our entry, then can we really be that protective about “stepping, jazz, rap music, soul or R&B music?”

Then there is the controversy about the movies we are in or the shows about us. People are annoyed because of “Precious” because it portrays us in a negative light. I have one question – is that a reality in our community? Then why are we ashamed of it? Maybe if we shine a light of the squalor and degradation in our community, we might feel compelled to actually fix it. Spike Lee is up in arms about Tyler Perry and his TBS comedies because they are buffoonery. Apparently, the only acceptable black comedies are shows like the Cosby show which showcase us at our best. But is that the reality of our existence? Quite frankly, Tyler’s success is BECAUSE of his accurate representation of large facets of black life. In “Why Did I get Married” he did a phenomenal job of looking at black marriages in ALL of their states. In “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” he showed the redeeming power of black love to elevate a woman out of depression and insecurity to happiness and contentment. In every single Madea-related movie, he shows the power of black families and how those families are an integral part of how black people get their values and how family is indelibly a part of black life. Even his buffoonery comedies showcase this – where’s the issue with this? We are hypocritical if we chose only to showcase HALF of who we are.

White people aren’t focused on just the “good” stories. Half the movies that come out about white life are quite frankly crappy. If we look at some of the TV shows out there, they portray white women as little more than addle headed sex crazed morons little. They bedhop (let’s talk about Cougar Town); they are murderers (every version of CSI, NCIS and Law and Order); and chronic liars. Psyc is funny as hell but is about a man who lies for a living in cahoots with the police department. Really? And we are worried about “Meet the Browns” because Mr. Brown is a tacky dresser and a bit of an idiot. Don’t all of us have a family member who we jokingly know is the missing idiot for some unsuspecting village? So Tyler Perry did a show about this crazy member of the family…what’s the big freaking deal?

We have much bigger problems than whether or not a group of white girls performed better than the black girls in a step show. Maybe, just maybe they worked harder? Cheerleading and dance competitions are arduous. Figure skating and gymnastics require years of practice to perform in a single Olympic or medal event. Black people have not had access to the kinds of funds for these types of trainings so we ‘ve excelled in areas where “natural” talent are allowed to flourish such as track and field, football and basketball. But sports like tennis and golf only have a few who look like us because we don’t often have the wherewithal to explore those options. So the fact that these white girls might have been better than the black girls is in my mind quite possible and quite likely probable. But hey, that’s just my feelings and does not represent the opinions of this station or any of its affiliates.

People don’t even realize that black people do not have the universal right to vote in this country. The Voting Rights Act is what gives us the right to vote and it was recently up to be re-signed. Note to self: check on the status of that. We are underserved in this country with regards to employment and healthcare. Traditionally, we hold more lower paying jobs that our white counterparts. By 2050, black people will no longer be the largest minority in this country, that honor will go to our Hispanic and Latino brethren, and so our concerns will be pushed even further down the social ladder of importance if we don’t get our patooties into gear. So can we focus on more critical things than a dance completion?

We have work to do in this country and that work is not helped by Michael Steele, a black man who is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee who gets no respect from his party and seems quite out of touch with the reality of the plight shared by the plight of the majority of his race in this nation. So if anyone thinks that I plan to be silent about my aggravation with the state of black people or the fact that my own people refuse to face up to our reality and do something about it, then they have another thing coming.

About the Author:
S. M. Williams is a Jamaican education professional who lives in South Floria.

Losing Everything, A Sign of The Times

Margaret Bailey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:00:01 UT

These past few years that the World has been experiencing economic upheavals has taken its toll on even the most conscientious and stable individuals in our Society. Many families are faced with the dilemma of downsizing. The middle class once owners of Real Estate, cars and other possessions are being thrust into the category of the "Have Nots" due to unpredictable financial times.

The perception of the Homeless and Disadvantaged is now changing. They are no longer individuals who have been careless and irresponsible. They are honest, hard working people with good jobs and families; however, due to the rising cost of living and low wages, they are not able to meet all their responsibilities.

Large families are being forced to move into small apartments because of unemployment and the inability to pay their bills and sustain their lives. Most people assume that people become homeless because of bad management or lack of ambition, but during these uncertain times it is happening to the most responsible citizens, and sometimes it is due to no fault of their own. One unfortunate circumstance, such as ill-health or a death of a family member, can lead to a road of degradation and nomadic circumstances.

The support system that once existed in years gone by is non-existent. The general tone of most peoples' attitudes are "Each man for his/her self". The climb to survival and longevity has taken on a dangerous competitive edge, where no one cares to help their fellowman. It has become an insatiable lust for the almighty dollar, where scruples ard morals are left hanging in the wind.

