Author Archives: Mike

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Smart Nations Deal Decisively With Terrorists ‚Jamaica Creates Ways To Protect Them From Law Enforcement..

Given nor­mal con­di­tions in which crime needs to be brought under con­trol, police offi­cers grap­ple with ways to pre­vent crime through deter­rence, through force of their pres­ence and in sit­u­a­tions where inci­dences of crim­i­nal­i­ty occur nonethe­less, they inves­ti­gate and arrest offenders.

That is man­ag­ing crime.
There are sev­er­al lev­els of crime, most law enforce­ment offi­cials, past and present will attest to the dis­tinct fact that; left to fes­ter crime is a can­cer­ous tumor which nev­er gets bet­ter with­out being reme­died, will not self-cor­rect, and it nev­er gets fixed by apply­ing the wrong antidote.

US anti-ter­ror police

Given time crime becomes unman­age­able and will invari­ably need cau­ter­i­za­tion or amputation.
This is so as in an infect­ed part of the body which is left to fes­ter, even­tu­al­ly, the infec­tion will dic­tate the need for dras­tic action as a mat­ter of urgency or sure death will follow.
By the time it reach­es that stage the body will cer­tain­ly lose a limb or suf­fer severe trau­ma as a result of the negligence.

Let’s take Jamaica’s sit­u­a­tion for example.
We have a bunch of politi­cians and oth­er lead­ers who are as pre­ten­tious as the sun will rise tomor­row. Never mind the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion which is large­ly too dumb to real­ize the debil­i­tat­ing effect crime is hav­ing on their lives and that of their chil­dren and gen­er­a­tions to come.
They glo­ri­fy crime and tell you just look at the tourist arrival numbers.
If this met­ric was­n’t so sim­plis­tic and down­right retard­ed it would be laughable.

Tactical Jamaican police team

That nar­ra­tive will cer­tain­ly dis­ap­pear, real soon, we recent­ly learned that sev­er­al cruise ship oper­a­tors will not be stop­ping at the Falmouth pier anymore.
Wow !!!
Visitors are fed up with the aggres­sive atti­tude of peo­ple when they dis­em­bark the ships.
Oh, wait, “crime deh ebery weh an dem mus expec seh peo­ple a gu try sell dem tings.”
The only prob­lem with that the­o­ry is that they have the mon­ey Jamaicans need so they will take that mon­ey elsewhere.

The polit­i­cal lead­ers are large­ly crim­i­nal cod­dling oppor­tunists and in some cas­es plain crim­i­nals themselves.
Other sec­tors with and with­out pow­er are heav­i­ly invest­ed in crime. From the board­rooms to the under­tak­ers to the hard­ware store, from the sound sys­tem oper­a­tors to the pul­pit and even the hus­tlers’ mur­der is a way of life.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CRIMINAL CODDLING.

And now we are here a coun­try at war with itself, a pseu­do civ­il war some may argue. The mul­ti­ple shoot­ings and dead bod­ies each day tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, noth­ing pseu­do about those numbers.
Absolutely noth­ing pseu­do about the real­i­ty of this head­line in one of the dai­ly publication.

SECURITY FORCES FORM CRIME BUFFER IN WEST KINGSTON : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​S​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​_​f​o​r​c​e​s​_​f​o​r​m​_​c​r​i​m​e​_​b​u​f​f​e​r​_​i​n​_​W​e​s​t​_​K​i​n​g​s​t​o​n​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​228

The prob­lem with the head­line is the head­line itself.
The secu­ri­ty forces are not form­ing a crime buffer, they are plac­ing their bod­ies between war­ring militias.

According to the (OBSERVER) Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) Major Basil Jarrett says that both the police and sol­diers have strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed troops in key hot spots across the coun­try, act­ing as a buffer between rival gangs. “Right now, we have a tense sit­u­a­tion in Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens as rival gangs grap­ple for own­er­ship and con­trol of turf in West Kingston,” said Jarrett in giv­ing an exam­ple of the strate­gic positioning.

“These men have no reluc­tance to attack each oth­er in the com­mu­ni­ty and so our pres­ence forces them to recon­sid­er and reassess their options. As we have seen, this has by no means removed their deter­mi­na­tion to shoot at and kill each oth­er, but with our troops on the ground, it does make it a bit more dif­fi­cult for them.” The pres­ence of the secu­ri­ty forces in the com­mu­ni­ties has not only com­pro­mised the activ­i­ties of the rival fac­tions, but has also led to fre­quent con­tact between sol­diers, police, and criminals.

“Just last night there was con­tact between a JDF patrol team and gun­men in the vicin­i­ty of Tulip Lane, Denham Town when gun­men opened fire on the patrol team. Fortunately, no inno­cent civil­ians were hurt in the exchange but this demon­strates the frus­tra­tion of the gun­men and their will­ing­ness to engage us as a result of our inter­fer­ing presence”.

South Korean spe­cial police offi­cers descend the stairs from sub­way sta­tion dur­ing an anti-ter­ror exer­cise as part of Ulchi Freedom Guardian or UFG in Seoul, South Korea.

Jarrett com­ment quote ” this demon­strates the frus­tra­tion of the gun­men and their will­ing­ness to engage us as a result of our inter­fer­ing presence”. 
That he would char­ac­ter­ize the pres­ence of the secu­ri­ty forces from the mili­ti­a’s per­spec­tive as “inter­fer­ing,” should be lost on no one.
In light of that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, one is tempt­ed to ask ratio­nal­ly who is in charge, the gov­ern­ment or the militias?

The world will know the answer to that and oth­er ques­tions soon enough as the pre­ten­tious Jamaican lead­er­ship and peo­ple con­tin­ue to pre­tend this is normal,
Nothing to see here it’s just crime/.Yah stu­pid­ly pre­ten­tious is just plain stu­pid the joke is on no one but the pretenders.
Other coun­tries are doing what they must to deal with their terrorism.
Jamaica in the mean­time is active­ly engaged in a sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern of pretense.

Britain the sup­posed mod­el of human rights Jamaica clam­ors to emu­late did not hes­i­tate to send out hun­dreds of well-trained robo­cops after ter­ror­ists struck.
And look they actu­al­ly are wear­ing face masks.
God for­bid, that Jamaican secu­ri­ty forces were to wear face masks to pro­tect their fam­i­lies from reprisals from ter­ror­ists.
The self-right­eous frauds would be all indig­nant in vile condemnation.

Other coun­tries send their best troops and police to erad­i­cate Terrorists from their midst, Jamaica pre­tends that the mer­ci­less killers who slaugh­ter men women and chil­dren are choir boys wor­thy of social intervention.
Given this stu­pid non­sen­si­cal atti­tude, it will only be a mat­ter of time until the secu­ri­ty forces will not have the pow­er to stand as a buffer between these war­ring factions.
If events of 2010 are any­thing to go by this lit­tle Island is in for a rude awakening,.The ques­tion is what will remain after the shit hits the fan?

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The High Graduation Rate Of Black Students In Prince George County Maryland Has Brought Charges Of Grade Inflation By Public Officials

America has a his­to­ry of dic­tat­ing that Black pros­per­i­ty, excel­lence, and empow­er­ment must nev­er be allowed to see the light of day. The lat­est pos­si­ble sto­ry of this is ema­nat­ing from Prince George’s County, Md., as many ques­tions arise about Black edu­ca­tion­al achieve­ment and accu­sa­tions that evi­dence of such achieve­ment in this par­tic­u­lar school dis­trict was the result of fraud. At the urg­ing of Black school board mem­bers and Democratic state law­mak­ers, Republican Governor Larry Hogan has called for an inves­ti­ga­tion in this pre­dom­i­nant­ly Black coun­ty – which is among the most pros­per­ous Black com­mu­ni­ties in the nation– over alle­ga­tions of grade infla­tion and ris­ing high school grad­u­a­tion rates.

In a let­ter, the gov­er­nor has asked Maryland State Board of Education President Andrew Smarick to look into poten­tial wrong­do­ing in the Prince George’s County school sys­tem amid alle­ga­tions stu­dents’ grades were fraud­u­lent­ly altered in order to boost grad­u­a­tion rates, as AP report­ed. The coun­ty has an 81 per­cent grad­u­a­tion rate, which some state board mem­bers and local offi­cials claim­ing it was due to manip­u­la­tion of grades and cred­its, accord­ing to WTOP.

Precipitating Hogan’s inquiry was a May 30 let­ter to him from four mem­bers of the Prince George’s County school board, as The Washington Post report­ed. In their let­ter, the mem­bers made claims of “wide­spread sys­temic cor­rup­tion,” includ­ing the chang­ing of stu­dents’ grades and cred­it­ing them for class­es they did not take, result­ing in inflat­ed grad­u­a­tion rates and grad­u­at­ing hun­dreds of stu­dents who did not meet state require­ments. The board mem­bers – Edward Burroughs III, David Murray, Raaheela Ahmed and stu­dent mem­ber Juwan Blocker – say whistle­blow­ers have “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” of the fraud. The four rep­re­sent a minor­i­ty bloc on the 14-mem­ber body.

State law­mak­ers rep­re­sent­ing the coun­ty have weighed in as well, call­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter. In a let­ter to state Superintendent of Schools Karen B. Salmon, Dels. Jay Walker and Geraldine Valentino-Smith, both Democrats, request­ed the Maryland State Department Education con­duct “an in-depth audit and fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion of such seri­ous alle­ga­tions.”

The grass-roots orga­ni­za­tion Progressive Maryland held a demon­stra­tion call­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the alle­ga­tions, as The Washington Post report­ed, with sup­port from Ben Jealous, for­mer nation­al NAACP pres­i­dent and a cur­rent Democratic can­di­date for gov­er­nor, and Bob Ross, pres­i­dent of the Prince George’s County chap­ter of the NAACP. Ross has asked Rushern Baker, Prince George’s County Chief Executive not to renew the con­tract of Kevin Maxwell, chief exec­u­tive of the coun­ty schools, accord­ing to fox5dc​.com. State Sen. Anthony Muse, also a Black Democrat, has called for Maxwell’s resignation.

Maxwell issued a state­ment main­tain­ing the alle­ga­tions are false, but wel­com­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. “From the begin­ning, I have main­tained that pol­i­tics lie at the root of the accu­sa­tions,” Maxwell said in a state­ment, call­ing the claims an affront to teach­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, stu­dents and par­ents over the past few years. “There has been no sys­temic effort to pro­mote stu­dents in Prince George’s County Public Schools who did not meet state grad­u­a­tion require­ments in order to inflate our grad­u­a­tion rates.

“We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Maryland State Department of Education to resolve this matter.”

Other school board mem­bers and school offi­cials also denied the allegations.

