Jamaica does not want Americans to visit

One meets people from all over the world in Skypeland. One young man from Jamaica said that Jamaica does not encourage Americans to visit Jamaica for tourism, and Jamaica does not need the United States. He claimed that the new Jamaican government would now focus on trying to attract European tourists instead, since the Americans did not seem to like the high crime rate found in Jamaica. I guess the Europeans, from less crime-ridden countries, will find the high crime in Jamaica less problematic. A lady from the UK claimed that the UK has almost the same level of crime as the US. Both of them sound very reasonable and rational. Of course, neither one of them based these impressions on any facts at all. People just love to make wild statements based on nothing at all, and then defend them vehemently.

Then I did some looking and found that US tourism dropped 12% in the last few months and so Jamaica is proposing a new 85 million dollar advertising budget to attract American tourists back to Jamaica:
http://www.broadstreetnews.com/index.php?categoryid=18&p2_articleid=655
Looks like our friend from Jamaica is incorrect on this issue. Well he was sure vehement about it in the cast and combative about it. However, there is nothing like looking at the facts to deflate a blowhard's arguments...

Let's take a look at some crime statistics. The current murder rate statistics from the United Nations are

Jamaica: 0.324196 per 1,000 people
United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
Washington DC: 0.327 per 1,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
I guess all their claims were nonsense. Of course, I pretty much knew that already. People love to argue aggressively for the dumbest positions, particularly if they have no facts to back them up, I notice...

The Jamaican also complained about how awful the United States is because it takes oil from the Middle East. However, a quick check of the oil import and export statistics demonstrates that Jamaica imports a lot of its oil from United States. Does this demonstrate that Jamaica is stealing American oil?
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_neti_a_EP00_IMN_mbblpd_m.htm
Maybe Jamaica should be attacked and condemned internationally for importing US oil and exploiting the US?

The Jamaican complained about the US was a terrible country since it had "imposed sanctions on Jamaica". So I checked into this. The US did NOT impose sanctions on Jamaica, but they did threaten to impose sanctions on Jamaica for human trafficking of children for sexual exploitation purposes:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20050603T230000-0500_81737_OBS_JAMAICA_FACES_US_SANCTIONS.asp
Nothing like getting a different picture of the situation when you find out a few facts, is there?

The Jamaican argued that human trafficking and child sexual abuse should not be viewed as a problem and the threats made by the US proved how awful the United States is. Well, that really says a lot for his credibility in my mind...

A Canadian joined in, claiming at first that a person should not bite the hand that feeds him. However, a little later, he made the statement that there was no reason for the US to worry about abuse of children and international human trafficking in Jamaica (Canada was also part of the human trafficking network). He basically stated that the United States should butt out of this situation. Wow...amazing the attitudes some people have.

He complained that Americans are arrogant. People provided evidence that Canadians seem arrogant too. Arrogance is in the eye of the beholder...

To justify his previous comments, he said that there is human trafficking and child sexual abuse in the US, so the US should not worry about human trafficking and child sexual exploitation in other places. I asked, just because it is found in the US, does this mean that the US should not try to stop it in the US and other places?

He then claimed he had never said that. Well I guess at least he realized he was defending an untenable position. An English lady jumped in to assert that the Canadian was correct, but I checked with some other people in the room later and they had had the same impression of the conversation I did, which I was typing into this blog as they spoke. Well, color me disgusted, anyway...