Both Political Parties have been guilty of enhanc­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty in our coun­try. Outside of the deep divi­sions that emanat­ed dur­ing the late six­ties through the sev­en­ties that result­ed in thou­sands of deaths polit­i­cal­ly, politi­cians at var­i­ous lev­els have them­selves engaged in felo­nious activ­i­ties that would land them in prison for decades in a true nation of laws.
As a for­mer Police offi­cer, I look at both polit­i­cal par­ties with near­ly the same sense of mis­giv­ing. Neither Party has done near­ly enough to ensure that mem­bers at all lev­els of their orga­ni­za­tion oper­ate with hon­esty and dig­ni­ty and as good stew­ards of the pub­lic’s trust.
The refusal of both polit­i­cal par­ties to adopt strin­gent trans­paren­cy laws that hold them­selves account­able to us, the peo­ple, is a clear indi­ca­tion that many on both sides still have a long way to go to earn the pub­lic’s trust and confidence.

Over the years, the Jamaican peo­ple have made it clear that they are no longer will­ing to tol­er­ate politi­cians oper­at­ing unac­count­able to them. Consequently, var­i­ous watch­dog orga­ni­za­tions have emerged to keep an eye on the pub­lic’s purse, with mixed results. Still today, some mem­bers of both polit­i­cal clans refuse to abide by the rules of transparency.
Having said that, there are signs across the polit­i­cal spec­trum that as Jamaica is being trans­formed Infrastructurally, so is the coun­try evolv­ing polit­i­cal­ly. It is refresh­ing to see peo­ple of the two par­ties hav­ing a good time togeth­er while wear­ing their par­ty col­ors. It is a true sign that we are at last emerg­ing from some of the dark­est days of polit­i­cal trib­al­ism that has plagued our young nation as it clawed its way out of Colonial control.
Personally, I would pre­fer to see both polit­i­cal par­ties shed and eschew their par­ty col­ors and allow the Jamaican peo­ple to come togeth­er as one nation.
Symbolically, the col­ors are still a sign of divi­sion, a sign of demar­ca­tion that we need to elim­i­nate. No Jamaican was born PNP or JLP. 

It is impor­tant that as our coun­try evolves, our tone should also evolve, but it seems that some have decid­ed to con­tin­ue the gut­ter pol­i­tics. Because of this, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly opposed to the People’s National Party and its con­tin­ued insis­tence on ele­vat­ing some of the worst actors to posi­tions of pow­er and visibility. 
The coarse­ness is almost across the board: Angella Burke, Damion Crawford, Isat Buchanan, Dennis Meadows, and others.
These indi­vid­u­als want to lead polit­i­cal­ly, peo­ple our young peo­ple would look up to as role mod­els to emulate.
Who would want their child to emu­late these misfits?
Our coun­try is awash in vio­lence, vio­lence that comes from lax laws, too many guns, and guns brought into our coun­try through the pro­ceeds of lot­to scamming. 
Yet the mind­set of some is that this is okay, and it is because we were scammed dur­ing slav­ery. I mean, are you kid­ding me?
While speak­ing on the cam­paign trail recent­ly, the PNP’s Dennis Meadows stat­ed, “I have no prob­lem with a man if he wants to chop because they chop us dur­ing slav­ery.” To chop is to scam peo­ple out of their hard-earned mon­ey. Here is a senior mem­ber of the People’s National Party encour­ag­ing Jamaicans to engage in lot­to scam­ming, which is a seri­ous crime but, beyond that, a prac­tice that is fuelling the esca­lat­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics in our country.

These are the mon­grels that are vying for polit­i­cal pow­er. Who remem­bers ‘run wid it’ and ‘any­thing and any­thing’?
After a vicious back­lash from the pub­lic, Meadows apol­o­gized, and the Party is now engaged in full dam­age con­trol mode. However, this is not an iso­lat­ed inci­dent. It is and has always been the mind­set of the PNP as a polit­i­cal movement.
It is a polit­i­cal par­ty that has con­tin­ued to den­i­grate the police à la Isat Buchanan. The par­ty has opposed all major leg­is­la­tion aimed at curb­ing vio­lent crime on the Island. 
This has always been the modus operan­di of the PNP, and it has secured the votes of large swaths of the elec­torate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in major urban slums.
Imagine the PNP being allowed to regain state con­trol; this is what the nation gets as lead­ers, peo­ple who active­ly encour­age the pop­u­la­tion to go out and engage in felo­nious activity.
No amount of mea cul­pa can right this shit.… this guy needs to go forth­with. If he is not sent pack­ing, it will be anoth­er clear indi­ca­tion that the PNP can­not be entrust­ed with state pow­er.
Every year, well over a thou­sand Jamaicans are sum­mar­i­ly slaugh­tered using illic­it guns pur­chased with mon­ey derived main­ly from the lot­to scam. It is a bridge too far to accept this guy’s I’m sor­ry. Men, women, and inno­cent chil­dren die each year, not to men­tion our police officers. 
That any per­son seek­ing pub­lic office could be so men­tal­ly bank­rupt is astound­ing. He must be let go.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The People National Party has always oper­at­ed like a cult and still does today. Those old enough to remem­ber will recall that they had the audac­i­ty to argue that Jamaica was a PNP country.
The old par­ty of the 70s still exists, albeit under a new coat of orange paint. The Party con­tin­ues to dis­sem­i­nate lies and obfus­ca­tion as facts to fool the very peo­ple it cares about: peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty. They claim to love the poor, and it shows because they lie to them even when the truth is in the open. 
Take, for instance, the local gov­ern­ment elec­tions held on Monday; even as the final count was still under­way by the Electoral Office of Jamaica EOJ, Massa Mark Golding was busy telling the crowd of PNP sup­port­ers gath­ered at their Head Quarters that the PNP had won the election.
This is a kind of déjà vu for me because it is eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Donald Trump claim­ing he won an elec­tion he lost and one that was­n’t even close at that.
“We can go for­ward with con­fi­dence that we have pulled off a great vic­to­ry here today. The peo­ple have spo­ken. The PNP is alive and well,”. “We are ded­i­cat­ing “this vic­to­ry” to for­mer prime min­is­ter and retired PNP President Portia Simpson Miller.”
Okay, haha, “A look like a los­er to yu?” Alright, I’ll stop. 
Why would Massa Mark tell his sup­port­ers that they had won the elec­tion when it was abun­dant­ly clear that they were actu­al­ly behind in the divi­sions decid­ed, were at best tied in oth­ers, and the process was still underway?
Is this the best Michael Manley’s par­ty has to offer?
I did not agree with many of Michael Manley’s poli­cies, but I damn sure respect­ed the hell out of the man.

