Democrats have it wrong

The late Jamaican reggae singer known as Prince Buster, certainly did not have Donald Trump in mind when he wrote," Hard man Fi Dead," some 60 years ago. 

              The Prince Buster classic.

 But this reggae classic fits Trump perfectly!

Many people throughout the world are really mystified how someone like Trump,  a man with the reputation for: cheating  small contactors and other persons including applicants to his university, misappropriation of foundation funds for his own use, sexually harassing and even raping women, and who was convicted of a felony by his peers,  and on an on, could get such an overwhelming mandate from the richest and most powerful country in the world.

And this mandate is such that those who warned that he could be a Hitler could be prophetic, for with him sweeping the presidency both in terms of popular vote and electoral college votes, sweeping the Senate and most likely the Congress and controlling the Supreme Court and lower courts ad infinitum, there is nothing to stop him doing anything he wants during the next four years.😡

What is sad, is that the Democrats could also be out of power for decades, unless of course, they wake from their stupor and stop blaming everyone but themselves.

Short-sighted Democrats who claim that they lost because Americans will never elect a woman, are overlooking the fact that Hilary beat him by three million votes in 2016 and only lost because of the weird electoral college system. And when they hold up the race  card, how do they explain how Obama, a black man, won in the USA, not once but twice?

There is even more stark information that they are misreading the facts when you look at voter turnout in the critical states; For example, Trump won Wisconsin by 23,000 votes but in Milwaukee, 93,000 black people did not vote!

He won Florida by 113,000 votes where 379,000 black people did not bother to vote. And that pattern is repeated all over.

So, are they really saying that those blacks who did not vote for Harris are racists?

The Democratic leadership needs to wake up and take full responsibility for their shortcomings.

For they are the root of all the evil.

Kamala ran a good campaign, considering the short time she had and the fact that as Vice President, she had to accept responsibility for all that went wrong under Biden.

But it was the powerful Leadership of the Democratic Party that kept others out of a primary to replace Biden when he broke his promise to serve only one term.

 Even I, a mere neophyte could see that Biden was fading fast, and I said just that in April 2023, in Joan, my views: He is just too old!.

But the leadership kept lying to the people until it was too late and they had to choose Kamala who had not even been a front-runner when Biden got the nomination in August 2020.

The Democrats have it all wrong for the exit polls show that the immortal words  uttered by James Carville;  “It’s the economy stupid,” is as true today as when he first uttered it.

The powerful and wealthy Democratic leadership can continue to drag down the Party by disregarding reality, although over 70% said they voted for change because they were finding it difficult to cope economically. And don't forget, Trump the master marketer, never failed to ask the question at his well publicised rallies: are you worse off today than you were four years ago?

In other areas, the democratic leadership is totally out of step with the majority, for most immigrants who became citizens after going through the long, tedious legal process to be able to vote, were turned off by the immigration policy which allowed people to simply climb a wall and get accepted in to the USA!

In places such as New York and Chicago, black Americans were also expressing disgust at how wall climbers were being given free housing, and debit cards, when their homelessness and dire economic situation was being disregarded by the Democratic elites.

Also, because the Democrats neglected its base made up of workers, unions such as the Teamsters, refused to endorse them for the first time in decades.

Then there was their strange stance on transgenderism which endorsed underperforming male athletes getting sex changes and destroying the hopes of hard working female athletes in just about every genre.

Sure, there is racism and misogyny in the USA, and small groups will always vote in line with their petty biases, but by ignoring the real issues, the Democrats will fade into oblivion and may even cause the fascism they shouted so loudly about, to become a reality.

In light of these realities, we can only hope that Trump’s promise during his acceptance speech on election night 'to help our country heal and to be the president every citizen' is not just words.

It’s difficult to see how it can be otherwise though, as these words are so much out of step with his character. Also the possibility of a 78 year old man really being able to change seems so impossible!

