MOVADO LOCKED UP
Mavado locked up in St. Ann jail
Jamaican dancehall star Mavado is now in police custody in St. Ann, after an incident at a nightclub in the parish last night.
Details reaching The Gleaner are that Mavado’s entourage was involved in a confrontation with a delivery man, that left the delivery man ‘bloody’.
The Gleaner understands that the police had to chase down Mavado’s tour bus to arrest the entertainer.
Stay tuned to The Gleaner and The Star for more details.
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BRUCILEAK
EDITOR’S NOTE
After intense discussion, The Gleaner took a decision to partner with independent non-profit media organisation WikiLeaks to provide Jamaicans with information out of dozens of secret cables from the United States Embassy in Kingston.
The diplomatic cables touch on various issues of Jamaican life and reflect the views and opinions of US Embassy officials based on conversations, documents and formal briefings.
The documents on Jamaica are part of 251,287 embassy cables leaked in 2010 which WikiLeaks acquired and which are being published around the world.
The cables on Jamaica will be published in The Gleaner starting today and will continue daily over the next several weeks.
We took the decision to publish stories from these documents because we feel Jamaicans have a right to this kind of information. We agree with WikiLeaks that a healthy, vibrant and inquisitive media play a vital role in making any country a better place to live and work.
We welcome your feedback. Send them to [email protected]. – Editor-in-Chief
The United States Embassy in Kingston labelled the Golding administration as two-faced and suggested that the prime minister was less than honest on at least two occasions when he first responded to questions in Parliament about the extradition request for Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.
A secret diplomatic cable from the embassy claimed that hours after Prime Minister Golding’s December 9, 2010 fiery responses in Parliament about the extradition request for the alleged strongman, a high-ranking Cabinet member was on the phone apologising for the comments.
The embassy is also claiming that Golding overstated the case when he told Parliament that Washington and Kingston had agreed not to publicly discuss the issue and that his memory was faulty when he told the House about when he was first briefed on the matter.
In a confidential cable dated December 10, 2010, the embassy in Kingston told Washington that the Cabinet minister told US Chargé d’Affaires (CDA) Isiah Parnell that Golding had been put in an uncomfortable position by Opposition Spokesman on National Security Dr Peter Phillips.
“Despite the PM’s statements and the headlines to the contrary, the (Cabinet minister) assured CDA that Golding had been misquoted and that it was not the position of the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) that the United States Government (USG) had violated the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) or the extradition treaty,” the cable stated.
“Interestingly, although the Office of the Prime Minister issued a press release on the morning after the debate highlighting the PM’s comments on the delay in naming a new US ambassador, there was no press release correcting or reinterpreting the PM’s comments suggesting the USG was responsible for the extradition delay,” added the cable which The Gleaner has received through WikiLeaks .
While quoting extensively from the heated debate in Parliament, the US Embassy argued that: “The imbroglio illustrates both the GOJ’s paralysis over the issue as the Golding administration flails for new legal points on which to delay a decision, as well as the PNP’s (People’s National Party) determination to use the issue as a means of attacking the JLP’s (Jamaica Labour Party) moral authority to govern.”
No political tool
But it was clear that the US was unwilling to allow the extradition request for the alleged Tivoli Gardens strongman to be used as a political tool even as it maintained that the Golding administration was stalling and speaking from both sides of its mouth.
“The GOJ appears to be trying to have it both ways – publicly blaming the USG for the delays, while privately assuring CDA that this is not the position of the Golding administration,” the cable said.
“However, in publicly accusing the US of violating Jamaican law while blaming his refusal to provide specifics on a nonexistent agreement with the USG, Golding can have the best of both worlds – casting off responsibility for the delay while remaining confident that the USG will not contradict his version of events.”
The cable also questioned the prime minister’s claim about when he was first briefed on the extradition request.
According to the embassy, Golding told the House that he first received information on the extradition request the day before the USG submitted it to the GOJ on August 25, 2009.
“Post (Embassy in Kingston) disputes the PM’s recollection, noting that former Ambassador (Brenda LaGrange) Johnson briefed the PM on the case in January 2009.”
The embassy further claimed that it was told by former National Security Minister Dr. Peter Phillips that as the outgoing minister of national security, he briefed the PM on the case shortly after the September 2007 elections that brought the JLP to power
Turning to Golding’s claim in Parliament that the two governments had agreed to restrict the public comments on the matter, the embassy said that was not quite true.
