REBECCA LEBER

You’d think President Donald Trump’s opin­ion of cli­mate change might inform the deci­sion he promised to make on the Paris cli­mate accord this week, fol­low­ing meet­ings with G7 lead­ers who pres­sured him to keep the US engaged. But it seems his team does­n’t know what his posi­tion actu­al­ly is.

At a White House brief­ing on Tuesday, here is Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s response to a reporter’s ques­tion about whether Trump believes human activ­i­ty is con­tribut­ing to glob­al warm­ing: “Honestly, I haven’t asked him. I can get back to you.”

The reporter then asked if he feels as if Trump is still try­ing to make up his mind. “I don’t know,” Spicer responded.

Though Spicer did­n’t hint at what his boss will ulti­mate­ly decide, he men­tioned that Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt met on Tuesday. That might be a bad sign, as Pruitt has been lead­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s “leave” con­tin­gent.

It’s not just Spicer who’s sent mixed sig­nals about whether Trump still thinks glob­al warm­ing is a “total, and very expen­sive, hoax,” as he’s tweeted.

During a press brief­ing in late March, when Trump was rolling out his anti-cli­mate exec­u­tive orders, a reporter asked a senior White House offi­cial whether the pres­i­dent accept­ed that humans con­tribute to cli­mate change. “Sure. Yes, I think the pres­i­dent under­stands the dis­agree­ment over the pol­i­cy response,” he replied. But pressed fur­ther, he could­n’t ful­ly explain Trump’s posi­tion, his advis­ers, or his own, for that mat­ter. “I guess the key ques­tion is to what extent, over what peri­od of time,” he said. “Those are the big ques­tions that I think still we need to answer.”

His advis­ers have recent­ly sug­gest­ed that Trump’s views on the Paris deal and cli­mate change were, in the words of eco­nom­ic advis­er Gary Cohn, “evolv­ing,” though they’ve offered lit­tle evi­dence of what those views now are. “I think he is learn­ing to under­stand the European posi­tion,” Cohn said dur­ing the G7 meet­ings last week. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who acknowl­edges cli­mate change as a threat, claimed Trump was “curi­ous about why oth­ers were in the posi­tion they were” on the Paris deal, and that he was “wide open” on the issue.

Regardless what Trump thinks of the Paris agree­ment, he’s been clear that his pol­i­cy choic­es won’t reflect the best avail­able sci­ence. Our time­line of Trump’s com­ments on glob­al warm­ing should give you a bet­ter idea of the ebbs and flows of his posi­tion since 2009.

“Americans are creeping along the road to serfdom, yoked to corporate employers.”

This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on AlterNet.

America, as Paul Krugman writes in his Monday col­umn, is sup­pos­ed­ly “an open soci­ety, in which every­one is free to make his or her own choic­es about where to work and how to live.”

This idea of free­dom is our favorite myth, and it’s one con­ser­v­a­tives love to trot out when argu­ing for gut­ting the social safe­ty net. Getting cru­cial help like health insur­ance or minor assis­tance pay­ing for gro­ceriess, they rea­son, makes a per­son less free.

In prac­tice, the con­ser­v­a­tive def­i­n­i­tion of free­dom means free­dom for cor­po­ra­tions to under­pay their work­ers, enforce non-com­pete agree­ments pre­vent­ing near­ly 30 mil­lion from ever get­ting a new job if they quit, and deny the sick­est among us life-sav­ing health care. Not to men­tion, Krugman writes, “the mil­lions of Americans bur­dened down by heavy stu­dent and oth­er debt.”

The New York Times colum­nist argues “that we’re get­ting less free as time goes by,” espe­cial­ly when com­pared to European coun­tries: “The Gallup World Survey asks res­i­dents of many coun­tries whether they feel that they have ‘free­dom to make life choic­es’; the U.S. doesn’t come out look­ing too good, espe­cial­ly com­pared with the high free­dom grades of European nations with strong social safe­ty nets.”

The non-com­pete agree­ments are par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious. Krugman writes: “almost one in five American employ­ees is sub­ject to some kind of non­com­pete clause. There can’t be that many work­ers in pos­ses­sion of valu­able trade secrets, espe­cial­ly when many of these work­ers are in rel­a­tive­ly low-pay­ing jobs. For exam­ple, one promi­nent case involved Jimmy John’s, a sand­wich chain, basi­cal­ly try­ing to ban its for­mer fran­chisees from work­ing for oth­er sand­wich makers.”

Employers know that there are many trade secrets to be pro­tect­ed. But what com­pa­nies will nev­er admit is that these agree­ments are “less about pro­tect­ing trade secrets than they are about tying work­ers to their cur­rent employ­ers, unable to bar­gain for bet­ter wages or quit to take bet­ter jobs.”