But as it stands today, we can only live in hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perception is reality

 I like Joe Biden for I think he is a really decent man who cares a lot about his country. And no one can deny that he has done a remarkable job in building back the economy of the USA after the devastation of covid.

In fact, I can say without any fear of contradiction, that based on his performance over the past four years, Joe Biden can go out in an unprecedented shower of glory.

The fact is though, like every human being who ever visited the planet, he is getting old and it shows clearly every day.

When he appeared at the press conference to address the special council's report into him having classified documents, despite being clearly energised by the anger he felt because the report described him as 'an elderly man with poor memory" he definitely looked and sounded shaky.

So the democrats can scream and shout as much as they like about this characterization being false, unfair whatever, and give personal testimonials of how sharp he is, he just looks shaky!

 His staff knows that too and that's why he is shielded from press conferences etc. 

No, Trump cannot be compared to Biden for he is a criminal, a cad, a man who cares only about himself. 

Also, he too is an elderly man with poor memory, and apart from the MAGA crowd, no one anywhere in the world, would want to see back as the President of the most powerful country in the world.

But that does not change the fact that Biden clearly does not appear to be able to lead the country for another four years and Kamla Harris gives no one any comfort as the hier apparent!

Its not too late to honor Joe and send him off into the sunset with a gold medal for what he has done for his country, for he deserves every honor for public service and personal sacrifice.

However, the Democratic Party urgently needs to wake up and face the fact that as far as voters are concerned, not only is perception is reality, but also, its now worse than only perception, as even the most dedicated Democrats can see him fading before their eyes.

The thought of a return by Trump is just too dangerous to even contemplate, so they need to stop procrastinating!

 

Karma is real

 As I listened and watched Dr. Sasa, special representative to the UN representing the parliament of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) on BBC's Hard-talk, during which videos showing extreme brutality against peaceful demonstrators in that country were shown, my heart  broke. 

For the benefit of those who have not been keeping up to date with matters there, briefly; on the 1st February 2021, the democratically elected government which was led by Aung San Suu Kyi, was overthrown by the military, and she was put under house arrest. 

Suu Kyi had been a Nobel Prize winner for the years she had stood up to the military rulers there and had endured imprisonment. After much trial and tribulations, she was elected by landslide in 2016 and became prime minister,  In November 2020 she again led her party to victory, but the army refused to accept the results, so like Trump, they claimed the election was stolen and staged a military coup. (Trump would have loved to have the support of the USA army to stage a similar coup on the same  grounds, but all he had was a bunch of morons who wrecked the capitol building😡!) 

Since February 2021, a large majority of the voters in Myanmar have been staging peaceful protests against the military, but instead of giving in,  the brutality of the military rulers has been increasing exponentially and the death toll keeps rising daily, as they fire live bullets into crowds of peaceful demonstrators.

In the interview on Hard-talk on March 12th, 2021, Dr. Sasa was begging the free world to come to the assistance of his country, and as I listened to his pleas, memories start to flood in. 

That is, memories of the images of mainly women and children who belonged to the Rohingya tribe.

They had lived in Myanmar for decades, but suddenly, they were being attacked and beaten, raped and brutalized and their homes and villages burnt to the ground by that same military. 

This started in 2017, when the majority people in Buddhist Myanmar decided that they did not want those Muslims around. Of the 1.4 million Rohingya's who lived there, thousands were killed and almost 800,000 now live under the most terrible conditions in camps in Bangladesh.

When those atrocities were being committed against the Rohingya's, the International Curt of Justice, in January 2020, unanimously ordered the government of Myanmar to stop the genocide. 

But guess who had gone to the court in December 2019, to testify court that the military were not committing atrocities against those hapless people?

Aung San Suu Kyi of course!

As I watched the interview with Stephen Sackur on BBCTV, this poem came to me. It is said that the writer is unknown for it had been found in one of the gas chambers in Germany, after the holocausts;

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

As I listened to the interview, I wondered out loud if Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Myanmar had ever heard that poem!

