Dear Editor,
If your neighbour sold stolen cars, would you buy one? If your neighbour sold illegal drugs, would you buy any? Most people wouldn't, and most Jamaicans don't. Although there are Americans selling guns on the black market and flooding some countries like Mexico with illegal guns, this will not make it a requirement for Mexico to stop flooding the US with drugs in the hope that America will stop the illegal export of guns.
We have a problem with some of our audacious nationals who target gullible elderly Americans. It isn't just about greed. There is a culture of winning something by just purchasing anything in the United States, but Americans have a powerful Government that will protect them. We don't. Therefore expecting the United States, as a sort of reciprocity, to stem the tide of illegal weapons to our shores in exchange for us to put an end to the lottery scam is wishful thinking.
The United States can punish us, but we can't punish them. The lottery scam isn't Jamaica's atomic bomb. Forget that Americans are selling illegal weapons and concentrate on why our citizens require these weapons. This is the part that requires critical thinking and leadership. How do we get Jamaicans to produce legal goods and services and not depend on drug smuggling and lottery scamming? Now instead of Senator KD Knight, AJ Nicholson and Arthur Williams concentrating on prevention, they are worried about curing. We need to stop our citizens from depending on illegal methods to survive and not rely on Americans to clean up our mess.
When Senator Knight gets up to speak, we listen because he is a brilliant debater and emerged from the Manatt Phelps and Phillips inquiry as the "Star Boy". He took Dorothy Lightbourne to school on various aspects of the law. He harangued Dwight Nelson until he couldn't recall what he had for breakfast before coming to the inquiry. He then delivered the coup de grace to then Prime Minister Bruce Golding by labelling him pathologically mendacious. His performance ensured the People's National Party's victory at the polls.
But Senator Knight is dead wrong on the issue of the lottery scam. We cannot make the United States do a quid pro quo deal. It won't happen. This might be good for a sound bite or a "letter to the Editor," but it is simply optics. In his hour of reflection, Senator Knight was penitent. In 2008 the senator said, "My deepest regret is that having gone in (in) 1989, where the conditions were terrible and having left in 2007, I cannot proudly say that the conditions had changed so significantly that I would be content to applaud myself or the team for the achievements."
He expressed profound regret that for the time he served in Government, he "was unable to contribute more to the upliftment of the marginalised in the country". Well, Senator Knight, this is your last chance to uplift the conditions of your countrymen ... no more stadium in Sligoville. Tell your party that giving Jamaicans an alternative to lottery scamming is the only way to uplift them, not blaming the US. St Kitts doesn't, Barbados doesn't, neither do Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Grenada, Puerto Rico, Cayman, etc.
Mark Clarke
Siloah, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
Wishful thinking about lotto deal with US
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If your neighbour sold stolen cars, would you buy one? If your neighbour sold illegal drugs, would you buy any? Most people wouldn't, and most Jamaicans don't. Although there are Americans selling guns on the black market and flooding some countries like Mexico with illegal guns, this will not make it a requirement for Mexico to stop flooding the US with drugs in the hope that America will stop the illegal export of guns.
We have a problem with some of our audacious nationals who target gullible elderly Americans. It isn't just about greed. There is a culture of winning something by just purchasing anything in the United States, but Americans have a powerful Government that will protect them. We don't. Therefore expecting the United States, as a sort of reciprocity, to stem the tide of illegal weapons to our shores in exchange for us to put an end to the lottery scam is wishful thinking.
The United States can punish us, but we can't punish them. The lottery scam isn't Jamaica's atomic bomb. Forget that Americans are selling illegal weapons and concentrate on why our citizens require these weapons. This is the part that requires critical thinking and leadership. How do we get Jamaicans to produce legal goods and services and not depend on drug smuggling and lottery scamming? Now instead of Senator KD Knight, AJ Nicholson and Arthur Williams concentrating on prevention, they are worried about curing. We need to stop our citizens from depending on illegal methods to survive and not rely on Americans to clean up our mess.
When Senator Knight gets up to speak, we listen because he is a brilliant debater and emerged from the Manatt Phelps and Phillips inquiry as the "Star Boy". He took Dorothy Lightbourne to school on various aspects of the law. He harangued Dwight Nelson until he couldn't recall what he had for breakfast before coming to the inquiry. He then delivered the coup de grace to then Prime Minister Bruce Golding by labelling him pathologically mendacious. His performance ensured the People's National Party's victory at the polls.
But Senator Knight is dead wrong on the issue of the lottery scam. We cannot make the United States do a quid pro quo deal. It won't happen. This might be good for a sound bite or a "letter to the Editor," but it is simply optics. In his hour of reflection, Senator Knight was penitent. In 2008 the senator said, "My deepest regret is that having gone in (in) 1989, where the conditions were terrible and having left in 2007, I cannot proudly say that the conditions had changed so significantly that I would be content to applaud myself or the team for the achievements."
He expressed profound regret that for the time he served in Government, he "was unable to contribute more to the upliftment of the marginalised in the country". Well, Senator Knight, this is your last chance to uplift the conditions of your countrymen ... no more stadium in Sligoville. Tell your party that giving Jamaicans an alternative to lottery scamming is the only way to uplift them, not blaming the US. St Kitts doesn't, Barbados doesn't, neither do Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Grenada, Puerto Rico, Cayman, etc.
Mark Clarke
Siloah, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
Wishful thinking about lotto deal with US
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