Games of "Catch 22" are being played because even when individuals are prosperous and managing, Corporations and the Elitists are seeking to relieve them of their worldly possessions. For instance, businesses are closing their doors overnight, leaving workers jobless without any explanations. Condominiums and Real Estate Organizations are seeking higher dividends by selling out without a moment's notice to the highest bidders. Therefore, our lives have become lessons in Luck and Chance, because even when individuals have the money, at any point in time, their lives can be altered by unforeseen circumstances.

As a society, we have embarked upon times that are unreasonable, with a very grim outlook for the future. How can we remain positive for the younger generation, when we cannot offer them solace by saying that their lives will be better. We encourage them to pursue an Education; however, the reality is, even with an Ivy League Education, they are not ostracized from the harsh cruelties of an economy that lacks meaningful opportunities.

People are turning to all sorts of "get rich quick" schemes or dabbling in drug sales to enhance their incomes, thus creating more criminal activities than any other era in history. The most rational of citizens have turned to lives of impropriety in order to survive.

Our Governments keep chanting that CHANGE is coming; however when a person or persons are firmly embossed in quick sand, CHANGE should not be gradual or a goal to aspire to. It should be IMMEDIATE.

So, as citizens continue to lose their homes, livelihood and possessions, the Government continues to send messages of hope and change to offer comfort. As most Jamaicans may know the old phrase, "Promises offer comfort to fools."

Therefore, before the sky falls in and we are left with our worlds being torn apart, all good citizens are looking earnestly for signs of REAL CHANGE and POSITIVITY. We can only hope and pray that it comes sooner than later.

Divided Loyalty added to mounting Pressure

Kharl Daley — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:00:01 UT

Yow Garnett wha'agwaan? I attach a document from wan a I idren from yard. Him out fe try publish it inna de local papers an did a seek my feedback. If yu think Jamaican.com uda publish it mek I know. As a father, I waan de I read de document an jus give I your thoughts even if yu feel seh it offensive. However de I feel afta reading de document jus mek it flow naturally like how de water gush out naturally from de rock a Niagara or Dunn's River.

Well, set out below is the lament of a father, Michael Flemmings from all the way in Porus Manchester but this could have easily been any father from any where. The same runs true if you are in North America, Canada in particular. The system creates desolation and calls it peace and strips from us the dignity of fatherhood.

It has become quite popular recently for individuals to be coming out speaking on behalf of children. I can’t help but wonder how serious these individuals are? Where are the groups or organisations that are willing to ensure that our Family Courts act in the children’s best interest and not continue the age old tradition of appeasing mothers? Are the courts able to recognise and reward “good fathers” or is there just a one size dead-beat dad approach to all fathers?

Is the Family Court able to give due considerations to all matters coming before it or are cases just pushed through in an attempt to speedily get through all matters set for that day? How can a father be appreciated and accepted as “the parent” by the school, church, doctor, and wider community and then goes to court and be treated like a dead-beat dad? Why should a father spend everyday of his son’s life teaching him how to appreciate life and what it has to offer, read, play cricket or kick a ball, being totally hands-on in an effort to empower his child, while the mother is otherwise occupied and then a judge is able to award custody to the said mother without any consideration for the best interest of the child?

One would have thought that the parent who is actively involved in the child’s life and doing everything possible to help that child to maximise all his potentials would be given the ultimate consideration. Especially in a society like ours where single parenting and particularly the lack of involved fathers represents a more pressing threat to our nation’s progress than is currently being recognised. Students' achievement is in most cases due more to the conditions of students' lives outside of school than it is to what takes place at school. Our progress as a nation is a function of our progress in education.

If the court decides that the mother should get custody of a male child, should the mother not now be expected to be the lead parent in empowering that child while the father plays a supporting role? If that supporting role is limited to just child support or payments pertaining to the child’s material welfare, aren’t we in danger of creating more Lee Boyd Malvos? What kind of subliminal images will be sent to that male child?

Respect begets respect. Should a person appearing in court before a judge expect that judge to be respectful and courteous? Judges are allowed to speak to persons appearing in court in a manner that the said judge would find unacceptable had he or she been the subject of such tone or comment. When interim orders are made in relation to maintenance, what guides the judge in making such declarations? Should these declarations have any bearing on the incomes of the parties involved or is it that the judges can make any order he or she feels at that time? Are those orders always constitutional?

Are the mandates of the Family Court and the roles of judges clearly and simply defined in order to be understood by the common man? If the more responsible parent is to be awarded custody, what criteria or methods are used to determine who the better parent is? Are decisions taken by the Family Courts in harmony with the recommendations and policies of other government agencies (Ministry of Education etc.)?

Why does it seem mothers should have custody, but it is the role of fathers to define and shape their sons life and ultimately determine the man he should become? Are fathers leaving the family court feeling any better for the experience or is it that fathers left feeling that they should walk away from their responsibility?

