As the Yuletide sea­son approach­es the need to be safe becomes more para­mount.
In times like this in which peo­ple are spend­ing more cash and maybe receiv­ing a few extra dol­lars from over­seas oppor­tunis­tic thieves, rob­bers and mur­der­ers will be even more brazen.
Nowhere is the need to be vig­i­lant more urgent than in Jamaica, though crim­i­nals every­where look to these high activ­i­ty events to take advan­tage of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.
As vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to increase, regard­less of what politi­cians in pow­er say to the con­trary, it behooves every­one to be extra vig­i­lant.
As some­one who writes from a for­mer law enforce­ment back­ground, I try to be as objec­tive as I pos­si­bly can. Needless to say, peo­ple on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide will find ele­ments of my analy­sis objec­tion­able of course.
As long as the objec­tions and sub­se­quent ad hominem reac­tions do not suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenge the facts of what I write, I’m okay with the attacks.

The present admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to use the *sup­pressed *crime sta­tis­tics from the States of Public Emergencies and Zones of Special Operations,(where those num­bers con­tin­ue to be sup­pressed) to (a) make the argu­ments for their con­tin­u­a­tion and (b) point to the sup­pressed sta­tis­tics as proof of the mea­sures’ suc­cess.
Without ques­tion­ing the motives of the admin­is­tra­tion, it is safe to say that the mea­sures are not work­ing as a suc­cess­ful or sus­tain­able crime strat­e­gy, for two pri­ma­ry reasons.

(1) The com­bined strength of the JCF & the JDF is not near­ly enough to begin to make the strate­gies sus­tain­able. There are sim­ply not enough bod­ies to staff these mea­sures.
Some may have seen the images of a group of sol­diers all sleep­ing in the Zone, with their weapons there for the tak­ing, not to men­tion the poten­tial of being killed while they sleep.
If we are hon­est with our­selves and set aside our polit­i­cal bias­es for a sec­ond we must con­clude that this is not sustainable.

(2) The shock and awe of the impo­si­tion of a ZOSO or SOE, nat­u­ral­ly result in the reduc­tion of vio­lent crimes. After they have been in place for a few weeks the crim­i­nals quick­ly adapt and it is busi­ness as usu­al.
The admin­is­tra­tion uses the sup­pressed stats to make its case as I have said before, but across the board, vio­lent crime num­bers con­tin­ue to climb as the crime-pro­duc­ers migrate to oth­er localities.

On Friday PNP Senator Lambert Brown berat­ed the lead­er­ship of the secu­ri­ty forces as, quote: ” fail­ures in his book”. Brown made the com­ments before oppo­si­tion sen­a­tors vot­ed to extend states of emer­gency (SOE) in five parish­es and a St Andrew police divi­sion for anoth­er 30 days.
There is more than enough rea­son to sup­port [Brown’s asser­tions], just not com­ing from either Brown or his par­ty.
The PNP had more than enough time to set the coun­try on a coher­ent path of law and order in which the rule of law pro­tect­ed the Jamaican peo­ple.
Under Michael Manley, Percival Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller’s failed lead­er­ship the coun­try has become a ver­i­ta­ble killing field.
Instead of doing its duty to our coun­try, the PNP chose cheap pop­ulism as a means to cur­ry favor with Jamaica’s most intel­lec­tu­al­ly and finan­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.
Outside of the repet­i­tive fail­ure com­ments, Lambert Brown offered no ideas and how he believed the lead­er­ship of the secu­ri­ty failed the coun­try, nei­ther did he offer up any ideas on what may be done differently.

As I said in an arti­cle yes­ter­day, the crim­i­nals in Jamaica have won.
Period!
“Evil per­sists where good men remain silent”. I am not sure about the [good men] part in this case, but the gen­er­al idea holds true. The absence of will and deter­mi­na­tion to erad­i­cate from its midst mur­der­ers, rapists and oth­er vio­lent offend­ers have set Jamaica on a col­li­sion course with a dark destiny.

The process­es in the day to day oper­a­tions of many dis­ci­plines are a bit much for many peo­ple. For that rea­son, only a small per­cent­age of peo­ple sign up for the mil­i­tary in the United States, for exam­ple, There the chance of actu­al­ly hav­ing to go to war is always height­ened, not many peo­ple want to kill or be killed.
Only 0.5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion actu­al­ly vol­un­teer for mil­i­tary ser­vice.
I can­not stand the sight of dead bod­ies so I would be no good work­ing in a mor­tu­ary. Many peo­ple say they could nev­er be doc­tors or nurs­es and oth­ers could nev­er be police officers.

In fact, being a police offi­cer means that those who vol­un­teer have made a deci­sion that they are will­ing and ready to deal with the worst ele­ments in soci­ety.
Generally, those encoun­ters are not pret­ty events to wit­ness. Those encoun­ters usu­al­ly come with a pri­or warn­ing of “beware, vio­lent con­tent”.
The rea­son police encoun­ters with vio­lent crim­i­nals are not pret­ty events is rather sim­ple, peo­ple who make con­scious deci­sions to com­mit seri­ous vio­lent offens­es have decid­ed by default, that they will not con­form to soci­etal rules and norms.

