I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that (a) when I write about crime in Jamaica, and (b) when I crit­i­cize this Government, © it should nev­er be seen as an endorse­ment of, or sup­port for the People’s National Party.
The ( PNP) was in office for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years. The degra­da­tion of our coun­try, phys­i­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and moral­ly must be laid square­ly at the feet of that polit­i­cal par­ty.
As a pre-emp­tive shot across the bow of the bleed­ing heart apol­o­gists let me just stop you right there.……People’s atti­tudes and behav­iors are influ­enced by poor, weak, acqui­es­cent and feck­less lead­er­ship.
Let me be abun­dant­ly clear, vio­lent crimes sta­bi­lized under the Edward Seaga’s gov­ern­ment which com­menced in 1980 and end­ed in 1988.
Edward Seaga was no saint, he main­tained the moth­er of all gar­risons, (Tivoli Gardens) out of which emerged, Jim Brown, Duddus, Blood, Livity and a host of oth­er blood-thirsty sociopaths.
I hope that I have made myself clear in the fore­gone, I do not spend my time writ­ing in sup­port of either of the two polit­i­cal par­ties that share pow­er in our coun­try, I call balls and strikes straight down the mid­dle the way I see them.

Seaga’s love for Tivoli Gardens could be viewed as a moth­er who was will­ful­ly blind to the demons with­in her child.
Though Edward Seaga may nev­er be absolved from his role in the Island’s gar­ri­son cul­ture, his record must be bal­anced with the real­i­ty that at the very least, when he real­ized that some of the crim­i­nals in his domain were out of con­trol, he nev­er wavered in pro­vid­ing their names to the police.
Whether this is enough to redeem Edward Seaga’s lega­cy is not for me to decide, his con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er, must be hon­est­ly assessed with­in the broad­er con­text of the gang-land pol­i­tics which exist­ed then, and to some extent exist to this very day.


What I do know is that this admin­is­tra­tion has its head up its own ass on the exis­ten­tial issue of vio­lent crime.
One mem­ber of the par­ty, Fayval Williams a Saint Andrew MP touts the val­ue of peace march­es on her Facebook page.
When polit­i­cal lead­ers are forced to march for peace, (as if vio­lent crime is a war to be end­ed through détente’), it is a white flag of sur­ren­der.
It is telling the crim­i­nal mur­der­ers that as a gov­ern­ment, you are out of options, you are beg­ging them to behave. Under what sce­nario is it okay to beg crim­i­nals to behave?
Why are the lead­ers bow­ing down to mur­der­ers instead of get­ting out of the way so that the secu­ri­ty forces can do their jobs?
The chal­lenge for the coun­try is that it cre­at­ed mon­sters, INDECOM, and allowed so-called human rights groups life JFJ & the IACHR total access to the coun­try’s process of leg­is­la­tion and law enforce­ment.
INDECOM is now an out of con­trol mon­ster par­tial­ly fund­ed by shad­owy for­eign forces.
The unit is total­ly out­side the con­trol of the gov­ern­ment. It works as a sort of watch­dog on the gov­ern­ment itself, on behalf of its for­eign fun­ders and han­dlers.
Years ago, as he berat­ed the Police in the media, the rabid attack dog that heads INDECOM point­ed to the [Nicaraguan polic­ing mod­el] as one that Jamaica should be fol­low­ing.
I will just let that sink in for a minute.….…..
Nicaragua is a fuck­ing failed state!!!

At present, our coun­try is drift­ing aim­less­ly with­out deci­sive lead­er­ship on the exis­ten­tial and crit­i­cal issue of crime. The Government of the day has made it clear that walk­ing and chew­ing gum is not a thing it can do.
It is clear that it only intends to walk, to hell with chew­ing gum.
There is a rea­son that the admin­is­tra­tion gets away with the cha­rade it is present­ly engaged in, on the one hand, there are the par­ti­san PNP sup­port­ers, and on the oth­er, there are the par­ti­san JLP. sup­port­ers. There is not much for ratio­nal think­ing in the mid­dle. Is there even a mid­dle any­more?
The thing is, that at present the pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment seems to be with the JLP, and so for those sup­port­ers, the gov­ern­ment can do no wrong.
As a con­se­quence, the admin­is­tra­tion does not feel any pres­sure to move deci­sive­ly to rem­e­dy the crime sit­u­a­tion, because for it’s sup­port­ers, crime was here under the PNP.
Because of that mind­set, the admin­is­tra­tion of the day does not need to wor­ry about account­abil­i­ty.
The econ­o­my is doing okay, but it bears men­tion­ing that there is an across-the-board fair eco­nom­ic con­di­tion glob­al­ly.
As for the stock mar­ket which is doing great, the vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans, as in the United States, does not under­stand what the stock mar­ket is, much less to have mon­ey invest­ed in it.

The nation’s unem­ploy­ment rate is pret­ty low. According to (Statista), in 2019, the unem­ploy­ment rate in Jamaica was approx­i­mate­ly 9.52 per­cent, a decrease from pre­vi­ous years. 
Imagine where the coun­try would be if we had polit­i­cal lead­er­ship that stood deci­sive­ly behind the rule of law?
Imagine if the coun­try was ready to absorb its return­ing res­i­dents and investors, (not just Chinese peas­ants) who would love to invest and live in our coun­try?
Imagine where the coun­try would be if we had lead­ers who were pre­pared to dis­card polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and stand up for the coun­try?
Imagine if the coun­try had decent men & women of hon­or and courage who stood up for social order and the rule of law? And tell the know-it-all pun­dits and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors to shut the fuck up?
Imagine if we had lead­ers who under­stood that we can­not build pros­per­i­ty on the bod­ies of dead cit­i­zens?
Imagine if there was con­sci­en­tious lead­er­ship that shuts out the noise about [human-rights] because it under­stood that dead peo­ple have lost their most fun­da­men­tal right.…… the right to life?
And, imag­ine if that lead­er­ship under­stood that stand­ing up for the rule of law, and enforc­ing the nation’s laws is not anti­thet­i­cal to human rights?