There is now absolutely no doubt in my mind that Karma is real.

(169) Joan Williams, author - YouTube

IF OBAMA HAD DARED TRY THAT!

America is a flawed democracy, yet despite that it has operated as the "policeman of the world," supposedly trying to make democracy worldwide practice.

The lack of democracy in the USA did not arise with the recent Trump instigated attempted coup in that nation's capital which saw a handful of racist thugs invading their parliament. The fact is, in the USA, the majority has never necessarily ruled, although that is what democracy is all about. So, in 2000, George W. Bush 'won' against Al Gore although he only got 47.9% of the votes cast while Gore got 48.4%. In other words, Gore got the majority of the votes cast, resulting in over half million more votes than Bush, but Bush became President. 

The same situation occurred in 2016, only the disparity was much worse. For in those elections, Hilary Clinton got in excess of three million votes more than Trump, yet he ended up as president. No wonder the autocrat Trump can insist he should remain president in 2020, although he got almost eight million votes less than Biden!

Trump is nothing but a fascist, potential tin-pot dictator though, for from 2016, he has consistently declared that if he did not win the election, it would be because of corruption! And he came back with the same song and dance in 2020, and this time it became a crescendo since November 3rd, because he was rejected at the polls. 

Amusingly though, he quickly accepted the representatives in his own party, who got elected in the states he was disputing and under the same system he calls corrupt.

I think Trump is the most corrupt politician in the history of modern America.

In his very first term, he was impeached, though not removed, for trying to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to come up with fake information on his opponent Joe Biden, for use in the 2020 election campaign. Then after he lost the popular vote in 2020, the electoral college votes, every challenge in the courts, he tried to strong arm the Secretary of State in Georgia to find him votes to overturn the results in that state and find him some votes so he could be declared the winner there.

When all that failed, as a last desperate attempt, he ordered his Vice President to lie about the number of votes he earned from the electoral college, despite the fact that the Vice President had no such power, as his job was basically ceremonial, going no further than declaring how many votes there were coming from each state.

So, like a modern-day Papa Doc (former Haitian dictator), he turned to his thugs, the Proud Boys, urging them to turn to violence. Those Proud Boys, are a far right group of white supremacists, who he told on the 29th, September 2020, to "Stand back and stand by." 

Well on the 6th January 2021, they were given the command by the president of the USA himself which led to the violent assault on Capitol Hill. When the smoke cleared, one female insurgent was found dead, a policeman was killed, four others died from other causes, many were injured and pipe bombs plus a car with explosives found nearby.

When this pathetic failed coup was met with national and international condemnation and Trump censored by Twitter and Facebook, the barefaced president in his typical self-serving fashion, threw his stupid supporters under the bus, declaring; "Those who violently besieged our Capitol are the opposite of everything this administration stands for."

What a scandal. In a civilized country, Trump as the instigator of the riots he belatedly pretended to condemn, would be arrested.

Anyway, despite the USA having a flawed democratic system, they do have strong and tested institutions, the most outstanding in this situation being the courts. For at every level, despite the fact that Trump had appointed the majority of the judges, they stood up for the constitution. 

 But back to the failed coup; I have to wonder if General Michael Flynn had still been in the army, if that attempt to violently overthrow the democratic system in the USA might not have succeeded in at least starting a civil war?  For using tactics like those of their hero Vladimir Putin, Flynn could probably have been able to mobilize enough troops under his command to do some meaningful damage. For he had even suggested after Trump lost the November 3 election, that he should declare martial law and rerun the elections in the states he lost under military supervision! Although since Trump consistently used bone spur as a medical excuse to avoid military duty and called soldiers suckers and losers, between the both of them, they probably couldn't find enough white racists to sacrifice their lives for that loser. 

 But who knows, for although he is clearly delusional, he found millions of even more delusional Americans to vote for him!

 But I am straying into conjecture.

