Let me just come out and say it, though not a fan of the PNP, Portia Simpson Miller, the not so edu­cat­ed, but savvy for­mer par­ty President and two times Prime Minister of Jamaica has demon­strat­ed that her polit­i­cal savvy is vast­ly supe­ri­or to [Peter Phillips’] Ph.D.
Portia was a pop­ulist, those char­ac­ter­is­tics are not easy to repli­cate. In fact, some sug­gest either you have it or you don’t.
So, it is small won­der that Damion Crawford can­not win a seat in the low­er cham­ber of the House of Representatives but he is sec­ond only to Simpson Miller in that par­ty. Popularity is some­thing you have or you don’t.
On the oth­er hand, Peter Phillips, a Ph.D. has stum­bled along mak­ing mis­take after mis­take since tak­ing the reins of the PNP.
Clearly, Phillips’ edu­ca­tion is not being man­i­fest­ed in the strate­gies he has embarked on, or the hills he has cho­sen to die on.
Does Peter Phillips not under­stand that the role of a respon­si­ble oppo­si­tion is not just to oppose but to be a part of a respon­si­ble Government?

If Peter Phillips was attuned to his role in the gov­ern­ment not mere­ly to oppose, he would know that his role is to help the gov­ern­ing par­ty to fine-tune leg­is­la­tion and offer advice for effec­tive gov­er­nance of the peo­ple.
Why would Peter Phillips oppose the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Zones Of Special Operation (ZOSO) in the Parish of St James which was sav­ing lives?
Why would Mister Phillips oppose the ini­tia­tive, which though not sus­tain­able, was sav­ing lives?
In Greek Mythology, the myth­i­cal King Midas had a wish that what­ev­er he touched would turn to Gold. The fic­ti­tious nar­ra­tive indi­cat­ed that King Midas got his wish but it turned out it was not all it cracked up to be.
On that score, Dr. Phillips is turn­ing to be the anti-Midas, the oppo­site of King Midas.
It appears that every­thing that Mister Phillips touch­es turns to dust, and maybe that was the rea­son that he found him­self at a work site on Hagley Park Road where unprece­dent­ed devel­op­ment is hap­pen­ing which will pro­pel Jamaica far into the 21^st cen­tu­ry.
After meet­ing with one busi­ness­woman in the area and cre­at­ing a video of her com­plaints Mister Phillips post­ed the fol­low­ing on social media.

[Quote] After being in busi­ness for 24 years, Charmaine Lee was about to throw in the tow­el’ because of the effects of the bad­ly admin­is­tered road­works on Hagley Park Road on her busi­ness. There are many more sto­ries like this. We are com­mit­ted to fight­ing for the peo­ple.# PNPforthePeople#PNPatwork.

Most of the com­ments in response to Mister Phillips’ post were less than com­pli­men­ta­ry.
I asked the Opposition leader: Mister Phillips, How exact­ly is the new infra­struc­ture sup­posed to be put in place with­out the incon­ve­niences?
Why is Peter Phillips there?
If you were in pow­er what would you have done dif­fer­ent­ly?
Mister Phillips was gra­cious by respond­ing to my inquiries, respond­ing thus.

I am there in my capac­i­ty as MP and ser­vant and advo­cate of the peo­ple. I have expe­ri­ence in this area being a for­mer Minister of Transport and Works. One of the basic prin­ci­ples of road­works is to secure all the lands that you need before start­ing. This was not done. Therefore, pro­long­ing the dis­rup­tions and incon­ve­niences expe­ri­enced by the busi­ness own­ers and res­i­dents. [Peter Phillips]

I respect­ed the fact that the Opposition Leader respond­ed to our ques­tions and we respect his point of view as well, but my response to the esteemed Opposition leader was the same as my response when I start­ed this arti­cle.
“Minister Phillips, as leader of the PNP, and a mem­ber of Parliament, I would rather see you and your par­ty in a role in which you under­stand that you are a part of the Government. By those mea­sures, explain to the peo­ple, and help the gov­ern­ment to fine-tune this young democ­ra­cy. [Michael Beckles]

It isn’t that the con­cerns of that busi­ness­woman Charmaine Lee are mer­it-less. Surely, the (Jamaican Government) PNP & JLP can come togeth­er to ensure there is leg­is­la­tion which ade­quate­ly takes care of prop­er­ty own­ers before build­ing out Infrastructure.
The Americans have ( Imminent Domain Laws) to pro­tect prop­er­ty own­ers from Government abuse. It is less than per­fect.
Surely the two par­ties can come togeth­er for the good of the peo­ple to ensure that busi­ness own­ers like Ms. Lee and oth­ers ‚are not dri­ven into bank­rupt­cy, when the gov­ern­ment is putting infra­struc­ture in place.Phillips a dinosaur of the pro­fes­sion has a role in this.
In America, they show up and start dig­ging and there is noth­ing that busi­ness own­ers can do about it.
But even though it is hard­ly per­fect in the most pow­er­ful coun­try in the world, we do expect that the (3) ‑year-old JLP Government is sup­posed to have the answers for all of those prob­lems.
I implore the good­ly Mister Phillips, to see him­self as a part of the Government.
In our coun­try, it is com­mon for the oppo­si­tion par­ty to see itself as divorced from the Government, it should not be so.
The Opposition par­ty is a part of the gov­ern­ment and should start act­ing as if it knows it.

In the Parliament two days ago the Prime Minister of Jamaica said that no one would suc­cess­ful­ly accuse nei­ther he nor his Administration of abus­ing the rights of the Jamaican peo­ple.
A noble com­ment to come from a politi­cian, con­sid­er­ing that politi­cians can hard­ly be trust­ed to be judi­cious with the pow­er they are giv­en.
Before you cel­e­brate the Prime Minister, how­ev­er, I urge you to pause just for a sec­ond as I out­line the con­text under which he made the state­ment and out­line the imprac­ti­cal­i­ty of that state­ment when jux­ta­posed against the nation’s present crime reality. 

The hon­or­able Prime Minister was respond­ing to the infan­tile heck­ling in the peo­ple’s house from a mem­ber of the Opposition PNP regard­ing the recent court rul­ing on the National Identification and Registration Act 2017.
The tragedy inher­ent for Jamaica, is that the Opposition PNP in its glee to sab­o­tage the Administration and regain pow­er has no com­punc­tion about throw­ing the Jamaican peo­ple to the wolves, and cer­tain­ly is uncon­cerned about the ongo­ing loss of lives or the fact that the National Identification and Registration Act 2017 could poten­tial­ly be a tool for good.
Likewise, the Governing Administration of the JLP and Prime Minister Andrew Holness are not par­tic­u­lar­ly per­turbed about the dai­ly slaugh­ter of the Jamaican peo­ple.
What the Holness Administration is con­cerned about is perception.

