Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of rid­ing and whistling at the same time, or as the Americans say, “walk and chew gum at the same time”.
We are not by any stretch a mono­lith. we are a diverse com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple of African, Chinese, Caucasian, Indian, Arab, Lebanese, Jewish and a slew of oth­er peo­ple. Yet we are a peo­ple vehe­ment­ly Jamaican to our core, all of us.
It is for that rea­son that we can take pride in the strides our coun­try have made since 1962 when our coun­try was grant­ed Independence and giv­en auton­o­my over our own lives.
Our progress in areas of edu­ca­tion, cul­ture, sports, med­i­cine, research, agri­cul­ture, tourism, is remark­able.
As a small nation, we have every right to hold our head high. Even among our least edu­cat­ed peo­ple, street smarts are a valu­able and val­ued cur­ren­cy that makes every Jamaican, not just wit­ty, but decep­tive­ly intrigu­ing.
We are sec­ond to no one in mak­ing some­thing from very little.

Understanding those attrib­ut­es makes it a head-scratch­er that we are not con­nect­ing the dots on the trau­ma vio­lent crime is wreak­ing on the coun­try.
There are many Jamaicans, far too many if you ask me, who would rather that we focus sole­ly on the pos­i­tives. We should­n’t wash our dirty laun­dry in pub­lic they say.
Of course, those peo­ple for­got one lit­tle secret, there is some­thing called the inter­net, there are no secrets any­more.
Others say we should sim­ply focus on the good things. As if the bad things will just get frus­trat­ed and dis­ap­pear on their own.
Bad things hap­pen on their own, peo­ple have to work their buns off to make good things hap­pen, both indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly.
We must cham­pi­on the good and seek to improve on them but we must focus like a laser on the bad, oth­er­wise bad becomes worse and the worse will inex­orably make us the worst.

We have to find ways to agree that the things that are good are com­mend­able and that the things which are not so good are .……well they are not good, and we must find ways to fix them col­lec­tive­ly.
The year 2019 end­ed with over 1300 mur­ders, which rep­re­sent­ed an increase over the year 2018 which had reg­is­tered a decrease com­pared to the year 2017.
Essentially, even when there is a slight decrease in vio­lent deaths and assaults, because of an absence of work­able and sus­tain­able strate­gies crime lev­els become sole­ly a func­tion of the whims and fan­cy of the vio­lence producers.

The World Bank laid out how crime affects nations as fol­lows.

A high rate of vio­lent crime can have many adverse reper­cus­sions:
1 It has a neg­a­tive impact on the invest­ment cli­mate and can deter or delay both domes­tic and for­eign invest­ment, and hence growth.
2 It leads to a high­er cost of doing busi­ness, because of the need to employ dif­fer­ent forms of secu­ri­ty, and diverts invest­ment away from busi­ness expan­sion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ment, and may lead to a less than opti­mal oper­at­ing strategy.

2. 2 It leads to busi­ness loss­es, aris­ing from loot­ing, arson, theft, extor­tion, and fraud.
3. 3 It leads to loss of out­put because of reduced hours of oper­a­tion (includ­ing avoid­ing night shifts) or loss of work­days aris­ing from out­breaks of vio­lence, and avoid­ance of some types of eco­nom­ic activity.
4. 4 It also reduces out­put because of the tem­po­rary (from injury) or per­ma­nent (from mur­der) exit of indi­vid­u­als from the labor force. In the lat­ter case, the loss is not just the cur­rent out­put, but the out­put in the remain­ing years of the individual’s work­ing life.
5. 5 It can also cause a per­ma­nent shut-down of firms or relo­ca­tion to less crime-prone coun­tries.
   It erodes the devel­op­ment of human cap­i­tal as well as social cap­i­tal and thus con­strains the poten­tial for growth. The crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica seems to be an impor­tant rea­son for migra­tion, since the fear of crime sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the qual­i­ty of life. Crime and vio­lence have also been blamed for slow­ing down the rate of return of migrants back to Jamaica. Also, crime forces oth­er­wise pro­duc­tive indi­vid­u­als to occa­sion­al­ly exit the labor force because of vio­lent injury to them­selves or close asso­ciates, or because of social unrest in the com­mu­ni­ty. Violence in some com­mu­ni­ties also caus­es schools to close peri­od­i­cal­ly. Moreover, home and com­mu­ni­ty insta­bil­i­ty is not con­ducive to learn­ing and edu­ca­tion­al objectives.

