Author Archives: Mike

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How Far Have We Come Since Bloody Sunday?

On Sunday March 7th. 1965 hun­dreds of peace­ful Civil Right marchers were attacked by armed Troopers as they attempt­ed to march across the Edmund Pettus bridge from Selma to the State cap­i­tal of Montgomery. Voting rolls in the south were 99% White and 1% African-American. Many African-Americans suf­fered immense hard­ships sim­ply because they dared to want to vote . Today many African-Americans sim­ply do not both­er, or does­n’t even reg­is­ter to vote.

I am par­tic­u­lar­ly incensed by this because of the abuse that gen­er­a­tion suf­fered to give our gen­er­a­tion the right to vote, yet we treat that pre­cious gift with impuni­ty, dis­re­gard­ing the sac­ri­fices that were made so we can have that right. In that march was the rev­erend Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis , and many oth­er stal­warts of the civ­il rights move­ment. On that sun­day which we now refer to as bloody sun­day no one was spared the dogs, water hoses and blud­geon­ing, as the full force of south­ern racism came down on inno­cent peace­ful marchers who just want­ed to vote.

Edmund Pettus Bridge where peace­ful marchers were attacked by Alabama state troop­ers as they made their way from Selma to Montgomery.

Fast for­ward to 2012 there is a black pres­i­dent in the White House and there are moves afoot in many south­ern and mid-west­ern states to sup­press the votes of minori­ties through dra­con­ian vot­er ID laws that dis­en­fran­chis­es large­ly African-American and lati­no voters.

Just how far has blacks come in their own coun­try, when a sit­ting senior Federal Judge in the state of Montana can for­ward a despi­ca­ble email which sug­gests that the moth­er of the pres­i­dent of the United States had sex with a dog?

Federal judge Richard Cebull.

The repub­li­can par­ty has become a haven for some of the most vile racist peo­ple . Many liv­ing in this coun­try, includ­ing Democrats refuse to call it what it is. After the vot­ing rights bill was signed into law by pres­i­dent Lyndon Johnson many whites sought refuge in the repub­li­can par­ty, feel­ing betrayed by the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty they felt was tak­en over by lib­er­als from the North. I would like to point out that lit­er­al­ly every­one involved at the high­er lev­els of the strug­gle has ben assassinated.

President John F Kennedy, his broth­er the for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al of the United States Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the list goes on and on all have been mur­dered. Today Republicans in an effort to ensure there will not be anoth­er black pres­i­dent no time soon, in many states are turn­ing back the clock on vot­ing rights.

ARE BLACK AMERICANS GOING TO STAND BY AND ALLOW OTHERS WHO HAVE NO MORE RIGHT TO THIS COUNTRY THAN THEY DO TAKE THEIR RIGHTS AWAY FROM THEM AGAIN?

This year, more than a dozen states enact­ed new vot­ing restric­tions. For exam­ple, eight — Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — imposed new laws requir­ing vot­ers to present state-issued pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards. Previously vot­ers were able to use oth­er forms of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, like bank state­ments, util­i­ty bills and Social Security cards. (new york time .com) 

ThE Reverend Al Sharpton has planned a march for Alabama on Sunday, not to com­mem­o­rate the vot­ing rights Act, but to high­light the seri­ous threat that repub­li­cans pose to the vot­ing rights of minori­ties in this coun­try. Republicans argue that the new laws are designed to erad­i­cate vot­er fraud. However the num­bers do not sup­port their argu­ments. In fact in most case where vot­er fraud are alleged, an elec­tion com­mis­sions are oblig­ed to inves­ti­gate, the find­ings revealed thus: Bad data match­ing , which revealed motor vehi­cle was wrong in assum­ing the vot­ers were dead, cas­es where vot­ers were alleged to have vot­ed , but nev­er did. A few cas­es of absen­tee bal­lots were cast by vot­ers who died before the elec­tions. The few votes left were cas­es where sig­na­tures were not rec­og­niz­able. This sug­gest the laws are a solu­tion look­ing for a prob­lem.(the new york times)

Why then are repub­li­cans look­ing to turn back the clock?

The elec­tion of Barack Obama to the pres­i­den­cy has exposed the dirty under­bel­ly of racism in America, many fool­ish­ly thought was a thing of the past. President Obama was elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy with­out win­ning the major­i­ty of white votes. This real­i­ty scared the hell out of the wing nuts on the right and as soon as Obama was inau­gu­rat­ed they con­spired to destroy his pres­i­den­cy. Senate Minority Mitch McConnell stat­ed quote “Making Obama A One-Term President Is My Single Most Important Political Goal”(medi​aite​.com) They have attacked his pres­i­den­cy with a fer­vor not seen in mod­ern times. Their attack has sev­er­al fronts. In the con­gress he is not allowed any leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments because of repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ism. They have launched all out wars on immi­grants from Alabama to Florida, and from Georgia to Arizona immi­grants are under assault from overzeal­ous state law enforce­ment to include rene­gade Arizona sher­iff Joe Arpaio, a mod­ern-day Bull O’Connor whom have been accused of seri­ous abuse of minori­ties. Joe Arpaio sher­iff of Maricopa coun­ty Arizona has been under fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions by the Obama jus­tice depart­ment for Human rights vio­la­tions. For his part Arpaio has alleged­ly launched his own inves­ti­ga­tions into the non­sen­si­cal birth cer­tifi­cate drib­ble , he has since announced that his inves­ti­ga­tions have con­clud­ed that the pres­i­den­t’s birth cer­tifi­cate is a forgery. This has fur­ther cement­ed what many believed that this old geezer is a loose can­non with a racist tinge.

Whether it is Joe Wilson a con­gress­man shout­ing “you lie” at the pres­i­dent as he deliv­ers the state of the union address, or an asso­ciate Justice of the Supreme court Samuel Alito shak­ing his head and mouthing “not true”,or it’s Arizona’s class­less gov­er­nor Jan Brewer wag­ging her fin­ger at the pres­i­dent on the tar­mac as he dis­em­barked from his plane, or that despi­ca­ble life form parad­ing as a fed­er­al judge, who for­ward­ed that email , or the count­less oth­er instances that has come to light we have seen these instances of the most vile form of racism that many seri­ous­ly believed they had left behind in the 60’s. 

Republican assault have not spared groups like Acorn, a group which has tra­di­tion­al­ly reg­is­tered minori­ties to vote. They have launched attacks on planned par­ent­hood, using sur­ro­gates like the Susan G Komen to do their dirty work. Komen is a can­cer char­i­ty which receives most of its funds from reg­u­lar donors, received a shock when it announced it would cut fund­ing for planned par­ent­hood. This was def­i­nite­ly a repub­li­can attack on planned par­ent­hood which to Komen’s sur­prised ini­ti­at­ed a tremen­dous blow-back which forced them to reverse that deci­sion. Komen is still reel­ing from that blow-back and has since hired a con­sult­ing firm to ass­es the dam­age done to their rep­u­ta­tion.(huff­in­g­ton post .com)

The jury is out on what this will all mean by the time the next elec­tion comes around, to my mind the next elec­tion is the least of our wor­ries. Republicans have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly elect­ed  right-wing oper­a­tives to coun­ty leg­is­la­tures state leg­is­la­tures, gov­er­nor­ships, con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts and to the US Senate. They have passed rad­i­cal new laws that looks fright­en­ing­ly like laws that were around dur­ing jim crow. Have you ever won­dered why peo­ple who com­mit crimes and paid their debt to soci­ety are still not allowed to vote? Well dur­ing the six­ties African-Americans would be giv­en things like a jar of jel­ly beans when they turn up to vote, if they failed to guess how many beans were in the Jar they were turned away with­out being able to vote. Potential vot­ers were giv­en writ­ten tests that asked about archa­ic ordi­nances that the ques­tion­ers them­selves did not know the answers to. Today vot­er sup­pres­sion laws are being insti­tut­ed broad­ly through­out the south and mid­west as fears over the brown­ing of America grows. Architects and sup­port­ers of these laws will tell you they are about the rule of law, they will tell you they are for the integri­ty of the process. But as I told you before they are about not see­ing anoth­er black man in the White House.

In many cas­es these bills are being signed into law with the sup­port of democ­rats, some of whom are not hap­py about Barack Obama’s pres­i­den­cy. The Roy Blount Amendment which was recent­ly vot­ed down in the United States Senate had the sup­port of sev­er­al Democratic sen­a­tors whom have demon­strat­ed a cow­ard­ly craven inter­est for their own polit­i­cal sur­vival over principle.

Rich com­pa­nies pay lob­by­ists to wine and dine law makers,they get what they want. Every per­son, every group must demand that gov­ern­ment work for them. Blacks are tak­ing this assault on their very exis­tence rather light­ly it seem. Our peo­ple are being arrest­ed and incar­cer­at­ed at a rate that is way above oth­er eth­nic groups, over 2⁄3 of our chil­dren are being born out-of-wed­lock, and I am yet to fig­ure out what it is that we are focused on as a peo­ple. Did African-Americans think the elec­tion of Barack Obama was going to mean a post racial America? It seem to me that his ascen­den­cy will actu­al­ly mean that the caus­es that are impor­tant to black peo­ple will be set back and made worse because of his rise. Some are unfair­ly blam­ing pres­i­dent Obama for some of the ills plagu­ing the black com­mu­ni­ty. They mean well, but they also lack a basic under­stand­ing of what a pres­i­dent can do, they also lack an under­stand­ing of what a first term black pres­i­dent, hat­ed by his ene­mies can accomplish.

There are about 40 mil­lion black peo­ple liv­ing in these United States. That is a very large coun­try with­in an even larg­er coun­try. There are between 5 and 6 mil­lion Jewish adher­ents liv­ing in the United States, not all of whom are reli­gious . However with the Jewish pop­u­la­tion a mere 1⁄8 of the black pop­u­la­tion, Jews in this coun­try wield sig­nif­i­cant clout and pow­er in get­ting their agen­da addressed both here and in the inter­est of the state of Israel. No politi­cian run­ning for office dare bad mouth Jews or their caus­es and hope to get elect­ed dog catch­er. Conversely any­one want­i­ng trac­tion in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles mere­ly have to dis­re­spect black Americans to become an instant hit.

As Netanyahu comes to the White House to tell Obama what he expects for the state of Israel, I won­der who speak for African-Americans in their own country?

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JLP MUST SNATCH VICTORY FROM THE ASHES OF DEFEAT:

Over the years we have been fed with the non­sense that Jamaica is PNP coun­try. The PNP of course is the People’s National Party, the old­er of the two main polit­i­cal par­ties which has shared pow­er between them­selves since adult suf­frage. As our coun­try look to cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of Independence it is time for the nation to take an intro­spec­tive look at its accom­plish­ments over this peri­od since we have been unshack­led from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion. This is a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to re-cal­i­brate and assim­i­late new per­spec­tives into the nation­al dia­logue. this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for lead­ers of the coun­try to change the dog­mat­ic atti­tudes they have and take a look at the out­side world to see what works, with a view to see what may work for our peo­ple, in our unique circumstance.

Andrew Holness Leader opposition JLP
Andrew Holness
Leader oppo­si­tion JLP

On the oth­er side of the polit­i­cal divide is the Jamaica labor party(JLP) which was sound­ly reject­ed by the elec­torate in nation­al elec­tions held December 29th of 2011. The JLP under the lead­er­ship of 39-year-old Andrew Holness can use the par­ty’s defeat as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-cal­i­brate and present itself to vot­ers as the real par­ty of sub­stan­tive growth and devel­op­ment for Jamaicans, the way Alexander Bustamante intended.

The Jamaica labor par­ty must start at the grass­roots edu­cat­ing peo­ple at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el , empow­er­ing them into select­ing their own can­di­dates. A new cam­paign geared at edu­ca­tion must trum­pet the achieve­ments of the labor par­ty . It must draw a sharp con­trast between what has been tan­gi­ble long-term poli­cies it enact­ed over the years on behalf of the peo­ple as against super­fi­cial fluff poli­cies of the oth­er par­ty. The JLP like its com­pe­ti­tion has made a lot of mis­takes over the years, not least of which is its inabil­i­ty to shun gar­ri­son politics.

The par­ty must not only eschew gar­ri­son Politics as Holness said he would , it must engage vig­or­ous­ly in the pol­i­tics of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty. Moving for­ward this will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the Labor par­ty from the PNP, a par­ty drunk with cheap pop­ulism and the pol­i­tics of nepo­tism, give­aways and payoffs.

Bruce Golding
Bruce Golding

Labor must under­stand that as more and more peo­ple are intro­duced to infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy they will even­tu­al­ly rec­og­nize that the brand of pol­i­tics prac­ticed by the PNP has been keep­ing them enslaved and chained to pover­ty. These more informed , bet­ter edu­cat­ed peo­ple will look to the labor par­ty for a new direc­tion, a direc­tion that leads them down a path of sus­tain­able growth and long-term devel­op­ment. The path the Labor par­ty of Bustamante, Donald Sangster, and Hugh Lawson Shearer, our coun­try’s best Prime Minister forged in the inter­est of all Jamaicans.

Former prime Minister Bruce Golding has done incal­cu­la­ble harm to the image of the par­ty in his han­dling of the Christopher Coke mat­ter. Golding unwit­ting­ly destroyed his polit­i­cal car­rear and dragged the par­ty down into the pits with him. The tragedy inher­ent in that débâ­cle is that Bruce Golding did not have to do any­thing in that process, it was a mat­ter for the courts.

Holness must not be intim­i­dat­ed into going door to door lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple, ask­ing them how they feel about the issues. He must then incor­po­rate that infor­ma­tion into for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies , in coöper­a­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er stake hold­ers. The sin­gle great­est imped­i­ment Holness will face will be com­mu­ni­cat­ing a mes­sage of long-term dis­ci­pline to a pop­u­la­tion that is always wor­ry­ing where the next meal is com­ing from. The Coke case, bet­ter know as the Mannat Phillips and Phelps mat­ter, is not the only scan­dal to have erupt­ed in Jamaica, far from it. The PNP is a scan­dal plagued par­ty which seem­ing­ly is immune from con­se­quence in Jamaica, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry for anoth­er day.
Finsac, Cuban Light Bulb Trafigura are just a few of the scan­dals that have plagued the PNP to which they have been let off the hook.

