March 18, 2022
The world has been following American women’s basketball player, Brittney Griner, and her incarceration in Russia at one of the worst possible times in Russian and American relations. She has been accused of drug trafficking. The Federal Security Service in Russia said she was carrying vaporizer cartridges containing hashish oil, an illegal substance in Russia.
Let’s not blame her for her mistakes right now. Being locked up must be a frightening thing in your own country, let alone in a foreign country, especially a foreign country at odds with your home country. To top it all off, Griner is a lesbian in a country where lesbian rights are not as welcoming as they are in North America and Western Europe.
In addition to all of her own problems, Americans allege that she is being used as “leverage” in this American/Russian standoff over the Ukraine. Just stop it now. She is not “leverage.” I wish the American media would stop making juvenile comments as if Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a hoot about some lesbian basketball player trafficking drugs into his country, to use that person as leverage in a war he is bogged down in, in the Ukraine. Griner just screwed up at possibly the worst time ever in the life of anyone.
But, that’s on her. We have our own captive in that of reggae star Jah Cure who is locked up in the Netherlands charged with attempted manslaughter, his verdict will be read this March 22. All signs to to the notion that he would be convicted of stabbing an event promoter last year October. What a shame.
Cure is no stranger to being locked up as he was convicted of weapons charges and rape in 1999 and served several years in a Jamaican prison for his crimes. Apparently he has not learned to stay out of the hands of the law. Love his music, but what a fool he is.
Cure could serve his prison sentence in Jamaica if the Jamaican government uses the options given to it by the Netherlands. So he has some comfort.