Need the votes
appalling, horrific, and reprehensible. That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague”. Lauer’s professional life was over. And his family life too, as his wife immediately filed for divorce. Oh, the survivor — that’s what #Metoo wants the women who make these charges to be called — Nevils was made an instant millionaire by NBC and was sent home on ‘sick leave’.
Virginia Roberts, by her own account, came from a “troubled home” and had been molested by a relative at age seven. She told the Miami Herald that she went from being a runaway to ending up in foster homes. By the age of 13 she had been living with her 65-year-old pimp until he was arrested on sex trafficking charges. So she hooked up with her dad again. He was then working at the property of Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy, Donald Trump. She claims that Epstein’s girlfriend invited her to give Epstein a massage and she did not need to be trained. She agreed and the visit made an unexpected turn. She was paid and went home simply amazed at the luxury she had just witnessed. The next day, they didn’t call. So she called and was told she could come again. That marked the beginning of three years of fabulous living; mansions and money, private jets and jewellery, celebrities and world leaders coming and going and generously posing for photos as they are wont to do. Eventually, she is given money to attend a massage course in Thailand. She meets a man however, and tells Epstein she won’t be returning. She marries shortly thereafter. But word of the #Metoo movement reaches her where she is in Australia. She announces that she had been a sex slave. She names a number of prominent figures, who ignore her. She goes through her photo album and finds a picture of Prince Andrew along with her and a third party. Voila! So, she hops on a plane, makes the 16,000 km journey to the tabloids in England to declare that she was “ordered’ to have sex with the prince”. She said they did it in a toilet. Prince Andrew was stripped of all his Royal duties and she headed home 160,000 pounds richer. That’s more than $27 million of our money.
Andrea Constand states publicly, when she made her second, successful attempt
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that put Cosby in jail for three to 10 years, that after the incident, “… the sound of his voice over the phone felt like a knife going through my guts... I couldn’t eat, sleep, talk, or socialise… then the nightmares started”. I would ask, how does one have these experiences when one is drugged and in an unconscious state during the event? How does Constand explain that, in the ensuing months, her visits to Cosby’s house continued. She even took her parents to meet him.
Brooke Nevils returned from Sochi and continued a passionate affair with Lauer in New York, which Lauer admits, regretfully, that he “ended it poorly”. Confronted with this shocking bit of information after the settlement, she admitted that it was true, but dismissed it claiming that, “It was transactional and not romantic.”
Virginia Roberts, now a multimillionaire, spoke of the incident with Prince Andrew thus, “I could not comprehend how it had been allowed to happen. It was scary and wicked. I had just been abused by a member of the Royal family. I feel so horrified and ashamed.” After all the settlements, however, she admits to having sex with the prince on three separate occasions, including one orgy with nine other girls. Also that Epstein also gave her US$10,000 to have sex with the prince on one occasion.
I have been in the company of mature business leaders and have on occasion been appalled at the claims they openly made about how they have used their staff members. Women have told me of the occasions they were required to perform all sorts of sex acts for their bosses and sometimes their friends. They continue, they say, because they have been trapped into thinking that if they continue their job is secure. Some did not have a problem with it. Others did, but they had children and commitments to furniture stores.
The abuse of women, particularly at the workplace, is rampant in Jamaica, and creative ways have to be found to protect our women without them suffering in the process. In the words of one employer who allegedly took his employee to a cottage to do some extra work, raped her before giving her to two of his friends, “Job hard fi find.”
Despite our best efforts, children are being abused, many of them by individuals in the home, particularly ‘stepfathers’ who seem to change on a quarterly basis. This is our greatest challenge. But a Jamaican version of the #Metoo movement in the US is definitely not the answer. That organisation does not allow sexual assault allegations to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. It does not acknowledge the possibility that women lie. It equates very unequal kinds of sexual misdeeds. The movement does not facilitate a thoughtful discussion about sexual assault. It impedes the discussion; promoting, in the process, mass hysteria, demanding our unthinking participation. It refuses to answer questions or entertain rational critiques.
Delroy Chuck is a politician, so he is not allowed to speak the truth. It is unlikely that anybody will vote for me so I can afford to be truthful. #Metoo is about vengeance. Egged on by feminists, every failed actress, everyone who did not get that job or that loan can even the score with some spurious, “..He tried to kiss me in his office 15 years ago. I haven’t been able to sleep since.” Or , “He tried to molest me in the 70s, I am still having thoughts of... “Then they leave with a cheque and someone’s marriage and lifelong career in tatters. This is not every case, but the doors can’t be so wide open they accommodate it.