One promi­nent com­men­ta­tor aligned to the rul­ing par­ty sug­gest­ed that the JLP is just a filler par­ty which gets elect­ed when peo­ple are a lit­tle tired of his par­ty. Even though his com­ment is large­ly hubris, there is a cer­tain degree of res­o­nance in there.

ONE HAVE TO WONDER, IS JAMAICA REALLY PNP COUNTRY?

Edward Phillip George Seaga

The PNP have ben­e­fit­ed for decades from a mis­con­cep­tion that it is for the small man. A mis­con­cep­tion nur­tured by cheap pop­ulism, and fer­til­ized by polit­i­cal give­aways and promis­es. The lead­er­ship of peo­ple like Hugh Lawson Shearer has been sig­nif­i­cant in set­ting a path for the coun­try that has been devi­at­ed from, by some in the labor par­ty when Shearer stepped aside to make way for Seaga. I have no fight with Edward Seaga, I am aware there is a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the labor par­ty which is still aligned to that wing. I am just not con­vinced that the Seaga doc­trine has been help­ful for the par­ty or the coun­try over­all. The lead­er­ship style of Seaga arguably placed the par­ty in obliv­ion for 18 1⁄2 years and con­tin­ued into rel­e­gat­ing the par­ty into the first sin­gle term for either par­ty in the his­to­ry of elec­tive pol­i­tics in the country.

1972 : The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon Hugh Shearer, cut­ting the rib­bon at the offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny of the Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation’s, Small Industries Development Division at 2 Ruthven Road, Kingston 10. The divi­sion is a spe­cial new

depart­ment cre­at­ed to assist the small entrepreneur.

The labor par­ty must pre­pare itself for tough slow slog­ging, if it is to change the per­cep­tion it allowed to become real­i­ty. Despite the fact that the labor par­ty is the par­ty which stands for real growth and devel­op­ment through low crime, edu­ca­tion, and low tax­es, it has ced­ed too much ground over the years to the oth­er par­ty which fol­lows a path of pop­ulism, crash pro­gram, intim­i­da­tion and scare tac­tics aimed at the busi­ness class. Labor has a rich tra­di­tion which it must bring to the table. It must rein­tro­duce young peo­ple to the labor par­ty which believes in work and entre­pre­neur­ship over the depen­den­cy of a wel­fare state.(jamaica labour par​ty​.com)

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Picture of the Cornwall Regional Hospital which was built by the Jamaica Labour Party 

Many peo­ple do not know of the stel­lar his­to­ry of the Jamaica labor par­ty. The par­ty has not done enough to edu­cate and inform the peo­ple, it has allowed the debate to be shaped by its adver­saries. It has allowed a false nar­ra­tive to devel­op that it is a par­ty for the rich. The reverse is actu­al­ly the truth. A par­ty which sets long-term goals of adher­ing to the rule of law, which believes in the free mar­ket, which believes that cheap hand­outs is not in the long-term inter­est of the indi­vid­ual, or the coun­try by exten­sion , is a par­ty that should be supported.

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Picture of The National Conference cen­ter which was built in record time (1 year) ! 

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Factory work­ers sewing in a gar­ment fac­to­ry dur­ing the 1980s

In the 1980’s This was what inside fac­to­ries looked like, pro­duc­tion was hum­ming tow­er­ing edi­fices were being con­struct­ed that will be part of the nation­al land­scape for gen­er­a­tions to come. Even if we are unable to get these labor inten­sive jobs back, we must find a way to bring tech­no­log­i­cal jobs to Jamaica, this is the par­ty that knows how to do that.

Go out and do it Andrew Holness.

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No One May Be Forced To Self Incriminate:

Supreme court build­ing Kingston:

Continuing our series on Jamaica’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem we want to speak briefly about a motion filed by 8 police offi­cers in Jamaica’s con­sti­tu­tion­al court regard­ing the pow­er of recent­ly formed inves­tiga­tive group INDECOM’s pow­er to force them to tes­ti­fy against themselves.

INDECOM had served notices on the claimants for them to attend the Video Unit at the Central Police Station on September 14, 2010 to answer ques­tions in rela­tion to the fatal shoot­ing of two men at Tredegar Park, Spanish Town, St Catherine, on August 12, 2010. They did not attend and were sub­se­quent­ly charged by INDECOM with fail­ure to com­ply. The case, await­ing the rul­ing of the Constitutional Court, is for men­tion on May 4 in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court. The attor­ney gen­er­al and the direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tion was also named in the offi­cers suit.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

I am not a lawyer ‚but with that dis­claimer out-of-the-way, let’s get some com­mon sense into the con­ver­sa­tion. Without tak­ing sides one way or the oth­er, it sim­ply comes down to the constitution.

INDECOM through its lawyers are con­tend­ing, had the police offi­cers attend­ed the Central Police Station Video unit to answer ques­tions from INDECOM they could have raised objec­tions regard their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to silence. Really?

If the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of these offi­cers, and all Jamaicans for that mat­ter, are guar­an­teed by the Jamaican con­sti­tu­tion against self-incrim­i­na­tion, as they most cer­tain­ly are, then the order to tes­ti­fy against them­selves is a moot order. Lawyers for INDECOM cel­e­brat­ed as they are , ought to be aware that no per­son can be forced to tes­ti­fy against them­selves, and even though police offi­cers are not peo­ple in Jamaica, they are also pro­tect­ed by the con­sti­tu­tion against self-incrim­i­na­tion. I will not attempt to indict the com­pe­tence of this court , how­ev­er this is a straight for­ward mat­ter that real­ly ought to be decid­ed straight­away with­out advisement.

Every last Jamaican cit­i­zen is guar­an­teed the right to defend them­selves against what the law calls unlaw­ful arrest, they are empow­ered to resist arrest if with­in in their opin­ion they are being sub­ject­ed to arrest unlaw­ful­ly. To cit­i­zens of oth­er coun­tries that may be shock­ing news, but it is the law in Jamaica. Every cit­i­zen in Jamaica is also guar­an­teed the right not to incrim­i­nate them­selves. In essence no cit­i­zen may be forced to speak to the police, if evi­dence is deemed to be gleaned through threats, intim­i­da­tion, coer­cion, or offers and promis­es of any­thing mate­r­i­al that state­ment by that per­son becomes inad­mis­si­ble in a court of law. Unfortunately high-priced lawyers for INDECOM does not believe those guar­an­tees extend to police offi­cers when they are accused of crim­i­nal actions.

What lawyers for INDECOM are ask­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al court to do is to dis­re­gard the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of these 8 police offi­cers, in order that they may have more pow­er. Miranda rights as they are called in the United States, is a must for all per­sons so arrest­ed or being ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with an inves­ti­ga­tion. The right against self-incrim­i­na­tion is fun­da­men­tal, so fun­da­men­tal that even though one choses to take what is ref­ered to as the 5th in the USA, in ref­er­ence to the amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that pro­vides that guar­an­tee, that per­son may not be penal­ized in any way for doing so. I know that many will argue that is in the US, the truth is those guar­an­tees are indeed avail­able to every Jamaican.

It would be a good place for the court to estab­lish authen­tic­i­ty as a fair and legit­i­mate arbiter of facts as they relate to the rights of all Jamaicans. It would be a good thing for this court to make sure jus­tice is not only done but also appear to be done. Justice delayed is jus­tice denied. Rule with­out giv­ing the impres­sion that there is a con­spir­a­cy of sorts against these defen­dants. Rule and allow the case to pro­ceed in the crim­i­nal court. The rights of these police defen­dants are not impor­tant to Jamaicans for Justice. The rights of these offi­cers are impor­tant to me.

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ARE YOU OUTRAGED YET?

Jamaica’s crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are fight­ing to have some of the coun­tries most bar­bar­ic pris­on­ers removed from the com­pe­tent super­vi­sion of the coun­try’s mil­i­tary. These men are housed at a facil­i­ty called the Horizon Remand Center in Kingston. We are reli­ably informed some of them are on a hunger strike in an attempt to draw atten­tion to their claims of being abused. My heart felt sug­ges­tion is to let these mur­der­ers have their wish let them starve to death. As I have talked about in two pre­vi­ous blogs, at the heart of this now report­ed hunger strike, are ser­i­al con­vict­ed mur­der­ers who are final­ly made to con­form with dis­ci­pline. They have devised a plan to assault mem­bers of the mil­i­tary guard­ing them, throw­ing fae­ces on them and when they are sub­dued they have high-priced defense lawyers fil­ing legal briefs in the coun­try’s high­est court claim­ing abuse.

No one is sug­gest­ing that any pris­on­er incar­cer­at­ed by the state should be rou­tine­ly or sum­mar­i­ly abused, far from it, These men are absolute­ly not the aver­age run of the mill inmates these are large­ly con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, who have fig­ured out how to manip­u­late the sys­tem in order to con­tin­ue to run their crim­i­nal enter­pris­es from inside the prison sys­tem This is a well thought out strat­e­gy that is being enhanced by the gov­ern­ment which has assigned every agency they can get their hands on to com­mence inves­ti­ga­tions. Exactly what these mur­der­ing slime balls want­ed in the first place.

Leading the charge in con­demn­ing the sol­diers and demand­ing their removal, for doing what they were sup­posed to do, con­trol vio­lent mur­der­ers is this woman Carolyn Gomes a pedi­a­tri­cian who has found­ed a far left lob­by group called Jamaicans for justice(JFJ). She has used every tool at her dis­pos­al includ­ing align­ing her­self with International Human Rights Organizations which actu­al­ly do real Human rights work for the advance­ment and uplift­ing of humanity.

Gomes how­ev­er has used her immense influ­ence in Jamaica , to impact leg­is­la­tion heav­i­ly in favor of crim­i­nals. Gomes we are told has a per­son­al vendet­ta against police offi­cers, of course in Jamaica being against the police is a cer­tain path­way to fame, and suc­cess. The Government has bestowed the Order of Jamaica on her , a high nation­al Honor. She has also received the 2008 human rights prize for her state­ments alleg­ing Extra-judi­cial killings by police. This is not to say there haven’t been and still aren’t cas­es of eye­brow rais­ing accounts of police shoot­ing. The fact is Gomes has no inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion that will indict accounts of events giv­en by police inves­ti­ga­tors or any oth­er agency that are part of the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem, to include the office of the Director of Public Prosecutor. Gomes a soft-spo­ken woman ‚eas­i­ly like­able is a decep­tive char­la­tan whom has wormed her way into the hearts and sym­pa­thy of those with whom she cross­es paths.America’s quar­ter­ly 

Every year thou­sands of Jamaica’s 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple are direct­ly or indi­rect­ly impact­ed by crime and acts of ter­ror, per­pet­u­at­ed by heart­less, heav­i­ly armed men whom have decid­ed­ly adopt­ed a pos­ture of liv­ing by their own rules. They mur­der , rape, and com­mit all types of egre­gious acts against some of their own kind, but large­ly against inno­cent Jamaicans. The coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem is a revolv­ing door which allows crim­i­nals arrest­ed on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges back onto the streets time and again only to see them kill over and over again, only to be arrest­ed and grant­ed bail again and again. The police are under­paid, under­staffed, cor­rupt in some instances, under appre­ci­at­ed, and un sup­port­ed by ade­quate leg­is­la­tion which would make their work eas­i­er and the coun­try safer.

The courts are over-bur­dened with case loads to the point cop killers are told by Judges to go home, after the court is unable to empan­el a jury 11 years after they were arrest­ed . These are men who ambushed a police offi­cer slaugh­tered him and stole his pis­tol. They are walk­ing the streets of Jamaica free men, That is what the lives of police offi­cers are worth in Jamaica.

This is just the tip of the ice­berg, the sys­tem is gross­ly over­bur­dened. As we speak there are tens of thou­sands of seri­ous cas­es that are before the courts that may nev­er see a res­o­lu­tion. In essence those offend­ers, some of them mur­der­ers, will nev­er pay for their crimes.

In addi­tion only about 32% of mur­ders are actu­al­ly cleared up by the JCF and an even more depress­ing 7% con­vic­tion rate in the courts. Due large­ly to shod­dy inves­tiga­tive work by police, inept pros­e­cu­tion, reluc­tant wit­ness­es, and in many cas­es sim­ple things like no copi­er in the court’s office to repro­duce doc­u­ments. This in a coun­try which spends 10’s of mil­lions of dol­lars upgrad­ing gov­ern­ment hous­es for Ministers of Government.

I have placed here for your infor­ma­tion and analy­sis the facts as they are made avail­able, due to the invalu­able work of the peo­ple at the Jamaica Observer .These are the peo­ple mem­bers of Jamaica’s mil­i­tary are being per­se­cut­ed for subduing.

THIS A SHAMEFUL AND DISGUSTING ASSAULT ON MEMBERS OF OUR FINE MILITARY. MEN AND WOMEN WHO RISK THEIR LIVES WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUPPORT TO DEFEND JAMAICA FROM ANARCHY. THESE ARE THE SLIME BALLS ON WHOSE BEHALF THE GOVERNMENT AND CRIMINAL RIGHTS LOBBY ARE PERSECUTING OUR SOLDIERS :

Below are the details of their con­vic­tions and charges:

Kevin ‘Richie Poo’ Tyndale, was also col­lared in a rur­al St James vil­lage, tried and sen­tenced to a total of 90 years on gun-relat­ed, wound­ing and rob­bery charges. But because the sen­tences on the three counts are to run con­cur­rent­ly, Tyndale will serve only 30 years.

Police also said Tyndale is a sus­pect in sev­er­al oth­er major crimes, includ­ing rob­bery and August 2003 mur­der of Jervis Lobban in Mud Town, St Andrew, anoth­er stomp­ing ground for the Gideon Warriors gang. He was con­vict­ed for the 2003 shoot­ing and rob­bery of an August Town, St Andrew, busi­ness­man who was shot six times and his jew­ellery and licensed firearm tak­en. According to the police and the evi­dence led in the closed court pro­ceed­ings, as the busi­ness­man lay wound­ed, Tyndale stood over him and shot him at point-blank range in the head. The busi­ness­man sur­vived and was able to iden­ti­fy Tyndale as one of his attack­ers. The man still has a bul­let lodged in his head. Tyndale denied the alle­ga­tions and told the court that he was at home at the time of the shoot­ing. Police claimed he was the gang’s sec­ond in com­mand until Andem’s cap­ture. According to police claims at the time, Tyndale wet his pants, sniffle.