Gov. Hogan’s office not­ed that the State Board of Education vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly in favor of mov­ing ahead with an inves­ti­ga­tion, which will be con­duct­ed by an out­side par­ty and with­out any input or over­sight from his office. “The gov­er­nor has nev­er weighed in on the sub­stance of the claims, and has specif­i­cal­ly said that he was direct­ing this inde­pen­dent enti­ty to inves­ti­gate in response to the mul­ti­ple requests from local offi­cials,” said Amelia Chassé, Deputy Communications Director for the Governor’s office in a statement.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (Source: Flickr)

Black Democratic sup­port for the inves­ti­ga­tion notwith­stand­ing, some argue, how­ev­er, that Maxwell makes a valid point when he argues there is a polit­i­cal moti­va­tion behind the governor’s actions. After all, Hogan is a white con­ser­v­a­tive Republican going after a Black coun­ty, that vot­ed against his elec­tion as gov­er­nor. As Stephan Neidenbach wrote in The Method, Prince George’s County is home to 7 of the 10 of the wealth­i­est Black com­mu­ni­ties in the U.S., and among the best edu­cat­ed in the coun­try. More impor­tant­ly, Rushern Baker, Prince George’s County Chief Executive, recent­ly announced his run for gov­er­nor against Hogan just days before.

Under Baker’s lead­er­ship and due to a neigh­bor­hood ini­tia­tive, vio­lent crime has dropped 36 per­cent and homi­cides 40 per­cent. This, as grad­u­a­tion rates have increased. If Hogan’s moti­va­tions were sin­cere, Neidenbach argues, he would have prompt­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion of the over­whelm­ing­ly white Carroll County, which is at the head of the class in state grad­u­a­tion rates, yet has wit­nessed a trou­bling spike in crime. More crime and more grad­u­a­tions are an unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion that raise suspicion.

Elsewhere in the coun­try, many white politi­cians have per­fect­ed the art of scape­goat­ing Black pop­u­la­tions, con­jur­ing the image of Black fraud and incom­pe­tence to jus­ti­fy neo­colo­nial­ist poli­cies that usurp the rights of Black peo­ple, depriv­ing them of democ­ra­cy and auton­o­my. In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder invoked his state’s emer­gency man­ag­er law, signed into law in 2011, to take over finan­cial­ly strug­gling cities and school dis­tricts such as Detroit, Flint, Pontiac, Benton Harbor and Ecorse. Coincidentally, the munic­i­pal­i­ties tar­get­ed for state takeover have been major­i­ty Black. Assigning unelect­ed offi­cials to con­trol these Black-con­trolled cities amount­ed to revers­ing and elim­i­nat­ing the elec­toral process for vot­ers. The Flint water cri­sis, in which the city’s res­i­dents have suf­fered from the lead poi­son­ing of their drink­ing water, was an out­growth of the emer­gency man­ag­er law.

Concerns about open hos­til­i­ty Black inter­ests and reac­tion to signs of Black pros­per­i­ty and suc­cess are long­stand­ing and based in real­i­ty. A prime exam­ple of this men­tal­i­ty is the destruc­tion of the boom­ing Greenwood com­mu­ni­ty in Tulsa, Okla., —also known as Black Wall Street — by a white mob in 1921.

It is estab­lished that many offi­cials regard the high aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment of Black chil­dren with great con­ster­na­tion, seek­ing to steal our children’s thun­der and down­play their intel­lec­tu­al capa­bil­i­ties and edu­ca­tion­al achieve­ment. They often accom­plish this by chang­ing the rules of the game after the fact. For exam­ple, the moth­er of the first Black vale­dic­to­ri­an at a Mississippi high school has filed a law­suit alleg­ing her daugh­ter was forced to share her title as “co-vale­dic­to­ri­an” with a white class­mate who had a low­er GPA.

The recent inquiry into the high grad­u­a­tion rate of Prince George’s County — the coun­ty with the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of Black wealth in America — has broad sup­port and should pro­ceed. People need to know the truth, with the inter­ests of the chil­dren first and fore­most in their minds. If the inves­ti­ga­tion begins to smell like an assault on Black excel­lence, then it deserves our col­lec­tive side eye.

The con­tent, opin­ions, and views expressed in this arti­cle are that of the writer and not of Atlanta Black Star. ABS gives a plat­form for many dif­fer­ent views and opin­ions in the Black Community. http://​atlantablack​star​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​7​/​0​6​/​t​h​e​-​h​i​g​h​-​g​r​a​d​u​a​t​i​o​n​-​r​a​t​e​-​o​f​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​s​-​i​n​-​p​r​i​n​c​e​-​g​e​o​r​g​e​-​c​o​u​n​t​y​-​m​a​r​y​l​a​n​d​-​h​a​s​-​b​r​o​u​g​h​t​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​s​-​o​f​-​g​r​a​d​e​-​i​n​f​l​a​t​i​o​n​-​b​y​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​o​f​f​i​c​i​a​ls/

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Holness’ Push For Crime Issue On CARICOM’s Agenda A Cry For Help?

Speaking at a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the 38th meet­ing of Heads of Governments in Grenada on Thursday night, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that he had request­ed of heads of CARICOM states that the issue of crime and vio­lence be placed on the agen­da for discussion.

Holness told reporters gath­ered after the meet­ing that while crime and vio­lence had not been a mat­ter on the agen­da for this sum­mit, he had tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise the mat­ter at that meeting.

Andrew Holness

“I raised the issue from the per­spec­tive of not just a secu­ri­ty issue but from a macro-social per­spec­tive that the use of vio­lence as a means of resolv­ing con­flict, as a means of social con­trol, as part of our social trans­ac­tions that it is becom­ing almost a fea­ture of our societies.”

The Prime Minister’s state­ments may be viewed in two or more lights depend­ing on where you stand.
(1) The Prime Minister is cor­rect this is a region­al issue in which the broad­er CARICOM com­mu­ni­ty has a stake and must take action.
(2) This is a cry for help from the Jamaican Prime Minister.

THE CASE FOR CARICOM’s POSSIBLE INVOLVEMENT

Of course, crime is a region­al issue best tack­led with all hands on deck. There are guns com­ing into Jamaica from Haiti. There are drugs com­ing through Haiti, into Jamaica from Colombia as far as the report­ing goes.
Jamaican farm­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing a sig­nif­i­cant loss of live­stock as Jamaican gangs are steal­ing and slaugh­ter­ing their live­stock and tak­ing the car­cass­es to Haiti to exchange for guns and ammunition.
Trinidad and to some extent Guyana have had issues with ter­ror­ism some export­ed from South America and in Trinidad’s case Islamic fundamentalism.
All of these fac­tors dic­tate that the region must come togeth­er in the fight against crime as it has for oth­er reasons

The issues of region­al crim­i­nal­i­ty and ter­ror­ism are best tack­led from a region­al per­spec­tive, while each state insti­tute their own sys­tems of deal­ing with their crim­i­nals as they see fit.
Only through col­lab­o­ra­tive effort and best prac­tices will this mon­ster be brought under control.
No mem­ber state is suf­fi­cient­ly rich, to com­bat on its own the grow­ing list of crimes affect­ing mem­ber states. Together CARICOM can have a sig­nif­i­cant effect in reduc­ing crime in the region.
Criminals should have no safe zones in the region, with coun­tries like the US, Canada, and Britain clamp­ing down on who enter their coun­tries, region­al coöper­a­tion on this issue would go a long way in con­trol­ling this problem.

A CRY FOR HELP?

You bet!
There is noth­ing wrong with ask­ing for help if a prob­lem seems too large to tack­le alone.
After decades of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, arm­ing crim­i­nals, shack­ling law-enforce­ment, INDECOM, erect­ing and insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing oth­er bar­ri­ers to the rule of law, a Jamaican Prime Minister is by default acknowl­edg­ing that the prob­lem they cre­at­ed is big­ger than their control.

Nevertheless, despite the past region­al coöper­a­tion on crime is imper­a­tive as it is on eco­nom­ic and oth­er issues.
The Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty must come togeth­er on all rel­e­vant issues or face the bleak consequences.
All hands are required on deck to deal with the bur­geon­ing issue of crime and ter­ror not just in Jamaica, but across the region, on Trinidad and Tobago and yes even Barbados.
Member states can take a hands off approach (hi Barbados) and pre­tend that they are an Island, [sic] well they are indeed an Island, but not even Island’s can stand alone anymore.

Justice Minister Delroy Chuck

The prob­lems fac­ing us are glob­al issues which if not attacked com­pre­hen­sive­ly will have cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for our coun­try and the region.
Even as the Jamaican PM speak about crime on the region­al stage, I would have pre­ferred to see a dif­fer­ent point per­son oth­er than Delroy Chuck speak on the local stage about the imple­men­ta­tion of the of the yet to become law spe­cial zones Act.

If our coun­try is to climb out of this hell-hole it is in, Delroy Chuck, an anti-police, crim­i­nal apol­o­gist is cer­tain­ly not the per­son to be run­ning point on this.
I have absolute­ly no con­fi­dence that Delroy Chuck has the char­ac­ter or the know how much less the desire to see Jamaica’s gar­risons become a thing of the past.
Delroy Chuck attend­ed the funer­al of a know crim­i­nal gang­ster and as such he has zero cred­i­bil­i­ty or char­ac­ter to talk about the imple­men­ta­tion of anti-crime measures.

As long as Chuck is out front talk­ing about this new law, or have any­thing ng to do with nation­al secu­ri­ty and jus­tice on the Island I will be a skeptic.

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Jamaica Has Means To Deal With Killers: Country Lacks Will And Character To Act.

In a war, you are des­tined to lose if you are queasy about killing the ene­my who has no com­punc­tion about killing you.
You are already a vic­tim when you show weak­ness, bul­lies thrive on your fear, they can smell it, they hear that you don’t want to use com­men­su­rate or over­whelm­ing force to squash them.

So their next killing is more brazen, more bru­tal, more I don’t give a f**k.
How does gov­ern­ment counter that?
By using over­whelm­ing force to send a mes­sage that their behav­ior will not be tolerated.
That ought to be a mes­sage to the naysay­ers who argue all folks like me want to see is more blood.

I have nev­er seen any­one win a war by beg­ging the ene­my not to wage war on them.
Make no mis­take about it what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica is not mere­ly crime as the lying faux nation­al­ists would have you believe.
We are active­ly engaged in a state of unde­clared civ­il war. The guys with the heavy auto­mat­ic guns doing the killings cer­tain­ly think so.
The aver­age of 4 dead bod­ies per day cer­tain­ly indi­cates that we are indeed in a state of unde­clared civ­il war.

We can accept those facts, or we can con­tin­ue the non­sen­si­cal cha­rade that every­thing is fine and dandy.
In fact, we can do as Ed Bartlett the Island’s Tourism Minister wants, hide the mur­der sta­tis­tics from the front page of local pub­li­ca­tions, hide the blood splat­ter on our clothes, as we stand grin­ning, hand extend­ed in greet­ing to the tourists dis­em­bark­ing the mam­moth cruise ships.
Why would a coun­try fight a war by plac­ing restraints on itself, when the ene­my fol­lows no rules and are con­strained by no values?
That’s a ques­tion for the Jamaican gov­ern­ment and peo­ple, two enti­ties which cre­ates all kinds of obsta­cles to their own abil­i­ty to deal effec­tive­ly with this monster.

Colin Powell for­mer chair­man joint chiefs, for­mer sec­re­tary of state under President GW Bush

“Never engage in a war you can poten­tial­ly lose.”
If you have to fight, take all of your weapons to the bat­tle­field, use them, win the war and go home”.
(Colin Powell)

To those who say we can­not use war to get peace I say this.
The world was thrust into the first world war in the year 1914, in that war, over 16 mil­lion died, includ­ing Jamaicans who fought on the side of their oppres­sors the British Empire.
The war last­ed from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918.