It diverts pub­lic resources exces­sive­ly away from pro­duc­tive uses that have a poten­tial­ly much high­er impact on social devel­op­ment and growth, to areas such as police, jus­tice, the med­ical sys­tem (for treat­ment of vio­lence-relat­ed injuries and trau­ma). For exam­ple, between ¹⁹⁸⁸⁄₈₉ and ²⁰⁰¹⁄₀₂, Jamaica’s bud­getary expen­di­ture for health, in nom­i­nal terms, grew 23 per­cent annu­al­ly, where­as the bud­get for nation­al secu­ri­ty and jus­tice grew by 62 per­cent. Since 1999, the bud­get for Justice and Correctional Services plus the Police has exceed­ed the bud­get allo­ca­tion for health (PIOJ, var­i­ous issues). For pri­vate cit­i­zens, it also diverts resources away from poten­tial­ly use­ful expen­di­tures like edu­ca­tion, to spend­ing on treat­ing injury and on pri­vate security.

Unless we devel­op tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude and stop pre­tend­ing that we can deal with this issue by the book, this prob­lem is sim­ply going to get worse.
This is not a prob­lem for America to solve, America can­not solve its own prob­lems.
It is not up to the British or Canadians to fix our crime prob­lem. We have this unique Jamaican propen­si­ty of ignor­ing dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.
In fact, we not only ignore their crimes, but we also idol­ize and lion­ize the crim­i­nals until they become too large and pow­er­ful to be con­trolled local­ly.
Then we look for the Americans to come to bail us out, as if Jamaica is the fifty-first state of the United States.
In the mean­time, the harm they do to the coun­try is incal­cu­la­ble, not just in blood and trea­sure but to our pop­u­lar cul­ture.
An inter­state high­way with­out guardrails is real­ly not a prop­er­ly con­struct­ed high­way. A coun­try that refus­es to guard its estab­lished demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples is a coun­try des­tined for failure.

Former Contractor General and now direc­tor of the Turks and Caicos Islands Integrity Commission Greg Christie, speak­ing at the Annual Archbishop Samuel Carter Lecture held Wednesday evening at Campion College, high­light­ed that Jamaica is now the num­ber two mur­der cap­i­tal of the world.
Let that sink in because some­one is going to argue that things are not so bad, even though the cumu­la­tive cost is out­lined above.
“Speaking of Jamaica, Christie said, “It’s now num­ber six in orga­nized crime out of 141 coun­tries, that’s not some­thing to be hap­py about”. “We can’t put that under the cov­ers”. It tells us some­thing about our soci­ety – a very mur­der­ous soci­ety.”
“There are two laws in our soci­ety. “One for the well-to-do – the rich, the con­nect­ed – and there is anoth­er law. The first one is sel­dom applied while the oth­er one is applied to every­body,” Christie said.

We are run­ning a fool’s errand when we pre­tend that our coun­try is on the path to some kind of eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle, despite this unchecked law­less­ness.
Yet one writer char­ac­ter­ized Greg Christie this way. “Christie’s, acid tongue and volu­mi­nous reports chafed the nerves of pub­lic offi­cials dur­ing his tenure in Jamaica”.
Speaking out is char­ac­ter­ized as acid-tongued.
The longer the author­i­ties wait to clamp down on this mon­ster the more entrenched it becomes, the more entrenched it becomes is the hard­er it is to eradicate.

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.

In 1914 the world was plunged into a glob­al con­flict, we have come to refer to that con­flict as world war one (ww1). That con­flict began after the assas­si­na­tion of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
According to History​.com, ten­sions had been brew­ing through­out Europe — espe­cial­ly in the trou­bled Balkan region of south­east Europe — for years before World War I actu­al­ly broke out. A num­ber of alliances involv­ing European pow­ers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and oth­er par­ties had exist­ed for years, but polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty in the Balkans (par­tic­u­lar­ly Bosnia, Serbia, and Herzegovina) threat­ened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignit­ed World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand—heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire — was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nation­al­ist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and oth­er nation­al­ists were strug­gling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Thanks to new mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies and the hor­rors of trench war­fare, World War I saw unprece­dent­ed lev­els of car­nage and destruc­tion. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed vic­to­ry, more than 16 mil­lion peo­ple — sol­diers and civil­ians alike — were dead.

World war one last­ed from 1914 until 1918, as stat­ed in History’s report­ing, by the time the con­flict end­ed over 16 mil­lion human beings were dead.
By 1939 the sec­ond world war had bro­ken out in Europe, a mere twen­ty-one years (21) lat­er. One would have thought that the death and destruc­tion of world war one would have served as a wake-up call to the European con­ti­nent, that they must set­tle their dif­fer­ences through dia­logue and con­ver­sa­tions, not so.

