Author Archives: Mike

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Voter Suppression In America Belies The Very Concept Of Democracy

In 15 days America goes to the polls to choose a new Congress. At stake are Governor-ships and elect­ed offices down the line to dog-catch­er.
The num­ber one issue fac­ing African-Americans, Native ‑Americans and oth­er peo­ple of col­or today dur­ing this cru­cial time are the road­blocks to vot­ing placed in their way by Republicans.

Stacey Abrams


The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act. A 2016 report from the civ­il rights coali­tion Leadership Conference on CHR found local offi­cials had shut­tered 868 polling places in the 3 years after the rul­ing.
Since the rul­ing, a flood­gate of vot­er sup­pres­sion activ­i­ty has been unleashed almost sole­ly in states and munic­i­pal­i­ties with large African-American, Native ‑American and Latino communities.

Brian Kemp



In Georgia, the sit­ting sec­re­tary of state Brian Kemp is on the bal­lot as the GOP can­di­date for gov­er­nor against the Democrats Stacy Abrams a black woman who would become the nation’s first black female gov­er­nor.
That prospect may have to wait as Hillary Clinton found out, get­ting more than three mil­lion votes than your oppo­nent does not mean you have won.

In his role as ref­er­ee, and as Candidate, Brian Kemp has report­ed­ly purged more almost a mil­lion peo­ple from the state’s vot­ing rolls.
This purge for sim­ple things like infre­quent vot­ing, and what is called “exact match a law Kemp and his Republican friends cre­at­ed demands gives them the right to remove or at least pre­vent peo­ple from vot­ing for a sim­ple miss­ing hyphen in a name, or a mis­spelled name.


The most basic right of a cit­i­zen in a democ­ra­cy is the right to vote. Without this right, peo­ple can be eas­i­ly ignored and even abused by their gov­ern­ment. This, in fact, is what hap­pened to African-American cit­i­zens liv­ing in the South fol­low­ing Civil War Reconstruction. Despite the 14th and 15th Amendments guar­an­tee­ing the civ­il rights of black Americans, their right to vote was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tak­en away by white suprema­cist state gov­ern­ments.
So said: http://​www​.crf​-usa​.org

African-Americans have always faced hur­dles when try­ing to vote, this nation has a sor­did lega­cy of oppres­sion and sup­pres­sion.


In 1890, Mississippi held a con­ven­tion to write a new state con­sti­tu­tion to replace the one in force since Reconstruction. The white lead­ers of the con­ven­tion were clear about their inten­tions. “We came here to exclude the Negro,” declared the con­ven­tion pres­i­dent. Because of the 15th Amendment, they could not ban blacks from vot­ing. Instead, they wrote into the state con­sti­tu­tion a num­ber of vot­er restric­tions mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for most blacks to reg­is­ter to vote. 

The imped­i­ments placed in the way of blacks are lurid and dis­grace­ful. Doctoral the­ses are writ­ten on the details of those tac­tics from being required to guess the num­ber of jel­ly-beans in a jar to violence.

Violence

In 1873, a gang of whites in Colfax, Louisiana mur­dered more than 100 blacks who were assem­bled to defend Republican office­hold­ers — this was, of course, back when Republicans had some sense. Federal pros­e­cu­tors indict­ed three of them, but the U.S. Supreme Court dis­missed the indict­ments in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)
Source: 
The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Literacy Tests

Perhaps the first lit­er­a­cy test aimed at keep­ing blacks away from the bal­lot box was South Carolina’s noto­ri­ous “eight-box” bal­lot, adopt­ed in 1882. The test, as explained in “The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South” by J. Morgan Kousser and “The Law of Democracy,” by Samual Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan and Richard Pildeswent as follows:



Voters had to put bal­lots for sep­a­rate offices in sep­a­rate box­es. A bal­lot for the governor’s race put in the box for the sen­ate seat would be thrown out. The order of the box­es was con­tin­u­ous­ly shuf­fled, so that lit­er­ate peo­ple could not assist illit­er­ate vot­ers by arrang­ing their bal­lots in the prop­er order. The adop­tion of the secret bal­lot con­sti­tut­ed anoth­er implic­it lit­er­a­cy test, since it pro­hib­it­ed any­one from assist­ing an illit­er­ate vot­er in cast­ing his vote. In 1890, Southern states began to adopt explic­it lit­er­a­cy tests to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. This had a large dif­fer­en­tial racial impact, since 40 – 60% of blacks were illit­er­ate, com­pared to 8 – 18% of whites. Poor, illit­er­ate whites opposed the tests, real­iz­ing that they too would be dis­en­fran­chised.
Source:
 The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Poll Taxes


If you didn’t have mon­ey, you didn’t have a vote:


Georgia ini­ti­at­ed the poll tax in 1871, and made it cumu­la­tive in 1877 (requir­ing cit­i­zens to pay all back tax­es before being per­mit­ted to vote). Every for­mer Confederate state fol­lowed its lead by 1904. Although these tax­es of $1-$2 per year may seem small, it was beyond the reach of many poor black and white share­crop­pers, who rarely dealt in cash. The Georgia poll tax prob­a­bly reduced over­all turnout by 16 – 28%, and black turnout in half (Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 67 – 8). The pur­pose of the tax was plain­ly to dis­en­fran­chise, not to col­lect rev­enue, since no state brought pros­e­cu­tions against any indi­vid­ual for fail­ure to pay the tax.



Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.


Sources: Voting Rights: The Poll Tax, Marion Butts Collection, Dallas Public Library and The Geography Of Race In The U.S.


Ridiculous Registration Practices

Even if blacks could read or had mon­ey, racist reg­is­tra­tion prac­tices were cre­at­ed to make their efforts to vote mis­er­able:
Southern states made reg­is­tra­tion dif­fi­cult, by requir­ing fre­quent re-reg­is­tra­tion, long terms of res­i­dence in a dis­trict, reg­is­tra­tion at incon­ve­nient times (e.g., plant­i­ng sea­son), pro­vi­sion of infor­ma­tion unavail­able to many blacks (e.g. street address­es, when black neigh­bor­hoods lacked street names and num­bers), and so forth. When blacks man­aged to qual­i­fy for the vote even under these mea­sures, reg­is­trars would use their dis­cre­tion to deny them the vote any­way. Alabama’s con­sti­tu­tion of 1901 was explic­it­ly designed to dis­en­fran­chise blacks by such restric­tive and fraud­u­lent means. Despite this, Jackson Giles, a black jan­i­tor, qual­i­fied for the vote under Alabama’s con­sti­tu­tion. He brought suit against Alabama on behalf of him­self and 75,000 sim­i­lar­ly qual­i­fied blacks who had been arbi­trar­i­ly denied the right to reg­is­ter. The Supreme Court reject­ed his claim in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903).

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.
Today’s tac­tics are a dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, more sophis­ti­cat­ed but no less obvious.


Voter ID


Some states, like Wisconsin for exam­ple, are try­ing to pass laws that are requir­ing peo­ple to present birth cer­tifi­cates to cer­ti­fy their eli­gi­bil­i­ty to vote when they nev­er had to before. Take, for exam­ple, how this will hurt one senior cit­i­zen as report­ed by the Center for American Progress Action Fund:
For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though par­a­lyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” vot­ed in every elec­tion since 1948 and even got elect­ed her­self as a mem­ber of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new vot­er ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a dif­fi­cult birth at her home in 1927, Frank nev­er received an offi­cial birth cer­tifi­cate. Her moth­er record­ed it in her fam­i­ly Bible and Frank has a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of bap­tism from a few months lat­er, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare state­ment, and a check­book. But with­out the offi­cial doc­u­ment, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.
“It’s real­ly crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. cit­i­zen?” But state offi­cials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth cer­tifi­cate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:
Though Frank nev­er had a birth cer­tifi­cate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can gen­er­ate a birth cer­tifi­cate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.


Redistricting


Every ten years, coun­ty com­mis­sions, state House and Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are redrawn based on pop­u­la­tion changes report­ed in the U.S. Census, the Detroit Free Press reports. The prob­lem with this is that GOP lead­ers see pop­u­la­tion growth in black and Latino com­mu­ni­ties that vote heav­i­ly for Democrats and want to spit these Democratic vot­ing bases. Take the state of Michigan for exam­ple, as report­ed by the Detroit Free Press:
Several groups rep­re­sent­ing African-American and Latino vot­ers have filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing the new maps that define the 110 dis­tricts for the state House of Representatives.


The state Legislative Black Caucus, the NAACP, UAW and the Latino Americans for Social and Economic Development, along with sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als filed suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit today. They’re ask­ing for a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order, halt­ing the new dis­tricts from tak­ing effect while a new map is drawn and approved.
“This is a coör­di­nat­ed assault on our vot­ing rights,” said Wendell Anthony, pres­i­dent of the NAACP Detroit branch.
The groups have two main com­plaints: the new map will force eight Detroit incum­bent leg­is­la­tors to run against each oth­er; and a dis­trict that now encom­pass­es most of the pri­mar­i­ly Latino pop­u­la­tion in south­west Detroit has been split into two dis­tricts.
The game is the same, but the tac­tics have changed.



As you con­tem­plate these points and try to make sense of it all, be remind­ed, how­ev­er, that the faith you may have had in the Supreme court may be unfound­ed or mis­placed. Much of what has tran­spired through­out America’s his­to­ry has hap­pened with the acqui­es­cence of the Supreme Court.
Much of the assault being waged on vot­ing rights by Republicans this cycle, is made pos­si­ble because the Supreme Court evis­cer­at­ed the vot­ing rights act. 
For no rea­son oth­er than it worked well.
In her dis­sent in Shelby County Vs Holder, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg argued, the court’s deci­sion is tan­ta­mount to throw­ing away one’s umbrel­la in a rain­storm because he isn’t get­ting wet.
Such was the absur­di­ty and bla­tant naked par­ti­san­ship by the Robert’s court.
That Justice Ginsberg’s dis­sent stands as a scathing reminder of what Republicans are doing to Democracy in America.





 



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INDECOM A Den Of Deceptive Liars Aided By Complicit Media/​In Crime Expansion

Hamish Campbell and Terrence Williams run­ning a con game on Jamaica with the aid and acqui­es­cence of the polit­i­cal class

The old Jamaican say­ing, “one fool makes many,” is impor­tant to remem­ber, par­tic­u­lar­ly in this time of social media and instant mes­sag­ing and every­one seek­ing a hype. 
This sto­ry I read in the Gleaner prob­a­bly strad­dles the “one fool makes many” and the “I see some fools and I’m going to exploit their igno­rance” fence.

Whatever Jamaica gets, Jamaica deserves, I say that with the great­est degree of indif­fer­ence to those who come into our coun­try and tell us how to gov­ern our­selves.
Nevertheless, when the pop­u­la­tion and it’s pathet­ic lead­er­ship are either too stu­pid or too heav­i­ly invest­ed in self-doubt to under­stand that the solu­tions to our nation’s prob­lems do not lie in our for­mer colo­nial mas­ters, then the results are what we have here.

GLEANER HEADLINE (dat­ed Sunday, October 21st.2018
INDECOM Urges Cops To Stop Tampering With Crime Scenes

The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) has repeat­ed its warn­ing to mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force not to tam­per with shoot­ing scenes. This fol­lowed the fatal shoot­ing of Renardo Powell on Marescaux Road in cen­tral Kingston last Thursday evening.
The police say Powell had been rid­ing around on a bicy­cle in the Marescaux Road area, rob­bing per­sons while bran­dish­ing what was lat­er dis­cov­ered to be an imi­ta­tion gun made from board.

