A Jamaican In Exile

 No, I have not gone insane when I say crime is good......... You see, Jamaica is like a pressure cooker, the heat being applied is economic pressure. As the pandemic has closed off Jamaica's main source of foreign exchange, the economic pressure has increased. Emigration and the resultant remittances from emigrants from Jamaica have acted as a sort of safety valve for the Jamaican society. Decoding Global Talent Polls show that over 90% of Jamaicans want to emigrate. If there was an open border between Jamaica and North America, only a few thousand people would remain on the island! This desire to flee the country of their birth is because of the lack of economic opportunities on the island. However, not everyone can leave. Not everyone has a relative abroad, not everyone can qualify for a visa. The rejection rate for applicants to emigrate is quite high. Only about 20 - 30% of applicants can get a visa and that approval percentage includes visitor visas which technically are not ...

  I am a fully vaccinated Canadian citizen who was born in Jamaica. Because vaccination is mandatory in my part of Canada (Alberta), I was forced to get vaccinated - if I wanted to live a normal life. Like Canada did some months ago, Jamaica is now embroiled in the debate about mandatory vaccination. There have been protests by the United Independents’ Congress (UIC) the only political party in Jamaica actively opposed to mandatory vaccination.  Even though I am fully vaccinated, I remain uncomfortable with some aspects of the lockdown and mandatory vaccination measures whether they are government imposed like in Canada or what I call ‘the drip drip method’ where employers, entertainment venues, restaurants and so on impose a vaccination requirement on their customers or employees.  We need to learn from our history. This is not our first pandemic. I was a child then but I am old enough to remember the polio and tuberculosis (TB) pandemics in Jamaica in the 1950s. With po...

  https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/opinion/a-not-so-happy-birthday-pnp_232014?profile=1096 The political establishment's vision for Jamaica is a country with a robust tourism sector that enriches the tourism moguls (mostly foreigners) while Jamaicans who can get jobs in the tourism industry, work for peanuts under terrible working conditions. I used to visit Jamaica and talk to the resort workers......Those who can't be employed in the tourist sector must work in call centre sweat shops - again for peanuts. Di rest? They don't really care and have no plan for...Dem cyan dead for all dem care... The political establishment flails about having few options so they focus on enriching themselves. To sever the ties with the corporate class or tourism moguls may cause that class to flee to neighboring countries - taking their capital with them. That's what happened to Michael Manley who didn't really, just hinted at it. I was there. I saw it and the destabilization that fol...

 https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/UPDATE:_Five_dead_after_three_separate_gun_attacks_in_downtown_Kingston?profile=1606 'Bun Down'? TTP. These people involved are either gangsters or associated with gangsters. They are 'irredeemable'. Some innocents may die in the crossfire or from the stress of heart attacks but they also do not count because they are the poor, the lumpen, the uneducated, the dirty, the unwashed. They are the stupid eediats who are only needed at election time. However, incidents like these make bad press and ridicule the idea of the rejuvenation of downtown for the benefit of wealthy real estate and business interests. Why won't these people behave so that the raping of Jamaica's resources by the political establishment and the economic elite can continue undisturbed? This bad press also is bad for tourism. We can't have that. These 'undesirables' live and operate below HWT so they do not matter to the corrupt political es...

  https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/opinion/assassination-of-the-haitian-president-a-wake-up-call_226005?profile=1096 Since this article was written some other things have been revealed. It has come to light that elements of the economic elite and some of the political class who opposed the President hired Columbian mercenaries dressed as and claiming to be DEA agents through a Miami firm with the help of a failed Haitian businessman who had Presidential aspirations. It seems that some of the presidential guard are accomplices as they did nothing to prevent the attack and none were wounded. There was discord in Haiti because the President wanted to stay in power a year longer than some interpreted the law to allow. Secondly, the president had failed to control the gangs which had recently united into a super gang and were calling for violent revolution. The growing power and reach of the gangs and their call for revolution alarmed the economic elite some of whom financed the operatio...

 Despite the attitude of the US and Europe to Haiti, the Caribbean country has suffered from poor leadership which I posit is the main cause of the country's current situation. The 'dire political, economic, and social disarray' of Haiti exacerbated by the Corona Virus, is a classic example of what underdevelopment of most of its people does to a country. When I visited Haiti in the 70s, I found a wealthy, mostly brown skinned wealthy elite in tandem with a mostly corrupt black political elite lording it over a mostly black and poor populace living in slums. These elites may enjoy such a situation for a time but such an arrangement is not sustainable. Jamaica too suffers from 'dire political, economic, and social disarray' which is becoming more dire every day. The more we in Jamaica follow the example of Haiti and neglect the development of most of our people, the more likely Jamaica is to end up with the same results as Haiti. Tek sleep mark death! Raymond D. Gran...

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20210525/hospital-horror As one who was trained in Early Childhood Education and who worked as an Early Childhood Consultant for a while, I had to study pedophilia. As pedophilia is a sexual orientation and it is impossible to change one's sexual orientation, one cannot just decide to not be a pedophile. Pedophilia is an incurable sexual orientation affecting up to 5% of a population. Therefore, there are thousands of pedophiles on the loose in Jamaica. According to the Pope, 2% of his priests are pedophiles. I suspect the percentage is higher. Most of these offences against children (over 90%) are never reported by the children. Often the experience is hidden by the victim child who then develops abnormally. Over 90% of children molested are attacked by men they know and trust or are known and trusted by the child's parents. However, the internet has cyber pedophiles who prowl the internet to meet and groom children not previous...