Healthcare too, is anoth­er way in which Americans are yoked to their jobs, unable to advance sim­ply because they’d lose their abil­i­ty to see a doc­tor. Until the Affordable Care Act went into effect, “there was basi­cal­ly only one way Americans under 65 with pre-exist­ing con­di­tions could get health insur­ance: by find­ing an employ­er will­ing to offer coverage.”

Then Obamacare was cre­at­ed, and despite its flaws, for the first time there was flex­i­bil­i­ty and afford­able care avail­able even to those with pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. Instead of sup­port­ing its busi­ness and job-cre­at­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties and mak­ing improve­ments to pre­vent the kind of pre­mi­um increas­es and oth­er chal­lenges the law faces today, the Tea Party under­mined it at every turn. It remains baf­fling how a par­ty that extolls the virtues of entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion worked over­time to sab­o­tage a law that encour­ages just that. With Trump in office, and the Republicans’ new plan on the table, the threats only get worse.

Instead of liv­ing up to our rep­u­ta­tion as the land of the free, Americans are, Krugman con­cludes, “actu­al­ly creep­ing along the road to serf­dom, yoked to cor­po­rate employ­ers the way Russian peas­ants were once tied to their mas­ters’ land.” Even worse, “peo­ple push­ing them down that road are the very peo­ple who cry ‘free­dom’ the loudest.”
Read the full col­umn here.

OUR SAD PRESENT REALITY !

When truth and hon­esty are dimin­ished and dis­card­ed, replaced with lies and half truths the basic pil­lars of decen­cy and human dig­ni­ty are destroyed as well.
As human beings we all are lessened .
When there are no longer clear lines of demar­ca­tion between right and wrong what do we tell our children?

Don’t like to obey your par­en­t’s rules .
Don’t.
Don’t want to risk get­ting injured or killed in the war.
Avoid the draft.

You don’t think you should study in School don’t .
It shows!
Not com­fort­able with some peo­ple’s existence.
Denounce and con­demn them.

Not will­ing to play by the rules .
Bribe your way through life.
Unhappy with tax rates .
Don’t pay taxes.

Women are beneath you, to be used and abused.
Treat them like objects.
Can’t be both­ered with the incon­ve­nience of truth.
Demonize truth, use alter­na­tive facts.

Have no con­cept of intellect.
Use hyper­bole and superlatives.
Have no con­cept of Religion and nev­er adopt­ed one.
Claim one with­out a basic under­stand­ing of it’s ori­gins or significance.
Razor thin on his­to­ry , cul­ture, geography .
Make an ass of yourself.

Hate the sit­ting President.
Run for President.
Hate his agenda.
Try to tear down every­thing he did.

BRAVE GRADUATES OF NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY IN INDIANA STOOD UP FOR TRUTH AND EXUALITY.

When those who have a vote refus­es to vote because they allow the lies of oth­ers to influ­ence their actions, we get the worst of the worse as leaders.
When peo­ple make false choic­es about care­less­ness with e‑mails and a per­son who clear­ly and demon­stra­bly should nev­er be any­where near the pres­i­den­cy you end up with a stan­dard which leaves ratio­nal peo­ple stand­ing with mouth agape in shock.

Israel has been steal­ing nuclear secrets and covert­ly mak­ing bombs since the 1950s. And west­ern gov­ern­ments, includ­ing Britain and the US, turn a blind eye. But how can we expect Iran to curb its nuclear ambi­tions if the Israelis won’t come clean?

Deep beneath desert sands, an embat­tled Middle Eastern state has built a covert nuclear bomb, using tech­nol­o­gy and mate­ri­als pro­vid­ed by friend­ly pow­ers or stolen by a clan­des­tine net­work of agents. It is the stuff of pulp thrillers and the sort of nar­ra­tive often used to char­ac­terise the worst fears about the Iranian nuclear pro­gramme. In real­i­ty, though, nei­ther US nor British intel­li­gence believe Tehran has decid­ed to build a bomb, and Iran’s atom­ic projects are under con­stant inter­na­tion­al monitoring.

The exot­ic tale of the bomb hid­den in the desert is a true sto­ry, though. It’s just one that applies to anoth­er coun­try. In an extra­or­di­nary feat of sub­terfuge, Israel man­aged to assem­ble an entire under­ground nuclear arse­nal – now esti­mat­ed at 80 war­heads, on a par with India and Pakistan – and even test­ed a bomb near­ly half a cen­tu­ry ago, with a min­i­mum of inter­na­tion­al out­cry or even much pub­lic aware­ness of what it was doing.

Despite the fact that the Israel’s nuclear pro­gramme has been an open secret since a dis­grun­tled tech­ni­cian, Mordechai Vanunu, blew the whis­tle on it in 1986, the offi­cial Israeli posi­tion is still nev­er to con­firm or deny its existence.

