Is this Judgement?
Note: This being my first blog I've decided to post an email I sent to a couple of friends about a month and a half ago re the crime situation in Jamaica (Oct 5). Hope you enjoy. Comments are welcome
Its 7:30am and I just came in from work. Interesting listening to the news this morning. There's been anothr event in Tivoli, Mountain View was last week under curfew, gas prices are near $60 a litre, a family of 4 were brutally murdered off Maxfield Ave this morning and ... the police are threatening to strike.
Oh what a beautiful day.
Tivoli - So I got up and heard that there's a 24 hr curfew around Tivoli. Well of course we hear the different spins on the story - the police is saying they were conducting a raid in the community following intelligence they gathered, then they were greeted with a barrage of gunfire upon which they returned the fire.....you know the usual template police response. Then of course the JLP alleging that Tivoli is being targetted etc.. u know the rest.
Now its interesting regardless of whose right or whose wrong (both may be right and wrong by the way) that 3 women (yes 3) were shot and injured right beside the leader of the opposition and the mayor of kingston near Denham town Police station. Now lets pause here, we live in a country where the police fire into a crowd where the leader of the opposition is standing along with the mayor! Heh heh...ohh boy. And in fairness to the police, as this new man Shields alludes to (who I'm now listening to on the radio by the way) we r faced with a situation where that to get criminals who killed one of your own you are faced with a barrage of politicking causing you to step as if your on thin ice.
Jamaica Observer pics
more Observer pics
Mountain View - So gunmen kick down a door of a residence off Jacques road, chase a man they were feuding with but he escapes so they then drag out a woman and her baby into the yard fire a barrage of bullets into her back with a machine gun, kill the child, casually walk to another house, kick down another door killing two other women...and the whole of a community that used 2b one of the liveliest I've known is now a Ghost town. Several residents are forced to move out. You drive on Mountain View and you see the firebombed houses.
Maxfield Ave - A house was firebombed 4:00am, a young girl screamed for help, when residence try to help they r fired upon by the gunmen still there while the house burns. Course when residence run to a jeep of soldiers they are told they can't do anything bout it cuz no policeman no deh bout. (Now while this may be true technically, I wonder if this were happening in Barbican if that would have been the response....hmmm. No silly me this sort of thing wouldn't happen up there cuz no criminals live up there).
Many are oppressed. Including the toll paying residents of Portmore. It hit me the other day when I was reminded of the role of government. Isn't it to protect its citizens? Yet they impose a tax on people to use a road. Ummm...now I know most we have become somewhat used to the arrogance of our government but when u think of it again...only a certain section of a people who live in a certain area are faced with this threat...and the govt (who are the protectors of its citizens) dispute it in court..in this economic environment...which they are responsible for overseeing...I dunno it soun kinda oppressive to me.
Course other things are happening in the country which by now most of us have already forgotten. Over 20 add people dying in a week, Spanish town, don man's body stolen from a morgue and decapitated while young boys run thru the street with the head on a broomstick and stickin a cigarette butt in its mouth.
I don't want to sound like a doomsday prophet here but COME ON! How bad can it get before people take this as a sign of judgement on the land! The callousness and hard heartedness of the people are evident. Judgement isn't necessarily brimstone and fire or Hurricane and earthquake. Over 1000 people die every year (this itself is judgment!)
At first when listening to the Rev Al Miller, him declaring that Jamaica is under a particular stage of judgement I took it with a grain of salt...but with all things considered here...what else can I think?
I remember as a young person who in 1980 when I heard that over 800 people died I said that this couldn't happen inna Jamaica again (this was after that bloody election). Well I think its been happening every year now since 1991 (I think) where over 1000 people die annually.
This has been a long banter and you may be asleep by now but all I'm saying is that if while listening to these things we are unaffected or unmoved by it - suppn wrong! I am constantly reminded of how a frog reacts when it is placed in a pan of hot water - It jumps out immediately - but if you place it in a pan of cool water but gradually warm it up it stays there and boils! Is this what is happening to Jamaica where our response is concerned? When judgement visits a land it not only visits Tivoli and Maxfield it visits "di whole land!". As a bredren remind mi di odda day, the people are indeed some of the nicest on earth but because of our circumstances the people have become cold or colder. Even us! Yes us the people of God. Think about it. We hear news everyday of people dying. We dismiss it for one reason or another. May be by saying in our minds that I'm not affected by that so that doesn't concern me or understandably because we are emotionally tired of the bad news we hear everyday. So we distance ourselves from it. If we are affected to this extent then aren't criminals going to become increasingly barbaric as we are now witnessing.
We are salt. Salt not only stays one place by itself "separate from the world". Salt must get into the pot and change the condition of its environment. Praying must be accompanied by action.
Mi gawn a mi bed ya sah. But one ting doah!...I remember clearly that during times of famine the righteous prosper! That during time of darkness citizens of the kingdom are the light (Isaiah 63). Just be in a state of preparedness and be vigilant in these times.