By 1939 the world was once again engulfed in anoth­er glob­al con­flict, world war two had bro­ken out.
World War II was the dead­liest mil­i­tary con­flict in his­to­ry, over 60 mil­lion lost their lives.

Before the war end­ed the United States det­o­nat­ed two atom­ic devices. One in the Japanese city of Hiroshima and the oth­er in Nagasaki.
An esti­mat­ed 226. 000 peo­ple per­ished as a result of those two events, with esti­mates of over half of that num­ber per­ish­ing on the first day of the bombings.
The end of Sino-German world ambi­tions result­ed in the for­ma­tion of the North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO), a west­ern alliance which says you mess with one you mess with all of us.
Under the new alliance, no new Hitler could take it unto him­self to march into Poland or France with­out incur­ring seri­ous blow­back from mem­ber states.

President Harry Truman

Since 1945 the world has not had a con­flict which engulfed the entire plan­et as both world wars one and two had.
There was only a lapse of 21 years between the end of WW1 in 1918 and the begin­ning of WW11 in 1939.
There have been no oth­er world wars since the end of WW11 and present day 2017, a stun­ning 72 years of rel­a­tive peace through strength and determination.

Sure the counter argu­ments about the mas­sive loss of Japanese lives are not with­out merit.
To the United States and the pow­ers bat­tling Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito how­ev­er, using the bomb saved the lives of count­less peo­ple who did not start the war.
America could have kept the bomb and send count­less young American GIs to their deaths.
President Truman decid­ed he could not in good con­science tell their par­ents they died for a good cause when he had the means to end the war.
He took the deci­sion many would have abdi­cat­ed and since then we have not had anoth­er world­wide conflagration.

Jamaica has the means to deal deci­sive­ly with the lit­tle mur­der­ing ter­ror­ists run­ning around gun­ning down inno­cent people.
What it lacks is the will and courage to do what must be done so that the coun­try may live in rel­a­tive peace and begin the task of build­ing prosperity.

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Crime Strategy Tantamount To Pouring Water Into Basket

The process by which Jamaica evolved into its present law­less state did not occur overnight, even as I am tempt­ed to say it will not be resolved overnight I won’t because that would be too predictable.

Jamaica’s Terrorism prob­lem has been a slow but steady burn. Needless to say that burn has ebbed and flowed based on the polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tion’s atti­tude at any giv­en time.

Before we get to how are we going to deal deci­sive­ly with this lit­tle prob­lem we must first acknowl­edge that the fix­es employed over­time and the fix­es being pro­posed are mere reac­tions to the mur­der rate, not tan­gi­ble sus­tain­able solutions.

So even as the lit­tle pow­er play­ers in the Senate debate Special zones bill recent­ly passed in the low­er cham­ber, the antic­i­pat­ed results after pas­sage will be just as neg­li­gi­ble as all of the oth­er anti-crime ini­tia­tives before it.

I wish I had a dol­lar for my many friends who tell me to lay off and give the bill time. They say after pas­sage we will see whether it works or not.
With all due respect to my friends, I don’t need to wait to know that pour­ing water into a bas­ket is a futile effort.

The fact of the mat­ter is that the fix­es being put forth in this bill are a dol­lar short and a day late.
The Island does not need anoth­er anti-crime law, nei­ther does it require anoth­er spe­cial police anti-crime task force if the atti­tude toward the rule of law and law enforce­ment continues.

Jamaicans have a very high tol­er­ance for law­less­ness, the politi­cians know it, the crim­i­nal Dons know it and the gang lead­ers know it.
If I said it once, I must have said it a thou­sand times.
This law­less­ness is fed by the acqui­es­cence of not just the locals but by Government and civ­il society.
Here ‘s a nov­el concept .….….
What would hap­pen if the gov­ern­ment called out the mil­i­tary and police and tell them to go get the criminals?

The first push­back would be the howls of con­dem­na­tion from the usu­al quar­ters. You know them they act smart, act like they are human rights advo­cates, but are lit­tle more than cheap oppor­tunis­tic leech­es.
Then there are the legions of vil­lage lawyers who know how every­thing should be done but have nev­er done anything.
Not to for­get the prog­nos­ti­ca­tors and pun­dits, the pon­tif­i­cates and the purists who have access to the airwaves.
They who shape pub­lic opin­ions and per­cep­tions, night and day, telling the unin­formed mass­es that the skies are falling.

Unfortunately for the unin­formed mass­es, it seems that they alone are bleed­ing, not the self-pro­claimed elites who live behind the high walls of the gat­ed communities.
But what would hap­pen if the Government ignored the vil­lage lawyers, pun­dits, and prognosticators?
What if the admin­is­tra­tors sim­ply ignored the provo­ca­teurs and the bleed­ing heart frauds who only care about dead crim­i­nals but have no love for the thou­sands of inno­cents dead?

You know what would happen?
The mind­less ter­ror­ists would get the mes­sage that the gov­ern­ment will not tol­er­ate their shit any­more and things would change.
In order to erad­i­cate this mon­ster from our midst, a gov­ern­ment must first under­take its pri­ma­ry function,
That func­tion is the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. Everything else is periph­er­al, incon­se­quen­tial until we have safe­ty and security.

These killers are killing because they know no one is com­ing after them.
The atti­tude of the admin­is­tra­tion must be to launch an all-out attack on Jamaica’s ter­ror­ists and if need be dri­ve them into the sea.
There should be no respite until these mur­der­ing scums are dealt full force with full force.

To the bleed­ing heart per­fec­tion­ist who have a prob­lem see­ing the blood of mur­der­ers, you hyp­ocrites have no prob­lem with the blood of inno­cent vic­tims, includ­ing chil­dren and lit­tle babies.
You are mod­ern day Pharisees who have no desire to see the end of the blood­let­ting as long as you can get some legit­i­ma­cy from it.
You are heathens.

The politi­cians, too pre­oc­cu­pied with the trap­pings of pow­er and the desire to get pow­er does not care a rat’s ass about the mul­ti­ple dead bod­ies each day, for them, it is a num­bers game which they see as a means to score cheap polit­i­cal points.
Up to June 24th, 697 peo­ple were report­ed killed. That num­ber does not include the many oth­ers who have been shot but sur­vived or may have died later.

In a mat­ter of 181 days, 697 peo­ple were slaughtered.
That trans­lates to just under 4 liv­ing breath­ing Jamaicans hav­ing their lives snuffed out by the Island’s terrorists.
In addi­tion to the car­nage on the roads and the oth­er deaths, it is no won­der that funer­als are now sport­ing events.
No wor­ries, pour the rum and go heavy on the cur­ry goat and white rice , every­thing irie.

Jamaica got on a path of car­ing about the lives of known killers, In a twist­ed Orwellian alter­nate uni­verse that exists today the lives of heart­less mur­der­ers are much more trea­sured than the lives of their inno­cent victims.
This sick twist­ed love affair with crim­i­nals, taught by the bour­geoisie from upper St Andrew has brought our coun­try to the edge of ruin and there is none to say enough of this shit.
Those of you who believe this will be fixed by social inter­ven­tion and social engi­neer­ing are even more stu­pid that you sound.
A coun­try and a peo­ple who erect bar­ri­ers to their own suc­cess are doomed to fail­ure and disaster.

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Holness Monitoring Crime Worries In His Constituency

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says he’s mon­i­tor­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion in his West Central St Andrew con­stituen­cy fol­low­ing the mur­der of three peo­ple along Hill Avenue in Olympic Gardens on Monday evening.

Holness is cur­rent­ly in Grenada attend­ing the 38th CARICOM Heads of Government meeting.

Today, he told jour­nal­ists that he has received an update on the mur­ders from the police.

Residents have called for the Olympic Gardens com­mu­ni­ty to be des­ig­nat­ed the first zone of spe­cial operations.

They argue that it is impor­tant to send the right sig­nal, say­ing the prime min­is­ter’s con­stituen­cy, or sec­tions of it, should be used as an example.

The Zones of Special Operations Bill, which was passed in the House of Representatives last month, is to be debat­ed in the Senate on Friday before becom­ing law.

If it becomes law, it will give the prime min­is­ter pow­er, in con­sul­ta­tion with the National Security Council, to declare an area a zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions to tack­le increased volatil­i­ty in a community.

However, the zone can only be estab­lished after the police com­mis­sion­er and the chief of defence staff make a request for such a dec­la­ra­tion in writ­ing to the prime minister.

More than 697 per­sons have been mur­dered across Jamaica up to June 24, up from 584 for the sim­i­lar peri­od last year. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​7​0​5​/​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​m​o​n​i​t​o​r​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​s​-​h​i​s​-​c​o​n​s​t​i​t​u​e​ncy

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MONDAY, JUL 3, 2017 05:00 AM EDT Meet The “modern-day President”: Donald Trump May Have Degraded The Dignity Of The Office Beyond Repair

Conservatives demonize the press for being unpatriotic, while worshipping a man who is destroying the presidency

It seems like a year ago, giv­en the tsuna­mi of tweets and gib­ber­ish that came from President Donald Trump over the week­end, but it was only Friday when Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Good Morning America” to crit­i­cize the news media’s cov­er­age of her boss as “nei­ther pro­duc­tive nor patri­ot­ic.” Ah yes, the patri­o­tism trope again. You might be old enough to recall how, through­out the com­par­a­tive­ly bucol­ic pres­i­den­cy of George W. Bush, we were repeat­ed­ly told in no uncer­tain terms that crit­i­ciz­ing the pres­i­dent while American troops were in harm’s way was unpa­tri­ot­ic and under­mined the troops. Let’s review:

“You don’t crit­i­cize the com­man­der-in-chief in the mid­dle of a fire­fight. That could be con­strued as putting U.S. forces in jeop­ardy and under­min­ing morale.” — Bill O’Reilly, April 2004

“I’ve held this in long enough. I real­ly sus­pect that these lib­er­al tac­tics are dam­ag­ing, maybe even killing the morale of our troops.” — Rush Limbaugh, June 2007

“The only ideas that they espouse are ways to under­mine the troops in harm’s way and under­mine their com­man­der in chief while they’re at war. Your can­di­dates have no idea how to keep this econ­o­my strong.” — Sean Hannity, October 2006

“He’s the com­man­der in chief. And what I find frankly repug­nant about you and some of your fel­low Democrats — you have under­mined our pres­i­dent …” —Sean Hannity, March 2006

“You know, Norman, those com­ments while we are at war, while troops are in harm’s way, while he is the com­man­der in chief, do you not see the out­rage in that?” — Sean Hannity, November 2007

“I have had it with mem­bers [of the Democratic] par­ty under­min­ing our troops, under­min­ing a com­man­der in chief while we are at war …” — Sean Hannity, November 2005

“Through their relent­less, vicious attacks on Bush, they sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly under­mined the public’s con­fi­dence in the war and our abil­i­ty to opti­mal­ly wage it.” — Columnist David Limbaugh, August 2014

As of Jan. 20, 2009, of course, the Republicans aban­doned these rules with whiplash-induc­ing haste, even while American sol­diers con­tin­ued to fight and die over­seas. But now that Barack Obama is out of the way, the rule is back.

