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.

“Di ting wata dung to nut­ten”). Translation. The thing is watered down to noth­ing. In case you are won­der­ing what I’m talk­ing about?
It is the con­sen­sus among the peo­ple who have spent two or three decades in the Jamaica Constabulary Force,(JCF) that they are no longer allowed to enforce the laws.
Many of you polit­i­cal apol­o­gists, (God bless you), can­not see any­thing ratio­nal­ly. Your only prism is polit­i­cal and col­ored either orange or green.

The nation’s vio­lent crime rate is at epi­dem­ic lev­els and ris­ing, but of course, as far as the aver­age vil­lage lawyer we hear opine on this is con­cerned, (“crime de eve weh”), crime is every­where.
It is a kind of faux patri­o­tism born out of a mis­guid­ed belief that iden­ti­fy­ing the can­cer­ous tumor of crime and seek­ing to cau­ter­ize it is less than patri­ot­ic.
So the default option is to ratio­nal­ize it away. It is syn­ony­mous to the for­mer female prison guard turned come­di­an, who joked that she would look at what she described as the gor­geous male crim­i­nals in prison, some of them rapists, and in self­ish lust tell her­self, “but he nev­er killed any­body.”

There is no point in try­ing to pry those peo­ple from their cub­by­holes of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty. If they believe they are not enti­tled to bet­ter, who am I to insist oth­er­wise?
But for the rest of us who know that as a peo­ple we can, and should do bet­ter, we must con­tin­ue to mil­i­tate for change.
We under­stand that we deserve bet­ter than liv­ing like caged ani­mals in a Serengeti of law­less­ness. We can ill-afford to pre­tend that there is no prob­lem, so we will con­tin­ue to speak out. 

The People’s National Party admin­is­tra­tion squan­dered the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty years ago. In an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₁₂ year unbro­ken run in office, instead of shoring up and expand­ing the struc­ture of the rule of law, the Patterson Administration said “any­thing a any­thing,“a wink and a nod to its crim­i­nal sup­port­ers that they should go out and take what­ev­er they want­ed from whomev­er they please.
At the same time, the Patterson admin­is­tra­tion was busy plun­der­ing the nation­al cof­fers, send­ing the coun­try deep­er and deep­er into pover­ty and debt.
Patterson did not lift a fin­ger to address the nation’s bur­geon­ing crime rate. Instead, he dev­as­tat­ed the JCF’s abil­i­ty to respond to the grow­ing crim­i­nal threat.
Under PJ Patterson’s lead­er­ship, the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force did not train a sin­gle detec­tive, for over ten years.
If we do not con­tin­ue to hone the skills of those whose task it is it bring killers to jus­tice, is there any won­der that the police is unable to make crim­i­nal charges stick?
If you sur­mise that maybe, just maybe that is the way the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship wants it, I believe you are the per­son I am writ­ing to.
Patterson did not make a sin­gle pen­ny avail­able to train a sin­gle detec­tive for more than a decade under his dis­as­trous régime.
Patterson said the coun­try need­ed all offi­cers to be in uni­form, a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage that he did not want the crim­i­nal (“Dons”) who pro­vide var­i­ous ser­vices to the PNP locked away by police.
The crim­i­nal enter­prise that was the Patterson Government ensured that there would not be a pro­fes­sion­al and com­pe­tent police depart­ment to inves­ti­gate and lock up the par­ty faith­ful.
To add insult to injury the left­ist University of the West Indies recent­ly hon­ored Percival Patterson, a total fail­ure and a dis­as­ter for our coun­try. A man whose tenure in office ben­e­fit­ted only him­self and his cronies.
The hon­or was a clear sign that there is no dif­fer­ence of thought between that far-left insti­tu­tion, and the morons it churns out.
It is a ver­i­ta­ble rogue’s gallery of bot­tom feed­ers bestow­ing acco­lades on bot­tom feed­ers. Essentially the awards are not worth the mate­ri­als they are made from.

The Jamaica Labor Party under Bruce Golding was a dis­grace. Ultimately, Golding was forced to step aside, giv­ing rise to Andrew Holness his pro­tégé of sorts.
Neither Bruce Golding nor Andrew Holness respects the rule of law or the offi­cers who enforce them.
Bruce Golding will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the Prime Minister who stood up for a trans-nation­al crim­i­nal, (Christopher Duddus Coke), instead of stand­ing up for the nation.
Today, Andrew Holness is Prime Minister, and though many believe that he is a genius of sorts, we are yet to see that genius exe­cut­ed in either word or deed, as far as secu­ri­ty and crime is con­cerned.
Holness has not demon­strat­ed that he (a) under­stands the impor­tance of the rule of law to a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation, (b) the impor­tance of sup­port­ing & respect­ing those who risk their lives to enforce our laws,© that he under­stands, [or even cares] about the morale of the men and women who work to secure the safe­ty of him­self, his fam­i­ly, and the nation at the per­il of their own lives.

Andrew Holness won his own man­date on February 25^th, 2016, after an abbre­vi­at­ed run as Prime Minister after Bruce Golding was forced to step aside after the Christopher Coke débâ­cle.
Holness arrived with an atti­tude of recrim­i­na­tion against the JCF. He issued blan­ket unver­i­fied state­ments against the JCF. He accused mem­bers of kick­ing down doors and killing inno­cent peo­ple in cold blood.
One thing is cer­tain [as a mat­ter of fact], the vile hearsay invec­tives Holness lev­eled at the JCF is 100% unadul­ter­at­ed hearsay.
Given Jamaica’s hyper-vio­lent soci­ety the police had lit­tle choice but to match force with vio­lent force.
And so under Seaga’ s tenure, when our police were allowed to act, our coun­try had 500 to 600 mur­ders each year.
Today under Holness’ lead­er­ship, despite ZOSO’s and SOE’s the Island is expe­ri­enc­ing homi­cide num­bers three times what obtained under Seaga.
The vio­lent nature of the Island’s crim­i­nals made Holness’ actions and words even more hyp­o­crit­i­cal and dan­ger­ous.
The prob­lem with Holness’ mis­guid­ed posi­tion is that he is Prime Minister and there­fore he is unique­ly posi­tioned to be destruc­tive, if he ever puts his mind to it.
He has put his mind to it!
It is dif­fi­cult for me to rec­on­cile that he means well when he has artic­u­lat­ed how he arrived at his mis­guid­ed posi­tion on crime.
His posi­tion as a mem­ber of par­lia­ment for one of the Island’s gar­ri­son con­stituen­cies peels back the thin veneer of bull­shit, reveal­ing the bla­tan­cy of his hypocrisy.
Instead of stand­ing up for the nation’s future by mak­ing a strong unequiv­o­cal dec­la­ra­tion that the rule of law is sacro­sanct, and demon­strat­ing com­mit­ment through actions, he aligned him­self with JFJ and INDECOM against the police. 

