BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – In a speech laced with Biblical references, Minister of National Security, Hon. Sam Condor, appealed to nationals during a state broadcast to “act now to rescue and rebuild our Jerusalem!” He explained, “Our Jerusalem is wherever we live, be it in the alley way, the street or the avenue.”
Minister Condor was responding to a sudden spike in crime in St. Kitts over the last week when the country recorded a total of four murders in as many days. Nationals were becoming alarmed when after two or three days, there were no reassuring words from the Government nor any indication that new measures would be put in place to quickly restore what many were calling “a country in crisis”.
Minister Condor acknowledged the gravity of the situation as he spoke: “I speak, mindful that our Federation has been put under tremendous pressure and that our people are grappling with the motive, cause, explanation and of course, with a solution to this problem,” he said.
May be Dr. St. Jean and his team should shop their proposal there instead since St. Kitts may believe they have a big enough problem to take the proposal seriously.
what do we expect when they removed capital punishment? Crime will continue to rise. cuz the criminal on the streets just like you and me. I really don`t know where the justice system is taking us to. Shame on these education donkeys!!!!!!!!Rather than system protect us, we now exposed to criminal activities.
what we really need is to move away from the ways of the white man.we are africans and need to move back to the way of our ancestors. our people are killing themselves in the name of material things white people have placed a mythical value to.
They need help
CORRUPT GOVERNMENT = HIGH CRIME RATE ! !
Everywhere has a high crime rate that means all governments are corrupt? If yes, it means that all human beings are corrupt and We are a corrupt generation. What must be done about it?
Humanist,
From your previous DNO posts, you seem bent on promoting an anti-Christian or anti-religion agenda. I am not blasting your atheistic or agnostic views, but I am saying that you are starting to appear as bigoted as the “fundamentalists” you attack. Lighten up, will ya?
I thought that old Adam and Eve story and the incredible stuff that folloed was long discreditted.
“Children! Children! Your loving all powerful, all seeing, all knowing father had a terrible enemy in his bedroom that he was too proud to fight, so he let his helpers fight it but they could not kill it. At the same time he had just given birth to you, so you were innocent – as a new born. And since he could not tolerate that terrible enemy in his bedroom he sent the enemy down to live in your nursery. Then the enemy caused you to eat something your all powerful father told you not to eat, so you father got vexed with you and condemned you to labour and to die. Then he did not like to see you dying like that so he made a very special son so that you could kill that son in the worste way and that son’s blood he would accept as remission for your sins. Isn’t your father loving? You must remind him and yourself that you are washed in his very special son’s blood all the times for him to accept you ad give you another kind of life. The blood. The blood. The blood. That’s your salvation. See how much your loving, powerful, father loves you?”
If you were to say that about any sinful politician they would look to lock up either you or the politician.
@ Monitor
I am not trying to promote any agenda other than getting people to examine the universe around them more critically than by simply believing what they were told. I am not anti-Christian or anti-religion. What I have said before is that there is no scientific evidence to support these belief systems, which is why they remain beliefs. I have also said that one may believe whatever he or she wants; my problem is when people try to force such unproved beliefs down other’s throats as though they are facts. It is one thing to say someone believes in Allah, not Yahweh; it is quite another to say that someone should be attacked, physically, for what one believes. This is a form of attempted dictatorship, and I do not want it to happen.
Moreover, I don’t write these things to cause trouble. I write them to stir up discussion and thinking. If I don’t do it, who else will? There are others on here who also cast doubt on just believing what one was brought up with, and I am glad for that. If they posted more often, I might post less. But skepticism remains a minority viewpoint in the island, and I do not want to see it unrepresented here.
I also wonder why those who write vast commentaries on religion, like Muslim_Always or Lizavier, do not come under your radar here, while I do. Nonetheless, I do not mean anyone on here any harm–it is to prevent harm from fundamentalist teachings, in fact, that I often leave comments.
I would like to lighten up, believe me–I am not nearly so serious and severe a person as I might appear from my posts. But I just don’t see enough persons promoting thinking for oneself, reason, studying science, and questioning the world’s workings, and so I feel compelled to continue trying to help do so, even if my efforts may end up having been useless. I am well-aware that a number of persons on here recoil at my very username simply because I ask people to ask questions and look at evidence–but so it goes.
Humanist,
It might surprise you that I too am a man of deep science. To bore you a little about my views, I lean toward the intelligent design theory. I personally feel there is too much mathematical order in the disorder around us.
If I hit you too hard, I apologize, but most of the “fundamentalists” who post stuff don’t seem to possess your level of intelligence.
@ Monitor
Thanks for explaining your views a bit further, and I would be happy to see more of what you think about the universe and our place in it.