1938: President Franklin D Roosevelt marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg by dedicating the Eternal Light Peace Memorial.
1944: During World War II, Soviet forces recapture Minsk from the Germans.
1950: The first carrier strikes of the Korean War takes place as the USS Valley Forge and the HMS Triumph sent fighter planes against North Korean targets.
1954: Food rationing, imposed during World War II, ends in Britain.
1962: French President Charles de Gaulle signs an agreement recognising Algeria as an independent State, after 132 years of French rule.
1971: Singer Jim Morrison of The Doors dies in Paris at age 27.
1976: Israel launches its daring mission to rescue 106 passengers and Air France crew members being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by pro-palestinian hijackers; the commandos succeeded in rescuing all but four of the hostages.
1988: The USS Vincennes shoots down an Iran Air jetliner over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.
1992: The first US Air Force C-130 transport planes from Operation Provide Promise arrives in the besieged Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
1993: Ousted Haitian President Jean-bertrand Aristide signs an accord in New York with the Haitian military that will return him to office.
1996: Boris Yeltsin decisively defeats communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov for a second term as Russian president.
1997: The Parliament of Western Samoa votes to amend the constitution to simplify the country’s name to Samoa.
1999: In their first matchup in three years, world chess champion Garry Kasparov best his key rival, Anatoly Karpov, to win the Siemens Giants chess tournament.
2000: Opposition candidate Vicente Fox is declared the winner in Mexico’s presidential elections, in a stunning victory that ended the ruling PRI party’s 71-year lock on the presidency.
2001: Fifteen female Falun Gong followers allegedly hang themselves at a labour camp in north-eastern China after being tortured by the camp staff. The Chinese Government outlawed the spiritual movement in 1999.
2005: Saudi anti-terror forces kills al-qaeda’s top leader in the kingdom in a dawn gun battle. But despite the Moroccan terrorist Younis Mohammed Ibrahim al-hayari’s death, and a two-year crackdown on militants, the number of extremists has grown.
2007: A 10-year-old
Nepalese girl is stripped of her title as a living goddess because she travelled overseas to promote a documentary about the centuries-old tradition. Because of popular support, Sajani Shakya’s position is reinstated, but she retires in March 2008 at the age of 11. President George W Bush refuses to rule out an eventual pardon for I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, after already commuting his prison sentence in the Central Intelligence Agency leak case (as it turned out, Bush left office without pardoning Libby). Japan’s defence minister
(Fumio Kyuma) resigns after drawing furious criticism for suggesting the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were inevitable. The Alinghi team from Switzerland succeeds in defending sailing’s coveted America’s Cup, beating Emirates Team New Zealand
5-2. Saxophonist Boots Randolph (“Yakety Sax”) dies in Nashville at age 80.
2008:The Pentagon announces it had extended the tour of
2,200 marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time. Venus and Serena Williams win in straight sets to set up their third all-sister Wimbledon final and seventh Grand Slam championship matchup.
2009: After bitter wrangling, Africa’s leaders agree to denounce the International Criminal Court and refuse to extradite Sudan’s President Omar al-bashir, who has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Darfur.
2012: Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond resigns, the biggest scalp in a financial market scandal that has ripped through the bank’s senior management and sown the seeds for a new investigation into Britain’s banking sector. A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, found Clayton F Osbon, a Jetblue Airways pilot who left the cockpit during a flight and screamed about religion and terrorists, not guilty by reason of insanity of interfering with a flight crew. Andy Griffith, 86, who made homespun American Southern wisdom his trademark as the wise sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show, died at his North Carolina home.
2013: Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, is overthrown by the military after just one year by the same kind of Arab Spring uprising that had brought the Islamist leader to power.
