Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. - Napolean Bonaparte

Dear Friends,

Today I am going to touch on something that is controversial but that I think needs to be said. I will only state my opinion and I will not try to say that I am right and someone else is wrong but will ask your indulgence in using this forum to have my say. All that needs to be said cannot be done here today but the universe willing I will be back to expand on a number of points in future writings.

I have read extensively on world religions for many years and I am somewhat bemused by the religious fanatics who seek to place life in some neat pre-packaged bundle because they lack the will to intellectually examine anything other than what was forced down their throats by establishments with ulterior motives. Any religion that requires the acceptance of its ideas on faith alone is admitting that its doctrines cannot stand on their own merits nor withstand any critical examination. They require that their adherents accept as truth their authority, and Christianity is a perfect illustration of this point, and it is not alone. However, as I writing to a predominately "christain" audience I will use Christianity as an example.

The basic problem with Christian morality comes down to it being little more than a primitive system of reward and punishment. Be good, don’t ask questions and stay in line and you will be rewarded.  Be skeptical, ask questions and use your mind in a reasonable and rational manner and you are consigned to eternal punishment in the most horrible place, forever. I cannot accept that this is the plan of an omnipitent creator who has created intelligent entities with free will.

In 1984, while standing on a barrack square in the blazing sun at the Barbados Defence Force base in St. Lucy, Barbados, intake 1-84 stood in rigid anticipation as we listened to the click, click, click of WOII Beckles'drill boots on the concrete as he strode unto the parade square. We were all expecting one of his, Yes Sir, No Sir, No Excuse Sir, questioning sessons but today was different. He was in a conversational mood and was asking each of us personal questions. When he came to me he asked me what was my religion and I said, "NONE. SIR!" The Sargeant Major immediately labelled me "atheist" and until my retiring from the BDF he never referred to me as anything else.

I was never allowed to explain that I was not an atheist but that I merely did not understand the usefulness of organised religion in the way that I had been exposed to it as a child.

At the time of her death, my Grandmother was the longest serving member of her chuch. She had been a member for over 65 years. A few months before her death I happen to arrive just as the reverend from her chuch was leaving after visiting her at home and I asked her, "Gran, All these years that you were going to church. What have you learned?" She looked at me for a while and then she said, "God is Good." ......... Seriously! I thought to myself. You were on this earth for over 90 years, going to church almost every week and this is sum of your understanding!  Then I thought. Do you really need to know more?

My grandmother still had hanging over her bed a print of a blonde hair, blue-eyed Jesus with a halo over his head. (I am sure all of you had seen one like it, right next to the print of the last supper and under the cross with the figure of Jesus being crucified on it.) I realised that my Grandmother went to her grave thinking that this was the picture of God and that in all the years her church had not sought to change her view of the Creator of the Universe. Were they wrong in perpetuating ignorance?  Of course, Christianity, by design, demands ignorance.  Both naiveté and willful ignorance is at the core of a faith that is contrary to the development of knowledge through reason and rationality.  It clearly teaches people not to trust in reason, and to only accept – without question – the dogmas of the church.

What is Atheism?

Atheism is the lack of belief in a deity, which implies that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter), that thought is a property or function of matter, and that death irreversibly and totally terminates individual organic units. This definition means that there are no forces, phenomena, or entities which exist outside of or apart from physical nature, or which transcend nature, or are “super” natural, nor can there be. Humankind is on its own.

If one takes the above definition to be true I am definitely not an atheist. I like most human beings need to accept that there is something greater than mankind behind the workings of the universe. To think that all the processes and mechanics of life and nature as a whole is totally random and that the laws of physics are mere coincidences, defies logic. I just don't believe that man is as yet capable of understanding this supreme force or that he needs to. Do the birds that fly thousands of miles each year with the seasons know why the do it? Do the turtles know what forces compells and guides them to return to the beach where they were born to lay their own eggs?

Not understanding what something is does not mean that it does not exist.

One of my pet peeves is man's need to name God. In the Old Testament of the Christain Bible alone there are over 25 names for God. Mankind has devised thousand of names and concepts for God under the guise of hundreds of religions. Are they all correct?

Why can't they be all correct?

Why must we limit God to what we can understand?

Is mankind so narcissistic, so conceited that we cannot accept that we just are not capable of understanding God?

When I was 14 years old I used to helped teach a Sunday School class to a group of 5 year olds at the church my mother forced my brothers and I to attend every Sunday. One day the senior teacher was absent and I had to find something to occupy these children for an hour so I decided to tell them the story of Moses and the burning bush. It was on that day that I realized that we were not meant to name God.

13  “But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?”

14 God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.  Exodus 3: 13-14.
 
Over the years I have reserched extensively the meanings of the words. I am who I am. I could write a book on the number of scholarly interpetations of the meaning of these 5 little words. The Septuagint , (circa 300 BC), translates the original Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh of Exodus 3:14 into Greek as "ego eimi ho on", which in turn translates into English as "I am the one who is". In the first and second centuries, the versions of Aquila and Theodotion have ehyeh asher ehyeh rendered into Greek as "esomai hos esomai" , which in turn translate as "I will be who I will be"

"I am who I am"

"I am the the one who is"

"I will be who I will be" 

Whoever or whatever the creator is, he must be having a good laugh at mankind....or....Is he crying?

If the history of religion has shown us anything, it is the fact that it is inherently evil in its insistence that rational thought is to avoided at all costs. It keeps its believers in line through fear, and some believe is the chief source of a vast majority of crime, either directly, indirectly or psychologically. But that is a story for another day.


Quote of the day

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"

The Secret to a Happy Relationship

My Dear Friends,

At 8:30 this morning I turned into my driveway after spending the last 12hrs at work and my cellphone rang. It was my wife calling me from at her office.

