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OUR PRAYERS GO OUT TO THE FAMILY OF ALTON ELLIS - ON HIS PASSING THIS MORNING IN THE U.K.
We will never forget his silky soulful vocals and foundation style, as they have blessed our shows many days - including today. please listen to our tribute to Alton Ellis on BadGalsRadio all weekend.
we will post details of his memorial and the location when they are announced later.
Jah Bless and Guide Our Idren to Glory
Bharrat Jagdeo is an embarassing, lowlife, panhandler - Jamaican PM Bruce Golding
For The Record - We Wholeheartedly Agree with PM Golding. - ED.

the glen lall: In what must be considered one of the most vicious attacks on another Caricom leader since the birth of Carifta, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding made a devastating critique on one of his Caricom colleagues, using the plural to avoid specificities.
It is clear to a majority of political observers and commentators that Mr. Golding had Guyana’s President in mind when he lashed out at “some” Caricom leaders who go begging the international community all the time.
Perhaps only the “yard fowl” remark of late Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, directed against Barbadian PM Tom Adams in 1983, could be seen as a more acerbic remark within the Caricom family since the integration movement was born.
How unfortunate that this could come from Jamaica, when that island’s people tend to treat Guyanese with immense friendliness.
Let’s quote the outspoken Jamaican leader: “They go around, hat in hand, to every capital of the world like panhandlers on the street, telling people how we are like the wretched of the earth; we are poor and that we need all sorts of charity.
Not only am I tired of it, but I believe that we have allowed it (the constant begging for aid) to cause us to put off indefinitely the need to confront some of our own weaknesses and deficiencies and to deal with them.”
Mr. Golding did not mention the Guyanese President, but any analyst should use logical deduction to arrive at whom he had in mind. Surely, he could not be speaking about Barbados and Trinidad.
any analyst other than PPP Rickey Singh
It is the first time in the 35-year history of the 15-member Caribbean Community that a Caribbean leader has chosen to engage in such an unprovoked emotional public outburst aimed at his counterparts over a perceived mendicant attitude in going around capitals of the world like beggars appealing for development aid.
Given his usually informed and conciliatory positions at Caricom meetings, it is not at all clear what may have prompted such a verbal onslaught in public against his counterparts, and with no examples given. [PPP rickey needs examples]
get the full dosage of freddie over at the glen lall
Barack Obama makes his own weather in the storm - Times Online
The banking crisis was a lucky break for the Democrat. But he has an ability to make the most of his good fortune
AFL-CIO leader defends Obama against racism; says economy should trump culture bias.

As the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain prepares to step up personal attacks on Democratic rival Barack Obama, a YouTube clip has resurfaced of AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka defending Obama against voters whose only issue with the candidate is his race.
11 Racist Lies Conservatives Tell to Avoid Blaming Wall Street for the Financial Crisis
Conservative pundits and politicians have piled onto the excuse like shipwreck victims clinging to a passing log: The real blame for the current economic crisis, conservatives would have you believe, lies not with anything they did, but rather with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act — a successful Carter-era program designed to get banks to stop covert discrimination, and encourage them to invest their money in low-income neighborhoods.
It’s always easy to tell when the cons are completely lost at sea. The lies get more absurdly preposterous — and also more transparently self-serving. But when they go so far as to openly and unapologetically latch onto race and class as an excuse for their woes (which this is, at its heart), you know they’re taking on water fast — and scared of going under entirely.
You can hear the conservative commentators burbling this CRA fable from the Wall Street Journal to the National Review; from Rush to YouTube. Neil Cavuto put the essence of the argument right out there on Fox News: “Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.” See! It’s all the liberals’ fault for insisting on social justice!
Conservatives are twisting the facts beyond the breaking point to support their revisionist history. But don’t be fooled: the financial crisis was caused by conservative financial follies and bankers run amok and nothing more. Here are the basic myths they’re trying to push about the CRA — and the facts that will enable you to fire back.
1. The CRA was a liberal boondoggle designed to con banks into funding housing for undeserving, unqualified minorities.
False. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was the result of decades of disinvestment in poor and working-class neighborhoods. It was designed to put an end to “red-lining” — a widespread practice in which banks refused to write mortgages for houses in certain neighborhoods, no matter who was applying or how creditworthy they were.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 had made it illegal for real estate agents and banks to discriminate against homeowners on the basis of race. Red-lining soon emerged as a not-so-subtle way to continue this discrimination, by declaring, ahem, certain neighborhoods as unfit to invest in. By 1977, the results of this practice were becoming all too obvious, so Congress stepped and gave lenders a choice: if you want the FDIC to insure your deposits, you need to knock off the redlining.