Peel back the thin veneer of bull­shit and Andrew Holness’ pub­lic rela­tions stunt is not just obvi­ous, it is insult­ing­ly cyn­i­cal.
The police offi­cers are receiv­ing no real train­ing which would make them capa­ble of address­ing the threat posed by vio­lent crim­i­nals and even those who would go so far as to chal­lenge the author­i­ty and sov­er­eign­ty of the state.
Holness wants the police to be cour­tesy corps offi­cers, hold down crime sta­tis­tics, solve noth­ing, harm not a sin­gle mur­der­er.
According to one cred­i­ble source in the know, nei­ther is the car­toon­ish mil­i­tary train­ing any bet­ter than that which is being giv­en to the police. It’s a façade the source laments.
But we all knew that mem­bers of the JCF are (a) poor­ly trained and (b) afraid of their own shad­ows.
The end­less social media videos pro­vide ample evi­dence that law-abid­ing Jamaicans should be ter­ri­fied for their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty.
The inad­e­qua­cy of the train­ing and lead­er­ship vac­u­um, sup­port struc­ture and the ter­ror of being per­se­cut­ed by Andrew Holness’ INDECOM, is more than enough for police offi­cers to run the oppo­site direc­tion from the call of duty.

This admin­is­tra­tion is play­ing a dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal game under the guise of ZOSO’s and SOE’s. Both mea­sures amount to mass sat­u­ra­tion of pub­lic spaces with the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, not the strate­gic goal of crime elim­i­na­tion.
Holness and the JLP are inter­est­ed in win­ning elec­tions as is the oppo­si­tion PNP. Political par­ties do not go after crim­i­nals in Jamaica. Being a crime-fight­ing leader like the great Hugh Lawson Shearer is way out­side the realm of what any­one should expect from Andrew Holness in present-day Jamaican.
The hyp­ocrites and vil­lage lawyers will find ways to crit­i­cize Shearer but one thing is cer­tain there is not a sin­gle damn law-abid­ing Jamaican who would not trade places and go back to the days of Shearer.
We can­not expect Holness to be Shearer, but by God, we can at least expect him to be like the flawed Edward Seaga.
Does he have to be a Bruce Golding?
One can under­stand that politi­cians want to win elec­tions. Within that frame­work, it is also under­stand­able that politi­cians would want to do as lit­tle harm as pos­si­ble to their chances to gain and hold onto pow­er.
Those con­cerns are expo­nen­tial­ly height­ened because of (a) a high­ly polar­ized crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing pop­u­la­tion and (b) a poor­ly edu­cat­ed pop­u­lace.
Unfortunately for the nation, the lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties large­ly comes from the same ran­cid pool sit­u­at­ed up at Mona com­mons.
PNP and JLP same shit. Same cor­rupt­ed and con­vo­lut­ed men­tal­i­ty.
Gone are the days when the dif­fer­ence between the two polit­i­cal par­ties were dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent.
There was no ques­tion of the dif­fer­ence between the par­ty of Seaga and that of Michael Manley. The lines of demar­ca­tion were dis­tinct. Voters had a real choice.
Today Holness and Peter Phillips come from the same stink­ing pool of left­ist shit­tery. And although Phillips will nev­er change from being a stu­pid com­rade, Andrew Holness is cer­tain­ly a prod­uct of the same failed left­ist crap­o­la. The par­ty of Bustamante, Sangster, Shearer, and Seaga is now a car­bon copy of Michael Manley’s dystopi­an nightmare.

When a politi­cian comes up to you to talk about pros­per­i­ty, or that he can do bet­ter than the ones in pow­er, look at the unchecked killings going on around you, know that he is play­ing you for a fool.
This is a time for patri­ots to stand up to these two cor­rupt polit­i­cal par­ties and let them know that it is Jamaica first.
That paper­ing over the crime sta­tis­tics using the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy is not accept­able, and it will not be tol­er­at­ed.
That we are not stu­pid, we are onto their devi­ous and decep­tive game of crime sup­pres­sion in cer­tain areas. We see the esca­la­tion in oth­er areas, we also see the nation­al num­bers and know that not a damn thing is being done about tam­ing the dan­ger­ous mon­ster of vio­lent crime.
That we will no longer sup­port this dan­ger­ous and cyn­i­cal plan to play pol­i­tics while they,(both par­ties) dis­re­spect our police.
Long after these lead­ers are gone we will still need our police and we will damn sure need our country.

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.

By Anne Branigin

In a rul­ing late Monday, Federal District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said for­mer White House coun­sel Don McGahn must obey a sub­poe­na to tes­ti­fy before Congress. The sub­poe­na, issued in April, came from the House Judiciary Committee as part of its inves­ti­ga­tion into pos­si­ble obstruc­tion of jus­tice by President Donald Trump.

As NBC News reports, in her deci­sion, Jackson also reject­ed a key argu­ment put for­ward by the Justice Department in defense of the admin­is­tra­tion — that as a for­mer close advis­er to the pres­i­dent, McGahn is absolute­ly immune to demands he appear before Congress.

From NBC News:

“It is clear to this Court for the rea­sons explained above that, with respect to senior-lev­el pres­i­den­tial aides, absolute immu­ni­ty from com­pelled con­gres­sion­al process sim­ply does not exist,” Jackson said in her ruling.

“Presidents are not kings,” she added.

“This means that they do not have sub­jects, bound by loy­al­ty or blood, whose des­tiny they are enti­tled to con­trol,” Jackson said. “Rather, in this land of lib­er­ty, it is indis­putable that cur­rent and for­mer employ­ees of the White House work for the peo­ple of the United States…”

McGahn, how­ev­er, can “invoke exec­u­tive priv­i­lege where appro­pri­ate” dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny, the judge said. 

If you’re con­fused about where in the Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion carousel of crazy McGahn fits, don’t wor­ry — April of this year might as well be four years ago in Trump-time.

House Judiciary Democrats want­ed McGahn to tes­ti­fy and turn over doc­u­ments relat­ed to for­mer spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Russian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Mueller’s report indi­cat­ed that Trump ordered McGahn to tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, “Mueller has to go.”