Tyndale

Joel Andem was for years the nation’s most feared fugi­tive, top­ping the most want­ed list for months. The leader of the noto­ri­ous Gideon Warriors Gang is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a 20-year sen­tence for shoot­ing with intent. Andem, who police sus­pect was involved in at least 23 mur­ders, was also sen­tenced to 12 years’ impris­on­ment at hard labour on a charge of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm. In addi­tion, he was slapped with anoth­er 20-year prison sen­tence in rela­tion to oth­er gun-relat­ed charges. Andem’s gang, which oper­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly from the hilly Kintyre area of St Andrew, was blamed for a reign of ter­ror in the Papine/​August Town dis­tricts of the parish and for extor­tion rack­ets at mar­kets and trans­porta­tion cen­tres. Gang mem­bers have also been accused of rob­beries, rapes and killings, includ­ing the August 2000 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of ser­vice sta­tion oper­a­tor Sylvia Edwards, whose body was found in a shal­low grave. The Gideon Warriors gang came to nation­al promi­nence in ear­ly 2002 when the police, dur­ing a raid at their camp at Rawly Hill Gully — sev­en kilo­me­tres from Kintyre — found video record­ings of Andem and his men, armed with high-pow­ered rifles and oth­er weapons, host­ing a Christmas treat for chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty and frol­ick­ing with each other.

AndemLivity Coke

The record­ing also showed gang mem­bers issu­ing threats against the police.

In the wake of the dis­cov­ery of that record­ing as well as a note­book con­tain­ing names which the police feared were intend­ed vic­tims, sev­er­al gang mem­bers were killed in con­fronta­tions with the police and Andem was even­tu­al­ly cap­tured at a house in the hills of St Ann in May 2004. This is the sec­ond time that Andem has accused prison offi­cials of beat­ing him. In 2008, an inves­ti­ga­tion was launched after Andem com­plained to Justice Gloria Smith at the Gun Court that a dozen sol­diers had beat­en him that day. The beat­ing, he said then, hap­pened after he refused to go with them to an upper cell, which made him sick. According to Andem, he had been suf­fer­ing severe headaches and stom­ach pains since the alleged inci­dent in which he alleged he was dragged up a flight of stairs to the cell. Andem’s sec­ond in com­mand, ed and begged not to be killed at the time of his cap­ture. At the time of his arrest cops said Tyndale was a sus­pect in 19 oth­er major crimes, includ­ing mur­der, shoot­ings and rob­beries. Police believe he shot and killed 56 year-old Ena Grant and injured anoth­er woman as they wor­shipped at a church in Land Lease, St Andrew. Scared eye­wit­ness­es on the scene said the assas­sin went to the altar as the pas­tor preached and was warm­ly greet­ed by the man of cloth before he took out his gun and aimed it at Grant. The armed man pulled the trig­ger twice but his gun mis­fired and Grant valiant­ly tried to use her Bible to hit the weapon from her attack­er’s hand. She almost dis­armed him, a church mem­ber said.

Christopher \'Dog Paw\' LintonLynton

“The gun stick and the peo­ple start bawl out ‘The blood of Jesus is upon you’. She used her bible and lick him and the gun drop,” the eye­wit­ness told the Observer at the time. But the gun­man, deter­mined that Grant must die, sim­ply went out­side, fixed the weapon and walked back into the house of wor­ship where he pumped three shots into her body. Grant was shot just over her right eye and armpit. When the Observer arrived, her life­less body was still on the church floor. Her glass­es, minus the right lens, were perched on her face and her Bible was trapped beneath her body. The mur­ders of 20 year-old Kimona Simpson, her 24 year-old com­mon-law hus­band Richard Miller, and her nine year-old son Tevin Parchment were also sus­pect­ed to be the work of Tyndale and his cronies.

Miller

Michael McLean has been accused of the killing of six mem­bers of a St Thomas fam­i­ly — three of them chil­dren no old­er than nine years old. The mur­dered fam­i­ly mem­bers were iden­ti­fied as three-year-old Lloyd McCool, Jhaid McCool, 6, Jessie Ogilvie, 9, Sean Chin, 8, Farika Martin-McCool, 27 and Terry-Ann Mohammed, also called ‘Teenie’, 42. They all lived at 49 Duhaney Pen Road in the parish. Police report­ed that fish­er­men on the Blue Mahoe Beach in Prospect stum­bled upon the bod­ies of two chil­dren — Lloyd and Jessie — lying togeth­er with their throats cut. The bod­ies of Martin-McCool and her son Sean were found about a half-mile away, on the oth­er side of the beach called ‘Cutters Point’. Their throats were also cut and Martin-McCool had sev­er­al stab wounds in her back. Cops sus­pect­ed that Martin-McCool was run­ning away from her attack­er as she was found lying on her face about 22 yards from her son’s body. Terry-Ann Mohammed’s body was found 12 miles away on the side of a foot­path in Needham Pen. It was burnt beyond recog­ni­tion. Police said the body was iden­ti­fied by a pair of slip­pers she was wear­ing. Police said five days after the mur­ders, McLean led them to the body of Jhaid McCool at Rosemont dis­trict, St Mary. The child’s body was found cov­ered by a piece of board. Both Linton and Coke are fac­ing charges of shoot­ing at the police and sus­pect­ed involve­ment in oth­er seri­ous crimes​.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​O​b​s​e​r​v​e​r​-​o​n​l​i​n​e​-​e​x​c​l​u​s​ive – Profile-of-the-hunger-strikers#ixzz1nodeNQYv

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Jamaica’s Government On Crime”#2

Yesterday I spoke to you about the state of Criminal Justice in Jamaica in part one of what I intend to be a two-part series on the sub­ject. This is not the first time that I have spo­ken about Jamaica’s bro­ken and woe­ful­ly inept crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and it cer­tain­ly will not be the last. As long as the sys­tem is as decrepit as it is, I will con­tin­ue to shine a light on it. I am unre­strained from telling the truth as I am not in the employ of that sys­tem any­more , nei­ther do I intend to be a part of it in the future. One thing is cer­tain, is that one does­n’t need to be inside a fire to know that it is hot, one does not need to be an expert to know that if one jumps off the Flat Bridge he will land in water. We live in a tech­no­log­i­cal age which makes access to infor­ma­tion rather easy. Under free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws gov­ern­ments and agen­cies are not allowed to be Judge and Jury in deter­min­ing whether the pub­lic has access to per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion it needs. The Jamaican Supreme Court for exam­ple has a web­site where all the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion that may be required by inter­est­ed par­ties are post­ed. Subsequently it is a lit­tle naïve’ for any­one to believe or sug­gest that one has to be immersed with­in the sys­tem in order to under­stand or ful­ly appre­ci­ate what the inner work­ings are. Conversely I dare­say it is rather unique­ly Jamaican that we con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that only cer­tain peo­ple who are indeed heav­i­ly invest­ed and or immersed with­in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline may appro­pri­ate­ly address that par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline. What we have found is that mis­con­cep­tion is direct­ly attrib­ut­able to some of the prob­lems that are plagu­ing our coun­try today.

I incor­po­rat­ed the for­gone para­graph in response to my very good friend and for­mer col­league who was real­ly kind to respond to the pre­vi­ous blog. I appre­ci­ate his response and find him cred­i­ble and hero­ic in voic­ing his opin­ion with­out hid­ing behind a moniker even as he still resides in Jamaica.

Executive Director of JFJ, Dr. Carolyn Gomes - FileCarolyn Gomes Director of Jamaicans for Justice.

Yesterday I told you Jamaica’s nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy could be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence (“spend all you can to pro­tect the most despi­ca­ble mur­der­ers”) It did not take long after I wrote that blog for the most notable face of crim­i­nal sup­port in Jamaica to emerge in sup­port of the most heart­less, bru­tal, cold-blood­ed mur­der­ers on our planet.

Carolyn Gomes is prob­a­bly a decent woman, but she is woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed. I too believe every­one is enti­tled to pro­tec­tions under the laws, but Gomes by her actions have made it sig­nif­i­cant­ly and abun­dant­ly clear that she has used the Agency she heads (Jamaicans for Justice) as a tool against law enforce­ment and as a source of sup­port for the most hard­ened mur­der­ers oper­at­ing in Jamaica. There is no ratio­nal expla­na­tion for the craven posi­tions she and her agency takes in the defense of crim­i­nals, with­out even an attempt to bal­ance that unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port with empa­thy for crime vic­tims who have suf­fered at the hands of these mur­der­ers. As one could rea­son­ably expect she wast­ed no time in com­ing out in defense of these crim­i­nals , not sug­gest­ing, but demand­ing that mem­bers of the mil­i­tary be removed from the remand cen­ter, and effec­tive con­trol of prisoners. 

Make no mis­take this will hap­pen. Never mind that author­i­ties have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that the high-pro­file crim­i­nals at the heart of this issue are doing so because they want exact­ly what Gomes wants for them. They want to be removed from the con­trol of the Military, they want to be returned to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion where they will be under the super­vi­sion of inept, poor­ly trained,corrupt cor­rec­tion offi­cers(warders).

This begs the ques­tion was this response coör­di­nat­ed with the brief filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of the same crim­i­nals? As I point­ed out yes­ter­day these crim­i­nals have no estab­lished source of income as far as this blog­ger knows, so where does the mon­ey come from to pay the high-priced crim­i­nal lawyers who fall over them­selves to rep­re­sent them in the high­est court in the coun­try? Is the mon­ey com­ing from the same source as the funds that keep (JFJ) in busi­ness? Or does (JFJ) gets fund­ed from the same pool that pays the high-priced (vul­tures)? Ask your­selves the ques­tion , where do these men get the funds to pay these high-priced lawyers (vul­tures)? And yes my dear friend Mac They are vul­tures, and they do dou­ble as law-mak­ers , there is no dis­crep­an­cy there. That state­ment is a fact, you see my friend it may be an incon­ve­nient truth ‚but the truth nonetheless.

There are innu­mer­able cas­es, too many to men­tion of Justices on courts at var­i­ous lev­els of the Judiciary in Jamaica who rou­tine­ly grant bail to crim­i­nals after they are arrest­ed for seri­ous crimes like mur­der and rape , they prompt­ly go out kill or rape again are grant­ed bail again and again and again to com­mit the same crimes some­times up to five times over, even as they await tri­al for the first case on which were charged.

Jamaican Judges argue that bail was not intend­ed to be puni­tive, they argue bail was not intend­ed to be pun­ish­ment. That may be all well and good accord­ing to British Judges, (which I will come back to). Since bail was not meant to be pun­ish­ment who argues for the vic­tims who are rou­tine­ly gunned down on almost every street cor­ner of Kingston and oth­er cities in Jamaica, in broad day­light, as onlook­ers stand there trans­fixed, too scared to move, too scared to tell police who did it, even though they know the per­pe­tra­tors? Too scared to speak , know­ing if they tell they will be next. From Hagley Park road to Slipe road, from Tower Street to Matthews lane the blood of Jamaicans con­tin­ue to run while Judges fid­dle over seman­tics, refus­ing to lock crim­i­nals away for the max­i­mum time allowed by law. If Judges con­tin­ue to make the same argu­ments then yes the law is an ass and the Judges are even big­ger Asses. 

England ‚the for­mer colo­nial pow­er Jamaicans quote, and seek to emu­late, do not make the same argu­ments in defense of their cit­i­zens. London is one of the most pro­tect­ed cities in the world, there are hun­dreds of thou­sands of cam­eras that lit­er­al­ly stitch togeth­er the secu­ri­ty of the city into man­age­able nerve cen­ters where secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als mon­i­tor the every move of Londoner in an effort to make sure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of that city is pre­served. Whether one believes in big broth­er hav­ing that much con­trol is a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be debat­ed, but the results are impos­si­ble to deny. 

In a sen­tence, coun­tries which val­ue their cit­i­zens under­stand that secu­ri­ty is job num­ber one.

It is not about crash pro­gramme work, it is not about faux tears of car­ing , nations do not thrive on hugs and plat­i­tudes. Jamaica’s Judges like the politi­cians are com­plic­i­ty respon­si­ble for the high rate of crim­i­nal­i­ty that con­tin­ue to plague the nation. I spent 10 years in the Police force and I left it know­ing that I could not make a dif­fer­ence serv­ing in that depart­ment, I refused to be con­sumed by a sys­tem in which the peo­ple who risk their lives are set up to fail. Many peo­ple are fooled by the “mis­ter bigs” who hand over a car to the com­mis­sion­er or a cou­ple of motor­cy­cles here and there. I would much rather see peo­ple with pow­er in Jamaica use those pow­ers to lob­by for leg­is­la­tion which puts crim­i­nals in prison where they belong.

Then again I won’t hold my breath, some of the most pow­er­ful in the suits and tie, are the most pow­er­ful gang leaders.

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Jamaican Government Support Murderers At The Expense Of Law Enforcement:

I hate to say I told you so. I am refer­ring to the PNP gov­ern­ment, Yea, yea, I know I sound par­ti­san, that’s the sim­plis­tic way to think. I prob­a­bly will not be able to change the minds of those of you who think that way. If your minds are already made up, a mind made up will learn noth­ing new. I urge you to put that aside and be objec­tive for a minute. Study my posi­tions a lit­tle clos­er, I crit­i­cize both polit­i­cal par­ties, the PNP more than the JLP because I feel that the PNP at its core is a far more destruc­tive par­ty for our coun­try. On every occa­sion that I have crit­i­cized the PNP I have pre­sent­ed doc­u­ment­ed ver­i­fi­able fac­tu­al basis for doing so. My posi­tions have noth­ing to do with polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion , the truth is I care about nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty in Jamaica, I care about Jamaica. It mat­ters not who is in charge, as long as they make deci­sions that are in the best inter­est of Jamaica.

There is a debate rag­ing in Jamaica as we speak at the heart of this debate is this image below:

(Jamaica Gleaner photo)

This is a pic­ture of Livity Coke , broth­er of Christopher Coke ‚dis­play­ing what has been ruled super­fi­cial wounds received at the hands of mem­bers of the mil­i­tary who are in charge of secu­ri­ty at the Horizon Remand cen­ter In Kingston.