He was fatal­ly shot when he was accost­ed by mem­bers of a police par­ty. Details on what led the cops to shoot him are yet to be released by the police. But per­sons who have report­ed that they arrived on the scene short­ly after the explo­sions were heard told The Sunday Gleaner that Powell was seen writhing in pain on the side­walk as two police­men, one with a pis­tol, and anoth­er with an assault rifle stood over him.

“The col­lec­tion of cas­ings is still a fre­quent com­plaint from cit­i­zens who observe offi­cers, post-shoot­ing inci­dents, col­lect­ing them. The agreed JCF/​INDECOM pro­to­cols are for the com­mis­sion to be noti­fied forth­with, and for the scene to be pre­served until INDECOM arrives,” added Campbell.

He agreed that in some instances, the police will have no choice but to pre­serve and pro­tect valu­ables from loss or theft, but argued that such actions must be record­ed and report­ed to INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors. So far this year, there have been 111 fatal police shoot­ings, with 11 of those occur­ring last month. INDECOM has report­ed that at least 92 mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces are before the courts in con­nec­tion with shoot­ing inci­dents.
They claimed it took min­utes for the cops to load the injured man and the bicy­cle in the back of a ser­vice pick­up and drove away. According to the alleged eye­wit­ness­es, while the cops were leav­ing the scene, they were stopped by a sec­ond group of cops who took the bicy­cle from the pick­up and placed it back on the bloody spot where Powell had been lying, while their col­leagues drove to the Kingston Public Hospital with the injured man.

Late last week, INDECOM’s assis­tant com­mis­sion­er, Hamish Campbell, declined to com­ment on its ear­ly inves­ti­ga­tion into Powell’s death, but he under­scored that tam­per­ing with crime scenes direct­ly affects its inves­ti­ga­tions. “Tampering with crime scenes will always be a prob­lem and will impede effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tions and the cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of events that occurred. This includes removal of the deceased, which is a com­mon prac­tice in Jamaica and not else­where,” said Campbell.
Credit: ://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20181021/indecom-urges-cops-stop-tampering-crime-scenes?fbclid=IwAR0Btv0uiZyijGMkYCCsM-zYmHDzh2Fa7X_1tvmrThGf6yPG-D9oHMsf0fo


So here’s some real per­spec­tive on this issue which is not dri­ven by hype, hyper­bole or the self-serv­ing grandios­i­ty we are used to see­ing com­ing out of the crime enhance­ment Terrence Williams Circus.

(1) Whether the head­line was defined by INDECOM or the Gleaner it makes no dif­fer­ence to me, igno­rance is bliss and I have no oblig­a­tion to suf­fer fools great­ly when they are mak­ing more fools.
The crim­i­nal sup­port­ing, crim­i­nal breed­ing INDECOM does not have a man­date to inves­ti­gate crime in Jamaica, that is with­in the remit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (or until such time the Chinese take over Jamaica and decides oth­er­wise).
INDECOM is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing fatal police shoot­ings, as such when they are called to vis­it a scene where mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces are forced to employ lethal force, INDECOM can­not des­ig­nate the scene a (CRIME SCENE).
Let me be clear, INDECOM has NO right, NONE, to declare a scene to which it is called to inves­ti­gate a police use of force a crime scene>
Scenes involv­ing Police use of lethal force are not [crime scenes] until incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence of wrong­do­ing emerges.
Any des­ig­na­tion to the con­trary is hyper­bol­ic, sen­sa­tion­al, and must be seen as direct attempts to prej­u­dice the minds of mem­bers of the pub­lic against their law enforce­ment offi­cers who risk life and limb to pro­tect them.

(2)In the case out­lined above the police were engaged in a use of force encounter with an offend­er who was armed with a fake gun. 
The police were called and respond­ed to what they believed was a real weapon.
Case closed.…
By eye­wit­ness accounts, it took only min­utes after the lethal encounter for the offi­cers to load the offend­er and his bicy­cle into their vehi­cle and dri­ve away.
(2a) Once offi­cers use lethal force they must assess the casu­al­ty, they did that. Once they real­ized he was still alive (there are no ambu­lances) their next oblig­a­tion is to get him to the hos­pi­tal.
The report­ing stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that ‑that is exact­ly what they embarked on doing.
On the arrival of a sec­ond police unit, they hand­ed over the bicy­cle to that unit to place it back on the scene, an attempt made with the great­est sin­cer­i­ty and inten­tion of com­ply­ing with the man­dates of the INDECOM act and their own train­ing, to pre­serve the scene in it’s most vir­gin state as best as is human­ly pos­si­ble.
(2b) As it relates to spent shells if the police are forced to leave the scene, to save lives and they col­lect the spent shells for the sake of account­abil­i­ty, where is the harm in that?

(3) Persons have report­ed that when they arrived on the scene short­ly after the explo­sions were heard told The Sunday Gleaner that Powell was seen writhing in pain on the side­walk as two police­men, one with a pis­tol, and anoth­er with an assault rifle stood over him.

Is it a crime for police offi­cers to stand over crim­i­nals whom they just shot?
Jamaica will have to make a deci­sion whether it wants to con­tin­ue as a haven for crim­i­nal­i­ty or take the req­ui­site steps to unshack­les itself from the chains of colo­nial­ist depen­den­cy and def­er­ence.
It will have to pack up Hamish Campbell and send him home and cause Terrence Williams to seek employ­ment chas­ing ambu­lances.

(4) The alleged removal of the deceased from the scene of shoot­ings in which law enforce­ment is involved.
Police offi­cers are not Doctors and nei­ther are the blood­suck­ing par­a­sites at INDECOM, as such the police have a duty, to make sure that all vic­tims of lethal force get to a com­pe­tent author­i­ty (hos­pi­tal) with a view to sav­ing lives.

INDECOM is focused on a cou­ple of things, (a) the agen­cy’s own sur­vival, as evi­dence mounts that it is doing far more harm than good. 
(b) That the agen­da of Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell is advanced, Saving lives is not a part of that agenda.

The man­date of the police is not based on any­one’s ego. Police offi­cers go out to pro­tect lives to pre­serve the peace and to pro­tect prop­er­ty.
No offi­cer goes out to take lives. 
Given Jamaica’s tox­ic anti-police envi­ron­ment it is a won­der that offi­cers expose them­selves in this cesspool of crime pro­tec­tion. 

Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell under­stand full well that as bot­tom-feed­ers, they can ful­ly exploit the igno­rance and cul­ture of crim­i­nal sup­port to fame and nation­al hon­or.
Venomous anti-police trolling is Jamaica’s largest growth indus­try, Campbell and Williams are mere­ly exploit­ing that to the fullest as so many before have and so many after them will. It is sim­ply the nature of the beast, they are not there to help Jamaica. Just ask Caroline Gomez, Mark Shields, and the oth­ers.
What is sad is when those in the media col­lude with these lying leech­es to deceive the peo­ple and march them back into servi­tude, which is exact­ly why Hamish Campbell is in Jamaica. 

You don’t have to like this Article but please share it, the men and women of the JCF needs all the sup­port they can get.
Lets not allow politi­cians and their lack­eys to destroy this beau­ti­ful lit­tle coun­try we call yaad


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Trevor Noah Urges Black People To Register As Republicans






Trevor Noah offered a hilar­i­ous scheme to fight vot­er sup­pres­sion on “The Daily Show” Thursday. Sure, it might sound mad, but just hear him out.

“Every black per­son in America needs to reg­is­ter as a Republican,” he said.

Noah used the guber­na­to­r­i­al race in Georgia between Democrat Stacey Abrams, attempt­ing to become the first black woman elect­ed gov­er­nor, and Republican Brian Kemp as his jump­ing-off point.

Kemp hap­pens to be Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state in charge of the elec­tion. He report­ed­ly has tens of thou­sands of vot­er reg­is­tra­tions on hold ― most­ly for black voters.

So, Noah fig­ured a lit­tle trick­ery might be in order
https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​r​e​v​o​r​-​n​o​a​h​-​s​c​h​e​m​e​-​v​o​t​e​r​-​s​u​p​p​r​e​s​s​i​o​n​_​u​s​_​5​b​c​9​9​e​6​f​e​4​b​0​d​3​8​b​5​8​7​6​e​1c6

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Stark Choices On November 6th, America As We Know It At Stake

The cap­i­tal dome Washington DC

Previous elec­tion cycles have gen­er­at­ed excite­ment for some Americans, for oth­ers elec­tions are noth­ing spe­cial, just anoth­er cycle of polit­i­cal ads and lying pan­der­ing politi­cians mak­ing the rounds.
In this cycle, how­ev­er, there is pal­pa­ble fear and a sense of dread, even fore­bod­ing.
Never before in mod­ern his­to­ry has so much rid­den on a sin­gle elec­tion.
On Immigration. Women’s Rights. Civil Rights. Voting Rights. Decency. The rule of law. How we treat the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble. And even whether we will have a democ­ra­cy after November 6th, 2018.


This cycle the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that many peo­ple who are able to vote will sit at home and not vote.
What this means is that they will effec­tive­ly sur­ren­der their deci­sion mak­ing to oth­ers. Those [oth­ers] usu­al­ly do not share their inter­est or val­ues.
Not vot­ing means that one has sur­ren­dered his or her right to self-deter­mi­na­tion. Nevertheless, they are among the first to com­plain when the inter­est of those who vot­ed take prece­dence over theirs.
Others would like to vote but can­not, and for those two groups, the results of the com­ing elec­tions will be the most con­se­quen­tial.


The Election of Donald J Trump to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States may have come as a shock to many, for oth­ers who were able to read the tea-leaves, not so much.
The medi­a’s fas­ci­na­tion with a two-bit con artiste and it’s inces­sant flir­ta­tions with him gave him the foun­da­tion and to a cer­tain degree, the legit­i­ma­cy he need­ed to enter politics.

The polit­i­cal class too was caught by sur­prise. One by one he dec­i­mat­ed them in 2016 until only he was left stand­ing.
Even then, the com­plic­it media con­tin­ued to give him wall-to-wall cov­er­age which enabled him to run his un-pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on a shoe­string bud­get and pull of the great­est polit­i­cal upset in our life­time.
Whether he did it all through is own devices or the Russians helped is almost imma­te­r­i­al at this point.
He has the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that’s what counts.

Trump nev­er hid the fact that he hat­ed Muslims. He talked about insti­tut­ing a Muslim ban if he was elect­ed.
He nev­er hid his hatred for Immigrants, he railed inces­sant­ly about what he called chain migra­tion and the visa lot­tery. Strawmen he cre­at­ed with­out a sin­gle iota knowl­edge how those pro­grams work. 
Like the absolute dunce he is, he spoke about the [visa lot­tery] and explains how the names of bad actors from oth­er coun­tries are placed in a bowl and win­ners drawn.

In his infan­tile mind, that is the only way he rec­on­ciles the idea of a [lot­tery], not the com­plex process in which peo­ple apply to the American Government and pay astro­nom­i­cal fees, whether they are suc­cess­ful or not and the American Government decides who comes in and who does­n’t. 