When the for­mer speak­er of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo last month, declar­ing Israeli pos­ses­sion of both nuclear and chem­i­cal weapons and describ­ing the offi­cial non-dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy as “out­dat­ed and child­ish” a rightwing group for­mal­ly called for a police inves­ti­ga­tion for trea­son.

Meanwhile, west­ern gov­ern­ments have played along with the pol­i­cy of “opac­i­ty” by avoid­ing all men­tion of the issue. In 2009, when a vet­er­an Washington reporter, Helen Thomas, asked Barack Obama in the first month of his pres­i­den­cy if he knew of any coun­try in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he dodged the trap­door by say­ing only that he did not wish to “spec­u­late”.

UK gov­ern­ments have gen­er­al­ly fol­lowed suit. Asked in the House of Lords in November about Israeli nuclear weapons, Baroness Warsi answered tan­gen­tial­ly. “Israel has not declared a nuclear weapons pro­gramme. We have reg­u­lar dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment of Israel on a range of nuclear-relat­ed issues,” the min­is­ter said. “The gov­ern­ment of Israel is in no doubt as to our views. We encour­age Israel to become a state par­ty to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT].”

But through the cracks in this stone wall, more and more details con­tin­ue to emerge of how Israel built its nuclear weapons from smug­gled parts and pil­fered technology.

The tale serves as a his­tor­i­cal coun­ter­point to today’s drawn-out strug­gle over Iran’s nuclear ambi­tions. The par­al­lels are not exact – Israel, unlike Iran, nev­er signed up to the 1968 NPT so could not vio­late it. But it almost cer­tain­ly broke a treaty ban­ning nuclear tests, as well as count­less nation­al and inter­na­tion­al laws restrict­ing the traf­fic in nuclear mate­ri­als and technology.

The list of nations that secret­ly sold Israel the mate­r­i­al and exper­tise to make nuclear war­heads, or who turned a blind eye to its theft, include today’s staunchest cam­paign­ers against pro­lif­er­a­tion: the US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway.

Meanwhile, Israeli agents charged with buy­ing fis­sile mate­r­i­al and state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy found their way into some of the most sen­si­tive indus­tri­al estab­lish­ments in the world. This dar­ing and remark­ably suc­cess­ful spy ring, known as Lakam, the Hebrew acronym for the innocu­ous-sound­ing Science Liaison Bureau, includ­ed such colour­ful fig­ures as Arnon Milchan, a bil­lion­aire Hollywood pro­duc­er behind such hits as Pretty Woman, LA Confidential and 12 Years a Slave, who final­ly admit­ted his role last month.

“Do you know what it’s like to be a twen­tysome­thing-year-old kid [and] his coun­try lets him be James Bond? Wow! The action! That was excit­ing,” he said in an Israeli documentary.

Milchan’s life sto­ry is colour­ful, and unlike­ly enough to be the sub­ject of one of the block­busters he bankrolls. In the doc­u­men­tary, Robert de Niro recalls dis­cussing Milchan’s role in the illic­it pur­chase of nuclear-war­head trig­gers. “At some point I was ask­ing some­thing about that, being friends, but not in an accusato­ry way. I just want­ed to know,” De Niro says. “And he said: yeah I did that. Israel’s my country.”

Milchan was not shy about using Hollywood con­nec­tions to help his shad­owy sec­ond career. At one point, he admits in the doc­u­men­tary, he used the lure of a vis­it to actor Richard Dreyfuss’s home to get a top US nuclear sci­en­tist, Arthur Biehl, to join the board of one of his companies.

According to Milchan’s biog­ra­phy, by Israeli jour­nal­ists Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, he was recruit­ed in 1965 by Israel’s cur­rent pres­i­dent, Shimon Peres, who he met in a Tel Aviv night­club (called Mandy’s, named after the host­ess and own­er’s wife Mandy Rice-Davies, fresh­ly noto­ri­ous for her role in the Profumo sex scan­dal). Milchan, who then ran the fam­i­ly fer­tilis­er com­pa­ny, nev­er looked back, play­ing a cen­tral role in Israel’s clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion programme.

He was respon­si­ble for secur­ing vital ura­ni­um-enrich­ment tech­nol­o­gy, pho­tograph­ing cen­trifuge blue­prints that a German exec­u­tive had been bribed into tem­porar­i­ly “mis­lay­ing” in his kitchen. The same blue­prints, belong­ing to the European ura­ni­um enrich­ment con­sor­tium, Urenco, were stolen a sec­ond time by a Pakistani employ­ee, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who used them to found his coun­try’s enrich­ment pro­gramme and to set up a glob­al nuclear smug­gling busi­ness, sell­ing the design to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

For that rea­son, Israel’s cen­trifuges are near-iden­ti­cal to Iran’s, a con­ver­gence that allowed Israeli to try out a com­put­er worm, code­named Stuxnet, on its own cen­trifuges before unleash­ing it on Iran in 2010.