The CRA didn’t force lenders to make riskier loans than they would have otherwise. It simply required that they take each applicant on his or her own merits, and give people in poorer neighborhoods the same fair chance at a mortgage that everybody else in town was getting. It wasn’t about preferential treatment. It was just about basic equality.
2. The CRA forced banks to lower their standards and make loans to all low-income families and people with poor credit — and find banks that refused to comply.
No. The CRA has encouraged banks to lend fairly and responsibly for over 30 years. It does not impose fines. It does periodically examine FDIC-backed banks, and issues them a CRA compliance rating. A highly-rated bank must meet the financing needs of as many community members as possible, and must not discriminate against racial and ethnic groups or certain neighborhoods. However, a bank will not receive a high rating unless it is also maintains “safe and sound banking practices.”
In other words, the CRA requires banks to lend to working-class families and people of color — but only when those people have been deemed as creditworthy as anyone else.
3. The housing bubble burst when too many people with home loans mandated by the Community Reinvestment Act failed to make their mortgage payments.
False. The CRA only applies to FDIC member banks and thrifts. Back in the 1970s, these institutions were responsible for most of the country’s mortgage lending. But starting in the 80s and on up to the present, we saw a huge boom in lending businesses– such as finance companies like Countrywide — that weren’t banks, and didn’t take deposits that required FDIC insurance. Thus, they didn’t have any obligation to the CRA. And they were free to set their own lending standards, which were often far less cautious than those required of FDIC-insured banks.
4. The bulk of the “junk” loans that have been packaged into mortgage-based securities are CRA loans.
False. An analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data in the country’s 15 biggest metropolitan areas found that 84.3% of the high-cost loans made in 2006 were originated by non-CRA lenders — including 83% of high-cost loans to low- and moderate-income individuals. The Federal Reserve notes that, across the country, non-CRA lenders were twice as likely as CRA lenders to issue subprime loans to vulnerable borrowers. Furthermore, the Fed also reports that responsible mortgages made by CRA lenders have about the same low rate of foreclosure as other traditional mortgages.
5. If the government had just set the lenders free to do their thing, the market would have prevented this. It’s just another example of how government oversight always leads to market failure.
Wrong again, buckaroo. As explained just above, up to four-fifths of these loans were issued by financial institutions that operated with little or no federal regulatory oversight. In fact, in 2006, only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was a CRA institution. A few others were mortgage/finance company affiliates of CRA-covered lenders; but even these were separate businesses that didn’t operate under CRA rules (including Countrywide, CitiMortgage, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage). Likewise: the vast majority of the top 20 issuers of risky interest-only and option ARM loans were not CRA-affiliated lenders.
If anything, the CRA example proves — once again — that government oversight not only works; it’s essential to maintain safe and sane capital markets.
6. The CRA is just another failed liberal handout program.
No. The benefits of CRA have been substantial. Robert Rubin recently estimated that the law has channeled upwards of $1 trillion into distressed neighborhoods across the country — including both inner cities and rural areas without much access to investment funds — without putting up any taxpayer money beyond what it takes to operate the CRA itself. In these areas, home ownership is up — and with it, the local tax base, which means more parks, more cops, more street repairs, and so on. There’s more decent rental housing, too, because landlords can get loans for upgrades and improvements.
Small business ownership is also up. Low-income communities have become more attractive to outside investors, and more able to support community redevelopment efforts. And in places where people once cashed their paychecks at the convenience store and depended on payday loans, there are now full-service bank branches offering the same affordable financial services people in better neighborhoods take for granted.
The cons like to talk about the “ownership society.” There is no ownership without access to capital. For 30 years, the CRA has been making private capital available to qualified people who want to bootstrap themselves into home and business ownership, and a secure place in the middle class.
7. OK — if it works so well, why do we still need it? Haven’t the banks finally figured by now out that redlining was a stupid idea?
If only. The very fact that the conservatives are trying to blame the mess on the CRA is, in itself, ample proof that we still need anti-redlining laws on the books. Fifty years into the civil rights era, and they’re still arguing that it should be acceptable to permanently exclude people from the capital markets on the basis of race and class. Different millennium, same ugly story: “See? This is what happens when you give money to minorities and poor people. You end up wrecking the country!”