History​.com char­ac­ter­ized the rea­son for the sec­ond world war thus; The insta­bil­i­ty cre­at­ed in Europe by the First World War (1914−18) set the stage for anoth­er inter­na­tion­al con­flict – World War II – which broke out two decades lat­er and would prove even more dev­as­tat­ing. Rising to pow­er in an eco­nom­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strate­gic treaties with Italy and Japan to fur­ther his ambi­tions of world domination. 

The truth of the mat­ter is that the rea­son for the break­out of world war two was far more com­pli­cat­ed than the fore­gone para­graph syn­op­sized.
Hitler felt that the Treaty of Versailles that brought World War I to an end, blamed Germany for the start of (WW1) and placed oner­ous con­di­tion­al­i­ties on the German peo­ple. Adolph Hitler promised that he would bring Germany out from under what he saw as an unfair treaty.
With the full back­ing of the German peo­ple behind him on the treaty issue, Hitler was able to devel­op his racial­ist mil­i­taris­tic goals for Germany.
The sec­ond world war end­ed in 1945, thank­ful­ly the Western pow­ers had defeat­ed the Nazi Axis of Germany, Italy„ and Japan.
Critical to the war effort in Eastern Europe was the effort of the Soviet Union against Hitler’s war machine.

In 1945, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of 50 coun­tries met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conference on International Organization to draw up the United Nations Charter. Those del­e­gates delib­er­at­ed on the basis of pro­pos­als worked out by the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States at Dumbarton Oaks, in the United States in August-October 1944.
The Charter was signed on 26 June 1945 by the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the 50 coun­tries. Poland, which was not rep­re­sent­ed at the Conference, signed it lat­er and became one of the orig­i­nal 51 Member States.
The United Nations offi­cial­ly came into exis­tence on 24 October 1945, when the Charter had been rat­i­fied by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and by a major­i­ty of oth­er sig­na­to­ries. United Nations Day is cel­e­brat­ed on 24 October each year.

Since the incep­tion of the United Nations, in 1945 there have been many con­flicts, to include the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars and many oth­er con­flicts in which America’s actions are less overt, to include the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Bosnian war and America’s excur­sions in places like Panama and Grenada.
Despite those con­flicts, the world has dodged major esca­la­tions com­pa­ra­ble to the two pre­vi­ous glob­al con­flicts of 1914 and 1939.
A full 75-years has passed since the last world war. The avoid­ance of a world­wide con­flict may have some­thing to do with the two com­pet­ing forces of the United States and the Former Soviet Union bal­anc­ing each oth­er out with their expan­sive nuclear arse­nals.
Since the end of the sec­ond world war, sev­er­al nations have also acquired for­mi­da­ble nuclear arse­nals which may have some deter­rent effect.

Those nations now include “Israel”, Great Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and of course the Russian Federation and the United States.
When the his­to­ry books are writ­ten on world his­to­ry let it be fac­tu­al­ly depict­ed, not by alter­na­tive facts, but by hard truths.
Let it be doc­u­ment­ed that President Barack Obama was able to bring the Islamic Republic to the table along with oth­er nations and ham­mer out an agree­ment.
By all accounts, Iran stuck to the terms of the agree­ment. The ene­mies of peace argue that it was not a [Treaty] and as such tear­ing up the deal was no big deal.

It is not the first time that we have been brought lied to, remem­ber the nar­ra­tive that Iraq had weapons of mass destruc­tion, and that Iraq was about to unleash them in a mush­room cloud over American cities?
That was the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a total­ly unpro­voked war against a sov­er­eign Iraqui nation.
Hundreds of thou­sands of Iraquis were killed and for what? Not that there could be any legal or moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ille­git­i­mate inva­sion of a sov­er­eign nation, the top­pling of its gov­ern­ment and the slaugh­ter of its people. 

WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED UNDER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

The JPOA or Joint Plan of Action was a frame­work agree­ment that encour­aged the P5+1 to con­tin­ue to nego­ti­ate a com­pre­hen­sive deal on Iran’s nuclear pro­gram in exchange for nar­row and tem­po­rary sanc­tions relief. That frame­work deal helps pave the way to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, which is also com­mon­ly referred to as the “Iran Deal”.
The JPOA was entered into on November 24^th, 2013. It is a nar­row­ly-con­strued sanc­tions relief pro­gram designed to encour­age Iran to stay at the nego­ti­at­ing table. It is the only eli­gi­ble sanc­tions relief until Implementation Day.