He nev­er hid his dis­dain for Mexicans. On the day he launched his cam­paign he glid­ed down that tacky gild­ed ele­va­tor berat­ing Mexicans as rapists, mur­der­ers, and drug deal­ers.
He nev­er hid his utter dis­re­spect for women, when con­front­ed by the FOX pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tive Megan Kelly about his dis­re­spect for women he flip­pant­ly said he was dis­re­spect­ful only to Rosie Odonell.
The next day he went on to talk about how Megan Kelly had blood com­ing from parts of her body in the most dis­gust­ing man­ner. 


He would lat­er be exposed in his own words, at his most dis­gust­ing­ly misog­y­nis­tic self, on the Hollywood access bus, telling Billy Bush how he delights in grab­bing women by the pussy.[sic]Trump nev­er hid his dis­dain for African Americans he asked Black Americans what did they have to lose, he told them how their lives were mis­er­able as they were get­ting mur­dered dai­ly, and their schools and their neigh­bor­hoods were shit­ty.

He nev­er both­ered to avail him­self to the real­i­ty that not all black peo­ple lived in depressed com­mu­ni­ties, are poor, or une­d­u­cat­ed.
He did not hide his desire to enact tax cuts for the rich, he said he want­ed to pass tax cuts and he want­ed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
On issue, after issue, Donald Trump told the nation his inten­tions, on the envi­ron­ment, on allow­ing the Dakota pipeline to pro­ceed he placed crit­i­cal water sources at risk all for the sake of oil derived from dirty tar sands which America does not even have exclu­sive rights to pur­chase.

Even as he dis­re­spects Native Americans by derid­ing them and plac­ing their inter­est and exis­tence in per­il, he has in the oval office, a por­trait of Andrew Jackson, the pres­i­dent who may have sin­gle-hand­ed­ly done the most harm to native Americans.


Trump is moti­vat­ed by hatred of Obama and his poli­cies but prob­a­bly, even more so, Donald Trump is moti­vat­ed by greed and the desire to acquire wealth.
His shal­low world­view has been shaped by priv­i­lege and enti­tle­ment, his poli­cies, where they may exist, are nar­row fly by night ideas he culls from oth­ers. Simply put, Trump lacks the intel­lect or the capac­i­ty to think through or artic­u­late a point of view out­side his nar­row, rapa­cious self-interest.

The cost of Donald Trump’s elec­tion to the Presidency of the United States has been vast­ly con­se­quen­tial in ways that I can­not begin to artic­u­late here, the dam­age will be gar­gan­tu­an far and wide out­side the United States.
The American Presidency always had some neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the rest of the world, even when a sit­ting pres­i­dent means well. It is the nature of the beast, big pow­er­ful coun­tries look after their inter­est and some­times those inter­est does not exact­ly line up with the inter­est of small­er less pow­er­ful ones.
Donald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy will leave deep cav­ernous fis­sures which will chal­lenge our plan­et’s resilience, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, far into the future.

As hor­rif­ic as Donald Trump is the Republican par­ty is equal­ly despi­ca­ble. The acts of vio­lence and vot­er sup­pres­sion are only a small part of the rot which has start­ed to take root across the coun­try.
In New York City, mem­bers of a right-wing white Supremacist bunch of thugs con­verged around and beat up a group of 3 men who were protest­ing their pres­ence.
New York City Police stood around and did noth­ing. Yes, New Yor City. 

In Texas, a field oper­a­tive to a Democratic can­di­date who went to a coun­ty office to deliv­er a let­ter on behalf of the can­di­date was ques­tioned about his par­ty affil­i­a­tion and prompt­ly arrest­ed once he revealed he was deliv­er­ing the let­ter on behalf of his boss a Democrat who was on the phone with him and heard the entire chill­ing encounter.

In Georgia, the Republican sec­re­tary of state Brian Kemp who is run­ning against Stacy Abrams an African American woman has lit­er­al­ly removed hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers from the rolls for infre­quent vot­ing and has held count­less oth­er reg­is­tra­tions on the flim­sy excuse that names may miss a hyphen or a name may have been incor­rect­ly spelled. 
Needless to say, the vast major­i­ty of the names were removed from Gwinnett County, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly African-American county.

In this case, the Republican Kemp is allowed to play ref­er­ee in a game in which he is engaged. As such he gets to remove from the vot­er rolls, the peo­ple he knows would be vot­ing for his oppo­nent.
And just in case you for­got we are talk­ing about America a place where some pub­lic offi­cials and many cit­i­zens do not mind throw­ing around the term banana-repub­lic as a pejo­ra­tive in describ­ing oth­er coun­tries.
Republicans have tried to steal elec­tions and stop peo­ple from vot­ing from as a far back as the 1960’s when the Party was tak­en over by white men who ran from the Democratic par­ty after Lyndon Johnson signed the civ­il rights and vot­ing rights acts.

The vot­ing rights act served in some way to quell the onslaught of attacks against African American’s right to vote until the Republican Supreme Court decid­ed in a 5 – 4 deci­sion in Shelby VS Holder, that the law worked too well, as a result, it was no longer nec­es­sary.
In a crush­ing dis­sent Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote:

1. “The sad irony of today’s deci­sion lies in its utter fail­ure to grasp why the [Voting Rights Act] has proven effec­tive … Throwing out pre­clear­ance when it has worked and is con­tin­u­ing to work to stop dis­crim­i­na­to­ry changes is like throw­ing away your umbrel­la in a rain­storm because you are not get­ting wet.”

2. “When con­fronting the most con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly invid­i­ous form of dis­crim­i­na­tion, and the most fun­da­men­tal right in our demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem, Congress’ pow­er to act is at its height.”

3. “Congress approached the 2006 reau­tho­riza­tion of the VRA with great care and seri­ous­ness. The same can­not be said of the Court’s opin­ion today. The Court makes no gen­uine attempt to engage with the mas­sive leg­isla­tive record that Congress assem­bled. Instead, it relies on increas­es in vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and turnout as if that were the whole sto­ry. See supra, at 18 – 19. Without even iden­ti­fy­ing a stan­dard of review, the Court dis­mis­sive­ly brush­es off argu­ments based on “data from the record,” and declines to enter the “debat[e about] what [the] record shows”…One would expect more from an opin­ion strik­ing at the heart of the Nation’s sig­nal piece of civ­il-rights legislation.”

4. “Just as build­ings in California have a greater need to be earthquake­ proofed, places where there is a greater racial polar­iza­tion in vot­ing have a greater need for pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures to pre­vent pur­pose­ful race dis­crim­i­na­tion.
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

The events I out­lined here does not begin to scratch the sur­face, no arti­cle, or book can ful­ly begin to explain the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty and dys­func­tion which has come to the fore since Donald Trump moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
There is no telling where this will end, nev­er­the­less, those who can vote bet­ter get up and go vote come November 6th.
The right to vote may very well be on the bal­lot this cycle and I do not mean just for black peo­ple.


Even a mas­sive turnout will not guar­an­tee a Democratic vic­to­ry, thanks to ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts which all but guar­an­tees Republican wins.
This was made pos­si­ble because Democratic vot­ers seem to believe all they have to do is vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.
Older Republican white peo­ple vote, so even in Blue Democratic states, it is not out of the ordi­nary to see state and coun­ty leg­is­la­tures dom­i­nat­ed by Republicans.
That is the way house dis­tricts get sliced and diced by Republicans to ensure they stay in office and enact their rev­o­lu­tion­ary racist ideas.
The choice is clear vote and change some of the tox­i­c­i­ty. 
Stay­ing home?
Do not complain.



by

Ron DeSantis Rose By Trafficking In Racist, Islamophobic Conspiracy Theories

He has defend­ed the Three-Fifths Compromise around slav­ery and said ISIS may be recruit­ing from Black Lives Matter.

By Amanda Terkel

The morn­ing after Florida’s pri­maries, Rep. Ron DeSantis ― the state’s new­ly cho­sen GOP can­di­date for gov­er­nor ― went on nation­al tele­vi­sion and used a racist dog-whis­tle to com­ment on his opponent.

“The last thing we need to do is to mon­key this up by try­ing to embrace a social­ist agen­da with huge tax increas­es and bank­rupt­ing the state,” DeSantis said of his Democratic chal­lenger, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who is black. 

The com­ment shouldn’t have been that sur­pris­ing. DeSantis tried to be the most pro-Trump can­di­date in the GOP pri­ma­ry, even run­ning an ad about how he teach­es his kids to love every­thing about Donald Trump, and the pres­i­dent has used plen­ty of his own racist dog-whis­tles. 

But beyond his embrace of the pres­i­dent, DeSantis has made a name for him­self by pro­mot­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that are trum­pet­ed by the rad­i­cal right and play into racial stereo­types. On four occa­sions, he has spo­ken at con­fer­ences orga­nized by a con­ser­v­a­tive activist who has tout­ed white Americans’ role in free­ing black peo­ple from slav­ery and said that “the country’s only seri­ous race war” is against white people.

“Liberal media are doing every­thing that can to help Andrew Gillum win this race and that includes writ­ing sto­ries that elic­it racial­ly charged fears and emo­tions. We not only reject your sto­ry­line, we con­demn your entire nar­ra­tive,” said Stephen Lawson, DeSantis’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions director.

Here are some oth­er con­spir­a­cies DeSantis has embraced:

ISIS may recruit from Black Lives Matter protests. 

In 2016, DeSantis agreed with Fox Business host Neil Cavuto that he was wor­ried the ter­ror­ist group ISIS could be recruit­ing from Black Lives Matter protests. 

“I do wor­ry about it, in the sense that reach­ing out to them doesn’t even have to involve bro­ker­ing a meet­ing between some ter­ror­ist recruiter and some­body who’s dis­af­fect­ed,” DeSantis said on Sept. 22, 2016. “It could sim­ply be expos­ing peo­ple to dif­fer­ent pro­pa­gan­da that you see on the inter­net, on social media sites. … So it’s def­i­nite­ly a prob­lem, and ISIS I think has proven them­selves to be pret­ty sophis­ti­cat­ed at cap­i­tal­iz­ing on some peo­ple who have some under­ly­ing issues.”

The Founding Fathers weren’t racist. 

In 2011, DeSantis wrote a book called Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama. In it, he excus­es­the Three-Fifths Compromise, which count­ed a black per­son as only three-fifths of a whole per­son to deter­mine con­gres­sion­al representation.

DeSantis defends the Founding Fathers for agree­ing to the com­pro­mise because “count­ing slaves as less than a full per­son for pur­pos­es of rep­re­sen­ta­tion ben­e­fit­ted anti-slav­ery states.” 

Allowing slaves to be count­ed as three-fifths of a white per­son gave slave states extra rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­out hav­ing to actu­al­ly allow black peo­ple to vote. 

Islamophobic conspiracy groups have merit.

Over the years, DeSantis has pro­mot­ed him­self with the help of fig­ures who ped­dle Islamophobic rhetoric and poli­cies. In 2014, he did an inter­view on Frank Gaffney’s radio pro­gram. Gaffney found­ed the Center for Security Policy, which the Southern Poverty Law Center char­ac­ter­izes as “a con­spir­a­cy-ori­ent­ed mouth­piece for the grow­ing anti-Muslim move­ment in the United States.” In 2017, DeSantis spoke at the annu­al con­fer­ence of ACT for America, anoth­er group that push­es anti-Muslim con­spir­a­cy theories. 