We’re not allowed to hold the pres­i­dent account­able, they’re say­ing. We’re evi­dent­ly not allowed to talk about the mount­ing evi­dence that Donald Trump may have engaged in a grow­ing ros­ter of nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties — pos­si­ble col­lu­sion with the Russian gov­ern­ment to hijack the 2016 elec­tion and all the accom­pa­ny­ing obstruc­tion of jus­tice, wit­ness tam­per­ing and abuse of pow­er that may have gone along with it. (There could be myr­i­ad addi­tion­al crimes that inves­ti­ga­tors have yet to uncover.)

Journalism along these lines is unpa­tri­ot­ic, accord­ing to the White House. In oth­er words, it’s unpa­tri­ot­ic for a free press to inves­ti­gate and hold account­able a pres­i­dent who hap­pens to be the cen­ter­piece of what may be the most unpa­tri­ot­ic plot by any American, pres­i­dent or not, in the his­to­ry of the repub­lic. If guilty, the pres­i­dent will have worked with a for­eign gov­ern­ment to com­man­deer our demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, then abused his pow­er as chief exec­u­tive to cov­er it up. This is the very def­i­n­i­tion of “unpa­tri­ot­ic.” Yet it’s the mem­bers of the news media who are the vil­lains somehow.

When the pres­i­dent tweet­ed a video of him­self clothes­lin­ing a pro-wrestling vil­lain whose head had been replaced with a CNN logo, his syco­phants and dis­ci­ples sucked it down like cocaine. In the wake of the tweet, the right-wing crowd that tried to brand “patri­o­tism” seemed per­fect­ly at ease with a pres­i­dent whose behav­ior is absolute­ly an abom­i­na­tion — a malig­nant tumor on our demo­c­ra­t­ic system.

Worse, Trump’s sup­port­ers seem thrilled with a pres­i­dent who, over the week­end before our cel­e­bra­tion of nation­al inde­pen­dence, declared the final demise of act­ing pres­i­den­tial decen­cy and deco­rum. Trump declared in no uncer­tain terms that his use of Twitter is “not pres­i­den­tial.” Instead, in a tweet like­ly to live in infamy, Trump pro­nounced it “MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.” The next day we were treat­ed to the afore­men­tioned CNN wrestling tweet, which itself was appar­ent­ly lift­ed from a racist, anti-Semitic troll on Reddit.

It’s not my job to ordain who or what is patri­ot­ic, but it can’t pos­si­bly be seen as patri­ot­ic to excuse and con­done the con­tin­ued vul­gar­i­ty, inde­cen­cy, irra­tional­i­ty and defi­ant igno­rance of the cur­rent com­man­der in chief. As I’ve writ­ten through­out Trump’s ascen­dan­cy in pol­i­tics, his behav­ior is cre­at­ing dam­age to the sys­tem. Is the pres­i­dent being patri­ot­ic? Decide for your­self. Is it patri­ot­ic for the Republican Party to aban­don its “fam­i­ly val­ues” high ground just to piss off lib­er­als and the hosts of a morn­ing talk show?

Trump and his sup­port­ers will ulti­mate­ly be judged by his­to­ry as to whether it’s patri­ot­ic to applaud the pres­i­dent as he lies about his oppo­nents with graph­ic, exclam­a­to­ry phras­es that all too often include bloody imagery. History will decide whether it’s patri­ot­ic to sup­port a pres­i­dent who, by his own account, sex­u­al­ly assault­ed women and then bragged about it. History will decide whether it’s patri­ot­ic for a pres­i­dent to attack a Gold Star fam­i­ly and a POW who was tor­tured in Vietnam. History will decide whether it’s patri­ot­ic to lie to the peo­ple about vot­er fraud that does not exist. History will decide whether it’s patri­ot­ic to encour­age the pres­i­dent to con­tin­ue to destroy the dig­ni­ty of the office, estab­lish­ing that from here on out it’s OK for the sup­posed leader of the free world to behave like a Twitter troll.

Trump sup­port­ers, swelled with vic­tim­hood, will tell you that oth­er peo­ple — the press and the Democrats — start­ed it. Trump sup­port­ers will tell you that CNN and the New York Times are being obnox­ious and unpa­tri­ot­ic, and there­fore deserve equal­ly nasty treat­ment by the pres­i­dent. Trump vot­ers have a right to say all this, of course. But they are bad­ly delud­ing them­selves and they ought to be swift­ly and accu­rate­ly corrected.

They don’t seem to accept the obvi­ous dis­tinc­tion that Jake Tapper of CNN is not the pres­i­dent. Michael Schmidt of the Times and Robert Costa of the Washington Post and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC are not the pres­i­dent. I’m not the pres­i­dent. The job of jour­nal­ists in this con­text is to hold the pres­i­dent account­able. Likewise, it’s the job of the “resis­tance” to do what activists do. It’s the president’s job to set an exam­ple of calm­ness, decen­cy and ratio­nal­i­ty — to rise above the pet­ti­ness and the vin­dic­tive shov­el fights occur­ring in the dark­er cor­ners of the inter­net. It’s the president’s job not to act like a wrestling stooge or an unhinged online com­ments troll, espe­cial­ly since he has legions of super­fans online and on con­ser­v­a­tive media to han­dle the trench war­fare for him.

The Rubicon of pres­i­den­tial con­duct has not only been crossed by Trump and his peo­ple, it has been crossed and then used as a gigan­tic latrine. By encour­ag­ing the pres­i­dent to throw down and go Full Trump all the time, they’re set­ting new and har­row­ing stan­dards for the office. Each pres­i­dent puts his stamp on the tra­di­tions of the pres­i­den­cy, and Donald Trump has already done that. The reper­cus­sions may include the slow dis­in­te­gra­tion of America’s rep­u­ta­tion, not to men­tion the respectabil­i­ty and integri­ty of the exec­u­tive branch.

With every insane new chap­ter of the Trump pres­i­den­cy, the floor for how low a pres­i­dent can sink has almost van­ished. Because he’s been allowed to get away will all of it rel­a­tive­ly unscathed, almost any­thing goes — even the mock­ing of a dis­abled reporter, even the repeat­ed usage of child­ish nick­names. Already, the very fact that Trump (bare­ly) won the elec­tion despite his errat­ic and repul­sive behav­ior dur­ing the cam­paign has sent a sig­nal to future politi­cians that Trump’s style is a winner’s style. That is almost cer­tain to breed future Trumps. The take­away will be that it’s both patri­ot­ic and suc­cess­ful to behave like a vicious over­grown tod­dler who incites vio­lence against his fel­low Americans.

I’m afraid we’ve already careened beyond the point of no return. Nevertheless, it’s cru­cial that those who hold some lev­el of benev­o­lent pow­er use it to help unseat this mad­man before the dam­age is ful­ly wrought — before this can­cer on the pres­i­den­cy and our entire polit­i­cal sys­tem becomes inop­er­a­ble. Then his­to­ry will decide which side was act­ing with patri­ot­ic intent and which side was burn­ing it all down in the ser­vice of malev­o­lent, self­ish and ulti­mate­ly destruc­tive ends.  http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​7​/​0​3​/​m​e​e​t​-​t​h​e​-​m​o​d​e​r​n​-​d​a​y​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​-​d​o​n​a​l​d​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​m​a​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​d​e​g​r​a​d​e​d​-​t​h​e​-​d​i​g​n​i​t​y​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​-​b​e​y​o​n​d​-​r​e​p​a​ir/

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Most Of America’s Terrorists Are White, And Not Muslim

Right-wing terror is real, and it’s a problem.

By Sarah Ruiz-Grossman 

When it comes to domes­tic ter­ror­ism in America, the num­bers don’t lie: Far-right extrem­ists are behind far more plots and attacks than Islamist extremists.

There were almost twice as many ter­ror­ist inci­dents by right-wing extrem­ists as by Islamist extrem­ists in the U.S. from 2008 to 2016, accord­ing to a new report from The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal.

Looking at both plots and attacks car­ried out, the group tracked 201 ter­ror­ist inci­dents on U.S. soil from January 2008 to the end of 2016. The data­base shows 115 cas­es by right-wing extrem­ists ― from white suprema­cists to mili­tias to “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” ― com­pared to 63 cas­es by Islamist extrem­ists. Incidents from left-wing extrem­ists, includ­ing ecoter­ror­ists and ani­mal rights mil­i­tants, were com­par­a­tive­ly rare, with 19 incidents.

When it comes to right-wing extrem­ism, attack­ers are also ‘most­ly men’ and ‘almost pure­ly white.’Reporter David Neiwert

While the data­base makes a point of dis­tin­guish­ing between dif­fer­ent groups with­in right-wing extrem­ism, lead reporter David Neiwert told HuffPost that “those are all gra­da­tions of white suprema­cy, vari­a­tions on the same thing.” When it comes to right-wing extrem­ism, attack­ers are also “most­ly men” and “almost pure­ly white,” Neiwert said.

Attacks by right-wing extrem­ists were also more often dead­ly, with near­ly a third of right-wing extrem­ist inci­dents result­ing in deaths com­pared with 13 per­cent of Islamist extrem­ist cas­es result­ing in deaths. However, the sheer num­ber of peo­ple killed by Islamist extrem­ists ― a total of 90 peo­ple killed ― was high­er than the death toll at the hands of right-wing extrem­ists ― 79 peo­ple killed.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has focused his rhetoric and poli­cies almost entire­ly on coun­ter­ing Islamist extrem­ism, not white suprema­cist extremism.

“As with a lot of things relat­ed to Trump and the Islamophobic right, the real­i­ty is viewed through an upside-down look­ing glass,” Neiwert said. “The real­i­ty is the most sig­nif­i­cant domes­tic ter­ror threat we have is right-wing extrem­ism.”

POOL NEW /​REUTERS
Jeremy Christian, accused of fatal­ly stab­bings two men who tried to stop Christian from harass­ing two young black women who appeared to be Muslim, in Portland, Oregon — May 30, 2017.

The Investigative Fund’s find­ings reflect those of pre­vi­ous stud­ies of domes­tic ter­ror­ism. The New America Foundation, for instance, which has been track­ing dead­ly ter­ror inci­dents on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11 attacks, also finds an almost two-to-one ratio of attacks by far-right extrem­ists to Islamist extrem­ists, with 21 dead­ly attacks by far-right extrem­ists, com­pared to 11 by Islamist extremists.

Despite the facts, many Americans still asso­ciate ter­ror attacks with Islamist extrem­ists rather than far-right extrem­ists, Neiwart noted.

“I think the larg­er per­cep­tion in pub­lic ― and this includes many pro­gres­sives and lib­er­als ― is the inver­sion of the real­i­ty: that the great­est threat we face is Islamist rad­i­cals,” Neiwert said. “And it’s reflect­ed in the way the press report upon var­i­ous kinds of domes­tic ter­ror attacks: When it’s a white domes­tic ter­ror­ist, they under­play it, write it off to men­tal illness.”