“Soon after the extradition request had been submitted, an envoy from the PM’s office had requested that the USG refrain from publicly pressuring the GOJ over the politically sensitive issue,” the embassy said.
It argued that even though it had generally refused to comment on the matter publicly, there had been no such explicit agreement or understanding reached with the Government of Jamaica.
Captured By Criminals?
THE NINE-monthlong face-off between Kingston and Washington over the extradition request for alleged drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke triggered speculation within the United States government that garrison dons and criminals might have captured the Golding administration.
A secret diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Liguanea, St Andrew, described as “troubling” the Jamaican Government’s “recalcitrance in granting US extradition requests, suggesting a lack of seriousness in addressing Jamaica’s crime problems, or even the possibility that garrison dons and criminal elements have captured the GOJ (Government of Jamaica)”.
The Gleaner has gained access to the secret cable through the whistle-blowing entity called WikiLeaks.
In January 2010 when the Obama administration and the Golding government were at a stalemate over two extradition requests, US officials in Jamaica sent the cable to their superiors in Washington taking issue with Jamaica.
“Attorney General Dorothy Lightbourne’s recent refusal to extradite Presley Bingham and the ongoing stand-off over the Christopher Coke extradition request raise doubts as to the GOJ’s resolve, especially when it comes to high-profile criminal dons with close ties to the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party),” the 2010 cable said.
According to the cable: “Most troubling was the growing perception in civil society and the private sector that after 18 years in opposition, the JLP weren’t up to the job of governing the country and PM Golding was too hesitant, indecisive and consumed by policy details to effectively manage the GOJ.”
US Chargé d’Affaires Isiah Parnell, in a January 2010 email response toThe Gleaner, had claimed that the US Embassy was very disappointed that the Government of Jamaica had denied the Obama administration’s request to extradite St James businessman Presley Bingham on what were very serious drug charges.
Reason for denial
Lightbourne had defended her decision, in January last year, to deny the extradition request for Bingham pointing out in a statement to the media that the request was turned down because it related to charges that the accused had been to court about before.
A previous extradition request for Bingham had taken longer than was legally allowable and he was freed by the Court of Appeal.
In the January 2010 diplomatic cable, the United States authorities had taken note that the Government of Jamaica continued to trumpet its intention to bring down the island’s spiralling crime rate, with National Security Minister Dwight Nelson promising that ‘draconian’ anti-gang measures to assist the police were coming.
However, in the cable, embassy officials argued that the Golding administration’s refusal to cooperate on two high-profile US extradition requests raised serious doubt as to the Government’s commitment to tackling the island’s skyrocketing crime rate.
After a nine-month delay in signing the extradition request for Coke, the Golding administration relented and inked the request when pressure began to mount from several quarters for the resignation of the prime minister who had admitted that he sanctioned the hiring of US law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to lobby Washington on the extradition matter.
Golding had vowed in the Jamaican Parliament that he was willing to pay a political price for defending the constitutional rights of Coke, arguing that the evidence US authorities garnered on the man, who is now facing gun and drug-running charges in the US, was obtained illegally.
Lightbourne had argued that the wiretap evidence against Coke was illegally obtained.
In the recently concluded Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry, the justice minister testified that the illegally obtained evidence formed part of her decision to have waited for nine months before signing the authority to proceed.
PAY FI DI BATTEY MEK YUH SELL OFF?
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‘You’d be cuter with a bigger butt’
IT is often said that men are visual beings and it is this infatuation with the outward appearance that has led some to make some rather offensive requests of the women in their lives.
The requests, while seemingly reasonable on the part of the males, have left some women scarred or have forced others to spend thousands of dollars trying to fit an image that they are probably not too eager to fit.
Many women go under the knife to please their mates. In this photo, a woman in Colombia — one of the leading countries worldwide for plastic surgery — gets prepped for cosmetic surgery. (Photo: AP)
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Twenty-six-year-old Myzanne Wallace has still not got over a move by her ex-boyfriend to fatten her up while they were dating back in high school. Both of them had grown up together, but he migrated when she was 11 years old. The two reconnected online and after months of rebuilding their relationship, he decided to pay her a visit.
“When he came back, he was saying I didn’t change because I was slim. He said I needed to put on weight,” she said.
She said she didn’t take his proddings seriously until he brought her a bottle of pills on his next visit which he asked her to take so she could gain some weight.
“First when he was talking about it, I thought he was joking, but when he brought the pills, that’s when I got upset and I asked him why he wanted me to change,” said a still upset Wallace, whose relationship with the young man came to a quick end.