With individuals declaring themselves women’s and children’s rights advocate where can good fathers turn for support? Where are the men’s rights advocates? Is it that once a boy becomes a man, he no longer has rights to be advocated? Which groups or organization are prepared to do a study on how children (boys especially) having had their future decided by a Family Court judge fared emotionally, psychologically etc? Does this by chance have any bearing on the graduation rate from tertiary institutions being over 74% female?

Look at those who were placed in the custody of the father as opposed to those being placed with the mother. Widespread family breakdown, families not forming in the first place and unplanned parenthood, have isolated pathogens that are an integral part of today's urban landscape.

The high crime rates, and the atmosphere of violence in areas where young men are raised without fathers and oftentimes incompetent mothers, have promoted cultural values based on violence, predatory sex and instant gratification. Coupled with the influence of the drug barons, the dancehall sub-culture, and Gaza/Gully phenomenon, those values are the dominant male adolescent values of many urban and sub-urban communities. Is the Family Court oblivious to what is happening in the wider society?

If we are serious about solving the crime problem in the medium to long term, we could start here by saving our at risk youths. Are the judges in the Family Court who are so powerful and mighty any better parents than those they seek to judge? Are judges in the Family Court on a mission to humiliate parents who appear before them (especially fathers)? How can a judge be quoting from and making decisions based on a report done on both parents with one or both parents not having access to the said report unless represented by an Attorney?

Solid parenting is not just about the material welfare of the child. It must be measured in terms of the soundness of the parent’s judgment, the sum of what that parent knows and the skill with which he/she can use those factors to the child’s advantage in nurturing and providing mental stimulation to enable that child to grow to understand and appreciate his/her purpose in life, the needs of his/her fellow citizens, and to be of service to them. Proper parenting enables children to become better citizens, improves social capital, and public morality.

Having recently had the uncomfortable experience of a prostate examination and while I would encourage all men to do so I however feel an unwillingness in suggesting that men go boldly to our courts to have their fate as fathers determined by a Family Court judge. I think it is time that the media (within strict guidelines) be allowed to report on cases before the Family Court and the future of those children having had family court intervention being documented in an effort to ensure that due considerations are given to ensuring that decisions taken are only in the best interests of our children. Our esteemed judges would have no objections to such scrutiny.

Jamaica’s Mixture of Gangs and Politics Causes Grave Problem with U.S.

George Graham — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:05:00 UT

Christopher Michael "Dudus" Coke

One of the ugliest skeletons in Jamaica’s closet is attracting international attention. And it could lead to the downfall of Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his Labour Party government.

I am talking about the connection between the island’s political parties and the gangs.

If my memory is accurate, it started back in the Sixties, when one of the parties encouraged supporters to take to the streets and keep opponents from voting. The other party responded in kind, and the tradition of political gang violence was born.

I haven’t lived in Jamaica for a long time, but I regularly read the online versions of the Gleaner and the Observer to keep up with the situation "at home." And I am troubled by what I’ve been reading lately.

Apparently, gang violence has become institutionalized over the years, and the result is one of the highest murder rates in the world. Also, the Jamaican dons have become increasingly involved with a powerful network that deals in illegal drugs and guns across the globe.

What’s even more frightening is that the gangs apparently enjoy protection from the authorities because of their political influence.

It certainly looks as if that’s what the Dudus Affair might be about.

Christopher Michael Coke, aka ‘Michael Christopher Coke’; ‘Paul Christopher Scott’; ‘Presi’; ‘General’; ‘President’; ‘Dudus’ and ‘Shortman’ is a Jamaican businessman, show promoter and don who (according to local press reports) has "strong family and business connections in the constituency of Prime Minister Bruce Golding."

Coke reportedly controls Golding’s West Kingston constituency of Tivoli Gardens, and the gang leader is credited with playing a major role in the Prime Minister’s election to Parliament.

Last year, U.S. authorities charged Coke with illegal gun trading and drug dealing. They asked Jamaica to extradite him for trial in America.

According to the indictment filed in the US District Court Southern District of New York, Coke and others known and unknown, "unlawfully, intentionally, and knowingly combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed together and with each other to violate the narcotics laws of the United States." He was also indicted on charges of conspiring to traffic in firearms

But Golding has so far refused to hand the Jamaican gang leader over to U.S. authorities. He said there are irregularities in the way evidence against Coke was obtained, but has provided no details.

American authorities are furious. "Jamaica’s processing of the extradition request has been subjected to unprecedented delays, unexplained disclosure of law enforcement information to the press, and unfounded allegations questioning the U.S.’ compliance with the MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) and Jamaican law," the American State Department complained. "The Government of Jamaica’s unusual handling of the August request for the extradition of a high-profile Jamaican crime lord, with reported ties to the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, which currently holds a majority in Parliament … raises serious questions about the Government’s commitment to combating transnational crime."