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

NEW YORK, New York — Leaders in Haiti must step up and end the polit­i­cal impasse between President Jovenel Mose and a surg­ing oppo­si­tion move­ment that has par­a­lyzed the island nation since July 2018, the top UN offi­cial there said on Thursday in a brief­ing to the UN Security Council in New York.

UN Special Representative Helen La Lime updat­ed ambas­sadors on lat­est devel­op­ments in the pro­longed divide which has left Haiti with­out a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment, deflat­ed the econ­o­my, and fueled insecurity. 

“Haiti is about to enter in its sec­ond year with a care­tak­er gov­ern­ment, its econ­o­my is fore­cast to sink deep­er into reces­sion, and 4.6 mil­lion of its cit­i­zens are now esti­mat­ed to require human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance,” she said, speak­ing via video­con­fer­ence from the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince. 

“To avoid a greater dete­ri­o­ra­tion, Haitian lead­ers need to rise to the occa­sion and com­mit to a way out of this impasse that will best serve the inter­ests of their people.” 

Threat of prolonged stalemate 

Ms. La Lime was intro­duc­ing the first report on the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, which she heads.

Known by the French acronym BINUH, it was estab­lished last October, fol­low­ing the end of 15 years of UN peace­keep­ing operations. 

Its man­date includes strength­en­ing polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty and good governance. 

During the past months, Ms. La Lime and inter­na­tion­al part­ners the Organization of American States and the Holy See have been sup­port­ing nego­ti­a­tions to forge con­sen­sus on a polit­i­cal agreement. 

However, talks failed to yield progress on the for­ma­tion of a new gov­ern­ment and the des­ig­na­tion of a “con­sen­su­al” Prime Minister by the President. 

“The lack of agree­ment on this mat­ter, as well as on the remain­ing length of President Mose’s term, threat­ens to need­less­ly pro­long a sit­u­a­tion that has already last­ed too long,” she told the Council. 

‘Rising tide of cruelty’ 

In the inter­im, Haitians are being sub­ject­ed to wide­spread human rights vio­la­tions as armed gangs now con­trol around a third of the coun­try, gen­er­at­ing “a ris­ing tide of cru­el­ty,” accord­ing to Marie Yolne Gilles, Executive Director of the non-prof­it Fondasyon Je Klere, who also spoke from the cap­i­tal city. 

“We have wit­nessed odi­ous killings, decap­i­ta­tions, rapes, rob­beries, embez­zle­ment and the diver­sion of sup­plies, abduc­tions and kid­nap­pings,” she report­ed, lat­er adding “we have death squadrons, and that’s a form of state terrorism.” 

As Ms. La Lime told ambas­sadors, the ongo­ing impasse and eco­nom­ic trou­bles risk fur­ther affect­ing the integri­ty of the nation­al police and oth­er key insti­tu­tions.
Read full arti­cle here: https://​www​.caribbean​news​.net/​n​e​w​s​/​2​6​4​0​9​9​6​1​0​/​h​a​i​t​i​-​a​t​-​t​h​e​-​c​r​o​s​s​-​r​o​a​d​s​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​u​n​d​e​r​-​p​r​e​s​s​ure

THE POLITICS

JAMAICA is being read­ied for yet anoth­er gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign sea­son, and yet, despite the maneu­ver­ing by both polit­i­cal par­ties, the lying, and the infan­tile brava­do, the sem­i­nal issue of vio­lent crime is ignored.
Just today one dai­ly pub­li­ca­tion had as one of its head­lines the words, “Bloody 24 Hours”.
The fact is, that kind of head­line could eas­i­ly be pre-writ­ten each day and it would be accu­rate every day.
What dif­fer­en­ti­ates this one or should I say what neces­si­tates it, is the num­ber of peo­ple killed or injured with­in a small win­dow of time.
In this case, it was Thirteen (13) peo­ple shot, nine (9) fatal­ly. Among the wound­ed, a two-year-old (2) baby boy.

THE GANGSTERS

As the gang­sters move away from the tra­di­tion­al mur­der zones of Saint James, parts of Saint Catherine and Clarendon as a result of the ZOSO’s and SOE’s, the homi­cide num­bers have decreased to some degree. In Saint James new police reports indi­cates that mur­ders have decreased expo­nen­tial­ly.
The unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that in oth­er areas crime has increased not just to the degree it has gone down in Saint James but across the board, vio­lent crimes includ­ing mur­ders, have increased by over 10% when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
The unof­fi­cial num­ber of mur­ders so far this year stands at 181 in just 51 days.
That is a rate of 3.54 per­sons dying vio­lent­ly at the hands of crim­i­nals, send­ing the Islands kill-rate high­er than the present 47 per 100,000, one of the high­est in the world.
The les­son inher­ent in this process of trans­plant­i­ng & prop­a­ga­tion of crime from areas with ZOSO’s and SOE’s to oth­er areas, is that the afore­men­tioned ini­tia­tives are not real solu­tions to the crime epi­dem­ic, they are mere organs for the growth of crime in dif­fer­ent areas.

THE POLICE

The Police force of today is far bet­ter equipped than when I served between the ear­ly ’80s to ear­ly 90s. Officers now have util­i­ty belts, pep­per spray, bal­lis­tic vests, etc.
The best we could man­age back then was pep­per spray in some Mobile Reserve units.
At the same time, offi­cers are lack­ing the train­ing they need and deserve in order to do a half-way decent job.
Absent from their util­i­ty belts are two com­po­nents, (a) Tasers, (b) a set of balls, to make it clear they are police offi­cers not to be tri­fled with.
Hesitancy when effect­ing arrests, is a clear invi­ta­tion for (a) a sus­pect to resist arrest (b) for bystanders to inter­vene.
Those opposed to a Jamaica in which the rule of law was the law of the land all but evis­cer­at­ed the idea of the no-non­sense cop.
Ironically, the vio­lence-pro­duc­ers always knew the no-non­sense cops and that in and of itself was a deter­rent and a vio­lence sup­pres­sant.
On the one hand, those who chose to be gang­sters were afraid they would get caught in the act and they also knew that as soon as we found out who did what it was game over. And find out we did.
Today between the Labor Party and the PNP the police is a shell of its for­mer self.
Blatantly trans­par­ent acts like dis­band­ing the Mobile Reserve (the Backbone of the Force) was a solu­tion seek­ing a prob­lem.
Andrew Holness and his cohorts long want­ed to ren­der the Unit impo­tent, one alleged inci­dent linked to the Unit was enough for him to move in and dis­band the Mobile Reserve under the guise of root­ing out cor­rup­tion.
Today the crim­i­nals rule the street and it seems that the peo­ple are resigned to the killings. They wait their turn to be mas­sa­cred like fish in a bar­rel, and that is exact­ly how the gang­sters treat them.