From an ear­li­er NBC News report:

“McGahn spoke with the President twice and under­stood the direc­tive the same way both times, mak­ing it unlike­ly that he mis­heard or mis­in­ter­pret­ed the President’s request. In response to that request, McGahn decid­ed to quit,” the report said. “He called his lawyer, drove to the White House, packed up his office, pre­pared to sub­mit a res­ig­na­tion let­ter with his chief of staff, (and) told (then-White House Chief of Staff Reince) Priebus that the President had asked him to ‘do crazy shit.’

“McGahn ulti­mate­ly did not quit and the President did not fol­low up with McGahn on his request to have the Special Counsel removed,” the report said.

Lawyers advo­cat­ing on behalf of the House Judiciary Democrats urged Judge Jackson to make a deci­sion quick­ly since the group wants to hold its own impeach­ment hear­ings, sep­a­rate from the five-day hear­ings recent­ly con­clud­ed by the House Intelligence Committee.

The Justice Department said it will appeal Jackson’s rul­ing and seek a stay of her order. But while White House press sec­re­tary Stephanie Grisham indi­cat­ed that the DOJ was “con­fi­dent” the administration’s absolute immu­ni­ty posi­tion would be vin­di­cat­ed, NBC News points out that no court has ever upheld the argu­ment that close advis­ers to the pres­i­dent can’t be forced to appear before Congress.

If his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion, McGahn, girl: You bet­ter shine your shoes, pop some vit­a­min B, and get Fenty-ready for the cam­eras, because you’re tes­ti­fy­ing. https://​www​.the​root​.com/​b​l​a​c​k​-​f​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​j​u​d​g​e​-​s​t​r​i​k​e​s​-​c​r​u​c​i​a​l​-​b​l​o​w​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​1​8​4​0​0​4​8​336

We see it dai­ly in the streets, in the alter­ca­tions between police offi­cers try­ing to do their jobs and defi­ant scofflaws who chal­lenge their author­i­ty.
In the ways that motorists ignore the rules of the road and do as they please.
It has been going on for years in the nation’s class­rooms as well, stu­dents defy and fight teach­ers because they know their par­ents will come to school prop­er­ty and assault teach­ers.
We see it in the way motorists oper­ate on the road­ways. In the way, peo­ple speak loud­ly on their cell­phones in places where they should­n’t, as if we all want to hear their con­ver­sa­tions.
We see it in the nation’s par­lia­ment, the uncouth coarse­ness which pass­es for a leg­isla­tive process.
And sure as night fol­lows day, some will instan­ta­neous­ly argue that our nation’s par­lia­ment is tame com­pared to some oth­er coun­tries.
As if a moun­tain of wrongs even­tu­al­ly equals right.
We could go on and on and on about the break­down in our soci­ety and at some stage, we have to ask what the hell is going on?

The mur­ders and the rapes, the bru­tal­i­ty being inflict­ed, broth­er on broth­er, neigh­bor on neigh­bor is inces­sant. Years ago a famed local psy­chol­o­gist blan­ket-labeled the entire Island, ‘mad”.
It would be wrong for me to argue with the diag­no­sis of a trained pro­fes­sion­al. Nevertheless, it just seemed too sim­plis­tic, and maybe even intel­lec­tu­al­ly lazy, to throw up our hands in exas­per­a­tion, and declare the entire Jamaica, .……mad.
So lets ratio­nal­ly dis­sect whats going on. Human beings will push the enve­lope as long as there are no con­se­quences for their actions. We Jamaicans are at the tip of that spear. From time to time I write about crime and the debil­i­tat­ing effect it is hav­ing on our coun­try, I argue repeat­ed­ly, that crime thrives on the acqui­es­cence of the nation.

When a new addi­tion to the delib­er­a­tive body, (the sen­ate), is engaged in a cru­sade to allow more exple­tives into pub­lic spaces, why would any­one won­der why a vale­dic­to­ri­an would feel empow­ered to infuse exple­tives into his address?
Hype.….Jamaicans thrive on hype, the young politi­cian reads his own press, and he is pumped on the adren­a­line that fame brings. To show his street bona fides, he pro­pos­es some­thing he ought to know is anti­thet­i­cal to the nation’s well­be­ing in the long run, but still, he per­sists.
Because the hype is far more impor­tant to him, than sim­ply being a good exam­ple to those com­ing up after him.
The Valedictorian could have walked away know­ing that for as long as he lives he will be remem­bered as that year’s vale­dic­to­ri­an, but the desire to gain a hype was far too strong a pull for him, and so he will be remem­bered as the vale­dic­to­ri­an who brought coarse­ness to the game.

Decency and deco­rum have become a thing of the past, those who ought to know bet­ter have become will­ing pas­sen­gers, on a train des­tined for derail­ment. The lev­el of crazy in our soci­ety is wear­ing thin on our pro­fes­sion­als.
Politicians fight­ing with doc­tors in hos­pi­tals. Teacher los­ing it in her class­room as a result of dis­re­spect­ful kid. Police offi­cer hang­ing onto the hood of a car for dear life because motorist knows he will not be held account­able for his actions.
This is law­less­ness, and it does not mean that the entire nation is mad. It means that those whose job it is to pro­tect our coun­try has failed dismally.

Our nation can­not claim that there is no tem­plate for suc­cess, there is.
We admire many nation’s suc­cess­es, we talk a great deal about them. The ques­tion becomes, “how come we can­not just copy what they are doing”?
The truth is that as soon as we get over our admi­ra­tion, and look at what it takes to get to their lev­el we back away because as a nation we lack dis­ci­pline.
We lack the dis­ci­pline to do what’s right. We lack the dis­ci­pline to sus­pend our affin­i­ty for the sweet sug­ary rush of cot­ton can­dy.
We tell our­selves that the nec­es­sary veg­an-diet could nev­er work for us in our unique cir­cum­stances. (Because of course, we are spe­cial), *sar­casm.*
And we con­tin­ue with the sug­ar rush. I think we all know where that will even­tu­al­ly take us.

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 is real­ly no safe way to hold a ser­pent, you can grab it by the head and try not to get stung, but that’s about it.
The present impeach­ment inquiry which Donald Trump forced the Democrats to engage in, is very much like a ser­pent. There are real­ly no good out­comes for the Democrats, despite the fact that they are the ones act­ing in defense of the con­sti­tu­tion.
One of the chal­lenges fac­ing the Democrats is that a large sec­tion of the elec­torate will walk off a cliff with Trump even though they know they are going to die.
That kind of fanati­cism is not born out of any­thing that Donald Trump has done on their per­son­al or col­lec­tive behalf. It is a result of what Donald Trump rep­re­sents as a racist, white suprema­cist who hates the same peo­ple they hate.