Now, I would like to speak to the Prime Minister’s state­ment in response to the PNP’s glee­ful behav­ior regard­ing the court’s deci­sion.
Before I do I must point out to the Jamaican peo­ple who read these pages, to under­stand that the People’s National Party has one objec­tive and that is to regain state pow­er.
The PNP will sab­o­tage the gov­ern­ment you elect­ed and it will sub­vert the process under the guise that it cares about your rights when what it actu­al­ly wants is to keep the coun­try back­ward and in the dark ages, ripe for its own manipulation.

There is much that the present Administration has to be proud of. The Jamaican stock mar­ket is being cel­e­brat­ed as among the best if not the best in the world. As a con­se­quence, the Island’s bright young and artic­u­late Finance Minister Nigel Clarke has been mak­ing the rounds and tak­ing vic­to­ry laps on American Television recent­ly.
The mod­est 2% growth rate the Island’s econ­o­my is expe­ri­enc­ing is a far cry from the 0.02% under the PNP, and for that, the Administration must be cred­it­ed.
Additionally, for the first time in my life­time, there has been a bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to the Jamaican peo­ple in which no new oner­ous tax­a­tion has been imposed on the over­bur­dened tax­pay­ers.
Accordingly, more Jamaicans are able to find employ­ment and the Tourism sec­tor is expe­ri­enc­ing unprece­dent­ed lev­els of vis­i­tors.
But like in the United States in which the stock mar­ket has been on a tear and more peo­ple are able to find work those indices, though good for the spread­sheets does not reflect what’s hap­pen­ing to the ordi­nary every­day citizen.

What the Prime Minister is miss­ing is that as focused as he is on the bal­ance sheet, there is anoth­er bal­ance sheet that he has ignored by which he will be judged, regard­less of what the eco­nom­ic num­bers end up say­ing.
What the Prime Minister has con­sis­tent­ly missed, is that we are liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent time.
A time which is far removed from the indoc­tri­na­tion he and oth­ers, includ­ing the bunch of frauds who pre­tend to be human rights activists, received from the (UWI).
Andrew Holness’ [Commissioner] who speaks on behalf of the Police, equal­ly mis­guid­ed, recent­ly declared that he believes he will see the day in which all police offi­cers will be human rights activists

As I out­lined in a pre­vi­ous Article, Antony Anderson lacks the most basic, yet fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes a police offi­cer. Because he has nev­er been one, and the cir­cles in which he has oper­at­ed all his life has been hos­tile to those who actu­al­ly enforce the nation’s laws.
As such, his state­ment should be ignored, if it did not car­ry such dan­ger­ous sig­nif­i­cance for the Jamaican peo­ple.
Every per­son who steps forth with the right mind­set to becom­ing a police offi­cer is already a human rights activist.
There is no greater sac­ri­fice that any man could give than to lay down his life for his broth­er.
Every police offi­cer who dons a uni­form knows that he/​she may be killed sole­ly on the basis of being a police offi­cer.
That he/​she may become a sac­ri­fice for oth­ers they have nev­er met.
Tell me then which mouth­piece which par­rots [human rights] in our coun­try has made that sac­ri­fice?
Which one of the glo­ri­fied frauds who pon­tif­i­cate about human rights, has ever been killed defend­ing the rights of oth­ers?
And so I say shut your mouths about Human Rights.
No greater right has any­one man than the right to life. On that note, the Government, Opposition and the litany of frauds in that fra­ter­ni­ty have been exposed for what they are, liars and deceivers.

The dai­ly slaugh­ter of the Jamaican peo­ple while the Opposition PNP tries to score polit­i­cal points, and the GOVERNMENT refus­es to do what it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly oblig­at­ed to do, is a sear­ing indict­ment of the cor­ro­sive com­plic­i­ty and moral deca­dence of the two polit­i­cal par­ties.
They know that what the Nation faces with the heav­i­ly armed gags have long passed just a crime prob­lem.
They know that this is exis­ten­tial, not just to the peo­ple but to the state itself.
Unfortunately, for the Jamaican peo­ple, both the JLP and PNP are more con­cerned with hold­ing and acquir­ing state pow­er and the poten­tial deriv­a­tives from the same, than they are about the dai­ly shed­ding of inno­cent blood.
They duplic­i­tous­ly con­spire to fool the peo­ple that police offi­cers ask­ing to enter their premis­es are abus­ing their rights are in essence abus­ing their rights.
In the same vein, they are con­spic­u­ous­ly silent when the gangs invade and mur­der entire fam­i­lies.
It is the most bla­tant exam­ple of hypocrisy and a barefaced assault on the dig­ni­ty and intel­li­gence of the peo­ple.
Andrew Holness, Peter Phillips, their min­ions, and their anti-Jamaican friends in the Human rights fra­ter­ni­ty has per­pe­trat­ed on the Jamaican peo­ple a dan­ger­ous fraud.
A fraud which is cost­ing the lives of more than (5)Jamaicans each day.

Regardless of the eco­nom­ic num­bers, imag­ine just how well Jamaica could be doing if these two major Political-gangs did not have the Island in the death throes of a stran­gle­hold.
Imagine if Jamaicans had the con­fi­dence to return home con­fi­dent in their safe­ty.
Imagine if investors were con­fi­dent enough to return and invest there­by pro­vid­ing our young peo­ple with employ­ment which offered a liv­ing wage.
Imagine that employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties were not just Chinese employ­ment, which is tak­ing us inex­orably back into anoth­er form of bond­ed servi­tude.
How in God’s name can a whole group of peo­ple who claim to be edu­cat­ed, be so blind, deaf, and dumb?

In response to the recent rul­ing of the nation’s high­est court that theNational Identification and Registration Act (NIRA) is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, I wrote what I thought was sober­ing if not an intel­lec­tu­al response which sim­ply laid out some of what’s at stake now that the law is out.
Chief among the points I raised was the fact that, (a) this (NIDS) issue should not be seen as a par­ti­san issue. (b) The court’s deci­sion should not be viewed with par­ti­san lens­es, as the courts have a duty to rule based on what’s in the con­sti­tu­tion. © Those who peti­tioned the court and received the pos­i­tive rul­ing should not see them­selves as win­ners, nei­ther should the Government see itself as losers, as this is crit­i­cal to the nation’s devel­op­ment. (d) I artic­u­lat­ed a way for­ward which I thought could oper­ate on par­al­lel tracks, vis-a-vis an edu­ca­tion cam­paign which pre­cedes a rewrit­ing of the present leg­is­la­tion and or an amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion. (e) in clos­ing, I also laid out in brief, some of the con­se­quences of not hav­ing a nation­al data­base of our cit­i­zens in our present world.