What the attempted coup in Washington on the 6th January 2021 further exposed, is just how racist a society the USA is.

Can you imagine if President Obama had become stark staring mad and had dared to mobilize a mob to take over the capital city after his second term had ended and he was obliged to give up power? I guarantee that not only would a significant number of his supporters have been shot on sight, but Obama himself would most likely have been lynched and so would any other black man that the white racists encountered for days and probably weeks to come! 

Although the democracy in the USA is very flawed as it can make the will of the majority irrelevant, Trump and his mob ha now taken away the ability of the Americans to ever again try and lecture any other county in the world about democracy!

But maybe that's not such a bad thing is it?

https://youtu.be/xpk-DCCgYqI

Welcome 2021

2020 has been such a stressful year that I appreciate those who tried to make light of it with witty maxims. My personal favorite is "I did not enjoy 2020 so I am not adding it to my age." Wishing I didn't have to.

 In  truth however it is not the year that was bad but the pestilence of having a global pandemic which no one was prepared for. It took months before scientists could even begin to understand the make up of the beast, and during the interim they did send some conflicting messages to the public, many of which have created some confusion, even now.

In the interim, the death toll from the virus climbed astronomically and many hospitals worldwide became so overwhelmed that persons suffering from other chronic illnesses, had to be turned away as the virus became the main focus. 

If a group of professionals deserve the Nobel prize for science this year, it's the scientists worldwide, from Cuba and China to the USA and United Kingdom, who have developed several vaccines in under a year. This has never been done before in the history of the world, for the norm for such developments have been in excess of a decade. In fact, even now there are no vaccines for the Aids and Ebola diseases, so this tells you something.

But I stray.

Despite the fact that several vaccines are now available, even if we all get a share,  the world will not return to normalcy for probably years to come. For in interim,  the economic devastation worldwide will continue to wreak havoc on, especially the poor. That is the terrible load we have to find a way of coping with over the next few months.

According to ONE, a global movement which campaigns to end poverty worldwide "COVID-19 has presented many new social and economic challenges, and is exacerbating already existing ones. One such challenge is global poverty. Right now over 700 million people live in extreme poverty worldwide, which is defined as living on less than US$1.90 per person per day. Right now, the pandemic is threatening to push up to 115 million people (my emphasis) into poverty in 2020 alone." And I might add, even in the rich USA, food bank operators have been crying out for assistance as they have never had to cope with the demand for food as they have seen in recent months. 

If people in the USA are feeling it, what about people living in really poor countries? 

I feel it especially sad for the children, millions of whom today are not been able to get one solid hot meal each day and who if their brains are not being damaged, their ability to learn is certainly being stymied. For whereas children in the first world have computers and universal internet connection, our realities in Jamaica are no where close to that. Children also need inter-personal stimulation even more than adults and having to remain cooped up at home with adults, some of whom are abusive, has only added to the misery of many.

Another group of youngsters who have suffered substantially are those who have sacrificed greatly, putting in years of training to represent their countries at the Olympics, only to have their dreams disintegrate in the face of this terrible virus. Hopefully, even the mutation of this virus will not cause another postponement from July this year in Japan. 

Generally, right at home here in Jamaica, the economic clouds are gathering for there was already a 10% decrease in GDP in the last quarter. The greatest contributor to that has been of course the rapid and immediate decline in tourism industry. The reality therefore is that even with the vaccines (which we are grateful for) there will be no normal life for most of the people on this planet in the short run as governments cannot deliver on social services and infrastructure, due to empty coffers.

Of course, I am not at all proposing that we lie down and die, only that we recognize what we have to face in the new year and probably many years to come.

To add to the general misery people faced last year due to the virus was the fact that hundreds of thousands of families lost close friends and relatives, forever. I am grateful that I lost no one close to me this year, although two deaths really shook me to the core. The first was the untimely death of Chad Boseman, the star of Black Panther, a film that brought so much pride to people of color. He was so young, hard-working, talented and devoted to his profession. For although he must have been suffering terribly in the last few months, no one knew as he went about his work with courage and dedication. He also brought joy and comfort to children suffering from cancer, without even letting on about his own struggles. I really mourn his death.