“It’s like they don’t appreciate you for who you are or how you look and that just makes you more conscious,” she argued.
Donnette Blair remembers the put down from the man she had a crush on in college, who when approached with the confession of her crush, gave her a once over then declared, “you’d be cuter with a bigger butt”.
“And like a fool, I started researching ways to get my buttocks bigger so I could please him,” she said.
She said she tried everything from exercise to detachable buttocks enhancers bought off the Internet, but she never seemed to be able to please him.
“Then one day something inside me snapped, and I realised how idiotic my actions had been,” she said.
Counselling psychologist Lola Allen-Jones said some men have even threatened to leave their spouses if they refuse to change, like to go back to the more modelesque image of their pre-pregnancy days or fit the image of the poster on their office walls.
“They (men) will say ‘look at so and so’ or somebody else they know. It might be a mutual friend, someone in the family, or maybe they’ll be driving along the road and see another woman,” said the psychologist, who cautioned men to be more considerate of their spouse’s feelings.
“In order to help someone make changes, you first have to affirm them. It is always best to start with affirmation, because by nature, especially with things like that, women tend to be very sensitive,” she said.
“Find a nice way of saying ‘I love the way you have looked over the years and I know you have had the kids, but do you think it would help if you did some exercise especially now that you are getting on in age’. Find a way, but start with affirmation, don’t just attack,” said Allen-Jones.
She agreed that there are some things that are in a person’s best interest which their spouse might choose to point out, but believes that one partner ought to be tactful in pointing out the flaws of another.
She said many relationships have ended because the couples are unable to accept how each other looks.
Meanwhile, plastic surgeon Dr Kemel Gajraj said women have been spending lots of cash to improve themselves to suit their partner’s physical tastes.
“They make liposuction requests because they do want to look good for their spouses. We have people who want to have their breasts lifted as opposed to [having them] hanging down; some of them have small breasts and they want to have big breasts; and some breasts are too big and they want it small,” he said.
He said most of the women are encouraged by their spouses to make the alterations, while some do it because they fear losing their men to other women.
“The men might be hinting at other women and how beautiful they look and the spouses want to look like those women,” Gajraj said.
DETAILS PAN MR ITSY
Schwarzenegger puts acting career on hold
LOS ANGELES, USA (AP) — With everyone talking about former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s out-of-wedlock child, the politician abruptly put his Hollywood comeback on hold to sort out his personal life and perhaps prepare for a starring role in a big-budget divorce battle.
The former Terminator star, who earlier this week acknowledged fathering a child with his family’s longtime housekeeper, told his talent agency Thursday to postpone all his movie projects.
“Governor Schwarzenegger is focusing on personal matters and is not willing to commit to any production schedules or timelines,” a statement from his office said.
When Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, separated earlier this month, neither was talking divorce. That may have changed, however, after he revealed Monday that he fathered a now 13-year-old son with the family housekeeper and never told his wife until this year.
People magazine reported this week that Shriver has retained prominent Los Angeles divorce attorney Laura Wasser. If the Kennedy heiress — a niece of President John F Kennedy — and former network TV anchor goes ahead with a divorce, several prominent attorneys say, she is likely to cash in big.
“It seems to me that he has gratuitously embarrassed her. This should greatly enhance settlement negotiations,” said Atlanta attorney John Mayoue, who has represented Chris Rock in a paternity suit, baseball star David Justice in his split with actress Halle Berry, and other celebrities.
Although California is a no-fault divorce state, meaning her husband’s actions technically can’t be used against him in court, the reality, attorneys say, is that they will be.
“Every judge would know about what happened, and I think would hold it against him,” said attorney Robert Nachshin, who has represented the ex-wives of a who’s who of entertainers that includes Will Smith, Rod Stewart and John Ritter. “Judges are human beings, and Maria will definitely be the sympathetic spouse.”
Based on his experience, Nachshin said, Shriver should expect to receive at least US$100,000 a month in spousal support and, with two children under the age of 18, thousands more a month in child support.
Then there’s the division of the couple’s property, including the Brentwood mansion that Shriver and her children moved from earlier this year.
Nachshin said that could be affected by a prenuptial agreement, if the couple signed one when they were married in 1986. Many such agreements call for people to keep what would otherwise be joint assets separate after marriage.
Although the scandal has gained worldwide attention, the attorneys said the most surprising thing about it is that the public found out.
“In my experience what Arnold did is not unusual,” said Nachshin, who has represented several clients he said hid the existence of children from their wives and others. Mayoue said separately that it’s not surprising for celebrities to have such secrets the public never knows of.