Donald Trump under­stood that- that sleep­er-cell of white resent­ment was always there, despite the unval­i­dat­ed faith, and soar­ing ora­to­ry laced with belief in them, by the likes of Barack Obama and Corey Booker.
Trump under­stood that those peo­ple are will­ing to blame their own fail­ings on oth­ers who do not look like them­selves.
As a mouth­piece for that sub­set, Trump was on point when he said he could shoot some­one on fifth avenue, and he would not lose any votes.
Today as the 44^th White male, and the 45^th man to occu­py 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as President, his sup­port remains as sol­id as it ever was, and the Republican par­ty he leads is now a racist, xeno­pho­bic cult.
That ought to put to rest the whole ques­tion as to why Trump’s sup­port remains sol­id despite the egre­gious things he has done since elect­ed to office.
No one wants to say it so I will. They are irre­deemable racists.

It is impor­tant to record for pos­ter­i­ty, that the Republicans have no desire to defend the Constitution, nev­er­the­less, that does not mean that the Democratic par­ty should abdi­cate its duty to pro­tect and defend the con­sti­tu­tion.
As such, it is crit­i­cal to under­stand that the Democrats are duty-bound to con­duct inquiries into Donald Trump’s actions.
When this peri­od of American his­to­ry is writ­ten the Democrats can take a bow that they are the patri­ots who stood up in defense of the United States Constitution.

It does not require a rock­et sci­en­tist to fig­ure out the strat­e­gy Trump and his shame­less Republican back­ers have in mind. As the world has seen in the hear­ing, as was the case dur­ing the Muller inves­ti­ga­tion, they are not inter­est­ed in facts.
They are inter­est­ed in obfus­ca­tion, deflec­tion, and diver­sions. Unfortunately for the coun­try, here is one polit­i­cal par­ty that does­n’t care whether a hos­tile pow­er inter­fered in the most sacred ele­ment of democ­ra­cy, the right to free and fair elec­tions.
But this was nev­er some­thing which both­ered Republicans, they have con­sis­tent­ly worked at cre­at­ing ways to ensure that black and brown peo­ple are lim­it­ed in their abil­i­ty to vote.
It is just sad and rep­re­hen­si­ble that as they have fought to lim­it the vote of peo­ple who are unlike­ly to vote for them they have opt­ed to have a hos­tile pow­er skew the vote on their behalf.
It was not long that some of these same peo­ple had wrapped them­selves in the American flag and pre­tend­ed to be patri­ots.
In fact many of them still do.

Republicans are wait­ing for Democrats to file arti­cles of impeach­ment, upon which the sen­ate can do either of two things, (1) Summarily dis­miss the charges. However, the Republicans who have con­trol of the sen­ate under the régime of Mosco Mitch McConnell will try to make it seem like they are fol­low­ing the laws. Or (2) hold a sham abbre­vi­at­ed tri­al, and quick­ly find that Trump broke no laws and com­mit­ted no impeach­able offense.
The ille­git­i­mate dis­missal of the charges or the (not guilty sham find­ing) then becomes an elec­tion-year weapon. Remember their nar­ra­tive that the Muller inves­ti­ga­tions were a hoax? The nar­ra­tive today that the House Intelligence impeach­ment inquiry is a par­ti­san witch hunt?
The pre­dictable sen­ate out­come will be dis­in­for­ma­tion on steroids. It will be dif­fi­cult for any Democratic can­di­date to stand up to that onslaught, much less over­come it.
With a whole state Television channel(FOX) ded­i­cat­ed to dis­in­for­ma­tion. Sinclair’s tele­vi­sion sta­tions across the nation. Twenty-four-hour talk radio and Facebook and oth­er enti­ties ded­i­cat­ed to churn­ing out dis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da ²⁴⁄₇, it will be a tough row to hoe for whichev­er Democratic can­di­date emerge as the nominee.

SO WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

The solu­tion is to gath­er the evi­dence and release it to the pub­lic. Or impeach him in the house but do not send the arti­cles to the Senate.

They should not send the arti­cles of impeach­ment to the sen­ate giv­ing Mitch McConnell the abil­i­ty to manip­u­late the process. Trump is already tam­per­ing with jurors to a poten­tial sen­ate tri­al, as he is secret­ly meet­ing with Republican sen­a­tors, the very peo­ple who would decide his inno­cence or guilt in an impeach­ment tri­al. Even the ones who he has berat­ed in the press as pompous fools.
This is essen­tial­ly jury tam­per­ing, but when Trump does these things they are not against the law. In fact, as far as his lawyers and sup­port­ers are con­cerned, as pres­i­dent, he is inca­pable of break­ing the law.
Such is the God-like sta­tus giv­en this men­da­cious men­di­cant.
Republicans have long held that it should be up to the vot­ers to decide whether to remove Trump from office.
DEMOCRATS should indulge them. Use the find­ings of the inquiry as cam­paign fod­der, but do not file arti­cles of impeach­ment. No use going into a fight if you know you are going to lose.
The strat­e­gy ought to be the Powell doc­trine.
“Don’t go to war if there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that you can lose, but if you have to fight take all your weapons to war use them all and go home”.

Democrats are not oblig­at­ed to file arti­cles of impeach­ment. They can opt to let the vot­ers decide.
Will the lying Republicans have a prob­lem with that strat­e­gy, you bet your ass they will, but Democrats are not oblig­at­ed to please them. Remember it was they who said the next pres­i­dent should decide who the next supreme court jus­tice should be when Obama nom­i­nat­ed Merrick Garland?
Every bit of infor­ma­tion gleaned from that inquiry should e weaponized and a scorched earth strat­e­gy devel­oped to remove this can­cer.
That should also mean remov­ing every sin­gle Republican Senator up for re-elec­tion and every house mem­ber as well.
Not a sin­gle one of those liars who refused to defend the con­sti­tu­tion vot­ed for the inquiry. Every one of them should be tar­get­ed for removal, regard­less of how red their state or dis­trict is.

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.