The real­i­ty is the most sig­nif­i­cant domes­tic ter­ror threat we have is right-wing extrem­ism.Reporter David Neiwert

The media has a long his­to­ry of dou­ble stan­dards when it comes to cov­er­ing ter­ror­ism ― start­ing with how slow main­stream media is to label attacks by white per­pe­tra­tors as “ter­ror­ism,” and quick to label them as such when attack­ers are per­ceived as non­white or “oth­er” ― and specif­i­cal­ly, Muslim.

Part of the prob­lem is the com­plex nature of how offi­cials choose to cat­e­go­rize attacks as ter­ror­ism. The FBI has spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria to clas­si­fy ter­ror­ist inci­dents ― but the pub­lic doesn’t always agree with offi­cials’ labels. For instance, many peo­ple con­demned the gov­ern­ment for not label­ing Dylann Roof a ter­ror­ist after killing nine black church­go­ers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, even though he specif­i­cal­ly said he was there “to shoot black peo­ple,” accord­ing to witnesses.

“There’s actu­al­ly a debate over whether what Dylann Roof did was domes­tic ter­ror­ism, when it so plain­ly is domes­tic ter­ror­ism,” Neiwert told HuffPost. “A lot of this has to do with embed­ded judg­ments about where these threats come from ― and that has to do with fear-mon­ger­ing around Islamophobia.”

THE INVESTIGATIVE FUND AND REVEAL
Investigative Fund’s inter­ac­tive map show­ing ter­ror­ism inci­dents by ide­ol­o­gy since 2008. 

According to Neiwert, the solu­tion lies with the gov­ern­ment first acknowl­edg­ing the scale of the prob­lem of far-right extrem­ism and then ded­i­cat­ing resources to fight­ing it.

So far, Trump has shown a clear dou­ble stan­dard in his response to ter­ror­ism: After Islamist extrem­ists attacked London on June 3, for instance, Trump con­demned the vio­lence on Twitter the same day ― but after an attack in Portland, Oregon, by a white suprema­cist on May 26, Trump wait­ed more than two days before tweet­ing about it. After the London attack, Trump also called on the courts to rein­state his trav­el ban on cer­tain Muslim-major­i­ty coun­tries ― which was round­ly crit­i­cized. After the Portland attack, Trump made no calls to change pol­i­cy to pre­vent future attacks.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion also report­ed­ly just dropped fund­ing for non­prof­it Life After Hate, which helps peo­ple leave the white suprema­cist movement.

But it’s not just Trump that’s the prob­lem. The Fund’s data­base goes back to 2008 and shows clear­ly how gov­ern­ment resources have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ded­i­cat­ed to tack­ling Islamist extrem­ism over right-wing extrem­ism. The gov­ern­ment suc­ceed­ed in inter­rupt­ing the vast major­i­ty of Islamist extrem­ist ter­ror cas­es since 2008; for instance: 76 per­cent of inci­dents tracked were “foiled plots,” which the group not­ed showed “a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of law enforce­ment resources.” When it came to right-wing extrem­ism, only about a third of inci­dents were inter­rupt­ed ― 35 per­cent ― and the major­i­ty of the cas­es includ­ed acts of vio­lence that led to deaths, injuries, or dam­aged property.

At the end of the day, it’s not only on the gov­ern­ment to acknowl­edge the real­i­ty of the grow­ing threat of far-right extrem­ism; accord­ing to Neiwert, it’s also on every­one from the media mem­bers to aver­age Americans.

“First thing we need to do is rec­og­nize that it’s there, it’s a prob­lem, it’s a threat ― as great a threat as Islamists,” Neiwert said. “And it needs to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.” http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​i​s​m​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​s​-​i​s​l​a​m​i​s​t​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​t​s​_​u​s​_​5​9​4​c​4​6​e​4​e​4​b​0​d​a​2​c​7​3​1​a​8​4df.

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Trump’s Election Investigation Is Already Facing Trouble

State officials are refusing to disclose data the commission wants, sometimes pointing to their own laws.

By Sam Levine, Sam Stein

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s com­mis­sion on elec­tion integri­ty is fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant hur­dles, as mul­ti­ple state elec­tion offi­cials have said they will not com­ply with the panel’s request this week for spe­cif­ic, sen­si­tive vot­er infor­ma­tion.

Even some Republican offi­cials have said that they may be opposed to or pro­hib­it­ed from releas­ing such infor­ma­tion or that they’re oth­er­wise will­ing to do only the bare min­i­mum in sat­is­fy­ing the Trump commission’s demands.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach ®, the commission’s vice chair who signed the let­ter sent to the states on Wednesday, told the Kansas City Star that his state would not release the last four dig­its of vot­ers’ Social Security num­bers because that infor­ma­tion is not pub­licly available.

Bryan Lowry @BryanLowry3

Kobach now says Kansas won’t be shar­ing the last 4 social. Update com­ing on http://KansasCity​.com  soon 

The request­ed infor­ma­tion includes the “full first and last names of all reg­is­trants, mid­dle names or ini­tials if avail­able, address­es, dates of birth, polit­i­cal par­ty (if record­ed in your state), last four dig­its of social secu­ri­ty num­ber if avail­able, vot­er his­to­ry (elec­tions vot­ed in) from 2006 onward, active/​inactive sta­tus, can­celled sta­tus, infor­ma­tion regard­ing any felony con­vic­tions, infor­ma­tion regard­ing vot­er reg­is­tra­tion in anoth­er state, infor­ma­tion regard­ing mil­i­tary sta­tus, and over­seas cit­i­zen information.”

Critics are fear­ful that sen­si­tive pri­vate data could become pub­lic if giv­en to the com­mis­sion and that inves­ti­ga­tors will use that infor­ma­tion to cre­ate an inac­cu­rate pic­ture of vot­er fraud ― a rel­a­tive­ly rare phe­nom­e­non in the U.S.

In Alabama, Secretary of State John Merrill ® said his office wouldn’t share any infor­ma­tion that wasn’t already avail­able to the pub­lic. He left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his office would decline to pro­vide any data on the state’s vot­ers to the commission.

“The Secretary of State’s Office will com­ply with the request if we are con­vinced that the over­all effort will pro­duce the nec­es­sary results to accom­plish the Commission’s stat­ed goal with­out com­pro­mis­ing the integri­ty of the vot­er rolls and the elec­tions process in Alabama,” Merrill said in a state­ment to HuffPost.

In North Dakota, elec­tions direc­tor John Arnold told HuffPost that state law pro­hib­it­ed releas­ing that kind of infor­ma­tion except to a “few enti­ties, but a pres­i­den­tial vot­er com­mis­sion isn’t one of them.”

Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske ® said in a state­ment that her office would pro­vide pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion, but wouldn’t release Social Security num­bers, driver’s license num­bers, DMV iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards or email addresses.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) wrote Kobach that his state “can­not share this infor­ma­tion,” refer­ring to Social Security num­bers, birth dates and driver’s license num­bers. He added that Kobach could pur­chase the state’s vot­er file “like any cit­i­zen” for $20.

Several states said they would dis­close only the bare min­i­mum required by pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws. Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox ® said Utah would share just pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion and not “any pro­tect­ed data.” Wisconsin elec­tion offi­cials sim­i­lar­ly said that they would dis­close already pub­lic infor­ma­tion ― like names, address­es and vot­ing his­to­ries ― and that state law pro­hib­it­ed them from releas­ing more sen­si­tive per­son­al data. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) direct­ed the state board of elec­tions not to release infor­ma­tion to the com­mis­sion “beyond what is pub­lic record.”

Even Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson ®, a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion, said she is legal­ly barred from pro­vid­ing all of the infor­ma­tion requested.

“Under Indiana pub­lic records laws, cer­tain vot­er info is avail­able to the pub­lic, the media and any oth­er per­son who request­ed the infor­ma­tion for non-com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. The infor­ma­tion pub­licly avail­able is name, address and con­gres­sion­al dis­trict assign­ment,” Lawson said in a statement.

Officials in California, Kentucky, Virginia, New York and Massachusetts have all flat­ly stat­ed that they won’t ful­fill the commission’s request.

“The cen­tral vot­er reg­istry is not a pub­lic record,” said Brian McNiff, a spokesman for William Francis Galvin, the sec­re­tary of the com­mon­wealth in Massachusetts.

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann ® said com­mis­sion mem­bers could “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The Minnesota and South Dakota sec­re­taries of state said they would not com­ply with the commission’s request. Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett ® said he was legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from pro­vid­ing the data the probe was requesting.

Adam Ganucheau 

✔@GanucheauAdam

Breaking: MS Secretary of State Hosemann, a Republican, on Trump vot­er file request: “Go jump in the Gulf“https://mis​sis​sip​pi​to​day​.org/​2​0​1​7​/​0​6​/​3​0​/​hosemann-on-trump-vot­er-id-request-go-jump-in-the-gulf/ … 

Some states have said they will com­ply with the data request. But even in those cas­es, they are unlike­ly to sat­is­fy all of the commission’s objectives.

The Georgia sec­re­tary of state’s office, for exam­ple, said it would hand over a vot­er list. But an offi­cial said that list does not con­tain driver’s license num­bers, Social Security num­bers, months and days of birth, sites of vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, phone num­bers or email addresses.

Bryan Dean, a spokesman for Oklahoma’s elec­tion board, said that his state’s office like­wise would sup­ply the com­mis­sion with “pub­licly avail­able vot­er roll data under the laws of our state.” But Dean not­ed that Social Security num­bers are not avail­able. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pâté ® said in a state­ment that his office would com­ply with the request, but that Iowa law pro­hibits releas­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion like Social Security numbers.

During an MSNBC inter­view on Friday, Kobach defend­ed the infor­ma­tion request.

“The com­mis­sion is only request­ing what any per­son on the street in California can walk into a coun­ty elec­tion office and get,” he said. “So if a Social Security num­ber is not pub­licly avail­able ― and it is not pub­licly avail­able in most states ― then we aren’t request­ing it. If it is pub­licly avail­able, if the pub­lic can get it, then the com­mis­sion would like it too.”

Citing a February 2012 Pew study, Kobach said there could be some 1.8 mil­lion deceased vot­ers on state rolls.

“We could actu­al­ly find out what the real num­ber is if we take the vot­er rolls of the states and we match them with the Social Security Administration’s list of peo­ple who have died,” he said. “Let’s find out what the real num­ber is. And then if you have the vot­er his­to­ry, you can say how many of these names appear to have vot­ed after the date of death.”

HuffPost con­tact­ed all 50 states in an attempt to get a fuller pic­ture of what type of com­pli­ance the Trump admin­is­tra­tion could expect. Numerous offi­cials said they were still review­ing the request. But regard­less of what they decide, the com­mis­sion seems like­ly to end up with an incom­plete and incon­sis­tent data set. http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​r​u​m​p​-​v​o​t​e​r​-​f​r​a​u​d​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​i​o​n​_​u​s​_​5​9​5​6​9​a​a​9​e​4​b​0​5​c​3​7​b​b​7​e​2​f​9​d​?​n​c​i​d​=​i​n​b​l​n​k​u​s​h​p​m​g​0​0​0​0​0​009

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‘Nothing Like Almost Shooting Someone To Set Your Head Right’: Fla. Sheriff’s Deputy Fired After Boasting Online

Florida sheriff’s deputy is out of a job after a pho­to sur­faced of him boast­ing about almost shoot­ing some­one to “set [his] head right.”