Its 7:30am and I just came in from work. Interesting listening to the news this morning. There's been anothr event in Tivoli, Mountain View was last week under curfew, gas prices are near $60 a litre, a family of 4 were brutally murdered off Maxfield Ave this morning and ... the police are threatening to strike.
Oh what a beautiful day.
Tivoli - So I got up and heard that there's a 24 hr curfew around Tivoli. Well of course we hear the different spins on the story - the police is saying they were conducting a raid in the community following intelligence they gathered, then they were greeted with a barrage of gunfire upon which they returned the fire.....you know the usual template police response. Then of course the JLP alleging that Tivoli is being targetted etc.. u know the rest.
Now its interesting regardless of whose right or whose wrong (both may be right and wrong by the way) that 3 women (yes 3) were shot and injured right beside the leader of the opposition and the mayor of kingston near Denham town Police station. Now lets pause here, we live in a country where the police fire into a crowd where the leader of the opposition is standing along with the mayor! Heh heh...ohh boy. And in fairness to the police, as this new man Shields alludes to (who I'm now listening to on the radio by the way) we r faced with a situation where that to get criminals who killed one of your own you are faced with a barrage of politicking causing you to step as if your on thin ice.
Jamaica Observer pics
more Observer pics
Mountain View - So gunmen kick down a door of a residence off Jacques road, chase a man they were feuding with but he escapes so they then drag out a woman and her baby into the yard fire a barrage of bullets into her back with a machine gun, kill the child, casually walk to another house, kick down another door killing two other women...and the whole of a community that used 2b one of the liveliest I've known is now a Ghost town. Several residents are forced to move out. You drive on Mountain View and you see the firebombed houses.
Maxfield Ave - A house was firebombed 4:00am, a young girl screamed for help, when residence try to help they r fired upon by the gunmen still there while the house burns. Course when residence run to a jeep of soldiers they are told they can't do anything bout it cuz no policeman no deh bout. (Now while this may be true technically, I wonder if this were happening in Barbican if that would have been the response....hmmm. No silly me this sort of thing wouldn't happen up there cuz no criminals live up there).
Many are oppressed. Including the toll paying residents of Portmore. It hit me the other day when I was reminded of the role of government. Isn't it to protect its citizens? Yet they impose a tax on people to use a road. Ummm...now I know most we have become somewhat used to the arrogance of our government but when u think of it again...only a certain section of a people who live in a certain area are faced with this threat...and the govt (who are the protectors of its citizens) dispute it in court..in this economic environment...which they are responsible for overseeing...I dunno it soun kinda oppressive to me.
Course other things are happening in the country which by now most of us have already forgotten. Over 20 add people dying in a week, Spanish town, don man's body stolen from a morgue and decapitated while young boys run thru the street with the head on a broomstick and stickin a cigarette butt in its mouth.
I don't want to sound like a doomsday prophet here but COME ON! How bad can it get before people take this as a sign of judgement on the land! The callousness and hard heartedness of the people are evident. Judgement isn't necessarily brimstone and fire or Hurricane and earthquake. Over 1000 people die every year (this itself is judgment!)
At first when listening to the Rev Al Miller, him declaring that Jamaica is under a particular stage of judgement I took it with a grain of salt...but with all things considered here...what else can I think?
I remember as a young person who in 1980 when I heard that over 800 people died I said that this couldn't happen inna Jamaica again (this was after that bloody election). Well I think its been happening every year now since 1991 (I think) where over 1000 people die annually.
This has been a long banter and you may be asleep by now but all I'm saying is that if while listening to these things we are unaffected or unmoved by it - suppn wrong! I am constantly reminded of how a frog reacts when it is placed in a pan of hot water - It jumps out immediately - but if you place it in a pan of cool water but gradually warm it up it stays there and boils! Is this what is happening to Jamaica where our response is concerned? When judgement visits a land it not only visits Tivoli and Maxfield it visits "di whole land!". As a bredren remind mi di odda day, the people are indeed some of the nicest on earth but because of our circumstances the people have become cold or colder. Even us! Yes us the people of God. Think about it. We hear news everyday of people dying. We dismiss it for one reason or another. May be by saying in our minds that I'm not affected by that so that doesn't concern me or understandably because we are emotionally tired of the bad news we hear everyday. So we distance ourselves from it. If we are affected to this extent then aren't criminals going to become increasingly barbaric as we are now witnessing.
We are salt. Salt not only stays one place by itself "separate from the world". Salt must get into the pot and change the condition of its environment. Praying must be accompanied by action.
Mi gawn a mi bed ya sah. But one ting doah!...I remember clearly that during times of famine the righteous prosper! That during time of darkness citizens of the kingdom are the light (Isaiah 63). Just be in a state of preparedness and be vigilant in these times.
posted by Russjam | 7:01 pm
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