DeSantis has also pushed to des­ig­nate the Muslim Brotherhood a ter­ror­ist group, an idea the Trump admin­is­tra­tion sup­ports and peo­ple like Gaffney champion.

As Shadi Hamid at the Brookings Institution has not­ed, “There is quite lit­er­al­ly not a sin­gle American expert on the Muslim Brotherhood who sup­ports des­ig­na­tion. Moreover, there is no plau­si­ble argu­ment to be made for label­ing the group a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, at least accord­ing to the rel­e­vant legal cri­te­ria, as Will McCants and Benjamin Wittes lay out. They sum it up quite well: des­ig­na­tion ‘would be illegal.”

American values are declining in the “age of Obama.”

In 2008, con­ser­v­a­tives seized on a clip of a black woman named Peggy Joseph say­ing that if then-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama won, “I won’t have to wor­ry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to wor­ry about pay­ing my mort­gage. You know, if I help him, he’s going to help me.” 

There’s noth­ing remark­able about Joseph’s com­ments. People always vote for politi­cians because they believe they will make the coun­try ― and often, their own per­son­al lives ― bet­ter. Certain can­di­dates may have poli­cies that could put more mon­ey in their pock­ets or lead to bet­ter representation.

But DeSantis talked about Joseph ― and Obama’s cam­paign ― as if they were rad­i­cal depar­tures from “the prin­ci­ples that the coun­try was found­ed on.”

In a 2011 speech, he said that with the Founding Fathers, “you think of things like, ‘Give me lib­er­ty or give me death’” and “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

But, he added, in the “age of Obama … you have peo­ple like that woman who vot­ed for Obama, who said since Obama was pres­i­dent, she wouldn’t have to wor­ry about putting gas in her car or pay­ing her mortgage.”

YouTube player

The right wing has long tried to claim that Obama secret­ly sup­ports com­mu­nism ― an un-American val­ue, of course. In his 2011 book, DeSantis gives cre­dence to some of these the­o­ries. He writes that Obama had a “men­tor­ship” with “Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American com­mu­nist writer with bit­ter­ly anti-American views.” 

“He cer­tain­ly would not have dis­cussed Davis in Dreams From My Father had Davis’ coun­cil failed to make an impact on him,” DeSantis wrote.

The Washington Post looked at Davis and his rela­tion­ship with Obama, and wrote that Davis “was indeed asso­ci­at­ed with the Communist Party” but was not a “hard-core Communist who spied for Soviet lead­ers. He was crit­i­cal of American soci­ety, but not America as a country.”

DeSantis, in his book, also implied that Obama’s moth­er was a com­mu­nist. He notes that one of her high school teach­ers said she would ask ques­tions around the Cold War like “What’s so good about cap­i­tal­ism? What’s wrong with com­mu­nism? What’s good about com­mu­nism?” He also cit­ed the fact that one of her class­mates referred to her as a “fel­low trav­el­er,” which is some­times used to describe some­one who is com­mu­nist. There’s no proof Obama’s moth­er was a com­mu­nist either. sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed here: https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​r​o​n​-​d​e​s​a​n​t​i​s​-​r​a​c​i​s​t​-​i​s​l​a​m​o​p​h​o​b​i​c​-​c​o​n​s​p​i​r​a​c​y​-​t​h​e​o​r​i​e​s​_​u​s​_​5​b​c​4​c​a​8​0​e​4​b​0​1​a​0​1​d​6​8​d​4​daa


by

A Little Less Dogma All Around Doesn’t Hurt

Macabre scenes from that fate­ful train crash.

One of the prob­lems fac­ing our coun­try is the inabil­i­ty of peo­ple to think out­side the box, or even allow them­selves to enter­tain oth­er ideas out­side the opin­ions they ini­tial­ly formed on any range of sub­ject mat­ters.
We form opin­ions, and noth­ing else will change what we made our­selves believe, facts become mere points to be countered.

Scenes from the crash



In a September 24th, 2018 Jamaica Observer Article titled: Railway Corp sup­ports devel­op­ment of Kendal crash site, Chairperson for the Kendal Crash Committee at the Municipal Corporation, Angella Edwards, said that the vision is that vis­i­tors to the pro­posed memorial/​recreational park will be able to park their vehi­cles and take a rail car to the area. 
Find the link below.
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​o​b​s​e​r​v​e​r​-​c​e​n​t​r​a​l​-​n​e​w​s​/​r​a​i​l​w​a​y​-​c​o​r​p​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​s​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​-​o​f​-​k​e​n​d​a​l​-​c​r​a​s​h​-​s​i​t​e​_​1​4​5​0​4​1​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

Graphic, yet indeli­ble imagery from that fate­ful event.



Not a bad idea for an actu­al area where vis­i­tors to a shrine could hon­or the dead who fate­ful­ly lost their lives in that hor­ri­ble crash. But why are Jamaicans so pre­oc­cu­pied with parks?
So I flip­pant­ly wrote the fol­low­ing in response to the [park sug­ges­tion]

ME
Memorial/​recreational park !!!
In oth­er words, build a park for sound-sys­tems to blare and semi-nude bod­ies to gyrate.
Why not?
Nothing trumps the need to be enter­tained, not even a solemn event as the Kendal crash.


Like bait on a line, it did not take long for one par­tic­u­lar fish to take me on indi­rect­ly.

JamaicanDawta Mike Beckles 

Castleton Gardens & Emancipation Park are recre­ation­al parks and I don’t see what you describe there. Why would you think that the Kendal site would be dif­fer­ent?Ahitschoo ah kun­tri it deh?

No dear­est, the idea of a recre­ation­al park is okay, but in a trag­ic event like the Kendal train crash in which over two hun­dred peo­ple lost their lives in that sin­gle event don’t you think that a mon­u­ment is more fitting?

These dra­mat­ic images say much more than words ever could.


Then came the real smart ones…

Nikanta JamaicanDawta • 
Nikanta speak­ing to me through some­one else.

I was at a loss when I read the com­ment too was too dumb­struck to respond. Because my thought is that this thing should have been con­cep­tu­al­ize decades ago. At the time when this occurred it was the worst train dis­as­ter of that time with over 200 per­sons los­ing their lives dozens of fam­i­lies affect­ed to date. I often heard my grand­moth­er lament about that inci­dent my neigh­bour had lost his moth­er and yet out­side of that grow­ing up I hard­ly ever heard any­thing for­mal­ly about the Kendal Crash we rever­ie noth­ing in this coun­try that’s why our relics and most of our his­toric buildings/​monuments look like crap.


Now after cor­rect­ing some of the mis­spellings I responded.

ME

Instead of a “RECREATIONAL PARK”, how about a fit­ting mon­u­ment which appro­pri­ate­ly hon­ors the dead, and takes into account the grief of the peo­ple at the time this unfor­tu­nate event occurred?
I too heard about it, the gory details and all, I would sug­gest that we have a fit­ting mon­u­ment to remem­ber the event by, not a recre­ation­al park.

JamaicanDawta Mike Beckles • 

I agree with you on this one, Mike. But yuh no know how di ting go: appeal to which paat yuh get votes.

ME 
Precisely!

So far so good right?
Naaaa.

Nikanta Mike Beckles 

So the mon­u­ment can­not be placed in the Park giv­ing it a more tran­quil set­ting while you stand there reflect­ing.? We so small mind­ed when it comes to things of sub­stance but we have no qualms about politi­cians spend­ing our tax dol­lars on their own friv­o­lous pur­suits.
.….….….….….….….….….….….….….
Actually, that is not an unrea­son­able posi­tion to take but I am think­ing the cost would prob­a­bly be astro­nom­i­cal so let’s focus on an edi­fice which hon­ors those who lost their lives.
So how about some­thing like the Lincoln Memorial, how about some­thing like the Holocaust muse­um, the civ­il war memo­r­i­al, the African-American Museum.
I don’t know some­thing sub­stan­tive, like a pres­i­den­tial library, just not a park.

ME

Okay, it seems that your brain, what’s left of it, is a stuck in a per­ma­nent a state of [park], hence your obses­sion and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with parks.
Can you think out­side what the stu­pid politi­cians pro­pose for a change despite the blinkers?

Nikanta Mike Beckles 

FYI You sir seem to have less of a clue as to what a brain actu­al­ly does and I am pre­sum­ing it has do with your lack of oxy­gen intake after all there isn’t much decent green spaces left in this coun­try to assist you with that (which is what I am more in agree­ment with so if you want to call it a MEMORIAL PARK…what the hell ever). I for one don’t give a hoot about what politi­cians rec­om­mend and clear­ly, you don’t give a hoot about any­thing real­ly except to open that space in your face.

Again I had to cor­rect the mis­spellings but anyway.

Now he/​she went there, (smile). 
Okay, I don’t mind dis­cussing issues but when you are los­ing and you decide to engage in ad hominem attacks, I take off the gloves.
Really?

ME…

The nuclear response.


I’ll tell you a lit­tle sto­ry after which it will be radio silence, my time is far too valu­able.
In parts of Africa, they would catch mon­keys by cut­ting a lit­tle hole in a pump­kin, enough to accom­mo­date the mon­key’s paw.
They would then use a spe­cial stick to loosen the gut of the pump­kin and leave it where the mon­keys would find it.
The mon­key would force, it’s paw into the squash and scoop all the entrails it’s lit­tle paw could hold and it would not let go.
The only prob­lem is that with a paw full of pump­kin entrails, the mon­key was unable to get its paw out of the tiny hole, but the mon­key would not let go of the prize and so it went, the trap­per would catch the mon­key, paw still trapped in the pump­kin.
If only it let go of what it ini­tial­ly grabbed.……

You are that (mon­key)

by

Trump Administration Plans Crackdown On Protests Outside White House

The admin­is­tra­tion has sug­gest­ed it could charge ‘event man­age­ment’ costs for protests and close 80% of the sidewalks

The White House

Donald Trump has fre­quent­ly and false­ly crowed about the idea of so-called paid protesters, includ­ing most recent­ly the sex­u­al assault sur­vivors who con­front­ed sen­a­tors in the lead up to the Brett Kavanaugh con­fir­ma­tion. Now his admin­is­tra­tion may be try­ing to turn that con­cept on its head, by requir­ing cit­i­zens to pay to be able to protest, among oth­er affronts to the first amendment.

Under the pro­pos­al intro­duced by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in August, the admin­is­tra­tion is look­ing to close 80% of the side­walks sur­round­ing the White House, and has sug­gest­ed that it could charge “event man­age­ment” costs, for demonstrations.

Currently the National Park Service is able to recoup costs for spe­cial events, but not spon­ta­neous protests like the ones that typ­i­cal­ly take place in Lafayette Park across from the White House. These charges could include the cost of erect­ing bar­ri­ers, clean­ing fees, repairs to grass, per­mit fees and the salaries of offi­cial per­son­nel on hand to mon­i­tor such demon­stra­tions, all tal­lied at the dis­cre­tion of the police.

Naturally, civ­il lib­er­ties groups con­sid­er the pro­pos­als an affront to the rights guar­an­teed under the first amend­ment. As the ACLU notes, such fees “could make mass protests like Martin Luther King Jr’s his­toric 1963 March on Washington and its ‘I have a dream’ speech too expen­sive to happen”.