The Snapchat pho­to, which was post­ed June 25, shows Deputy Austen Callus, 23, sit­ting in a vehi­cle in plain clothes. The cap­tion read, “Nothing like almost shoot­ing some­one to set your head right lol. God I gate peo­ple with knives.” It is assumed that “gate” was a typo of the word “hate.” The inci­dent he was refer­ring to was a domes­tic vio­lence call involv­ing a knife.

On Thursday, Pinellas County Sherif Bob Gualtieri fired Callus, a patrol deputy, say­ing that the pho­to raised doubts about Callus’ mind­set when he’s out on the job.

“If you make that kind of a state­ment … you’re not going to be employed here as a deputy sher­iff because it calls into ques­tion your thoughts, your motives, and cer­tain­ly leaves the deputy and the agency in a very bad sit­u­a­tion if some­thing were to hap­pen in the future,” Gualtieri said, accord­ing to the Tampa Bay Times.

Too right, because had Callus actu­al­ly shot some­one … well.

Anyway, it turns out that the Good Samaritan who called Callus out was a friend of his who report­ed the pho­to, along with sev­er­al oth­ers that were tak­en while Callus was on-duty in his cruis­er as well as off-duty. The woman told the sheriff’s office that Callus’ girl­friend has recent­ly bro­ken up with him and that he’d been drink­ing heavily.

Around the same time, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ana­lysts caught wind of the pho­to, which was mak­ing rounds on social media.

“This is the kind of cop Pinellas coun­ty sheriff’s office hires?” wrote one Facebook user who shared the pho­to. “Someone who wants to shoot some­one just to get his head right?”

According to Gualtieri, through­out the inves­ti­ga­tion, Callus nev­er said any­thing that eased Gualtieri’s con­cern over what the pho­to depict­ed and said.

“So we can’t have some­body as a deputy who makes that kind of a state­ment … when he’s going through all this per­son­al tur­moil that’s going on,” Gualtieri added.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times.

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Los Angeles City Council Votes Unanimously To Name Street After Former President Barack Obama

The Los Angeles City Council vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on Wednesday to rename a street that runs through south­west Los Angeles after for­mer President Barack Obama. As luck would have it, the street runs par­al­lel to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, anoth­er hood classic.

Rodeo Road is a 3.5 mile stretch of road that runs from the east­ern Culver City bor­der, cross­es over Crenshaw Blvd to tra­verse through Leimert Park, the famous black arts dis­trict, and comes to an end at Arlington Avenue. The motion was pro­posed by city coun­cil pres­i­dent Herb Wesson, who intro­duced Obama at his first cam­paign ral­ly in Los Angeles nine years ago at Rancho Cienega Park (Dorsey Park to the locals), which is locat­ed on Rodeo Road.

Rodeo is often con­fused with the more upscale Rodeo Drive, which is locat­ed in Beverly Hills. The lit­mus test that sep­a­rates the natives from the out­siders or tourists is the way the street names are pro­nounced. In Beverly Hills, it’s ‘Roh-Day‑O,’ and in the hood, it’s ‘Roh-Dee-Oh.’

None of that will mat­ter now, how­ev­er, because it will soon be Obama Blvd, and this is the black­est thing to hap­pen in L.A. since they renamed Santa Barbara Blvd ‘Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd’ thir­ty years ago.

A plan is also in place to name a stretch of the 134 free­way after Obama as well.

See y’all on the cor­ner of Crenshaw and Obama Boulevards. http://​www​.the​root​.com/​l​o​s​-​a​n​g​e​l​e​s​-​c​i​t​y​-​c​o​u​n​c​i​l​-​v​o​t​e​s​-​u​n​a​n​i​m​o​u​s​l​y​-​t​o​-​n​a​m​e​-​s​t​r​e​-​1​7​9​6​5​3​5​889

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Special Crime Zones Bill Will Be Cotton Candy: Taste Good Bad For You…

The recent­ly tabled (Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) (Special Security and Community Development Measures) Act, 2017” )oth­er­wise called the (“spe­cial crime zones Bill”) was passed in the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives last night.
The process is not over, there is a process which includes the Senate debat­ing and vot­ing on it , then to the Governor General for his sig­na­ture before it becomes law.
If Delroy Chuck has any­thing to do with it,-it is guar­an­teed to be anoth­er paper tiger.

Simultaneously, the month of June has been the most vio­lent in 7 years. The police reports ‚141 per­sons were killed up to Tuesday June 27th.
That num­ber rep­re­sents the largest num­ber of per­sons to be killed in Jamaica since 2010 in a sin­gle month.

Now that the bill has gar­nered some sem­blance of bi-par­ti­san sup­port ‚there are enough rea­sons to believe it may actu­al­ly become law despite my per­son­al mis­giv­ings about it’s ulti­mate success.
As I said in a recent Article the fact that the likes of the PNP’s Paul Burke is sup­port­ing the bill is not only a sign of the times, but a glar­ing exam­ple Jamaica’s crime prob­lem has reached crit­i­cal mass.

The vil­lage lawyers are already out with their ill-informed prog­nos­ti­ca­tions. They will talk about the poten­tial for police abuse . They will talk about past instances of abuse. They will even talk about the press­ing need for restraint, because some­how we must pro­tect the human rights of crim­i­nals and their supporters.
What the Monday Morning quar­ter­backs won’t talk about is the fact that the coun­try is a ver­i­ta­ble zone of exclu­sion for law abid­ing people.
Decent law abid­ing cit­i­zens are lit­er­al­ly liv­ing , in fear that the next per­son killed may be them.

Paul Burke

In response to the bill ‚the PNP’s Paul Burke spoke elo­quent­ly in a sin­gle statement.
“Our rights have already been tak­en away…I have wit­nessed first-hand the lev­el of fear…I used to be able to go across many com­mu­ni­ties, I am [now] reluc­tant to do so” .
Burke’s state­ments came in response to his par­ty’s con­tin­ued harangu­ing, and hid­ing behind the issue of human rights as a rea­son for not sup­port­ing anti-crime initiatives.

PM Andrew Holness

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the debate the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said “The truth is that the Jamaican State only exists in some areas of Jamaica, and so from a nation­al secu­ri­ty point of view we want to ensure that every square inch of Jamaica has some pres­ence of the Jamaican State,” he said. “We are accept­ing it as the norm, and we are nor­mal­iz­ing a sit­u­a­tion that should nev­er be nor­mal,”
This is a remark­able state­ment from the Jamaican Prime Minister.
In that state­ment he acknowl­edged that Jamaica is now a frac­tured coun­try in which state pow­er exists only in some areas.
For the record Jamaica is an approx­i­mate 4411 square miles and a pop­u­la­tion of 2,7 mil­lion people.
That is a pro­found admis­sion. We have been warn­ing against this for years.

Now grant­ed that Holness just recent­ly seemed to have had this brush with real­i­ty , a con­tact aware­ness which may have hap­pened because of the num­ber of dead bod­ies , nonethe­less this writer feels oblig­at­ed to wel­come him to the plan­et real­i­ty.[sic]

The fraud­u­lent Elitists on the Island who sit in their ivory tow­ers and pon­tif­i­cate about treat­ing these ver­min with kids gloves should be made to stare at their dead bod­ies for hours with­out stop­ping.
These alleged mem­bers of the ski-mask gang will not be tak­ing the life of anoth­er inno­cent person.

According to Jamaican media 712 peo­ple were report­ed killed from the start of the year to June 27th.
If that trend hold the coun­try is on track to record over 1400 homi­cides for the year. Those mur­der num­bers are much clos­er to the year 2005 than a sit­u­a­tion in which the coun­try’s homi­cide num­bers are being checked.

Now of all the idi­ot­ic, sil­ly things I have heard in this crime con­ver­sa­tion, noth­ing piss­es me off more than the request Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett made. Bartlett wants the local media to bury the crime num­bers in the nether regions of their publications.
This idi­ot­ic nar­ra­tive has tak­en on legs , not sur­pris­ing­ly , many Jamaicans believe hid­ing bad news is okay, as long as they are not killed while they are hav­ing cur­ry goat and rice, Guinness stout and Ganja. Many are not too con­cerned about the dead bod­ies they step over to get to the party .

I per­son­al­ly wel­come this bit of leg­is­la­tion ‚the “special crime zones Bill” ‚even though I am under no illu­sion that it will do much to take back the streets from the gangs which now rule them.
But because it seem to indi­cate an awak­en­ing of the peo­ple who run the coun­try to the grim real­i­ties of the time .

I dis­agree with the intent of the bill , I doubt when it becomes law it will be suc­cess­ful because the bill will be focus­ing on com­mu­ni­ties not indi­vid­u­als and entities.
When the secu­ri­ty forces swoop down on cer­tain areas as des­ig­nat­ed by the prime min­is­ter or whomev­er that author­i­ty is , it can almost be guar­an­teed they will not be swoop­ing down on Cherry Gardens or Norbrook.
They will not swoop down on Jacks Hill or up on Stillwell Road.

Based on that alone poor­er peo­ple who are con­fined to sec­tions of Three Miles, of Rema, Olimpic Gardens or Payne avenue will be penal­ized for being poor.
If the so-called human rights advo­cates want to make that argu­ment I am all for sign­ing on to that narrative.
What I will have no patience for ‚is the gib­ber­ish from those who talk about human rights for killers but have no com­pas­sion or empa­thy for crime victims.
This is why I con­tin­ue to speak about the val­ue of what Los Pepes did in Colombia.

Police patrol the polit­i­cal gar­risons the two par­ties cre­at­ed , then blame police for the mon­sters they created.

Any effec­tive strat­e­gy which will have a pos­i­tive impact on Jamaica’s bur­geon­ing ter­ror prob­lem must begin with…

♦The under­stand­ing that whats going on is terrorism.
♦ Remove the hand­cuffs from the hands of the good police offi­cers, and place them on those of crim­i­nal cops.
♦ Fire Terrence Williams , repeal INDECOM, and replace it with a law and lead­er­ship which is not in con­flict with police , but roots out dirty cops.
♦ Ignore for­eign Government’s opin­ion of how we enforce our laws and what laws we pass to gov­ern our country.
♦ Make mon­ey avail­able and begin the task of train­ing enough detectives .

♦ Infiltrate the gangs.
♦ Take from judges hands the pow­er to deter­mine sen­tence in gun crimes( truth in sentences).
♦ Hire more judges who under­stand their roles as inter­preters of the law , not lawmakers.
♦ Hire more, (and )com­pe­tent prosecutors.
♦ Hire Judges who were prosecutors.

Illegal guns flood­ing into Jamaica report­ed­ly being paid for with lot­to scam­ming money.