Wife:-  " You heard that David in the hospital? He just collapse and in ICU.

Me :-  " Nooo....What happened?   (waiting for the real motive behind the call)

Wife:- " His girlfriend said he was pushing himself too hard and wouldn't slow down. You know Mark, I keep telling you about working those long hours every night. It ain't healthy. You have a young child who needs a father. I ain't thinking bout me but Kayla needs her daddy."

Me :- " But my dear, you know how much I have put into Medlife over the past 2 years. It ain't making no money but I have a lot of very nice old people that are depending on me to make it work. To them Medlife could mean life or death."    (Feeling good, I have played the old people card.)

Wife :- " And what going to happen to them when you fall down dead?"

Me :- " Honey, my phone needs charging. I will call you when I get inside."    (I hang up)

The secret to being happily married for over 15 years is simply this:-

"Recognize early when you are getting into an argument that you cannot win and get out before you have to tell your wife she is right."

I have watched my grandfather and my father make the mistake of admitting that they were wrong to their wives and they never heard the end of it. Believe me people. You will be 90 years old on your hospital deathbed with tubes in every orifice, hooked up to every life sustaining monitor there is and your wife would lean over and whisper in your ear..."You remember 60 years ago when I told you that you should have done so and so....If you did do it then you would not be in this position now."

I am a student of Sun Tzu's - The Art of War and I apply its principals in every aspect of my life. I have found dealing with women to be the most challenging. Their minds are unusually adept at deception and to quote the great man,  "All warfare is based on deception."  In fact, if there were more female generals there would be much shorter wars and you can quote me on that.

So before you try to match wits with your significant other remember these words of wisdom adapted from the teaching of Sun Tzu. "If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from her."

 

Quote of the Day

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. "  Sun Tzu - The Art of War

Real Heroes

My Friends,

I was a lucky child. My godfather was the headmaster of a primary school and instead of the usual toys and the occasional five dollars bill that most adults gave children I would often receive books and as I got older, printed stories about  influential black people and their achievements.

One story I remembered vividly was of a young soldier in Vietnam. That story more than anything else influenced my decision to become a soldier immediately after leaving school. Despite resistance from my parents and teachers I joined the Barbados Defence Force and have never regretted it.

Now, thanks to the power of the Internet every month I will use this space to share some of the stories that have helped to shape my life. Many of you may never have heard of these people. Few books were written and no movies made about their exploits but I hope you share their stories with your children as I have shared them with mine. 

Dwight Johnson

(He reminds me of a BDF soldier...but the name escapes me....)

You don't really think of Vietnam as being a tank warfare kind of affair. Sure, there were plenty of intense,  battles fought during the vicious multi-year conflict through the jungles of Southeast Asia, but most of these showdowns were the ambush / search-and-destroy sort of events, with infantrymen slogging through armpit-deep mud, fighting off ambushes and human wave attacks in miserable driving rainstorms, and crawling through carefully-dug tunnels laden with booby traps.  You don't exactly picture a Blitzkrieg of Panzers blasting through the hedgerows of Normandy or anything, mostly because trying to drive a tank through a jungle is a logistical undertaking that borders on being retarded.
Perhaps that's why Specialist Dwight Johnson of the 1st Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment holds the impressive distinction of being the only tank driver to receive the Medal of Honor for actions in combat during Vietnam.  Although, as you might expect, the actions that led to Spc. Johnson receiving America's highest award for bravery in combat actually had very little to do with him actually sitting at the controls of his M48A3 battle tank, and a lot more with taking on an entire North Vietnamese Army offensive by himself armed with nothing more than a .45-caliber handgun and a complete lack of anything resembling fear or restraint.

In mid-January 1968, just a few days before the infamous Tet Offensive seriously knocked the American forces on their collective asses, the 1/69th Armor received a frantic call from a front-line Infantry platoon that had just come under attack by a battalion-sized force of battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars.  Eager to get into the action and save his buddies from what was quickly becoming a desperate situation, Dwight Johnson jumped behind the controls of his M48 and started careening through the jungle towards the sounds of distant gunfire.
 
Of course, as I indicated earlier, the terrain in rural Vietnam isn't incredibly responsive when you go around trying to plow several thousand tons of metal through it. So, of course, as luck would have it, the second that Johnson's tank approached the firefight, one of the treads blew out, rendering the vehicle immobile.  Thanks for stopping by, now please enjoy the show while you watch all your buddies get gunned down by a force that outnumbers them ten to one.
 
To Hell with That!  Dwight Johnson grew up on the mean streets of the Detroit housing projects, and he wasn't going to just sit around while American troops were out there getting shot in the head right in front of him.  Johnson grabbed the only personal weapon that had been issued to him by the United States Army:  A Colt M1911A1 .45-caliber pistol.

I shit you not, this tank pilot hopped out the hatch of this heavily-armored bulletproof vehicle and charged into battle against camouflaged, experienced, AK-47-toting enemy soldiers armed with nothing more than a handgun, a really bad attitude, and an uncontrollable urge to kill everything in sight.  He charged into the middle of the ambush, fighting alongside the men of the trapped platoon, taking out enemy soldiers with his pistol with incredible proficiency.  When Johnson burned through the last magazine of his weapon, he took up a weapon from one of his fallen comrades and continued fighting.  With the Americans desperately trying to fight off an increasingly-more-deadly human wave attack, the battle soon moved into close-quarters, hand-to-hand  combat.  Johnson blasted a few guys at extreme-close range, but eventually had to discard the weapon after he snapped the stock in half while smashing some dude's face in with it (seriously).
 