During the Vietnam War the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment attempt­ed to impose sim­i­lar bar­ri­ers to cit­i­zens freely assem­bling in protest and were sued by the ACLU. In their rul­ing the courts reassert­ed the fact that “the use of parks for pub­lic assem­bly and air­ing of opin­ions is his­toric in our demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety, and one of its car­di­nal values”.

The White House side­walk, Lafayette Park, and the Ellipse were unique sites for the exer­cise of those rights, they ruled, and there­fore they could not “accord def­er­ence to an exec­u­tive approach to the use of the White House side­walk that is root­ed in a bias against expres­sive conduct…”

The National Park Service has attempt­ed to jus­ti­fy the pro­pos­al by point­ing out that large protests, like the Women’s March, over­tax their abil­i­ties, and place a heavy cost on the gov­ern­ment. One might argue when it comes to pre­serv­ing our right to protest no cost is too high.

The pub­lic has until 15 October to com­ment on the plans. https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​o​c​t​/​1​2​/​t​r​u​m​p​-​a​d​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​p​l​a​n​s​-​c​r​a​c​k​d​o​w​n​-​o​n​-​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​s​-​o​u​t​s​i​d​e​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​use

by

Ye Loon

You sim­ply can­not make this up.

YouTube player

Kanye West, with his bizarre White House meet­ing Thursday with Donald Trump, gave fresh proof that the line between celebri­ty and politi­cian is tru­ly no longer a thing.

West, sit­ting across from the Trump at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, went into a near­ly 10-minute speech, wear­ing Yeezy boots and his famous “Make America Great Again” hat.

Here are some of the wildest com­ments West made dur­ing his soliloquy:

1. “This is our pres­i­dent, he has to be the fresh­est, the fly­est, the fly­est planes, the best fac­to­ries and we have to make our core be in power.”

2. Trump “might not have expect­ed to have a crazy moth­er­fuck­er like Kanye West sup­port­ing him.”

3. West said he would poten­tial­ly run for pres­i­dent “only after 2024.”

4. “I love this guy.” [Followed up with a hug.]

5. “The prob­lem is ille­gal guns, ille­gal guns is the prob­lem. Not legal guns. We have the right to bear arms.”

6. “Let’s stop wor­ry­ing about the future, all we have is today. … Trump is on his hero’s jour­ney right now.”

7. “There was some­thing about when I put this hat on it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman, that’s my favorite super­hero, you made a Superman cape for me.”

8. “One of the moves I love that lib­er­als try to do ― a lib­er­al would try to con­trol a black per­son with the con­cept of racism because they know we are a very proud, emo­tion­al people.”

9. Talking about the Constitution’s 13th Amendment, which for­bids slav­ery: “Why would you keep some­thing around that’s a trap door? If you’re build­ing a floor, the Constitution is the base of our indus­try, of our coun­try, of our com­pa­ny. Would you build a trap door that if you mess up and acci­den­tal­ly some­thing hap­pens, you fall and you end up next to the Unabomber? You got to remove all that trap door out of the relationship.”

10. “I think the way the uni­verse works is per­fect. We don’t have 13 floors, do we?”

11. “Time is a myth.”

12. “You are tast­ing a fine wine. It has com­plex notes to it.”

13. “My dad and my mom sep­a­rat­ed, so there was not a lot of male ener­gy in my home, and also I’m mar­ried to a fam­i­ly where, you know, there’s not a lot of male ener­gy. It’s beau­ti­ful though.”

14. “I love Hillary. I love every­one, but the cam­paign ‘I’m with her’ just didn’t make me feel — as a guy.”

Trump said at one point that West “can speak for me any time he wants. He’s a smart cook­ie. He gets it.”

When West was fin­ished speak­ing, Trump told the reporters around them: “I tell you what ― that was pret­ty impres­sive. That was quite something.”

West respond­ed: “It was from the soul. I just chan­neled it.”

Another wild thing that hap­pened is that the entire world learned that West’s iPhone pass­word is 000000. He typed it into his phone in front of live TV cameras.

White House press sec­re­tary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the meet­ing ear­li­er this week, say­ing that “West is com­ing to the White House to have lunch with President Trump and he will also meet with Jared Kushner. Topics of dis­cus­sions will include man­u­fac­tur­ing resur­gence in America, prison reform, how to pre­vent gang vio­lence, and what can be done to reduce vio­lence in Chicago.” 

Last month, West appeared on “Saturday Night Live” wear­ing the red MAGA hat and pro­mot­ing Trump. After the show end­ed, he treat­ed the stu­dio audi­ence to a pro-Trump, anti-Democrat rant that was booed and lat­er slammed by cast mem­ber Pete Davidson as“one of the worse things I’ve ever seen work­ing here.”

West, hus­band of real­i­ty TV star Kim Kardashian, has been extreme­ly vocal about his enthu­si­asm for the pres­i­dent, fre­quent­ly post­ing about Trump on social media.

headshot

Jenna Amatulli

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SOE’s And ZOSO’s Lacks Necessary Viscosity Needed In Crime Fight



The roll­out of armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers and the blan­ket­ing of com­mu­ni­ties like Grange Hill In Westmoreland with secu­ri­ty per­son­nel bod­ies are cool optics and all, It may even be spec­tac­u­lar to some peo­ple who have nev­er seen a spec­ta­cle like that in those parts of the coun­try. 
In fact, the mas­sive roll­out of gov­ern­men­tal pow­er as it is may even save some lives as local shot­tas are forced to lay low for a while until they fig­ure out the logis­tics of mov­ing around unde­tect­ed to ply their macabre trade.

Ultimately though, I believe like every­one else the gov­ern­ment knows that this strat­e­gy wears thing real­ly fast. The bod­ies of police offi­cers and sol­diers alike begin to grow tired and weary, and crim­i­nals even­tu­al­ly adapt to the secu­ri­ty pres­ence and fig­ure out ways around them.
There is a prece­dent for this, despite the mas­sive deploy­ment in St James, mur­ders dis­si­pat­ed in some areas but flared up in oth­ers, and occurred even in the areas of the state of emergency(SOE).
I hate to say “I told you so” but Stevie Wonder could have seen that com­ing.


Sure the Administration has to do what­ev­er it can to stem the blood­let­tings. Failure to do so would amount to an abdi­ca­tion of its core func­tion.
Unlike the Opposition PNP which crit­i­cizes the SOE’s and ZOSO’s ini­ti­at­ed by the admin­is­tra­tion sim­ply for the sake of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, my response is about sustainability.



Many years ago I accom­pa­nied a friend to a place in the St Ann hills. I drove my pre­cious lit­tle VW Golf which was leak­ing engine oil from an engine which had long past its prime. Unmindful of the calami­ty we were plac­ing our­selves in, we went any­way, despite the oil leak and the clat­ter and clunk from a dying engine.
We had a grand time and lat­er that night we decid­ed to head back to Kingston.
I start­ed my old jalopy and the clank­ing sound­ed loud­er than it did ear­li­er that day. We got out of the car and looked under­neath where all of the oil made a mean­der­ing pat­tern in the red St Ann dust. The last guy who looked at the oil leak had for­got­ten to tight­en the drain plug.
There was no ser­vice sta­tion around and we had no engine oil.

I thought about using cook­ing oil as a sub­sti­tute after plug­ging the drain with cloth and oth­er stuff but the only shop opened at that time of the night had no cook­ing oil. A griz­zled old reg­u­lar stand­ing near­by sug­gest­ed we use “Syrup.”.….…… >Syrup?
The lady at the shop had syrup, so straw­ber­ry syrup it was.
The syrup had enough vis­cos­i­ty to take us to Kingston. I can just imag­ine the par­ty those engine parts had at the sweet treat, nev­er­the­less, the sweet treat had to be purged from the engine and replaced with the actu­al stuff which is guar­an­teed to pro­duce the desired results.
So back to the less tasty engine oil went my old Golf, sor­ry engine parts the par­ty is over.

The ini­tial sug­ar rush to the cit­i­zens who are delight­ed to see gov­ern­ment forces, wears thin real quick when their move­ments are con­strained, busi­ness­es are forced to close ear­ly and par­ties become a thing of the past.
I am not crit­i­ciz­ing the admin­is­tra­tion for doing what it must, a‑la these stop-gap mea­sures. The polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion cer­tain­ly has no moral author­i­ty and def­i­nite­ly no stand­ing based on its prece­dent of fail­ure. When the PNP crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment as it has been doing, it makes its motives rather sus­pect, as it has been com­plic­it in the crim­i­nal­iz­ing and destruc­tion of our culture.



So what is the solu­tion?
The solu­tion lies not in the show of force but in a res­olute show of resolve begin­ning with new laws.
Let the bleed­ing heart frauds who opine on every issue from behind their grilled for­ti­fi­ca­tions chat to their heart’s con­tent, that’s what they do.
Let them pon­tif­i­cate about human rights and let them yap about poli­cies and pro­to­cols befit­ting Scandinavia.
The Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to secure the nation, and Jamaica cer­tain­ly isn’t Scandinavia.

The great­est threat to the nation’s secu­ri­ty is not the lit­tle-dis­joint­ed gangs run­ning around with Kalashnikov rifles, it is the pon­tif­i­cat­ing frauds who shape pub­lic pol­i­cy with data and direc­tion they pull out of their col­lec­tive ass­es.
There must be a strength­en­ing of the nation’s gun laws, as the secu­ri­ty forces bat­tle to find the weapons those with the pre­dis­po­si­tion to bring guns into the coun­try find new ways to avoid detec­tion.
The guns the secu­ri­ty forces recov­er must, there­fore, be seen as a mere frac­tion of the weapons and ammu­ni­tion flood­ing the coun­try from the United States, Hatia and Colombia via the drug trade.

PM Andrew Holness



The fight must be a gov­ern­ment to Government inter­ac­tion.
As a young police offi­cer, I spent count­less hours in the bush­es of Westmoreland and oth­er parts of the coun­try destroy­ing Ganga fields because Ronald Reagan want­ed then destroyed.
Jamaican Ganga was get­ting into the United States and many Jamaicans were get­ting rich from the weed.
Jamaican gangs across the United States had used their new found wealth to cre­ate may­hem on the streets of many US cities, it was not enough to make mon­ey they embarked on a sys­tem of wan­ton vio­lence nev­er before expe­ri­enced in cities like New York and as far away as Anchorage Alaska.
The United States took the nec­es­sary steps to cor­rect the mad­ness through the pas­sage of laws like the RICO statute and the “three strikes you are out”, laws.
Many groups crit­i­cized those laws and they admit­ted­ly weren’t per­fect, but they worked. Problems with those laws arose when law-enforce­ment and pros­e­cu­tors chose to inject race and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions into their appli­ca­tions.
Nevertheless, the unavoid­able con­sen­sus is that those laws worked to remove those threats from the equa­tion. 

It is now time for Jamaica to demand that the United States work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Jamaican law enforce­ment, not just to stop the guns com­ing in, but to trace the ship­ments from the US to their sources and bring the ship­pers to jus­tice.
Jamaican law enforce­ment must also exer­cise bet­ter inves­tiga­tive tech­niques which are not con­fined just to the recov­ery of the ship­ment and the adren­a­line derived from know­ing those weapons will nev­er reach the hands of mur­der­ous thugs. They must be focused more on tech­niques which fol­low ship­ments to those who receive them.