Holding elec­tive office has always had one mean­ing for the PNP regard­less of who is at the help of that rab­ble-rous­ing par­ty. That goal is to hold office to see what they can rip and run. Don’t believe me, Massa Mark all but said it last night.
“Comrades, we will con­tin­ue the work. We will con­tin­ue to build our momen­tum”. “We will con­tin­ue what we have been doing; the peo­ple want to see a PNP Government, and the peo­ple want to see I man, Mark Jefferson Golding, in Jamaica House.”
So, the idea for them is not to work to con­tin­ue the great infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment under the JLP. It is not to fur­ther the tremen­dous work that Ed Bartlett has done in tourism or what Tufton is doing in the health ser­vices and Nigel Clarke’s great job with the econ­o­my. His focus is to be sit­ting in Jamaica House, case closed. 
They want to con­trol the nation­al purse strings so that they can dole out scarce resources to the cheap ide­olo­gies who fol­low behind them, look­ing for hand­outs for their votes.
It has always been that way: the least edu­cat­ed, most bois­ter­ous fol­low behind the PNP. Many do not want to say it, but to hell with it, I said it. Most of these peo­ple would not know progress if it hits them in the face. Give them a plate of food, and they will turn back tremen­dous progress for this clown polit­i­cal par­ty called the PNP.

For its part, this is a wake-up call for the Jamaica Labor Party. Yes, some peo­ple have always clam­ored for the PNP because of the promis­es of free­ness. It is dif­fi­cult to extrap­o­late whether they are the ones who some­times switch and vote JLP. There is also the say­ing in our coun­try that the elec­torate does­n’t elect a new gov­ern­ment; it votes out the one they have. Be that as it may, there is enough in the data to show a dis­qui­et with the JLP admin­is­tra­tion that is worth dig­ging into.
Whether the dis­qui­et is about the deliv­ery of reg­u­lar ser­vices like garbage pick­up, bad roads, or the ele­phant in the room, the crime mon­ster, the admin­is­tra­tion must rec­og­nize that the peo­ple are get­ting fed up.
And when the Jamaican elec­torate is fed up, it sum­mar­i­ly dumps the rul­ing par­ty by default, elect­ing the oppo­si­tion by large margins.
We saw it begin­ning in 1980 when Michael Manley was dumped from office,… The JLP was dumped sim­i­lar­ly in 88. Andrew Holness dec­i­mat­ed Portia in the lat­est iter­a­tion of that prac­tice in 2020…
The JLP admin­is­tra­tion has been in office for sev­en con­sec­u­tive years. It must under­stand that its pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty is the secu­ri­ty of the Jamaican People. Yet despite that tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty, the Holness-led JLP wast­ed years run­ning down ZOSO and SOE Rabbit holes that led to nowhere because, as we all know, Rabbits do not have one way in and one way out.
The prime min­is­ter demon­strat­ed scant regard for the police depart­ment by plac­ing for­mer sol­dier Antony Anderson over the police as he had done with oth­er agen­cies. The prime min­is­ter fol­lowed up by telling the nation that Anderson was mod­ern­iz­ing the JCF, a slap in the face of peo­ple’s intel­li­gence as if mod­ern­iz­ing the force had to be done at the expense of crime reduc­tion. As mur­ders esca­lat­ed and peo­ple grew more and more fear­ful, his National Security Minister Horace Chang remarked that, ‘we must give Tony a chance’.
What utter rub­bish. No oth­er Police Commissioner who came up through the ranks was giv­en that much grace or lever­age, not to men­tion the salary and perks. Worse yet, the Prime Minister refus­es to lis­ten to law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als, past and present, on how to tack­le crime, and if he’s not care­ful, he’ll have a long time to con­tem­plate the fol­ly of his ways.
Some peo­ple may be stu­pid, but not every­one is. The JLP admin­is­tra­tion under Andrew Holness has done tremen­dous work for Jamaica, and it should be com­mend­ed for the progress made after the ²²¹⁄₂ years débâ­cle of PNP gov­er­nance that will con­tin­ue to be a stain on Jamaica, rivaled only by the dan­ger­ous dal­liances of the 70s.
This gov­ern­ment will be judged on crime regard­less of what the Prime Minister or oth­ers like Ed Bartlett, Nigel Clarke, Chris Tufton, and oth­ers do. If peo­ple are afraid, they will look for safe­ty else­where, even if it means being worse off.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