As I pre­dict­ed, but had hoped would not be the case, the court’s rul­ing on this issue fell snug­ly into the crevass­es of our trib­al pol­i­tics. As was to be expect­ed, the conversation/​debate around the issue lacks the mer­it it deserves based on the authen­tic­i­ty of both points of view, replaced with parochial and out­dat­ed polit­i­cal fin­ger-point­ing.
Since the deci­sion was hand­ed down, a group of the Island’s major pri­vate sec­tor orga­ni­za­tions have lent their voic­es by call­ing for the com­mence­ment of the for­mer debate with a view to pass­ing a new piece of leg­is­la­tion which will give the nation a nation­al data­base of its cit­i­zens.
The group includes the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC) and Jamaica Exporters and Manufacturers Association (JMEA).
In a joint state­ment, the busi­ness lead­ers said “As it appears that there is polit­i­cal con­sen­sus as to the neces­si­ty for imple­ment­ing a nation­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law, we strong­ly urge both polit­i­cal par­ties to imme­di­ate­ly com­mence con­sul­ta­tions, with a view to set­tling the con­tentious dif­fer­ences in the leg­is­la­tion and avoid­ing the pro­vi­sions which offend our con­sti­tu­tion, so as to return a bill to the house and enable a smooth and ear­ly pas­sage.” 

That has been this writ­ers con­tention since the rul­ing. There is no ques­tion that Jamaica, like most oth­er coun­tries, MUST insti­tute a law in which all of her cit­i­zens are known by the state.
This is not lost on the Government, it is not lost on the Business lead­ers, it is not lost on this writer, and it should not be lost on the nation’s oppo­si­tion par­ty.
If the Opposition PNP has legit­i­mate con­cerns about poten­tial human rights abro­ga­tions as it relates to a National Identification Law, it should act respon­si­bly and air out those con­cerns com­men­su­rate with its oblig­a­tions to be a rea­son­able and respon­si­ble Opposition par­ty.
The posi­tion of the Opposition par­ty’s argu­ments should not be brushed aside, nei­ther should the rul­ing of the court be brand­ed polit­i­cal because it is the easy thing to do.
The court’s deci­sion should be viewed as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit down and address the parts of the leg­is­la­tion which the court ruled did not pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster.
If the present con­sti­tu­tion is too archa­ic and inef­fec­tu­al to give cov­er to the (NIDS) leg­is­la­tion, then the nation’s lead­ers have a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to amend the con­sti­tu­tion, or bet­ter yet throw out the whole darn thing.

There is a mind­set in our coun­try that effec­tive­ly latch­es onto things like crus­taceans to a coral reef as the cur­rent bar­rels by, cling­ing ever so des­per­ate­ly even though it is clear that the posi­tion in which it finds itself is not the most ten­able posi­tion.
Now, there is no deny­ing the pri­va­cy con­cerns of many. Governments have not been known to be exact­ly the most hon­or­able stew­ards of the peo­ple’s trust. Additionally, there are reli­gious and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the pub­lic domain about glob­al­ism that this writer is not about to pooh-pooh away.

The web­site (yourgenome​.org )argues The National DNA Database has proved to be a valu­able tool in the fight against crime. However, many peo­ple are con­cerned about how it has evolved from a data­base con­tain­ing genet­ic infor­ma­tion on con­vict­ed crim­i­nals to one that has infor­ma­tion from a much wider group of peo­ple.
The pub­li­ca­tion went on:
The UK National DNA Database holds the DNA^? pro­files and rel­e­vant DNA sam­ples from a select num­ber of UK indi­vid­u­als. It is the largest data­base of its kind in the world and is con­tin­u­ing to grow each year. Every pro­file in the UK National DNA Database is derived from a sam­ple of human mate­r­i­al, such as sali­va or hair, col­lect­ed from a crime scene or police sus­pects.
However, many peo­ple are against the idea of extend­ing the DNA data­base because of the poten­tial threat it has to our pri­va­cy. While a DNA pro­file pro­vides very lit­tle infor­ma­tion about some­one, their DNA sam­ple con­tains infor­ma­tion that can reveal their eth­nic­i­ty or how sus­cep­ti­ble they are to dis­ease. The risk of data abuse is there­fore poten­tial­ly high.

For those on either side of this issue, a look at some of the Information on this site may be pret­ty help­ful in arriv­ing at a more rea­soned and informed posi­tion.
Ultimately though, the trend of cre­at­ing nation­al data­bas­es seems to be the direc­tion the world is head­ing and not where it is mov­ing from.
Subsequently, though (yourgenome​.org ) con­tends that there is no data to sup­port the the­o­ry that hav­ing a nation­al data­base with peo­ple who are not known crim­i­nals helps with solv­ing more crimes, and that it presents a clear dan­ger of false match­es, it also argues the fol­low­ing.
The infor­ma­tion derived from each DNA pro­file can be a pow­er­ful tool in the fight against crime. If a match is made between a DNA pro­file at a crime scene and a DNA pro­file on the data­base, it can help police to iden­ti­fy a pos­si­ble sus­pect quick­ly. They can then use this infor­ma­tion as strong evi­dence to demon­strate an indi­vid­ual is guilty of a crime.
https://​www​.yourgenome​.org/​d​e​b​a​t​e​s​/​i​s​-​i​t​-​e​t​h​i​c​a​l​-​t​o​-​h​a​v​e​-​a​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​d​n​a​-​d​a​t​a​b​ase.

As I wrote in the pre­vi­ous Article on this sub­ject, this issue requires rea­soned lev­el-head­ed and mature dia­logue which takes into con­sid­er­a­tion all of the pros and cons as much is avail­able on the sub­ject.
The deci­sion of the court is a clear indi­ca­tion that the law lacked the foun­da­tion­al strength to with­stand a con­sti­tu­tion­al smell-test.
This law affects all Jamaicans and so the chal­lenge which came from the PNP was pre­dictable, though the peti­tion­ers were exclu­sive­ly PNP par­ti­sans.
That is the modus operan­di of the People’s National par­ty.
The INDECOM act writ­ten and con­struct­ed with the obvi­ous­ly same degree of alacrity as the NIDS act only affects the police so nei­ther Government nor Opposition felt a need or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be judi­cious in the word­ing or con­tent of the law.
They knew that the gullible and hap­less police would nev­er test its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty in the courts and so it stands.
This issue will not go away, this is just the begin­ning of what will be a pro­tract­ed process which inex­orably will con­clude with a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of NIDS.
Mark my words.….

In response to the Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan did not mince words in clap­ping back at the silence of the Democrat par­ty regard­ing the assault on her col­league Ilhan Omar.
Tlaib was furi­ous at her par­ty’s silence despite Donald Trump’s and right-wing attack dogs assault on her col­league Ilhan Omar.
Recently a white ter­ror­ist was arrest­ed for threat­en­ing to put a bul­let in Representative Omar.
This did not stop the race baiter at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave from adding fuel to the fire of the right wing hate machine.