Even if the fore­gone is insti­tut­ed, those who flout the nation’s laws and wreak hav­oc on the soci­ety can sim­ply walk out on bail when arrest­ed. Jamaican judges are mini-gods account­able to them­selves.
Unless the Bail Act is redone it’s all for naught.
Subsequently, there must be leg­isla­tive changes which take from the hands of con­flict­ed judges the abil­i­ty to grant bail for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes. 
Yea, yea, guilty until proven inno­cent balder­dash, tell that to the vic­tims of vio­lent crimes and their fam­i­lies.
Tell that to those who had their loved ones snatched away from them because some punk has a gun and want to demon­strate his pow­er.
Tell that to the moth­ers who see their daugh­ters vio­lat­ed corpse lying in bush­es because some moron decid­ed that no meant yes.

Before a nation builds out its ideas of a mod­ern soci­ety and embarks on the per­fec­tion of the rights and priv­i­leges its inhab­i­tants desire and to which they are enti­tled, it has to do the hard work of first cre­at­ing a nation in which the rule of law is sacro­sanct. 
That hard work begins with a con­sti­tu­tion and a set of laws which pro­tects the inno­cent and pun­ish­es the guilty.
As long as Jamaica con­tin­ues to allow the unpun­ished assault of the weak and inno­cent and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tects the rights of the guilty there will be no turn around from this dilem­ma the nation faces. 






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Soldier Busted With Illegal Weapon/​ammo

The police are report­ing that a team of offi­cers arrest­ed and charged a JDF sol­dier, 26-year-old Orane Samuels and seized a 9MM Pistol S/​N G23151 with a mag­a­zine and twelve (12) 9mm cartridges.

Samuels

Officers report­ed that they were con­duct­ing rou­tine enquires and patrol in the Crescent dis­trict area of St Catherine when Samuels was spot­ted act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly. 
He was stopped and searched and the weapon tak­en from his waist­band.

According to the police, their inves­ti­ga­tions have revealed that the Soldier has been in pos­ses­sion of the weapon since the peri­od between 2015 and 2016, as he claimed to have found it at Logan Lane in Linstead dur­ing that time.
The Military was informed.

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Republicans Perpetuated A Monumental Fraud The Consequences Will Be Everlasting

Fifty-one forty-eight, (51−48 ) the final vote of the United States Senate led by Republicans.
The vote to ele­vate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was straight Party line with the excep­tion of West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin vot­ing [Yea] with the Republicans and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski vot­ing no.
Pivotal to the process of Kavanaugh’s ascen­dan­cy was the hope that Maine’s wishy-washy, hand-wring­ing Republican Senator Susan Collins would be a poten­tial no.


From the off­set, those opposed to Kavanaugh hung their hats on two male sen­a­tors. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona.
Both men are staunch Conservatives who vote lock­step with their par­ty on issue after issue, both have had a luke­warm to a frigid rela­tion­ship with Donald Trump and both are not seek­ing re-elec­tion to the Senate.

The hope­fuls were of the opin­ion that both men were free to stand out and stand for some­thing, that some­thing being with Democrats in oppo­si­tion to the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion. 
Being uncon­strained from not hav­ing to face the rad­i­cal right-wing vot­ers in their respec­tive states, many were hope­ful that at least one of the two men, Jeff Flake would be a sav­ior in what they con­strued to be an exis­ten­tial fight for the soul of the supreme court and for America.

But more than Flake and Corker, women across the nation, uneasy about the prospect of Roe V Wade with a poten­tial Justice Kavanaugh on the high­est court, looked to Murkowski and Collins, two female US Senators whom they believed were ami­able or open to rea­son.

Throughout the tumul­tuous process, Susan Collins played Susan Collins to a “T” tak­ing both sides of the issue, say­ing that Dr. Ford deserves to be heard while at the time say­ing that Brett Kavanaugh gave her cer­tain assur­ances that Roe V Wade is set­tled law. 
The wishy-washy Maine US Senator was in her ele­ment, pre­tend­ing to care about wom­en’s issues while rev­el­ing in the idea that the eyes of the nation were on her.

Susan Collins


Senator Murkowski kept how she would vote to her­self, many of her con­stituents flew down from Alaska to lob­by their sen­a­tor to vote against Brett Kavanaugh, as did many Maine vot­ers to lob­by Susan Collins.
Jeff Flake, seem­ing con­flict­ed as to how to vote, vot­ed to move the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion out of com­mit­tee, on con­di­tion that there was one final one-week of inves­ti­ga­tions by the FBI regard­ing the alle­ga­tions made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Brett Kavanaugh

But any­one with the slight­est idea of the way inves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed knew right away that that was a hoax.
There can be wide para­me­ters placed around how long an inves­ti­ga­tion [may] take, but to sug­gest that any mean­ing­ful fol­lowup inves­ti­ga­tion must begin and be con­clud­ed with­in a week is essen­tial­ly per­pet­u­at­ing a fraud on the coun­try.

Chris Coons, Delaware’s Democratic US Senator and friend of Jeff Flake believed every word of his friends cha­rade when he asked for a week more so that the FBI could check out the claims of Doctor Christine Blasey Ford.
Little did Coons know that Flake’s play was noth­ing more than a ploy to give cov­er to Republicans to cut off debate and force the vote to put Kavanaugh on the court.

Jeff Flake


Flake played right into Trump and Mitch McConnell’s hands. Trump would ulti­mate­ly lim­it the scope and reach of the Investigations while a trun­cat­ed report would give lever­age to Republicans who would then argue that the FBI had cleared Kavanaugh because there was noth­ing to Dr. Ford’s claims.
It was a ter­rif­ic sleigh of hand which gave the Democrats tem­po­rary respite but a ter­ri­ble heart­burn in the end.

Jeff Flake may or may not have pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions but his part in that plot was mas­ter­ful. He came off as a states­man who believed in process and pro­to­col but a clos­er look reveals his move was a cyn­i­cal ploy which ulti­mate­ly gave Republicans the cov­er they need­ed to close out debate on the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion.

More women came out and accused Brett Kavanaugh of improp­er sex­u­al behav­ior, more cor­rob­o­rat­ing wit­ness­es emerged beg­ging the FBI to con­tact them. We have a sto­ry to tell they claimed.
Unfortunately, the FBI had no inter­est in their truths, no inter­est in what they had to say.
Kavanaugh, cried, lied, and threat­ened Democratic sen­a­tors and the nation. His tem­pera­ment was a clas­sic exam­ple of a bel­liger­ent drunk, but none of that gave Republicans pause. Instead, they dou­bled down on their nom­i­nee.
When the bat­tles are being waged around a wom­an’s right to chose, as they sure­ly will be, let it be remem­bered that Lisa Murkowski stood tall, the Republican men act­ed as Republican men do, Joe Manchin pro­tect­ed his ass over his coun­try, Jeff Flake was true to his name and Susan Collins gave the mid­dle fin­ger to women.


In the end, the FBI con­clud­ed a sham inves­ti­ga­tion which did not include an inter­view of nei­ther the accused or the accuser. We are told only nine peo­ple were inter­viewed and true to the prin­ci­ples of a state run by a strong­man the results of the sham inves­ti­ga­tions were not made pub­lic.
In fact, Senators had very lim­it­ed time to browse through the sin­gle copy of the report which was placed in a secure room in the bow­els of the Senate build­ing.

Mitch McConnell had pulled off a per­fect tri­fec­ta. (1) He had blocked most of President Obama’s Federal appoint­ments for the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry. (2) In an unprece­dent­ed move, he had blocked the ascent of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. President Obama a twice-elect­ed President had every right to appoint a replace­ment for the deceased par­ti­san Antonin Scalia and (3) McConnell had stolen the seat in which sits Neil Gorsuch, a staunch right-wing func­tionary appoint­ed by Donald Trump a pres­i­dent who has been named as an unin­dict­ed crim­i­nal co-con­spir­a­tor.


Today Saturday, October 6th is the day the United States Senate ignored the alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct against Brett Kavanaugh and vot­ed to advance the nom­i­na­tion to make Brett Kavanaugh an asso­ciate jus­tice of the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th jus­tice in the his­to­ry of the court.
This day may be the day his­to­ri­ans look back on and say this was the day we lost America.
Or not.

Trump


The con­se­quences of this vote today will be last­ing on the American soci­ety.
In the end, the FBI direc­tor, Christopher Wray will raise his hand and he will tell the Congress that a fair inves­ti­ga­tion was done by his agents, and it will be a lie.
Donald Trump has cor­rod­ed lit­er­al­ly every pub­lic body in the coun­try.
One thing is cer­tain, how­ev­er, is the bla­tant dis­hon­esty and lack of process with which the Republicans han­dled this nom­i­na­tion.
Scared of poten­tial­ly los­ing the House and pos­si­bly the Senate they per­pet­u­at­ed a mon­u­men­tal fraud on the nation all in the name of pol­i­tics and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white suprema­cy.
Country be damned.
And that may very well be the end result of this fraud.

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Chicago Officer Jason Van Dyke Guilty Of Murder In Laquan McDonald Shooting

A jury also found the offi­cer guilty of 16 counts of aggra­vat­ed bat­tery in the teen’s killing.

By Andy Campbell

A Cook County jury delivered a verdict in the murder trial of Chicago Officer Jason Van Dyke, charged in the 2014 on-duty sho

A Cook County jury deliv­ered a ver­dict in the mur­der tri­al of Chicago Officer Jason Van Dyke, charged in the 2014 on-duty shoot­ing death of Laquan McDonald. 

Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police offi­cer charged with mur­der in the 2014 shoot­ing death of teenag­er Laquan McDonald while on duty, was found guilty on Friday.

A Cook County jury found Van Dyke guilty of sec­ond-degree mur­der, as well as 16 counts of aggra­vat­ed bat­tery. He was acquit­ted of offi­cial mis­con­duct, and a charge of first-degree mur­der was vacat­ed for the sec­ond-degree mur­der conviction. 

Judge Vincent Gaughan revoked bail and ordered Van Dyke tak­en into cus­tody to await sen­tenc­ing lat­er this month.

YouTube player

The jury delib­er­at­ed for less than eight hours over two days in the case, in which Van Dyke faced the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life in prison for shoot­ing 17-year-old McDonald 16 times on a Chicago street in October 2014.

Chicago police were on high alert as the city pre­pared for a ver­dict in the rare tri­al of an offi­cer accused of mur­der for an on-duty killing. Hundreds of police were seen pack­ing street cor­ners and city parks. Jurors, who delib­er­at­ed for five hours on Thursday and about 2 1⁄2 more on Friday, were sequestered by Judge Vincent Gaughan and kept at an uniden­ti­fied hotel overnight.

Van Dyke tes­ti­fied in his own defense that he feared for his life and that McDonald was behav­ing errat­i­cal­ly (an autop­sy revealed PCP in his sys­tem). His defense team cit­ed a state law that allows offi­cers to use dead­ly force if it’s nec­es­sary to stop a flee­ing sus­pect who has com­mit­ted a felony while using a dead­ly weapon, accord­ing to Vice News. McDonald was car­ry­ing a knife at the time, but police dash­board cam­era footage refut­ed Van Dyke’s claim that the teen was aggres­sive­ly swing­ing the blade at him.

Three oth­er offi­cers await tri­al on charges of try­ing to cov­er up the killing and obscure the investigation.