♦ Fast-track court cas­es so that jus­tice may be served and cit­i­zens may once again have con­fi­dence in the state to deliv­er justice.
♦ Get politi­cian’s grub­by lit­tle fin­gers off law enforce­ment by cre­at­ing a sys­tem of checks and balances.
♦ enact seri­ous laws which puts crim­i­nals caught with a gun in prison for a min­i­mum of two years, grant­ed the weapon was nev­er used in the com­mis­sion of a homi­cide or assault.
♦ In the event the weapon was involved in a n assault or Robbery the penal­ty should be twen­ty years in Prison.

♦ A crim­i­nal caught with a weapon , or who used a gun in the com­mis­sion of a homi­cide, the penal­ty should be life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
♦ Improve account­abil­i­ty in the JCF , using the CompStat  sys­tem , short for COMPuter STATistics), a sys­tem if applied judi­cious­ly and hon­est­ly cre­ates best prac­tices of account­abil­i­ty for Police Commanders. If you aren’t mea­sur­ing it, how do you know if you are fail­ing or succeeding?
♦ Create in the JCF and élite task-force to inves­ti­gate while col­lar crimes , that includes every Jamaican, no one is above the laws.
♦ It’s time for a nation­al Identification data­base, cre­ate one.

Terrence Williams (right) com­mis­sion­er of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), Hamish Campbell, (cen­tre) IDECOM’s assis­tant com­mis­sion­er and Dave Lewis, INDECOM’s direc­tor of com­plaints cen­tral region at a Gleaner Editors’.

Jamaica must remove some of the voic­es from the debate if this thing is to be resolved . Many of the loud­est voic­es push­ing back against reform and solu­tions based sug­ges­tions, are the peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from the cul­ture of crime on the Island.
This law will not do a damn thing to bring mur­der down, mur­der­ers will sim­ply slith­er out of what­ev­er zones are des­ig­nat­ed at a giv­en time, and move to oth­er areas as they did in 2010.

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Off-Duty Officer Pins Black Teen To Ground For Being On His Lawn

Another teen filmed the video and begged the officer to let them go.

By Carla Herreria

Police offi­cers in the Village of Lansing, Illinois, are inves­ti­gat­ing an inci­dent involv­ing an off-duty police offi­cer who was filmed hold­ing a black teenag­er to the ground and threat­en­ing his life for being on the officer’s lawn.

Another minor filmed a por­tion of the Saturday con­fronta­tion, which was lat­er shared on Facebook, where it went viral. The rough­ly 90-sec­ond video, seen below, con­tains explic­it lan­guage throughout.

In it, an adult man strad­dles the teen and puts his hand around his neck. The man can be heard scold­ing the teen for com­ing onto his prop­er­ty and says, “I’m going to fuck­ing kill you.”

Andrew M. Stroth, a civ­il rights attor­ney who is rep­re­sent­ing the teen’s fam­i­ly, iden­ti­fied him as 15-year-old Jordan Brunson and iden­ti­fied the teen who record­ed the inci­dent only as Aaron, also 15.

Later in the video, the off-duty offi­cer tells Brunson that he is “try­ing to fig­ure out what’s going on and you guys are act­ing stupid.”

When Brunson tells the man that “he is not involved in this,” the man says, “I don’t give a fuck who is. Do you under­stand that?”

“Why are you doing this to me then?” Brunson asks, to which the man replies, “Because your friend is being a fuck­ing idiot,” appar­ent­ly refer­ring to Aaron.

A woman named Ann Falls, who claims to be relat­ed to Brunson, shared the video Monday on Facebook. It has been viewed near­ly 4 mil­lion times.

The Lansing Police Department con­firmed to the Northwest Indiana Times that offi­cials had been inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent before video of the con­fronta­tion was uploaded to the inter­net. The con­fronta­tion was relat­ed to a larg­er fight that had bro­ken out among about 30 juve­niles ear­li­er in the day, police said in a state­ment Tuesday.

Brunson told Chicago news sta­tion WGN-TV that he was try­ing to help his friend who had been injured in a fight and went to sit on the officer’s porch.

“I was exam­in­ing him,” Brunson told the news sta­tion. “I was going to go tell his grand­moth­er.” Brunson also said that the man nev­er iden­ti­fied him­self as a police officer.

When asked about the officer’s con­fronta­tion of the teens, a spokesper­son for the Lansing police direct­ed HuffPost to state­ments released Monday, which said the off-duty offi­cer “became involved when he was approached by two oth­er sub­jects involved in the fight.”

“One of the juve­niles had vis­i­ble minor injuries, and the oth­er was tem­porar­i­ly detained for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion until the arrival of on-duty offi­cers,” the state­ment said.

The off-duty offi­cer had found a back­pack con­tain­ing a base­ball hat and a BB gun in his back­yard, then he saw the injured 15-year-old on his prop­er­ty, accord­ing to the police’s state­ment Tuesday. The teen told the offi­cer that he had been in a fight with sev­er­al black male juveniles.

A black 15-year-old (Brunson, who is not iden­ti­fied by name in the police state­ment) then report­ed­ly approached the injured teen and the off-duty offi­cer on the officer’s prop­er­ty. According to police, the offi­cer told both teens to stay put until police arrived, but they refused, “result­ing in the off-duty offi­cer phys­i­cal­ly detain­ing one of the juveniles.”

Stroth, whose law firm inves­ti­gates police bru­tal­i­ty, called the officer’s actions unwar­rant­ed and exces­sive, and said the ear­li­er fight between the teens was unre­lat­ed to the officer’s treat­ment of Brunson.

“The video speaks for itself. It’s yet anoth­er exam­ple of a white offi­cer using exces­sive and unrea­son­able force against a 15-year-old black boy,” Stroth told HuffPost. “Based on eye­wit­ness reports and the video, Jordan did noth­ing to pro­voke the unwar­rant­ed and exces­sive force used by the police officer.”

Stroth told HuffPost that police had not filed any charges against either boy. Lansing police have not released the name of the offi­cer, who is still on active duty, Police Chief Dennis Murrin told the Northwest Indiana Times.

Brunson’s fam­i­ly has not pressed any charges against the offi­cer, though Stroth’s law firm is con­duct­ing its own inves­ti­ga­tion into the incident.

A news con­fer­ence is sched­uled for Wednesday morn­ing at the Lansing Police Department, where activists are expect­ed to protest the off-duty officer’s actions, accord­ing to Stroth. http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​l​a​n​s​i​n​g​-​o​f​f​-​d​u​t​y​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​c​h​o​k​e​s​-​t​e​e​n​_​u​s​_​5​9​5​2​f​4​6​8​e​4​b​0​2​7​3​4​d​f​2​e​5​4​7​0​?​n​c​i​d​=​i​n​b​l​n​k​u​s​h​p​m​g​0​0​0​0​0​009

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Are Residents Of St. Andrew South Western Better Off After Portia’s 43 Years?

Present the flow­ers , pop the cham­pagne and march out the band, Portia Simpson Miller is final­ly retir­ing from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics after 43 long years.

White Wings way a sec­tion of Portia;s constituency

Now her par­ty, and even the oth­er par­ty are mag­nan­i­mous , effer­ves­cent in praise of Miller.
The Intellectual ghet­to is ready to bestow a hon­orary dis­tin­guished fel­low  award on her ‚and there will cer­tain­ly be nation­al hon­ors in the future.
By the way, what are those nation­al hon­ors worth now , I mean every­one has one of those these days?

Portia Simpson Miller has done well for.….…. , well Portia Simpson Miller. There is no deny­ing that.
She rose from hum­ble begin­nings in rur­al St, Catherine to the pin­na­cle of polit­i­cal pow­er on the Island with­out the ben­e­fit of much for­mal education.
Given Jamaica’s racial caste sys­tem her mete­oric rise is noth­ing to be sneered at.
Her ascen­dan­cy to the top polit­i­cal office is tes­ta­ment to her grit and deter­mi­na­tion if not her abil­i­ty to get things done.

adapt­ed

As the acco­lades pour in and the revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­ans begin the unright­eous task of san­i­tiz­ing her record for pos­ter­i­ty, it is impor­tant that those be viewed against the facts.
Portia Simpson Miller, like most Jamaican politi­cians, went into pol­i­tics for self , not out of some undy­ing ded­i­ca­tion to serve others.
The best way to judge a per­son is to look at what they have done in the past.
Remove the cult-like ide­o­log­i­cal fer­vor from her died-in-the wool sup­port­ers and there is not much left which would speak to 43 years as a leader who has served in var­i­ous capacities.

Is Portia Simpson Miller unique in this respect?
Of course not !
Without delv­ing into 43 years of polit­i­cal his­to­ry which are book-end­ed by a seat on the parish Council and two stints as Prime Minister , Mrs Miller has missed mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to be great.

Her refusal to join with Andrew Holness in a sym­bol­ic march through zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions( gar­risons) , her sys­tem­at­ic refusal to eschew polit­i­cal gar­risons, refus­ing to vote to extend the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in 2010, are only a few of the times in which Simpson Miller myopi­cal­ly chose parochial polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing over the nation’s greater good.

Pipes with no water …

As Simpson Miller ride off into the sun­set the tor­ren­tial out­pour­ing of putrid praise will flow nau­se­at­ing a few .
I will be among those who will not shed a tear to see the back of her.
Portia Simpson Miller accom­plished much more for her­self as a black woman ‚than many men more accom­plished could ever have .
There is no deny­ing her that.
In terms of accom­plish­ment for our nation I am yet to see the results.

The ques­tion for our nation and more specif­i­cal­ly , res­i­dents of St. Andrew South Western is this .
How well has Portia’s 43 years of rep­re­sen­ta­tion turned out for you?

Adiós Portia .……No tears here !

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When The Likes Of Paul Burke Support Anti-crime Legislation We Have Reached Critical Mass.…

(Chubble ketch yu pickney shut fit yu )!!!
Old Jamaican proverb !
Translation when you get in trouble you are forced to do things you would normally never do.

The Jamaican Government is in a mad rush to pass by mid July a bill into law it calls the Special Security of Community Development Measure.
I com­mend the Government for now rec­og­niz­ing that some­thing dras­tic needs to be done to cor­ral the Island’s gal­lop­ing mur­der rate.
Since the start of the year almost 700 Jamaicans have been report­ed mur­dered. In addi­tion to those shot and injured oth­er types of assaults, includ­ing sex­u­al assaults and a gen­er­al sense of law­less­ness is the norm. This in addi­tion to the insane car­nage on the Island’s road­ways, which has result­ed in 156 fatal­i­ties up to May 8th.

Ignore Bunting And Phillips On Crime: Not Long Ago Bunting Wanted Divine Intervention…

The new leg­is­la­tion is being tout­ed as a means toward bring­ing down the Island’s out of con­trol mur­der numbers.
Many Jamaicans at dif­fer­ent lev­els believe there is no need for more laws or emer­gency pow­ers for law enforcement.
What is need­ed they argue is a restruc­tur­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
I concur.

There is much that the police can do with the immense pow­ers they have if they learn to use those pow­ers intelligently.
Since the long­stand­ing emer­gency pow­ers of the 70’s and 80’s have been pulled from the police they have strug­gled to deal effec­tive­ly with crime .
Nevertheless, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, exploit­ing the flee­ing felon arrange­ments and oth­er built-ins, allows police offi­cers to do their jobs with­out undu­ly incon­ve­nienc­ing cit­i­zens, or abro­gat­ing their rights.