It is for these rea­sons why the Legislative branch of Government must set the legal para­me­ters for the police to do its job, butt out, and allow the police to do what nei­ther doc­tors, leg­is­la­tors, nurs­es, talk­ing heads, nor arm­chair experts can do, enforce the laws.
Butt out already!
The prob­lem in our coun­try is that there are far too many peo­ple with too much time on their hands. They call in, to radio talk shows dai­ly, just so they can hear them­selves talk.
Juxtapose that with the self-styled sav­iors of human­i­ty who oper­ate in the media space, they take full advan­tage of the opin­ion­at­ed igno­rance, and encour­age the anti-police growth indus­try, and we have a per­fect storm, and the rea­son for the pop­u­lar cul­ture which exist in Jamaica today.

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.

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The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom which has char­ac­ter­ized the world­view of Andrew Holness and the opin­ion shapers in Jamaica, that stri­dent­ly and force­ful­ly enforc­ing the nation’s laws, is tan­ta­mount to abuse of rights, is far­ci­cal, and not anchored in real­i­ty.
That pre­sump­tion makes the ridicu­lous assump­tion that in order to have a coun­try of laws, where cit­i­zens can live in safe­ty is a bina­ry choice between hav­ing secu­ri­ty and los­ing all their rights, or hav­ing all their rights and hav­ing no secu­ri­ty.
This is the far­thest thing from the truth, as is evi­denced from Africa to Asia, from Europe to the Americas.
It is true that at times indi­vid­ual rights and con­ve­niences may be infringed in order for gov­ern­ment agents to restore secu­ri­ty and pub­lic order, but it is not the same as say­ing that police can­not do their jobs with­out abus­ing the rights of law-abid­ing citizens.

And so we must rec­on­cile what is behind the intran­si­gence and stub­born­ness on the part of author­i­ties to move deci­sive­ly against the mur­der­ers who are oper­at­ing with­out regard for con­se­quence.
It is easy to con­clude that it is *pol­i­tics*, hit pub­lish and close my com­put­er, but it is far more com­plex than that.
It was­n’t always so, there was a polit­i­cal par­ty that believed in the rule of law for sure. Revisionist his­to­ri­ans, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the *intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to*, have not only con­vinced them­selves that strong gov­ern­ment action against ter­ror­is­tic insur­gency is a bad thing, but they have also man­aged to con­vince their alums, Andrew Holness includ­ed.
That is the rea­son mon­ey and mea cul­pa was giv­en to the Rastafarian com­mu­ni­ty for Carol Gardens.
It is the rea­son mon­ey and mea cul­pa was giv­en to the repub­lic of Tivoli after it attacked the Jamaican state and mur­dered civil­ians and agents of the state.
Agents of the state in both cas­es who gave their lives for the repro­bate nation received ridicule, chas­tise­ment, and had their rep­u­ta­tions dragged through the mud by the Island’s crim­i­nals who dou­ble as polit­i­cal leaders.

Those who both­er to pick up a his­to­ry book will find evi­dence that nei­ther Bustamante, nor Hugh Lawson Shearer believed in pussy­foot­ing with crim­i­nals.
It was the PNP that decid­ed to play polit­i­cal pop­ulism, by tak­ing advan­tage of the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the semi and illit­er­ate mass­es.
Cheap promis­es of man­na from heav­en and every­thing free includ­ing the free­dom to do as they please became the polit­i­cal cur­ren­cy of the People’s National Party. Free house, free elec­tric­i­ty, free water, free mon­ey for food and fun. What’s not to like?
How does an oppo­si­tion par­ty break­through that fan­tas­tic lie to teach the love of coun­try, hard work, obe­di­ence to our laws as the bet­ter way toward a pros­per­ous nation?
It could not and still can­not. In the 70s Manley’s man­na from heav­en and every­thing free, was dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to his oth­er teach­ings of self-suf­fi­cien­cy. But no one both­ered to pay atten­tion.
After all, why would any­one care when they were busy mov­ing into the free hous­es peo­ple vacat­ed hav­ing fled demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism?
Why would they care about tak­ing peo­ple’s prop­er­ty from them, they were told that the own­ers were bad cap­i­tal­ists?
Until of course the whole deck of cards came crash­ing down, as it most cer­tain­ly had to.
Out of that peri­od came the sta­bi­liz­ing peri­od of the Seaga admin­is­tra­tion in 1980.
By 1988 Michael Manley was back, he said he was sor­ry, but a leop­ard nev­er changes its spots. Of course, the gullible free­ness indoc­tri­nat­ed Lumpenproletariat was again ready for anoth­er round of slop­ping at the pub­lic trough.
An unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ unbro­ken years of any­thing goes regres­sive PNP Government was to fol­low. That peri­od has shaped and honed the nation’s pop­u­lar cul­ture, includ­ing the, take what you want by what­ev­er means nec­es­sary. Remember *any ting a any ting*!