Arguably, Lakam’s exploits were even more dar­ing than Khan’s. In 1968, it organ­ised the dis­ap­pear­ance of an entire freighter full of ura­ni­um ore in the mid­dle of the Mediterranean. In what became known as the Plumbat affair, the Israelis used a web of front com­pa­nies to buy a con­sign­ment of ura­ni­um oxide, known as yel­low­cake, in Antwerp. The yel­low­cake was con­cealed in drums labelled “plumbat”, a lead deriv­a­tive, and loaded onto a freighter leased by a pho­ny Liberian com­pa­ny. The sale was cam­ou­flaged as a trans­ac­tion between German and Italian com­pa­nies with help from German offi­cials, report­ed­ly in return for an Israeli offer to help the Germans with cen­trifuge technology.

When the ship, the Scheersberg A, docked in Rotterdam, the entire crew was dis­missed on the pre­text that the ves­sel had been sold and an Israeli crew took their place. The ship sailed into the Mediterranean where, under Israeli naval guard, the car­go was trans­ferred to anoth­er vessel.

US and British doc­u­ments declas­si­fied last year also revealed a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown Israeli pur­chase of about 100 tons of yel­low­cake from Argentina in 1963 or 1964, with­out the safe­guards typ­i­cal­ly used in nuclear trans­ac­tions to pre­vent the mate­r­i­al being used in weapons.

Israel had few qualms about pro­lif­er­at­ing nuclear weapons knowhow and mate­ri­als, giv­ing South Africa’s apartheid régime help in devel­op­ing its own bomb in the 1970s in return for 600 tons of yellowcake.

Israel’s nuclear reac­tor also required deu­teri­um oxide, also known as heavy water, to mod­er­ate the fis­sile reac­tion. For that, Israel turned to Norway and Britain. In 1959, Israel man­aged to buy 20 tons of heavy water that Norway had sold to the UK but was sur­plus to require­ments for the British nuclear pro­gramme. Both gov­ern­ments were sus­pi­cious that the mate­r­i­al would be used to make weapons, but decid­ed to look the oth­er way. In doc­u­ments seen by the BBC in 2005 British offi­cials argued it would be “over-zeal­ous” to impose safe­guards. For its part, Norway car­ried out only one inspec­tion vis­it, in 1961.

Israel’s nuclear-weapons project could nev­er have got off the ground, though, with­out an enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion from France. The coun­try that took the tough­est line on counter-pro­lif­er­a­tion when it came to Iran helped lay the foun­da­tions of Israel’s nuclear weapons pro­gramme, dri­ven by by a sense of guilt over let­ting Israel down in the 1956 Suez con­flict, sym­pa­thy from French-Jewish sci­en­tists, intel­li­gence-shar­ing over Algeria and a dri­ve to sell French exper­tise and abroad.

“There was a ten­den­cy to try to export and there was a gen­er­al feel­ing of sup­port for Israel,” Andre Finkelstein, a for­mer deputy com­mis­sion­er at France’s Atomic Energy Commissariat and deputy direc­tor gen­er­al at the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Avner Cohen, an Israeli-American nuclear historian.

France’s first reac­tor went crit­i­cal as ear­ly as 1948 but the deci­sion to build nuclear weapons seems to have been tak­en in 1954, after Pierre Mendès France made his first trip to Washington as pres­i­dent of the coun­cil of min­is­ters of the chaot­ic Fourth Republic. On the way back he told an aide: “It’s exact­ly like a meet­ing of gang­sters. Everyone is putting his gun on the table, if you have no gun you are nobody. So we must have a nuclear programme.”

Mendès France gave the order to start build­ing bombs in December 1954. And as it built its arse­nal, Paris sol­ds mate­r­i­al assis­tance to oth­er aspir­ing weapons states, not just Israel.

“[T]his went on for many, many years until we did some stu­pid exports, includ­ing Iraq and the repro­cess­ing plant in Pakistan, which was crazy,” Finkelstein recalled in an inter­view that can now be read in a col­lec­tion of Cohen’s papers at the Wilson Centre think­tank in Washington. “We have been the most irre­spon­si­ble coun­try on nonproliferation.”

In Dimona, French engi­neers poured in to help build Israel a nuclear reac­tor and a far more secret repro­cess­ing plant capa­ble of sep­a­rat­ing plu­to­ni­um from spent reac­tor fuel. This was the real give­away that Israel’s nuclear pro­gramme was aimed at pro­duc­ing weapons.