SOLUTION

This Administration has a three-tiered strat­e­gy (a) tie the hands of the police, (b) give the nation false hope that its strate­gies will pro­duce results just around the cor­ner, © give more sup­port to INDECOM to harass and per­se­cute law-enforce­ment offi­cers.
I am well aware that stat­ing the facts can be shock-induc­ing. The nation needs to be shocked by the truth.
At present this admin­is­tra­tion has stu­dent con­sta­bles work­ing for a pit­tance with­out ade­quate train­ing.
Yes, there is cred­i­ble evi­dence that stu­dent con­sta­bles are being deployed with­out the ben­e­fit of a full con­sta­ble’s salary.
Worse yet they are being required to do police work in haz­ardous con­di­tions in which their lives will be threat­ened.
We are reli­ably informed that many of these stu­dent offi­cers have not even received basic firearms or field­craft train­ing.
At the same time if these stu­dent con­sta­bles take action using lethal force with­out the train­ing this Government will walk away and leave them to the rabid dogs at INDECOM.
This is not right and we are ask­ing the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion to cease and desist from endan­ger­ing the lives of these young peo­ple, the lives of their col­leagues and the lives of the gen­er­al pub­lic.
Speaking to these con­cerns recent­ly the police high com­mand said they were kept in the field basi­cal­ly because of the exi­gen­cies of the service(basically they are need­ed).
None of this mat­ters if they do their jobs and are accused of wrong­do­ing, this Government will not defend them, and so what the gov­ern­ment is doing is bla­tant­ly improp­er.
It is not out of the ordi­nary for stu­dent con­sta­bles to get some real-time expe­ri­ence before grad­u­at­ing from basic train­ing. Many police depart­ments do it includ­ing the NYPD.
What is wrong about it, is hav­ing them deployed as trained offi­cers, doing the job of ful­ly trained offi­cers, with­out the req­ui­site train­ing for pro­tract­ed peri­ods of time.
Putting those young peo­ple in such tenous no-win sit­u­a­tions is express­ly wrong and it should not be allowed to continue.

We are now clear that a mas­sive dis­play of police offi­cers and sol­diers does noth­ing to reduce crime over­all. Sure, some crimes with­in the space the secu­ri­ty forces occu­py will be reduced, notwith­stand­ing, the over­all crime sta­tis­tics will only change for the worse when vio­lence pro­duc­ers are forced into oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.
It is time to stop with this cha­rade and end the states of emer­gen­cies and zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions.
It is time for the Government and oppo­si­tion to get togeth­er like adults and work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly on this issue. There is more than enough praise to go around for both par­ties.
Release the ties that bind the hands of the police, [stand INDECOM down], and to hell with the crit­ics.
This is the only way to attack the vio­lence pro­duc­ers, both par­ties must come togeth­er. That way there is no polit­i­cal mileage to be gained from hav­ing tak­en action.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Yesterday I talked about the fact that the Jamaican Media has been noth­ing but syco­phan­tic cheer­lead­ers, unwill­ing to pro­fes­sion­al­ly hold the polit­i­cal class account­able for the actions they take.
My com­ments were par­tic­u­lar­ly aimed at what I thought was the mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion by the media of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s vis­it last January.
The Media col­lec­tive­ly billed Pompeo’s vis­it as one aimed at (strength­en­ing the bond between two friend­ly nations)[sic].
That was the expla­na­tion out of Jamaica House. It was the sto­ry the Media pro­mul­gat­ed.
There was zero crit­i­cal think­ing as to the real rea­son the US Secretary of State vis­it­ed the Country at the time he did.

(1) No one won­dered whether or not the United States had a vest­ed inter­est in a frac­tured CARICOM, or that China’s influ­ence in JAMAICA and the region need­ed to be blunt­ed.
(2) No one thought it odd that the vis­it was done at a time when the United States des­per­ate­ly need­ed some­thing of a con­sen­sus of region­al play­ers against the Maduro gov­ern­ment in Venezuela, even as it lines up a pup­pet to take over in that coun­try?
(3) There were no ques­tions as to why it took the Secretary of State of the United States to vis­it to shore up a rela­tion­ship that has exist­ed for as long as Jamaica has been a nation?
(4) There were no raised eye­brows at the idea that Pompeo would decide that he would only meet with cer­tain lead­ers of the CARICOM com­mu­ni­ty and not oth­ers.
(5) No one asked what was gained from the vis­it of such a high pro­file mem­ber of the American Administration, that could not be worked out at the Ambassadorial lev­el.
(6) And it cer­tain­ly did not perk any­one’s inter­est that the Jamaican Prime Minister out of the blue just decid­ed, “Ah, I think I will just skip this 31^st CARICOM con­fer­ence in Barbados.
(7) What did Pompeo offer the Government to stay away from Barbados? After all, a frac­tured CARICOM region is a region less sus­cep­ti­ble to China’s roman­tic entreatments.

Look, Andrew Holness is not a hor­ri­ble Prime Minister, he is arguably run­ning neck and neck with Edward Seaga for who is the bet­ter of the lot that suc­ceed­ed Michael Manley.
Kinda like a nov­el line from Kris Kristofferson’s clas­sic,[ Sunday morn­ing com­ing down].