One of the things I find com­pelling is the way politi­cians treat African-American vot­ers as a mono­lith, con­trolled by Black Pastors.
Now I do under­stand why they would want to go to Black Churches when they want to reach the African-American vot­ing core. After all, Black women are the back­bone of the black church and black women are the most reli­able vot­ing block in the coun­try.
And so polit­i­cal aspi­rants believe that regard­less of what harm they did to the African-American com­mu­ni­ty in the past, all they have to do is to vis­it a black church, offer up a mea cul­pa and all is for­got­ten.
But hold up there Busta, that ain’t gonna always fly.
The coun­ty exec­u­tive in my neck of the woods told me that my pas­tor endorsed his can­di­da­cy after I dis­agreed with him on an issue.
Okay, truth be told, I dis­agree with him on every­thing. He is white, male and Republican, hard­ly any­thing on which he and I can agree.
I flat­ly told him that my Pastor does not speak for me.

Which brings me to the cur­rent crop of aspi­rants for the Democratic Nomination in 2020.
In my esti­ma­tion, one of the rea­sons that so many white male can­di­dates have failed to reg­is­ter any sup­port in the pri­maries may be attrib­uted to their lack of appeal to Black voters.
Take con­gress­man Tim Ryan from Ohio for exam­ple, he nev­er seemed to grasp that the pres­i­den­cy is much larg­er than Ohio’s 13^th con­gres­sion­al district.
Dude, you were run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy not to remain in the con­gress, dur­ing the debates his every answer was about his dis­trict. The fact is that African-Americans make up the base of the Democrat par­ty, blacks have pre­cious lit­tle in com­mon with Ryan’s 13^th conservative/​democrat dis­trict in Ohio, and so he was out real quick.

There were sev­er­al oth­er white male can­di­dates, Bennet. Bullock. Delaney. Steyer and of course Buttigieg, nei­ther of these men have fig­ured out a way to appeal to black vot­ers despite the fact that they are run­ning on the Democrat tick­et. Bernie Sanders marched with Dr. King and still, he can­not seem to shake the nag­ging sus­pi­cion with which many black vot­ers view his can­di­da­cy.
Neither of them will be the nom­i­nee for their par­ty of choice it appears. 

This brings us to Michael Bloomberg the for­mer Democrat turned Republican, turned Independent, turned Democrat, bil­lion­aire three-term Mayor of New York City.
He decid­ed that he wants to be pres­i­dent, because the present crop of Democrats does­n’t seem to meet with his approval.
You know one fake bil­lion­aire was able to worm his way into 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, so as a real bil­lion­aire he should be able to do it quite eas­i­ly, right?
He should ask Tom Styer how his can­di­da­cy is work­ing out.

I’ll nev­er for­get that Michael Bloomberg felt that the lying decep­tive Rudolph Giuliani must have been indis­pens­able in 2003 after his sec­ond term end­ed. Michael Bloomberg and Mark Green one of the Democrat can­di­dates vying to be may­or of the city agreed that if they won the elec­tion they would allow Giuliani to stay on for an extra three (3) months as Mayor to super­vise the rebuild­ing efforts in the city. Fernando Ferrer the oth­er demo­c­rat can­di­date said no.
The pow­er-hun­gry Giuliani waged an intense lob­by­ing effort to stay in office argu­ing: “It will give peo­ple in the city who have fears about what’s going to hap­pen, and how it’s going to hap­pen, a cer­tain sense of con­fi­dence.“
What non­sense, it was an unvar­nished pow­er-grab but Bloomberg allowed his crony to do it because he had plans of his own.
Fernando Ferrer would have none of it argu­ing; “I know the pol­i­tics of the moment might dic­tate a dif­fer­ent posi­tion, but I am deeply con­cerned about the prece­dent this would set.”
Now, remem­ber it was the same Giuliani who made the deci­sion to place the city’s com­mand and con­trol cen­ter in the world trade cen­ter tow­er, even after the tow­ers were attacked ten years ear­li­er.
At the time Giuliani was lob­by­ing for more time in office in clas­sic dic­ta­to­r­i­al fash­ion, the state’s Republican Governor George Pataki was also all for it.
The New York Civil Rights Coalition was harsh­ly crit­i­cal of the plan, accus­ing Giuliani of bul­ly­ing the may­oral can­di­dates and being “dis­rup­tive to elec­toral democ­ra­cy.”
According to Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg agreed to his plan immediately.

In the end, Michael Bloomberg allowed Giuliani to stay on after his term end­ed. Conceivably not out of any desire to see con­ti­nu­ity in the rebuild­ing process after the events of September 11^th, 2001, but because he had plans of his own to strong-arm the city coun­cil to change the term lim­its law.
The law only allowed for two terms up to Giuliani’s tenure.
During his tenure as Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican Mayor was a reg­u­lar lit­tle Napoleon.
Bloomberg sup­port­ed and cham­pi­oned a ban on large sug­ary drinks. Simply put, Michael Bloomberg felt that as Mayor of New York City he and his Board of Health, had the right to dic­tate to New Yorkers what size sodas they were allowed to have.
I’m not sure whether Communist nations and oth­er dic­ta­tor­ships tell their cit­i­zens how much sug­ar they can and can­not con­sume? Obviously, Michael Bloomberg had not acquaint­ed him­self with the fail­ings of the 18^th amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion.
In a 4 – 2 epic smack­down of Bloomberg’s mea­sure, Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. of the New York State Court of Appeals wrote in a 20-page deci­sion, that the city’s Board of Health “exceed­ed the scope of its reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty.”
The American Beverage Association at the time argued: “the pro­pos­al would have cre­at­ed an uneven play­ing field for thou­sands of small busi­ness­es in the city and lim­it­ed New Yorkers’ free­dom of choice.”
This issue was about (free­dom of choice), even if one agrees that maybe its not such a bad idea to con­sume less sug­ar, it is nev­er a good idea when the Government becomes the arbiter of what one should and should­n’t con­sume.
Bill de Blasio, the present Mayor of the city sup­port­ed Bloomberg’s over-reach at the time.

In a March 2007 arti­cle for New York Magazine Chris Smith wrote; Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come to Pier 76, just off the West Side Highway, on a crisp Tuesday after­noon in March to open new sta­bles for an NYPD mount­ed unit, and he’s down­right gid­dy, his voice ris­ing as he lists the fea­tures of the $8.7 mil­lion facil­i­ty. “The four-legged mem­bers of Troop B need­ed a hayloft!” he exclaims. “As well as stalls! An equip­ment room, a heat­ed exer­cise area, and their own show­er!”
At the time, fam­i­ly home­less­ness was on the rise. The sit­u­a­tion was wors­ened by a Bloomberg pro­gram called Housing Stability Plus, which shrank pay­ments to fam­i­lies liv­ing in sub­si­dized units. Yes, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican bil­lion­aire Mayor shrank pay­ments to fam­i­lies liv­ing in sub­si­dized hous­ing. It is usu­al­ly the least pow­er­ful, poor­est peo­ple who live in those sub­si­dized hous­ing units.
Smith wrote; Unemployment is down, but to me, one of the most haunt­ing images of 2006 was the thou­sands of des­per­ate peo­ple lined up in mid­town hop­ing for a chance at a hand­ful of jobs at the new M&M can­dy store in Times Square. Deaths of chil­dren “known” to the child-wel­fare sys­tem sky­rock­et­ed last year. 
And Sean Bell an inno­cent African-American man, was mur­dered by NYPD COPS on the ear­ly morn­ing of the day he was sup­posed to be married.