In other words: no, they haven’t learned their lesson; and yes, they still believe in red-lining as much as they ever did. Racism is alive and well, and there are still plenty of Americans who would bring back housing discrimination in a heartbeat if the law allowed them to. Which is precisely why we can’t allow them to.
8. If we can’t blame the CRA, then who can we blame? How about the federal banking agencies, which outright told banks to go ahead and adopt risky lending practices? In particular, a 1992 Boston Federal Reserve Bank publication, Closing the Credit Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending, told the banks that it was OK to adopt unsound lending practices.
Nice try, but still wrong. According to the National Community Reinvestment Association, the document cited above offered three new guidelines to lenders — none of which are applicable to the current subprime crisis.
The first guideline was that the lack of proper credit history shouldn’t be counted as a negative factor for potential homebuyers. Banks could use other evidence to assess the borrower’s payment habits, including the timely payment of rent, utility bills, and other scheduled loans. Borrows still need to prove that they’re reliable; they’re just allowed to use documentation besides a credit report.
The second was to remind bankers that some households with debt ratios above the standard 28/36 criteria might still qualify for home loans. This guideline is very conservative by today’s standards. Many problematic subprime loans were granted to borrowers with debt-to-income ratios above 50 percent, which was in no way sanctioned by the 1992 guidance document.
The third was that lenders could count Social Security, second jobs, and other verifiable income streams as valid sources of income when evaluating loan applications. But most subprime loans failures aren’t related to alternative income sources. The real problem has been with “liars’ loans,” in which the reported income streams are never verified at all.
9. Well, then…it must be Bill Clinton’s fault, right? In 1995, Clinton changed the Community Reinvestment Act to allow the securitization of CRA and subprime mortgages. That’s what started all this.
Talking point regurgitation at its worst. The 1995 revisions to the CRA only changed the way in which a bank’s CRA compliance is evaluated. They made no mention of mortgage securitization at all. Under the 1995 rules, banks are rewarded only for making mortgages in their communities, not for re-selling mortgages as securities.
10. OK, then — it’s the Democratic Congress’s fault! President Bush and Senator McCain tried to stop the subprime mortgage crisis, but Democrats blocked their efforts.
It’s not lying. It’s a gift for fiction. This one’s actually made it into a TV ad. The claim is that Bush and McCain supported the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which would have created a new government agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other federal housing programs.
However, there’s no pony in this manure pile. This bill would have done nothing to stop the rash of subprime lending that preceded the housing bubble. It only provided oversight for Fannie and Freddie — but it said nothing at all about the companies that issued subprime mortgages.
11. No serious conservative economist would have ever approved of the CRA.
False. In March 2007, Federal Board Chairman Bernanke — no liberal he — noted that CRA has helped institutions discover and enter new markets that may have been previously under-served and ignored by insured depositories.
These myths are floating around everywhere this week — a Big Lie that’s being repeated so often that Americans may well start to believe it. The real objective of the “blame the CRA” campaign is to pre-emptively discredit any future progressive proposals that involve using government regulation to make the capital markets behave — and to get the free-market fundamentalist faithful back in the fold.
Time to fire back, and replace the Big Lie with some real truth
Four Students Are Behind the Obama Cut-Out Lynching Case

Four students are behind the Obama cut-out lynching case. George Fox University in Oregon announced Tuesday that four students have been punished for lynching a life-sized cardboard cutout of Sen. Barack Obama last week. The Newberg, Ore.-based Christian college told about 1,000 students who attended a general assembly where the news about finding the four students

Macka Diamond has formed the Money-O Galliance. - Sadeke Brooks
Dancehall artiste Macka Diamond has joined forces with fellow female deejays to form the ‘Money-O Galliance’.
However, Macka Diamond says the ‘Money-O Galliance’ should not be confused with the Galliance (an offshoot of the Bounty Killer-led Alliance), which includes Alebra, K-Queens, Ruffi-Ann, Lexi-Lee, and Tasha Rozez.
She also said it is not an attempt on her part to ‘gimmick’ the group.
Original Galliance
“If dem (Galliance) have a problem wid it dem can join in too since dem a di original Galliance,” she told THE STAR. “Mi kno seh Killer would maybe tell dem fi join it to. No hard feelings. Mi just kno seh wi love the name. It nuh have nutten wid Alliance or seh wi a segregate from anybody,” Macka said.
Bounty Killer, who issued a statement via his publicist Julian Jones-Griffith, said the Galliance was far from being defunct. “I guess we have done something good forming the Alliance and Macka wants to replicate it with her own Galliance.”