It was a dif­fer­ent coun­try before 1972, Jamaica was the Caribbean then. People from oth­er Islands told for­eign­ers they were Jamaicans, unable to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the dif­fer­ent accents, every Caribbean nation­al became by default a Jamaican as far as for­eign­ers were con­cerned.
Today despite some good indi­ca­tors, Jamaica strug­gles to regain its for­mer pres­tige and pride of place. Her cit­i­zens are viewed with sus­pi­cion and as pari­ahs, even with­in the CARICOM region.
Bustamante, Sangster, Shearer, and Seaga are all gone, today the lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties all comes from the same left­ist, ran­cid cesspool.
The PNP has always cap­i­tal­ized on the igno­rance of the mass­es, that was a giv­en. Adherence to the rule of law was nev­er on their agen­da. They paint­ed the police as aggres­sors to be hat­ed. They PNP pro­lif­er­at­ed zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions which became ver­i­ta­ble no go for law enforce­ment. The JLP did the same.
Neither polit­i­cal par­ty saw any­thing wrong with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of focus groups oper­at­ing as human rights orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing some from out­side the coun­try.
To the two polit­i­cal par­ties any group/​s which would bring more pres­sure to law enforce­ment would free them up from been seen to be inter­fer­ing, what’s not to like?
Today, no leg­is­la­tion to do with crime and vio­lence can pass the leg­is­la­ture with­out it pass­es muster with for­eign groups oper­at­ing as human rights groups and their local affil­i­ates.
No oth­er nation allows this except Jamaica.

THIS OUGHT TO PUT IN CONTEXT EVERYTHING I’M WRITING TODAY

The *intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to* and the mis­guid­ed pur­vey­ors of filth and deca­dence declare [Jamaica has come a long way in human rights]
In one local pub­li­ca­tion one such pur­vey­or, Glenroy Murray, Associate direc­tor, pro­grams & advo­ca­cy Equality for All Foundation Jamaica Ltd, wrote;
“Jamaica is no stranger to human rights abus­es. Within our dis­tant past, there is the Coral Gardens mas­sacre, and in more recent times we remem­ber the secu­ri­ty forces’ oper­a­tion in Tivoli Gardens. Gender inequal­i­ty and sex­u­al vio­lence con­tin­ue to plague our women; homo­pho­bia and trans­pho­bia rep­re­sent bar­ri­ers to inclu­sion for les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al and trans­gen­der (LGBT) Jamaicans.”
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​e​d​i​t​o​r​i​a​l​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​h​a​s​-​c​o​m​e​-​a​-​f​a​r​-​w​a​y​-​i​n​-​p​r​o​t​e​c​t​i​n​g​-​h​u​m​a​n​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​_​1​8​1​954

(1)The state respond­ed in Coral Gardens to crim­i­nals who burned a gas sta­tion.
(2) The state respond­ed and annexed Tivoli Gardens after that repub­lic trea­so­nous­ly attacked the Jamaican state.
I will not attempt to relit­i­gate either event, the cause and con­se­quences are mat­ters of the his­tor­i­cal record for pos­ter­i­ty.
The cam­paign to bring Jamaica a coun­try deemed extreme­ly homo­pho­bic, into com­pli­ance with trend­ing west­ern stan­dards has always been behind the flood of focus groups which set up shop in JAMAICA. It was nev­er about the num­ber of dead poor black Jamaicans.
The aver­age Jamaican got duped but it has always been clear that whether it was the so-called human rights groups or INDECOM which Bruce Golding was forced to cre­ate, the focus was not about mur­dered Jamaicans.
Those who write about these human rights advances, includ­ing the one in the link above, have revealed them­selves for the world to see, yet the entire Lumpenproletariat has missed it.

The great­est right a human being has is the right to life. Without life, noth­ing else mat­ters. Dead peo­ple have no care.
Jamaica is on track to have anoth­er ban­ner year in homi­cides, no one who talks about human rights ever both­er to talk about the rights of the mur­dered inno­cents.
Their focus was nev­er about stop­ping the mur­der of black Jamaicans. The focus was always about bring­ing Jamaica into conformity(regardless of the cost) with the Homosexual agen­da.
Carolyn Gomes for­ay into the Island’s polic­ing mat­ters unrav­eled when the truth came out, no one took heed.
The Island’s lead­er­ship fell for it hook line and sinker, as they have on so many oth­er issues.
In the mean­time, the mur­ders con­tin­ue unchecked. The two polit­i­cal par­ties are still bound up by the pow­er of the inter­na­tion­al human rights lob­by, with no end in sight.
The ques­tion remains as I have asked repeat­ed­ly, ” what made you think that those who fund these groups cared about dead black Jamaicans”?
Have you heard a sin­gle so-called Human Rights Agency lament the car­nage?
Me nei­ther!

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.

Michael Bloomberg’s lia­bil­i­ties as a polit­i­cal can­di­date are so glar­ing­ly obvi­ous that it’s easy to dis­miss his pres­i­den­tial bid as a van­i­ty project. He is utter­ly devoid of charis­ma, has no real organ­ic base in the Democratic Party, and is a viable can­di­date only because he’s filthy rich and is will­ing to inun­date the race by open­ing up his near­ly lim­it­less mon­ey pit.

This unpre­pos­sess­ing pro­file hasn’t stopped big name pun­dits like Tom Friedman and Bret Stephens, both appear­ing in the pages of in The New York Times, from extolling Bloomberg as a poten­tial sav­ior. Writing even before Bloomberg entered the race, Stephens argued that all the exist­ing Democratic can­di­dates were weak against Trump except for Bloomberg.