The JPOA relaxed eco­nom­ic sanc­tions direct­ed at non‑U.S. per­sons when con­duct­ing busi­ness with Iran relat­ed to petro­chem­i­cal prod­ucts; the auto­mo­bile indus­try; Iran’s pur­chase and sale of gold and oth­er pre­cious met­als; and Iran’s export of crude oil to China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and Taiwan. The United States also autho­rized U.S. per­sons to sup­ply Iran’s spare parts in sup­port of the safe oper­a­tion of Iran’s civ­il air­craft. Furthermore, the JPOA estab­lished a finan­cial chan­nel to facil­i­tate human­i­tar­i­an trade with Iran. This lim­it­ed relief was offered in exchange for Iran tem­porar­i­ly lim­it­ing its nuclear pro­gram while the par­ties negotiated.

There was no rea­son to walk away from the deal. The Iranians by all accounts were adher­ing to the rules of the JCPOA.
The prob­lem with the JCPOA is that it bore the sig­na­ture of Barack Obama the 44^th pres­i­dent of the United States.
And that was a prob­lem for the moral­ly bank­rupt nar­cis­sis­tic racist who suc­ceed­ed him.
He could not bear to leave in place a plan that no oth­er American pres­i­dent of the United States was able to secure.
So he tore up the deal claim­ing that he could get a bet­ter deal, the truth of the mat­ter is that he can­not even get Iran to the table to talk, because world lead­ers have zero respect for him.
And so now the cam­paign of lies and defama­tion has increased as the war­mon­gers build a case for war against anoth­er sov­er­eign nation.
Do not be fooled by the lies. 

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.

With over 1300 homi­cides in 2019, mur­ders hap­pen­ing in Zones Of Special Operations and in spaces in which there are active States of Emergencies in place, there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the sta­tus quo.
Several indi­vid­u­als over­seas have offered their ser­vices to the Jamaican Government to help with solv­ing this mon­ster which is rob­bing the coun­try of its human and eco­nom­ic trea­sures and poten­tial. Unfortunately, to date, there has been silence from the admin­is­tra­tion in Jamaica House, despite the con­tin­ued ele­vat­ed lev­els of homi­cides and oth­er vio­lent felonies being com­mit­ted daily.

Not every per­son who claims to have exper­tise may offer up good or prac­ti­cal ideas on how to pro­ceed on this crit­i­cal mat­ter.
Nevertheless, even a bro­ken clock is right twice per day. On that basis alone, it is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that the admin­is­tra­tion would not jump at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take advan­tage of the offers of help.
The Government could eas­i­ly form a blue-rib­bon pan­el to con­sid­er the sug­ges­tions. A blue-rib­bon pan­el that does not include any­one from the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the oth­er know-noth­ing, know-it-alls, whose ideas got us into this pick­le in the first place.

Failure to accept offers of help and seri­ous­ly con­sid­er the pro­pos­als put for­ward will con­firm what many peo­ple both local­ly and abroad already believe, that politi­cians are heav­i­ly invest­ed in the state of crim­i­nal­i­ty in the coun­try.
For our part, we have sug­gest­ed over the last decade that the nation needs com­pre­hen­sive reso­cial­iza­tion of our peo­ple. Since Government can­not leg­is­late moral val­ues in the home, it should begin by doing so in the schools.
For years I have called for a clos­er look at bring­ing young peo­ple not going to col­lege or trade schools under the tute­lage of some kind of pro­gram, run and super­vised by the Jamaica Defense Force. That pro­gram would not include tac­tics and or strate­gies that could be used against the coun­try if the indi­vid­ual choos­es to step out­side the laws.

Discipline and Civic duty and respon­si­bil­i­ty are crit­i­cal com­po­nents in nation-build­ing. None of these pro­pos­als have been act­ed on in a ful­some way, and as is cus­tom­ary the pro­pos­als are being regur­gi­tat­ed local­ly as if they are nov­el ideas.
In 2013, three years after the INDECOM act was passed and it came up for review, I wrote sev­er­al arti­cles beg­ging the then admin­is­tra­tion to change aspects of the law, to com­plete­ly repeal and replace it, or pay for inac­tion lat­er.
The law came up for review, as it has rea­son­ably been designed to after 3 years. At the time the Police, Military and even the Minister of National Security came out against the Act. 

Minister of National Security at the time Peter Bunting did not mince words in rela­tion to the Act. quote: This com­mis­sion is too pow­er­ful!
Nothing sub­stan­tive, if at all, was done by the par­lia­ment and the Act was allowed to remain.
The dam­age to the rule of law in the coun­try since then, will nev­er be known. Notwithstanding, it is clear that what emanat­ed from the last decade of the INDECOM Act, is that we have a police depart­ment that is com­plete­ly immo­bi­lized and unwill­ing to get involved in fight­ing crime, out of fear of being criminalized.