Livity Coke is in jail await­ing tri­al on charges of shoot­ing at police offi­cers stem­ming from the incur­sion into Tivoli Gardens by mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to arrest his broth­er Christoper (dudus) Coke on gun run­ning and nar­cotics charges to which he has sub­se­quent­ly pled guilty in the United States. This charge would have been a very seri­ous charge in any oth­er coun­try which respects the rule of law. let me point out, this is not so in Jamaica, even if he is con­vict­ed, which is a 7% pos­si­bil­i­ty, he may very well get a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, if that much. Such is the state of crim­i­nal jus­tice in Jamaica. At the cen­ter of this non­sense is a group of gang lead­ers who want sol­diers removed from enforc­ing dis­ci­pline at Horizon, so they may return to the care of inept large­ly cor­rupt, intim­i­nat­ed cor­rec­tion offi­cers(prison warders ) where they know they will be able to con­tin­ue run­ning their gangs that are on the outside.

Coke and oth­ers now have high-pro­file lawyers fil­ing brief in Jamaica’s Supreme Court on their behalf, argu­ing that they are being abused. The Government is falling all over itself to have INDECOM the Jamaican FBI (sic), Criminal rights activists, Earl Witter the so-called pub­lic defend­er and every force they can pos­si­bly Marshall to fight the sol­diers on behalf of these filthy scum bags.

I could wan­der off and actu­al­ly tell the world that INDECOM was cre­at­ed to inves­ti­gate the police while crime surges. Which is real­ly a smoke screen while politi­cians involve them­selves in all kinds of crim­i­nal actions. But I won’t.The dif­fer­ence is that the FBI can actu­al­ly inves­ti­gate, and does inves­ti­gate crim­i­nals. INDECOM’S man­date is to inves­ti­gate police offi­cers , they have no man­date to inves­ti­gate seri­ous crimes, not so in Jamaica.

But I won’t talk about that, that’s a dif­fer­ent conversation.

According to prison offi­cials the men at the cen­ter of this dis­rup­tion are crim­i­nals already con­vict­ed of very seri­ous crimes, most are infa­mous, and some even though not yet con­vict­ed , are known to have com­mit­ted mul­ti­ple mur­ders. Prison Officials are con­tend­ing some of these vio­lent acts have been cap­tured on secu­ri­ty cam­eras that were recent­ly installed at Security Post 11 where some of the most high-risk inmates are housed.

That list includes Tesha Miller, Christopher Linton, Joel Andem, Kevin Tyndale and Michael McLean — “very dan­ger­ous indi­vid­u­als”, Prendergast charged that “many of them vio­lent­ly oppose” prison rules.

You think?

Christopher \'Dog Paw\' Linton(por­trait for Tyndale and Mclean not available)

These are some of the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals in the entire world. They have no com­punc­tion about gun­ning down any­one ‚any­where, at any­time, and if they are unable to do so them­selves, have their oper­a­tives do so on their behalf.

Yet after law enforce­ment have safe­ly and effec­tive­ly removed these filthy scum­bags from the streets, with­out hurt­ing them , the Government of the coun­try in league with the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are falling over them­selves to defend these degen­er­ates. They com­plain about extra-judi­cial killings, if these low lives are killed in the process of appre­hend­ing them. When they are appre­hend­ed and locked up, and they con­tin­ue to mis­be­have the gov­ern­ment per­se­cute those tasked with the dan­ger­ous job of keep­ing them locked up. It is clear that the Government wants these men on the streets where they may con­tin­ue with their geno­ci­dal rampage.

Here’s how Officials of the Prisons explain what these men have been up to in the facility.

The JDF, in dis­miss­ing the alle­ga­tions, sug­gest­ed that it was a ploy by the inmates to force prison offi­cials to trans­fer them back to the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion where they can con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.“As we con­tin­ue to frus­trate their attempts to influ­ence their gangs, inmates have resort­ed to doing every­thing in their pow­er to have them­selves removed from JDF cus­tody and incor­po­rat­ed into the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion,” said Captain Basil Jarrett, JDF civil/​military co-oper­a­tion offi­cer.Jamaicagleaner​.com

Captain Basil Jarrett, sin­gu­lar­ly, by this state­ment alone, has demon­strat­ed that he is heads and shoul­der above any­one in the Administration of Portia Simpson Miller.

My only crit­i­cism with the process as artic­u­lat­ed by mem­bers of the JDF is that these degen­er­ates must be iso­lat­ed from each oth­er. My crit­i­cism how­ev­er is not made with any knowl­edge of the geo­graph­i­cal lay­out or capa­bil­i­ties of the facil­i­ty. As such I am not sure that my cri­tique is even a fair one, in light of the afore­men­tioned admis­sion. Knowing the inad­e­qua­cies of the jus­tice sys­tem in Jamaica I would haz­ard a guess that facil­i­ty does not have com­mon sense capa­bil­i­ties that would argue for the safe­ty of offi­cers or the secu­ri­ty and effec­tive con­tain­ment of accused criminals.

Here we have crim­i­nals who are known ser­i­al mur­der­ers who under­stand the system.

They have mon­ey to hire the most cel­e­brat­ed high-pro­file (vul­tures) called defense lawyers to push their agendas.

Gaming the system.

And whip­ping up reli­able, depend­able sup­port from the polit­i­cal left which sup­ports them in the country.

This Government is a dis­grace, a shame­ful exam­ple of how Governments in small devel­op­ing coun­tries like Jamaica are them­selves vic­tims when they acqui­esce to the far left dic­tates from Agencies like the Inter American com­mis­sion on Human Rights, The United Nations com­mis­sion on Human Rights, Amnesty International and the pletho­ra of oth­er so-called Human Rights Organizations around the world.

These far left Agencies along with prox­ies like Jamaicans for Justice, have pres­sured small coun­tries into aban­don­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, even though pub­lic opin­ion over­whelm­ing­ly sup­ports these mea­sures in their fight against demon­ic crim­i­nals who are hell-bent on may­hem and mur­der. These far left Elitist oper­ate in coun­tries like the United States, Canada among oth­er devel­oped coun­tries. In each of the coun­tries from which they oper­ate they do not get to dic­tate to nei­ther State nor Federal Officials how nation­al secu­ri­ty, or crime is han­dled. They take their scare tac­tics to the United Nations where they tie loan and aid guar­an­tees to acqui­es­cence of their rad­i­cal far left agen­da. It is a vicious form of coher­sion that lit­er­al­ly guar­an­tees that small­er depen­dent states will con­tin­ue to be inun­dat­ed with crime. No investor wants to do busi­ness in a crime rid­den coun­try, coun­tries like Jamaica, Mexico, or Colombia with high crime rates are tar­get­ed. Mexico has oil, Columbia has Cocaine, Jamaica has.…..

So they stay poor and depen­dent on the satel­lite states. Check mate.

One would rea­son­ably assume that politi­cians run­ning for office, or hav­ing being elect­ed to office, would real­ize that their pri­ma­ry duty is to pro­tect cit­i­zens. Not so in Jamaica, politi­cians in Jamaica are large­ly crim­i­nals, Judges are so lib­er­al with sen­tenc­ing and the lat­i­tude they give defense attor­neys , it rais­es eye­brows as to whether most of them are not taint­ed with blood mon­ey. And that does not even begin to address the crim­i­nal defense attor­neys who rep­re­sent the most despi­ca­ble ser­i­al mur­ders. Oh by the way most of the defense attor­neys dou­ble as Legislators. The coun­try has been caught in this vicious cycle for decades. The coun­try’s entire nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy may be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence” Spend what­ev­er it takes to pro­tect the most mur­der­ous crim­i­nals” Jamaica has nev­er seen a char­ter it does­n’t want to sign, they have nev­er seen a piece of paper being float­ed in International cir­cles that they take a pass on.

This is a coun­try that is run by those schooled at what the late Wilmott )Mutty) Perkins called the “intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to” The University of the West indies. They are a cadre of pre­tenders, first and sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of blacks who have final­ly clawed their way out of abject pover­ty . They have gained edu­ca­tion and they want to be asso­ci­at­ed with the ways of their for­mer mas­ters whom have long retreat­ed to Europe. they are the new bour­geoise’ and they are damn sure going to let every­one know it.

Only prob­lem with this, is they pre­tend that Jamaica is Switzerland,or Denmark, so they live in some dis­tant place in their minds, as the killings sur­round them. They bar­ri­cade them­selves in their homes, hav­ing to breach lay­ers and lay­ers of iron grille for­ti­fi­ca­tion which sep­a­rate room from room. And as they sur­vive day-to-day they are lulled into believ­ing that this is the way to live, they tell them­selves Jamaica is not bad, there is crime everywhere.

They con­vince them­selves that the prob­lem is with the police and sol­diers who in their minds are spoil­ing the nar­ra­tive in their mind,disrupting their fan­tas­tic utopia,causing inter­na­tion­al con­ster­na­tion of their Island par­adise. The par­adise they rule.….….

Then they awake from their dream and sep­a­rate them­selves from their prison room by room, and they watch their new­ly crowned Empress naked in igno­rance and they mar­vel at her new clothes.

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Simpson Miller Insultingly Cynical:

Portia some­times defy her crit­ics with her cun­ning. What she lacks in intel­lect she cer­tain­ly has in street smarts. Of course it is insult­ing to sug­gest that the roll-out of this crash pro­gram give away, is not done to pay for votes in the upcom­ing local gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Most impor­tant­ly it would cer­tain­ly look bad­ly on her and her par­ty if all the par­ty hacks were seen wear­ing par­ty col­ors. Telling them not to wear the gang col­ors is dubi­ous and cer­tain­ly cynical.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller(glean­er pho­to)

PRIME MINISTER Portia Simpson Miller has issued a call for peo­ple employed on the Jamaica Emergency EmploymentProgramme (JEEP) to refrain from appear­ing par­ti­san on work sites.“I want to make an appeal that nobody must wear par­ty colours on the JEEP pro­gramme. It is Jamaica’s pro­gramme, not a polit­i­cal par­ty,” the prime min­is­ter said. Simpson Miller has moved to dis­miss fears that the tim­ing of the local gov­ern­ment elec­tion was strate­gic in order to coin­cide with the roll-out of JEEP. jamaica​glean​er​.com

I have a cou­ple of ques­tions for prime Minister Miller.

(1) Why would you wor­ry about work­ers appear­ing par­ti­san on work-sites,? are you wor­ried that the world will see that it is a PNP pay for vote ‚crash pro­gram give-away that will con­tin­ue to sink Jamaica fur­ther into poverty ?

(2)Seriously madam Prime Minister how stu­pid do you think we are? Elections are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due by the end of March and you have announced that elec­tions will be on the 26th of said month. Yet we are to believe there is no con­nec­tion between the elec­tion date and the roll­out of this par­ti­san pay­out acronym JEEP.

Personally I don’t mind being tak­en for a fool, but I would rather be tak­en for a fool by some­one who is actu­al­ly smarter than I am. Just how stu­pid do you think Jamaicans are?

During the 70’s this very brand of pol­i­tics was prac­ticed in our country,bands of brig­ands were giv­en pay for work they nev­er did. All over the coun­try ‚pri­mar­i­ly in cities and Towns, large crews of PNP red/​orange clad thugs, male and female sat on walls , motor­cy­cles, and on street cor­ners drink­ing Guinness and smok­ing mar­i­jua­na. At the end of the week they received pay­ment from the government.

While this drain was tak­ing place the gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ed to tell the mid­dle class that if they did not like social­ism they should take one of the five flights a day that were leav­ing to Miami.

They did.

Michael ManleyPercival James PattersonSimpson Miller

That was the class which cre­at­ed jobs, they all left, that exo­dus was the largest of its kind in the his­to­ry of our nation . Our coun­try is still suf­fer­ing as a result of that brain drain. What was left was the polit­i­cal class the work­ing poor and the hood­lums. That peri­od has been the sin­gle most defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic which impact­ed the destruc­tion of Jamaica’s once pris­tine neigh­bor­hoods. People sim­ply walked out of homes they worked hard to build. These homes end­ed up being cap­tured and occu­pied by PNP thugs. Three decades lat­er that par­ty is still seen as the sav­ior of the mass­es. Of course, who would­n’t love a par­ty which lit­er­al­ly fright­ened peo­ple out of man­sions so that com­mon thugs could have them for free?

That was the begin­ning of the destruc­tion of our coun­try. Today some want to make the peri­od of Michael Manley a pos­i­tive for our coun­try. That peri­od was a colos­sal fail­ure of social engi­neer­ing that has lit­er­al­ly set our coun­try back 50 years. I will con­tin­ue to show the world what that peri­od has done in set­ting the course of destruc­tion our coun­try has been on ever since. After 8 years of JLP rule They fol­lowed up with a peri­od of 18 1⁄2 years which has cement­ed that destruc­tion. Revisionist his­to­ry will not change those facts.

The United States is now a coun­try divid­ed and extreme­ly polar­ized between Republicans and Democrats. There are many inter­ven­ing fac­tors that one could arguably point to why the coun­try is so sharply divid­ed , not least of which is race. Prior to the last twen­ty years when the coun­try was sold out to spe­cial inter­est, the fights waged between the two par­ties were bat­tles waged for the good of the country.

Not so in Jamaica, one par­ty strug­gle to set a course for progress the oth­er wins every time on fight­ing for party.

Promises, nepotism,corruption, polit­i­cal pay-offs, patronage,these are the cor­ner­stones of PNP pol­i­tics which has dom­i­nat­ed the land­scape and fooled a peo­ple, many of whom are intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged and oth­ers who feel they are so smart they will suf­fer the Empress to con­tin­ue to believe in the fal­la­cy of her new clothes.

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Politics And The Press:

REPUBLICAN DEBATE NUMBER 20:

Watching the Republican can­di­dates debate Wednesday night remind­ed me why I can’t stand politicians.

(Getty image)

Rick Santorum said he vot­ed for no child left behind, a sig­na­ture accom­plish­ment of for­mer President George W Bush. However he said he did so for the team, sug­gest­ing that he did so as a repub­li­can in sup­port of a repub­li­can pres­i­dent. Mitt Romney wast­ed no time in jump­ing on Santorum berat­ing him for doing so, ask­ing quote ” I won­der which team he was talk­ing about”?

Of course research lat­er shows Romney stat­ing his sup­port for no child left behind as a good thing. No child left behind I believe, was a plan cre­at­ed with the best of inten­tions and orches­trat­ed and passed into law by the Bush Administration. Critics of No child left behind have now point­ed out that the Act, forces teach­ers to teach to a test , rather than allow stu­dents to test to the teach­ing they receive.