The whole thing start­ed after a piece of garbage Republican Texas mem­ber of Congress sought to inflame pas­sions by cher­ry-pick­ing a sen­tence from a speech Congresswoman Omar game to (CAIR).
In the speech at a fundrais­er for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Los Angeles, Omar said, in part, that “CAIR was found­ed after ⁹⁄₁₁ because they rec­og­nized that some peo­ple did some­thing, and that all of us were start­ing to lose access to our civ­il lib­er­ties.”
The Rupert Murdoch [dishrag] the New York Post respond­ed with the above front-page, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly (HERE’S YOUR SOMETHING).
FOX, the main mouth­piece of America’s White Nationalism, through one of its brain-dead mouth­pieces, Brian Kilmeade ques­tioned whether the Congresswoman was even American.
Kind of an odd ques­tion, I guess she has to col­lude with Russia, obstruct jus­tice and com­mit a whole litany of crimes to be con­sid­ered an American.
Because the main Race-baiter in the coun­try was quick to join the fray by way of a tweet,(we will nev­er for­get).

“They put us in pho­tos when they want to show our par­ty is diverse,” Tlaib tweet­ed Saturday. “However, when we ask to be at the table, or speak up about issues that impact who we are, what we fight for & why we ran in the first place, we are ignored.”
“They put us in pho­tos when they want to show our par­ty is diverse,” Tlaib tweet­ed Saturday. “However, when we ask to be at the table, or speak up about issues that impact who we are, what we fight for & why we ran in the first place, we are ignored.”

Rashida Tlaib’s clap-back was par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant, because both Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer were quick to con­demn Representative Omar for speak­ing freely about the apartheid state of Israel and how mon­ey is dri­ving some of the sup­port for the racist state.
Conversely, Schumer has been silent in the face of the assault and threats against Congresswoman Omar and Pelosi has been below luke­warm in push­ing back against the tor­rent of vit­ri­olic assault and threats lev­eled at Congresswoman Omar.
So too are the bunch of cow­ard­ly oppor­tunists in the Democrat par­ty, many of whom arrived in Washington with Ilahan Omar.

The impor­tant thing to con­sid­er about Congresswoman Omar’s state­ments about Israel is that they are absolute­ly cor­rect.
The Republicans and almost all of the Democrat par­ty had no prob­lem when the Republican-led House under John Boehner brought the Right-wing hate­mon­ger Benjamin Netanyahu through the back door as an insult to President Barack Obama, to address a joint sit­ting of the Racist Republican Congress.
The Democrats had the option to boy­cott that sit­ting, yet they all showed up like lit­tle whipped dogs and sat there to a for­eign leader who was brought in to dis­re­spect their president.

According to (The Times Of Israel) In his speech, Netanyahu assailed an emerg­ing nuclear deal with Iran and told Congress that the nego­ti­a­tions between the two coun­tries would “all but guar­an­tee” that Tehran gets nuclear weapons to the detri­ment of the entire world. The invi­ta­tion to Netanyahu to address Congress, extend­ed by House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, has trig­gered a polit­i­cal furor in the United States. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s oppo­nents in Israel accused him of stag­ing the speech as a cam­paign ploy. 

Those famil­iar with the mid­dle-east war­mon­ger Benjamin Netanyahu, knows how he plot­ted to have America neu­tral­ize Iraq under the guise that Iraq pos­sessed weapons of mass destruc­tion.
Bush and Cheyney were will­ing sheep and so an ille­git­i­mate war was waged on the nation of Iraq and of course, no weapons of mass destruc­tion were ever found.
Barack Obama, then a first-term Senator from Illinois, vot­ed against the Iraq war. Netanyahu knew that he could not move Barack Obama around as he was able to do Bush, or the present idiot-in-chief, so he was no fan of President Barack Obama.
Having had Iraq destroyed and seg­ment­ed in war­ring enclaves Netanyahu turned his dan­ger­ous­ly decep­tive atten­tion to the peo­ple’s repub­lic of Iran. His oppo­si­tion and dem­a­goguery of the Iran nuclear deal had noth­ing to do with any­thing that Iran may have done. The Iranians had con­sis­tent­ly said they did not intend to have a nuclear weapons pro­gram for mil­i­tary purposes. 

All of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion regimes which were put in place all said that Iran has com­plied with the terms of the deal.
So, Netanyahu’s oppo­si­tion to the arrange­ment and his address to the joint sit­ting of the American Congress was not [tru­ly] intend­ed to warn the world of impend­ing gloom and doom about Iran’s inten­tions.
But an Iran which is com­ply­ing with the terms of the deal, is an Iran that Netanyahu can­not con­vince America to attack.
What the Benjamin Netanyahu real­ly wants is total hege­mo­ny in the region, with Syria bro­ken up and destroyed, the only oth­er nations of any con­se­quence in the region are Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both have already sold out to the Zionist state.
Netanyahu will form the next Government, hav­ing fin­ished less than he expect­ed but with the pha­lanx of right-wing par­ties in the Zionist state, he will be in charge once again. He will become the longest serv­ing Prime Minister in that nation’s his­to­ry.
Back In America, Donald Trump has uni­lat­er­al­ly declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.
That ladies and gen­tle­men is the sec­ond drum­beat for war against the Iranian State.
The first being, the dec­la­ra­tion that Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel.
The war clouds are gath­er­ing and you will be pay­ing for it.

From our friends over at the Nation. And an in-depth look at the fal­la­cy of the American Drug war which has scooped up guilty and inno­cent alike, large­ly peo­ple of col­or while the real power­bro­kers behind the use and sale of dan­ger­ous drugs, white men gets off scot-free.

A half-century of Washington’s harsh drug prohibition policies has brought misery to millions across the globe. 

By Alfred McCoy

We live in a time of change, when peo­ple are ques­tion­ing old assump­tions and seek­ing new direc­tions. In the ongo­ing debate over health care, social jus­tice, and bor­der secu­ri­ty, there is, how­ev­er, one over­looked issue that should be at the top of everyone’s agen­da, from demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists to lib­er­tar­i­an Republicans: America’s longest war. No, not the one in Afghanistan. I mean the drug war.

For more than a cen­tu­ry, the US has worked through the UN (and its pre­de­ces­sor, the League of Nations) to build a harsh glob­al drug-pro­hi­bi­tion régime — ground­ed in dra­con­ian laws, enforced by per­va­sive polic­ing, and pun­ished with mass incar­cer­a­tion. For the past half-cen­tu­ry, the United States has also waged its own “war on drugs” that has com­pli­cat­ed its for­eign pol­i­cy, com­pro­mised its elec­toral democ­ra­cy, and con­tributed to social inequal­i­ty. Perhaps the time has final­ly come to assess the dam­age that drug war has caused and con­sid­er alternatives.