Assistant pros­e­cu­tor Jody Gleason argued that Van Dyke had no right to fire even one shot, let alone 16, includ­ing sev­er­al that struck the teen in the back, and while he was already on the ground. Subscribe to the Politics email​.How will Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion impact you?

“It’s Jason Van Dyke fir­ing bul­lets, rip­ping into the flesh of Laquan McDonald 16 times. That’s not jus­ti­fied, that’s not nec­es­sary — that’s first-degree mur­der,” pros­e­cu­tor Joseph McMahon told jurors, accord­ing to NPR. He urged jurors to con­vict on first-degree mur­der and aggra­vat­ed battery.

Van Dyke’s lawyer, Dan Herbert, com­pared the scene that night to a mon­ster movie, telling jurors that McDonald had attacked a truck dri­ver and slashed a police vehicle’s tires just before he was shot.

“When a mon­ster turns and looks at the vic­tim, that’s when the music starts to play,” the defense lawyer said.

Two alter­na­tive jurors who were dis­missed from the tri­al on Thursday said they would have leaned toward find­ing the offi­cer guilty of mur­der, accord­ing to the Chicago Tribune.

One of them, a white woman, not­ed that oth­er offi­cers on scene that night didn’t use dead­ly force. 

“Where was [McDonald] actu­al­ly caus­ing an issue that Jason Van Dyke thought that he need­ed to use dead­ly force? I just didn’t under­stand that,” the alter­na­tive juror told the newspaper.

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Police: Major Gun And Ammo Find

In a suc­cess­ful coör­di­nat­ed oper­a­tion between the police and Customs depart­ments, Wednesday evening at Berth 7, a bar­rel with sender list­ed, (name with­held) and receiv­er list­ed as (name with­held) was scanned and anom­alies were observed.



A detailed check of the bar­rel which includ­ed gro­cery items revealed 9 Pistols, 1 Uzi Submachine Gun, 26 Magazines and Ammunition list­ed as fol­lows 100- 5.56, 100- 7.62, 50- .45, 130- .40 and 243- 9mm rounds were found.

Two men were held in con­nec­tion with the seizure (1) Desmond Matthieu o/​c Bramwell age 43 years, Taxi Operator of #3 Barrett Avenue Kingston 13 and (2) Jevaughn Richards o/​c J or Flintstone age 24 years-old, unem­ployed of #88 – 100 Spanish Town Road Kinston 13.

The con­tra­band along with the two detainees were hand­ed over to C‑TOC which will be con­duct­ing fur­ther investigations.


Despite slights and dis­parag­ing state­ments from the Minister of National Security Horace Chang, the Police con­tin­ue to do good work for the peo­ple of Jamaica.
Sure there are bad actors among the police as there are bad actors in Gordon House and every­place in between.

Nevertheless, finds of this nature bring home the stark real­i­ties of the effec­tive­ness and impor­tance of police work and how lives are saved as a result.
Yet no one both­ers to stop and thank these brave and ded­i­cat­ed men and women who work tire­less­ly and with­out fan­fare to keep the nation safe.

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Police Corporal Busted In Gun Find

Corporal Miller


In a snap oper­a­tion car­ried out by mem­bers of C‑TOC in the Myers Lane area of Newlands Saint Catherine a police­man, Cpl. Devon Miller, 52 years old, attached to the Operations sec­tion of the Saint Catherine South Division was inter­cept­ed dri­ving a blue Toyota Corolla motor car and sig­naled to stop.

The car was searched and an AK47 rifle with ser­i­al num­ber tam­pered with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 15 7.62rds and a Taurus 9mm pis­tol with ser­i­al num­ber PT915 were found in the trunk of the car.

The licensed firearm in the pos­ses­sion of Cpl. Miller, a Taurus 9mm was also seized. A pair of license plates were found in Miller’s car as well. A sec­ond man 18-years-old Edward Forbes, was also arrest­ed. A third sus­pect fled the scene and is being sought by the police.
Investigations con­tin­ue.….
This arti­cle has been updat­ed to include pho­to­graph of the sus­pect since publication.

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Killings:/killing Of Women And Children Not An Abstract Phenom

Graphic images Emancipation park

My dear­ly depart­ed grand­fa­ther and great aunt always said: “what cost noth­ing gives good mea­sure”.
It is a para­ble which sounds com­pli­cat­ed but has a very sim­ple mean­ing.
If you did not pay for some­thing, or if you do not place any val­ue on some­thing you most like­ly will be care­less and reck­less with its han­dling and care.

The malig­nant can­cer of vio­lence and mur­der in our coun­try and in par­tic­u­lar the mur­der of our women may very well have their Genesis in that para­ble.
My son uses my wife’s car to deliv­er piaz­za when he is home from col­lege, no prob­lem. As soon as he got his own car and his mom bor­rowed it, he went to great pains to lec­ture her about not get­ting a scratch on it.
When we pay for some­thing our­selves or place real val­ue on the things we have access to, or own, we tend to be far more judi­cious with their care.

Most actions we take lead to con­se­quences down the road. The cheap­en­ing of life through our every­day dis­course, the music we lis­ten to the movies we watch, vio­lent video games and in Jamaica’s case the wan­ton degra­da­tion some women sub­ject them­selves to are only a few of the char­ac­ter­is­tics which form the per­fect con­di­tions for the whirl­wind of mur­der the nation is expe­ri­enc­ing today.
At this point, I can hear in my head the fal­la­cious argu­ments quote: “peo­ple get killed every­where not just in Jamaica. 
I can just imag­ine the Google search­es to find mass killings in oth­er parts of the world, ready to copy and paste in the rebut­tal to the legit­i­mate angst we feel at the unnec­es­sary and wan­ton shed­ding of blood.
Defending killings is now a noble way to spend time for many.


For those con­cerned, not just about the run-away mur­ders and the resul­tant con­se­quences of the trau­ma on the nation’s chil­dren, I ask, no I beseech you, take a stand against this luna­cy.
For far too long this per­verse and macabre way of life have dom­i­nat­ed our pop­u­lar cul­ture while we go on liv­ing as if noth­ing is wrong, or that noth­ing can be done about it.

If the politi­cians seem unable or unwill­ing then the peo­ple must stand up for the coun­try we were blessed with and demand that this mad­ness stop.
But before we do that, we need to make some changes in our own lives.
We must eschew vio­lence and the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of it.
We must stop speak­ing it to our chil­dren. We must stop lis­ten­ing to the mur­der music and We must anchor our beliefs to some­thing more last­ing, more endur­ing than mate­r­i­al things.



Women must stop cheat­ing on their spous­es and sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, out of greed for mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions or sex­u­al lust.
Men must stop believ­ing that the women in their lives are a dis­pos­able com­mod­i­ty which can be replaced with anoth­er.
Many of you claim to love your chil­dren yet you kill their moth­ers and leave the very same chil­dren, your chil­dren, trau­ma­tized for life. 
Others kill Both the women who bore their chil­dren and the chil­dren of their loins. You are sub-human, you are beneath the ani­mals, you are monsters.

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There is no escap­ing the stark real­i­ties of the(“materialistic bun cul­ture,”) women who want more than the men in their lives can afford, who cheat to get mate­r­i­al things they can­not afford.
Women who insist that the men in their lives have to steal to-be with them.
This is some­thing I have writ­ten about for years. 
Oh for the times whilst I was an offi­cer look­ing real spiffy in my uni­form, and the women who open­ly flirt­ed with me. ” Bway yu neet an cleeen an han­sum eeh, but yu a police , my man haf­fi teef , police nu mek nu mon­ey”.
All this while decked out in Jewellery from ear to toes.
Where do-you think the jew­el­ry came from?


I am not lay­ing this sole­ly at the feet of women as I am almost cer­tain some will argue. Far from it, all I am say­ing is that much of what men do begins with what women demand, what women teach, and what women allow.
Why have sex with a man who has made no com­mit­ment to you? Why have a child with a man who has anoth­er woman or worse, sev­er­al oth­er women?
Why have chil­dren with a man who can­not stay out of jail? Why com­plain when you gave up your pow­er sev­er­al chil­dren ago when you had the pow­er to say “NO”? 
Many female birds will not mate with the male of their kind unless he first builds a suit­able nest and dec­o­rates it inside and out, upon which she inspects it and decides whether it is good enough.
If she does­n’t like what she sees, she Flies away and its all for naught.


On the oth­er hand, when women make demands that men can­not meet they tend to push the enve­lope to get what their women want. Children in the rela­tion­ships observe the pow­er dynam­ics play­ing out live what they learn.
The men who strive for mate­r­i­al trap­pings through what­ev­er means, large­ly tend to do so to attract women as one of their pri­ma­ry moti­va­tions.
This places us in the same cat­e­go­ry as the male pea­cock which shows off its awe­some plumage to attract the female.

We have a twist­ed val­ue sys­tem which glo­ri­fies and lust for mate­r­i­al extrav­a­gance rather than places the appro­pri­ate val­ue on life. The insa­tiable and rapa­cious desire to have the best of every­thing have cheap­ened life and turned humans into mon­sters.
A woman vis­it­ing the United States walked into my busi­ness-place with her elder­ly father, the father want­ed to pur­chase a cell phone for her to use while she is vis­it­ing. He also need­ed a phone she could use when she returned to Jamaica.
She was embar­rass­ing­ly ungrate­ful, berat­ing her father for not hav­ing wi-fi at home in front of oth­er cus­tomers and myself.
The gen­tle­man explained he did not need wi-fi as he was gone all day, on his return home at nights [he explains], he watch­es a lit­tle tele­vi­sion and that was that.

That did not appease her but she went on to demand that her elder­ly father pur­chase the newest i‑phone. He balked at spend­ing that much mon­ey which he seem­ing­ly did not have, or want­ed to spend.[he had a flip phone]
She insist­ed she want­ed unlim­it­ed data, so I asked her if she had unlim­it­ed data back home , she respond­ed in the neg­a­tive.
She can­not afford unlim­it­ed data in Jamaica but she berat­ed and embar­rassed her elder­ly father because she want­ed the most expen­sive phone with unlim­it­ed data, which nei­ther her nor her elder­ly dad could afford.


The Christian val­ues we were raised on have long become a top­ic of scorn and deri­sion, it is fairy tales, non­sense, we are now too intel­lec­tu­al­ly for­ward-lean­ing to believe in a God we can­not see.[sic]
How dare any­one place any restric­tions on our las­civ­i­ous and mate­ri­al­ist pur­suits?
How dare any­one expect that we respect elders, our teach­ers, the laws, how dare any­one tell us Jamaicans what we can and can­not do?
When we sow the wind we reap the whirl­wind, it is that simple.

by

Female Cop Visciously Murdered In Her Own Home




The Police are report­ing the mur­der of District Constable Mellisa Edwards- White, 43 years old, attached to Crime Stop a res­i­dent of Farmbroke Avenue, Patrick City, Kingston 20.

According to the report­ing, the dece­dent was mur­dered between 7:30pm and 8:50pm Saturday, September 29, 2018.

Police reports indi­cate that the broth­er of Mrs. Edwards left both the deceased and her hus­band, Mr. Barrington White, o/​c “Barry” o/​c ” Drops“53 years old, a Taxi oper­a­tor of the said address and went to a near­by premise.