“Then I fum­bled in my clos­et for my clothes and found my clean­est dirty shirt.“

He may be the best of a bad lot. His eco­nom­ic poli­cies are not bad. As it relates to infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment, he is sec­ond only to Hugh Shearer who built the most schools and oth­er infra­struc­tur­al projects per capi­ta than any oth­er Prime Minister in the Nation’s brief his­to­ry.
Holness’s short­com­ings are National secu­ri­ty, like many of his com­pa­tri­ots he believes he knows enough to insert him­self into the intri­ca­cies of polic­ing, to the detri­ment of the coun­try.
As a con­se­quence, vio­lent crimes have con­tin­ued to esca­late on his watch.
It bears men­tion­ing that the Prime Minister’s most impor­tant func­tion is the secu­ri­ty of the nation.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that any­one would give him a pass­ing grade con­sid­er­ing that he is fail­ing at his core responsibility.

Andrew Holness is not out of time, he may yet become a great Prime Minister. In Fact, I am root­ing for him, for the coun­try’s sake.
That is, if peo­ple are will­ing to for­give the thou­sands of peo­ple who have been mur­dered on his watch, who need­n’t have died.
If the local media has some­thing to do with it he may very well be san­i­tized and made a nation­al hero.
The local Observer who cheer led Mike Pompeo’s vis­it with flow­ery non­sense, also explained away Holness’s absence from the 31^st CARICOM Conference in Bridgetown Barbados.
In response to ques­tions raised by us and oth­ers about the real rea­sons that Holness, the leader of the largest Nation with­in CARICOM was not in Barbados, the Observer’s Editors decid­ed to take on the role of Spokesperson for Jamaica House on Thursday.
“Caricom meet­ing: The sky is not falling” they declared.

Some are view­ing his deci­sion to stay away as his refusal to delib­er­ate­ly walk into the lion’s den of angry lead­ers who are in Bridgetown with more than the usu­al agen­da. The fret­ting about the Jamaican lead­er’s absence, and the refusal to take his expla­na­tion at face val­ue, is clear­ly relat­ed to the tim­ing, because the recent con­tretemps regard­ing the vis­it of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has not yet com­plete­ly sim­mered. That vis­it to Jamaica by Mr. Pompeo was crit­i­cized by the Caricom Chairman and Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and a hand­ful of oth­er lead­ers as an attempt to divide Caricom, while Mr. Holness explained it was a nor­mal bilat­er­al meet­ing between two friend­ly coun­tries. The sus­pi­cions about Jamaica’s motives as being nation­al­is­tic per­sist and nerves are still raw. As we say in Jamaica, some of the Caricom heads are just being ‘jumpy’. But we believe in this space that too will pass.(Observer)

What a load of crock. The Jamaican Prime Minister had a duty to attend the con­fer­ence. The Editors, act­ing as the Jamaica House offi­cial organ, and by its own admis­sion, agree that Jamaica needs CARICOM despite what some sil­ly polit­i­cal min­ions have been say­ing.
[Jamaica is sen­si­ble and prac­ti­cal enough to under­stand that the coun­try is bet­ter off with Caricom than with­out it. indeed, Canada has just announced it wants an annu­al meet­ing with Caricom lead­ers to strength­en its rela­tion­ship with the 15-mem­ber region­al inte­gra­tion group­ing. Why would Jamaica not want to be part of that? The Editorial con­ced­ed.
The region­al alliance is a net pos­i­tive for all sig­na­to­ries, even as mem­ber states retain their cher­ished sov­er­eign­ty. The ben­e­fits of trade, trav­el, and oth­er coop­er­a­tions can­not be overem­pha­sized in the 21^st cen­tu­ry.
The idea that Jamaica can stand on its own and does not need part­ners, is the kind of think­ing that has got­ten the coun­try into this death spi­ral of crime it is now in.
What the Jamaican Prime Minister must be care­ful of, is not to allow him­self and our coun­try to be used as a pawn against our neigh­bors with­in CARICOM by those with sin­is­ter motives.
Even as the drum­beats con­tin­ue about the ben­e­fits of the rela­tion­ship between the USA & Jamaica, the human car­go of depor­tees con­tin­ues from the United States to Jamaica.
Many of those being deport­ed are inno­cent of the crimes they were con­vict­ed of. Many left Jamaica as babies. Many com­mit­ted sim­ple infrac­tions American tourists to Jamaica com­mit dai­ly.
None of that mat­ter to American Authorities, not in State, and damn sure no one in the so-called Department of Justice.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

The Jamaican media has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate and report the news. It has a duty to inves­ti­gate and ana­lyze events and where pos­si­ble present to the Jamaican peo­ple, rea­soned and intel­li­gent analy­sis of events, in a man­ner that every­one can under­stand.
Unfortunately for the Jamaican peo­ple, the media has opt­ed to engage in sala­cious non­sense, cheap par­ti­san pun­dit­ry, and juve­nile cheer­lead­ers to the dance­hall cul­ture.
As a con­se­quence, the vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion does not get qual­i­ty ana­lyt­i­cal infor­ma­tion upon which it can make bet­ter-informed deci­sions.
Because of that, the Jamaican peo­ple are kept in the dark and in most cas­es, they have no idea what their gov­ern­ment is doing in their name.

Take for instance the January vis­it to Jamaica of the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
The vis­it was billed as an attempt to solid­i­fy the long­stand­ing ties between the two nations.
One Editorial gushed; we should grasp the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the region to fur­ther strength­en its rela­tion­ship with our long-stand­ing friend, the United States”.
This, even as Pompeo’s vis­it drew

as was

crit­i­cisms that it was intend­ed to divide the CARICOM alliance.
Even while speak­ing about Caribbean uni­ty, Pompeo decid­ed to meet with only eight Caribbean coun­tries him­self. This maneu­ver was unique­ly Trumpian. Doing one thing and say­ing anoth­er. Preaching uni­ty while dri­ving the wedge of dis­uni­ty.
The fol­low­ing were the Islands on Pompeo’s itin­er­ary.
1. Jamaica
2. The Bahamas
3. Belize
4. St Kitts
5. Haiti
6. Dominican Republic
7. St Lucia
8. St Marteen
One can extrap­o­late from this list the coun­tries that chose not to sup­port Pompeo’s vis­it, and with whom he chose not to meet, that list includes Trinidad & Tobago as well as Barbados.
This was a clas­sic attempt at divide and con­quer by Mike Pompeo. The Islands that chose not to play ball were exclud­ed.
Pompeo’s boss Donald Trump report­ed­ly asked a con­fi­dant in ref­er­ence to the United States, “have you ever seen a coun­try so divid­ed”?
The con­fi­dant replied, “no”.
Trump report­ed­ly respond­ed; “I love it.” Pompeo’s actions were clear as day.