Even though I first made my mark with a 1972 book that the CIA tried to sup­press on the hero­in trade in Southeast Asia, it’s tak­en me most of my life to grasp all the com­plex ways this country’s drug war, from Afghanistan to Colombia, the Mexican bor­der to inner-city Chicago, has shaped American soci­ety. Last sum­mer, a French direc­tor doing a doc­u­men­tary inter­viewed me for sev­en hours about the his­to­ry of illic­it nar­cotics. As we moved from the 17^th cen­tu­ry to the present and from Asia to America, I found myself try­ing to answer the same relent­less ques­tion: What had 50 years of obser­va­tion actu­al­ly drilled into me, beyond some ran­dom facts, about the char­ac­ter of the illic­it traf­fic in drugs?

At the broad­est lev­el, the past half-cen­tu­ry turns out to have taught me that drugs aren’t just drugs, drug deal­ers aren’t just “push­ers,” and drug users aren’t just “junkies” (that is, out­casts of no con­se­quence). Illicit drugs are major glob­al com­modi­ties that con­tin­ue to influ­ence US pol­i­tics, both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al. And our drug wars cre­ate prof­itable covert nether­worlds in which those very drugs flour­ish and become even more prof­itable. Indeed, the UN once esti­mat­ed that the transna­tion­al traf­fic, which sup­plied drugs to 4.2 per­cent of the world’s adult pop­u­la­tion, was a $400 bil­lion indus­try, the equiv­a­lent of 8 per­cent of glob­al trade.

In ways that few seem to under­stand, illic­it drugs have had a pro­found influ­ence on mod­ern America, shap­ing our inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics, nation­al elec­tions, and domes­tic social rela­tions. Yet a feel­ing that illic­it drugs belong to a mar­gin­al­ized demi­monde has made US drug pol­i­cy the sole prop­er­ty of law enforce­ment and not health care, edu­ca­tion, or urban development.

During this process of reflec­tion, I’ve returned to three con­ver­sa­tions I had back in 1971 when I was a 26-year-old grad­u­ate stu­dent research­ing that first book of mine,The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. In the course of an 18-month odyssey around the globe, I met three men, deeply involved in the drug wars, whose words I was then too young to ful­ly absorb.

The first was Lucien Conein, a “leg­endary” CIA oper­a­tive whose covert career ranged from para­chut­ing into North Vietnam in 1945 to train com­mu­nist guer­ril­las with Ho Chi Minh to orga­niz­ing the CIA coup that killed South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. In the course of our inter­view at his mod­est home near CIA head­quar­ters in Langley, Virginia, he laid out just how the Agency’s oper­a­tives, like so many Corsican gang­sters, prac­ticed the “clan­des­tine arts” of con­duct­ing com­plex oper­a­tions beyond the bounds of civ­il soci­ety and how such “arts” were, in fact, the heart and soul of both covert oper­a­tions and the drug trade.

Second came Colonel Roger Trinquier, whose life in a French drug nether­world extend­ed from com­mand­ing para­troop­ers in the opi­um-grow­ing high­lands of Vietnam dur­ing the First Indochina War of the ear­ly 1950s to serv­ing as deputy to General Jacques Massu in his cam­paign of mur­der and tor­ture in the Battle of Algiers in 1957. During an inter­view in his ele­gant Paris apart­ment, Trinquier explained how he helped fund his own para­troop oper­a­tions through Indochina’s illic­it opi­um traf­fic. Emerging from that inter­view, I felt almost over­whelmed by the aura of Nietzschean omnipo­tence that Trinquier had clear­ly gained from his many years in this shad­owy realm of drugs and death.

My last men­tor on the sub­ject of drugs was Tom Tripodi, a covert oper­a­tive who had trained Cuban exiles in Florida for the CIA’s 1961 Bay of Pigs inva­sion and then, in the late 1970s, pen­e­trat­ed mafia net­works in Sicily for the US Drug Enforcement Administration. In 1971, he appeared at my front door in New Haven, Connecticut, iden­ti­fied him­self as a senior agent for the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Narcotics, and insist­ed that the bureau was wor­ried about my future book. Rather ten­ta­tive­ly, I showed him just a few draft pages of my man­u­script for The Politics of Heroin, and he prompt­ly offered to help me make it as accu­rate as pos­si­ble. During lat­er vis­its, I would hand him chap­ters and he would sit in a rock­ing chair, shirt sleeves rolled up, revolver in his shoul­der hol­ster, scrib­bling cor­rec­tions and telling remark­able sto­ries about the drug trade — like the time his bureau found that French intel­li­gence was pro­tect­ing the Corsican syn­di­cates smug­gling hero­in into New York City. Far more impor­tant, though, through him I grasped how ad hoc alliances between crim­i­nal traf­fick­ers and the CIA reg­u­lar­ly helped both the Agency and the drug trade prosper.

Looking back, I can now see how those vet­er­an oper­a­tives were each describ­ing to me a clan­des­tine polit­i­cal domain, a covert nether­world in which gov­ern­ment agents, mil­i­tary men, and drug traders were freed from the shack­les of civ­il soci­ety and empow­ered to form secret armies, over­throw gov­ern­ments, and even, per­haps, kill a for­eign president.

At its core, this nether­world was then and remains today an invis­i­ble polit­i­cal realm inhab­it­ed by crim­i­nal actors and prac­ti­tion­ers of Conein’s “clan­des­tine arts.” Offering some sense of the scale of this social milieu, in 1997 the United Nations report­ed that transna­tion­al crime syn­di­cates had 3.3 mil­lion mem­bers world­wide who traf­ficked in drugs, arms, humans, and endan­gered species. Meanwhile, dur­ing the Cold War, all the major pow­ers — Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States — deployed expand­ed clan­des­tine ser­vices world­wide, mak­ing covert oper­a­tions a cen­tral facet of geopo­lit­i­cal pow­er. The end of the Cold War has in no way changed this real­i­ty.

http://​then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​a​l​f​r​e​d​-​m​c​c​o​y​-​w​a​s​h​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​d​r​u​g​-​w​a​r​-​r​u​i​n​i​n​g​-​w​o​r​ld/

Andrew Holness took office talk­ing thrash about police kick­ing off peo­ple’s doors. To date, he has empow­ered polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Terrence Williams to per­se­cute the police but has done noth­ing about the gangs which have tak­en over entire parish­es.
In the mean­time, the police have become an inef­fec­tu­al laugh­ing­stock while the gangs rule the streets, leav­ing those not yet dead cow­er­ing in fear, won­der­ing whether one of the bar­rages of bul­lets they hear has their name on it.

