'Life's a b ... and then you die'.

I don't remember where I picked that phrase up but I have been using it for years and here I am using it again, and justifiably so too. So too would Kevin Brown, the Jamaican guy held a couple days ago, accused of trying to take bomb-making parts into Montego Bay on an Air Jamaica flight from Orlando, Florida.

Talk about having a rough life. I mean, you have to be really down on your luck to be a Jamaican sent to Iraq to fight an unjust war against people who live for this kind of stuff. You have to remember that these are people who feel that there are 72 blessed virgins waiting for them on the other side of the explosions they create. It's hard to argue against wanting to go there, wherever 'there' is.

Brown survives and heads back home to Jamaica, his own personal Iraq, only to hear that his beloved mother has been strangled to death. I know my mind would have snapped if that had happened to me.

The sad part is that he could probably end up in jail and could be sent away for a long time because it doesn't matter how many bullets he dodged and how many insurgents he may have killed for America. For all intents and purposes, Brown is now regarded as a Jamaican terrorist and those two words together - 'Jamaican' and 'terrorist' - puts him between a rock and a very hard place.

The sadder part is that many of us Jamaicans, who just love to fly into 'the States' are now going to find our trips a little less pleasant. Trust me. We are now going to be profiled as potential terrorists, our every move is going to be analysed by experts on terrorist behaviour and when we apply for visas, extensive background checks are going to be made into everybody we know or had a passing acquaintance with. So, don't be surprised if in the coming months you wake up to find people going through your trash or if there is an annoying frizzy sound on your phone line.

The saddest part is that if the American authorities understood just how much we love their country, they would know that we wouldn't want to blow anything up there. It is our Promised Land. I swear there are Jamaicans who believe that when they die their souls go to America. But even if that was true, after this incident even their souls are going to need visas and be subject to strip searches of the most intimate kind.

Why do you think Prime Minister Golding has been so pro-active on this matter? He knows what the potential fallout is. He is also aware that Americans are currently living in an atmosphere of fear and they jump at anything that goes boom at the airport. The last thing we want to be is a country that adds to that fear because we all know what that means. It means no more visas, it means very little business, it means fewer tourists and for those who think that the US is the Promised Land, it means finding somewhere else for their restless souls to be at peace for an eternity.

Peace such as that, however, will continue to elude poor Kevin Brown.

Send comments to

shearer39@gmail.com.