“But if trounc­ing Donald Trump is essen­tial to the preser­va­tion of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, then it won’t do to cross fin­gers and hope he stum­bles,” Stephens averred. “A Bloomberg can­di­da­cy would be a gift to Democrats, the coun­try, and the world. Sneer at it at your per­il.” Heeding Stephens’s injunc­tion, I forced myself to momen­tar­i­ly stop sneer­ing at Bloomberg’s can­di­da­cy and try to empathize with his sup­port­ers. To go by Bloomberg’s words and those of advo­cates like Stephens, the case for Bloomberg goes some­thing like this: In an age of polar­iza­tion, Bloomberg could bring the nation togeth­er by being the voice of cen­trists who are being aban­doned by both the right and left. Bloomberg’s polit­i­cal pro­file of social lib­er­al­ism com­bined with eco­nom­ic con­ser­vatism would draw vot­ers who don’t like Donald Trump but find Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders too rad­i­cal. He’s more men­tal­ly agile than Joe Biden and less cal­low than Pete Buttigieg. Bloomberg could not only defeat Trump but also pull the United States away from the polar­iz­ing pop­ulism offered by the extreme left and the extreme right, polit­i­cal ten­den­cies that are desta­bi­liz­ing democ­ra­cy.
Read more here: https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​b​l​o​o​m​b​e​r​g​-​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​a​r​i​a​n​-​c​e​n​t​r​i​s​t​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​i​al/

THE INTERESTS OF WHITE LIBERALS AND BLACKS ARE NOT THE SAME. MICHAEL BLOOMBERG MAY BE RIGHT FOR WHITE LIBERALS, NOT FOR BLACK AMERICANS. 

Democrats should be wary of embrac­ing can­di­dates like Democrat turned Republican, turned Independent, now Democrat again Michael Bloomberg.
Sure there is an urgent desire to see the back of Donald Trump, that is a fore­gone con­clu­sion. Nevertheless, the likes of Michael Bloomberg is cer­tain­ly not what the coun­try needs at this cru­cial time, and is most cer­tain­ly not what the Africa-American com­mu­ni­ty needs.
Black Democratic vot­ers can ill afford to allow their dis­gust for Donald Trump to cloud their visions and allow for the crit­i­cal mis­take of nom­i­nat­ing a can­di­date, the likes of Michael Bloomberg.

The very fact that Michael Bloomberg was a Democrat, then changed to Republican, then changed to Independent and has now sup­pos­ed­ly changed back to being a Democrat is proof enough that he has no core con­vic­tion, but that he is an oppor­tunis­tic leech who will latch onto any­thing from which he can derive a ben­e­fit.
After Barack Obama ascend­ed to the Presidency, all and sundry on the Republican side thought they could also be pres­i­dent, (you know, if the black guy can become pres­i­dent, then it can’t be that hard right)?
Wrong.…. in my Trumpiest voice.
Well in a way they may have been right to some degree, we end­ed up with Donald Trump.
And now the shoe is on the oth­er foot, now Democrats, Socialists, Turncoats, and every bil­lion­aire run­ning believe that Trump is a goof­ball and a clown, so it can’t be too dif­fi­cult to beat him.
Wroooong!!!!!
As we have seen this cycle, many have lined up hop­ing to be the Democrat nom­i­nee, as Republicans and oth­er nut-jobs did in 2016. As in 2016, so too will they all leav­ing one. Let us hope for the sake of san­i­ty that the Democratic nom­i­nee will not be Michael Bloomberg.
The real per­ver­sion in my esti­ma­tion is not the plu­ral­i­ty of the can­di­dates who have lined up seek­ing the Democratic nom­i­na­tion. It is the fact that bil­lion­aire Michael Bloomberg believes that he can enter the race at his choos­ing and just dump mil­lions of dol­lars into adver­tis­ing and vot­ers will sim­ply bow down and anoint him the sav­ior of the Democratic par­ty, and the heir appar­ent to suc­ceed Donald Trump.
For the record, I have no prob­lem with peo­ple of means using their mon­ey to seek office. Tom Steyer did not just decide that he had a right to the nom­i­na­tion at the last moment. His has been a pro­tract­ed cam­paign, we can argue on the merits.

In an arti­cle, I wrote [in the link above] I talked about the affron­tery of Bloomberg attend­ing ser­vices at A R Bernard’s Christian Cultural Center(CCC), in Flatlands Brooklyn a few Sundays ago, and offer­ing up a nau­se­at­ing­ly trans­par­ent mea cul­pa to Bernard’s con­gre­ga­tion, but which was aimed at the wider black com­mu­ni­ty.
Bloomberg’s con­tin­u­a­tion of the Rudolph Guiliani stop and frisk pol­i­cy as Mayor of New York City, caused untold agony, pain, and suf­fer­ing to black and brown New York city res­i­dents, as a result of NYPD abuse of that process.
Michael Bloomberg sup­port­ed stop and frisk even after the NYPD had scaled back the pol­i­cy on its own, and even after he was long out of office.
Now that Michael Bloomberg wants to be pres­i­dent he is all of a sud­den sor­ry?
Bloomberg’s mea cul­pa on this issue, was one more iter­a­tion of his will­ing­ness to do and say any­thing as long as he can derive a ben­e­fit.
But my dis­gust was not sole­ly for Bloomberg on that Sunday morn­ing when he was allowed to take the stage at CCC, in fact, he was not the pri­ma­ry tar­get of my ire. The idea that any leader of a church, large or small, much less one which boasts a con­gre­ga­tion of forty thou­sand, would allow a Michael Bloomberg to deceive his flock, is a grave dis­ser­vice not just to the con­gre­ga­tion but ulti­mate­ly to the body of Christ. 