One of the most renowned quotes attrib­uted to Jamaica’s first nation­al hero, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, is: “Jamaicans will not know them­selves until their backs are against the wall.“
I do not pre­tend to know just how far up against the wall the small nation of 2.8 mil­lion is will­ing to be pushed?
Neither do I know just how much small­er they can “small up dem self.“
And so, as I have pre­dict­ed time and again, sim­ply putting grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions around one’s home will not be enough giv­en time.
That time is here; grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions do noth­ing to deter the killers any­more.
If they decide to kill, noth­ing stops them. They trav­el in large groups, heav­i­ly armed, total­ly uncon­cerned about police or mil­i­tary pres­ence.
They sim­ply law down huge and sus­tained vol­leys of auto­mat­ic weapons fire on who­ev­er dare approach them.
The trag­ic irony in that overused Garvey quote is that the very peo­ple who recite it unfail­ing­ly fail to grasp that they them­selves are unwit­ting pawns on that chessboard.

Jamaica has one of the world’s high­est mur­der rates. For an Island/​nation with the size of 4,411 square miles or less than a third of the American state of Connecticut, the 48^th small­est of that nation’s 50 states, Jamaica’s mur­der rate is stag­ger­ing.
Unfortunately for the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens still left in Jamaica, there will be no respite or let up any­time soon.
The Island’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship has no con­cern for the blood­let­ting out­side of using it for mileage politically.

The sit­ting Prime Minister came to office with a decid­ed atti­tude against the police, or more appro­pri­ate­ly against the police depart­men­t’s tac­tics in keep­ing crim­i­nals in check.
Tactics are used on urban and oth­er crim­i­nals and mili­tias around the world. Those are tough, no-non­sense, hard-nosed polic­ing tac­tics that cre­ate space around the pop­u­la­tion and pause those who would com­mit mur­ders.
Without stip­u­la­tion or con­text, he repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that ” the days of police kick­ing off peo­ple’s doors are over” closed quote.
Now tech­ni­cal­ly, Holness has no pow­er to direct­ly stop the police from going after crim­i­nals, includ­ing kick­ing down doors to get them.
Nevertheless, he has the pow­er to make it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult by increas­ing the bureau­crat­ic process after such police actions, there­by ren­der­ing the police unin­ter­est­ed in going after crim­i­nals.
This he did by ramp­ing up the pow­er with stat­ed sup­port for the oner­ous, over­bear­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive police watch­dog INDECOM.
This essen­tial­ly iced police enthu­si­asm for fight­ing crime.
Under this kind of sys­tem, offi­cer’s inter­est is best served by sim­ply run­ning out the clock on their shifts and going home to their fam­i­lies, rather than risk being per­se­cut­ed by an overzeal­ous INDECOM. Usually on false affi­davits pro­vid­ed them by man­u­fac­tured witnesses.

Day after day, I watch uncut video clips of the dead, at oth­er times the bul­let-rid­dled bod­ies, some­times still writhing as the lifeblood drains from their rup­tured bod­ies. Meandering like a lazy pud­dle on the dusty side­walks.
Simultaneously, I see the Prime Minister mis­lead the Jamaican peo­ple that he brings pros­per­i­ty to their lives.
Fundamentally ignor­ing the exis­ten­tial cri­sis the coun­try faces as he makes those promis­es.
Repeating over and over again, the dis­cred­it­ed refrain, know­ing full well, [or does he], that there can be no pros­per­i­ty in an envi­ron­ment of wan­ton unchecked violence.

How stu­pid are these polit­i­cal lead­ers real­ly? They ignore the peo­ple’s cry, in Saint James, Westmoreland, and Clarendon, in Saint Thomas and Saint Catherine and Hanover and Manchester, in Saint Elizabeth and Kingston, in Portland and Trelawny, in Saint Andrew and Saint Mary and Saint Ann.
There is no haven from the gun in Jamaica, guns are every­where, and the gang­sters don’t care who knows that they are armed and dan­ger­ous.
The peo­ple are beg­ging for an end to law­less­ness to live their lives as nor­mal peo­ple do.
Yet the uncon­scionable Administration in Jamaica House, like the one before it, refus­es to release the agents of the state to go after the ter­ror­is­tic thugs who are killing peo­ple at will.
Choosing instead to focus on the sup­posed human rights oblig­a­tions of police offi­cers.
If the lead­ers refuse to plug the dike, then the water will wash over them. Somehow change will come either with their help or to their per­il.
I call upon inno­cent, law-abid­ing Jamaicans to mobi­lize against this threat. If your lead­ers refuse to act, then you must act.
Do not be a sta­tis­tic; stand up and fight and throw out the bums.

Asked about the PNP’s back­lash against him for speak­ing out about his par­ty’s recent loss, for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the People’s National Party (PNP) Paul Burke said: 

“I don’t know what back­lash is. You mean the paid social media mer­ce­nar­ies? [They] have very lit­tle impact on the ground. It’s going to get worse, not bet­ter. I’m going to become Mr Unpopular. It’s water off the duck­’s back, trust me.” 
“They can’t do any­thing to me. I’m not wor­ried about them. I don’t need them; they don’t need me. The only thing I have is the truth, which I can back up. I don’t know what direc­tion the par­ty will go in, but I real­ly believe that the par­ty has to get its mes­sage clear. It has to be clear. It has to be con­sis­tent. It has to be cred­i­ble and you must find mes­sen­gers, what­ev­er that mes­sage ends up being, who can car­ry that mes­sage. In oth­er words, I can’t car­ry a mes­sage to tell peo­ple go to church because I don’t go to church,” 

Say what you want about Paul Burke’ s brash brava­do, and seem­ing lack of humil­i­ty, but Burke knows what he is talk­ing about. Paul Burke has been in the trench­es and has been instru­men­tal in the PNP’s polit­i­cal suc­cess­es for decades.
Burke under­stands what it takes to win elec­tions, even though his par­ty lacks the basic fun­da­men­tals of gov­er­nance.
It appears that it is to this very issue that Paul Burke is relat­ing.
Burke’s unper­turbed non­cha­lance may be a by-prod­uct of his knowl­edge that many who are now con­demn­ing him for speak­ing out and wants him oust­ed from the par­ty, also want­ed Peter Phillips out of the par­ty as well.
Many of those same peo­ple also at one time labeled Peter Phillips a trai­tor as well.
Phillips was almost [per­sona non gra­ta ]for sign­ing a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States with­out the knowl­edge or con­sent of the Party boss Portia Simpson Miller.
It is that cultish unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic men­tal­i­ty which has defined the PNP through­out its exis­tence.
A men­tal­i­ty which has kept the par­ty stuck sub­scrib­ing to a failed and dis­card­ed [form of Socialism] which has hurt our coun­try expo­nen­tial­ly before, and from which Jamaica has yet to recover. 