He continued: “We have our own Galliance, Macka has hers but we don’t have a problem with it, we endorse that. It’s all positive. Macka Diamond is a great and long-standingfriend of the Alliance so it’s all positive.”
Nonetheless, Macka Diamond says she is willing to change the name of the group if the original Galliance has a major problem with the name.
Other artistes who make up the Money-O Galliance are Lady G, Queen Paula, along with newcomers Black Queen and Champagne. But the group is not limited to artistes as it also includes dancers Dahlia and Latesha.
Macka Diamond is also inviting other female artistes to join the movement, which she says started more than six months ago.
Macka believes this unity is important in the dancehall because the aim is to help the women get more airplay and recognition in the industry.
Just a hunt a food
“Wi just a hunt a food,” she told THE STAR. “We as woman hungry and dem nah give wi di run weh dem give the man dem.”
She said members of the Money-O Galliance have been bombarding various selectors at dances to play their songs.
“It’s like a campaign and wi pulling together the forces. Unity a di strength fi di woman dem,” she said. “Wi jus’ waan wi freedom, title and respect from the man dem.”
Macka Diamond says the women get reasonable airplay but their presence in the street dances and parties is almost non-existent. She is also making a plea to female disc jocks to support the women in dancehall.
? Macka Diamond launches all-female ‘Money-O Galliance’
URL: Statue of Caribbean woman breaks new ground
The statue is a tribute to African-Caribbean women
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London’s first public statue of an African-Caribbean woman has been unveiled as a memorial to women in the Caribbean community.
The 3m (10ft) high Bronze Woman statue of a woman holding a baby has been installed in Stockwell Memorial Garden, south London.
The anonymous figure is based on a poem of the same name by Guyana-born Cecile Nobrega, who lives in Stockwell.
The statue comes after a 10-year-long campaign by Ms Nobrega.
Olmec, a community investment foundation, raised £84,000 funding and found the sculptors and a location for the statue.
The statue was unveiled by a “circle” of women of Caribbean origin including artist Anissa-Jane, Baroness Rosalind Howells OBE and Music of Black Origin (MOBO) Awards founder Kanya King.
Windrush anniversary
An initial model of the statue was first designed by sculptor Ian Walters, who also created the Nelson Mandela statue in Parliament Square in 2005.
Following his death in August 2006 the project was completed by Aleix Barbat, a final year sculpture student at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in London.
Olmec director Tanzeem Ahmed said the monument was “a tribute to the diverse communities that make up British society and a symbol of the potential of women everywhere”.
The installation of the statue marks the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush ship to Britain carrying 500 West Indian immigrants, and the 200th anniversary of the end of the transatlantic slave trade.
St Kitts opposition calls for inquiry into black out

In St Kitts Nevis, the Opposition People’s Action Movement, PAM, has called for a full-scale public inquiry into a recent electricity outage that plunged the island into darkness.
Opposition leader Lindsay Grant made the call in a national address today in which he also urged citizens to demand answers from the government.
He charged that the recent island wide power outage had come about as a result of irresponsible spending by the Denzil Douglas administration.
He said despite repeated warnings from the Opposition, Government had decided to purchase prototype generators valued at over 11-million US dollars that have proven to be faulty.
An October 2 fire at the lone power station damaged two generators, leaving thousands in the dark.
Two staff members of the power company also had to be treated for smoke inhalation.
URL: Immense volume of money is laundered in Dominican Republic, Fannin warns
Puerto Plata. - United States ambassador Robert Fannin yesterday warned that an immense volume of money originating from drug trafficking is laundered in Dominican Republic and urged industrialists to collabrorate with the government in its war against it.
The diplomat affirmed that drugs pose a danger for the tourism industry and the world, for which the country should seek new ways to attack the problem of the demand, “as demonstrated by the fact that narcotics consumption has fallen 24 percent since 2001.”
Fannin made the request in the conference “Opportunities in Commercial Interchange and Investment between the United States and Dominican Republic,” that dictated in the American Chamber of Commerce’s monthly luncheon here, held in the hotel Gran Ventana, Playa Dorada.
The U.S. ambassador said the around two billion doses of cocaine transported through Dominican territory produced much money that has been brought here, where it’s being laundered. “The private sector is in a very good position to help identify and alert the authorities on these activities in this area.
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OUR PRAYERS GO OUT TO THE FAMILY OF ALTON ELLIS - ON HIS PASSING THIS MORNING IN THE U.K.
