We are well aware that politi­cians will lit­er­al­ly say any­thing to get elect­ed. Nevertheless, African-American vot­ers have to be high­ly cog­nizant of the fact that the past is pro­logue when they decide to cast their vote for a can­di­date.
I have a tremen­dous degree of mis­trust for peo­ple who say they have evolved ‘on the issue of race for exam­ple’ I believe that every one of us was born with the abil­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wrong and right. We have that innate [built-in], which tells us whether or not the posi­tion we are tak­ing on any giv­en issue, is the cor­rect one. Christians call it the Holy Spirit, oth­ers call it a con­science.
Michael Bloomberg was unmoved by the cries of hun­dreds of thou­sands of black and brown peo­ple who felt the full brunt of [racial­ly tar­get­ed polic­ing] on his watch.
His sum­ma­ry dis­missal of the data, even after he left office, expos­es a cyn­i­cal bil­lion­aire tech­no­crat who will do what­ev­er serves his per­son­al ends.
How does he dif­fer from Donald Trump?

It is that cyn­i­cal dis­re­gard for respect and the human­i­ty of oth­ers which caused Michael Bloomberg to say the fol­low­ing about New Jersey junior US Senator who hap­pens to be African-American.

“Cory Booker endorsed me a num­ber of times, and I endorsed Cory Booker a num­ber of times,” Bloomberg said. “He’s very well-spo­ken. He’s got some good ideas. It would be bet­ter the more diverse any group is, but the pub­lic is out there pick­ing and choos­ing, and nar­row­ing down this field.”

There is a very good argu­ment to be made about Corey Booker as a legit­i­mate African-American can­di­date for pres­i­dent. That he who would endorse Michael Bloomberg, or would part­ner with the bul­ly­ing for­mer Republican Governor of his state, (Chris Christie), on some issue, cre­ates enough space to debate the pros and cons of his pro­gres­sive bona fides, or whether they even exist­ed before he decid­ed to run for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion.
But that is a ques­tion for debate between cen­trists and pro­gres­sive Democrats.
The fact that in 2019 a can­di­date for pres­i­dent would refer to an African-American, US Senator as, “very well-spo­ken”, much less a supreme­ly edu­cat­ed US Senator, demon­strates that on the crit­i­cal issues which affect black peo­ple, Michael Bloomberg is com­plete­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed.
(Corey Booker attend­ed Stanford University, where he received a BA in 1991 and then a mas­ter’s degree a year lat­er. He stud­ied abroad at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, before attend­ing Yale Law School). [w]
Bloomberg grew up in Medford, Massachusetts and attend­ed Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. [w]

Michael Bloomberg is being tout­ed at some lev­els on a dai­ly basis, par­tic­u­lar­ly by white lib­er­als on pub­lic radio in the New England area as the best hope for Democrats.
What is good for white lib­er­als in New England is not good for Black peo­ple suf­fer­ing under the yoke of police oppres­sion in America’s cities and towns.
Michael Bloomberg may have been good for white lib­er­als in New York City, but just ask the aver­age black and brown New Yorker, and they will tell you of a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent reality.

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.

THOM HARTMANN

here is a very sim­ple rea­son why some Republicans vot­ed for the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Richard Nixon, but none have so far bro­ken ranks against Trump.

That rea­son is a cor­rupt­ed U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1976 (Buckley v. Valeo) and 1978 (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti), the Supreme Court ruled that when cor­po­ra­tions and bil­lion­aires pur­chase their very own politi­cians, it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed “free speech” rather than “bribery,” which is how we defined it from the begin­ning of our repub­lic until 1976. In 2010, the Supreme Court dou­bled down on its betray­al of American democ­ra­cy with its Citizens United decision.

After those twin deci­sions in the 1970s, mon­ey from cor­po­ra­tions and the mor­bid­ly rich began to flow into the cof­fers of the Republican Party, hoist­ing Ronald Reagan into the White House. (Democrats were then still large­ly fund­ed by unions, and thus not so eas­i­ly up for sale.)

The spig­ots of cash nev­er turned off; the 2016 elec­tion was a $6.5 bil­lion affair.

As a result, today’s Republican politi­cians are whol­ly owned agents of cor­po­ra­tions and the bil­lion­aire class, stok­ing extreme anger over a few social issues (immi­gra­tion, guns, God, gays, race) and using it to bring in the Fox rubes that the bil­lion­aire Murdochs kind­ly hand them.

Read it here: https://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​1​2​/​0​4​/​w​h​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​n​o​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​t​u​r​n​e​d​-​o​n​-​t​r​u​m​p​_​p​a​r​t​n​er/

When you keep doing the same old thing you end up with the same old result. They say to keep doing that is the def­i­n­i­tion of being a “fool”.
I’m not about to refer to any­one or any orga­ni­za­tion as fools, I will let their actions speak for them.
The mur­der rate is up to five per day accord­ing to police. Now bear this in mind, (a)not every time that the killers pull the trig­ger some­one dies, (b) when a shot per­son dies days lat­er, that unfor­tu­nate­ly does not get count­ed in the mur­der sta­tis­tics.
Usually, when we report on these things, there are those who accuse us of being alarmist. They nev­er accuse us of lying, the facts are irrefutable.

