Jamaican Till I Die!

This must be one of the hardest blog to write because most people believe that a blog about Jamaica’s 50th anniversary should be positive and upbeat. Outlining all of our glories, achievements and greatness before the world and all mankind. A blog where all objectivity should be saved for another day. This blog post started way before Jamaica 50 celebrations but somehow I found it very hard to push the publish button. I have been adding to it a little here and there, so it represents different ideas over time. I love my country, there is no other country on this planet I love more than Jamaica. I look back on my life and experiences and there are very little I would change. If I could do it over again I would not change much except study a little bit more but for the most part I enjoyed my Jamaican existence on planet earth. I think it prepared me for  life and made me who I am today. Yes life in jamaica was not always easy, at some points in time it was hard but it is that hardne

"He bared his chest and declared…If you are going to shoot, shoot me, but leave these defenceless, hungry people alone." ….Alexander Bustamante I once saw a play in the 80's at the little theater where the above was said by one of the actors and another actor shouted in response…..”A should a now!!” …to the laughter of the audience… His implication was that today's police would have obliged Alexander Bustamante and open fire killing him and everyone dead. I however think that if it was now there would be no one to play the role of Bustamante because that is not how our current so called leaders roll, we would simply be on our own. Market Woman early 1900 For me, the best part of Jamaican history is the period from 1900 to 1962. I call this period the Golden Age of the Nation Building. The fight against hard life and suffering experienced at the hands of British Colonialism. A time when the working class, Educated Class, middle and upper middle class came to

I was sent the following link and on this site there are two videos showing a fight between two families in the Ghetto. The video to say the least is very disturbing on so many levels but basically I divide what was happening into two parts. First there are the families involved in the fight, I do not know why they are fighting but they seem very upset and willing and ready to inflict grievous bodily harm on each other, as stick, stone and fist fly. Clearly they lack the basic concepts of problem/solution and have chosen to resort to violence. In all my years of living uptown I have never seen such a situation played out in public, people living uptown are not that intimate with each other’s life and seem to be educated enough to apply problem/solution skills to settle their differences and rarely resort to such violence. Although I must admit that a undercurrent of aggression pervades in all levels of our society regardless of uptown or downtown, even the political class is not

ClovisToon Last week I discovered that there was an entertainer in Jamaica called Mr. Vegas, up until that point I had no idea that this man existed. I must admit that his Genre of music is not something I listen to or considered to be music. However it seems that this Mr. Vagas’s baby mother had cheated on him, in his house, on his bed, in front of his 1 year old. Which caused Mr. Vegas to have one of the worst public mental emotional break down I have ever seen. I have never seen such a ridiculous display of emotions, especially from a person who entertains his fans with such man like bravado.  Gyalis: Noun. A man who obsessively seduces and deceives women. A promiscuous heterosexual male. For a person who sells himself as such a “Gyalis” one would think he would have shown the woman and her lover the door then head to the Frig for a ice cold beer, watch a movie or some football before going to bed. The whole incident treated like water off a ducks back or call up the second

Being poor does not mean being Low Class. They were not one and the same! I know some rich people who are totally Low Class, gutter trash and I know some poor people who are Full of pure Class. Class is not defined by your financial standing, as money cannot buy class. which is like putting lipstick on a pig - it is still a pig or in this case a low class, trash with money and still no class. Class is defined in my book as how one sees one self, how one carries one self. It is manners and respect for your fellow man; it is an understanding of who you are and where you are going in life and how you intend to get there. Class is discipline, hard work and dedication to achieve ones goal and objectives in life. This is not your old time European concept of class. My concept of class is based on personal empowerment to achieve happiness through contentment. Breaking Down The Social Barriers In the 1970's, Michael Manley started the movement to break down the old colonial social

I am reading an interesting piece on the relationship between Debt and GDP, this continued from my reading last week on Debt and the Exchange Rate… I am trying to figure out at what point I should start to feel good about increasing GDP and lowering exchange rate. Since increase borrowing can increase GDP but only marginally so that the trade off is not worth the borrowed money and increase borrowing can lower our exchange rate since we artificially flood the market with currency we did not earn. Our Governments have trained us to react to certain stimuli without giving us the real story behind those stimuli. Marginally increasing GDP and lowering exchange rate through excessive borrowing, doubling our debt is nothing but window dressing, eye candy and false positives as it is not sustainable or real, unless we earn way more than we borrow and debt repayment is a low percentage of every dollar earned, currently our debt is over 140% of GDP and 80 cents out of every dollar goe

European Colonialist and their descendants want us to believe that what they did, all the disgusting murderous things they have done throughout history was done in the interest of Indigenous People for our own good. They wanted us to believe that without them, the colonizers, Indigenous People’s culture and civilization that existed from the start of time, without outside influence would not have survived.  The fact is Indigenous People survived to this day NOT because of European Colonizers BUT in spite of European Colonizers who wiped out more Indigenous People, culture and civilization than almost any natural event since The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction level event some 66 million years ago. European Colonizers are naturally ignorant, because only truly ignorant people can do what they do and justify it. You must start from a position of pure ignorance coupled with a sense of superiority and delusional of grandeur. On top of all that, you must have a lack of respect for

During a recent online debate, a certain muppet began to blame the Jamaican people for the Peoples’s National Party being in power for 18 years between 1989 and 2007. I find it completely unfair to blame the Jamaican people for the PNP being in power for 18 years because it was not the people of Jamaica that was at fault but the Jamaica Labour Party, who did not present themselves as a viable option and who I believe should return the opposition salary they received after 16 years of being the worst opposition on the face of this planet as it was not until after the question of leadership for that party was settled that they began to focused their attention on the Jamaican people and do the job they were paid to do. In November of 2004 Edwards Seaga announced that he was stepping down from representational politics and by mid-January of 2005 his announcement came to past. The Jamaica Labour Party had not won any of the 4 elections between 1989 and 2007 and if one was to research th