The other passing that I personally felt, was that of Alex Trebek, who for decades, entertained and educated us as the host of Jeopardy. I will certainly miss his wit, knowledge and charm.

If there was any good news coming out of 2020, it was the fact that Americans came to their senses as they voted out Donald Trump. While I still consider it a mystery how they voted for him in the first place in 2016, the greater mystery is how come he increased his support in four years after such an erratic, hate-filled  and counterproductive  term. Yes, the man is clearly unstable, but what on earth would you call those millions who continue to support him.?

The fact is though, although those erratic hands no longer remain on a nuclear button, some seventy million racists still remain in the USA and many are heavily armed. That does not bode well for non- white citizens and visitors to the USA.

 Only time will tell how that will develop in the long run.

American/ Russian interefernce in elections

Even if the Americans have themselves had a record of sometimes “interfering” in elections in other countries, they have every right to be upset that Russia interfered in their presidential elections, as all the intelligence agencies have agreed happened. Interestingly, president Trump has time and time again, chosen to believe Putin's word, although he is ex and probably still KGB, while dismissing the evidence provided by 17 of his own intelligence agencies, but that's another issue.

Anyway, the difference between what the Russians did to the USA in their democratic elections and normal "interference,"  is that the US and Russia are currently the two most powerful superpowers in the world and if one can gain unchallenged influence throughout the world because it has its surrogate in power as the head of the other superpower, it would be terrible for the rest of us. 

Especially if the one that ends up with total power is Russia!

For Russia is by no means a liberal democracy and thus their holding sway over what happens in smaller and weaker states would be tragic for people in the free world, who could see the freedoms to which they had become accustomed, being gradually diminished.

I have been there and speak from personal experience on the front lines.

This was during the cold war era in my small island of Jamaica which lies only 90 miles away from Cuba. We were forced to go through four years of turmoil because the democratically elected government of the day decided it preferred the Cuban system of government and the socialist philosophy to the Westminster system of government under which it had gained power. And the Cubans were only too happy to assist them in every way possible to  take away our freedoms. For after all, Jamaica being the largest and most influential island in the English speaking Caribbean, would give them great leverage in their quest to have the then USSR dominate the entire region.

So we saw our island being flooded by thousands of Cubans supposedly coming in to assist in agricultural development and the health service. They however were under the command of a general named Ulysses Estrada who was allegedly the head of their intelligence agency, the DGI. Also assisting the Cubans but covertly, was the Russian KGB and I know that as a fact as I did have an encounter with one.

On the other side was the American CIA which had allegedly heeded the opposition party’s cry for help, but they apparently operated very covertly, for although I was often on the frontlines, I never encountered a CIA agent on the ground.

However, I say without apology THANKS TO THE AMERICAN CIA FOR ASSISTING US, FOR IF THEY HADN’T, JAMAICA TODAY WOULD PROBABLY BE LIKE VENEZUELA where food shortages, hyper-inflation, no press freedom, government sponsored aggression and the silencing of the opposition are the order of the day.

Worse yet, we could be like Cuba itself. I have visited that country four times since 1980, because of its physical beauty and the fact that I have close family there. Their life is one of absolute misery and the younger ones who were born after the revolution, do not even know that there is an alternative world in which people can criticize their government, read and write what they want or even better, get a passport and travel to any place they wish, as long as they have the money. Sad.

I therefore thank the Americans for “interfering” and assisting us in defeating the Cuban DGI and Russian KGB in the elections that followed our four year period of turmoil…1976-1980.

For reducing the world to a position where one of the two super powers dominates totally because it succeeded in putting its surrogate in power, is extremely dangerous for the entire world. For what Lord Acton said in the 1800’s is still relevant today. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”