Mike Pompeo was doing exact­ly what I said in an arti­cle I penned at the time.
He was using Jamaica to counter China’s grow­ing influ­ence in the region and to build sup­port against Venezuelan President Maduro. If that meant destroy­ing the CARICOM alliance, nei­ther Pompeo nor Donald Trump was going to be con­cerned about that.
Trump, Pompeo’s boss has done every­thing in his pow­er to weak­en NATO, why would he care about a bunch of tiny black-ruled (shit­hole-coun­tries)?
Jamaica is the largest English-speak­ing island in the Caribbean it has always been seen as the cen­ter of deci­sion mak­ing in the region.
Unfortunately for Jamaica, because of the Island’s crime epi­dem­ic, much of the Island’s man­u­fac­tur­ing has moved to Trinidad.
Today Jamaica may be the most pop­u­lous Island but it does not have the wealth to back up its numer­ic strength.
Trinidad & Tobago the wealth­i­est Islands, and Barbados, the most edu­cat­ed in the region, form­ing their own alliance against what they saw as American manip­u­la­tion, was noth­ing to scoff at.

They’re not wrong in their oppo­si­tion to Pompeo, but the Jamaican Media, the cheer­lead­ers they are, com­plete­ly missed what was occur­ring with Pompeo’s vis­it.
We did not.
And so Andrew Holness’s deci­sion to skip the 31^st Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, in Barbados, and send­ing Kamina Johnson Smith to lead the Jamaican del­e­ga­tion was an action that expos­es why Mike Pompeo was in Jamaica in January.
Holness’s excuse is that he has press­ing mat­ters to attend to. Oh, give me a damn break.
What the hell does he have to do that is more press­ing than meet­ing with Jamaica’s CARICOM col­leagues?
Jamaica House issued a state­ment on behalf of Holness which stat­ed that Holness did not make the engage­ment due to “press­ing nation­al mat­ters and to ensure the con­sti­tu­tion­al com­po­si­tion of the Cabinet”.
What cocka­mamie? What a dis­re­spect­ful slap to the faces of Jamaica’s CARICOM part­ners.
And for what, but to car­ry out the dic­tates of the most cor­rupt and dan­ger­ous American régime in history? 

In the mean­time, Barbados Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Mia Mottley, warned against Nationalism in the region.
Ironically, White Nationalism is what Trump preach­es and what Mike Pompeo rep­re­sents.
Small Caribbean nations should be bond­ing togeth­er, not car­ry­ing out the dic­tates of the racist and divi­sive régime in Washington DC.
This pub­li­ca­tion sup­ports the stance tak­en by Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and oth­ers.
The actions of the Jamaican Prime Minister was pre­dictable, it is trans­par­ent, and not in the long-term inter­est of Jamaica.
No Jamaican should take pride in this.
No Jamaican should excuse Holness’s actions. He act­ed like a servile syco­phant to a cor­rupt, racist, and law­less régime. Not a good look.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

“Why don’t peo­ple who emi­grate stay in their own coun­try and cre­ate the coun­try they want to live in”?
Whichever way you look at this ques­tion it has legit­i­ma­cy. And so as an Immigrant myself, I too have strug­gled with this ques­tion…
I want­ed to explore the sub­ject out­side the default response that every­one wants a bet­ter life.
Sure, every­one wants a bet­ter life but some peo­ple who are not wealthy or well to do,-do have the abil­i­ty to emi­grate and they some­times opt not to.
Does that make them patri­ots for decid­ing not to leave, and does it make peo­ple like me who decid­ed that enough was enough, trai­tors to our coun­try of birth?

I have giv­en this sub­ject some thought, and I must con­fess that I do not have an answer to this ques­tion. Life is short, peo­ple have fam­i­lies to whom they are com­mit­ted, they want to give their chil­dren a good edu­ca­tion so they may com­pete in this ever-chang­ing world in which we live.
It seems to me that in many cas­es peo­ple emi­grate for those rea­sons rather than the mis­con­cep­tion that peo­ple do so because they are seek­ing wealth. (not that any­thing is wrong with chas­ing wealth in my opin­ion)
For the most part, emi­grat­ing to anoth­er coun­try means liv­ing in a rel­a­tive shad­ow, being treat­ed, not as (sec­ond ‑class cit­i­zens) as some have sug­gest­ed, but as alien crea­tures from anoth­er world, the word “cit­i­zen” does not come into the pic­ture at all.
This is not true in all cas­es, but the black-white racial dynam­ic makes the fore­gone an ever-present reality.

More than 400 died try­ing to make it to the USA last year, accord­ing to the United Nations’ migra­tion agency. Why do they risk their lives and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being sep­a­rat­ed from fam­i­ly?
As I allud­ed to in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, peo­ple leav­ing their home coun­tries today are not doing so because they are chas­ing wealth as explained by Sofia Martinez, a Guatemala-based ana­lyst for the International Crisis Group, “It’s about escap­ing a death sen­tence.”
“This isn’t about immi­grants chas­ing the American dream any­more.“
As it is in South and Latin America a region that encom­pass­es the Caribbean, vio­lence and the resul­tant eco­nom­ic chaos has been a cat­a­lyst for mass migra­tion of peo­ple to oth­er shores.

Violence and war across the Middle East and Africa as well as in Latin and South America have not only cre­at­ed eco­nom­ic chal­lenges for those regions it has also cre­at­ed envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges as well.
The move­ment of peo­ple to oth­er coun­tries does not always mean that peo­ple are always seek­ing to emi­grate to Europe or North America.
As we have seen over the years peo­ple will move from their hor­rid sit­u­a­tion to one that is far from per­fect, and from which many peo­ple have fled and would flee giv­en a chance.
Many Haitians have moved from Haiti to Jamaica and oth­er Islands in the Caribbean.
Many peo­ple have fled Syria to oth­er mid­dle east­ern coun­tries. Many have fled vio­lence in Sudan to oth­er African nations and so on.