Now completely out of ammunition and/or anything he could use as a workable firearm, Johnson rushed back to the tanks.  Seeing that his vehicle was still hopelessly immobile, he rushed over to his platoon Sergeant's tank, opened the hatch, and peeked in.  The tank's gunner was badly wounded – slumped in his seat, but still breathing.  Johnson heroically pulled the chap out the hatch while bullets whizzed by his head, hoisted the wounded soldier on his back, and carried him to a nearby APC so he could receive medical attention. 

Then, of course, Johnson sprinted back to the tank, jumped in, and started firing the main gun at the NVA soldiers who were by now rapidly closing in on the tanks' position.  Within seconds he was spraying the battlefield with some large-caliber destruction, and holding the honor of being the guy in the battle who fired both the engagement's largest and smallest weaponry.  I say "of course" he did this, because at this point in the story nothing should really surprise you about this guy – he didn't pull any punches, didn't stop fighting for any damn reason ever, and definitely wasn't going to let anything short of death stand in the way of his super-intense, blood rage.

Eventually the main gun on the M48 jammed, presumably as a result of Johnson firing so many rounds out of it so rapidly that it melted the barrel.  Once again left without a viable means for killing people, Johnson quickly glanced around the interior of the tank, taking stock of what was available.  What he found were more magazines for the 1911. So, for the third time, Specialist Dwight H. Johnson rushed into the middle of a raging war zone firing his pistol at anything that moved.  After killing a few more NVA (the Medal of Honor citation eventually gave up trying to tally this guy's kill totals), and burning through the rest of his ammunition, Johnson hopped up onto the roof of his tank, exposing himself in full view to the enemy soldiers, and started mowing people down with the .50-caliber machine gun on the cupola.  By the time the smoke cleared, the American forces were standing alone on the battlefield.  Spc. Johnson's insane, utterly-ridiculous kill-frenzy of destruction had helped not only fight off a massive battalion of NVA soldiers, but also rescued the stranded U.S. platoon from a situation in which they would have otherwise been completely f***ed.  He received the Medal of Honor for his actions, battled with his regiment through the Tet Offensive, and survived the war.

Quote of the Day

"When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism." -  Robert Green Ingersoll

Are You Pushing the Buttons or Are the Buttons Pushing You?

Placebo Buttons
The Misconception: All buttons placed around you do your bidding.
The Truth: Many public buttons are only there to comfort you.

We like to walk around feeling superior, telling ourselves that we are in control.

"I control what I do, I am a leader not a follower. No one can make me do what I don't want to."

The reality is that everyday we are manipulated. By the media, by advertising. What we eat, what we drink, what we wear, almost everything that we use was firstly introduced to us, (in most cases subconsciously), by some external source.

We are all more gullible than you may think. That brings me to the buttons.
You press the doorbell button, you hear the doorbell ring. You press the elevator button, it lights up. You press the button on the drink machine, a soft drink comes rattling down the chute. Your whole life, you’ve pressed buttons and been rewarded. It’s conditioning at its simplest – just like a rat pressing a lever to get a pellet of food.

The thing about buttons though is there seems to be some invisible magic taking place between the moment you press them down and when you get the expected result. You can never really be sure you caused the soft drink to appear without opening up the vending machine to see how it works.
Maybe there’s a man inside who pulls out the can of soda and puts it in the chute. Maybe there’s a camera watching the machine, and someone in a distant control room tells the machine to dispense your drink.
You just don’t know, and that’s how conditioning works. As long as you get the result you were looking for after you press the button, it doesn’t matter. You will be more likely to press the button in the future (or less likely to stop).

The problem here is that some buttons in modern life don’t actually do anything at all. The magic between the button press and the result you want is all in your head. You never catch on – because you are not so smart.

For instance, the close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States since the Americans with Disabilities Act. The button is there for workers and emergency personnel to use, and it only works with a key. Whether or not you press the buttons, the doors will eventually close. But if you do press the buttons, and later the doors close, a little spurt of happiness will cascade through your brain. Your behavior was just reinforced. You will keep pressing the button in the future.

Non-functioning mechanisms like this are called placebo buttons, and they’re everywhere.
Sound engineers and video editors sometimes press a key on their computer keyboards or click around with the mouse and change absolutely nothing, or make the screen go blank for a few moments. When clients ask for nonsensical changes to a project while hovering over the worker’s shoulder, they can press the placebo button and tell the client they’ve made the requested change. Most people will be satisfied and convince themselves they’ve seen a slight difference.

Computers and timers now control the lights at most intersections, but at one time little buttons at crosswalks allowed people to trigger the signal change. Those buttons are mostly all disabled now, but the task of replacing or removing all of them was so great most cities just left them up. You still press them though, because the light eventually changes.
In an investigation by ABC news in 2010, only one functioning crosswalk button could be found in Austin, Texas; Gainsville, Fla.; and Syracuse, NY.
The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on, according to city Department of Transportation officials. More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show. Any benefit from them is only imagined.
- New York Times, 2004

In many offices and cubicle farms, the thermostat on the wall isn’t connected to anything. Landlords, engineers and HVAC specialists have installed dummy thermostats for decades to keep people from costing companies money by constantly adjusting the temperature. According to a 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal, one HVAC specialist surmises 90 percent of all office thermostats are fake (others say it’s more like 2 percent). Some companies even install noise generators to complete the illusion after you turn the knob.
In a survey conducted in 2003 by the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News, 72 percent of respondents admitted to installing dummy thermostats.