The truth is this should have been obvi­ous to pol­i­cy mak­ers from the get-go, kids do not process infor­ma­tion the same way , nei­ther do they assim­i­late infor­ma­tion at the same time. This is influ­enced by gen­der, eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and myr­i­ad oth­er issues. What I find loath­some is that Romney now make an issue out of no child left behind, after it is seen not to be work­ing as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion thought it would.

The ques­tion is why can’t some­one just admit that they sup­port­ed some­thing that they thought was in the best inter­est of the coun­try and it did not shake out that way? President Obama has since allowed sev­er­al states to opt out of no child left behind.

IS NEW JERSEY’S GOVERNOR CRIS CHRISTIE HAVING IT BOTH WAYS ?

New Jersey’s ram­bunc­tious Governor Chris Christie has stat­ed over and over again that he isn’t run­ning for pres­i­dent of the United States, but is he being truth­ful? Christie recent­ly bucked crit­ics in his state by order­ing flags flown at half-staff after the death of pop icon Whitney Houston. Many peo­ple includ­ing some police unions argue that Houston had not lived a per­fect­ly angel­ic life and as such that hon­or ought not be accord­ed her. Christie did not budgec he stood by his deci­sion. He argued legit­i­mate­ly that many notable icons from New Jersey ‚like Frank Snatra and oth­ers, lived lives sim­i­lar to Houston and the same hon­or was accord­ed them when they died . He argued cor­rect­ly that Elvis Presley also received the same hon­or, and no one found it objectionable.

Police unions always take the posi­tion that any­one who fall foul of the laws, or ever suc­cumbed to human frail­ties are dis­pos­able. In their per­fect lit­tle worlds they some­times play God, they may be remind­ed to take a look in the mir­ror and amongst their own ranks. People make mis­takes in life , includ­ing cops,it smacks of some­thing else oth­er than what they claim, when they take that holy-than-thou atti­tude. It also reduces sup­port and empa­thy oth­ers might feel toward their causes.

Governor Christie did not back down, but was it out of a core prin­ci­pled belief or is he audi­tion­ing for a place on the repub­li­can tick­et in what many spec­u­late could be a bro­kered con­ven­tion in August? Christie has tak­en a posi­tion on most nation­al issues, he is one of the most quot­ed repub­li­cans, yet he main­tains that he will not run for pres­i­dent. Christie also showed a side of him that may play well with repub­li­can pri­ma­ry voters.

Christie clashed with New’s week Johnathan Capehart also a MSNBC con­trib­u­tor , and who also hap­pens to be open­ly gay. Christie got real ugly lash­ing out at Capehart when Capehart point­ed to incon­sis­ten­cy between his posi­tion and that of pres­i­dent Obama as it relates to gay mar­riage. Christe resort­ed to being a school yard bul­ly by revert­ing to the following

“I used to be a pros­e­cu­tor. I’m not going to be cross-exam­ined by you this morn­ing,” said Christie to Capehart in a heat­ed exchange on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “You’re going to lose.”Read more: http://​poloti​co​.com

This kind of attack on media is symp­to­matic of repub­li­can can­di­dates run­ning for pres­i­dent but we have not seen that kind of ran­cid rabid con­fronta­tion­al school yard bul­ly type tac­tic employed in gen­er­al . It smacked of Newt Gingrich’s attack on Juan Williams ‚a phys­i­cal rough­ing up of CNN’s Don Lemon by bul­lies in the Michelle Bachman’s for­mer cam­paign, and for the record Lemon is also an open­ly gay African-American journalist.

Newt Gingrich also lashed out at CNN’s John King for lead­ing with a Question about his infi­deli­ties and state­ments Marianne Gingrich made to anoth­er net­work about him want­i­ng to have an open mar­riage. Gingrich lashed out with a false sense of out­rage to rau­cous applause from the par­ti­san crowd in the hall. Mitt Romney also lashed out at John King in the last debate , telling John King “you get to ask what you want I answer what I want“in response to King demand­ing he answer the ques­tion he asked him. of course the attack on the media seem to always be a clar­i­on call for right wingers in the repub­li­can par­ty when their lies are exposed.

So what is Chris Christie run­ning for ? I don’t know ! I feel how­ev­er Christie would like to see Romney get the nom­i­na­tion and ask him to be his run­ning mate.

Say you read it here first when it come to pass.

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Gang Warfare Rages In Jamaica:

This is a con­tin­u­ing in a series of blogs I will write on the saga of the esca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica. Yesterday I point­ed to the utter incom­pe­tence of the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting. Bunting came to the post total­ly unpre­pared. Speaking at the Police Elleston Road Facility, dur­ing a weapons destruc­tion event, around the sec­ond week of February the min­is­ter said he was informed at anoth­er event that if crime was low­ered it would help the economy !!!!

Really Peter ? You have to be told this ? how utter­ly dumb and igno­rant are you?

Today the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party blast­ed Bunting for recent state­ments he made accus­ing the JLP of not imple­ment­ing a crime pol­i­cy draft­ed in 2007. Delroy Chuck Opposition spokesper­son on nation­al secu­ri­ty blast­ed Bunting’s state­ments as arrant non­sense and point­ed out that the poli­cies were not only imple­ment­ed they were improved upon.

Bunting and Chuck

(Observer Photo)

Jamaican Cops in action

THE Opposition Jamaica Labour Party has dubbed Security Minister Peter Bunting’s accu­sa­tion that the par­ty failed to imple­ment a crime pol­i­cy draft­ed in 2007 as rub­bish. Bunting made the claim dur­ing a press brief­ing at Jamaica House yes­ter­day and drew the ire of the JLP.

“Minister of National Security Peter Bunting stat­ed that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment failed to imple­ment a pol­i­cy draft­ed in 2007. The Opposition said that this is arrant non­sense and a poor excuse by Bunting for the present fail­ures,” the JLP said in a release​.Read more: http://​jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Chuck went on to say:

“In respect of leg­is­la­tion the draft of the Anti-Gang Legislation was sent to Bunting and oth­er stake­hold­ers in 2011 for exam­i­na­tion and com­ment. No com­ment was ever received from Bunting or the PNP and they are only now claim­ing to be exam­in­ing this impor­tant piece of leg­is­la­tion,” Chuck said.

A total of 165 mur­ders have been tal­lied by the police since January 1 and yes­ter­day Bunting out­lined a raft of short and long-term mea­sures the state would be imple­ment­ing to col­lar crime but the JLP said Bunting’s response to the spike in mur­ders and shoot­ing is unacceptable.

“It is patent­ly clear that the port­fo­lio of National Security is beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of Bunting and that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller must imme­di­ate­ly re-exam­ine the assign­ment of this port­fo­lio, as an increase of even one mur­der or shoot­ing over 2011 is unac­cept­able to the Jamaican peo­ple,” the JLP release said.

Anyone who fol­lows these blogs knows I am no fan of Delroy Chuck but “wow” I could­n’t have put it bet­ter myself. The only prob­lem with Chuck’s state­ment is that there is an implic­it sug­ges­tion in it that Portia Simpson Miller is intel­lec­tu­al­ly capa­ble of under­stand­ing that Bunting is a dud. And even if she could under­stand it, she would not have the will or under­stand­ing of the need for change.

WHAT BUNTING AND THE GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO DO IS TO SUGGEST THAT THE SPIRALLING CRIME RATE IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE JLP AND NOT THEIRS.

Bunting and the PNP could not address the doc­u­ment the for­mer gov­ern­ment sent them ‚they were too intent on pro­tect­ing the crim­i­nals in their gar­ri­son communities.Remember they vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly not to give police more time to root out ter­ror­ists after the fall of the Tivoli empire. The fact is they have six times more gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties than the oth­er par­ty and they had an elec­tion to win. In the mean­time Bunting and his par­ty has leaked infor­ma­tion to the press that they have no con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ties of Commissioner Ellington to do his job. Word on the streets is that they plant­ed this infor­ma­tion to once again blame the police and deflect blame and respon­si­bil­i­ty for their failures.

Commissioner Ellington Chief of defense staff Major General Anthony Anderson and Bunting(observer photo)

It will be a stretch for this lat­est strat­e­gy of the PNP to be effec­tive, Ellington has sim­ply been one of the most effec­tive com­mis­sion­ers in mod­ern his­to­ry not only in reduc­ing crime but in erad­i­cat­ing cor­rupt cops from the depart­ment. A 40% reduc­tion in crime is very sig­nif­i­cant , then again does the aver­age Jamaican under­stand this? In the mean time Bunting looks into the face of the com­mis­sion­er and tells him his job is safe .

Bunting, who was speak­ing dur­ing a Jamaica House press con­fer­ence, insist­ed Ellington enjoys the con­fi­dence of the PortiaSimpson Miller-led administration.“He has been suc­cess­ful and we expect him to con­tin­ue that suc­cess and he will have the sup­port of myself as min­is­ter and the administration.”

Since last week, word has been going around that the admin­is­tra­tion was not pleased with Ellington and the lead­er­ship that he pro­vides to the JCF. Persons close to the Government have claimed plans are afoot to replace Ellington, who was appoint­ed to lead the JCF under the pre­vi­ous Jamaica Labour Party gov­ern­ment. jamaica​glean​er​.com

In the image above Jamaican cops are seen in action under the cap­tion “Gang con­flicts rag­ing” in the (Jamaica Observer) Those con­flicts will con­tin­ue to rage in the absence of a seri­ous once and for all piece of leg­is­la­tion that puts crim­i­nals in prison and throw away the keys and a police force that is allowed to do its job law­ful­ly with­out favor or affec­tion , mal­ice or ill will.

Peace.

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Bunting’s Incompetence:

Peter Bunting spent most of his time thrash­ing Police Officers while his par­ty was in oppo­si­tion . He attend­ed many func­tions where he berat­ed the police force. As shad­ow min­is­ter for nation­al secu­ri­ty, he did­n’t both­er to spend time devel­op­ing a strat­e­gy that would fur­ther the process of crime sup­pres­sion and elim­i­na­tion in the coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple . In fact, Bunting was in the fore­front of his lead­er’s brigade that now forms the gov­ern­ment, they vot­ed not to give the secu­ri­ty forces the time and pow­ers they need­ed to con­sol­i­date the gains after they lib­er­at­ed Tivoli Gardens.

Photo cour­tesy of the Jamaica Observer.

Yesterday Peter Bunting told the coun­try that his par­ty, the People’s National par­ty will win a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the parish coun­cil seats in local gov­ern­ment elec­tions con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in March.

Why is this important ?

Peter Bunting just hap­pen to be the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter. As we pre­dict­ed when his par­ty was returned to office after a short 4 year stint in oppo­si­tion, crime would head right back upwards . Word on the streets is, and always was, that his par­ty is high­ly tol­er­ant of crime. People feel they can run with what­ev­er they are into, “eat a food”. After Tivoli Gardens was annexed to Jamaica, crime trend­ed south­ward to the tune of 40% over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od of pre­vi­ous year/​s. Jamaica record­ed an aver­age of 1600 mur­ders annu­al­ly up to the time of the Tivoli take-back. Crime trend­ed down and remained at 40 % low­er untill The PNP took office. Now it is far from com­fort­ing that we could crow about a 40% reduc­tion in crime when we have 1600 homi­cides report­ed each year . On the one hand it is great that 640 less Jamaicans have been killed whilst on the oth­er it is heart rend­ing that 960 peo­ple were slaugh­tered, in a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of only 2.7 mil­lion people.

Bunting yes­ter­day announced that 165 Jamaicans have been slaugh­tered since the start of this year. That 165 homi­cides, is over a peri­od of 51 days. That num­ber trans­lates into an aver­age of 3.24 Jamaicans killed dai­ly as far as police knows. Anyone who know Jamaica will prob­a­bly argue that those num­bers rep­re­sent the tip of the iceberg.

Today we are told that the gov­ern­ment of Portia Simpson Miller wants to bring crime down to first world lev­els by 2017.

WHAT ARE CRIME LEVELS OF FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES ?

Switzerland is a first world coun­try : In 2010 Switzerland record­ed 53 homi­cides, pop­u­la­tion at the time 7,554,661.

The United States is a first world coun­try: in 2010 The United States record­ed 14,748 homi­cides, pop­u­la­tion at the time 308,745,538.

During the late 1980 to ear­ly 1990’s the United States saw as much as 24,000 homi­cides at the zenith of the drug wars, since then crime has trend­ed down­wards to 14,748 in 2010.

I picked these two coun­tries because if we take out the dis­par­i­ty in pop­u­la­tion size they rep­re­sent two coun­tries most peo­ple would argue are sta­ble coun­tries where peo­ple want to live.

So which first world coun­try is the gov­ern­ment of Miller refer­ring to? The year 2017 is 5 years away , at the rate of an annu­al 1,600 homi­cides, are they sug­gest­ing that they are will­ing to see 8,000 peo­ple slaugh­tered before they take action?

This gov­ern­ment is the epit­o­me of incom­pe­tence. Not only do they give crim­i­nals the feel­ing that with them any­thing goes, they actu­al­ly cement that mind­set by hav­ing no plan to com­bat crime. Those who argue that this mind­set is not preva­lent on the streets are disin­gen­u­ous and the truth is not in them. Any per­son may car­ry out their own gener­ic poll to ver­i­fy these facts on the streets of any city , in any vil­lage in the country.

Like any­one else police offi­cers are enti­tled to their polit­i­cal views, how­ev­er many serv­ing mem­bers of the JCF joined the licky licky mass­es and vot­ed this incom­pe­tence into being , sub­se­quent­ly they share in the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of our coun­try , even as for­mer rigid dic­ta­tor­ships are shak­ing off the man­tle of polit­i­cal oppres­sion and embrac­ing free­dom and the promise of the twen­ty first century.

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Crime Beast Resurges:

Police in the Island of Jamaica have all but con­ced­ed that they are unable to deal with the mon­ster of crime in that country.

There are sig­nif­i­cant signs that the police depart­ment and the inept gov­ern­ment have no clue how to arrest the crime prob­lem, (no pun intended).

Yesterday in these blogs we dis­cussed some issues we feel are key in under­stand­ing why police offi­cers fab­ri­cate evi­dence to gain con­vic­tions. We will not re-lit­i­gate that blog what we will do is talk about what seem evi­dent to those who are inter­est­ed in knowing.