By the end of the 50s, there were 2,500 French cit­i­zens liv­ing in Dimona, trans­form­ing it from a vil­lage to a cos­mopoli­tan town, com­plete with French lycées and streets full of Renaults, and yet the whole endeav­our was con­duct­ed under a thick veil of secre­cy. The American inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Seymour Hersh wrote in his book The Samson Option: “French work­ers at Dimona were for­bid­den to write direct­ly to rel­a­tives and friends in France and else­where, but sent mail to a pho­ny post-office box in Latin America.”

The British were kept out of the loop, being told at dif­fer­ent times that the huge con­struc­tion site was a desert grass­lands research insti­tute and a man­ganese pro­cess­ing plant. The Americans, also kept in the dark by both Israel and France, flew U2 spy planes over Dimona in an attempt to find out what they were up to.

The Israelis admit­ted to hav­ing a reac­tor but insist­ed it was for entire­ly peace­ful pur­pos­es. The spent fuel was sent to France for repro­cess­ing, they claimed, even pro­vid­ing film footage of it being sup­pos­ed­ly being loaded onto French freighters. Throughout the 60s it flat­ly denied the exis­tence of the under­ground repro­cess­ing plant in Dimona that was churn­ing out plu­to­ni­um for bombs.

Israel refused to coun­te­nance vis­its by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), so in the ear­ly 1960s President Kennedy demand­ed they accept American inspec­tors. US physi­cists were dis­patched to Dimona but were giv­en the run-around from the start. Visits were nev­er twice-year­ly as had been agreed with Kennedy and were sub­ject to repeat­ed post­pone­ments. The US physi­cists sent to Dimona were not allowed to bring their own equip­ment or col­lect sam­ples. The lead American inspec­tor, Floyd Culler, an expert on plu­to­ni­um extrac­tion, not­ed in his reports that there were new­ly plas­tered and paint­ed walls in one of the build­ings. It turned out that before each American vis­it, the Israelis had built false walls around the row of lifts that descend­ed six lev­els to the sub­ter­ranean repro­cess­ing plant.

As more and more evi­dence of Israel’s weapons pro­gramme emerged, the US role pro­gressed from unwit­ting dupe to reluc­tant accom­plice. In 1968 the CIA direc­tor Richard Helms told President Johnson that Israel had indeed man­aged to build nuclear weapons and that its air force had con­duct­ed sor­ties to prac­tise drop­ping them.

The tim­ing could not have been worse. The NPT, intend­ed to pre­vent too many nuclear genies from escap­ing from their bot­tles, had just been drawn up and if news broke that one of the sup­pos­ed­ly non-nuclear-weapons states had secret­ly made its own bomb, it would have become a dead let­ter that many coun­tries, espe­cial­ly Arab states, would.
Read more here: https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​w​o​r​l​d​/​2​0​1​4​/​j​a​n​/​1​5​/​t​r​u​t​h​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​s​-​s​e​c​r​e​t​-​n​u​c​l​e​a​r​-​a​r​s​e​nal