Jamaica can­not afford to have this lev­el of vio­lent crimes, it is way too small for that lev­el of vio­lence.
We have long con­clud­ed that though we are eter­nal opti­mists in believ­ing that the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple are law-abid­ing, that per­cep­tion may be shift­ing to the reverse.
The coun­try is caught between the prover­bial rock and a hard place. As the two polit­i­cal par­ties fight for the affec­tion of the vot­ing pub­lic, each par­ty is more than hap­py to demon­strate to the loud­est most unsa­vory ele­ments with­in the soci­ety that they will allow them carte blanche to do as they please.
The casu­al­ty in all of this is the rule of law. Those who suf­fer are law enforce­ment offi­cers and law-abid­ing citizens.

No polit­i­cal leader, except (Damion Crawford) of the PNP, has demon­strat­ed the slight­est under­stand­ing of the role the rule of law plays in demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties.
Even those with P.hD’s, demon­strate the same crass and abra­sive ghet­to men­tal­i­ty. They do their darn­d­est to con­vince the coun­ty it is some­thing to be proud of.
I have always believed and main­tained that [“garbage in garbage out”].
Because there are no balls, in the lead­er­ship of a sin­gle one of the 63 who occu­pies the low­er cham­ber of the leg­is­la­ture, the coun­try can expect no change in the cul­ture of crim­i­nal­i­ty which has tak­en over the entire Island.

As I have writ­ten repeat­ed­ly, it is impos­si­ble for me to rec­on­cile that there is no one capa­ble of under­stand­ing that what is being done about crime will not work.
In the 1980s the mur­der sta­tis­tics hov­ered around 500 to 600. The police were able to do their jobs and though the JCF was far from per­fect, it was not dif­fi­cult to live in Jamaica and feel rel­a­tive­ly safe despite those homi­cide num­bers.
Today some of the very same tac­tics are being applied to crime, SOEs ZOSOs(new), the dif­fer­ence, how­ev­er, is that the crim­i­nal under­world has been vast­ly updat­ed. INDECOM, Mass American and British depor­ta­tions, new high­ways have been cre­at­ed, new ways to com­mu­ni­cate, social media crim­i­nals have mass mobil­i­ty, new and pow­er­ful auto­mo­biles, and motor­cy­cles. A vast armory of guns and an end­less sup­ply of ammu­ni­tion. An end­less sup­ply of cash from lot­to scam­ming, drug deal­ing, extor­tion, human traf­fick­ing, rob­beries, mur­der for hire, gun-run­ning, and the coun­try is a ver­i­ta­ble gang­ster’s paradise.

As the coun­try slides fur­ther and fur­ther into the abyss, inter­est groups gath­er like the “mice coun­cil” of the medieval fable “the cat and the mice”.
Sure, those cow­ard­ly rodents knew that belling the cat was what they need­ed to do. But not a sin­gle one had the balls to vol­un­teer to do it.
Neither has the human rodents man­aged to sum­mon the balls to address in a seri­ous way, the crime scourge in our coun­try and stop with the straw­man argu­ments about human rights.
The Island’s crime rate is what it is because the crim­i­nals know that nei­ther of the two polit­i­cal par­ties will allow the police to do its job.
They under­stand also that there is a group of fraud­u­lent self-pro­claimed intel­li­gent peo­ple, (smart ‑ass­es) if you ask me, who will argue for the rights of crim­i­nals, (because it’s fash­ion­able), even if they are liv­ing scared shit­less.
It is the most incom­pre­hen­si­ble exam­ple of fak­ery I have ever seen.

If you thought that the gravest dan­ger to the coun­try is the ram­pant and uncon­trolled crim­i­nal­i­ty you may actu­al­ly be wrong.
It is becom­ing clear­er by the day that the entire cul­ture of the once par­adise Island, may be chang­ing for the worse. The aver­age man on the street now sees the laws as a nui­sance and those why try to enforce them as an even greater nui­sance.
The poor­ly trained, poor­ly paid, poor­ly super­vised, poor­ly sup­port­ed police spend their time fend­ing off attacks for doing the sim­plest task they are sworn to do.
Set aside the poor train­ing and the heart­burn induc­ing dis­plays we have seen in the social media videos of police offi­cers being set upon for doing their jobs, the Holness admin­is­tra­tion has made it impos­si­ble for offi­cers to car­ry out their duties.
I have per­son­al­ly called for the repeal of the INDECOM Act. I have said from its incep­tion that it would increase crime. That it would sig­nal that it is a‑okay to attack police offi­cers. And that it would ush­er in a lev­el of dis­re­spect for tra­di­tion­al norms unprece­dent­ed in our nation’s his­to­ry.
I am not sor­ry to say I told you so.
Unfortunately for Jamaica, Bruce Golding gave the coun­try INDECOM with the full back­ing of the PNP. Not often do the two par­ties agree on any­thing, but on cre­at­ing this crime enhance­ment tool they were in lockstep.