Assistant com­mis­sion­er of Police Élan Powell

Yesterday we fea­tured this man assis­tant Commissioner of Police Élan Powell in charge of crime in Jamaica. Assistant Commissioner Powell is a good man who loves his job, he means well. Both Powell and Senior Superintendent Wilford Gayle direct­ly involved in crim­i­nal Investigations are two pro­tegé of the Constant Spring CIB under the tute­lage of Noël Asphall and Rudolph Dwyer. Dwyre a superb inves­ti­ga­tor who over­saw crime and Noël Asphall a tow­er­ing ted­dy-bear who could get the lazi­est of the lazy to work for free through moti­va­tion. Your blog­ger ben­e­fit­ted great­ly from hav­ing being part of that office, and was priv­i­leged to play a part in keep­ing crime in check in our area of influ­ence. There are many more unsung heroes who will nev­er be reward­ed or remem­bered because they do not fit the nar­row prism of what cops are sup­posed to be these days in Jamaica.

The fol­low­ing is a tran­script from the Gleaner one of Jamaica’s dai­ly publications.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has released chill­ing sta­tis­tics and we are still in the mid­dle of the sec­ond month of the year. The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) week­ly crime sta­tis­tics indi­cate that up to February 11, last year, the homi­cide fig­ures stood at 114. There have been 137 cas­es of mur­der for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od this year. The crime sta­tis­tics fur­ther sug­gest­ed that gang vio­lence has been the motive behind the vio­lent killing of at least 50 per­sons. The gun has been used in more than 100 of the report­ed cas­es of homi­cides. Last month, 104 per­sons were mur­dered, while up to yes­ter­day, close to 40 have been killed since the begin­ning of February. 

Most dan­ger­ous places

According to the sta­tis­tics, the most dan­ger­ous places at the moment are in the St Catherine North Police Division where more than 25 per­sons have been killed.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Here’s what this means folks, over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year less Jamaicans have been killed than this year. As a prag­ma­tist I promise you I will not over com­pli­cate this issue. Irrespective what the police and the gov­ern­ment tell you these num­bers reveals a strik­ing tale. That tale is that this gov­ern­ment attracts crim­i­nal­i­ty as flies fol­lows feces.

As I have said on so many occa­sions this gov­ern­ment is seen as a cod­dler of crim­i­nals. I opined that this gov­ern­ment aligned itself with crim­i­nals whilst in oppo­si­tion. As the oppo­si­tion par­ty they vot­ed not to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to con­tin­ue with their momen­tum in pur­suit of crim­i­nals after Christopher Coke was rout­ed from Tivoli Gardens. There were no dis­senters, they vot­ed as a uni­tary block.

This I thought was a trea­so­nous act which should have been pun­ish­able with ban­ish­ment from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics. Jamaicans being who they are vot­ed them into office.

Of course the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom on the street is that The People’s National Party then in oppo­si­tion, could not allow the police to con­sol­i­date their gains as they have sig­nif­i­cant­ly more gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties than the then gov­ern­ment of the Jamaica Labor Party.

The sto­ry the PNP which now forms the gov­ern­ment gave for not sup­port­ing the secu­ri­ty forces is scan­dalous, quote: “We do not want the secu­ri­ty forces to vio­late the rights of cit­i­zens”. So they sided with the criminals !!!!

Powell report­ed­ly told the Gleaner, a mouth­piece for the Government that , quote“We are fac­ing some try­ing times and all of us will have to bond togeth­er with our effort. With this col­lab­o­ra­tion, we should get on top of things,” Assistant Commissioner Ealan Powell, head of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB).(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Spanish Town is excep­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing and I am appeal­ing to the moth­ers, the sis­ters and girl­friends to come for­ward and talk to us. It is going to take all hands on deck to ensure suc­cess,” Powell told The Gleaner.

This is a SOS folks:

Assistant com­mis­sion­er Powell still a friend, clear­ly is sig­nalling a “SOS”. That is a dis­tress call for help. I have long main­tained that Police and gov­ern­ment can­not acqui­esce to crim­i­nal rights groups. I have long writ­ten that the rule of law must be sacro­sanct. I have long argued that the rule of law must be the foun­da­tion that any soci­ety is built on. After the rule of law has been estab­lished as a cor­ner­stone, then soci­ety must move to make sure that the rights of indi­vid­u­als are pro­tect­ed. Not the reverse.

Percival James Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller have mort­gaged the secu­ri­ty of Jamaica on the altar of cheap polit­i­cal games­man­ship and vote-get­ting. Groups like Jamaicans for Justice which argue that their man­date is to ensure cit­i­zens rights, have over the years thrown their sup­port to crim­i­nals at the expense of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty. As a result they have lost the sup­port of a lot of ordi­nary Jamaicans, seen as just anoth­er crim­i­nal cod­dling enti­ty in the coun­try. This group in par­tic­u­lar has been giv­en carte blanch in help­ing to shape nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy. The result is the Police beg­ging for mer­cy from Jamaica’s urban terrorists.

Let me just say this, Assistant Commissioner Powell well-inten­tioned though he may be, is a sup­port­er of the par­ty in Government . He most cer­tain­ly will be pro­mot­ed before they are removed from office even if they are only allowed a sin­gle term. This sug­gest Powell and some close to him, have a bright future in the JCF . The prob­lem with that is that it offers a dim future for Jamaica.

Powell and oth­ers came to promi­nence as the way for­ward for the JCF. The coun­try was told that the police is a para-mil­i­tar force that must be mod­ern­ized, that we agreed with. What we do not agree with is that the JCF should be made into a paper tiger that is reduced to beg­ging crim­i­nals to behave 

PS: Assistant Commissioner Powell and I passed the accel­er­at­ed Examinations togeth­er, we worked togeth­er at Constant Spring. Powell was a guy who loved the Office , I loved remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets. I knew where they lived , I knew where they dined, I knew where they slept, I knew where they pro­cre­ate, I caught them where they procreate.

“Shottas” love sex and that is where I caught them, where their girls lived. 

Powell stayed I left.

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Understanding Police Mis-steps:

In 2008 Jamaican Police Detective Constable Carey Lyn-Sue admit­ted that he had fab­ri­cat­ed state­ments to secure con­vic­tions. Two weeks ago, an arrest war­rant was issued for Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue for his alleged role in fab­ri­cat­ing a wit­ness state­ment in a case involv­ing mem­bers of the stone crush­er gang and in par­tic­u­lar a lead­ing mem­ber Eldon Calvert. Police sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that a Montego Bay-based female detec­tive cor­po­ral is sus­pect­ed to have fab­ri­cat­ed a wit­ness state­ment in a case involv­ing alleged Stone Crusher gang leader Eldon Calvert.

PowellAssistant com­mis­sion­er of police Élan Powell i/​c crime.

The com­mon thread in all three instances ? Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue !!!!

Detective sergeant Sirjue report­ed­ly super­vised both the detec­tive cor­po­ral and con­sta­ble Lyn-Sue. Over the years we have heard com­ments and innu­en­dos advanced from all and sundry, about how polic­ing should be done and what ought to be done to fix our prob­lems as it regards law enforce­ment in the coun­try. In the midst of it all, no one both­ers to ask the police how they feel about any of the issues which affect their lives or effec­tive­ness on a dai­ly basis. The inevitable con­clu­sion it seem has always been that the police (from the poor­er class) ought to be told what to do.

Even though many police offi­cers now serv­ing, are now twice as smart and in many instances are more edu­cat­ed than their polit­i­cal boss­es, the stig­ma remains of the police boy wear­ing short pants guard­ing the rich man’s house. As a black man who served proud­ly in the JCF for a decade before I took my leave of the depart­ment, I have heard it all from the experts who told us the rea­son there is cor­rup­tion in the force. Alleged rea­sons range from, because it’s large­ly a male dom­i­nat­ed body, oth­ers tell us it’ large­ly due to the fact that it is dom­i­nat­ed by blacks.

This sin­gle case tied togeth­er, turns all those sil­ly notions on their heads.

Many will point to these two recent­ly revealed instances of impro­pri­ety as a trend, of course it ‚mat­ters not that they do not have evi­dence or enough infor­ma­tion to form those opin­ions. Notwithstanding , three instances over a peri­od of a few years does not a pat­tern make, if any­thing it points to the fact the that the sys­tem is work­ing. It may be cold com­fort to those whose jobs it is to pon­tif­i­cate to learn that police depart­ments all over the world deal with these issues all the time. Also the rea­son this prob­lem exist has noth­ing to do with quo­tas as some have sug­gest­ed, there are no quo­tas in the JCF. This issue is all about trust or the lack there­of. We may lit­i­gate the mer­its and demer­its of police offi­cers per­jur­ing them­selves in order to gain con­vic­tions, those are legit­i­mate ques­tions which the coun­try has every right to demand answers to. One thing is cer­tain, is that it fur­ther erodes the mea­gre trust cit­i­zens have in the abil­i­ty of the sys­tem to serve them in a just and fair way.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) tout­ed to be one of , if not the pre­mier police ser­vice in the world from time to time is forced to deal with alle­ga­tions and some­times proven instances where this hap­pens. It is despi­ca­ble and should not be tol­er­at­ed , but it does speak to an under­ly­ing ques­tion of why. In the case of the NYPD there are sev­er­al rea­sons why offi­cers fab­ri­cate evi­dence, none of which has to do with a break­down in their jus­tice sys­tem. American Police Officers large­ly com­mit these acts to fill quo­tas, to remain on plum details, and in a lot of cas­es out of racial prej­u­dice. (Amer­i­can civ­il lib­er­ties union)

As we look for answers to the ques­tion of what is behind offi­cers fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence we would be well advised to look at the fail­ure of the jus­tice sys­tem to deliv­er jus­tice to the pop­u­la­tion , to include police offi­cers. I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about this issue and still we see crim­i­nals returned to the streets after being arrest­ed and charged for mul­ti­ple cas­es of mur­der, over and over again. On many of those occa­sions they imme­di­ate­ly elim­i­nate wit­ness­es for the pros­e­cu­tion that would poten­tial­ly tes­ti­fy against them. In a coun­try like Jamaica where a large per­cent­age of mur­der cas­es are built on eye­wit­ness­es accounts the need to keep wit­ness­es alive is of the utmost impor­tance. Yet Jamaican Judges con­tin­ue to release cal­lous mur­der­ers onto the streets using the flim­sy argu­ments that bail was not intend­ed to be a pun­ish­ment. One would rea­son­ably con­clude that if a jurist erred they would err on the side of cau­tion, on the side of the aggrieved.

Not so, they argue for legal argu­ments long, out­dat­ed and which even the framers do not find use­ful in this era of mul­ti­ple mur­ders and urban ter­ror­ism. London is one of the most close­ly mon­i­tored cities in the world , a crim­i­nal accused of mul­ti­ple mur­ders in the United Kingdom will cer­tain­ly not be released onto the streets untill the courts finds him inno­cent. Yet Jamaican judges con­tin­ue to turn them loose quot­ing British Laws.

I have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten on this sub­ject, large­ly explain­ing that the ques­tion of extra-judi­cial killings, evi­dence fab­ri­ca­tion, mob killings, wit­ness­es not turn­ing up to give evi­dence, lack of jurors, the rise of the don cul­ture, and myr­i­ad oth­er soci­etal ills can be traced right back to the doorsteps of a mal­func­tion­ing jus­tice sys­tem. Let me be clear this does not mean that Judges are sole­ly the rea­son for all of soci­etal ills, far from it. What I am say­ing is that Legislators, Judges, Prosecutors, Police, Prison offi­cers, Defense Attorneys and all oth­er play­ers with­in the sys­tem have been colos­sal failures,beginning with the Legislators.

Crime will con­tin­ue to increase under this Administration. The gen­er­al mind­set is that this par­ty in gov­ern­ment is a crime cod­dling par­ty, there is more than ample evi­dence to sup­port that the­o­ry. Police Officers are caught between a rock and a hard place in want­i­ng to make dif­fer­ence in the crime Serengeti that is Jamaica, though this method can­not be con­doned at least for this blog­ger there is at least an under­stand­ing as to its cause.

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Jamaica Has No Interest In Law Enforcement:

Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner ran a sto­ry head­lined: NO REST FOR INDECOM: in the Sunday February 12th pub­li­ca­tion. INDECOM of course is the most recent Agency that has been cre­at­ed to over­see alle­ga­tions of police abuse and so-called extra judi­cial killings. Lets be clear-most major police depart­ments have prob­lems with abuse, bad apples with­in the ranks, when­ev­er these abus­es rear their heads it is imper­a­tive that they are root­ed out. From my per­spec­tive I have no prob­lem with over­sight of the police depart­ment, after all, pub­lic employ­ees must have over­sight and account­abil­i­ty. The gen­er­al con­cen­sus is if one has noth­ing to hide, then there is no rea­son to fear oversight.

A promi­nent con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer in Jamaica chal­lenged me some­time ago in an email, to write about extra-judi­cal killings by police per­son­nel in Jamaica, his infer­ence being that as a for­mer police offi­cer I must have been a part of, or at a min­i­mum been wit­ness to instances of extra-judi­al killings by fel­low offi­cers. As insult­ing and arro­gant as that hubris is, it forms a cor­ner­stone of any con­ver­sa­tion involv­ing Jamaican law enforce­ment, wher­ev­er those con­ver­sa­tions happen.

NO REST FOR (INDECOM) .(Jamaicagleaner​.com)

This is the most laugh­able form of law enforce­ment imaginable .

Where is it ever writ­ten: NO REST FOR THE POLICE? The real police I might add!!!!

Reverend Gordon Evans, the com­mis­sion’s direc­tor of com­plaints for the west­ern region, told The Sunday Gleaner that the past month has offered no rest for INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors cov­er­ing the west­ern parish­es. “We have been kept busy, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last four weeks,” he said. The cler­gy­man explained that his team has been called upon at least once and some­times more than once in each of the last four weeks to inves­ti­gate police killings and non-fatal shoot­ings. “For this week (last week), we were called upon to inves­ti­gate two cas­es. The triple killing and anoth­er shoot­ing that was­n’t fatal,” said Evans. He added: “There tends to be a peri­od where you get a spurt and then a lull.”

A Reverend in charge of an office that inves­ti­gates police shoot­ings. What’s next police offi­cers in charge of the Seminary? Does the polit­i­cal direc­torate real­ize the stu­pid­i­ty of these over­sight bod­ies ? It nev­er worked , and it will nev­er work, the strat­e­gy must be to train, equip and pay a pro­fes­sion­al police force and do away with all of the fake and wan­na be police depart­ments . This kills morale in the real police force and forces police offi­cers to close ranks in order to pro­tect them­selves. There is nev­er going to be real coöper­a­tion between the two bod­ies and right­ly so . Police offi­cers risk their lives to pro­tect they do not need Monday morn­ing quar­ter backs com­ing in lat­er to sec­ond guess them when they take action.