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the inau­gur­al address by Prime Minister Andrew Holness at his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny on (March 3, 2016).
Your Excellencies, the Governor General, the Most Honourable Sir Patrick Allen and Lady Allen
Leader of the Opposition the Most Honorable Portia Simpson Miller
Former Prime Ministers:
The Most Honorable Edward Seaga and Mrs Seaga
The Most Honorable PJ Patterson
The Honorable Bruce Golding and Mrs Golding
My fel­low Jamaicans
Good afternoon.
I rec­og­nize that I stand here today only by the Grace of God. It has not been an easy jour­ney to this podi­um, but earnest labour and fer­vent prayers con­quer all. To God be the glory.
It is with a deep sense of grat­i­tude, hon­our and humil­i­ty that I took the Oath of Office moments ago, ful­ly con­scious of the mag­ni­tude of expec­ta­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ty I have assumed, but equal­ly ener­gized and opti­mistic about a pros­per­ous future for Jamaica. I pledge to serve the peo­ple of Jamaica faith­ful­ly, with all of my ener­gies, all of my heart, mind and soul.
I stand here today hap­py to be rep­re­sent­ing the voice, vision, vote and vic­to­ry of Jamaica.
We may have dif­fer­ent voic­es and dif­fer­ent votes on a sim­i­lar vision, regard­less of our dif­fer­ences, Jamaica was vic­to­ri­ous at the General Elections. It is not per­fect, but we can all be proud of the peo­ple, sys­tems and insti­tu­tions that make up our democracy.
Meaning of the Mandate
On the day of Election, I wit­nessed a young man car­ry­ing, cra­dled in his arm, an obvi­ous­ly bed-rid­den elder­ly man from a polling sta­tion. I was touched by the sight. In the bus­tle of the busy school yard, as they passed, the elder­ly man point­ed his ink stained fin­ger at me and said, “Andrew, do the right thing!”
I stand here hum­bled by the awe­some pow­er of you, the peo­ple, and I com­mit to doing right by you. The peo­ple are sov­er­eign and their views and votes must nev­er be tak­en for granted.
The peo­ple of Jamaica did not vote in vain. They expect a gov­ern­ment that works for them and by the same expec­ta­tion, an Opposition that is con­struc­tive. This his­toric elec­tion deliv­ered the small­est major­i­ty but also the clear­est man­date: Fix Government!
With this mandate:
There is no major­i­ty for arrogance.
There is no space for selfishness.
There is no place for pettiness.
There is no room for com­pla­cen­cy and,
There is no mar­gin for error.
I am under no illu­sion as to the mean­ing of this man­date. We have not won a prize. Instead, the peo­ple are giv­ing us a test.
There is no absolute agency of pow­er. This means that the win­ner can­not take all, or believe we can do it alone.
Leading Partnerships for Prosperity
To achieve the vision of shared pros­per­i­ty through inclu­sive eco­nom­ic growth and mean­ing­ful job cre­ation, now more than ever, Government must lead, acti­vate, empow­er and build real part­ner­ships. I intend to lead a Government of part­ner­ship. The solu­tions to our prob­lems do not rest with Government alone.
The sum total of our poten­tial exceeds our prob­lems; our col­lec­tive capa­bil­i­ties are greater than our chal­lenges, but it is only through part­ner­ship that these capa­bil­i­ties and this poten­tial can be seized, har­nessed and real­ized for the good of Jamaica.
Partnerships require trust, clear assign­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ty and an ele­vat­ed sense of duty.
There is only so much trust that pledges and state­ments of com­mit­ment can buy. I under­stand that the Jamaican peo­ple now want to see action in build­ing trust. This is part of fix­ing government.
Everyone who will form the next gov­ern­ment must be seized of this expectation.
From the politi­cian mak­ing pol­i­cy to the civ­il ser­vant pro­cess­ing an appli­ca­tion, we must act duti­ful­ly to ful­fill our responsibilities.
Trust requires the actu­al­iza­tion of our com­mit­ments. We will ful­fill our commitments.
Our actions can achieve so much more if they are coör­di­nat­ed. We will bring greater coör­di­na­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty and focus to the role of gov­ern­ment so that the objec­tives of part­ner­ship can be clear.
There is no doubt that sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of Jamaicans have lost hope in our sys­tem, but I am encour­aged that a far larg­er num­ber main­tains faith, keeps hope and con­tin­ues to pray that Jamaica will grow and prosper.
I am ener­gized by the expres­sions of will­ing­ness to work with our new Government in the inter­est of Jamaica. The sense of duty is alive and well. There is more hope than despair and this cre­ates a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to form part­ner­ships for prosperity.
Partnership with Families
You know, I am now joined in Parliament by my life part­ner Juliet. Family is the ulti­mate part­ner­ship. And that is why my Government will focus resources on sup­port­ing families.
By increas­ing the income tax thresh­old we will restore the eco­nom­ic pow­er of house­holds to par­tic­i­pate in not only grow­ing our GDP but more impor­tant­ly grow­ing the gen­er­al well­be­ing of the society.
Here’s how the part­ner­ship with fam­i­lies, and the work­ing heads of house­holds will work.
Our gov­ern­ment will ease your tax bur­den, but you must spend and invest wise­ly, use the addi­tion­al mon­ey to acquire a house for your fam­i­ly or improve the house you already have, or buy Jamaican-made goods.
This how we will increase local effec­tive demand in hous­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and agri­cul­ture. This is how you can play a part in cre­at­ing in jobs while sat­is­fy­ing your well-being.
We will con­tin­ue our pol­i­cy of tuition-free edu­ca­tion and no user fee access to health care. However, will enable you to save in an edu­ca­tion bond for your chil­dren’s edu­ca­tion and in a nation­al health insur­ance scheme your healthcare.
We will enhance our social safe­ty net for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies, and will pro­vide sup­port for par­ents in cri­sis, but you must be respon­si­ble and send your chil­dren to school. Our men must take care of their chil­dren, and cou­ples must be respon­si­ble in hav­ing the chil­dren they can afford.
Our gov­ern­ment com­mits to cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ment in which fam­i­lies can flour­ish and form com­mu­ni­ties of social mobil­i­ty from which every ghet­to youth can be star. However, every fam­i­ly mem­ber must do his or her part by being per­son­al­ly, social­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly responsible.
I am sure Juliet will under­stand if I seek to build anoth­er part­ner­ship in Parliament. Leader of the Opposition, Portia Simpson Miller has giv­en long and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to the coun­try and I believe the man­date is say­ing, we may not be on the same side of the road, but as much as pos­si­ble we should hold hands in coöper­a­tion to over­come obsta­cles for the good of the country.