As Michael Bloomberg basked in his new police horse-sta­ble with equip­ment rooms, heat­ed exer­cise areas, and show­ers, a reporter asked him “What about the Bell sup­port­ers who are angry that more cops weren’t indict­ed”? 
Smith wrote that the mood soured as soon as Sean Bell’s name was men­tioned. Bloomberg retort­ed in response to the ques­tion; “We’re a coun­try of laws!” he says sharply. “The dis­trict attor­ney made his case to the grand jury, the grand jury has indict­ed three peo­ple, they will have their day in court, and jus­tice will be served, what­ev­er that is.”
Bloomberg cared much more about the new show­place for hors­es than the fact that his goons had mur­dered an inno­cent young man on the day he was to be mar­ried.
Sean Bell and many oth­ers were mur­dered, bru­tal­ized and harassed as a result of the bro­ken win­dows pol­i­cy called “stop and frisk”, start­ed by the oth­er Republican Gestapo Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.
Michael Bloomberg con­tin­ued it, and allowed Black and Brown peo­ple of the city to be sub­ject­ed to untold ter­ror by out of con­trol cops who saw the laws as a license to abuse those they did not like. 

According to the New York Daily News, In 2013, a judge ruled the prac­tice had been applied in an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al way and a fed­er­al mon­i­tor was appoint­ed to over­see reforms. 
Michael Bloomberg railed against the judge’s deci­sion at the time and sup­port­ed its con­tin­u­ance despite the fact that the NYPD had start­ed reduc­ing the use of stop-and-frisk on its own, an effort cham­pi­oned by Mayor de Blasio when he took office in 2014.
Bloomberg sup­port­ed the prac­tice for years even after he left office.

Nevertheless, on Sunday, November 17^th, 2019 the same Michael Bloomberg was at his friend A R Bernard Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. The afore­men­tioned is the largest mega-church in the tri-state area boast­ing a mem­ber­ship of forty thou­sand peo­ple.
No par­tic­u­lar group votes with more depend­abil­i­ty than African-American women. There is no bet­ter place to find African-American women than the black church.
And so Michael Bloomberg, oppor­tunis­tic for­mer Democrat, turned Republican, turned Independent, is now con­ve­nient­ly a Democrat again try­ing to weasel his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He is at least polit­i­cal­ly savvy enough to know that you are going nowhere in the Democrat par­ty with­out win­ning the black vote.
So here he was address­ing the largest black con­gre­ga­tion between here and Texas.
The oth­er con artist now occu­py­ing the white house is no genius, despite his claim that he is a sta­ble genius. Nevertheless, he was savvy enough to rec­og­nize that there is a rough­ly 35% of dis­af­fect­ed, racist whites some­where out there who need­ed some­one with a mega­phone.
By virtue of his name and for­tune Michael Bloomberg has a loud mega­phone, what he needs is a fol­low­ing and that is the rea­son he was in A R Bernard’s church on Sunday morning.

Bloomberg: “I now see that we could and should have act­ed soon­er, and act­ed faster, to cut the stops.”
“I wish we had and I’m sor­ry that we didn’t, but I can’t change his­to­ry,” he con­tin­ued. “However, today I want you to know that I real­ized back then that I was wrong and I’m sor­ry.”
“The fact is, far too many peo­ple were being stopped while we tried to [reduce crime] and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of them were black and Latino.”
“Because of the num­ber of stops of inno­cent peo­ple, because it had been so high, resent­ment had built up.” “We erod­ed what we had worked so hard to build: trust. Trust between police and com­mu­ni­ties, trust between you and me”.
“And the ero­sion of that trust both­ered me deeply. And it still both­ers me. And I want to earn it back.”
I call Bullshit on Michael Bloomberg’s mea cul­pa.
Decades after his con­tin­ued stri­dent defense of a pol­i­cy that brought untold agony and hurt to so many.
All of a sud­den this oppor­tunis­tic con artist is sor­ry?
I don’t think so. It is cyn­i­cal, trans­par­ent, and it is reprehensible.

But there is one threat greater to our peo­ple than these devi­ous self-serv­ing politi­cians. It is the pas­tors who allow these weasels to come into their church­es, know­ing that the major­i­ty of the con­gre­ga­tions look to them not only for spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship, but polit­i­cal guid­ance.
On Sunday morn­ing, in bring­ing his friend Michael Bloomberg to the stage A R Bernard told his con­gre­ga­tion; “Come on, CCC, show some love and appre­ci­a­tion.”
Appreciation for what?
Years of police bru­tal­i­ty which brought death, pain, and despair to count­less African-American and Caribbean-American fam­i­lies?
In the 60s the Black church was at the fore­front of the civ­il rights strug­gle. Since then, church­es pay no tax­es on their mon­e­tary intake, as long as they stay out of the polit­i­cal are­na.
It was an inge­nious way for the sys­tem to neu­tral­ize the black church.
Today, except for a few instances, black church lead­er­ship is all about the tithes and offer­ings and not about the inter­est of their con­gre­gants.
It is time for black vot­ers to tell the Michael Bloombergs of the world that their pas­tors do not speak for them.

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.

Over the last two days, in two sep­a­rate arti­cles, we spoke to what appears to be a brew­ing ide­o­log­i­cal strug­gle between the Powerful United States and its emerg­ing counter-weight, the People’s Republic of China.
As I argued in the first arti­cle, this is a sense of déjà vu for the tiny Island Nation of Jamaica which saw, it’s pro­duc­tive sec­tor destroyed, an incred­i­ble brain-drain occur, and her econ­o­my evis­cer­at­ed in the 1970s as the United States and the Soviet Union bat­tled for world dom­i­na­tion.