If (INDECOM) is a trust­ed enti­ty which the Jamaican peo­ple are pre­pared to work with, that they feel com­fort­able with , and they are pre­pared to open up to those inves­ti­ga­tors, then the prob­lem of cor­rup­tion and police excess is solved in Jamaica. Simply give (INDECOM) the guns and uni­forms, they are the police, prob­lem solved:

Gleaner pho­to

Of course if that is not a work­able solu­tion then the whole inves­tiga­tive cha­rade is a mon­u­men­tal fraud.

A pas­tor in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tors? How much more stu­pid can the pol­i­cy mak­ers be? There are some impor­tant facts Jamaicans will have to avail them­selves to, not least of which is the real­i­ty that whomev­er they chose to call when they need help, be it the tra­di­tion­al prac­tion­ers we call police offi­cers or the com­mu­ni­ty enforcer called the “Don”-the desired result is the same. The func­tion they pro­vide is polic­ing, the noun just hap­pens to be “Police”, so it mat­ters not who car­ries out the “verb”-the func­tion is the same. What this means is that cre­at­ing lay­ers of police agen­cies to police oth­er police agen­cies is an effort in futil­i­ty; a drain on the already impov­er­ished coun­try’s very lim­it­ed and in some cas­es non-exis­tent resources.

Having a seper­ate agency traips­ing around, sniff­ing at every scene of police shoot­ing, col­lect­ing state­ments and incrim­i­nat­ing cops with fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence is not a func­tion that will engen­der trust or coöper­a­tion, if this con­tin­ues there are going to be seri­ous con­se­quences to both agen­cies and the coun­try going for­ward. Police offi­cers are not going to, and should not allow peo­ple who are asleep in the dead of night to give state­ments incrim­i­nat­ing them end­ing their careers, send­ing them to prison, send­ing them into pover­ty, and destroy­ing their lives and that of their families.

Jamaica’s Governments of both polit­i­cal par­ties have been sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures which have betrayed the scared trust of the peo­ple, lead­ing them down wrong paths time and again, tak­ing advan­tage of their trust and in some cas­es naïveté’. And in the process set­ting up real ser­vants of the peo­ple who tru­ly sac­ri­fice, pit­ting them against their broth­er in a dan­ger­ous game of exploitation.

It is time that the Jamaican peo­ple rise up, throw off the encum­ber­ing man­tle of polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, and rec­og­nize that the polit­i­cal lead­ers are all manip­u­la­tive, lying, bas­tards who are enrich­ing them­selves at their expense with nary a thought for their inter­est. But then again how can they dis­card some­thing that has now become part of their DNA?

After all is said and done there is no men­tion of the grave dan­ger police offi­cers face in deal­ing with some of the world’s most heav­i­ly armed, deter­mined, blood-thirsty urban ter­ror­ists; the empha­sis is as always focused on those who risk it all and pay with their lives.

This is a strik­ing indict­ment on a repro­brate nation which embraces crim­i­nal punks over those sworn to pro­tect and serve. 

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Catholic Bishops Show Their True Colors:

Catholic Bishops have whole­sale reject­ed the com­pro­mise made by President Obama. 

Catholic Bishops in the United States have shown that their objec­tions to Administration pol­i­cy is pure­ly polit­i­cal . The pol­i­cy would have catholic busi­ness­es like Hospitals and Universities the church oper­ate pay for con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age in their health plans. Catholic bish­ops argue the new pol­i­cy would force them do pro­vide fund­ing for some­thing they are moral­ly opposed to. The pres­i­dent has since stepped into the fray offer­ing a com­pro­mise which would have the Insurance com­pa­nies pick­ing up the tab for the con­tra­cep­tion to women employed by these catholic institutions.

As I indi­cat­ed yes­ter­day Timothy Dolan the des­ig­nat­ed leader of the catholic bish­ops, issued a rather pompous state­ment in response to the olive branch extend­ed by pres­i­dent Obama. Dolan issued a rather dis­re­spect­ful and scathing broad­side in which he cas­ti­gat­ed the admin­is­tra­tion, accus­ing it of inter­fer­ing with the oper­a­tions of the church.

It did not mat­ter to Dolan that the issue has noth­ing to do with Government inter­fer­ence in the church , but actu­al­ly is about wom­en’s repro­duc­tive rights and health. Dolan seemed not to want the truth to get in the way of the repub­li­can nar­ra­tive he want­ed to prolong.

The bish­ops said the plan offered insuf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion for their insti­tu­tions: “In the case where the employ­ee and insur­er agree to add the objec­tion­able cov­er­age, that cov­er­age is still pro­vid­ed as a part of the object­ing employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the cov­er­age offered by the object­ing employ­er. This, too, rais­es seri­ous moral con­cerns.” The Obama admin­is­tra­tion plans to hold a series of meet­ings in the com­ing days and will invite the bish­ops and oth­er reli­gious lead­ers to col­lab­o­rate on devel­op­ing the new pol­i­cy, said an admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who was not autho­rized to speak on the record. 

James Salt, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Catholics United, a lib­er­al advo­ca­cy group that is orga­niz­ing sup­port for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, said, “The bish­ops’ blan­ket oppo­si­tion appears to serve the inter­ests of a polit­i­cal agen­da, not the needs of the American peo­ple.” nework​times​.com 

Timothy Dolan

For the Catholic Church, which con­sid­ers the use of arti­fi­cial birth con­trol a sin, the man­date is “a rad­i­cal­ly new and unprece­dent­ed attack on reli­gious free­dom,” said Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien and Wilmington Bishop W. Francis Malooly.(usato​day​.com)

The lan­guage of the bish­ops in the last para­graph is replete with the talk­ing points of repub­li­cans in con­gress, those on the cam­paign trail and the talk­ing heads on FOX mis-information.

This is not about any gov­ern­men­tal intru­sion into the affairs of the church, it is not about the exec­u­tive branch over-reach­ing into reli­gion, it is open assault on the duly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States of America by repub­li­can oper­a­tives with­in the catholic church on behalf of their friends on the far right of the repub­li­can party.

Let us be clear even some of those who first object­ed like for­mer Governor Tim Kaine has said that the com­pro­mise offered by the pres­i­dent sat­is­fied all con­cerns he had . Clearly the catholic church has aligned itself with repub­li­can right wingers in this coun­try against work­ing women. Women who make up large parts of the con­gre­ga­tion that makes the catholic church the pow­er­ful and filthy rich tax exempt insti­tu­tion it is .

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The Catholic Bishops Utter Arrogance:

President Obama stepped to the podi­um this morn­ing and did what any­one would expect the cap­tain of the ship to do, take charge, he did that. The pres­i­dent came with a work­able com­pro­mise to the recent flare up which is real­ly an issue about con­tra­cep­tion, an issue Germaine to wom­en’s health , but which has been hijacked and esca­lat­ed by des­per­ate repub­li­cans and made to be about reli­gious free­doms and the catholic church in light of an ever improv­ing econ­o­my. Republicans are des­per­ate for an issue as their search for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date swing like a pen­du­lum from one unsa­vory char­ac­ter to anoth­er. they are pre­pared to throw any­thing onto the wall and see what sticks.

At the cen­ter of the debate is an admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy which would have the catholic church pro­vide con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age for women they employ. The catholic church oper­ates many col­leges, Universities and oth­er busi­ness, many women who are employed by them aren’t even catholics, yet the Catholic church main­tains that the pol­i­cy would force them to pay for some­thing that they are opposed to. In essence the catholic church wants women who are in their employ to pay for their own con­tra­cep­tives even if they are not catholics, and mind you these women would receive these very same ben­e­fits if they were employed to a non reli­gious employer.

So while repub­li­cans froth­ing at the mouth on this issue, try to make it some­thing it isn’t, the pres­i­dent offered a com­mon sense com­pro­mise which moves the respon­si­bil­i­ty from the catholic church to the Insurance com­pa­nies. The details are yet to be assessed but this seem to be a way for every­one to be hap­py , right ?.….….….….….….….……Well not so fast Timothy Dolan had this to say.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan and Barack Obama(get­ty images)

“While there may be an open­ness to respond to some of our con­cerns, we reserve judg­ment on the details until we have them,” Cardinal-des­ig­nate and Conference pres­i­dent Timothy Dolan said. “Today’s deci­sion to revise how indi­vid­u­als obtain ser­vices that are moral­ly objec­tion­able to reli­gious enti­ties and peo­ple of faith is a first step in the right direc­tion,” he added. “We hope to work with the Administration to guar­an­tee that Americans’ con­sciences and our reli­gious free­dom are not harmed by these regulations.”

Appearing on CBS This Morning on Thursday, Dolan called the ini­tial deci­sion “a ter­ri­bly mis­guid­ed judg­ment.” He said Wednesday that “the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should do what it’s tra­di­tion­al­ly done since July 4, 1776, name­ly back out of intrud­ing into the inter­nal life of a church.“cbsnews​.com.

Ok in my esti­ma­tion the pres­i­dent of the United States should not have called this guy , this pres­i­dent has acqui­esced to too many peo­ple he should not defer to, who the hell does this guy Dolan think he is ? I find the lat­ter part of his arro­gant pompous state­ment rather offen­sive, Quote: The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should do what it’s tra­di­tion­al­ly done since July 4th 1776 name­ly back out of intrud­ing into the inter­nal life of a church.

Is this the same catholic church that has turned a blind eye to the pedophiles with­in its ranks who prey on lit­tle boys rap­ing and sodom­iz­ing them , effec­tive­ly destroy­ing their lives? Is the gov­ern­ment sup­posed to stay out of an insti­tu­tion which shuf­fles the same pedophiles from parish to parish with­out doing any­thing tan­gi­ble about their crimes? Dolan has some nerve!!

If Timothy Dolan wants to wait on his han­dlers in the repub­li­can par­ty to tell him how to han­dle this over­ture by the pres­i­dent I under­stand that, but please spare us the pom­pos­i­ty. No one wants to hear a lec­ture from the catholic church.

Those of us with an ounce of decen­cy long stopped lis­ten­ing to you Pharisees.

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Weasly Democrats/​Disgusting Republicans

A major thrust of repub­li­cans under the pres­i­den­cy of President Barack Obama is to oppose every­thing he pro­pos­es, peri­od!! It makes no dif­fer­ence that the pres­i­den­t’s poli­cies are for the good of the coun­try , includ­ing the very same racist hyp­ocrites who wear the repub­li­can label, the strat­e­gy is the same oppose, oppose, oppose. Not one repub­li­can is will­ing to step out­side that nar­ra­tive and be dif­fer­ent, they act uni­lat­er­al­ly as a cau­cus in objec­tion to the pres­i­dent of the United States.

Not so long ago I recall democ­rats lin­ing up to sign on to con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tions that lit­er­al­ly shreds the con­sti­tu­tion hyp­o­crit­i­cal repub­li­cans swear to believe they believe in. Legislations like the Patriot Act lit­er­al­ly takes away sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the rights of Americans „ yet it received sup­port from democ­rats some of whom admit­ted they did not even both­er to read the volu­mi­nous bill, a bill which stripped away the rights of the very peo­ple they represent.

Bush knew exact­ly what he was doing after the September 11th ter­ror attacks, he made sure that the attacks were kept fresh in the minds of Americans as he sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly stripped away more and more of their rights,. No one both­ered to remem­ber the old adage ” nev­er give up your rights for secu­ri­ty as you will end up with neither”.

The point though is the sol­id wall of oppo­si­tion to this pres­i­dent on the sole basis of race, exas­per­at­ed by the shame­ful and the silent acqui­es­cence of democ­rats who sit on their hands and ass­es as this pres­i­dent is pil­lo­ried from all quar­ters with lies, smear insults and racial caricatures.

It does seem that the econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter, repub­li­cans are talk­ing about social issues, wedge issues as they are ref­ered to, gay rights, mar­riage equal­i­ty, prayer in schools, con­tra­cep­tion, this issues they like to talk about. As I stat­ed in recent blogs, repub­li­cans are now des­per­ate­ly search­ing for an issues that will stick or have some res­o­nance going into the gen­er­al elections,there are scared stiff they are los­ing the eco­nom­ic argument.

Fleisher Rove

It’s not unusu­al to see hacks like Ari Fleisher, and Karl Rove old hand from the Bush Administration on tele­vi­sion dis­re­spect­ing the pres­i­dent, and dis­tort­ing his record. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly offend­ed by Fleisher a polit­i­cal who nev­er saw any­thing wrong with any­thing Bush did, but now make a liv­ing as a con­trib­u­tor on MSNBC which he and oth­ers like him cas­ti­gat­ed as left-wing media, because peo­ple like Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow told the truth and set the record straight. I will refrain from assess­ing Rove he is sim­ply not worth it, to relate to him is to ele­vate him.

Fleisher would be well remind­ed to remem­ber his own lies in what is now com­mon knowl­edge as it relates to the Valerie Plame out­ing by oper­a­tives with­in the Bush Administration. Had a demo­c­rat done what they did that admin­is­tra­tion would have been brought to its knees and all involved, would have been thrown in prison.

HERE COMES THE LILY LIVERED DEMOCRATS WHO STAND FOR NOTHING

But of course I digress, this morn­ing the lily liv­ered cow­ards that pass for democ­rats were out join­ing with repub­li­cans in push­ing against the pres­i­dent against the recent direc­tive giv­en to catholic insti­tu­tions to pro­vide Contraception cov­er­age in health insur­ance for women in their employ.

This is an issue which is about wom­en’s health, of course Catholic bish­ops are con­tend­ing that this forces them to pay for some­thing which is against their teach­ings and con­science. Mark you this is not a direc­tive to the church about some­thing which hap­pens in the church , it is about busi­ness­es oper­at­ed by the catholic church. In essence the catholic church wants to be exempt from pro­vid­ing women in it’s employ who may not even be catholics from get­ting con­tra­cep­tion in their health care pack­age , a move which forces them to pay for some­thing which they would be afford­ed by oth­er employers.

THIS IS A LIST OF THE DEMOCRATS WHOM HAVE NOW SIDED WITH REPUBLICANS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT ON THIS ISSUE

Sens
Bob Casey
Joe Lieberman
Joe Manchin
Ben Nelson
Bill Nelson

Reps, John Larson, Dan Lipinsky, Gerry Connolly, and for­mer gov­er­nor Tim Kaine.