An active-duty mem­ber of the U.S. Air Force was crit­i­cal­ly injured Sunday after set­ting him­self ablaze out­side the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while declar­ing that he “will no longer be com­plic­it in geno­cide,” a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter told The Associated Press.The man, whose name wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly released, walked up to the embassy short­ly before 1 p.m. and began livestream­ing on the video stream­ing plat­form Twitch, the per­son said. Law enforce­ment offi­cials believe the man start­ed a livestream, set his phone down and then doused him­self in accel­er­ant and ignit­ed the flames. At one point, he said he “will no longer be com­plic­it in geno­cide,” the per­son said. The video was lat­er removed from the plat­form, but law enforce­ment offi­cials have obtained and reviewed a copy.
The per­son was not autho­rized to dis­cuss details of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion pub­licly and spoke to the AP on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Police did not imme­di­ate­ly pro­vide any addi­tion­al details about the inci­dent. The inci­dent hap­pened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seek­ing the cab­i­net approval for a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in the south­ern Gazan city of Rafah while a tem­po­rary cease-fire deal is being nego­ti­at­ed. Israel’s mil­i­tary offen­sive in Gaza, how­ev­er, has drawn crit­i­cisms, includ­ing geno­cide claims against the Palestinians. Israel has adamant­ly denied the geno­cide alle­ga­tions and says it is car­ry­ing out oper­a­tions in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al law in the Israel-Hamas war. In December, a per­son self-immo­lat­ed out­side the Israeli con­sulate in Atlanta and used gaso­line as an accel­er­ant, accord­ing to Atlanta’s fire author­i­ties. A Palestinian flag was found at the scene, and the act was believed to be one of “extreme polit­i­cal protest.” In a state­ment, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington said its offi­cers had respond­ed to the scene out­side the Israeli Embassy to assist U.S. Secret Service offi­cers and that its bomb squad had also been called to exam­ine a sus­pi­cious vehi­cle. Police said no haz­ardous mate­ri­als were found in the vehicle.(AP)

A for­mer FBI infor­mant who claims to have links to Russian intel­li­gence and is charged with lying about a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar bribery scheme involv­ing President Joe Biden’s fam­i­ly was again tak­en into cus­tody Thursday in Las Vegas, two days after a judge released him, his attor­neys said.

Alexander Smirnov was arrest­ed dur­ing a meet­ing Thursday morn­ing at his lawyers’ law offices in down­town Las Vegas. The arrest came after pros­e­cu­tors appealed the judge’s rul­ing allow­ing 43-year-old Smirnov, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli cit­i­zen­ship, to be released with a GPS mon­i­tor ahead of tri­al. He is charged with mak­ing a false state­ment and cre­at­ing a false and fic­ti­tious record.

Attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a state­ment that they have request­ed an imme­di­ate hear­ing on his deten­tion and will again push for his release. They said Smirnov was tak­en into cus­tody on a war­rant issued in California for the same charges.

The case against Smirnov was orig­i­nal­ly filed in California, where he used to live. Several sealed entries were list­ed in the court dock­et, but no addi­tion­al details about his return to cus­tody were imme­di­ate­ly available.

A spokesman for Justice Department spe­cial coun­sel David Weiss, who is pros­e­cut­ing Smirnov, con­firmed that Smirnov had been arrest­ed again, but did not have addi­tion­al com­ment. He is in the cus­tody of U.S. Marshals in Nevada, said Gary Schofield, the chief mar­shal in Las Vegas.

Smirnov was first arrest­ed last week in Las Vegas, where he now lives, while return­ing from overseas.

Prosecutors say Smirnov false­ly told his FBI han­dler that exec­u­tives from the Ukrainian ener­gy com­pa­ny Burisma paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 mil­lion each around 2015. The claim became cen­tral to the Republican impeach­ment inquiry of President Biden in Congress.

Smirnov has not entered a plea to the charges, but his lawyers have said their client is pre­sumed inno­cent and they look for­ward to defend­ing him at trial.

As part of their push to keep him in cus­tody, pros­e­cu­tors said Smirnov told inves­ti­ga­tors after his arrest last week that “offi­cials asso­ci­at­ed with Russian intel­li­gence were involved in pass­ing a sto­ry” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s self-report­ed con­tact with Russian offi­cials was recent and exten­sive, and said he had planned to meet with for­eign intel­li­gence con­tacts dur­ing an upcom­ing trip abroad.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts on Tuesday had said he was con­cerned about Smirnov’s access to mon­ey pros­e­cu­tors esti­mat­ed at $6 mil­lion but not­ed that fed­er­al guide­lines required him to fash­ion “the least restric­tive con­di­tions” ahead of tri­al. Smirnov was also ordered to stay in the area and sur­ren­der his passports.