“We had an employee that always complained of being hot,” recalls Greg Perakes, an HVAC instructor in Tennessee. “Our solution was to install a pneumatic thermostat. We ran the main air line to it inside of an enclosed I-beam. Then we just attached a short piece of tubing to the branch outlet (terminating inside the I-beam without being attached to any valves, etc.).”
The worker “could adjust her own temperature whenever she felt the need,” Perakes says, “thus enabling her to work more and complain less. When she heard the hissing air coming from inside the I-beam, she felt in control. We never heard another word about the situation from her again. Case solved.”
- The Air-Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News, Mar. 27, 2003

Placebo buttons are a lot like superstitions, or ancient rituals. You do something in the hopes of an outcome – if you get the outcome, you keep the superstition.
Dancing to bring the rain, sacrificing a goat to get the sun to rise – it turns out these are a lot like pressing the button at the crosswalk over and over again.
Your brain doesn’t like randomness, and so it tries to connect a cause to every effect; when it can’t, you make one up.

So as you go about your business today, ask yourself this....

Am I really in Control?

Quote of the Day

“The closest to being in control we will ever be is in that moment that we realize we're not.”  - Brian Kessler

Breaking News! ... Jesus Not Coming Back

World - Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whose return has been eagerly awaited by Christians for two millennia, is never coming back to earth, the Messiah himself announced today.

The Lord issued a surprisingly bitter statement to His followers explaining His decision. A transcript of that statement follows.

FINAL MESSAGE TO HUMANITYTo My followers:

When I made My promise to return to the world and deliver you from evil, I fully intended to keep that promise. Sadly, however, humanity has made Me change My mind. You're not worth redeeming. I'm washing My hands of this disastrous experiment in intelligent life and free will.

I was hoping you'd make some progress since the days when the Romans persecuted the Jews. But nothing has changed. You all still hate each other. You don't do much to feed the hungry, or shelter the homeless, or any of that other shit I told you to do. Why do you even pretend to care about My will? Why do you pray and sing hymns and read the Bible? Is it all just a charade to make you feel better about yourselves?

Never mind. I know the answer to that.

I've learned to hate your species for so many reasons. I can't stand your constant whining about your petty problems. I hate the way you adopt new slang words and catch phrases to try to 'out-hip' each other. I despise your bad table manners. Child pornography also freaks Me out.

From now on, I'm going to concentrate on other intelligent life forms. Or maybe Dad and I will start a whole new Creation.

Before I do that, though, I want to share just a few of the reasons why you piss Me off. I mean, there are the obvious things, like violence and greed, but that's not what really gets Me.

"Almighty Infuriated By Humanity's Malice, Greed, Bad Music."

What really gets Me are the little things. Like the stupid ways you pretend to believe in Me. Christian rock. Tattoos with My name on them. And don't even get Me started on those stupid T-shirts.

When you're not doing trivial things to show your devotion to Me, you're getting all bent out of shape over something pointless. Take 'animal rights.' My dad put animals on the planet to serve humanity. He gave you an enormous variety of creatures to do your work, to serve as your companions, and for you to eat. So now you've decided they have rights? And you attack people to defend those rights? Your ability to invent problems for yourselves never ceases to amaze Me.

I think I could forgive your sins if you were going somewhere culturally. You really had something going back there in the Renaissance. But then you just ran out of creative steam. I realize it gets harder and harder to think of anything original...but paintings of soup cans? That was a few decades ago; nowadays it's even worse. Someone throws crap at a wall and you act like it's profound.

Another thing that makes Me mad are all the bullshit religious myths. Stigmatas, for example. Only one person got a real stigmata, and that's Me. The whole stigmata phenomenon just goes to show that you people can't stand letting someone else get all the attention.

You've got all this nonsense occupying your thoughts when you should be concentrating on more important things. Like not destroying the world, for example. In case you haven't noticed, greenhouse gases are threatening to make the planet uninhabitable, and the kooks of the world are starting to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Guess you can't be bothered with that when Days of our Lives is on.

Think I'm going to save you from self-annihilation? Think again. When you obliterate yourselves, don't come crying to Me.

Yours truly,

Jesus Christ
Office of Redemption and Salvation

Quote of the Day

"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. "(Matthew 7:5,15,21-23)

Politics...What the ****?

After listening to the state of the Barbados economy discussed ad nauseum for the past few days, it reminded me about a little piece I had read describing the world political ideologies using references to cows. I couldn't resist adding my own two cents on Barbadian democracy.

• Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
• Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
• Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
• Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
• Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
• Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
• Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
• Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
• Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
• Militarism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
• Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
• Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
• Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
• Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
• Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
• Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
• Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
• Environmentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
• Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
• Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government tells you they are cows.
• Barbadian Democracy: You have two cows. Someone shoots one and steals the other. The Police Commissioner tells you, "Don't Panic". The government does nothing.

Quote of the Day

The Death Penalty...Do We Need It?

Lately, much has been said about the resumption of hanging in Barbados. I have heard a lot of emotionally charged calls for the authorities to hang those convicted of murder. My question is this.

"What are we trying to achieve with the death penalty?"
Let me share with you the case of Stanley "Tookie" Williams to illustrate the moral complexities of the death penalty question. Mr. Williams, an author and Nobel Peace and Literature Prizes nominee was put to death on December 13, 2005 by lethal injection by the state of California. Mr. Williams was convicted of four murders committed in 1979, and sentenced to death. Williams professed innocence of these crimes. He was also co-founder of the Crips, a deadly and powerful Los Angeles-based street gang responsible for hundreds of murders. About five years after incarceration, Mr. Williams underwent a religious conversion and, as a result, authored many books and programs to promote peace and to fight gangs and gang violence. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Literature Prize.
Mr. Williams' was a self-admitted life of crime and violence, followed by genuine redemption and a life of uniquely and unusually good works. The circumstantial evidence against Williams left little doubt that he committed the four murders, despite last-minute claims by supporters. There also existed no doubt that Mr. Williams posed no further threat to society, and would contribute considerable good.