We have evolved with­out for­mal struc­ture a very good part­ner­ship in edu­ca­tion and we intend to con­tin­ue our infor­mal col­lab­o­ra­tions in this area and pur­sue oth­er such areas of coöper­a­tion between Government and Opposition members.
I still believe it is a use­ful sym­bol of nation­al uni­ty for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to appear togeth­er in zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions. I again extend the invitation.
Partnership for Growth with Private Sector
The pri­or­i­ty of this Government is to grow the econ­o­my and cre­ate mean­ing­ful jobs. In so doing, we will more rapid­ly and sus­tain­ably reduce debt. I am sure we all agree that much of Jamaica’s devel­op­ment has been achieved with­out growth, which has left us with much debt. This is unsustainable.
Going for­ward, Jamaica’s devel­op­ment must rest on its abil­i­ty to cre­ate propo­si­tions of val­ue and attract invest­ments to con­vert the val­ue into wealth. In this mod­el, Government is not the main investor, it is the Private Sector whether they be large enter­pris­es or small busi­ness. In the eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship with the Private Sector, Government’s role, among oth­ers, is:
To ensure the rule of law.
Create a safe, secure, and fair envi­ron­ment for business
Make mar­kets where none exist
Ensure trans­paren­cy and access to infor­ma­tion ‑and cre­ate an effi­cient and sup­port­ive pub­lic sec­tor bureaucracy
In exchange, we want the Private Sector to unleash invest­ments in the local econ­o­my. We want to see the return of the pio­neer­ing dri­ve to cre­ate new indus­tries, the entre­pre­neur­ial will­ing­ness to take risk, and the inno­v­a­tive insight to do things bet­ter. I am heart­ened by the sig­nals com­ing from the Private Sector. I believe they have got the mes­sage about the part­ner­ship for growth and job cre­ation. Now is the time for growth.
Partnership with inter­na­tion­al partners
We are not naïve about the chal­lenges we face regard­ing our debt and the need to main­tain fis­cal dis­ci­pline. This is why we will con­tin­ue with the prin­ci­ple of joint over­sight of our Economic Programme and performance.
We rec­og­nize the impor­tance of, and val­ue our rela­tion­ship with our bilat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al friends. These rela­tion­ships have been crit­i­cal in secur­ing sta­bil­i­ty. We believe in pre­serv­ing sta­bil­i­ty, but we must now build up on this in a pro­duc­tive part­ner­ships with them to achieve inclu­sive growth and job creation.
There are many more areas of part­ner­ships that we must for­mal­ly pur­sue for nation­al devel­op­ment and as our gov­ern­ment is installed over the com­ing days these will become evident.
The Role of the Prime Minister
In all these part­ner­ships for pros­per­i­ty, there must be coör­di­nat­ed effort. That is my role. I will ensure that:
Government is coör­di­nat­ed and strate­gi­cal­ly directed.
Decisions are tak­en quickly.
Targets are set.
The nation is informed and that.
Everyone under my appoint­ment is held to account for their action or lack thereof.
Institutional Reform
There is a sense of expec­ta­tion of change. It is not lost on me that I am the first of the Post-Independence gen­er­a­tion to lead Jamaica. More than any­thing else we want to see Jamaica take its true place as a devel­oped coun­try in the next 50 years. The strug­gle is not so much polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence as it is eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence. It is through our eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence that we secure real polit­i­cal independence.
However, after 53 years of inde­pen­dence, there is need for insti­tu­tion­al review of the Jamaican State both in terms of mod­ern­iza­tion of the insti­tu­tions of the State, and the struc­ture of the State. Government has to improve its busi­ness process­es and become more effi­cient as a reg­u­la­tor and a ser­vice provider.
There is need for us to have a say in the fun­da­men­tal insti­tu­tions that define Jamaica, the rights we secure for our cit­i­zens and how we want Jamaica to be. We will give form to that voice in a ref­er­en­dum to decide on the con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters and social matters.
Independent Jamaica must remove the cul­ture of depen­den­cy from our midst. We must teach our chil­dren that there is no wealth with­out work, and no suc­cess with­out sac­ri­fice. We must remove the belief from the psy­che of our chil­dren that the only way they can step up in life is not by how hard they work, but by who they know.
As Prime Minister I have a duty to align our incen­tives and reward sys­tems for those who work and fol­low rules. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where the man who plays by the rules is rewarded!
It is impor­tant that the cit­i­zens of Independent Jamaica have a sense of enti­tle­ment to good ser­vice from their coun­try. However, increas­ing­ly this is not being bal­anced with a duty of ‘giv­ing back’. Jamaica has ben­e­fit­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the civic pride and sense of nation­hood that drove so many to give gen­er­ous­ly of their tal­ent and trea­sures to build our great nation.
The spir­it still exists, to a great extent, local­ly and in our Diaspora. However, we have to be more active in pro­mot­ing civic respon­si­bil­i­ty, vol­un­teerism and ‘giv­ing back’, par­tic­u­lar­ly among our youth. And we have to inte­grate the incred­i­ble tal­ents and assets of the Jamaican Diaspora in local devel­op­ment. Too often I hear com­plaints from the Diaspora that they expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty in giv­ing to Jamaica. Giving should be easy, as part of our Partnership for Prosperity which includes the Diaspora, we will make it eas­i­er for you to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of your homeland.
Jamaica is too rich in peo­ple and tal­ent to be a poor coun­try. With good gov­er­nance and a prospec­tive out­look, Jamaica, with­in a decade or less, could emerge as a boom­ing econ­o­my and a pros­per­ous society.
Jamaica is geo­graph­i­cal­ly cen­tral in the Caribbean. My vision is to turn Jamaica into the cen­tre of the Caribbean. A cen­tre of finance, trade and com­merce, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, and the cen­tre of arts, cul­ture, and lifestyle region­al­ly. This is all pos­si­ble with­in our life­time. Despite any neg­a­tives, Jamaica still has a pow­er­ful and allur­ing brand ampli­fy­ing our voice and influ­ence in the world.
We can­not be sat­is­fied with things as they are. My dream is to ful­fill your dream. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where there is hope and oppor­tu­ni­ty. Where we can encour­age our chil­dren to dream big and be opti­mistic about their life chances. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where our young peo­ple can find mean­ing­ful work. A Jamaica where you feel safe to live, work and raise your chil­dren. A Jamaica that is boom­ing and investors and entre­pre­neurs can have a con­fi­dent out­look on the econ­o­my. A place where we can retire and tru­ly enjoy as paradise.
All of this is pos­si­ble. We must start now. Time for a part­ner­ship. Time for action!