Sadly the arc of crime is not going to be bent by this bit of leg­is­la­tion even if it becomes law.
Another law which sin­gles out com­mu­ni­ties rather than indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties (gangs) are prob­a­bly going to yield neg­li­gi­ble results at best and worse case may even exac­er­bate rather than fix the prob­lems it is intend­ed to fix.

There is much which can be done with­out anoth­er bit of anti-crime legislation.

♦Hiring judges who respect the law , not judges who rely on their own emo­tions regard­ing bail and sentencing.
♦ Hire more judges and prosecutors.
♦ Remove cor­rup­tion from the Judiciary
♦ Remove cor­rup­tion from the police department.
♦ Repeal the INDECOM Act and reau­tho­rize a law which inves­ti­gates like the FBI does , not an agency of one per­son­’s ego , which cre­ate con­flict with law-enforce­ment and align itself with lob­by groups which are opposed to police.
♦ Train and equip hun­dreds of moti­vat­ed young offi­cers who want to serve in the CIB.
♦ Eliminate polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from law enforce­ment and elim­i­nate polit­i­cal con­nec­tions to crim­i­nal gangs.
♦ Both polit­i­cal par­ties must come togeth­er and throw their unequiv­o­cal sup­port behind the police.

The fore­gone is not a panacea for the elim­i­na­tion of crime . It is a road map which if expand­ed upon will begin the slow and tedious return of Jamaica to some sem­blance of safe­ty and security.
Civility and respect must be taught in the home.

It is a wel­come change to see PNP stand­out Paul Burke come out in sup­port of the new anti-crime ini­tia­tives of the admin­is­tra­tion, despite intran­si­gence and obstruc­tion from lead­ers of his party.
If old front-line sol­diers of the PNP like Burke can now see the need to stop with the pussy­foot­ing I don’t know what it will take to wake up the lead­er­ship of the coun­try that the play time thing has long passed.

The PNP fraud­u­lent­ly main­tain that more pow­ers to law enforce­ment means the rights of Jamaicans will be tak­en away.
In a bril­liant rebut­tal to his par­ty Burke said “Our rights have already been tak­en away…I have wit­nessed first-hand the lev­el of fear…I used to be able to go across many com­mu­ni­ties, I am [now] reluc­tant to do so” .

In the mean­time , while the Government is dead set on get­ting this mag­i­cal bit of leg­is­la­tion passed by mid July ‚it has invit­ed the reg­u­lar shapers of pol­i­cy to make sub­mis­sion about the legislation.
Of course the inter­est groups which have always impact­ed anti-crime leg­is­la­tion are the very same groups which will be inform­ing the debate on this one as well.
In the end this bit of mag­ic will have the same degen­er­a­tive effect the INDECOM law has had on crime.
The Norman Manley Law School.
The Bar Association.
Anti-Police lob­by, Jamaicans for Justice(JFJ. FAST, PMI, and the oth­er crim­i­nal sup­port­ing cabal of deplorables, all of which make mon­ey or gain rel­e­vance from crime.

The per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of stu­pid­i­ty is doing the same old thing and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result.…

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New Jersey College Fires Black Professor After She Went On Fox News To Criticize White Privilege

A black New Jersey com­mu­ni­ty col­lege pro­fes­sor was fired after she appeared on Fox News to defend a black-only Memorial Day Celebration in New York City.

The event was adver­tised as an “unapolo­get­i­cal­ly black space,” which nat­u­ral­ly caused a firestorm in con­ser­v­a­tive media. This led Lisa Durden, a polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor who was an adjunct pro­fes­sor at Essex County College in Newark, to appear on Fox News to dis­cuss the controversy.

“Boo-hoo-hoo,” Durden said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly in the June 6 inter­view with Tucker Carlson. “You white peo­ple are angry because you couldn’t use your white priv­i­lege card to get invit­ed to the Black Lives Matter all-black Memorial Day celebration.”

The exchange quick­ly turned heat­ed, with Carlson, a man clear­ly capa­ble of mak­ing and break­ing careers, going on to call Durden “hos­tile and sep­a­ratist and crazy.”

“You’re dement­ed actu­al­ly,” Carlson said. “You’re sick and what you’re say­ing is dis­gust­ing and if you were a Nazi I would say the same thing to you.”

Two days after the inter­view, the school sus­pend­ed Durden, who taught cours­es on mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cul­ture, from her teach­ing duties with pay, although only about a week remained in the sum­mer school ses­sion. Two weeks lat­er, Durden was fired from Essex, a cam­pus that is fed­er­al­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a “Predominantly Black and Hispanic Serving Institution.”

In an inter­view with The Washington Post after her removal, Durden didn’t mince words. “I was pub­licly lynched,” she said. “They didn’t let me fin­ish the class and they dis­rupt­ed the learn­ing process. I had a right to free speech, and I exer­cised that right.”

In a lengthy state­ment—post­ed in text and video form on Friday — Essex County College President Anthony Munroe said the school was “imme­di­ate­ly inun­dat­ed with feed­back from stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and prospec­tive stu­dents and their fam­i­lies express­ing frus­tra­tion, con­cern and even fear that the views expressed by a College employ­ee (with influ­ence over stu­dents) would neg­a­tive­ly impact their expe­ri­ence on the cam­pus.”http://​fusion​.kin​ja​.com/​n​e​w​-​j​e​r​s​e​y​-​c​o​l​l​e​g​e​-​f​i​r​e​s​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​p​r​o​f​e​s​s​o​r​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​s​h​e​-​s​p​o​k​-​1​7​9​6​4​2​0​454

“In con­sid­er­a­tion of the College’s mis­sion, and the impact that this mat­ter has had on the College’s ful­fill­ment of its mis­sion, we can­not main­tain an employ­ment rela­tion­ship with the adjunct,” Munroe, who is also black, said in the statement.

Leslie Farber, Durden’s attor­ney, con­firmed to NJ​.com that her client is con­sid­er­ing legal action against her for­mer employer.

“I believe their first sus­pend­ing and then fir­ing her was direct­ly because of her appear­ing on the Tucker Carlson TV show, and is a vio­la­tion of her fed­er­al and state con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free speech,” Farber said.

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Alleged Multiple Murderer Killed By Police In Hanover

The police Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) has con­firmed that one of Hanover’s most want­ed men is dead. 

He has been iden­ti­fied as 33-year-old Shenarda Leslie, oth­er­wise called ‘Blacks’, of Mount Pleasant dis­trict, Hanover.

According to the CCU, Leslie was among a group of men who fired shots at the police dur­ing an oper­a­tion in Green Island in the parish last night.

The CCU said about 8:50 p.m., a team of cops was con­duct­ing oper­a­tions in the area when they sig­naled the dri­ver of a Toyota Corolla motor­car to stop. The dri­ver dis­obeyed the sig­nal and men inside the vehi­cle opened gun­fire at the team.

The police coun­tered the attack and Leslie was lat­er found with gun­shot wounds and a 9mm Smith and Wesson pis­tol with four car­tridges was seized.

He was pro­nounced dead at hos­pi­tal. The oth­er occu­pants escaped in the area.

The mat­ter was report­ed to the Inspectorate of Constabulary as well as the Independent Commission of Investigations.

The police have report­ed that Leslie was the leader of the One Voice Gang, fol­low­ing the incar­cer­a­tion of Yasser James. He was impli­cat­ed in at least 15 mur­ders in the Hanover in the last eight months. These include:

- Andre McKenzie, oth­er­wise called ‘Kush’ who was killed in Williamsfield on November 12, 2016.
 — Malik Dixon who was killed in Williamsfield on December 24, 2016. Two oth­er men were injured in that incident.
 — Triple mur­der in Williamsfield, includ­ing one-year-old and five-year-old chil­dren. Three oth­ers were also shot and injured on January 18.
 — Triple mur­der in Dias on March 24. One man was also shot and injured.
 — Double mur­der in Middlesex on May 26.
 — Murder in Malcolm Heights on June 14. A woman was also shot and injured.
 — The most recent quadru­ple mur­der in Mount Pleasant dis­trict on June 13.  http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​6​2​4​/​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​m​u​l​t​i​p​l​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​h​a​n​o​ver

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Police Officer Ray Tensing’s Murder Trial Just Ended In A Mistrial — Again

Tensing shot Sam DuBose at point-black range. The video wasn’t enough to convict him.

A judge declared a mis­tri­al Friday after an Ohio jury failed to reach a unan­i­mous ver­dict in the tri­al of a police offi­cer who shot and killed a man dur­ing a July 2015 traf­fic stop. University of Cincinnati offi­cer Ray Tensing, who is white, had been charged with mur­der in the death of 43-year-old Sam DuBose, who was black. The tri­al was the sec­ond for Tensing for the same inci­dent — his first tri­al also result­ed in a dead­locked jury and mis­tri­al last November.

DuBose’s shoot­ing made nation­al head­lines in 2015 after video of the inci­dent record­ed by Tensing’s body cam­era showed the offi­cer shoot­ing DuBose point-blank in the head. Tensing, who was patrolling off cam­pus, had pulled over DuBose because he was dri­ving with­out a front license plate. After an exchange about DuBose’s license and reg­is­tra­tion, the video appears to show DuBose start his car. Tensing tes­ti­fied that he shot DuBose after DuBose attempt­ed to dri­ve off. Tensing said that he thought he was going to be dragged under­neath the car because his arm was pinned in DuBose’s pas­sen­ger-side car win­dow. But a foren­sic video expert tes­ti­fied for the pros­e­cu­tion that the video showed that Tensing’s arm was not pinned and that Tensing pulled his gun and aimed it at DuBose before the car began mov­ing for­ward. The pros­e­cu­tion and defense made large­ly the same argu­ments and called many of the same wit­ness­es in both trials.

DuBose’s shoot­ing fol­lowed a traf­fic encounter between a police offi­cer and 28-year-old Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas, which had tak­en place rough­ly a week ear­li­er. Video of that inci­dent also went viral — and protests fol­lowed after it was report­ed that Bland had been found dead in her jail cell sev­er­al days lat­er; her death was ruled a suicide.

The Tensing ver­dict also comes amid a string of police-relat­ed news over the past week. Last Friday, a jury found a Minnesota police offi­cer, Jeronimo Yanez, not guilty of sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter in the shoot­ing death of Philando Castile dur­ing a traf­fic stop last July. On Wednesday, a jury in Milwaukee found anoth­er offi­cer, Dominique Heaggan-Brown, not guilty of reck­less homi­cide and oth­er charges in the shoot­ing death of Sylville Smith last August.

In a state­ment Friday, DuBose’s moth­er, Audrey DuBose, said that her fam­i­ly was “out­raged that a sec­ond jury has now failed to con­vict Ray Tensing” and called for peace­ful protests and anoth­er retri­al. She also said that the fam­i­ly stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the fam­i­lies of Castile, Smith, and oth­ers who were killed by police. http://​www​.moth​er​jones​.com/​c​r​i​m​e​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​/​2​0​1​7​/​0​6​/​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​r​a​y​-​t​e​n​s​i​n​g​-​v​e​r​d​i​c​t​-​s​a​m​-​d​u​b​o​se/