The les­son to be learned it seems, is that peo­ple are will­ing to stay in their coun­try of ori­gin if there are peace and safe­ty. This has been true for all of record­ed his­to­ry.
The chal­lenge in all of this is that where there is cor­rupt and weak lead­er­ship few­er and few­er peo­ple are will­ing to risk their entire lives wait­ing for their gov­ern­ment to stand up to the forces which cre­ate unsafe envi­ron­ments, to begin with.
As we have seen in regions through­out the world, whether we agree with the meth­ods uti­lized or not, where gov­ern­ments find a way to pro­tect their cit­i­zens, no-one is break­ing down the doors to leave.

The New York Times Nicholas Kristof wrote in 2012; Generations of Americans have learned to pity Africa. It’s main­ly seen as a quag­mire of famine and geno­cide, a des­ti­na­tion only for a sybarit­ic safari or a masochis­tic aid mis­sion. So here’s anoth­er way to think of Africa: an eco­nom­ic dynamo. Is it time to pre­pare for the African tiger econ­o­my? Six of the world’s 10 fastest-grow­ing economies between 2001 and 2010 were in Africa, accord­ing to The Economist. The International Monetary Fund says that between 2011 and 2015, African coun­tries will account for 7 of the top 10 spots.
There is a new dynamism across the African con­ti­nent with the excep­tion of a few sore spots, peo­ple are not run­ning away as they did before.
In fact, nations like Ghana, Rwanda, and oth­ers have sim­ply rolled out the red car­pet to peo­ple of African ances­try, and oth­ers to come to Africa and settle.

Conversely, Doctors with­out bor­ders have report­ed that every year, an esti­mat­ed 500,000 peo­ple from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras flee extreme vio­lence and head north through Mexico to find safe­ty. The high lev­els of vio­lence in the region, known as the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), are com­pa­ra­ble to that in war zones where MSF has worked for decades.
The coun­tries of the NTCA have long been bur­dened by deep social inequal­i­ty, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, and con­flict — and in some cas­es have been fur­ther desta­bi­lized by US inter­ven­tions in the region over the past 40 years. Now, these coun­tries are also con­tend­ing with the rapid expan­sion of transna­tion­al orga­nized crime, which has explod­ed over the past decade. Across this region, drug and human traf­fick­ing by crim­i­nal groups known as maras, cou­pled with wide­spread cor­rup­tion and weak law enforce­ment, have result­ed in an envi­ron­ment where civil­ians face the ever-present threat of violence.

Back in our own coun­try of Jamaica, both the gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple would do well to under­stand these trend lines and stop play­ing games with those who would ren­der our coun­try a bat­tle­field waste­land.
The bul­let-points in Doctors with­out bor­ders reports are already a prob­lem in our coun­try. Drug & human-traf­fick­ing, deep social inequal­i­ty, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty as always been there, though some­what less a prob­lem today than it was three decades ago. , And desta­bi­liza­tion by US inter­ven­tions in the region over the past 40 years has not gone away.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

From time to time I myself have chas­tised oth­ers for engag­ing in ad hominem attacks on mes­sen­gers because they dis­agree with the mes­sage.
At the same time, I have also reserved the right to ques­tion the right of cer­tain mes­sen­gers to car­ry a cer­tain mes­sage because of the lev­el of taint on them, (lack of moral author­ity), and in par­tic­u­lar, the mes­sen­ger’s lack of (stand­ing) to car­ry that mes­sage.

In the United States, for exam­ple, a per­son may file a claim in court that is a per­fect­ly legit­i­mate claim to be adju­di­cat­ed. Nevertheless, that case may very well get tossed by a judge because the peti­tion­er did not have “stand­ing” to file the claim.
Standing in the legal sense is the abil­i­ty of a par­ty to bring a law­suit in court based upon their stake in the out­come. A par­ty seek­ing to demon­strate stand­ing must be able to show the court suf­fi­cient con­nec­tion to and harm from the law or action challenged.

It is for that rea­son that I find the US Ambassador to Jamaica, Donald Tapia’s con­sis­tent inser­tion of his opin­ions into Jamaican mat­ters increas­ing­ly offen­sive & wor­ri­some.
I must reit­er­ate, as I have done every time that I broach this sub­ject of Jamaica’s sov­er­eign­ty, “Jamaica is not the 51^st state of the United States, and nei­ther should Jamaica seek to become that”.
As a diplo­mat, Tapia has no right dis­cussing inter­nal Jamaican pol­i­tics, not with Journalists, not with any­one.
But that is exact­ly what Tapia did while speak­ing to Jamaica Observer Editors at the Beechwood Avenue Headquarters on the sub­ject of cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
Naturally, cor­rup­tion is a burn­ing issue across the length and breadth of Jamaica, not just in the JCF but across all pub­lic and pri­vate bod­ies.
Why the Observer Editors decid­ed to dis­cuss the JCF and the use of Polygraph with a for­eign diplo­mat is any­body’s guess.
Donald Tapia’s boss at State Pompeo oper­ates out­side the laws and could do well with a poly­graph test.
The larg­er fish at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue is so cor­rupt that he could not be trust­ed to give a depo­si­tion in his own defense by his bat­tery of lawyers, out of fear that he would com­mit perjury.

Donald Tapia echoes what I have con­sis­tent­ly writ­ten, that when it comes to police cor­rup­tion in Jamaica the issue must be broached from the head. That process if attacked from the top is the best way to begin to have senior offi­cers that new recruits to the force can look up to. It also pro­duces a cadre of lead­ers who set good exam­ples of integri­ty but on lead­er­ship over­all.
As a for­eign diplo­mat, Tapia has absolute­ly no stand­ing to be inter­ven­ing in the inter­nal work­ings of Jamaica, much less in how our police depart­ment is man­aged.
This should alarm every Jamaican that a for­eign diplo­mat is allowed to inter­act with Jamaica’s law enforce­ment, (least of all an American diplo­mat).
The United States has some of the most cor­rupt police depart­ments in the world. In most cas­es, entire depart­ments oper­ate as a law unto them­selves. Groups of cops and indi­vid­ual offi­cers, assault cit­i­zens, fal­si­fy reports, plant evi­dence, kill unarmed cit­i­zens based on their race, and com­mit all sorts of egre­gious crimes, they are hard­ly ever held account­able for these crimes against entire com­mu­ni­ties.
As a con­se­quence, no American politi­cian has the moral author­i­ty, much less the stand­ing to give advice to any coun­try on police cor­rup­tion or how to fix it.
For decades and decades, America has turned a blind to the killings, abuse and mass incar­cer­a­tion of its black cit­i­zens by cor­rupt police departments 