The case of Stanley "Tookie" Williams should force all clear thinking people to reflect on the purpose of the death penalty:

•Is the purpose of the death penalty to remove from society someone who would cause more harm?
•Is the purpose to remove from society someone who is incapable of rehabilitation?
•Is the purpose of the death penalty to deter others from committing murder?
•Is the purpose of the death penalty to punish the criminal?
•Is the purpose of the death penalty to take retribution on behalf of the victim?

Space would not allow me to examine all of these questions in detail so I will leave it to you, the reader to draw your own conclusions. I will answer all comments and I will revisit these issues in subsequent writings.

However, let us look at the argument, that capital punishment is, in fact, a deterrent to crime.  Today, Commissioner of Police, Darwin Dottin stated that the majority of murders committed in Barbados this year were crimes resulting from personal disputes. These are crimes executed in the heat of passion where the perpetrator reacts in an highly excited emotional state. Do you think that the killer paused to think of the consequences of his actions before acting?

Even now proponents of capital punishment, have stopped using it as an argument because the idea of the deterrence of crime and capital punishment, cannot be proven with any statistical or logical surety. How do you deter someone from committing a crime they committed?

The second plank for the deterrence argument, sets out to suggest that folks who may commit capital crimes, would be deterred by visible and swift hangings. Fact is, this is not the case at all. Statistics from every capital punishment jurisdiction to non capital punishment jurisdiction, do not find any correlation with lower capital offences than it is with higher capital offences. In fact, there is no evidence to suggest anything to do with "punishment" and "crime" at all. The death penalty is not employed in England but crime is relatively lower per-capita than any other country. Why is that? Same can be said of France.

I have as yet not been able to find any credible relationship between murder and capital punishment, to suggest it as a deterrent, on any level, for any reason--long term or short term.

The fact is the majority of Barbadians wants capital punishment to be used as a form of retribution and revenge on the murderous thug who killed that innocent victim. I would like some upstanding, law-abiding citizen to stand up and shout on behalf of all those christian minded, love one another, turn the other cheek sprouting Bajans, "we want to kill (but don't have the guts to do it )the person who killed somebody else. It would make us feel better, (not safer), to know that some punk, got killed because he killed someone else."

As I listened to The Commissioner's report on crime in Barbados, I kept waiting to hear if he would state the reasons for the escalating crime situation. He alluded to the Cash for Gold syndrome and the Fete Culture as contributing factors but was too politically correct to state the obvious... THE ECONOMY!

Crime and its linkages to the economy, is patently obvious yet our leaders keep trying to avoid facing up to it. Firstly, we must start to admit that  a lot of issues, especially in regards to providing a safe, regulated and transparent economy, is out of our hands, or, above our heads and spheres of interest. It would be better to say it and then attempt to engage us, the people, into a discussion on how to move forward with providing equity for all in the country. And we have to do something about it or it will get worse. Yes we can have punishment, but the murder of an innocent is a murder of an innocent. No amount of punishment can bring them back. If the people who are predisposed to crime in general can't eat, or, live to their fullest potential in an orderly society, "their" society, they will be forced to live to their potential outside of that orderly society. End of Story! If you don't include, you exclude. It just so happens that the exclusion, is fatal--in many regards.

As always, I am about solutions. What can we do in Barbados to safeguard our economies and ultimately control the escalating crime situation? Sorry, I don't have the answer. If I did, I would be delivering the Financial Statements and Budgetary Proposals later today instead of the Minister of Finance.  However, the answer, is not found in a text book from Harvard nor is it found in a mandate from the IMF and World Bank. It is found, rather, in the heart of a leader and with a love for Barbados and it's people who is willing to put frameworks and safegards around the sectors of economic activity within this country, to be honest and transparent so that people can feel included in their economic process. Then and only then will we see the levels of crime return to "normal" levels in Barbados.

So people forget the revenge mentality. We are better than that.

Quote of the Day

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."  Mahatma Gandhi

Was the cost of staging the Rihanna's concert worth it?

Dear Friends,

Only this week I had the occasion to hear an Anglican reverend tell a story, from the pulpit, about standing in line at the cashier at a local supermarket. He said that two ladies, one with red hair and the other with orange hair, were in front him and they were putting back more than half the items they had in their trolley because they did not have enough money to pay for them. They were commenting on how expensive things were. The priest said that in a moment of weakness he was tempted to tell them, "If you did save the money you spent on that hair or on the Rihanna show tickets you would be able to afford food!"

The debate about the benefits to Barbados of Rihanna performing in Barbados will rage for sometime. My take on the matter is this. All Rihanna has to do is come home, lime a Friday night at Oistins drink some Banks beer,  have some bottles of Mount Gay, Cockspur and ESAF white on the table as she eats a rice & peas, macoroni pie & grill fish, go to a different beach every day and visit Harrison's Cave and a few points of interest. The international press and paparazzi will give Barbados all the free advertising we need without taxpayers having  to spend a cent. Let Rihanna plan trips home for Sandy Lane Gold Cup, Kadooment, Holetown Festival, Barbados Music Awards, etc.

In my opinion, the show was an attempt to give Bajans something to distract them from the precarious state of this countries finances. And..... It worked! I laud the strategist who devised it. Very few are questioning how the 4 million dollars spent on the show gave Barbados any more advertising mileage than Rihanna wukking up during Kadooment did.

The gurus will tell you that all the spending by Barbadians stimulated the economy. This reminded me of the following story told by many a economics teacher. It is as follows:-

It is the middle of the afternoon on a particularly hot day in a little village on a hillside on the East Coast. The usually reliable breeze seems to have dropped and the oppressive heat further adds to the low mood of the inhabitants of the village. These are tough times, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit.