A State Department spokesman labeled Jamaica a "major illicit drug-producing country." And "a highly placed U.S. source" was quoted in the Sunday Observer as warning that Washington would begin canceling the visas of high-profile Jamaicans.

Opposition to the Prime Minister’s position is rising in Jamaica. This week, the island’s most powerful group of business leaders, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), joined the tide of dissent.

The PSOJ called on the government to "expeditiously take those steps necessary to allow the Jamaican courts to assess and determine the merits of any outstanding extradition requests by the United States, confident that our courts will have every regard for the rights of citizens, as enshrined in Jamaica's Constitution."

But Golding is standing by his political ally.

"I’m not defending the wrongdoing of any person, but I will say this: If I have to pay a political price for it I’m going to hold a position that constitutional rights do not begin at Liguanea. That’s not where they start," Golding told Parliament last week.

Not only the Prime Minister, but all of Jamaica might be called on to pay a "political price." And in these troubled times, that price might prove high, indeed.

This could be the time to start cutting loose those politically connected dons, and set Jamaica on the path to a healthier political and social environment.

Killing the “Love Bird” Would Destroy a Piece of Jamaica’s Soul

George Graham — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:10:00 UT

I am aghast that the Jamaican Government is considering a plan to get rid of Air Jamaica. Of course the airline is losing money. In these troubled times, what airline isn’t? But this is not just any airline, this is a piece of Jamaica in the sky.

I notice that the government can still afford to advertise on television in America, where I live. And, as far as I am concerned, those brightly colored Air Jamaica planes are the best advertisements that money can buy. The money spent running the airline should be considered a part of Jamaica’s tourism promotion budget.

Ask any of us in the Diaspora what airline we take to go home, and you will probably hear, "the Love Bird." I, for one, wouldn’t think of flying home on any other airline. Air Jamaica is home. When I board the plane, I’m "back a yard."

I will always remember my first flight on Air Jamaica. It was in January 1970 and I was promotion manager for a book publisher in Toronto. One day I received a surprise phone call from a representative of Continental Telephone, who wanted to talk to me about a job – in Kingston.

It seems the American company had received a big contract to rebuild Jamaica’s phone system and was looking for someone to do PR for the project. A few weeks earlier, I had played golf with a Continental Telephone rep while on vacation in Port of Spain, and I had told him how much I missed the Caribbean sunshine. When the job opening came up, he mentioned my name.

I had been in Canada for many long, cold years and it was winter. Did I want to go home? I’m sure I don’t have to answer that question. If you’re Jamaican, and you’ve lived abroad, you know the answer.

So in two shakes of a duck’s tail, I was boarding the Love Bird.

I will never forget the joy of setting foot on that plane. A smiling hostess handed me a rum punch, and island music played on the speakers. Ahead of me, a stout woman was wrestling with an overstuffed suitcase. She was cursing the suitcase as only Jamaicans can curse. But she was smiling.

A young mother who had boarded the plane earlier was quietly nursing her infant, and no one seemed to mind. This was Jamaica, after all. Cool beans. We were together and we were feeling all right.

Everyone was chattering, our voices electric with excitement. We were eager to get home. And in the meantime, we were soaking up the atmosphere of home, enjoying an experience that mere money cannot buy.

So to those of us who have known and loved Air Jamaica, the thought that it might vanish from the sky is almost sacrilegious.

I haven’t flown on the Love Bird for a while, but I understand it is still a magical experience. Last year, Air Jamaica was named "The Caribbean’s Leading Airline" at the World Travel Awards. It was the twelfth win in a row for the airline.

So, Mr. Golding, sir, I am asking you to hol’ you han’ before you chop off the Love Bird’s neck. That’s what you would be doing if you sell Air Jamaica to Caribbean Airlines.The Air Jamaica planes would disappear, and Jamaica would lose a piece of its soul.

Someone sent me a copy of a letter you received from the Air Jamaica staff, begging you to let them take over the airline instead. From what I’ve read, your government won’t be getting any money from Caribbean Airlines anyway, just shares in their company.

So why not give the employees a break, Mr. Prime Minister? What have you got to lose?

Stay the execution, Mr. Golding. You wouldn’t want to go down in history as the man who killed the Love Bird.

Tags: Air Jamaica, Air Jamaica sale, Caribbean Airlines, Jamaican airline

Black History

Kharl Daley — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:00:01 UT

Black and beautiful we are

Loveable too.

Articulate and

Courageous

Kindhearted and true.

History teaches us that we are

Innovative, inventive and industrious in the fields of

Science, Sport and

Technologies and all

Other faculties.

Remember always that

You are young, gifted and black.

Black History Month (Yea Mon!) thanks and praises to the vision of Dr. Carter Woodson and to the painters, craftsmen, sculptors, poets, musicians, teachers and parents and everyone else who have and are still contributing to the mystic of Black History.