According to the Jamaica Observer, Tapia dis­closed that in a sit-down with the police it was made clear that the poly­graph test­ing of new recruits and rank-and-file mem­bers was not enough to ensure the trans­for­ma­tion of the 152-year-old force.
“…Today to become a JCF offi­cer you have to take a poly­graph test. I think it was last year it was 150 peo­ple that applied to become a JCF [mem­ber], only like 75 of them actu­al­ly passed the poly­graph test to move on. So that 75, or what­ev­er the num­ber is, those are all clean offi­cers. But, my point to them is the fact is, okay, so they’re clean, [but] what about this sec­tion up here? They’ve been here for five years. They did­n’t take a poly­graph test,” Tapia said, refer­ring to the force’s offi­cer lev­el, “They did­n’t take a test.”

Of course, it goes with­out say­ing that fish rots from the head. Of course, in this medi­um, we have long point­ed out that cor­rup­tion should be tack­led from the top.
What we can­not sub­scribe to, is peo­ple with­out a moral com­pass and lack of stand­ing preach­ing to us how to fix cor­rup­tion in our coun­try.
I find it incred­i­ble that the Jamaican gov­ern­ment would see this as some­thing it wants to engage in, not to men­tion with this American admin­is­tra­tion of all pos­si­bil­i­ties.
While we are on the sub­ject of poly­graph test­ing, It must first be under­stood that it is not a sci­ence, nei­ther are the results of poly­graph test­ing admis­si­ble in American courts.
Polygraph test­ing will not deter­mine the qual­i­ty of the JCF, or any gov­ern­ment body.
It is sim­ply one more tool giv­en to those who are tasked with select­ing good qual­i­ty can­di­dates for sen­si­tive posi­tions.
If mem­bers of the JCF are sub­ject­ed to poly­graph test­ing so too should all oth­er pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees.
Law enforce­ment web­sites argue, it is impor­tant to note that the poly­graph test is not always 100% accu­rate and you may “false­ly fail” the test.
They also pro­vide guide­lines on how to pre­pare for a poly­graph test and how to be suc­cess­ful at pass­ing them.
By virtue of this, less empha­sis should be placed on Polygraph tests and more on pay­ing qual­i­fied can­di­dates a liv­able wage and insti­tut­ing appro­pri­ate super­vi­sion at all lev­els. Check out the link below on the poly­graph.
https://​golawen​force​ment​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​m​a​s​t​e​r​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​p​o​l​y​g​r​a​p​h​-​t​e​st/

Massachusetts Senator and Presidential can­di­date Elizabeth Warren in 2019 blast­ed Donald Tapia and oth­ers cho­sen by Donald Trump as woe­ful­ly unqual­i­fied for there posi­tions.
On her offi­cial twit­ter account sen­a­tor Warren said, “For decades, admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties appoint­ed big donors as ambas­sadors. They’re usu­al­ly not experts in the coun­try, for­eign pol­i­cy — or any­thing else rel­e­vant to the job. But, Donald Trump per­fect­ed the act of sell­ing swanky diplo­mat­ic posts to rich buf­foons.”
Senator Warren named Gordon Sondland, Robert ‘Woody’ Johnson, Doug Manchester, and Kelly Knight Craft as donor ambas­sadors, along with Trump’s ambas­sador appoint­ment to Jamaica – Arizona busi­ness­man Donald Ray Tapia.
Not only does Tapia not have stand­ing or moral con­vic­tion to speak on cor­rup­tion, but his very ambas­sador­ship is also a prod­uct of cor­rupt prac­tices.
One of the most dif­fi­cult mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate with Jamaicans liv­ing at home who have strong views on American pol­i­tics, is that even though they may fol­low the news, they do not have the lived expe­ri­ence.
Jamaica should not be tak­ing advice on polic­ing, much less on cor­rup­tion from an unqual­i­fied neo­phyte who comes from one of the most cor­rupt regimes in American history.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

“It all start­ed back when there was a lot of pres­sure on banks to make loans to every­one.”
And then Congress got involved ― local elect­ed offi­cials, as well ― and said, ‘Oh that’s not fair, these peo­ple should be able to get cred­it.’ And once you start­ed push­ing in that direc­tion, banks start­ed mak­ing more and more loans where the cred­it of the per­son buy­ing the house wasn’t as good as you would like.”
[Michael Bloomberg] was Speaking to the mort­gage melt­down of 2008. And more to the point, endors­ing the process known as redlin­ing.
According to (Huffingtonpost) “Redlining, was the term where banks took whole neigh­bor­hoods and said, ‘People in these neigh­bor­hoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mort­gages, tell your sales­men don’t go into those areas.’”

Huffingtonpost also detailed how Michael Bloomberg was a mem­ber of some lily-white social clubs before he decid­ed to run for the may­oral­ty of New York City.
Those clubs includ­ed the Century Club, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white club in Purchase, New York, & the Brook club — an élite, secre­tive social club in mid­town Manhattan. According to the same report­ing, Bloomberg resigned his mem­ber­ship in both clubs but rejoined after com­plet­ing his three terms as Mayor of New York City.
This seems to be stan­dard oper­at­ing prac­tice for Micahel Bloomberg who was a strong advo­cate for the con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram used by the NYPD called ‘Stop & Frisk.
The con­tro­ver­sial prac­tice which dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed African-Americans was intro­duced by Bloomberg’s pre­de­ces­sor Republican Rudolph Giuliani.
The prac­tice was wide­ly panned and was even­tu­al­ly dropped by the NYPD. Even so, Michael Bloomberg praised the pro­gram and crit­i­cized those who fought to stop it, even after he left office.