2016: A devastating truck bombing on a bustling commercial street in downtown Baghdad kills nearly 300 people. A 19-year-old tourist from Virginia loses his left foot in a blast that occurred when he stepped on a plastic bag filled with explosive chemicals in New York’s Central Park. Actress Noel Neill, who played Superman’s love interest, Lois Lane, in both a movie serial and on TV, dies in Tucson, Arizona, at age 95.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
John Clare, English poet (1793-1864); Franz Kafka, Austrian author (1883-1924);
Tom Stoppard, British playwright (1937-); Jean-claude “Papa Doc” Duvalier, former president of Haiti (1951-2014); Ken Russell, British film director (1927-2011); Tom Cruise, US actor (1962- )
What’s happening at the St Ann Municipal Corporation?
te-tes should know when to leave well alone. And to know he was once so well regarded. More and more people will be un-friending him soon if he keeps up his spiteful personal attacks.
Oh no, Mr Chuck
All the sisters in my circle like Delroy Chuck for his boyish good looks. But all that is about to change after his faux pas in Parliament about the #Metoo movement. Clearly, he did not even think about the lovely ladies in his family before that unfortunate statement. Doesn’t he understand how hard it can be to turn up at a police station to report sex crimes? Of course, not 30 years, but give sexually abused people up to six years to file complaints.
E-mail me at pepperpot@ jamaicaobserver.com
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — Antigua and Barbuda will not be represented at Friday’s special conference of Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders, where Barbados
Prime Minister Mia Mottley is to hand over the chairmanship of the 15-member regional grouping to her St Vincent and the Grenadines counterpart, Dr Ralph Gonsalves.
The Guyana-based Caricom Secretariat had earlier this week announced that the regional leaders will host their 20th Special Meeting via videoconference beginning at 10:00 am (local time) after they had agreed during their Ninth Special Meeting in April to stage the handing-over ceremony at the beginning of July.
The Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) has been reliably informed that the Gaston Browne Administration will not be represented at the meeting where regional leaders are expected to also address a number of procedural matters.
CMC understands that the Antigua and Barbuda’s position is linked to the efforts to liquidate the financially strapped regional airline, LIAT, which is headquartered in St John’s. The shareholder governments are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
“There are some regional leaders who see our regional institution, carrier, LIAT, as a ‘predator’ and they are determined to keep their knees on its neck to prevent its regeneration,” Prime Minister Brown wrote on his Facebook page.
“Their espoused values about regional integration are in congruent with their insular actions,” he wrote, adding “it is with a heavy heart that I add if this insularity hidden in intellectual subterfuge is allowed to continue unabated, the Caricom and OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) integration institutions shall wither and die”.
Browne later told CMC that “there is a conspiracy by a few regional leaders to stymie the resurgence of LIAT, as a new entity to provide air connectivity for the Caribbean people and to move tourists within our region”.
He was perhaps making reference to an advertisement where commuters were being encouraged to travel on flights operated by “OCL Barbados LTD”, and indicating “flights now available for Caribbean destinations”.
The flights, which are due to begin on July 12, is promising commuters in Grenada, St Lucia, Dominica, St Vincent, Barbados, Guyana and Tortola, fares as low as US$99 plus taxes and giving telephone contact numbers in St Vincent and the Grenadines for the ‘One Love, One Caribbean’ initiative.
Meanwhile, the Antigua and Barbuda Government said Cabinet on Wednesday “held a fulsome discussion on the future of LIAT 1974 Ltd” and that it is “developing a plan for a new LIAT, which includes an invitation to private entities to invest in that new carrier.
“In keeping with the requirements set out by the shareholder governments, that plan is to be developed in the shortest possible time and to be ready in a few days. The Antigua and Barbuda Government is committed to investing an amount of US$15,000,000 to US$20,000,000 towards the new LIAT,” according to a statement issued following the Cabinet meeting.
It said that the conditions of the loan secured prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis requires that the borrowed resources be invested in LIAT.
“A decision was taken to have the Registrar of Companies in Antigua and Barbuda, acting under the Companies Act, to reserve the LIAT 2020 Ltd new company name. Antigua and Barbuda stands opposed to the liquidation of LIAT 1974 Ltd without a plan to create the necessary connectivity which regional integration requires,” the statement said.
It said that staff members of LIAT, numbering more than 800 throughout the region, and more than 500 in Antigua are very worried about their future.
The statement said that the Cabinet was informed that the cost and distribution of severance among the shareholders will be assessed.
Browne told CMC that the liabilities should be settled based on shareholding.
“They have argued legal point that shareholder governments have no legal liability and that a compassionate severance should be paid, based on collective agreements. This will leave Antigua with EC$62 million of the EC$83 million liability,” he told CMC.