The world seemingly moves so fast today so that the past seems so far away. May 17th 1954 Brown had to sue the Board of Education and by January 20th 2010 Obama has spent a year already in the ‘White’ House.

The moral of the facts are, educate us or better yet, if we take our education to task we can reach great heights.

The study of Black History reveals that along our marches and struggles there were others not of our pigmentation but they too had that old Negro spirit, fighting for us and with us. Many were burned in effigy while others pay the ultimate price so let us not alienate them from the glory of our triumph.

In heartache and pain we must revisit the pages of our history from Emmett Till to Martin Luther King Jnr, from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X from Nat Turner to Nelson Mandela. Not a single page of our history should go unread.

In our tributes least we forget, let us extol Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and the Cuban soldiers in aiding the liberation of Angola.

To the late Peter Tosh and countless others a Para- military salute for keeping us musically harmonized to the motherland. As Peter puts it, ‘It doesn’t matter where you come from as long as you are a Blackman you are an African, don’t mine your complexion for you have the identity of an African.”

Yea man! When I recall the triangular route of the infamous slave trade only the words of Bob Marley ‘save’ them, for we can only ‘forgive them through love and affection”. May this Black History Month remind us not to be vehicles of white domination. Zeen. May we continue to build on the legacy of Black Consciousness, liberation and achievements. (So Long Mi Comrades)

Heading into a New Decade, Jamaica Faces Formidable Challenges

George Graham — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 05:40:05 UT

With the world economy in a mess, Jamaica faces stiff challenges in the next few years. The new decade is off to a gloomy start internationally as giants like America, Europe and Japan struggle to cope with the aftermath of the meltdown that occurred toward the end of 2008. The ripple effect is still being felt around the globe, and Jamaica is no exception.

New taxes, resulting at least in part from an International Monetary Fund mandate, and high interest rates, imposed because of questions about Jamaica’s ability to meet its debt obligations, are a crippling combination. They tend to discourage the investment that creates jobs; and rising unemployment inevitably leads to greater poverty and more crime.

I am confident that Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his government are taking steps to counter this threat. But it will not be easy. The prevailing global climate is not favorable for private investment. And if the government steps in to fill the investment gap, as it probably will have to, the result would be more public debt, triggering a vicious cycle of higher interest rates and more taxes.

I am not an economist, and I haven’t lived in Jamaica for a long time, but it looks to me as if the island is in for a very difficult time. Of course, Jamaicans are resilient and innovative. The island has faced hard times before, and I am sure it will muddle through as it always has. But changes will be necessary.

New markets need to be found for Jamaican exports and new sources of tourism dollars must be tapped. New areas of development must be explored – perhaps in "green" energy, as Jamaica has an abundance of sunlight and wind.

But, most of all, new attitudes must be encouraged. Obviously, the island will have to grow more of its own food – and eat what it produces. Obviously, population growth must be addressed.

And, obviously, public servants must be held accountable.

I am sure there are many dedicated, honest, hard-working men and women in the island’s civil service. And they probably do not receive the credit they deserve. But the level of public service has deteriorated to the point where the Daily Gleaner is advocating drastic reforms, including an end to "security of tenure," which protects incompetent civil servants from being fired.

"After 47 years of Jamaica’s Independence, it is more than obvious that we have not done a good job at managing our affairs. Jamaica is badly adrift and is on the verge of becoming a failed or rogue state," the newspaper’s editors declared recently. "Saving our country requires strong leadership and an urgent overhaul of the public bureaucracy, which has failed at its job to effectively manage the country’s business and deliver first-rate services."

There is also the deplorable problem of corruption. Jamaica simply cannot afford to tolerate corruption. The implications are too devastating. Corrupt politicians and public servants take the food out of the mouths of hungry children. They must be dealt with accordingly.

Jamaica is not the most corrupt country in the world. That dubious honor goes jointly to Somalia and Myanmar (formerly Burma) with Iraq coming in second. But the island ranks far too low on the list produced by the Berlin-based organization, Transparency International. The 2006 ranking puts the island at 84^th among 180 countries surveyed, below places like Serbia. (The least corrupt countries are Finland, Denmark and New Zealand. )

When I was a boy, the Jamaican civil service was held in high esteem. I don’t recall anyone questioning the integrity of civil servants back then. And politicians were rarely caught with their hands in the till.

Somehow, that pride of service must be restored. Without it, Jamaica will be hard pressed to weather the storms ahead.

Santa Claws

Kharl Daley — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:07:24 UT

Every year Santa Claws and discreetly mauls my reputation as a caring and giving dad

He being disingenuous makes me, ‘stone moderated mad.’

Enough is enough;

Since children aren't told whom their Christmas presents are really from, I'll now expose Santa’s massive global scam.

In the 1930’s Coco-Cola soft drink Company wanted a key figure for an imaginary Christmas icon and so American artist Haddon Sundblom painted the now legendary Santa Claus man.