The New York Times Ashley Southall said in Never of 2019; During Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure as may­or of New York City, police offi­cers stopped and ques­tioned peo­ple they believed to be engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty on the street more than five mil­lion times. Officers often then searched the detainees — the vast major­i­ty of whom were young black and Latino men — for weapons that rarely mate­ri­al­ized.
“The tem­per­a­ture in the city at the time was that the police were at war with black and brown peo­ple on the streets,” said Jenn Rolnick-Borchetta, the direc­tor of impact lit­i­ga­tion at the Bronx Defenders, one of the groups that have suc­cess­ful­ly sued the Police Department over the prac­tice. “And that is how peo­ple expe­ri­enced it.”
At the time the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLY) said, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk pro­gram con­tin­ues to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get, stop, and frisk peo­ple of col­or, espe­cial­ly young black and Latino men and boys, the vast major­i­ty of whom have done noth­ing wrong. 

The New York Daily News report­ed that in 2011, the peak year of Stop Question & Frisk (SQF) in NYC, 84% of those stopped were either black or Hispanic — a fig­ure well above black and Hispanic rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the city.
Six per­cent of those stops result­ed in an arrest while an addi­tion­al 6% result­ed in a tick­et. This means there was no fur­ther police action tak­en in 88% of cas­es. 
Despite the fail­ure of the prac­tice to (a) pro­duce results that could be point­ed to ‑to off­set the out­cry, and (b) despite the dis­pro­por­tion­ate way in which it was exe­cut­ed, and © despite the ten­sions it cre­at­ed between the police depart­ment and Black and Hispanic peo­ple in the city, Michael Bloomberg dou­bled down­ing on his defense of the ini­tia­tive.
That, of course, was until he decid­ed he want­ed to run for the Presidency of the United States.

As soon as he saw an open­ing to run for President, Michael Bloomberg imme­di­ate­ly had a come to Jesus moment and decid­ed, “maybe stop & frisk was not such a good pol­i­cy after all”. It is the very same way that Bloomberg decid­ed to quit his mem­ber­ships in the all-white clubs when it suit­ed his inter­est and rejoined when he was no longer under the glare of the spot­lights as a politi­cian.
And so Bloomberg, the recent con­vert to civ­il rights, ready to sing kum­baya, has been doing the rounds in the African-America church­es.
Bloomberg may be an ego­ma­ni­a­cal oppor­tunist but he is no fool, he knows no Democrat can win the white house with­out win­ning the black vote.
He start­ed off with his friend A R Bernard’s church in Brooklyn which is the largest meg-church in the north­east, boast­ing a mem­ber­ship of about 40,000.
In a kind of mea-cul­pa tour, Bloomberg has set out to win black vot­ers to his side, even if he has to bold-faced­ly lie to them.

As more and more voic­es have been raised about his record when it comes to Black America, Michael Bloomberg has launched an all-out charm offen­sive to con­vince African-Americans that he is a changed man.
As his redlin­ing com­ments and stop and frisk poli­cies gath­er steam against his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions Michael Bloomberg told reporters in Tennessee Thursday that he intends to launch “Mike for Black America”. Hahaha.…..Really now?
Bloomberg must know that win­ning over Black peo­ple real­ly does not require much more than promis­es and a pat on the back, unless you are also Black your­self.

“I apol­o­gized for the prac­tice and the pain that it caused,” he said Wednesday. “It was five years ago. And, you know, it’s just not the way that I think, and it doesn’t reflect what I do every day.”
Oh my God, if only life was that sim­ple, despite the pain he has caused he demands for­give­ness on the basis that it has been five years ago.
If only the peo­ple who have been abused by Bloomberg’s police and framed could have it that easy and have their good names restored.
They too should claim it’s been five years and then some. But those priv­i­leges are reserved for the rich and pow­er­ful like Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump. 

Introducing Michael Bloomberg at an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Dr. Elenora Woods, pres­i­dent of the city’s NAACP chap­ter, (a black woman) said Bloomberg would be a tire­less fight­er for eco­nom­ic jus­tice for black Americans.
Sure thing I sup­pose, she is prov­ing a neg­a­tive, Bloomberg has yet bought the Democrat nom­i­na­tion, but she already knows that he will be a tire­less fight­er for Black Americans.
You sim­ply can­not make these things up.
“Look, I know what racism looks like,” woods went on, “I know what it looks like, and that’s not Mike Bloomberg.”
I don’t know whether Michael Bloomberg is a racist or not, in fact, that is hard­ly the point. He has demon­strat­ed through his poli­cies, that he is dan­ger­ous to the inter­ests of black peo­ple, that is the issue in front of us.
I have been think­ing about join­ing the NAACP but Nah .….…I’m good.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

The choice of for­mer Contractor General Greg Christie to lead the Integrity Commission of Jamaica should offer some hope to peo­ple of hon­or in the coun­try.
The for­mer Contractor General has been one of the most out­spo­ken offi­cials on the issue of cor­rup­tion ever to hold pub­lic office.
Greg Christie would have been expo­nen­tial­ly more suc­cess­ful dur­ing his time as head of the Contractor General’s Department, if he had pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al powers.

During his 7‑year stint as Contractor General, Christie was accused by the JLP, that some of his com­ments would cause com­pe­tent and skilled Jamaicans to think twice before join­ing the pub­lic sec­tor for fear that their rep­u­ta­tion could be dam­aged beyond repair.
The equal­ly pathet­ic PNP accused the then Contractor General of being overzeal­ous.
The fact that Greg Christie would be attacked by both polit­i­cal par­ties is indeed evi­dence that he was step­ping on their toes.
Jamaica needs more Greg Christies, not fewer.

The peo­ple can only pros­per when there is a moral and hon­est Government. One of the most debil­i­tat­ing chal­lenges our coun­try faces, is the deca­dent issue of across the board cor­rup­tion.
By him­self, Greg Christie can do lit­tle, but togeth­er we all can do a lot.
Even as the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of mor­bid cor­rup­tion has tak­en over the Governments of larg­er more pow­er­ful nations, it still behooves Jamaica to con­tin­ue to strive for clean and hon­est lead­er­ship in gov­ern­ment.
It is for that rea­son that we ful­ly endorse the appoint­ment of Greg Christie to head the Integrity Commission.