Suddenly, a stranger is seen walking up the hill. He stops at the little rum shop at the entrance to the village. He has heard that the owner is selling a bicycle for $100.00. The stranger asks if he can see the bicycle and take it for a ride. The rum shop owner agrees but insists that the stranger leaves $100.00 on the counter of the shop until he returns and makes his decision on whether or not he wants to buy the bicycle. The stranger agrees, lays a $100.00 bill on the counter and takes the bicycle for a ride down the hill.

As soon as the cyclist is out of sight, the rum shop owner runs into the village and shouts for the farmer who keeps a few pigs, sheep and chickens in his yard. The rum shop owner pays his debt of $100.00 to the farmer for food which has fed his family for the last week. Then the farmer quickly takes the $100.00 and walks next door to pay his debt to his neighbour who provides him with animal feed. The neighbour then walks swiftly down to the end of the village to pay his debt to the car mechanic who repaired his car the previous week so that he could collect the animal feed to sell the farmer. The car mechanic gets in his car and drives to the entrance of the village and pays the rum shop owner his debt of $100.00 to clear his credit for goods purchased at the shop. As he turns to drive down the hill, the car mechanic notices a cyclist turning into the village and stopping outside the rum shop.

Meanwhile, the rum shop owner has placed the $100.00 bill he received from the mechanic on the counter. The stranger enters the rum shop and explains that he found the bicycle uncomfortable to ride, but thanks the rum shop owner for his time, picks up the $100.00 bill and walks back down the hill.

No one earned anything. However, the whole village is now without debt, the mood has noticeably improved and everyone looks to the future with optimism. 

Sounds familiar?

Our Government gurus should understand that encouraging people to spend money they cannot afford is not, "stimulating the economy". This kind of economic illusionism only exacerbates the vicious cycle of debt that we find ourselves in.  But.... I am no economist. What do I know.

Quote of the Day

"So you think that money is the root of all evil....Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? " - Ayn Rand

"He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home”

Dear Friends,

The following is a true story. It happened only today. This morning, I arrived at a little apartment in a quiet Christ Church neighbourhood to meet with a lady who had called my office a few days earlier. She had requested that someone come and perform a security survey of her home with a view to installing a security system.

This very nice elderly lady was waiting for me by the door. I introduced myself, showed her my identification and she invited me to come in and sit down. She the proceeded to explain why she had come to the conclusion that she needs an alarm system in her home. This is her story.

" Mr. Phillips, I used to live in my parents home in B*********. After they died my husband and I lived there for a while. After my husband died, I was forced to leave there. We had a large lime tree in the back yard and the paros kept coming into the yard to steal them. I installed razor wire on the fences but almost every day I would see fresh blood on it where the paros were still trying to get in. I decided that anybody that determined to get limes could be dangerous so I made the decision to move.

I moved to F*** G***** H****** into a little house deep in the development. It was very quiet at first until one morning I went outside to find a blood trail on my driveway leading into my plants. I called the Police who later informed me that there had been an attempted burglary at a house up the road and the occupant had shot the intruder. It was he who had ran up my driveway and hid in my plants. After hearing gunshots in the neighbourhood almost every night I decided to move again. Every morning I would look outside expecting to see more blood or worst, a dead body.

I found a nice apartment in a quiet neighbourhood in Christ Church. After a couple of months someone broke my car glass and stole the change I had in the ashtray. $700.00 in damage for less that $10.00 in change. I then started leaving the car unlocked. Every few days I would find the car ransacked. I asked the landlord if he could install a light that I could turn on if I heard anything outside. He did it and for the next few nights I sat and waited. Sure enough I heard someone outside by the car and I switched on the light, opened my the window and shouted. The young man looked at me and made a gesture as if he was going the throw something at me. I didn't wait to see if he had anything in his hand. I quickly closed the window and called the Police. The came the next morning. When this apartment became available I decided to move here.

Last Saturday night, I went to bed around 10pm. and all was quiet. My neighbour woke me the next morning to ask me if I had witnessed the commotion that occurred before midnight just outside my apartment. I told her that I had heard nothing. She told me that 2 police officers had been shot, bullets holes in my guard wall, and that the place was in an uproar with Police vehicles up and down for most of the night. I knew nothing. I slept through it all. That is when it hit me. If someone was trying to get in here, I would not have heard them. I need an alarm system. Four of my friends have your system so I called you."

During her story I listened in amazement. Thinking... Is this my Barbados? Is this what our senior citizens have to endure?

I think it was the matter-of-fact way that she related her story that stuck with me. She had accepted that this was her reality!

After I had finished my survey and was leaving she stopped me and asked. "Mr. Phillips, if I decided that I have to move, can I take the system with me?

I told her, "Of course, I will personally take it out and install in wherever you want it...And I wouldn't even charge you for doing it."

Quote of the Day

"Don't panic." Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin.

Are we prisoners in our own homes?

Dear Friends,

Today I am going to tell you a true story. A story about an average family. A husband, a wife and six children... three boys and three girls. Both parents are entrepreneurs and between them owned and managed three small businesses employing about 20 people. This couple is your average law abiding, tax paying citizens that are only trying to work hard and leave their children a better life  than that which they themselves had.

About fourteen years ago they bought  little piece of land in what they thought was going to be a good neighbourhood. Over the next four years they built their home, improving on it piece by piece. Electronic security system, professional landscaping,swimming pool, air-conditioning, etc.