That is not to say that INDECOM is sole­ly to blame for the high lev­el of vio­lent crime in the coun­try. Far from it, nev­er­the­less, the last thing that the police need­ed was a [rabid dog] with a per­son­al agen­da, who is will­ing to coach and coerce wit­ness­es to lie in order to build crim­i­nal cas­es against police offi­cers sim­ply for doing their jobs.
On that score, INDECOM and Terrence Williams have become a sanc­tu­ary for the crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing on the Island, com­pa­ra­ble only to the polit­i­cal cov­er under which ’70s and 80’s gang­sters oper­at­ed with impunity.

Today, the sin­gle most astound­ing thing to me as a for­mer front line crime fight­er, is the igno­rance and bone-head­ed­ness of the present admin­is­tra­tion in its belief that vio­lent crime can be con­tained by a show of red seams and cam­ou­flage uni­forms.
High law enforce­ment vis­i­bil­i­ty is a deter­rent for some cat­e­gories of crimes and offens­es. Traffic offens­es sim­ple lar­ce­nies, etc
Vigilant police patrols are a deter­rent to break­ings, bur­glar­ies, rob­beries, and oth­er offens­es of that nature.
Great crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tors with the appro­pri­ate work­ing knowl­edge of crim­i­nals and their modus operan­di, who are unafraid to take them down one way or anoth­er, are the only deter­rent to gang­land activity.

That is the rea­son that despite the smoke-screens called ZOSO and the SOE’s there has been an increase in vio­lent crimes, and dan­ger­ous killers are not being held account­able nei­ther in the courts on any sig­nif­i­cant lev­el, or are they being neu­tral­ized by the police.
The Island’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, and the Prime Minister, in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­ue to play pol­i­tics on this issue. In the mean­time, in the last decade alone, over 16,000 Jamaicans have lost their lives vio­lent­ly.
The laws are not near­ly tough enough. The police are not near­ly as effec­tive as they should be, because the real offi­cers who want to make a dif­fer­ence have no guar­an­teed path in this JCF, and are fear­ful of being criminalized.

In the mean­time, the aver­age joe on the street have no respect for the laws.
They are unper­turbed by the pres­ence of the police and are quite will­ing to drape offi­cers in their uni­forms and beat the hell out of them. (Ashes cold dawg sleep in de).
This is a new year, it requires new ideas, humil­i­ty, and intro­spec­tion. Clearly, the strate­gies employed in deal­ing with vio­lent crimes over the last three years are [not]working.
And so I beseech the Prime Minister to change course. “You have the pow­er and the office to lead on this sem­i­nal issue”.
“Mister Prime Minister, it is only great lead­ers who have the humil­i­ty to say I made a mis­take”. Violent crim­i­nals require a firm hand. A very firm hand.
Do not be delud­ed any longer into think­ing that flood­ing neigh­bor­hoods with the uni­formed bod­ies of poor­ly trained police offi­cers and sol­diers are the solu­tion to these killings.
They are not.
Too many inno­cent peo­ple have died because your admin­is­tra­tion and oth­ers before it refused to act deci­sive­ly against crim­i­nals. The ball is in your court, you do not want any more blood on your hands.
You are the leader of the coun­try.
Act now.

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.

Mike Beckles

There is much that can be said about crime in the Caribbean region and the way indi­vid­ual Island nations deal with it on their own.
One thing is cer­tain, is that no Caribbean coun­try has dealt as poor­ly with the issue of crime as Jamaica has.
Across the region, we have seen peo­ple take decid­ed stances, in some cas­es even more stri­dent than their respec­tive gov­ern­ments, has been against who they believe are vio­lence pro­duc­ers who will inex­orably degrade the qual­i­ty of their lives. This has sparked protests from our native Jamaica, and her nation­als, a clear sign that Jamaicans are hav­ing doors slammed shut in their faces even across the CARICOM region. 

A for­mer col­league retired Deputy Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant spoke elo­quent­ly on this issue in a social media post days ago, detail­ing in no uncer­tain terms how our polit­i­cal lead­ers have let Jamaica down as a mat­ter of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, and our coun­try­men and women pur­sue a path of destruc­tion while expect­ing good out­comes.
DCP grant wrote in ref­er­ence to a local pub­li­ca­tion’s head­line “mur­ders galore”, It is a dis­mal indict­ment on a fail­ing soci­ety that glo­ri­fies the wrong val­ues and idol­izes per­sons who pro­mote may­hem. Even more appalling is the igno­rance that pre­vents us from cause and effects out­comes, we do the same things day in day out and are sur­prised when we get a wors­en­ing of the same outcomes.