“Do not make a mock­ery out of me,” Albregts said to Smirnov, warn­ing that he’d be placed back into the fed­er­al government’s cus­tody if he vio­lat­ed any of his con­di­tions. His lawyers say he had been “ful­ly com­pli­ant” with his release conditions.

Prosecutors quick­ly appealed to U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright in California.

“The cir­cum­stances of the offens­es charged — that Smirnov lied to his FBI han­dler after a 10-year rela­tion­ship where the two spoke near­ly every day — means that Smirnov can­not be trust­ed to pro­vide truth­ful infor­ma­tion to pre­tri­al ser­vices,” pros­e­cu­tors wrote in court doc­u­ments. “The effects of Smirnov’s false state­ments and fab­ri­cat­ed infor­ma­tion con­tin­ue to be felt to this day. Now the per­son­al stakes for Smirnov are even high­er. His free­dom is on the line.”

Smirnov had been an infor­mant for more than a decade when he made the explo­sive alle­ga­tions about the Bidens in June 2020, after “express­ing bias” about Joe Biden as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, pros­e­cu­tors said.

But Smirnov had only rou­tine busi­ness deal­ings with Burisma start­ing in 2017, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. No evi­dence has emerged that Joe Biden act­ed cor­rupt­ly or accept­ed bribes in his cur­rent role or pre­vi­ous office as vice president.

While his iden­ti­ty wasn’t pub­licly known before the indict­ment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to inves­ti­gate the pres­i­dent and his fam­i­ly, and helped spark what is now a House impeach­ment inquiry into Biden. Republicans pur­su­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of the Bidens demand­ed the FBI release the unredact­ed form doc­u­ment­ing the unver­i­fied alle­ga­tions, though they acknowl­edged they couldn’t con­firm if they were true.

Democrats called for an end to the probe after the Smirnov indict­ment came down last week, while Republicans dis­tanced the inquiry from his claims and said they would con­tin­ue to “fol­low the facts.”

Smirnov’s lawyers say he has been liv­ing in Las Vegas for two years with his long­time girl­friend and requires ongo­ing treat­ment and dai­ly med­ica­tions for “sig­nif­i­cant med­ical issues relat­ed to his eyes.” He lived in California for 16 years pri­or to mov­ing to Nevada.

Those of you old enough will recall when the Borguise uptown peo­ple looked down on ordi­nary Jamaicans because we spoke the patios dialect? Many still today speak with an accent we poor coun­try folk can­not iden­ti­fy. Many of them attend­ed the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, some nev­er set foot in a col­lege, but they inher­it­ed light skin and a lit­tle mon­ey .…. residue of the colo­nial era. Sadly, some of the dark-skinned ones who man­aged to get a col­lege degree have also been fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the old slave mas­ters. If I laugh, I die. I attend­ed a small par­ty here in New York a few weeks ago where a bunch of them were in atten­dance, and I could hard­ly tell they were Jamaicans. Hahahhha.

Surprisingly, today, the same peo­ple are all over the patios, our dialect; they even want to make it our nation­al lan­guage. I’ve been told they even cre­at­ed a Bible out of it, but qu ya.
Sadly, they still feel priv­i­leged to tell us what is appro­pri­ate or good for us.
But talk­ing about that, many of us are old enough to recall how they treat­ed Bob Marley even when he attempt­ed to move uptown on Hope Road, where his muse­um is today.

Fast for­ward to the Bob Marley movie that every­one is talk­ing about.…(hyperbole), not every­one is talk­ing about it. Nevertheless, a long over­due movie was made about Bob, and truth­ful­ly, this writer has [not] seen the film, and it may be a long time before I see it. Not because I do not respect the body of work the man did in his very brief 36 years but because I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that (a) Bob Marley belonged to his fam­i­ly, but he was also larg­er than one fam­i­ly. He belonged to the aver­age Jamaican. Now, many argue Bob belonged to the world; I do not quar­rel with that either…

(b) I believe that because of the fore­gone, Bob should have been played by a Jamaican. © Probably most impor­tant­ly, a movie about a man as icon­ic as Bob Marley should include every aspect of his life, good and bad, and no one should be left out of the sto­ry. Whitewashing and san­i­tiz­ing a sub­jec­t’s image dis­torts his­to­ry and is not in any­one’s best interest.

I must con­fess that I was nev­er keen on hero-wor­ship­ing any­one. I admire peo­ple who have con­tributed to human­i­ty, but that’s as far as it goes for me. I also believe that the deci­sion-mak­ers made a mis­take by not includ­ing every aspect of Bob Marley’s life in this biopic. Bob lived a fas­ci­nat­ing life, we are told; the world must under­stand who the man real­ly was. Opportunity missed? I believe so. At the end of the day, leav­ing out huge chunks of his life paints a pic­ture of a per­fect man. There are no per­fect humans. Documenting all aspects of his life would have been a greater ser­vice to Bob and the peo­ple who love him.