Bob Casey of PA , Joe Leiberman of CT, Joe Manchin WV , Ben Nelson NB, Bill Nelson FL. These are your US Senators whom have quick­ly joined with repub­li­cans and the catholic church to fight against wom­en’s rights.

Even as these so-called democ­rats try to pro­tect their sor­ry hides , repub­li­can sen­a­tor Jim Demint of south Carolina had this to say at their c ‑pac gath­er­ing in Washington DC. Listen to Demint here, out­side the :

JON MEACHAM: Senator, you’ve been in Washington now for 12 years. Actually more, sor­ry. Have things changed in a pal­pa­ble, tac­tile way in terms of get­ting things done from when you came in? 

DEMINT: Yeah, I think they are more polar­ized. And it’s a con­trast I try to make in the book because we real­ly no longer have a shared vision. I mean, I know from busi­ness that you have peo­ple com­ing from dif­fer­ent direc­tions, they can work togeth­er if they have shared goals and a shared vision. But now we have the ten­sion between those who want cen­tral­ized pow­er, gov­ern­ment con­trol of edu­ca­tion, health care, trans­porta­tion, ener­gy, and Republicans, who are I think find­ing their foot­ing around their core prin­ci­ples of we need to devolve pow­er out of Washington, we need to decen­tral­ize, because that’s what makes America work, is the bot­tom-up approach.

So say­ing to com­pro­mise now, and I use this anal­o­gy a lot, is just like a coach telling his team to go out and work with the oth­er guys and coöper­ate with them. The Democrats are there to beat us. Every pol­i­cy that they intro­duce is to cen­tral­ize pow­er. They are com­plete­ly inca­pable of cut­ting spend­ing because their con­stituen­cy is based on depen­den­cy on gov­ern­ment and those who want more from gov­ern­ment.Msnbc​.com/​m​o​r​n​i​n​g​joe

Here ladies and gen­tle­man is the rea­son noth­ing gets done, these peo­ple do not rep­re­sent your interest.

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Game Change?

Rick Santorum pulled a hat trick in Colorado, Minnesota. and Missouri, oblit­er­at­ing his rivals last night. los­ing is nev­er pain­less, but “ouch” this has got be be most painful for Mitt Romney. Mister Romney’s cam­paign has every­thing going for it. So the talk­ing heads in the main stream media tell us. Romney has lots of money„organization, and estab­lish­ment sup­port, he also has super pac sup­port which pours even more mon­ey into mas­sive adver­tis­ing cam­paigns aimed at any and every­one in the path of their can­di­date. There is just one tee­ny-wee­ny prob­lem the cam­paign needs a good can­di­date.

RomneySantorum

There seem to be a core dis-sat­is­fac­tion at the heart of the repub­li­can par­ty with Mitt Romney. We were told Romney was the inevitable can­di­date for his par­ty’s nom­i­na­tion, the next in line, the one who wait­ed his turn, now the repub­li­can par­ty want to play by a dif­fer­ent set of rules. This is not fair to mis­ter Romney after all he has changed his views to fit his par­ty, he has changed from a pro-choice, pro-civ­il union, pro-gun con­trol, pro-health care man­dates in order to be called a “con­ser­v­a­tive”.

How could this hap­pen to a good man like Governor Romney? This man ought to be the Bain of envy of all 99%s . He is rich, mar­ried to the same woman for decades, has won­der­ful chil­dren, a (chris­t­ian,) actu­al­ly not a chris­t­ian, a mor­mon, but you know what I mean!!! right? In so many ways Romney is the all American guy, the guy you want to emu­late, so what is the prob­lem? How can his par­ty pull the rug out from under him when he seemed des­tined for a coro­na­tion? Why is the repub­li­can par­ty still search­ing for a dif­fer­ent suit­or even as the wed­ding day draws near­er and near­er? Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich. Sarah Palin, Herman Caine, Donald Trump, Tim Pawlenty,Ron Paul, Chris Christie, Daniels, Jeb Bush et al, Conservatives con­tin­ue to date even though the wed­ding of con­ve­nience between itself and Mitt Romney draws clos­er. What is the rea­son why con­ser­v­a­tives con­tin­ue with this cheat­ing, Romney for all intents and pur­pos­es has done all that is required of him, lets stop with the cheat­ing and get the wed­ding underway.

The truth is, Ronald Reagan the holy grail repub­li­cans hitch their elec­toral wag­gon to, arguably could not get nom­i­nat­ed for pres­i­dent in this repub­li­can par­ty. Reagan raised tax­es, main­tained bud­get deficits, added tril­lions to the nation­al debt and grant­ed amnesty to ille­gal aliens. You tell me where would Ronald Reagan be in this par­ty of Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachman, and Jim Demint?

Romney despite his wealth, would be a good fit for the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, he is at heart, pro-choice, deep down he is for com­mon sense gun con­trol, he deep down believes whether we agree with gays or not, they have a right to pro­tec­tions under the law, and his mor­mon faith is actu­al­ly not scoffed at in the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty. The Democratic par­ty has come around to being the inclu­sive par­ty that believes in tol­er­ance, there is only one prob­lem with Romney and the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, he does­n’t seem to care about the poor enough, he feels they should be allowed to lan­guish in their state, he also believes the very poor should be aid­ed to remain in pover­ty. Romney said he was­n’t con­cerned about them they have a safe­ty net , and if it was bro­ken he would fix it. “WOW”.

Romney in his hon­esty stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that he did not care about the poor, then when he real­ized how hor­ri­ble that sound­ed he attempt­ed to estab­lish some degree of bal­ance ‚he went on to say “I don’t care about the rich , what I care about is the mid­dle, the heart and soul of America”. Maybe if Romney under­stood that some of the poor were once in the mid­dle class, and with a good job they could climb back to where they were,he would care, but Romney a man esti­mat­ed to be worth a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars can­not under­stand that and as such he is con­tent to let the poor remain where they are.

So now the repub­li­can par­ty has dat­ed every­one, now it’s Santorum turn, one gets the feel­ing that the par­ty is hold­ing it’s nose on this date with this lat­est suit­or. It seem to me the repub­li­can par­ty knows and under­stands the inevitabil­i­ty of this arranged love­less mar­riage between her­self and Willard Mitt Romney , and as the pre-arranged August wed­ding approach­es she is deter­mined to have as many illic­it affairs she can before suc­cumb­ing to the hoe-hum bore­dom of a life with a man she does not love.

It is a long way untill the November elec­tions, repub­li­cans will throw any and every­thing at pres­i­dent Obama, they will launch a scorched earth attack the likes of which we have nev­er seen, those who thought the elec­tions of 2008 that saw the elc­c­tion of Barack Obama was tur­bu­lent and divi­sive will be in for a sur­prise, this elec­tion will be a lot like some third world coun­tries, divi­sive can­tan­ker­ous, and down­right dangerous.

Republicans sim­ply do not believe democ­rats should gov­ern America, they have demeaned and dem­a­gogued the last three demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents in a way that seem com­plete­ly removed from the way the last three repub­li­can pres­i­dents have been treat­ed. One is seri­ous­ly left to won­der where America is going with this lev­el of poloriza­tion? The coun­try has already gone through one civ­il war.

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Romney Pivots:

Republican front-run­ner Mitt Romney built his entire pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on the boast he will restore the American econ­o­my. In his hur­ry to cement that nar­ra­tive it appeared Romney for­got two words (eco­nom­ic recov­ery) Romney’s cam­paign fer­vent­ly believes that the dam­age repub­li­cans have done to the econ­o­my start­ing with eight years of George Bush, to their absolute obstruc­tion to every­thing pres­i­dent Obama has done to fix the econ­o­my, is more than enough to see the pres­i­dent kicked out before his poli­cies can return enough jobs to ordi­nary Americans.

This strat­e­gy is a seri­ous bet against the very American peo­ple repub­li­cans claim they want to help. Before we talk about the econ­o­my I just want to speak a lit­tle bit about the Romney cam­paign. As I said in a recent blog it is instruc­tive that Romney chose not to run on his record as a lib­er­al Governor of Masseschutes. most American pres­i­dents were for­mer gov­er­nors, if Romney’s record as an exec­u­tive was good why then has he cho­sen not to run on that record, if he is indeed seri­ous about becom­ing pres­i­dent of the United States of America?

The truth is, under Governor Romney’s stew­ard­ship his state was near the bot­tom, 47th in job cre­ation. Romney’s health plan which has a man­date that forces peo­ple in Massachuset to buy health care or be fined , is the tem­plate for the much maligned Obama care which most Americans are yet to see or under­stand. Romney came to the con­clu­sion that he can­not run on that record and as such he would gam­ble on run­ning on his record as a busi­ness­man . The only prob­lem with that strat­e­gy is that the facts do not line up with his nar­ra­tive, as head of Bain Capital a ven­ture Capitalist com­pa­ny, Romneys objec­tive was not to cre­ate jobs, con­verse­ly what Bain did was take over com­pa­nies, gut­ted them , took the cap­i­tal out and filed for bankruptcy.

Despite these facts that Romney will not allow to get in the way of his nar­ra­tive Romney con­tin­ue to ham­mer away at the econ­o­my , lam­bast­ing the pres­i­dent as incom­pe­tent, over his head and mak­ing the case he will do a bet­ter job. Never mind that when the pres­i­dent took office the econ­o­my was shed­ding 750 thou­sand jobs each month and has now turned around and is now adding almost a quar­ter mil­lion jobs per month, even as the coun­try recov­ers from the worst reces­sion since the great depression.

Romney in response to the new jobs num­bers for January took some time to come out with a state­ment, and when he did he said the econ­o­my is rebound­ing but it would have been bet­ter if not for the poli­cies of the pres­i­dent, in fact Romney is find­ing it hard to artic­u­late the rea­son why any­one should vote for him for pres­i­dent. On the radio show of right-wing talk­er Laura Ingram, Romney was asked how can he say the econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter, then turn around and say that we should change the pres­i­dent ? Romney asked Ingram if she had a bet­ter suggestion.

INGRAHAM : How do you answer the pres­i­den­t’s argu­ment that the econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter in a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign if you your­self are say­ing that it’s get­ting better?

ROMNEY: Well of course it’s get­ting bet­ter. The econ­o­my always gets bet­ter after a reces­sion. But the ques­tion is, has it recov­ered by virtue as some­thing the pres­i­dent has done or has he delayed the recov­ery and made it more painful? The lat­ter is, of course, the truth.

INGRAHAM: Isn’t that a hard argu­ment to make? Is that a stark enough contrast?

ROMNEY: Well, have you got a bet­ter one, Laura? This hap­pens to be the truth.

The econ­o­my is get­ting bet­ter, of course, com­pared to where it has been. It would be absurd to say dif­fer­ent. (The econ­o­my grew by 2.8 per­cent in the last quarter.)

Mitt Romney left him­self no escape valve that would relieve some of the pres­sure in the event the econ­o­my con­tin­ue to add jobs, which will indi­cate to the vot­ing pub­lic that the poli­cies of this pres­i­dent are work­ing, or at worst aren’t as rad­i­cal as Romney and Gingrich would like to scare them into believ­ing. So what will Romney do if the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to add man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, Israel does not attack Iran caus­ing the price of oil to sky­rock­et, or there are no ter­ror attacks on the coun­try? How does Romney piv­ots when he built an entire pres­i­den­tial cam­paign against the econ­o­my? They have stat­ed that Obama owns the econ­o­my, with no men­tion of the fact that the econ­o­my was almost sent into a depres­sion by George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich­est Americans who do not need them, unde­clared wars, and an unre­strained “do as you please green light” giv­en to big banks and finan­cial institutions.

Romney clear­ly can­not artic­u­late a path for­ward on for­eign pol­i­cy. The Iraq war is over, Osama Bin Laden is dead, troops in Afghanistan will soon be head­ing home, there is a stran­gle hold eco­nom­i­cal­ly on the Iranian econ­o­my over their nuclear pro­gramme, and despite their lies America’s image has been restored abroad to the extent that is pos­si­ble, because of this pres­i­dent. So it seem Romney whom it seem more and more will be his par­ty’s nom­i­nee will get des­per­ate and clear­ly will have to scare vot­ers about Obama , of course David Axelrod will be pre­pared to fight back despite cit­i­zens unit­ed big mon­ey let into the polit­i­cal dis­course by the Supreme Court.

In a stump speech after win­ning the neva­da cau­cus­es Romney told the peo­ple gath­ered [H]e’s been try­ing to take a bow for 8.3 per cent unem­ploy­ment. Not so fast, Mr. President. … We wel­come any good news on the jobs front, but it is thanks to the inno­va­tion of the American peo­ple in the pri­vate sec­tor, not to you.’ … Romney’s com­ments are a hint of how he would cam­paign … if … the unem­ploy­ment rate con­tin­ues to fall: with a two-fold attack that the offi­cial fig­ures do not reflect the true scope of job­less­ness and that any improve­ment is despite, not because of, the pres­i­dent.(Politico .com)

There is Romney’s strat­e­gy , blame the pres­i­dent for a bad econ­o­my, but deny he has any­thing to do with it when it improves. How effec­tive this strat­e­gy will be is yet to be seen. Romney and his min­ions must be des­per­ate or they real­ly take vot­ers for absolute fools. Romney can­not have his cake and eat it too , either the pres­i­dent owns the econ­o­my as they are quick to point out, good or bad, or he does­n’t and can­not be held respon­si­ble for it. As pres­i­dent Obama said Republicans can make a deci­sion to have a strong mil­i­tary, , a decrease in the nation­al debt, and bal­anced bud­gets , or they can con­tin­ue to give the wealth­i­est 1% tax-cuts they do not need , but the coun­try can­not afford both. On every issue repub­li­cans want to have it both ways.

It’s also inter­est­ing that when­ev­er they talk about unem­ploy­ment fig­ures repub­li­cans use a dif­fer­ent method­ol­o­gy, gen­er­al unem­ploy­ment num­bers are not used by repub­li­cans, they talk about peo­ple who have stopped look­ing for jobs and oth­ers who aren’t count­ed, for a pletho­ra of rea­sons. All of a sud­den peo­ple who do not want to work, peo­ple who decid­ed to stop work­ing are brought back into the frame­work, as they seek to fudge the num­bers in an effort to dis­tort the narrative.