Needless to say, these pages have been ded­i­cat­ed since 2010 to argu­ing, and urg­ing my fel­low Jamaicans to change course from the path they are on.
The cen­tral theme as val­i­dat­ed by Grant is that we are yet to make the link between respect for the rule of law and safe­ty and secu­ri­ty.
The aver­age Jamaican would like to live to a ripe old age, even those who engage in tak­ing the lives of oth­ers, they too cry like lit­tle bitch­es when con­front­ed with cer­tain death.
Yet arguably, the aver­age Jamaican engages in prac­tices that lit­er­al­ly guar­an­tee that they will be vic­tim­ized by vio­lent crime.
Hiding crim­i­nals. Refusing to give infor­ma­tion to law enforce­ment in con­fi­dence. Actively shield­ing crim­i­nals. Benefitting and prof­it­ing from crim­i­nal con­duct. Demonizing and slan­der­ing law-enforce­ment for doing their jobs. Actively engag­ing in demon­stra­tions against police and pro­vid­ing false state­ments to adver­sar­i­al agen­cies opposed to the rule of law, are only a few of those prac­tices which are anti­thet­i­cal to a sta­ble demo­c­ra­t­ic nation.

Some of the fac­tors which plague Jamaica also plague oth­er Caribbean nations. Political inter­fer­ence. Lobbying from enti­ties like defense lawyers, so-called human rights groups and oth­er NGOs has pro­vid­ed suc­cor and sup­port to crim­i­nal gangs in ways they nev­er bar­gained for.
The year 2019 just con­clud­ed and even though we do not have the offi­cial crime sta­tis­tics from the police, it is safe to say that over 1300 Jamaicans have been mur­dered despite the imple­men­ta­tion of mul­ti­ple States Emergencies (SOE’s) & Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO’s) across var­i­ous hotspots across the Island.
Clearly, the mea­sures in place are not work­ing. Clearly, a new approach is need­ed. The solu­tion to Jamaica’s crime epi­dem­ic is not to be found in any new crime plan, ZOSO, SOE or any oth­er stop-gap mea­sure.
In fact, it will not be found in the train­ing of more of the same cour­tesy corps cops who are being turned out onto the streets in num­bers but are unable to effect a sim­ple arrest with dis­patch and pro­fi­cien­cy.
A thou­sand zeroes are still worth noth­ing unless a sol­id pos­i­tive num­ber pre­cedes them, More poor­ly trained, poor­ly super­vised, poor­ly renu­mer­at­ed, poor­ly sup­port­ed police makes no dif­fer­ence.
During my ser­vice, I saw those dead­wood cops in name only. As one who engages in social com­men­tary years lat­er, I see the same dead­wood, many of whom served over three decades yet made not a damn dif­fer­ence beyond the salaries they col­lect­ed.
Most of them are the harsh­est crit­ics of those who prof­fer work­able ideas out­side their scope of understanding.

Across the Caribbean Sea in the twin Island Republic of Trinidad & Tobago mur­ders and acts of ter­ror­ism has long being a part of their infra­struc­ture as it has been ours.
Today Trinidad and Tobago have a Police Commissioner who exem­pli­fies what polic­ing and lead­er­ship of police ser­vices ought to look like.
Commissioner Gary Griffiths is a no-non­sense police com­mis­sion­er who is a cop’s cop.
He is unafraid of the spe­cial inter­est, crim­i­nal lawyers, ( term self-explana­to­ry). Those who make a name from demo­niz­ing cops, and oth­ers tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing cops

This year, this medi­um cel­e­brates a decade of com­mit­ment to the rule of law, through its unwa­ver­ing sup­port for the nation’s law enforce­ment agency.
As it’s founder, and a past mem­ber of the JCF, I have com­plet­ed count­less hours of research and writ­ings ded­i­cat­ed to the bet­ter­ment of our coun­try, through sup­port for the rule of law.
Throughout that time I have argued that the hier­ar­chy of the JCF has been the most cor­rupt incom­pe­tent bunch of peo­ple any­where in law enforce­ment.
Some of the adjec­tives I have used to describe them have been unsa­vory but well earned.
In recent times the new head of the Police Federation Sergeant Petra Rowe has shed the cloak of fear and tore into that same group label­ing them lazy, and opposed to the present com­mis­sion­er’s agen­da.
It is good to see new police lead­er­ship grow­ing balls and speak­ing out against this cor­rupt lot of incompetents.