In retaining Wasser, Shriver is turning to an attorney whose specialty is keeping details of celebrity splits secret, and Nachshin said that’s what Schwarzenegger should strive to achieve. He suggested that if the former governor is smart, he would seek to have divorce proceedings handled privately by a retired family law judge, keep his mouth shut in public and tell the truth in court.
“Because courts go crazy if people lie,” he said.
Celebrity divorces have become a specialty of retired judges because they can be conducted in private, although the final resolution must, like any other divorce, be made public.
In the past, celebrities and the wealthy have gone to great lengths to keep the details of their divorces private, with mixed results.
Billionaire supermarket mogul Ron Burkle tried unsuccessfully to keep secret 1,200 pages of his divorce transcript, including allegations that he told his daughter he had videotapes of her mother having sex with a boyfriend.
In allowing the documents to be unsealed, the California Supreme Court struck down a law that would have kept
them from the public. Ironically, the law was signed by Schwarzenegger.
If there is one area where the former governor may prevail, attorneys and other experts say, it would be in getting out of paying a substantial sum to either the 13-year-old boy or his mother.
The woman, who has been identified as Mildred Patricia Baena of Bakersfield by The New York Times and other media, has vanished since her name became public Wednesday. The Associated Press has not independently verified that she is the mother of Schwarzenegger’s child.
Schwarzenegger’s office has declined to discuss whether Baena is the boy’s mother.
On her son’s birth certificate, Baena listed her ex-husband as the boy’s father and there’s no evidence that has ever been contested.
The time limit for her ex-husband to challenge paternity has long since passed, so it could never be legally established that Schwarzenegger is the father, said Michael McCormick, executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children.
McCormick previously assisted a man who tried unsuccessfully to get the courts to halt his child support payments to his ex-wife after DNA tests showed the woman’s daughter actually was fathered by comedian Sam Kinison.
“From a legal perspective, Arnold Schwarzenegger had nothing to do with the creation of this child,” McCormick
ANOTHER VISA REVOKED
US revokes Government minister’s visa?
A report that the United States Embassy here revoked the visitor’s visas of a Government minister and his wife on Friday remained shrouded in mystery up to late yesterday evening, even as a highly placed authoritative Jamaican source insisted that the action was taken.
The Sunday Observer made repeated attempts to contact the minister for a comment. However, calls to his cellphone went to voicemail and he did not respond to a message left.
Efforts to get a comment from US Embassy officials in Kingston also proved unsuccessful and no one was available at the US State Department to speak on the issue.
The highly placed source did not say whether the US authorities informed the Jamaican Government of the action. However, the source has received information that a news release on the matter has been crafted by the United States State Department for release this week.
The source also confirmed to the Sunday Observer that the minister is under investigation by local law enforcement authorities, but declined to give details.
Last year February, the US cancelled the visitor’s visa issued to Wayne Chen, chairman of the state-run Urban Development Corporation.
At the time, Chen, who found out about the measure on his way out of the island on a business trip, expressed shock and surprise at the action.
Chen was eventually reissued with a visa six months later.
GOODMORNING-A Good Name is to Be Chosen Over Great Riches
Once you become saved and born again in the Lord, that is just the beginning. From there, God wants you to grow in His knowledge and grace, along with setting you up in what your divine destiny is going to be in Him. And when God sets you up in your divine destiny, then you will find out exactly what you were created for and exactly what He will be wanting you to do for Him in this life.
Once you come into this full surrender with the Lord, He will then let you know who you should be marrying in this life, along which jobs you will be taking and exactly what your calling is going to be in Him.
Again, we cannot emphasize this theme strong enough. If you want to find out exactly what your true purpose and destiny is going to be in this life, then you have to be willing to fully surrender your entire life and your entire being into the hands of God the Father. Since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, only He will know exactly what you should be doing with your life, along with exactly how to get you to where you will need to go.
In this article, I want to add one more profound verse into this mix. Here is this most profound verse, and then I will point out a few, key things for all of us to really grab ahold of from this very powerful verse.
“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold.” (Proverbs 22:1)
1. When you really think about the big picture, this earthly life is very, very short. Sooner or later we will all die and cross over to the other side – which will either be heaven for the saved or hell for the unsaved.
As we have said before, no suitcases will need to be packed on your deathbed. Absolutely nothing will be crossing over with you to the other side once you die and cross over. Naked you came into this world and naked will you go out of this world. Plain and simple.