As the ide­o­log­i­cal war­fare raged between America’s cap­i­tal­ist agen­da and the Soviet’s com­mu­nist push, small­er nations found them­selves at the cen­ter of proxy wars between the two hege­mon­ic pow­ers as they com­pet­ed, not just for real estate but for their doc­trine to be the defin­ing doc­trine world­wide.
Despite the immea­sur­able dam­age done to Jamaica in the 1970s, the Island was arguably luck­i­er than oth­er small nations that found them­selves at the cen­ter of the fight between the two giants in what became known as the cold war.
Tragically for Cuba, anoth­er Carribean Island just 90 miles from Jamaica’s west­er­ly shore, events in the 1960s brought America’s force down on the Cuban peo­ple. A force that has sti­fled and brought untold suf­fer­ing to the Cuban peo­ple.
The counter-argu­ments that Communism has been respon­si­ble for the dev­as­ta­tion of Cuba is worth dis­cussing. However, Several nations, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Eastern Europe were gob­bled up into the Soviet Empire, after the fall of com­mu­nism, those coun­tries have done remark­ably well for them­selves.
Cuba has not, and can­not do the same eco­nom­i­cal­ly. America’s embar­go, and the stran­gle­hold it has placed on the Cuban econ­o­my, crip­pling sanc­tions, and oth­er means, makes it impos­si­ble for the Cuban econ­o­my to grow, regard­less of Cuba’s domes­tic politics.

In what appears to be the sec­ond iter­a­tion of what hap­pened to Jamaica in the ’70s, there are some omi­nous clouds devel­op­ing which ought to be of grave con­cern to Jamaicans regard­less of where they live.
In two sep­a­rate inter­views giv­en to local media enti­ties, both the American ambas­sador to Jamaica and the head of the United States Southern mil­i­tary com­mand found it nec­es­sary to lec­ture Jamaica about her rela­tion­ship with China.
In both instances Admiral Craig S. Faller head of Southern Command and US Ambassador to Jamaica Donald Tapia gave inter­views, and in those inter­views seem to have for­got­ten that Jamaica was not one of America’s Colonial out­posts but a sov­er­eign inde­pen­dent nation.
The text and temer­i­ty of both offi­cials seemed to sug­gest that Jamaicans (a) were inca­pable of under­stand­ing the unfore­seen con­se­quences of Jamaica’s rela­tion­ship with China, (b) Jamaican offi­cials were inca­pable of mak­ing deci­sions in Jamaicas best strate­gic inter­est.
Interestingly, the U.S. itself is indebt­ed to the People’s Republic of China to the tune of $1.11 tril­lion as of May 2019.
It is safe to say that the US is ful­ly con­ver­sant with China’s moti­va­tions when they invest in America’s trea­sury bonds. So too should we assume that Jamaica under­stands what’s at stake when it bor­rows from China?

In the United States sys­tem of Justice, there is a term in law that deter­mines whether a par­ty wish­ing to sue in Federal court has the right to do so.
That term is called ‘standing”. Before that case can progress in the sys­tem, the sys­tem has to deter­mine whether the plain­tiff has the right to make the case in the first place.
Accordingly, the argu­ments of both American offi­cial may be on point as it relates to the need for Jamaica to be extreme­ly cau­tious about her deal­ings with the People’s Republic of China, the ques­tion is whether either or both offi­cials have the “stand­ing” to make those admon­ish­ments to Jamaica.
It was Mark Twain who said; “Nothing so needs reform­ing as oth­er peo­ple’s habits”. It goes with­out say­ing that the United States has no stand­ing to dic­tate to Jamaica how to con­duct her affairs.
Sure, Jamaica needs to be clear-eyed about China’s strate­gic inten­tions, which are tied to their loans, so too does the United States need to change its approach to inde­pen­dent sov­er­eign nations.

What Jamaicans do not need are lec­tures and a talk­ing to, like an errant child. Jamaicans are not unciv­i­lized, une­d­u­cat­ed lit­tle out­post natives. What Jamaica needs is respect, low-inter­est loans, tech­ni­cal exper­tise and invest­ments which will help to lift the small nation’s econ­o­my to a place where her peo­ple will have no need to leave out of eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety.
Regardless of China’s long-term strate­gic inter­est, it is dif­fi­cult to turn down low-inter­est loans and infra­struc­tur­al expan­sion which are crit­i­cal to the ulti­mate devel­op­ment of the country.

The United States has assist­ed Jamaica in numer­ous ways that have been help­ful. Many Jamaicans will read­i­ly point to some­thing which they have indi­vid­u­al­ly ben­e­fit­ted from. To those Jamaicans, it is dif­fi­cult to make the case that there are larg­er more con­se­quen­tial con­sid­er­a­tions out­side those minor ben­e­fits.
Others talk about the fact that there are prob­a­bly hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jamaicans liv­ing and work­ing in the United States.
What they fail to rec­og­nize is the ease with which Americans can vis­it and live in Jamaica, much unlike the reverse.
The pol­i­cy that Americans must have a pass­port to trav­el out­side the coun­try is of the mak­ing of the United States, it has noth­ing to do with oth­er nations.
Previously Americans could trav­el to Jamaica with only a dri­ver’s license.
Jamaica has no way of know­ing whether or not Americans trav­el­ing to the Island have crim­i­nal records. In fact, many do have crim­i­nal records and many do com­mit crimes while vis­it­ing. Many com­mit crimes while liv­ing in Jamaica.
In these instances, there is no reci­procity of respect in the Jamaica-America relationship. 

So yes, there have been much that the Americans have done as a large pow­er to assist Jamaica, hur­ri­cane and oth­er dis­as­ter relief, and a gen­er­al slate of across the board assis­tance, none of which can change Jamaica or pro­pel her into the 21^st cen­tu­ry.
Low-inter­est loans and tech­ni­cal assis­tance does give the Island the abil­i­ty to move for­ward. They allow for much-need­ed high­ways link­ing all sec­tions of the coun­try togeth­er, much the same way that President Dwight Eisenhower embarked on a mas­sive high­way build­ing project across the United States dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy.
Eisenhower under­stood that inter­state com­merce was crit­i­cal to expand­ing and grow­ing the American econ­o­my.
Andrew Holness also under­stands that cre­at­ing road­ways across the Island is crit­i­cal to island development. 