As for intelligent design: You can accept intelligent design if you like, but it is not itself science. Intelligent design is most often a form of Christianity that attempts to include certain developments in astronomy and theoretical physics into its worldview; it may also be a form of Deism. (Deism, incidentally, is the form of belief in a deity I am happiest to accept, though it does not have any science supporting it at the moment. Deism, or perhaps pantheism, is the closest to what Einstein’s own beliefs were.) Creationism, usually a synonym for intelligent design, is actually anti-science in its “Young Earth” form, which maintains that the Earth is 10,000 years old and that dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden; Old Earth Creationism is at least open to scientific ideas, allowing the Earth to be its proper 4.6 billions years old. (If you are the latter type of Creationist, I apologize if my reply initially seemed like an attack; it is the Young Earth Creationists who I really take issue with.) There are certainly scientists who think the universe was perhaps created/designed; but this creation/design is 1)an unproved (and likely untestable) belief and not itself science because of that and 2)not usually a belief that supports religious beliefs. In other words, the most legitimate scientists who speak about design, like Michio Kaku, do not equate it with religion (i.e., their god is not a personal god, which would be one that has anything to do with us, but is rather more like a set of principles not yet understood by science). Micho Kaku says as much in an interview segment here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi6yPJvCFU0
I always say that we cannot know for sure, and I readily admit that there may well be a deity like that out there. But if so, the likelihood of this deity being the entity that the fundamentalists kill in the name of and so on–I just cannot see this being probable at all, especially since we are such a microscopic fleck of the universe at large. If we were important, I would imagine we would have a more prominent place in a drastically smaller universe. For me, whatever started off our universe is not likely anything we would refer to as a “deity” in the conventional sense–but, of course, we cannot know for certain.
As for order in the universe, it is certainly true that the universe’s “settings” are just right, in many areas, to support life on Earth. But you must remember that our planet is one of thousands within our galaxy alone, to say nothing of those in other galaxies. If we are the only planet with life, or one of the only, the fact that we have life does seem like a lucky chance–whether or not the universe itself is a product of some kind of design. Moreover, consider that, though the patch of universe we live in allows us to live, we cannot live in most of it; we cannot leave the Earth without vast precautions, and we cannot even live easily on most of our planet, which consists primarily of water. Large sections are hostile to us, like desert and ice; and we have only formed at all during a period in which the globe was not undergoing an ice age or being bombarded by vast asteroids. Perhaps we are simply lucky.
Whatever the case, I just cannot believe that our purpose on this tiny planet is to murder gays, to stone adulterers, to execute apostates, to commit acts of terrorism against those who hold different ideas about where we came from. But we are not taught these alternate worldviews enough, if at all, in Dominica. Comparatively few Dominicans are outright ready to stone people to death, true, but many still believe what they do without having once questioned it. And this is why I write what I do.
I’ll add this video from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about the dangers of accepting too readily that the universe is fine-tuned to our existence. Unfortunately, Tyson appeared to be unusually ticked off at intelligent design followers and hence gave his presentation an insulting name, but please look instead at the reasons he presents for why saying that the world is orderly can present problems. (This is not mathematical order, per se, but it does apply to intelligent design, particularly the Young Earth variety.)
It would have helped if I attached the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJfqmZ0cuek&feature=related
A five (5) year spell of over 100 murders and numerous shootings and burglaries in such a small island can hardly be considered a “sudden spike in crime”.
St. Kitts is a puzzle with a miniscule population less than 38,000 and tiny landspace how can there be so many murders? Sad situtation but sociologists from the world over need to go there for research. Their findings might assist SKN gov there cant be many mini islands with St.Kitts murder rate.
Had this been said by an American politician, one would (not wrongly) assume he or she was a member of the Tea Party. I appreciate the sentiment of removing crime, of course, but “Jerusalem” is a bit much.
Only that Mr. Condor spoke about “building our Jerusalem” without the true understanding of what “Jerusalem” means in the mind of a person of Love–if he believes that Jerusalem is in the alley way, or on the street avenue.
The alley way, or the street avenue does not demonstrate physically, the Jerusalem which is of “joy and peace.”
A young man who is in search of joy and peace, would not believe those words, but infact it would further break down hope in his/her mind. The reason he would become more aggresive.
But that is the reason for the lack of hope, provoking the attitude and conduct of resentment and rebel, causing the vile and discord that many of us become victims of.
Words that are spoken without the Truth irritate the minds of those who hear it, building frustration, hate, anger etc, etc, all of which eventully errupts.
We need to make sure that we have the truth, that others will hear it and decide to turn their way towards that Truth.
There are too many human beings who view Life like a fairy tale story. But the happy ending of that fairy tale story is always vanity, or futillity it never comes to pass in reality.
The truth shall make you “free”. And freedom is reality of Life–which only comes from God, through faith. Not by any works that we do.
De mor allu preech and de mor chuch allu mek de wors de world get. Pahaps allu shood tek a good look at wat u r sayin, bekawz u r produsing de oppozit to wat u want.