It was from Clement Moore’s 1822 poem, “A visit from St.Nicholas” that Haddon drew inspiration and created the white bearded, red and white suited man.

Since then in every mall I saw them sat

Little children Santa Claus lap

Telling them if they aren’t naughty but nice

He’ll leave them their desired toys on Christmas Eve night.

But what of me a father that have worked so hard

Providing for my children in the bitter cold abroad

Why rob me of the recognition and thanks for the presents I’ve bought

Then give it to the prankster, Santa Claus the fraud.

I would love to be acknowledged and appreciated for the things I've done

I’ve sacrifice a lot for my children’s welfare and fun

All year from dust to dawn I’ve laboured so hard

At times doing two jobs to send things back a yard

I’ve shipped barrels and parcels all through the year and

Constantly remit money for my children’s care.

Where was Santa when my children were heading back to school?

No help with lunch money, books or education tools

Where he was when food, rent and medical bills are to be paid?

No sign of him for those other 11 months of the year.

I feel despised and cheated now when Christmas comes around and Santa heap and rob my praises then leaves me with a frown.

I can’t be home for Christmas this year as things are really hard but I’ve once again made the sacrifice for a irie Christmas dung a yard.

My wish now for Christmas is a ban on Santa Claus and teach and educate our children on the true gift of Christmas joy.

Merry Christmas to you and Happy 2010 to all.

Can Blacks be racist against Whites

Kharl Daley — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:30:00 UT

Racism is a belief that a particular race is the primary determinant of human traits and capabilities and that the racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. No where is this more evident than in white society and has been a constant theme in black life for over 600 hundred years.

Racism is therefore the nuclear boom of physical and physiological and moral destruction of a people. It is the greatest evil of mankind perpetrated by whites through the medium of a white dominated world.

Racism invites the exploitation of an entire race of people, dehumanizing them while maintaining and preserving the system through injustice, segregation, discrimination and all other facets of human endeavors that robs a people of their respectful place in history, their culture, their dignity and right to self determination.

To analyze racism is to carefully examine human foibles entirely connected to historical truths of how blacks were and are treated by whites from the so called justice systems straight down to the commoner of the streets.

To the racist, prejudice and discrimination is perfectly natural and not immoral base upon a distinction of skin color. This gives rise to the inherent notion (albeit a false one) that natural preferences and privileges comes with being white with the exclusion of the entire black race from the blessings of the upper echelons of a so called civilized society.

Racism has cause blacks to be denied proper and equivalent education, healthcare, housing, jobs, justice and other faculties of human life. The end result of which poverty, illiteracy and other ills of social decadency becomes color coded. In essence it becomes black.

It is therefore mute to even suggest that blacks can be racist even as the proverbial black blood is still dripping from the finger tips of a white racist society. To say that blacks can be racist against whites is liken to a black person calling a white person a nigger. What effect can or will that really have?

I hope by spelling out the word nigger I have indeed shock the sensibility of the reader for in so doing my point is made clear. If I had used the N-word it would have taken away the sting of degradation, the hurt and torture of what racism is all about.

Now there are no benefits gained from blacks who may 'discriminate' against whites for whites still would not be deprived of anything. They would still maintain their status and privilege within the society base on skin color. The white power structure will not be rattled let alone crumble under a so called black racism. Such does not exist and is not practical.

Conversely, if a white person should utter the word nigger in the presence of blacks the sting and torture of racism takes hold in the body, mind and spirit of all blacks.

Racism always brings with it an economic foundation to those who practice it while those who are subjects will harbor upon themselves abstract poverty, brutality and condemnation.

Racism inculcates a sense of inferiority and fear upon its victims stripping them of their self worth and pride. It gives racist, a power structure of authority and awe while the inevitable position of bearing the yoke of oppression, serfdom, peons and slaves are cast upon blacks.

Any assault upon white establishment cannot be by blacks merely being racist against whites, for racism are the suppression of civil liberties, human rights, freedom and the covert and open lynching of humanity. No where in this universe blacks have such control, dominance or inhumane inflictions upon whites, not even on the continent of Africa where the vast majority of the population are blacks.

Racism must therefore not be confused with that which is used by the oppress in protest and resistance to the oppressors or oppression. The person with the yoke around their neck cannot be classified in the same way as the ones that place it there.

Caribbean Court Of Justice (CCJ) Can We Trust Ourselves?

Hamilton Daley — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:23:44 UT

In a recent speech at a reception at the British High Commissioner's residence in Kingston, to mark the 800th anniversary of the University of Cambridge, my esteemed legal colleague Lord Anthony Gifford QC, Barrister and Attorney-at-Law, called for real discussions to be held at national level for Jamaicans to determine whether the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) should become the country's final appellate court.