The great exis­ten­tial threat to the PNP is the PNP’s refusal to adapt and change. The JLP made the same mis­take after its loss in 88. As a con­se­quence, they were locked out of the process for over two decades. The brain-dead deci­sion to con­tin­ue on as a cult, instead of a 21^st-cen­tu­ry polit­i­cal par­ty is demon­strat­ed by the com­ments against Paul Burke who has been instru­men­tal in the PNP’s suc­cess­es long before many of his crit­ics were born.
Burke a smart polit­i­cal oper­a­tive is cog­nizant that the par­ty needs to change and sep­a­rate itself from the old failed social­ist poli­cies and affil­i­a­tions which ruined the coun­try in the 1970’s.
The Party’s string of loss­es will con­tin­ue as long as the JLP con­tin­ues to build out the nations infra­struc­ture and peo­ple sees pos­i­tive changes hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and in their own lives.
As long as the admin­is­tra­tion can eschew cor­rup­tion, the PNP will have a long time on the out­side look­ing in with clenched fists and beret’s, relics of a dis­tant past no one wants to revisit. 

In the hus­tle and bus­tle of every­day life and the chal­lenge to sim­ply put food on the table and get by, we are miss­ing some­thing rather con­se­quen­tial and prece­dent-set­ting.
The President of the United States, and his cam­paign has been under inves­ti­ga­tion by Special Counsel Robert Muller to deter­mine whether he, or his cam­paign, con­spired with a for­eign pow­er, [Russia], to defraud the United States in the 2016 Presidential Elections.

As a result, a Special Counsel was appoint­ed, in the per­son of Robert Muller, for­mer Marine, for­mer FBI Director, Lawyer, Former Federal Prosecutor.
Muller’s man­date as Special Counsel, was dif­fer­ent than a Special Prosecutor, a‑la Kenneth Starr
Muller was tasked to look at whether Trump or his cam­paign con­spired with Russia to steal the elec­tions and there­by defraud the United States.
The chal­lenge for the American pub­lic which has an inter­est in jus­tice, fair­ness, the rule of law, and the con­cept that no one should be above the law, is the way the sys­tem is set up.
It is a sys­tem which means for all intents and pur­pos­es, a pres­i­dent can put him­self above the laws and there is pre­cious lit­tle any­one can do about it.

According to what the present Attorney General William Barr revealed so far, Special Counsel Robert Muller did not exact­ly estab­lish a link that could stand the test of a crim­i­nal tri­al that Trump or his cam­paign had crim­i­nal­ly con­spired with Russia to defraud the United States.
That was the very first mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion made by William Baer. coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tions are not nec­es­sar­i­ly crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. Their results are for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and Congress.
The Attorney General took the view that the President had not com­mit­ted obstruc­tion of jus­tice, despite Trumps many acts of inter­fer­ence with the inves­ti­ga­tions in plain sight, notwith­stand­ing that deci­sion was not William Barr’s to make, but the deci­sion of the Congress.
TRUMPS ACTIONS
(1) Firing James Comey, the FBI Director when he refused to pledge loy­al­ty and feal­ty to him.
(2) Lambasting then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recus­ing him­self from the inves­ti­ga­tions.
(3) Eventually fir­ing Jeff Sessions.
(4) Placing an unqual­i­fied polit­i­cal hack Matthew Whitaker in place to head the Justice Department after fir­ing Sessions. (After Whittaker had open­ly declared on Television that he knew how to end the Muller Investigations.
(5) After much out­cry at the Whittaker appoint­ment, nom­i­nat­ing William Barr, a man who wrote an exhaus­tive memo in sup­port of expan­sive Executive pow­er, and his dis­dain for hold­ing a pres­i­dent account­able for obstruct­ing jus­tice.
(6) Demonizing, embar­rass­ing and ulti­mate­ly fir­ing top-tiered Justice and FBI offi­cials who were instru­men­tal in start­ing a counter-intel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tion into Russian inter­fer­ence into the 2016 Elections.
These are only a few of the steps Donald Trump took that are pub­lic, it begs the ques­tion of what kinds of actions he took in pri­vate over the two years that the Special Counsel Investigations were in effect.

The Justice Department and its employ­ees are part of the Executive Branch of Government. Subsequently, an inves­ti­ga­tion under­tak­en by the Justice Department is tech­ni­cal­ly under the con­trol of the chief executive,(the pres­i­dent). Even though the pres­i­dent is the sub­ject of the inves­ti­ga­tion, he has the pow­er under the laws to sup­press the find­ings of said Investigation.
The so-called safe­guards which had allowed this cha­rade to exist for as long as it did, were that pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents were less open­ly hos­tile to the rule of law.
So even though they may have open­ly bro­ken the laws, a‑la, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, in recent times, they still main­tained an expo­nen­tial­ly less dis­dain­ful atti­tude towards the laws of the nation.
The moral of all this, is that those laws were designed specif­i­cal­ly so that a cor­rupt President would not ever see the inside of a jail cell, unless he went into one to see con­di­tions for him­self as President Barack Obam did.
With all of Richard Nixon’s crimes, he resigned before he was tossed from office, but not before cut­ting a deal with Gerald Ford, the only man to have been vice pres­i­dent and pres­i­dent with­out being elect­ed by the vot­ers.
[Ford] par­doned Nixon imme­di­ate­ly h ascend­ed to the pres­i­den­cy, there­by ensur­ing that Richard Millhouse Nixon, the crim­i­nal, nev­er saw the inside of a jail cell.
The guise Ford used to jus­ti­fy his actions was that the Nation need­ed to heal. The irony of that posi­tion was that Richard Nixon know­ing­ly and crim­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed the Constitutional crisis.

For the peo­ple on the left who were of the opin­ion and belief that a find­ing by Robert Muller would result in Donald Trump being led out of the white house in hand­cuffs, it is a bit­ter pill to swal­low that the con­text of Muller’s find­ings will nev­er see the light of day, much less the truth of the crimes which were com­mit­ted in the process of cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing [a pres­i­dent Donald Trump].
There has been too much ener­gy and arro­gance invest­ed in the cre­ation of the sense of mys­tique and excep­tion­al­ism of America and the American Presidency, to allow a report on Donald Trump to destroy it.
Did any­one ever real­ly believe that there would be a report, (regard­less of the Investigator) which would say a for­eign pow­er picked and installed an American President? 

Kirstjen Nielsen says DHS is alert to domes­tic ter­ror threat. Law enforce­ment sources say the agency has gone “silent.”

The Department of Homeland Security has dis­band­ed a unit of intel­li­gence ana­lysts who mon­i­tored domes­tic ter­ror­ism threats even as depart­ment offi­cials admit that the threat of domes­tic ter­ror­ism is grow­ing.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis has reas­signed a group of intel­li­gence ana­lysts who focused on domes­tic threats, result­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant drop in reports and analy­sis about threats from extrem­ists and white suprema­cists, The Daily Beast report­ed. Local law enforce­ment offi­cials told the out­let they are no longer receiv­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion from DHS since the unit was dis­band­ed last year.