No one won­dered why the Americans, British, and Canadians would have jumped to the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help fund this Trojan-horse. Damion Crawford agrees it is oner­ous, and maybe one or two oth­ers from either side as well.
However, as I have argued from its incep­tion, the law is oner­ous and unac­cept­able but the Commissioner of the agency is the worst thing that could hap­pen to the JCF and crime-fight­ing in our coun­try.
Placing a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac in charge of an over­sight agency was as bad an idea as it could get. Terrence Williams is a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac and a nar­cis­sist, he is also a media whore, those traits made him not just dan­ger­ous he is destruc­tive.
The trou­ble now is that those who cre­at­ed this mon­ster has no damn idea how to con­trol it.
Which brings me to the hypocrisy of the so-called min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty Horace Chang, in com­ments recently.

Said Horace Chang:
“There is a feel­ing out there that because of INDECOM, they (unlaw­ful cit­i­zens) can abuse the police and get away with it, that is what is caus­ing the prob­lems.”
“It’s an opin­ion of ele­ments of the police force, and it may have some basis in terms of prac­tice, because INDECOM was designed to deal with com­plaints against the police at a time when it was felt that there were too many extra­ju­di­cial activ­i­ties by the police.” 
“There is a strong school of thought that INDECOM is over-exu­ber­ant in apply­ing the law, or is per­haps exces­sive in apply­ing the law, and there may be a need for some inter­ven­tion.”
“INDECOM was cre­at­ed to con­trol police excess­es, and I think the police are say­ing INDECOM has become exces­sive at this point in time.”
“I don’t want to make a judge­ment call, but there are cer­tain­ly some con­cerns by the offi­cers of the force; it is almost a rever­sal on the pur­pose for which INDECOM was found­ed.”
“We will be seek­ing to con­vene a meet­ing with the lead­er­ship of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, their union and the direc­tors of INDECOM”.
“It is some­thing we have to look at and see to what extent it’s becom­ing the real prob­lem, and to what extent we can work with INDECOM to ensure pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards are main­tained, but at the same time, police­men [can] feel com­fort­able doing their job.” 
“It is felt at this point that the direc­tors of INDECOM have gone the oth­er route now, where they are being exces­sive in apply­ing the reg­u­la­tions of the law to the police offi­cers.”
“It’s an insti­tu­tion that is evolv­ing and I expect there can be dis­cus­sions held to look at how it’s oper­at­ing, but the increased attack on the police by cer­tain ele­ments is of con­cern to me as the min­is­ter.” 

No fuck­ing shit, it took these brain-dead morons this long to fig­ure this shit out? I said that this would have been the result on day one. How is it pos­si­ble that these sup­pos­ed­ly smart peo­ple could not have fore­seen this com­ing?
To make mat­ters worse, Chang’s belat­ed epiphany may not even have got­ten through to the oth­er geniuses(*sarcasm*) in the cab­i­net, much less the oth­er morons in the full house.
There have been more than enough red flags that INDECOM, as con­sti­tut­ed, would be a prob­lem.
You know, the court chal­lenges Terrence Williams filed in pur­suit of more pow­er. Terrence Williams beg­ging for more pow­er. Terrence Williams berat­ing the DPP in the press. Terrence Williams dem­a­gogu­ing the entire secu­ri­ty forces in the media. Terrence Williams nar­cis­sism. Terrence William’s mega­lo­ma­nia. Terrence Willimas media whor­ing. Terrence Willims using INDECOM as his per­son­al blud­geon­ing tool. Terrence Williams at the start hold­ing press con­fer­ences with JFJ.
I could go on and on, but the real threat to our coun­try today from INDECOM, is that Williams believes that the Government does not have the author­i­ty to dic­tate to him how to con­duct the affairs of INDECOM.
More than half of the INDECOM bud­get comes from for­eign fun­ders.
I have writ­ten about this as well, no one gives any­thing away for free.
A crime-rid­den Jamaica is a Jamaica in which the mass­es are stuck in pover­ty and crime.
A nation stuck in pover­ty and crime is a nation per­pet­u­al­ly a beggar/​borrower nation. If Canada, the UK, and the United States (all nations to which Jamaica is indebt­ed) real­ly want­ed to help Jamaica to ease its way out of pover­ty their con­tri­bu­tions would be to the law enforce­ment enti­ties in Jamaica.
Support for INDECOM means that the coun­try will con­tin­ue to be mired in vio­lent crime and as a con­se­quence will for­ev­er be a slave to the lend­ing insti­tu­tions in Canada, the UK, and the US.

If the mass­es are unable to make these con­nec­tions it falls to the lead­er­ship of the coun­try to under­stand these pow­er plays and find ways to avoid them.
The myopia and igno­rance on the streets are to be found in Gordon House as well.
Jamaica needs a new leg­isla­tive approach to vio­lent crime. It needs a new, no-non­sense approach to enforc­ing the nation’s laws. And yes that includes remov­ing from the purview of judges the option to grant bail for cer­tain vio­lent offens­es. New leg­is­la­tion should also remove form their dis­cre­tion, the sen­tence imposed for cer­tain vio­lent offens­es.
Those steps are not a panacea, they are the cor­rect first steps to retak­ing the streets. Retraining the police and get­ting rid of most of the senior lead­er­ship is ger­mane to the suc­cess of this approach.

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.