Leaving chunks of his life out of the film serves the nar­row inter­ests of deci­sion-mak­ers. It con­tin­ues the mis­guid­ed attempt to make the man a God.….. he was a man. Those who were inte­gral parts of his life, includ­ing the women he loved and any of his off­spring not includ­ed, have every right to be angry. This does noth­ing to final­ly put to rest the dis­qui­et that exist­ed since Bob tran­si­tioned in 81.
It is bad for his lega­cy, It isn’t good for posterity

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The ques­tion of cor­rupt African lead­ers is a well-talked-about phe­nom­e­non. In fair­ness to the cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials in African Nations, cor­rup­tion is not a Black prob­lem but a prob­lem where peo­ple are left to han­dle mon­ey and pow­er with­out prop­er checks and balances.
Even in the places that brag about checks and bal­ances, cor­rup­tion in gov­ern­ment is wide­spread. Though noth­ing to be proud of, Africans can take small com­fort in the fact that pub­lic offi­cials across the globe have engaged in cor­rup­tion of some kind.
Corruption is crim­i­nal and must be pun­ished wher­ev­er it rears its ugly head. Having gone through European col­o­niza­tion, many nations across all con­ti­nents have seen mas­sive cor­rup­tion in their gov­ern­ments, many of which have waged exis­ten­tial strug­gles for inde­pen­dence. To many free­dom fight­ers who went on to become elect­ed lead­ers in their coun­tries, the trap­pings of pow­er become too much to relin­quish. They see them­selves deserv­ing of their titles based on their sac­ri­fices in the strug­gle.…. Not all free­dom fight­ers became despots; how­ev­er, Nelson Mandela, for exam­ple, chose to lead and then leave.
Having out­lined the fore­gone, it is essen­tial to note that cor­rup­tion takes var­i­ous forms. 

As one expert puts it, cor­rup­tion can be a cop on the beat accept­ing a cup of cof­fee or a judge allow­ing his per­son­al feel­ings to influ­ence the judg­ment he hands down.
Even advanced nations like the United States have had their share of cor­rup­tion in gov­ern­ment; many peo­ple in Congress have been indict­ed, con­vict­ed, and even impris­oned. So, too, have Governors been indict­ed and imprisoned.
Richard Millhouse Nixon, the 37^th President of the United States, left office pre­ma­ture­ly in the face of cer­tain impeach­ment and poten­tial crim­i­nal indict­ments. Before depart­ing, Nixon cut a deal with his Vice President Gerald Ford that saw Ford ascend to the pres­i­den­cy, then par­don­ing the crook Nixon so that he could not be crim­i­nal­ly indict­ed for his alleged crimes.
Ford argued his par­don of Nixon was to heal the Nation. More informed observers saw Ford’s actions as anoth­er iter­a­tion of Governmental corruption.
Geral Ford became the 38^th President of the United States, the only per­son to attain the office of Vice President and President with­out being elect­ed by the American vot­ers. Ford was appoint­ed vice pres­i­dent to Richard Nixon when Nixon’s vice pres­i­dent, Spiro Agnew, was indict­ed for corruption.
Fast for­ward to the present day, and the sin­gle-term, twice-impeached 45^th pres­i­dent, Donald Trump, is run­ning to become the 47^th President should he be elect­ed in November.
Trump is all but set to romp through his par­ty’s nom­i­nat­ing process even though he is fac­ing 91 felony counts in sev­er­al juris­dic­tions and has been con­vict­ed in sev­er­al civ­il cases.

Realistically, no nation can claim the high ground on this issue; they can claim to put checks and bal­ances in place, but they have no con­trol over peo­ple’s actions, even with those checks and bal­ances in place.
So, African lead­ers should wake the hell up after hear­ing American mer­ce­nary for­mer navy seal and leader of the mer­ce­nary firm Blackwater Erik Prince argue for the re-col­o­niza­tion of the African con­ti­nent. Erik Prince is the broth­er of Betsy Devos, the for­mer Trump Education secretary.
If ever there was a time for African uni­ty, at least mil­i­tar­i­ly, it is now. There are rea­sons that Western nations do not want a unit­ed Africa out­side the obvi­ous rapa­cious desire to con­trol the con­ti­nen­t’s pre­cious resources. A unit­ed Africa, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and mil­i­tar­i­ly, would be a force to be reck­oned with. It is time that African lead­ers force the nations with bases on the con­ti­nent to leave and ensure pri­vate armies like the one Erik Prince led nev­er set foot on the continent.
Joe Biden may not be think­ing of attack­ing African nations, but if Trump is reelect­ed, there is no telling what that crim­i­nal enter­prise will do.
Africa must unite or perish.….…

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

ERIK PRINCE HAS been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto sup­ply com­pa­ny; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mer­ce­nary firm Blackwater, which con­duct­ed a noto­ri­ous 2007 mas­sacre in the mid­dle of Baghdad; the broth­er of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s sec­re­tary of edu­ca­tion; a shad­ow advis­er to Trump; and the plain­tiff in a law­suit against The Intercept. 
Last November, Prince start­ed a pod­cast called “Off Leash ” which in its pro­mo­tion­al copy says he “brings a unique and invalu­able per­spec­tive to today’s increas­ing­ly volatile world.” On an episode last Tuesday, his unique and invalu­able per­spec­tive turned out to be that the U.S. should “put the impe­r­i­al hat back on” and take over and direct­ly run huge swaths of the globe.

Here’s are Prince’s exact words:

If so many of these coun­tries around the world are inca­pable of gov­ern­ing them­selves, it’s time for us to just put the impe­r­i­al hat back on, to say, we’re going to gov­ern those coun­tries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. …

You can say that about pret­ty much all of Africa, they’re inca­pable of gov­ern­ing themselves.

Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that lis­ten­ers might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talk­ing about being a colo­nial­ist again.” Prince respond­ed: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great con­cept not just for Africa but also for Latin America.
Prince and Serrano either do not know or do not care that pre­vi­ous bouts of the European fla­vor of colo­nial­ism led to the deaths of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. Then in the 20^th cen­tu­ry, the ide­ol­o­gy of colo­nial­ism gave birth to Nazism.
Like the pre­vi­ous enthu­si­asts of impe­ri­al­ism, Prince is com­plete­ly blind to his own moti­va­tions and where they inevitably lead. He doesn’t want to do this for America’s ben­e­fit, you see. No, it’s because “if you go to these coun­tries and you see how they suf­fer, under absolute­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ments that are just crim­i­nal syn­di­cates, a lot of them deserve better.”

This was the ratio­nale for Britain’s white man’s bur­den, France’s mis­sion civil­isatrice, Spain’s mis­ión civ­i­lizado­ra, Portugal’s mis­são civ­i­lizado­ra, and even impe­r­i­al Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which aimed to con­quer every near­by coun­try for the ben­e­fit of allOpens in a new tab. Imperialists have always told them­selves that they are sub­du­ing oth­er lands to help their benight­ed inhab­i­tants. This benef­i­cence some­how always leads to mass death.

This curi­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is famous­ly por­trayed in “Heart of Darkness,” the 1899 nov­el by Joseph Conrad. The book’s nar­ra­tor, Charles Marlow, describes his voy­age up a riv­er into the inte­ri­or of an unnamed African coun­try that is obvi­ous­ly Congo in the process of being col­o­nized by Belgium.

Marlow explains:

It was just rob­bery with vio­lence, aggra­vat­ed mur­der on a great scale … the con­quest of the earth, which most­ly means the tak­ing it away from those who have a dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion or slight­ly flat­ter noses than our­selves, is not a pret­ty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sen­ti­men­tal pre­tense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea — some­thing you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sac­ri­fice to.

Marlow attempts to find out what hap­pened to Mr. Kurtz, an upriv­er colo­nial agent. When he arrives, he finds Kurtz is liv­ing in a vil­la sur­round­ed by heads stuck on spikes. Marlow learns that Kurtz has writ­ten a report for the “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.” It begins with Kurtz declar­ing, “By the sim­ple exer­cise of our will we can exert a pow­er for good prac­ti­cal­ly unbound­ed.” Before long it degen­er­ates into an exhor­ta­tion to “exter­mi­nate all the brutes!” That’s in fic­tion. In real­i­ty, Belgium’s well-mean­ing impe­ri­al­ism killed per­haps 10 mil­lion Congolese. It always seems to work this way. For instance, here are a series of 2003 quotes about the Iraq War from Mississippi’s Trent Lott, then the GOP’s Senate minor­i­ty leader: March 27: “I ask Mississippians of all faiths to pray for all our coali­tion forces and the Iraqi peo­ple as they engage in an intense but noble bat­tle against what is noth­ing but sheer evil.”

April 15: “We went in there to free those peo­ple.” October 28: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens.”

Serrano at least is more in touch with the grimy real­i­ty of what they’re talk­ing about, and he excit­ed­ly men­tions how America could bring less­er nations “the pro­fes­sion­al­ism they need to cap­i­tal­ize on their nat­ur­al resources. In any case, Prince’s words illus­trate that we are liv­ing in a time in which many of humanity’s worst ideas, ones we thought were long dead and buried, have risen from the grave and are now stag­ger­ing about again. Fascism? Maybe things went off the rails last time, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath­wa­ter. A pea-brained fear of vac­cines? Sure, why not? A con­vic­tion that the old lady who lives in the for­est is steal­ing our chil­dren and vivi­sect­ing them to con­sume their adrenochrome? That makes per­fect sense.
Later in the show Prince also res­ur­rects anoth­er old pop­u­lar favorite, The Enemy Within Is in League With the Enemy Without. “You get the BLM and the Hamas mili­tias of the Democrat Party, very active in the United States this sum­mer,” he says. “When that BLM or Hamas mili­tia shows up to start wreck­ing things, you show them what law and order looks like, imme­di­ate­ly.” So that’s where we are in today’s America. Maybe we could return to med­i­cine based on the four humors, in which all human afflic­tions are due to imbal­ances in your phlegm, blood, and yel­low and black bile. And why not give chat­tel slav­ery anoth­er shot? If we’re going to do impe­ri­al­ism again, real­ly, the sky’s the limit.

If you know me, you know I talk about crime regard­less of who occu­pies Jamaica House. My dis­dain for crim­i­nal­i­ty may be traced to when I became a police offi­cer. Still, today, I have scant regard for crim­i­nals or even those who would offer sup­port for them.
I have observed over the decade and a half that I have engaged in writ­ing on crime; read­ers’ respons­es have been based on what I say about the two polit­i­cal par­ties that run our country.
It indi­cates that even on this most impor­tant and exis­ten­tial sub­ject, peo­ple’s respons­es are based on their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and beliefs.….…. Sadly, this includes past and present mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
Surely, we all have our polit­i­cal lean­ings; there is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with doing so. Our inabil­i­ty to deal with impor­tant issues from objec­tive, non-polit­i­cal lens­es is prob­lem­at­ic. My expe­ri­ences have been that even when we claim to be objec­tive, our argu­ments are polit­i­cal instead of focused on the top­ic under discussion.