This how­ev­er in no way absolves the imbe­cil­ic lead­er­ship of the two polit­i­cal par­ties. Neither has shown a ded­i­ca­tion to the secu­ri­ty and sol­ven­cy of Jamaica. Instead what they have engaged in are cheap polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing which has been dan­ger­ous­ly detri­men­tal to our coun­try, all because of the need to gain and main­tain polit­i­cal con­trol.
At least when Commissioner Griffiths speaks in Trinidad and Tobago those polit­i­cal imbe­ciles have the shame to remain silent.
In Jamaica, a police com­mis­sion­er is mere­ly a lap­dog for the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing morons who beat the desks in the par­lia­ment build­ing. As such from 103 Old Hope Road down, the JCF is noth­ing but a neutered mon­grel with no bark, and cer­tain­ly no bite.
If only we had police lead­ers in our coun­try will­ing to stand up for Jamaica, but of course, our soci­etal mon­grels would not even have the shame to sim­ply shut their stu­pid mouths.

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.

Have you ever won­dered why Democrats are always shak­ing in their boots about what Republicans think, how they will react to what they want to do?
Me too, and that is the rea­son the coun­try lags behind and could arguably be seen as regress­ing in some areas when com­pared to parts of Europe and Asia.
It is also the rea­son that the United States con­tin­ues to appear to be a cen­ter-right nation, despite the fact that there are more peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as Democrats than Republicans.

It is for that rea­son also that Republicans get what they want pol­i­cy-wise. They take out­landish posi­tions out­side what they would nor­mal­ly expect to get away with, but they get Democrats to cave in and give them a lighter ver­sion of the out­ra­geous posi­tion they put for­ward, result­ing in them get­ting what they want­ed in the first place.
Did Democrats want this log-jam which exist in immi­gra­tion? How about a wall on the south­ern bor­der, did Democrats want that? Did Democrats want a strained rela­tion­ship with Nato allies? How about kids kid­napped from their par­ents and locked in cages like ani­mals, did Democrats want that?

Republicans could­n’t care less about what Democrats think? The Republican par­ty long ceased to be a par­ty of rea­son, it purged from its ranks mod­er­ates who pre­vi­ous­ly joined Democrats on issues, and carved out a con­sen­sus on pol­i­cy posi­tions.
It is the Republican Party that decid­ed that bi-par­ti­san­ship was a dirty term. It was the likes of Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, and the new age Racist Xenophobes like Meadows of North Carolina, and the drunk Matt Gaetz from Florida who con­tin­ue to carve up the coun­try into enclaves of hate.
Naming them nowa­days is real­ly an aca­d­e­m­ic process, there is no day­light between the mem­bers of the Republican par­ty. It is a par­ty of igno­rant hate­ful Racists, period.

Republicans In Name Only, (RINO), is the pejo­ra­tive for any Republican who showed an incli­na­tion to rea­son or to work with Democrats.
Today, bi-par­ti­san­ship is a thing of the past, for Republicans, it’s either their way or no way.
Many ran for the exits rather than stay and fight for the par­ty. John Boehner, David Jolly, Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, on and on, even the old Long Island hack Peter King has now decid­ed not to seek reelec­tion.
There is noth­ing brave or noble about these men who have decid­ed to walk away from the par­ty with­out defend­ing the hon­or of the par­ty, and by exten­sion the Constitution of the United States of America.
They are abdi­ca­tors of their oaths, cow­ards, who ran away, rather than stand up to Tyranny, Racism, Xenophobia„ and Sexism. 

This brings us to the rea­son the Republican par­ty has come to this. It cer­tain­ly has­n’t been the first time that the par­ty has been hijacked in mod­ern his­to­ry.
(a) It is a well-doc­u­ment­ed fact that after the sign­ing of the civ­il and vot­ing rights acts white men, who were tra­di­tion­al Democrats fled en-mass to the Republican par­ty. For them, the Democratic par­ty had betrayed them by giv­ing African-Americans dig­ni­ty and auton­o­my over their own lives. Their women also bailed on the Democratic par­ty as well. White women place all else sec­ond to their priv­i­leged white­ness. The right to own prop­er­ty, the right to have con­trol over their repro­duc­tive rights, are all sec­ondary, white­ness is the cen­tral pow­er priv­i­lege they value. 

So when Democrats ask why do white women vote against their own self-inter­est? The answer becomes, they are vot­ing their inter­est, it just isn’t what you think it should be.
(b) After Illinois, US Senator Barack Obama was ele­vat­ed to the Presidency of the United States, the T‑Party, (a sup­posed grass­roots move­ment) lit­er­al­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ized the Republican par­ty, it was­n’t for the bet­ter.
The T‑party move­ment was no grass­roots move­ment, but a dis­rup­tive move­ment fund­ed from the shad­ows by bil­lion­aire right-wing Libertarian broth­ers, Charles and David Koch, who also fund­ed oth­er shad­owy right-wing groups like Freedom Works, and more impor­tant­ly the pow­er­ful Americans for pros­per­i­ty.
The Koch broth­ers are major indus­tri­al­ists who vis­cer­al­ly oppose lib­er­al Obama’s poli­cies which would pro­tect the envi­ron­ment.
David Koch was recent­ly deceased.