At the time of this story all the children are grown except for the last girl who has just entered fourth form in secondary school.The house has every modern amenity and the neighbourhood is now almost fully developed and considered to be relatively upmarket. The head of the local Defence Force, a retired head of the local Prison services and numerous doctors, lawyers and other professionals number among their neighbours. One would think that at this time all would be well with this family. You would be wrong.

Sometime last year one of their neighbours was attacked and fatally shot in his driveway as he returned home in the early hours of the morning. This sent this family into a state of panic. The wife noted that she usually came home after dark and no longer felt comfortable leaving the front gate always open, as was the custom and she definitely did not want to have to get out of her car to open it when she came home. The solution was the installation of an electronic gate opener.  A few months after the gate opener was installed it was noticed that the exterior security lights were being left on until late at night when the first daughter came home. When questioned about it she said that she did not feel safe getting out of the car in the garage and having to fiddle with her keys before entering the house. The solution?.... Installing automatic garage doors and a new back door to the garage.

A month and $15,000.00 later, the husband had to go overseas with the rest of the family leaving the wife alone in the home. The wife insisted that 8 inch bolts be placed on all doors both upstairs and downstairs. Even though the husband pointed out that every window and door was already protected by the alarm system the wife was adamant.  Sixteen bolts were installed to supplement the locksets and deadbolt locks already in place.

Two weeks ago a business woman was attacked in her home by armed gunmen. The wife is now insisting that the husband accept the quote of over $40,000.00 plus for hurricane shutters as she thinks this will be a way to further secure the home, protecting the 10 full french doors and 27 glass doors that she had forced the husband, against his better judgement, to install when they were building the house. So far the husband has resisted.  Then.... a man and his son-in-law was shot dead outside their home and a few days later 2 Police Officers shot while on duty. The wife is now asking him about getting a licensed firearm.

How long can he resist? 

Should he resist?

A few years ago we would have said that we were taking about a family in Jamaica or Trinidad. Not so my friends. This is a story unfolding right here in Barbados. The escalation of the crime situation has resulted in ordinary families taking extraordinary measure to feel safe in their own homes. I hear the Commissioner of Police quoting statistics and the Attorney General adding his voice to the situation but I am not hearing any solutions. 
Do we have to resort to barricading ourselves in our homes in order to feel safe?
Do each family need to purchase firearms to protect their own?
Like my friends in Belize, do we have to drive our children to school with an assault rifle in the back seat? Like my acquaintances in Haiti, do I home school my children?
Or like my good friend in Trinidad, do I hire a security firm to escort my children to and from school with armed guards?

This is our Caribbean reality.

I feel the helplessness of the husband in the story. I understand his pain on a real level like no one else can because.... 

It is me.



Quote of the Day

"Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head." - Chinese Proverbs

Is Wukking up We Culture?

Dear Friends,

A lot has been said about whether the Kadooment parade and the accompanying behaviour is indeed part of we culture. I never gave this question much thought but the worldwide furore about the videos showing Rihanna's during Kadooment got me thinking.  If a stranger, knowing nothing of the history or traditions of Barbados saw these videos, what would they think? Taken out of context the behaviour can be construed as lewd and lascivious. Similarly, a visitor from another planet witnessing a priest performing the rite of Holy Communion would label us all cannibals for drinking the blood of Christ and eating his body.(In fact, the Europeans at the end of the 15th century witnessed the indigenous people of the Caribbean performing a victory ritual designed to honour the bravery of their captives and were labeled cannibals. 500 years later our children are still being taught that the Caribs, (Kalinago) people were cannibals.)

What is Culture?

The etymology of the modern term "culture" has a classical origin. In English, the word "culture" is based on a term used by Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", thereby using an agricultural metaphor to describe the development of a philosophical soul, which was understood as the one natural highest possible ideal for human development.

It is indeed ironic that we are now examining the behaviour during Kadooment, a festival born out of our agricultural heritage as it relates to a word born of a similar heritage.

In short, the term culture has come to refer to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human. The word culture  has many different meanings.  For some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food.  For a biologist, it is likely to be a colony of bacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrient medium in a laboratory Petri dish.  However, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns.  The term was first used in this way by the pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871.  Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." 

Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon.  It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds.  Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture.  They are not culture in themselves. 

In examining the Culture of Barbados one must first understand that there are layers of culture.

Layers of Culture

There are three layers or levels of culture that are part of our learned behavior patterns and perceptions.  Most obviously is the body of cultural traditions that distinguish our specific society.  When people speak of Italian or Japanese culture, they are referring to the shared language, traditions, and beliefs that set each of these peoples apart from others.  In most cases, those who share our culture do so because they acquired it as they were raised by parents and other family members who have it.
 
The second layer of culture that is part of our identity is a subculture .  In complex, diverse societies in which people have come from many different parts of the world, they often retain much of their original cultural traditions.  Unlike societies like Trinidad and Guyana, this is not seen to any great extent in Barbados. People of European, Indian, African and Asian decent assimilate so completely into our society that there is no identifiable subculture. The cultural differences between members of a subculture and the dominant national culture has disappeared, the subculture ceases to exist except as a group of people who claim a common ancestry.  This is only a personal observation and I may be wrong. I welcome discussion on this matter.

The third layer of culture consists of cultural universals.  These are learned behavior patterns that are shared by all of humanity collectively.  No matter where people live in the world, they share these universal traits.  Examples of such "human cultural" traits include:

Communicating with a verbal language consisting of a limited set of sounds and grammatical rules for constructing sentences

1. Using age and gender to classify people (e.g., teenager, senior citizen, woman, man)
2. Classifying people based on marriage and descent relationships and having kinship terms to refer to them (e.g., wife, mother, uncle, cousin)
3. Rising children in some sort of family setting
4. Having sexual division of labor (e.g., men's work versus women's work)
5. Having a concept of privacy
6. Having rules to regulate sexual behavior
7. Distinguishing between good and bad behavior
8. Having some sort of body ornamentation
9. Making jokes and playing games
10. Having art
11. Having some sort of leadership roles for the implementation of community decisions

While all cultures have these and possibly many other universal traits, different cultures have developed their own specific ways of carrying out or expressing them.  For instance, people in deaf subcultures frequently use their hands to communicate with sign language instead of verbal language.  However, sign languages have grammatical rules just as verbal ones do.