By his speech Lord Gifford ignited again the discussion on whether Jamaica should accede to making the CCJ Jamaica's final court of appeal. The speed and direction in which Jamaica moves at any given time in respect of the CCJ issue has in the past depended on the colour of the government. The PNP, the party presently in Opposition, has long been open to the concept of the CCJ, whilst the governing JLP's politics has, up until a recent statement by Prime Minster Bruce Golding in which he indicated that his Government may re-evaluate its position on the CCJ, always been lukewarm at best. The Prime Minister's statement should be welcomed as acknowledging recognition of changing times. The JLP's aversion to anything suggesting federalization of Caribbean states pre-dates Jamaica's independence, CARICOM and certainly the present day reality of a strong European Union, of which 'mother' Britain is part.

As a fundamental lesson, Constitutional and Political Science students are taught Baron de Montesquieu's principle model of governance of a democratic state. The theory is that the ideal model requires that there should be Separation of Powers between the three main limbs of government, namely; the Executive (government), the Legislature (parliament) and the Judiciary (courts). However, the status quo in Jamaica imparts a confused story as far as Montesquieu's theory is concerned.

For Jamaica the facts are conflicting; Jamaica's head of state is the Queen of England and its final court of appeal, the Privy Council. Both are based in a foreign Country, United Kingdom of Great Britain. It is not like this fact is over-looked by the British Law Lords either, in a now oft cited remark Lord Nicholas Phillips, the president of the UK Supreme Court, stated that the Law Lords on the Privy Council were spending a "disproportionate" amount of time on cases from former colonies, mostly in the Caribbean.

The reality is that as a Region we should not have over-stayed our welcome at the Privy Council. Lord Phillip's comment focuses the minds of any country that might have cold feet or doubt their own ability to chose persons from amongst themselves who can act judicial with integrity and beyond reproach.

It seems to me that the CCJ is now the unavoidable destiny of English speaking Caribbean countries. As a matter of national pride Jamaica should not be seen to be the last Caribbean state to reluctantly release the apron-string of the Privy Council, particularly since as a Constitutional fact the arrangement with the PC was only ever meant to be an 'interim transitional' measure. However, this interim arrangement has now lasted 47 years because there has not been the cohesive political will to make something of our own in the Caribbean.

The time has now arrived for Jamaica to commit to the Caribbean's own regional jurisprudence, after-all, it is an essential part of our self-determination as an independent country. If national politics requires that we jump over a referendum, lets get that done so our history of development can move forward. At this time the most counter-productive stance is to do nothing when you're the person at the helm; direction is needed, change is required, the status quo is no longer acceptable lest Jamaicans should always be asked to qualify the concept of our country's "independence".

About the Author
Hamilton Daley is a practising Attorney-at-Law in Jamaica and Solicitor Advocate in England.

Your Experience in Jamaica Can Depend on How You Choose to Take It

George Graham — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:23:44 UT

My brother Bill and his wife Faye, who live in London, Ontario, are spending a couple of weeks in Jamaica this month. They’re staying at a hotel in Ocho Rios, and they are renting a car and driving across the island to look up relatives. Bill left for Canada 50 years ago, and married a girl from Nova Scotia. They are frequent visitors to Jamaica but they haven’t been back for a few years. I wonder what changes they’ll notice.

Judging from the newspapers, they might be risking their lives. I’ve been reading about a soaring crime rate and lack of discipline among the country’s 2 million-plus residents. According to a recent Observer article, for example, "a lack of law and order" is costing Jamaica hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. The article reports that more than 300 returning residents have been murdered since 2000. This has scared away a lot of Jamaicans who have lived abroad and wish to return home, and has prompted many returning Jamaicans to pack up and leave. The article quotes some of these people as saying they would rather endure the cold than be raped or killed in Jamaica.

Returning Jamaicans have more to complain about than the lack of personal safety. Some say island residents "scammed" them out of their life’s savings. And others cite the "soon-come" attitude afflicting much of the island’s population.

None of this is new to me. A cousin and her husband, who "went home" to Jamaica, are back in Miami. They complained about having to live in a walled community with armed guards, about the lack of freedom to move about as they would like, and the nonchalant attitude displayed by service personnel. They said they would be promised that someone would come to fix something and the appointment was rarely kept.

The last time I lived in Jamaica, which was 30 years ago, there were frequent power outages and other utility breakdowns. And newcomers to the Jamaican lifestyle were driven to distraction by the prevailing lack of punctuality. I recall hearing about a Canadian woman who got so frustrated she threw herself into the road and rolled all the way down the hill at Mona.

There was also lot of violent crime. Standing in line to get my driver’s license, I overheard conversations about robberies and saw people showing each other their bullet wounds.