Donald Trump forced impeach­ment onto the Democratic house and the American nation. He was not impeached because of things Democrats did. He was impeached because of the ille­gal and immoral acts he com­mit­ted.
Unfortunately, the media con­tin­ue to engage in hand-wring­ing about how this is going to play with Republicans. Who the hell cares about what Republicans think when the cor­rect thing to do is to stand up to a law­less chief exec­u­tive, and a par­ty which has marched lock­step with him?
Why is the con­ver­sa­tion viewed through the eyes of old white Republican peo­ple who are vast­ly out of step with the rest of the world on most issues of importance?

Oh, one more thing to my African-American peo­ple, you con­tin­ue to live in the dark­ness of apa­thy and dis­in­ter­est. You con­tin­ue to make the argu­ment that your vote does not count. That noth­ing changes. Why then do you believe old­er white peo­ple vote with such fer­vor?
Why did you think they stood in lines which snaked around city blocks in 2016, so they could vote for Donald Trump?
Why do you think that they have tried so very hard to stop you from vot­ing for as long as your ances­tors have sought the fran­chise?
Why do you think Republicans have tried to sup­press your vote cycle after cycle, and have com­mit­ted them­selves to do the same on steroids come 2020?

The idea that peo­ple can live in a coun­try and not care to engage in the sin­gle most impor­tant process which affects their lives is insane, to say the least.
Those who gov­ern, make deci­sions that affect every­thing in our lives, whether the police con­tin­ue to mur­der our chil­dren in cold blood, what we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, how much tax­es we pay. They deter­mine the qual­i­ty of our chil­dren’s schools, deter­mines war & peace, and every­thing in between.
That any­one would leave such seri­ous deci­sions for oth­ers to make is fright­en­ing.
Yes, it is quite okay to get mad at all the ills which plague us, but apa­thy towards the process is the least good option African-Americans have at their dis­pos­al.
In fact, con­tin­ued vig­i­lance and fideli­ty to the process is the best option we have, that is the rea­son so many have giv­en so much for so long, it is for that rea­son that so many paid the ulti­mate price.
Throwing away what they died for is not an option.

Emily Jacobs

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed 2020 Democratic pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Tulsi Gabbard for being the only House Democrat to vote “present” on impeach­ment arti­cles against President Trump and refus­ing to take a stand. “Today was very con­se­quen­tial, and to not take a stand one way or anoth­er, on a day of such great con­se­quence to this coun­try, I think is quite dif­fi­cult,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters after the his­toric vote Wednesday, adding, “We are sent here to lead.”

Rep. Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) did not speak on the House floor, while most oth­er mem­bers gave 30-sec­ond to one-minute speech­es to explain or jus­ti­fy their stances. During the sec­ond vote on charges of obstruc­tion of Congress, Gabbard was seen stand­ing against the back wall of the House cham­ber on the side where Republicans sit, accord­ing to Fox News. After the pres­i­den­tial con­tender stunned House Democrats and Republicans alike by refus­ing to opt for or against the two arti­cles, Gabbard released a state­ment explain­ing her deci­sion. “After doing my due dili­gence in review­ing the 658-page impeach­ment report, I came to the con­clu­sion that I could not in good con­science vote either yes or no,” the Hawaii Democrat said. 00:03 /​00:15

“I could not in good con­science vote against impeach­ment because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrong­do­ing. “I also could not in good con­science vote for impeach­ment because removal of a sit­ting President must not be the cul­mi­na­tion of a par­ti­san process, fueled by trib­al ani­mosi­ties that have so grave­ly divid­ed our coun­try,” Gabbard added.

Gabbard’s “present” votes were essen­tial­ly her way of abstain­ing from tak­ing a posi­tion on the issue, while still vot­ing on the mea­sures. She went on to say in her state­ment that she would intro­duce a res­o­lu­tion on the House floor cen­sur­ing Trump. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t buy her expla­na­tion. “Whenever we have a vote, we should vote ‘yes’ and we should vote ‘no,’” the New York Democrat said. “Voting ‘present’ is a very tough posi­tion to be in. To not take a stand in a moment that is so con­se­quen­tial, I think it’s quite dif­fi­cult.” Gabbard wasn’t the only House Democrat to take a posi­tion sep­a­rate from the par­ty line. Reps. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey both vot­ed “no” on the arti­cles, while Jared Golden of Maine vot­ed “yes” on the abuse of pow­er arti­cle but “no” on the obstruc­tion of Congress arti­cle.
This arti­cle first appeared in the New York Post.