Now, let’s talk about crime in Jamaica. 
My posi­tion on the sub­ject is well known: I hate crim­i­nals; I spent a decade fight­ing them, I was shot doing it, and if it were up to me, they would all be in jail. Period.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have large­ly con­tributed to crime through omis­sion and com­mis­sion: com­plic­i­ty, acqui­es­cence, incom­pe­tence, and polit­i­cal expediency.
Political par­ti­sans from both camps will have you believe that their side is more seri­ous about crime reduc­tion in our coun­try, but in essence, when it comes to pro­duc­ing tan­gi­ble evi­dence to back up their claims, they fall short. As I have said, even some police offi­cers believe their for­tunes are tied to their par­ty’s for­tunes at the polls.
The long and short of the mat­ter is that nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has been res­olute in lay­ing down the law on crim­i­nal­i­ty. Consequently, our coun­try devel­oped a pop cul­ture that is lais­sez-faire, or should I say on this issue, it’s almost hands-off by both polit­i­cal parties.
Instead of mak­ing it clear that crime will not be tol­er­at­ed in our coun­try, we have cre­at­ed a cot­tage indus­try around how to ben­e­fit from it since it is a way of life. This includes bands, funer­al par­lors, all the way to vending.
It is log­i­cal to argue that nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has tak­en the nec­es­sary steps to alle­vi­ate this bur­geon­ing crisis.
I have laid out a series of steps that begin with leg­is­la­tion and con­tin­ue with an effi­cient, well-trained police force and a court sys­tem bound by law to send crim­i­nals to prison. All of that must be encap­su­lat­ed in a nation­al mind­set that is not cen­tered on the rights of crim­i­nals but on the rights of crime vic­tims and their families.

Having said the fore­gone, I have also laid out why the gov­ern­ment [must] dis­as­so­ci­ate itself from crime pro­duc­ers and pass leg­is­la­tion that makes it clear Jamaica is no haven for crim­i­nals. Our small econ­o­my is eas­i­ly dis­turbed by out­side forces that would do us harm. We must do our best to ensure we have clean hands on this issue. I have spo­ken to the help the so-called human rights groups in our coun­try have got­ten from out­side donors while our crime-fight­ing efforts have come under scruti­ny, ridicule, and puni­tive back­lash… all from out­side Jamaica.
Guns con­tin­ue to flood the Island, most of which are report­ed to come from the United States, despite its enor­mous and numer­ous law enforce­ment bud­gets and resources.
It is incon­ceiv­able to me that the most pow­er­ful nation in the world can­not stop the flow of guns into a small coun­try with min­i­mal resources.
It is easy for a pow­er­ful nation to destroy a small nation’s econ­o­my using slan­der and lies if that nation seems to be doing things right. It has hap­pened before it can hap­pen again.
Every time that Jamaica, a major­i­ty Black nation, sets itself on a course to becom­ing self-suf­fi­cient and eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable, out­side forces align against our coun­try, and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion all of a sud­den gains trac­tion, effec­tive­ly turn­ing back the gains recorded.

A few weeks ago, the influ­en­tial Financial Times wrote glow­ing­ly about the Jamaican econ­o­my, call­ing it ‘arguably one of the most remark­able and rad­i­cal but under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed turn­around sto­ries in eco­nom­ic his­to­ry.”The Times Journalist Arnie Weissmann tout­ed Jamaica’s eco­nom­ic turn­around as ‘the envy of devel­op­ing coun­tries’.
Not sur­pris­ing­ly to any sane, ratio­nal per­son, the United States State Department quick­ly issued addi­tion­al trav­el advi­sories to Americans about trav­el­ing to Jamaica.
The State Department’s advi­so­ry warned that vio­lent crimes are ‘com­mon’ and sex­u­al assaults occur ‘fre­quent­ly, includ­ing at all-inclu­sive resorts.’.….. Wait, what? I was in Jamaica with my fam­i­ly in January of 2024. I would cer­tain­ly not expose my fam­i­ly to this kind of dan­ger. So, the State Department must be talk­ing about Jamaica Queens.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Sandals International Chairman Adam Stewart have both pushed back against the slan­der­ous alle­ga­tions against Jamaica.…. Social media is rife with American tourists mock­ing the State Department’s advi­so­ry. Many have done so while book­ing their flights to Jamaica.

It is counter-pro­duc­tive at this point to talk about the hypocrisy of the American State Department’s advi­so­ry, not to men­tion the tim­ing of it. Coincedencital or strate­gic, you are the judge.
As I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, Jamaica is a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black coun­try. The Island has main­tained close ties to the United States for decades after emerg­ing from British Colonial rule…
Despite this so-called friend­ship, the Island has pre­cious lit­tle to show for that bilat­er­al rela­tion­ship. There are a few hand­outs here and there, but hard­ly any­thing tan­gi­ble to point to. Before the Chinese advent onto the island, the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture was decrepit, rel­e­gat­ed to the wind­ing roads that have exist­ed since the colo­nial era, and bridges and oth­er major infra­struc­ture were hard­ly any more devel­oped than the roads.
Nevertheless, with new Chinese-spon­sored high­ways, the key to the nation’s devel­op­ment, the American Ambassador under Donald Trump had the temer­i­ty and the gall to cau­tion Jamaica about accept­ing the Chinese largest as if Jamaica was answer­able to the American government.