On his return, he dis­cov­ered the house secure­ly locked and his call to his sis­ter’s cell phone went unan­swered.
He then went to the back of the house and looked through a win­dow and he dis­cov­ered the muti­lat­ed body of his sis­ter lying face down on the bed­room floor in blood and called the police.

On the entry of the police, the body of Mrs. Edwards was dis­cov­ered to have mul­ti­ple chop wounds to the head, face, and hands. A blood-stained machete believed to be the mur­der weapon was found on the bath­room floor.

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Baltimore Residents Weren’t Lying About The City’s Corrupt Police Force

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By Julia Craven

It’s a shame no one believed their truths about how law and order falls on the heads of black citizens


Baltimore told y’all.

They said it dur­ing West Wednesday ral­lies in mem­o­ry of Tyrone West, a black man who died dur­ing a 2013 traf­fic stop in Northeast Baltimore. They said it when vic­tims who had been paid to keep qui­et still chose to speak out about police vio­lence. They screamed it at the top of their lungs after unarmed Keith Davis Jr. was shot in the face by a city cop in June 2015. Maybe you heard when they burned police cars after Freddie Gray died in police cus­tody in 2015. Or maybe when they talked about their cer­tain­ty that no offi­cer would be pun­ished in Gray’s death.

On Monday, a fed­er­al jury actu­al­ly found two for­mer Baltimore police offi­cers guilty in a major cor­rup­tion case. Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor, for­mer mem­bers of the city’s now-dis­band­ed Gun Trace Task Force, had been charged with rack­e­teer­ing and robbery.

Six oth­er offi­cers on that task force had already plead­ed guilty on sim­i­lar charges. Four of them had tes­ti­fied against Hersl and Taylor, prov­ing once again what many black folks in Baltimore had known for decades: The Baltimore Police Department is a dis­gust­ing­ly cor­rupt exam­ple of how law and order falls on the heads of black citizens.

Testimony in the cor­rup­tion case revealed that offi­cers would dri­ve their patrol cars toward groups of peo­ple, pro­vok­ing them to flee, in order to jus­ti­fy unwar­rant­ed search­es. They car­ried toy guns in case they killed an unarmed per­son and need­ed to plant some­thing. They plant­ed drugs. They tracked some of their tar­gets with ille­gal GPS track­ing devices. They robbed civil­ians. They sold drugs and guns. They put in for over­time hours even when they weren’t work­ing and pock­et­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of tax­pay­er dol­lars. They levied “tax­es” on local drug dealers.

“Yes, cops take mon­ey from drug deal­ers. Cops rape. Cops lie in their reports,” University of Baltimore pro­fes­sor and Baltimore native D. Watkins wrote last month for Salon. “Cops beat peo­ple. Cops sell drugs. Cops threat­en cit­i­zens. Cops intim­i­date oth­er cops. Cops are gang-affil­i­at­ed; they’ll snatch a blunt out of your hand and smoke it, hide extra guns in the dope house, aim their pis­tol at you for fun, plant drugs on you, make you sell drugs for them or with them, make you rob and steal, and then expect to be called ‘hero’ no mat­ter what they’ve done. Politicians from every side — from those as pro­gres­sive as Obama to those as racist as Trump — break their necks to co-sign their hero status.”

In light of the lat­est rev­e­la­tions, a Maryland state law­mak­er has even called for dis­band­ing the city’s police force, cit­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of the Camden, New Jersey, police depart­ment in 2013. “The deci­sion came in the wake of record high mur­der rates and an extreme­ly inef­fi­cient police bud­get ― both of which are prob­lems that Baltimore City cur­rent­ly faces. It was a bold, near­ly unprece­dent­ed deci­sion, but it worked,” said Del. Bilal Ali, who rep­re­sents part of Baltimore.

A 2016 Justice Department report described how offi­cers in the Baltimore Police Department rou­tine­ly abused res­i­dents’ civ­il rights, tar­get­ed black indi­vid­u­als, per­formed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al search­es, retal­i­at­ed against indi­vid­u­als and failed to hold cops account­able for mis­con­duct. The report said that the depart­ment was racist “at every stage of [its] enforce­ment actions” and that these prac­tices “erode[d] the com­mu­ni­ty trust that is crit­i­cal to effec­tive policing.”

In 2016, the No Boundaries Commission and the West Baltimore Commission on Police Misconduct, two local advo­ca­cy groups, released their own report detail­ing the abuse inflict­ed on res­i­dents of the Sandtown-Winchester neigh­bor­hood by police. Fear of law enforcement’s retal­i­a­tion was so great that only 39 of the 450 res­i­dents who spoke with researchers were will­ing to be quot­ed, even under a pseudonym.

“It used to be that if you did some­thing ille­gal, they pat­ted you down, they arrest­ed you, and they locked you up,” one res­i­dent told researchers. “Now, they don’t even arrest you; they just take you in the alley and they beat you up. It doesn’t mat­ter what you do.”

Another res­i­dent said that one “offi­cer picked me up and slammed me on my face, took my back­pack off, and threw all my books out, and when they didn’t find any­thing kicked me in my stom­ach. I was just hap­py they didn’t lock me up and bounced.” (If this sounds crazy, please note that accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny in the cor­rup­tion case, Gun Trace Task Force super­vi­sor Sgt. Wayne Jenkins thought men over the age of 18 with book­bags looked sus­pi­cious.)

The report also took state­ments from peo­ple had wit­nessed offi­cers rob­bing drug deal­ers.

But it shouldn’t take a fed­er­al tri­al, a fed­er­al report, a new local report or real­ly any insti­tu­tion­al con­fir­ma­tion to con­vince peo­ple of the way that many police depart­ments ― includ­ing those out­side Baltimore ― take advan­tage of the most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens. The peo­ple of Baltimore have been say­ing this stuff for decades. Yet it required a Justice Department inves­ti­ga­tion and a tri­al involv­ing almost cin­e­mat­ic inci­dents of cor­rup­tion for oth­er folks to believe them. That itself is part of the problem.

Maybe, Watkins sug­gest­ed, Freddie Gray’s death might not have gone unpun­ished in a coun­try that whol­ly accept­ed the premise that cops are not always heroes, but often dam­aged indi­vid­u­als who read­i­ly harm black (and Latino, LGBTQ and oth­er mar­gin­al­ized) citizens.

“How might a case like this have changed pub­lic per­cep­tion around Gray’s death?” Watkins wrote, refer­ring to the cor­rup­tion tri­al. “Even though they stopped Gray for no rea­son and then he died while in their cus­tody, peo­ple still saw them, at worst, as heroes who made a mis­take. Because if all cops are heroes, those cops couldn’t have done any­thing inten­tion­al­ly mali­cious to cause Freddie Gray’s death, right?”

They told y’all.
https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​b​a​l​t​i​m​o​r​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​t​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​_​u​s​_​5​a​8​4​a​d​b​8​e​4​b​0​0​5​8​d​5​5​6​5​a​2d3




by

“Glorified Security Guards,” What?

Horace Chang Minister of National Security

Several years ago for­mer Senior Superintendent of Police Renetto Adams called for the dis­band­ment of the Jamaica Constabulary Force( JCF).
At the time I found the argu­ments of Adams curi­ous giv­en that he nev­er called for its dis­band­ment through­out his rather lengthy service.

I doubt there is a sin­gle Jamaican who has passed through the JCF who does­n’t believe that there are seri­ous struc­tur­al flaws with­in the Agency, as is the case with all of Jamaica’s pub­lic bod­ies.
Nevertheless, the work put in by police offi­cers is sec­ond to none, the risks are expo­nen­tial­ly greater than that to which oth­er cat­e­gories of work­ers are exposed and the hours are far more than required of oth­er work­ers.

Over the years there have been far too many fuck-ups by some peo­ple wear­ing police uni­forms, oper­at­ing under the umbrel­la of police offi­cers but are worse than those who nev­er took an oath to pro­tect and serve.
As a con­se­quence, even the worst lowlives who should be locked away and the keys dis­card­ed have had neg­a­tive things to say about the force.
Despite this, how­ev­er, a larg­er major­i­ty have done tremen­dous work, some­times sep­a­rate and apart from the call of duty to ensure that we still have a place we can call a coun­try.
No one else, no oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers have con­tributed more, bar none.

No real ded­i­cat­ed police offi­cer gets up and goes to work believ­ing they are secu­ri­ty guards.
Despite poor pay, abject work­ing con­di­tions and the dis­grace­ful lack of resources and sup­port, they sol­dier on and pro­duce the best results they can, giv­en the cir­cum­stances.
They do so while expos­ing them­selves and their fam­i­lies to ret­ri­bu­tion, some­thing the Island’s politi­cians could nev­er under­stand as they are in pub­lic ser­vice only to serve them­selves and the inter­est of their fam­i­lies.

That is the rea­son that the com­ments of Minister of National Security Horace Chang have stuck in my throat like a chick­en bone.
In seek­ing to make the case for the dis­band­ment of the Police force as it is con­sti­tut­ed, Chang stat­ed that they inher­it­ed a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny, speak­ing of the JCF. 


For the record, I do not care to hear any respons­es about con­text.
Sure the PNP has held office for longer peri­ods of time than the gov­ern­ing JLP, but that does not excuse the JLP of any of the prob­lems plagu­ing the coun­try or the police force.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are equal­ly as guilty in advanc­ing the break­down of the rule of law.
Contrary to their twist­ed per­cep­tions, dis­band­ing the force or cre­at­ing quote: Jamaica’s own police force” is a stu­pid idea bourne out of not know­ing their ass­es from their heads.

Changing the des­ig­na­tion of the police force to “police ser­vice” will cer­tain­ly stop the killings in the coun­try. (sar­casm drip­ping here).
As I have stat­ed for many years, this periph­er­al stuff is not going to fix any­thing.
Jamaican police offi­cers are going to have to come from Jamaica, a coun­try of imper­fect peo­ple like every­where else in the world.
Fix the Government, train equip and com­pen­sate the offi­cers, hold them account­able, edu­cate the pub­lic on the ben­e­fits of obey­ing the nation’s laws, cre­ate the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive frame­work and get the fuck out of the way.
It is not rock­et sci­ence.


There is no redemp­tive con­text in which the Minister of National Security can refer to the JCF as a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny in a non-pejo­ra­tive way.
The sac­ri­fices and the efforts made dai­ly, their shed blood and the ded­i­ca­tion of police offi­cers ulti­mate­ly dis­qual­i­fy politi­cians, least of all Horace Chang from speak­ing about them in the neg­a­tive.

Any incom­pe­tence in the JCF must be laid at the feet of incom­pe­tent, crim­i­nal sup­port­ing politi­cians and their crim­i­nal sup­port­ers.
If Horace Chang wants to change the train­ing reg­i­men of the police force, “I say go ahead this is long over­due,” source mod­ern polic­ing tech­niques from coun­tries which have good police depart­ments.
Ridiculing the men and women of the force is not smart, it is imbe­cil­ic.


My spilled blood in 1988 was not as a secu­ri­ty guard, glo­ri­fied or oth­er­wise.
I was a police offi­cer work­ing to uphold the laws and secur­ing the peace and secu­ri­ty of Jamaicans.
The men and women of the JCF deserve more respect from the pop­u­la­tion and they damn sure deserve more respect than they are receiv­ing from piss ‑ass low-life politi­cians like Horace Chang.