One night a gunman climbed into my car as I stopped at a red light in the middle of Halfway Tree and scared me witless. He kept pointing the gun at my head and threatening to kill me, but my Guardian Angel must have intervened because he relented, kicked me out of the car, and drove away. The wrecked car was recovered days later, its trunk loaded with ganja. And the gunman, who turned out to be an escaped prisoner, was shot to death by police.

The way I remember it, Jamaica has never been a "safe" place to live. I suppose it’s only natural that when so many people have no way to make a living and no hope of a decent future that some of them will resort to violent crime. When my father was overseer of a property in Portland, he was never without his revolver. He carried it in a shoulder holster during the day and slept with it under his pillow at night. His vigilance was our security.

Of course, Jamaica is not unique in this regard. I would much prefer to take my chances in Port Antonio than in Chicago, for example.

And it is not true that the majority of Jamaicans are undisciplined. You have only to see the neatly uniformed schoolchildren trooping home from school to realize that the island is home to many strict parents. And, while I am sure there are "scammers’ in Jamaica – as there are in England, Canada, America or anywhere else – most of my fellow-Jamaicans are scrupulously honest.

They are also generous and friendly. They’ll smile and call you "my love" as you walk by. In my experience hostile incidents are rare. And when ugliness erupts you can often deflect trouble if you have a sense of humor.

As for that famous "no-problem" attitude, it can be irritating or disarming – depending on how you choose to take it. Go with the flow and you’ll get along just great; kick against the pricks and you’re in for a wretched experience.

Knowing my brother and his wife, I am not worried for them. They are armed with the best protection you can take to Jamaica – a friendly attitude. They won’t be going there to find fault or to tell people how much better they do everything in Canada. They ‘ll be going there to enjoy the wonderful beaches and majestic mountains, to admire the spectacular sunsets and share the laid-back island lifestyle.

Now, if only they remember to drive on the left-hand side of the road.

Civilized Anti-Crime Initiative Offers Hope for a Brighter Future

George Graham — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:05:22 UT

In these hard times the news from Jamaica is not always encouraging, but once in a while I hear or read about something that lifts up my spirits. Recently, for example, a friend sent me a video titled "Heal Jamaica," and it moved me so much I used it in the next day’s "By George" blog. If you haven’t caught the video yet, you can click here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX14fmED4E&feature=related

Another uplifting bit of news came from a Gleaner story about the Ministry of National Security's Community Animation Programme, which is reportedly making a big difference to the lives of people in March Pen, an urban community in the Spanish Town area.

According to Ivan Barnes, President of the March Pen Road Community Council, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of young people on the streets and community residents have been settling disputes in a more amicable way since the programme started. The Gleaner article quoted Barnes as saying:

"The community is fairly quiet now. Currently we have over 100 young persons, some of whom used to sit on the road, who are now in the CSI programme. We also have some of the same persons joining in with the Animation Programme, seeking a different way out, in terms of dealing with issues that may confront them on a daily basis."

The Ministry of National Security launched the crime fighting programme on April 1, through the Community Security Initiative (CSI), with the aim of bringing together community leaders and residents, and the police, in a setting where they can work out conflicts and head off violence.

"The programme has brought us to a level where … as a community (we) can talk to the 'dons', or whoever is in conflict. We can explain to them how to go about resolving their problems, who to talk to and all that," Mr. Barnes was quoted as saying. "If anything happens in the community, we are the first ones they run to, before it escalates. So that level of understanding is very much alive in the community. We don't have to force anyone to join. I think they have grasped the fact that this is the best way to resolve their problems."

Catering student Danniee Williams, who is participating in the animator training programme, said March Pen "was a troubled community, but it no longer is."

"When violence or conflicts occur, we just have to deal with them and do it in the right form," she said.

I am impressed by the level of sophistication being displayed by the Jamaican government. In Florida, where I live, it seems that the knee-jerk response to crime is to gun down the perpetrators – or at least slap them in prison. The news that a more civilized approach, based on prevention rather than retribution, is working in Jamaica is music to my ears.

And from the results reported so far, this programme seems to be catching on.

CSI Director Patricia Balls reports overwhelming interest from communities. "We find that there are a number of communities that we did not have on our list, because we wanted to start with about eight. These communities would be those that the CSI and Peace Management Initiative are already working in. But, we will be including communities such as Tivoli Gardens, because of the popular demand," she said.

This programme is part of the wider campaign called 'Together We Can Stop It'. That campaign is designed to:

Foster a partnership between citizens and law enforcement officers in the fight against crime
Encourage citizens to take preventive actions to guard against the abduction and rape of women and children
Motivate citizens to pass on to law enforcement officers vital information on murder, abduction, rape, abuse and any other major crimes.

I know the global economic crisis must be making it very difficult for Jamaica to address the chronic problems of poverty and crime, but civilized initiatives like this make me feel that the island’s leaders are up to the challenge.

Tags: community animation programme, conflict resolution, crime fighting, jamaican anti-crime program, jamaican crime