'GOD IS dead', wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882. Sigmund Freud agreed - "The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief."

JAMAICA'S MOST regularly re-run headline is surely, 'Murder count soars'. With the murder total poised to top 1,500 this year, it's hard to believe now that 'only' 423 Jamaicans were murdered in 1989. That's a mind-boggling 350 per cent increase in 15 years.

“A Dog lay in a manger, and by his growling and snapping prevented

the oxen from eating the hay which had been placed for them. "What a selfish Dog!" said one of them to his companions; "he cannot eat the hay himself, and yet refuses to allow those to eat who can."  Aesop’s Fables

“Osama wins it for Dubya” is how many sum up George Bush’s victory in the US presidential election. And there’s some truth to this. In the days before Osama Bin Laden appeared live and well on video, John Kerry was surging in the polls and in the betting markets. After Osama’s appearance the money shifted sharply to Bush, and once again the London bookies had it right.

"A MAN with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." This pretty much sums up the wildly gyrating polls in the 2004 U.S. presidential race.

America is the richest country on earth, but its democracy is an ugly mess. To quote the September 24^th Economist - “If democracy means multi-party competition at the grass roots, America is not a full democracy in elections to the House of Representatives”.

U ROY'S Wear You To The Ball was the first big deejay hit. I was too young for parties in 1970. But I remember my uncle shouting "Turn off that tuneless garbage!" to my older cousins when it came on the radio. Now the same people who sing along at oldies sessions to 'Chica bow chica bow, she's got it, move it up!" condemn their children's dancehall favourites as 'foolishness'. Plus ca change ...

ALL SPORTS serve up the occasional storybook surprise. But watching the West Indies is becoming a surreal experience. Regularly plumbing the gloomiest depths and then abruptly soaring to ecstatic highs, Windies cricket increasingly resembles a weird theatre of the absurd. They say losing hurts worse than wining feels good. Yet the agony of constant defeat seems to make our rare triumphant moments even more exhilarating. A pitch black canvas punctuated by brilliant bursts of colour - such is the current picture of Caribbean cricket.

THE PNP came to power in early 1989, only a few months after Hurricane Gilbert hit the island. With the PNP conference being held in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, let's try and evaluate our situation then and now.

JAMAICA IS a marvel. Does any other country so constantly straddle the line between functioning order and disastrous chaos? Even forces of nature beyond our control regularly contrive to balance our fate on a knife edge and then tip the scales in our favour.