“It’s espe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic giv­en the growth in right-wing extrem­ism and domes­tic ter­ror­ism we are see­ing in the U.S. and abroad,” a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial told The Daily Beast.
The move came after new Intelligence and Analysis chief David Glawe reor­ga­nized the divi­sion.
A DHS spokesper­son told the out­let that it works with oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies to gath­er “threat infor­ma­tion regard­less of a threat actor’s ide­ol­o­gy” and shares that infor­ma­tion with oth­er agen­cies.
“The same peo­ple are work­ing on the issues,” a senior DHS offi­cial insist­ed. “We just restruc­tured things to be more respon­sive to the I&A cus­tomers with­in DHS and in local com­mu­ni­ties while reduc­ing over­lap with what the FBI does. We actu­al­ly believe we are far more effec­tive now.”
But Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Mike Abdeen told The Daily Beast that the Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been “most­ly silent” for the past six months despite pre­vi­ous­ly send­ing his office a sig­nif­i­cant amount of infor­ma­tion.
“It’s been very qui­et late­ly,” Abdeen said. “It’s changed with the new admin­is­tra­tion. It doesn’t seem to be as robust, as active, as impor­tant — it is impor­tant, I’m sure, but it’s not a pri­or­i­ty. It doesn’t seem like engage­ment, out­reach, and pre­ven­tion are seen as a pri­or­i­ty as we used to see in the past. There were round­table meet­ings in the past, there was more activ­i­ty, more train­ing, more sem­i­nars. Now it seems like it’s gone away.”

As a result of the “reor­ga­ni­za­tion,” offi­cials said the office must now coör­di­nate with the FBI to share infor­ma­tion with local law enforcement.“While I can­not speak to what is going on at DHS I&A today, the analy­sis pro­vid­ed by I&A per­son­nel on domes­tic extrem­ism was essen­tial dur­ing my tenure at DHS,” for­mer act­ing head of Intelligence and Analysis John Cohen told the out­let. “Based on the cur­rent threat envi­ron­ment, I believe those same efforts are essen­tial today.”
Disbanding the domes­tic ter­ror­ism intel­li­gence unit is a curi­ous move after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a speech at Auburn University last month that her depart­ment would work to pre­vent attacks like the one in New Zealand, where a white nation­al­ist gun­man killed 50 peo­ple at two mosques.
“We, too, have seen the face of such evil with attacks in places such as Charlottesville, Pittsburgh and Charleston,” Nielsen said. “I want to make one thing very clear: We will not per­mit such hate in the home­land.”
Read more here: https://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​4​/​0​2​/​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​d​h​s​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​d​s​-​t​o​-​r​i​s​e​-​i​n​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​m​-​b​y​-​d​i​s​b​a​n​d​i​n​g​-​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​-​u​n​it/

On Thursday, April 4^th, vot­ers in East Portland will get their chance to cast votes for either the JLP’s Ann-Marie Vaz, or the PNP’s Damion Crawford for the seat made vacant after the PNP MP Lynvale Bloomfield was mur­dered in February.
The intense buzz sur­round­ing the by-elec­tion for this seat, brings into sharp focus the val­ue the two major polit­i­cal par­ties place on state pow­er.
Still evi­dent is the old style par­ti­san snip­ing, which gen­er­al­ly ends up in blood­shed.
Thus far, there has been blood­shed and the old par­ti­san Horace Chang in his dual role as General Secretary for his par­ty and Minister of National Security, has imme­di­ate­ly hyped the shoot­ings as polit­i­cal, over the find­ings of his own police Department which point­ed­ly said the shoot­ings were not political.

Now grant­ed that I could­n’t care a Rat’s ass who wins this fias­co on Thursday, it seems to me that Chang has a duty, and indeed a respon­si­bil­i­ty, not just to square his pro­nounce­ments with the find­ings of his police depart­ment, but to be mea­sured in the way he deals with inci­dents such as the shoot­ings in the con­stituen­cy con­sid­er­ing that he is the Minister of National Security.(gag)
But this is the kind of hyper-par­ti­san­ship on which Horace Chang cut his teeth and has flour­ished in, to become the mem­ber of Parliament for one of the Island’s grit­ti­est polit­i­cal gar­risons.
Chang must under­stand that his state­ments as General Secretary of his par­ty can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from Horace Chang the Minister of National Security.
If there is infor­ma­tion which is of help to the police as to who the shoot­ers were and what their motives were, Horace Chang as Garrison MP, and Minister of National Security is best poised to have those answers.
That intel­li­gence should be passed on to the police and not used to stir the pot of polit­i­cal vio­lence.
On the oth­er hand, it is remark­able that Fitz Jackson the oppo­si­tion spokesper­son on National Security can gar­ner infor­ma­tion with such alacrity indi­cat­ing that the deceased was a JLP sup­port­er want­ed by the law, yet he and his par­ty are unable and unwill­ing to sup­port mea­sures which are aimed at curb­ing the law­less­ness and the metasta­ciz­ing gang­land stple killings on the Island.

Most Jamaicans at home and abroad wish­es that polit­i­cal vio­lence is a thing of the past. Rightly so, most of the build­ing blocks of polit­i­cal vio­lence are gone.
Because of bet­ter account­abil­i­ty safe­guards in place, a‑la the Contractor General’s Act. etc, Members of Parliament have few­er dol­lars to toss around to thugs to do their bid­ding.
As a con­se­quence, politi­cians are only use­ful to the thugs as buffers between them­selves and the police.
Thugs are mak­ing their own way, through lot­to-scam­ming, mur­der for hire, Robberies, and oth­er crim­i­nal acts, which ren­ders the politi­cians far less impor­tant.
Being that as it may, politi­cians on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide are still cling­ing to their con­nec­tions in the gar­risons to deliv­er the votes en-block, as Mister Anderson clung to his mur­der­ous shot­ta Wayne, in the fic­tion­al Jamaican flick (SHOTTAS).
For the good and sur­vival of the Jamaican state, it may be a pos­i­tive out­come if life imi­tates art, since Jamaican Politicians refus­es to eschew this type of crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tion.
If they refuse to change, then change should remove them from the equation.

One of the eas­i­est ways for the polit­i­cal gangs which run our coun­try to show matu­ri­ty is to begin to bring peo­ple togeth­er, rather than sep­a­rate them.
We are a small coun­try of fam­i­lies, friends, and neigh­bors, and yes, friends we are yet to meet.
What a dif­fer­ence it would make if the two gangs do away with the par­ty col­ors and show the world that we are one people?