The real­i­ty is that with American guns flood­ing the Island unabat­ed and the secu­ri­ty forces con­strained from going after the mur­der­ers out of fear of the American, Canadian, and British-fund­ed Human Rights agen­cies and crim­i­nals being deport­ed in large num­bers, the strat­e­gy is for the Island to fail.
If Jamaica can­not keep its crime rate down, invest­ment poten­tial becomes nil. Tourists are scared away by the American State Department. The Jamaican econ­o­my, heav­i­ly depen­dent on tourism, returns to the days of( ‘any­thing a any­thing’).
Major lend­ing insti­tu­tions, such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Paris Club, depend on poor nations to bor­row from them.
Now, do you see why it is impor­tant to trash Jamaica?
According to some reports, the Prime Minister is per­plexed at the tim­ing of the American advi­so­ry. This writer is not, and truth­ful­ly, I know the PM is ful­ly con­ver­sant with what’s happening.
Hey, in the mean­time, real Jamaicans must look at the sources fund­ing the large oppo­si­tion motor­cades and meet­ings. We should nev­er allow our coun­try to slide back into the dol­drums of the 90s.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a young friend yes­ter­day; he want­ed my opin­ion on what was hap­pen­ing in Israel. I told him I had no idea what was hap­pen­ing in Israel because I did not know of a coun­try named Israel. I am aware, how­ev­er, of a nation called Palestine. He then asked don’t you believe in a two-state solu­tion? I respond­ed no!!! Shocked, he asked don’t you believe Palestinians deserve a state? I respond­ed, of course, that is the only state I believe in. He replied I want peace, so I think two states will resolve the sit­u­a­tion. I asked him how that could be when Israel was built on a lie. How can there be peace with­out justice?
Anything resem­bling peace in Palestine, even if there were to be a two-state exper­i­ment, would amount to a smol­der­ing caul­dron that would explode at any time.
Nobody wants to say out loud what needs to be said. Everyone is either afraid or in cahoots with the Zionist Lobby AIPAC, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Even those opposed are pet­ri­fied of the Zionists and their allies com­ing after them.
In the video I did above, one of my dear friends, a man I great­ly respect, told me he would con­sid­er whether it was wise of him even to share the video.
My friend was con­cerned for my safe­ty but feared that mere­ly shar­ing a video about the sub­ject would endan­ger him as well. Such is the pal­pa­bil­i­ty of the fear the Zionists have imposed on ordi­nary Americans and their abil­i­ty to speak out on this trav­es­ty in Palestine.

What the world is forced to con­tend with is an ille­git­i­mate state cre­at­ed and enhanced by the Americans in 1947 and rec­og­nized first them­selves a year lat­er in 1948. This ille­git­i­mate state is no dif­fer­ent than that which the Dutch cre­at­ed in South Africa, the British in Australia, or even the Americans cre­at­ed almost three hun­dred years ago.
Truthfully, the world has always been one in which the strong take what they want, and the weak suf­fer. However, after the Second World War, the world was told that there was a new inter­na­tion­al order in which nations were oblig­at­ed to oper­ate like good cit­i­zens in a coun­try of laws.
This new order meant that nations could not invade oth­er coun­tries, plun­der their resources, and take their land. An inter­na­tion­al court was also set up in the Hague, Netherlands, to hear cas­es against errant nations.
This was doomed to fail from the start, as the pow­er­ful nation that was instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing the court, the United States, removed itself from its authority.
Some argue that the new order has worked. They point out that since the Second World War end­ed in 1945, there has not been anoth­er world­wide con­fla­gra­tion. Truthfully, it was a mere 21 years after World War I end­ed before the start of the second.
It is now 79 years since World War Two came to an end.
On the face of it, it appears that this inter­na­tion­al order has kept the peace.…..except that the world was thrust into an exis­ten­tial stale­mate between the United States and the Soviet Union, two nuclear-armed pow­ers com­pet­ing for world domination.

After the Soviet Union col­lapsed, the world faced the United States, the sole nuclear Superpower, hav­ing total hege­mon­ic auton­o­my over our planet.
From that emerged America push­ing its weight around in nations as small as Grenada and Panama to oth­ers as large and remote as Iraq and Afghanistan. No coun­try was spared America’s hege­mon­ic reach, overt and covert.
So no, there has not been anoth­er world war, but we have had many wars all start­ed by the United States.
Part of the immense pow­er wield­ed by the United States includ­ed, though not con­fined to, the desta­bi­liza­tion of Libya and oth­er coun­tries while nuclear arm­ing and pro­tect­ing the Zionist state of Israel in the United Nations Security Council.
As a con­se­quence, Israel has thumbed its nose at the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as it goes about com­mit­ting atroc­i­ties and war crimes against the Palestinian peo­ple with zero consequence…
In the mean­time, the pow­er­ful zion­ist lob­by man­ages to cow any­one who dares speak out against Israel’s war crimes by label­ing them anti­se­mit­ic in the American main­stream media.
Even elect­ed offi­cials are afraid to vote against send­ing American tax dol­lars and bombs to kill Palestinians. That is the pow­er of the wealthy and pow­er­ful Zionists oper­at­ing from America’s soil…

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.