NOW THIS /​

Samuda pays for his Mombasa grass.

MINISTER of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries Karl Samuda informed the House of Representatives yes­ter­day that he has now paid up $546,000 for the Mombasa grass plant­ed on his prop­er­ty in Knollis, St Catherine, by the Jamaica Dairy Development Board (JDDB).Samuda also told the House that he has the names of oth­er major farms, some polit­i­cal­ly linked, which have also ben­e­fit­ed from the 500 acres of the grass already plant­ed across the coun­try to boost dairy production.

However, he said he cur­rent­ly has no inten­tion of releas­ing those names.

“Similar treat­ment was offered and avail­able to all diary, beef and small rumi­nants farm­ers,” Samuda told the House, in an impromp­tu response to the alle­ga­tions made by Opposition spokesman on agri­cul­ture Dr Dayton Campbell in Parliament last week Wednesday.

Samuda said that, unlike claims made by the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), the project was not restrict­ed to small farm­ers and many of the major farms had received “a con­sid­er­ably larg­er con­tri­bu­tion” of grass than he had, and were not required to pay for the service.

“I do not wish to name them now, and I will not. The fact of the mat­ter is that per­sons who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in this pro­gramme were not only relat­ed to non-polit­i­cal fig­ures. But I have no inten­tion what­so­ev­er to match like with like,” he said.

“I would not seek to strength­en my pre­sen­ta­tion by draw­ing ref­er­ence to any­one that it might even­tu­al­ly hurt, because I am sat­is­fied that any­one who took advan­tage of this pro­gramme did so in the earnest belief that it would improve their con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of the coun­try through agri­cul­ture,” he added.

On the ground, ordi­nary Jamaicans became reporters detail­ing events as they occur. We bring them to you as we receive them…

Scandal whirlwind: If Trump tried to shut down the FBI’s Michael Flynn investigation, did Jeff Sessions play along?

Tuesday began with the White House in total chaos over reports that President Donald Trump had spilled sen­si­tive intel­li­gence to the Russians on the morn­ing after he fired FBI Director James Comey over what he lat­er admit­ted was the inves­ti­ga­tion into Russian ties to the Trump cam­paign. This was not what admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials want­ed to be talk­ing about in the days before the president’s first big over­seas trip. In the mid­dle of the cri­sis, they had to hold a pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled meet­ing and press con­fer­ence with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Here’s the dis­patch from the pool report:

Shortly after that, Israel’s media report­ed that it had been that nation’s intel­li­gence that Trump had shared with Russia with­out per­mis­sion, jus­ti­fy­ing Israeli offi­cials’ ear­li­er fears that he would do exact­ly that.