#MatthewHaiti

October 5 at 9:09am · Santo Domingo · 

For those who might wish to donate to #HaitiRelief

From my 13 years as a journalist here, I can recommend
any of these organizations-

Based on the following criteria:
All are in Haiti, led by Haitians, and do not have foreign offices
All are non sectarian
All are dedicated to uplifting the lives of the small farmers
All have been recommended to me by more than two Haitians who are very involved in development and whose opinions I value

One may suit one's personal values more than another

https://www.mpphaiti.org/Seeds-for-Haiti.html

http://www.fonkoze.org/

http://www.oreworld.org/

http://www.lambifund.org/

Back to the Line of Fire

Charlotte, NC erupted into rioting after another police shooting of a Black man who was either 1) peacefully sitting in his car, reading a book, waiting for his son to come home for work or 2) exiting his car for the second time, brandishing a gun and threatening the police.

Police say they found a gun. His family says he did not have one. Police say he has a record for armed assault. Two stories and we are never going to know the truth since the officer involved was not wearing a body cam.

A story appeared on my FB feed that it required more training to become a hairdresser than it does to become a police officer.

No.. REALLY? Could that be true. Police officers must have amazing training I thought. They are paid $42.5 in Charlotte, as a starting salary and have amazing benefits. True, it is dangerous work. There have been 30 work related deaths on the force since 1892. This number of 30 Charlotte police officers killed  over  124 years stands in contrast to the 62 persons who were killed by police so far in 2016.

Some of those who were killed by police might have been white.Some might have been armed. Some might have actually posed a direct and immanent threat to the police officers who were confronting them.

But do our police not have better ways to bring down suspects?

Is 'he had a gun' now going to be the standard of all the police need to shoot down someone on the street.

So I checked again about whether perhaps we would be better off putting the hairdressers in the squad cars and sending the cops back to school.

YES

That is true.

In North Carolina, for instance, it takes only 640 hours of class training to become eligible to be a police officer. You must complete the Basic Law Enforcement Training and pass the test with 70%.

"QUESTION How long does it take to deliver BLET? ANSWER Approximately 16 weeks - attending full time or 40 hours per week - to deliver the entire course. BLET "night" courses usually last 6-7 months. "Night" courses typically take place Monday - Friday (6- 10pm) and on Saturdays, but are mainly taken by persons working other full time jobs."

That will total 640 hours.

Evidently this is pretty standard nationwide.

But to be a HAIRDRESSER??????

YO Mama--girl

you gatta have 1200 hours.. pass the board..DO AN APPRENTICESHIP  keep that license up to date with continuing education courses.. Not kidding.. NOT

It is no wonder that Charlotte is burning

And Tulsa
And Ferguson
And Watts
And
And
And

The GOP Platform = Beyond the Candidates Right to Life VS War on Women

Let us take a look at the party platform of the Republicans.. the Grand Old Party.. to see what they have planned for the nation should they win the election.

We will take this in small bites.. because,.. well.. it is too much for my stomach to digest all it once. It sticks in my craw.

So just small bites.

Here is the link for the cliff notes version  for you to read through once.. just do it quickly.. once.. and then we will go back over it piece by piece. But in order to get the full 66 page document, there seems to be no link on the GOP page. The only one I found was here linked in the Huff Post - and one has to sign up for Scribd to download it.  That is probably wise since what folks say that they are going to do in public and what they say they are going to do behind closed doors, to their inside friends, are often not the same thing.

So.. Small Bites..

Let us start with one issue that prominent... the Abortion issue.

How are the Republicans going to outlaw abortion and overturn the Supreme Court decision on RoeVWade?  This is part of what those on the Left call the GOPs 'War on Women' and what the Evangelical Right - which represents up to 15% of the Republican base - calls the "Right to Life" Over the last years access to abortions has become more and more difficult in the United States. More than 200 restrictions have been passed on the state level over the last 4 years., Here is the map.

The 2016 Presidential Platform on abortion starts on page 20 of the 66 page platform. The first position is the proposal of a constitutional amendment referred to only as "a human life amendment.". There are various variations on this - see here. Note that while one of these proposals does include the death of the mother aa a reason for an abortion, all of them rescind the woman's right to freely chose to end a pregnancy.

There are currently five countries in the world which will allow a woman to die before they will allow an abortion. I am now living in one of them. I shudder to think that there are people in the United States who seek to turn the United States into one such heartless nation.

There is more very ugly stuff in the Republican platform on abortion but this is all that I can stomach for today.

Do not let all the attention be focused on candidate at the top of the ticket or the inability of his wife to come up with anything original to say in her speech.,
.

Zika on its way

I have not been well really since the chikungunya.

 That must be about two years now although it is hard to tell time here for me without the change of seasons. The pains in my joints have not really left me,  just as some had predicted might happen,

 Dona Gloria, my neighbor who has 25 years on me, stops in front of the bars on my ground floor apartment on her way to the market and we rub our respective wrists and complain about our ankles.

 Now there is another virus on the way. One that attacks new bornes. Called Zika. It gives them tiny heads. The women and girls are being told not to get pregnant.

But the Catholic Church, which rules here under the Papal Nuncio, forbids the use of contraceptives (ah yes, you think that they use them? that the machos spend their money on latex? that they take showers with raincoats? think again)

and abortion is prohibited in all cases.. well I think that there has been a bit of flexibiltiy,. perhaps if a ten year old mother is going to die.. something like that.

this is a bitchin hard island.. let me tell you

and if you think this side is hard..

wow..

the other side of the place

is really hit hard..

one blow ..

after another
after another

after another


they are trying to have elections

so
Puerto Rico is sinking - Puerto Ricans are coming HERE to look for work!
Cuba is being sold back to the sugar barons
and the Dominican Republic is sending Haitians back across the border to sit and starve. Pretending that they are white men.

Well,. Actually.. That is a pretty good imitation of a white man.,

They certainly learned from the best of them.

Everyone tries to imitate democracy


because uncle sam says democracy is the way to go.. well used to say that until Cizens United said that plutocracy was better


but now that we have

almost
president trump

barnum bailey

elections

who are we
to
judge?