All of the money you have made and saved up in this life will not be crossing over with you. All of the material wealth you have acquired such as your house, your car, and your clothes will not be going with you. The only thing that will be going over to the other side is your soul and spirit once it pulls up out of your earthly body.
From there, if you are a Christian, you will then enter into heaven and you will then come before Jesus at His Judgment Seat where He will then do a full review of your life. The Bible says that Jesus will then be rewarding us up in heaven according to the good works we had done for Him while down here on this earth.
2. So knowing that this is how it will all end up for us as Christians, we all need to do an occasional review of our life from time to time so we can make sure that we are always staying on the right path with God and not straying off into areas that He would not want us to be going into in this life.
We also need to make sure that we always keep all of our priorities straight so we can stay on top of our game with the Lord and not miss out on any of the good blessings He will want to pass our way in this life.
My brother Chris and I live in the United States. God has blessed our country with incredible wealth and riches over the years. However, with all of these kinds of material blessings from the Lord, it becomes very easy for many to get off center with the Lord and start focusing and chasing after all the wrong things in this life.
And this is where the above verse is now going to come into major play. With our country having so much material wealth to play with and go after, many people end up spending the rest of their earthly lives chasing after all of this material wealth and trying to acquire as much of it as they can before they die and cross over.
However, sooner or later all of these people will eventually die and once again, absolutely nothing they have acquired and earned in this life will be going with them to the other side. And this will now bring us right into the real heart of the above verse.
3. Notice this verse is telling us that it is better to live for having a good name in this life rather than to chase after all of the material wealth of this world.
Why? Because when someone dies and all of their friends and family are attending their funeral service paying their last respects, what is the number one thing most people will remember about the one who has just passed away? The number one thing they will remember and take away with them is what kind of person they were and how well they had treated other people in this life.
They will not remember all of the riches and wealth they may have accumulated. They will only remember what kind of person they were and how well they had treated other people in this life.
If that person ends up dying with a good name, then people will have good, loving, and fond memories of that person and those memories will last forever. If that person was a mean, spiteful, and selfish person who cared about no one else but themselves, then people will walk away with negative memories and they will be glad this person will no longer be living among them.
How many times have you seen this at a funeral service when friends and family would get up to speak about the one who has just passed away, how they will always talk about what kind of person they were. This is always the first thing most people will talk about when they are talking about someone who has just passed away. They will always talk about the quality of their loved one’s personality, not how much money they had made or how many material blessings they had accumulated in this life.
This is why the Lord worded the above verse the way He did. He is trying to show all of us what is most important in this life. And what is most important in this life is that we try and become the best person we can in Him through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
If we can let God mold and shape us into the true saints He wants us to become in Him in this life, then we will be able to leave this life having a good name, just like the above verse is telling us to do. And if we can leave this life having a good name and a good reputation, then all of our loved ones will end up having good, loving, and fond memories of us.
This is how God wants us to leave this world, with us fully accomplishing all of His perfect will for our lives, and then with all of our loved ones really cherishing and loving us for the kind, good, and righteous people we were in this life.
CONCLUSION
As you can see from the way the above verse is being worded by the Lord, the only thing people will remember about you when everything is all finally said and done is what kind of person you were in this life. And yet so many people live this life for just the exact opposite. They live for all of the material wealth they can accumulate in this life instead of living for what God’s purpose was for their lives, along with what God was wanting to do with the transformation of their minds and their souls.
As we have showed you in our article titled, “Sanctification,” the number one thing God wants to do with each one of us is to transform us into the express image of His Son Jesus Christ. He wants to consecrate and set us apart unto Himself. He wants to make us more holy like Himself.
Bottom line – God is the Potter and we are the clay. If we can let God do the kind of transformation work He wants to do with each one of us, then we can leave this world having a very good name just like the above verse is telling us to do.
And if we can leave this world having a very good name, then we can have the satisfaction and fulfillment that we did everything God had asked us to do for Him in this life, along with leaving very fond and loving memories into the hearts of all of the people we had truly loved down here.
Though the above verse is a very short one-liner, there is an incredible piece of revelation contained in it showing us what we should all be striving for and what is really most important in this life.
Remember – when it is all said and done and you get ready to leave this world for the next one, no one will care about how much money you have made or how many earthy possessions you had accumulated. All they will remember is what kind of person in the Lord you had become and how well you had treated other people in this life.
Become the sanctified saint that God is asking you to become in Him, and you will then leave this world with a good name and good reputation – and people will then love you, cherish you, and always remember you for all of eternity.
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