There are med­i­cines for most ail­ments these days, in fact, there are many dif­fer­ent med­ica­tions of each ail­ment.
Now each of those med­ica­tions may have some pos­i­tive effects but have you ever lis­tened to the dis­claimers?
Additionally, can­cer drugs are of no use to dia­bet­ics, nei­ther is it a good idea to apply a drug to a patient if it will react neg­a­tive­ly with oth­er drugs.
Remember the lat­ter state­ment, it will all make sense as we go along.

I was with a group of friends over the week­end and as it always does, pol­i­tics crept into the dis­course. Of course, there were some liba­tions involved, so much of the fil­ters were cast to the side.
Of the six or eight friends involved, all were dyed in the wool Comrades, and then there I was, some­where right of cen­ter. I learned that rea­son, ratio­nale, and facts do not mat­ter in the face of rea­soned, ratio­nal, truth.
They all stuck to the idea that Michael Manley was the great­est Prime Minister in Jamaica’s short his­to­ry. Of course when I asked them to jus­ti­fy those asser­tions no one could.
It becomes rather impos­si­ble to make sense when there are eight or nine hard­core com­rades against, well.….little old me.

Michael Manley had great ideas, like oth­er lead­ers before and after him. Manley, despite his exu­ber­ance and raft of ideas, lacked the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of glob­al pol­i­tics.
Instead of read­ing the T‑leaves and being cau­tious, he went full speed ahead like a bull in a chi­na shop.
If we are hon­est with our­selves, we may final­ly agree that Michael Manley’s tenure had a few good nuggets of social pol­i­cy but all things con­sid­ered, his tenure was a com­plete fail­ure and a dis­as­ter for Jamaica.
Now because the Labor Party has been dis­mal as it relates to mes­sag­ing. And because the PNP has plant­ed func­tionar­ies into all aspects of the body politic, it has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to remove the lie from the con­ver­sa­tion.
Michael Manley applied a drug to a patient with­out an under­stand­ing of how his pre­scrip­tion would inter­act with those the patient was already on.
In short, he installed a square peg into a round hole.

At the height of the cold war the for­mer Soviet Union and the United States maneu­vered for world dom­i­na­tion, with Jamaica only a cou­ple of hours flight from the Florida shores, Michael Manley hitched his wag­on to Cuba and declared he would go to the moun­tain top, hand in hand with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The prob­lem is that while Manley’s wag­on was hitched to Cuba, Cuba was hitched to the Soviet Union, America’s exis­ten­tial foe.
At the time, Jamaica’s econ­o­my was intrin­si­cal­ly tied to the United States. Jamaica could ill afford to upset the Americans which Manley did with reck­less aban­don.
So it mat­tered not that Michael Manley had great ideas to make sure there were no bas­tard chil­dren, improve liv­ing wage, and a raft of oth­er social pro­grams, there was no mon­ey to fund them and that is the issue.
The pro­duc­tive sec­tor went away and it took its mon­ey. The mid­dle class also ran and so too did the best and bright­est pro­fes­sion­als.
Manley remind­ed every­one, not on board with his mis­guid­ed poli­cies that there were five flights per day leav­ing for Miami.
He need­n’t have remind­ed them, they want­ed no part of what he was sell­ing.
Talk is cheap, but we can have a con­ver­sa­tion about what the Americans may have done or not done. The real­i­ty is that one can have great plans but if they are not exe­cut­ed care­ful­ly fail­ure is guar­an­teed.
Micahel Manley guar­an­teed fail­ure when he hitched his wag­on to Cuba. Moral vic­to­ries are of no use to hun­gry bel­lies.
Regardless of what may be said of Michael Manley, he was smart enough to real­ize his mis­takes. And so he returned, hum­bled, chas­tened, look­ing for a sec­ond chance, it was giv­en to him and PJ Patterson.
Jamaican vot­ers have short mem­o­ries and that has caused our coun­try much pain.

Unfortunately, for the his­to­ry books and the Carribean com­mu­ni­ty, the left­ist pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of our cul­ture by the University of the West Indies has sought to rewrite his­to­ry and san­i­tize Michael Manley’s dis­mal record of accom­plish­ment. Instead of fac­ing hard sta­tis­ti­cal data they chose soar­ing ora­to­ry as a barom­e­ter of suc­cess.
On the con­trary, the record of accom­plish­ment by Hugh Lawson Shearer still stands today as the stan­dard by which all are judged in Jamaica and the Carribean even.
That memo has yet to reach the forked tongue pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als the UWI has pro­duced across the CARICOM region.
For this do-noth­ing bunch of left­ists, Michael Manley’s soar­ing rhetoric is com­pa­ra­ble to accom­plish­ment. All of the black lead­er­ship which came out of that era from the Caribbean to Africa were great talk­ers, not doers. In that regard, Michael Manley was a one-eyed king in a room full of blind dudes.
For the rest of us who val­ue deeds over words, Schools, Hospitals, Jobs, Airports and oth­er infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ments are more valu­able than flow­ery rhetoric.
I too liked Michael Manley when he stood up against the white Apartheid régime in Southern Africa. I liked the fact that he want­ed to move our poor work­ing peo­ple away from the shack­les of colo­nial­ism.
Our Country will be for­ev­er grate­ful for his con­tri­bu­tion. On the oth­er hand, we must face the fact that Michael Manley was a flawed man who made crit­i­cal mis­takes that have changed the course of our coun­try.
Unfortunately, most of it has not been for the better.

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.