I think we can agree that Wukking up is not a universal cultural trait.

So, the question must be asked.

Can Wukking Up be considered, "we culture?"

There is no doubt that it has become part of our learned behavior passed on from generation to generation.
I am sure all of us have laughed at the three year old wukking up to the latest calypso beat. Who taught them that? Some might say it was even hereditary. Is Wukking up in our DNA?

 Quote of the Day

" A picture is worth a thousand words."  Check the link below.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150344582405401



Coming Soon

Wukking up and the Church.

Illegal Drugs - How do we solve the problem?

Dear Friends,

With reference to the Caribbean drug problem, the Secretary, Secretariat for Multidimensional Security (SMS) of the OAS, Ambassador Adam Blackwell, made the following comments: "it takes a network to beat a network" in order to tackle this transnational problem.  Drug abuse was not an isolated problem as it was directly related to violence and organised crime, the Ambassador underscored that our responses to crime and violence should be long-term actions to address their underlying causes. 

Stating "more prisons and longer jail sentences are not solving, and will not solve the problems", Mr. Blackwell cautioned "we cannot arrest our way out of crime.  I am not suggesting we let hardened criminals go free but sending individuals with an illness to the best crime school - prison, is counterproductive," he concluded.  

We all applaud the efforts of our Customs and Excise, Police and Security Officers at the Grantley Adams International Airport for  the sterling job they are doing in the apprehension of persons attempting to import drugs into Barbados. However, like Ambassador Blackwell, I must ask, What are the underlying causes of the drug problem in Barbados?

The questions that need to be asked are these:-

• Who is the market for these drugs and how were they introduced to it?
• Why is there a market for these drugs?
• Who controls the sale of these drugs? 
• Who is benefiting fro the proceed of the sale of these drugs?

The way I see it is this. Clearly, if there was no demand for illicit drugs there would be no trade. Trade is about supply and demand. Only the possibility of significant financial reward could make 8 Jamaican & 2 Bajan men ingest marijuana in an attempt to smuggle drugs into Barbados. I mean, what were they thinking? What information could they be acting on that they would think it smart to buy tickets, (at Caribbean Airlines prices...they aint even wait fuh RedJet den!), and travel to arguably one of the best policed airports in the region with drugs.

I know that some of you will say that they weren't very smart. If it was one or two people I might agree but 10 on the same flight! Did they know each other? Who paid for their tickets? What did they plan to do with the drugs once the got to Barbados? Was it for their own use or for sale? I hope that these answers will come out over the next few days.

There is a view held among some academics that the legalization of marijuana would result in a flooding of the market resulting in a reduction in price of the drug thus reducing the attractiveness to organized crime. If everyone grew it in their backyards it would have little value. Maybe if one holds to the opinion that the protection of the money generated by the drug trade is what is responsible for the number of firearms we have in Barbados, it might follow that legalization would negate the need for all this firepower resulting in less illegal firearms. Statistically, the illegal drug trade is the major contributor to the crime levels in Barbados. Would the removal of monetary reward reduce these crimes?

My problem with this is that if marijuana was as easily available as ackees, what would this do to the minds of of our children since it is generally accepted that marijuana is the gateway drug to the much harder stuff? Do we legalize them too?

Head of the Drug Squad, senior Superintendent Grafton Phillips, is on record saying that existing programmes are not working but as usual no alternatives were given. 

How do we reduce the market demand for illegal drugs in Barbados?

Together we can come up with the answer. The future of our children may depend on it.

 Quote of the day

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive," Albert Einstein 

Coming Soon

"Culture is roughly anything we do and monkeys don't." Lord Raglan

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke

Dear Friends,

After much procrastination, I have decided today to start this blog. Recent events have shown me that life is short and that it makes no sense to put off for tomorrow what can be done today.

I am becoming more and more frustrated at what I see going on in Barbados today. The issues are various, ....from the failure of both political parties to put the people of Barbados first,.... to the established church being quiet on moral issues,.... to the Commissioner of Police telling us that crime is down,.... to the average Bajan not being able to own a home.

This time has come for Barbadians to speak out. I don't pretend to have all the solutions. I don't even have all the questions. However, it is time for a few good men, (and women), to do something! You don't have to agree with me. In fact, I hope you don't. All I ask is that you take notice of what is going wrong in the country and add your voice towards finding a solution. Barbadians have become a nation of finger pointers. It is the last Government's fault that we are in the present economic situation, it is Police's fault that crime is up, it is the fault of the school system that our youth have no ambition and the list goes on.

We need solutions! I don't care who caused it! How can we fix it?

I will write on issues that concern all Barbadians. I invite your comments and together we may be heard by the powers that be. Let us use the "Bowl" to ensure that one day we all do not have to throw our hands in the air in despair and shout "Old Brass Bowl, look wah we Buhbados come tuh!!!"

Quote of the Day

"Our lives begin to end the day we are silent about things that matter." Martin Luther King Jr.

Coming Soon...

Twenty (20) people have been detained for suspicion of smuggling drugs into Barbados. They were caught after they came in on a Caribbean Airlines flight from Jamaica. The 20 are currently being processed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.