Jamaicans love the United States of America, giv­en a chance, Jamaicans would unan­i­mous­ly opt to trav­el and live in the United States, more so than they would, the People’s Republic of China or any oth­er nation.
Nevertheless, those same Jamaicans will get rather defen­sive when their coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty is not respect­ed.
They are quite aware of what China is doing, but at the same time, they are mes­mer­ized at the high­ways being built across their own coun­try.
Those infra­struc­ture projects are a source of pride, and no amount of lec­ture will damp­en that pride.
The United States may have missed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly solid­i­fy its rela­tion­ship with an all-impor­tant strate­gi­cal­ly placed ally.
Maybe a lit­tle more respect would have result­ed in some bet­ter loan agree­ments, grants, and tech­ni­cal sup­port.
Jamaica has done a lot of heavy lift­ing try­ing to live up to American demands. On a per­son­al note, I have risked my own life for years in the fight against illic­it drugs, because the Americans want­ed us to.
The for­mer [Air Jamaica] was forced to pay enor­mous fines to the United States for the sins of inge­nious mar­i­jua­na smug­glers.
Today Jamaica is flood­ed with ille­gal American made guns. Instead of help­ing to bol­ster the crime-fight­ing efforts of the Islands law enforce­ment, the United States seeks to attach puni­tive mea­sures to those who come down hard on the Islands crim­i­nals.
Maybe a change of atti­tude will go a long way, instead of a lecture.

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.

Trump’s man in Jamaica Ambassador Donald Tapia has tak­en the same tack as Southern Command head, Admiral Craig Faller, in talk­ing down to Jamaica about the dan­ger China pos­es as a result of Sino-Jamaica rela­tions.
Make no mis­take about it, every word and every con­cern com­ing out of Washington DC’s mouth­pieces are true, just not wel­come from them.
The prob­lem is the gall and temer­i­ty of Washington DC to want to dic­tate terms to Jamaica as to who her friends should be as well as how she should con­duct her affairs.
Can you imag­ine the Jamaican ambas­sador in the United States telling the American Government how to con­duct for­eign affairs?
I am still try­ing to under­stand the ratio­nale for America’s unwant­ed pater­nal­is­tic propen­si­ties.
In response to Admiral Faller’s state­ments while in Jamaica we wrote yes­ter­day, that as a guest in Jamaica the Admiral was out of order and way ahead on his skis to be lec­tur­ing Jamaica about her rela­tion­ships.
Sure China is a two-head­ed snake, but as a coun­try, Jamaica has to make deci­sions in her inter­ests and the choic­es are not always between good and bad. Those choic­es are some­times choos­ing one of two evils.

In a more com­pre­hen­sive lec­ture than that of Fallers, yet in a mode as dis­joint­ed as his boss’s infan­tile style, Tapia went on a tear: “China is a drag­on with two heads. If China came to Jamaica pre­sum­ably with no strings attached, then why did you nego­ti­ate 1,200 acres of the most prime real estate with them? Because they need a return on their invest­ment,” Tapia told the local Gleaner pub­li­ca­tion.
Those are facts, but they are of no con­cern to either Tapia or the United States.

Tapia; “There is no way that you will be able to fund that high­way in 50 years. The nego­ti­a­tion was 1,200 of the most beau­ti­ful acres on the water that you gave to China, and they said they would devel­op it.” 
Again true, true, true, but the United States has always had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to assist Jamaica in a mean­ing­ful way which would remove her from pover­ty.
Jamaica with a first-world infra­struc­ture is in America’s strate­gic inter­est as she will be bet­ter able to retain its peo­ple and devel­op her econ­o­my.
America nev­er cared too much about Black peo­ple, so a devel­oped Jamaica would mean few­er Jamaicans seek­ing to enter the United States.
The United States has act­ed against Jamaica’s fidu­cia­ry inter­est in the past.
The harm done to Jamaica in the ’70s, was the price the coun­try paid for eschew­ing socialism/​communism. Some argue it was a great vic­to­ry against those forces, oth­ers say it was a pyrrhic victory.

Tapia denounced as unfair the Jamaican Government’s con­ces­sions to China Harbour Engineering Company – and oth­er con­struc­tion firms aligned to Beijing that engage in major infra­struc­ture projects.
This too is true but last time I looked Jamaica did not belong to America, nei­ther is she answer­able to the United States for her deci­sion mak­ing, no more than the United States is answer­able to her.
Again the US had it’s chance if it cared about Jamaica to help her with her devel­op­ment. Instead, Jamaicans are deport­ed from the US with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy and reg­u­lar­i­ty for the most minor infrac­tions.
Jamaica is awash in illic­it American guns, that are killing inno­cent cit­i­zens at an alarm­ing rate each year.
Extradition and depor­ta­tions are the char­ac­ter­is­tics that seem to define the American-Jamaican expe­ri­ence today.
Not mutu­al respect and devel­op­ment which should favor the two nations.

Said, Tapia: “When they (China) go into a coun­try, they go after two things – the min­er­als and the ports. I could tell you hor­ror sto­ries of coun­tries where they have tak­en over the ports because those coun­tries could not pay for their invest­ment; China usu­al­ly has a great pro­pa­gan­da sto­ry as to why it has hap­pened.”
“When America invests in the ener­gy and edu­ca­tion sec­tors, we are build­ing a long-last­ing effect and will con­tribute to sta­bil­i­ty and help to stem the brain drain. Those who talk about free speech, free enter­prise and human rights are for­get­ting that those three things go togeth­er with Jamaicans, who are free­dom-lov­ing peo­ple, and one day, the chick­ens will come home to roost. So, take all you can from them, but remem­ber that the West is stand­ing there with you.”

We have sure­ly seen what it looks like when America stands with Jamaica, and though the rela­tion­ship between the two nations is crit­i­cal, it sure­ly has­n’t been a rela­tion­ship based on mutu­al respect.
According to https://​trav​el​.state​.gov/ as of the fis­cal year 2018, the United States Embassy in Kingston’s refusal rate for grant­i­ng (B)visitor visas to Jamaicans was 54. 46%, as opposed to 5.1% for the Apartheid state of Israel.
The only coun­tries with high­er refusal rates are African nations like Liberia, with 64.36%, Libya with 73.73%, and some Asain nations like North Korea, Laos and oth­ers.
It is sure­ly the pre­rog­a­tive of the United States, how it han­dles its busi­ness, includ­ing who is allowed in as against who it keeps out. Jamaica’s geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty sure­ly has­n’t helped in her rela­tion­ship with her pow­er­ful neigh­bor to the north.
Jamaica’s rela­tion­ship with the United States is pure­ly strate­gic as it relates to America’s inter­est in stop­ping the drugs enter­ing her ports and main­tain­ing Jamaica as a syco­phan­tic under­ling who will ensure none of America’s adver­saries gains her affections.

(Former Jamaican ambas­sador and deputy per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the United Nations, told The Gleaner yes­ter­day that America had telegraphed its dis­plea­sure with Sino-Jamaican pacts since the vis­it by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in February 2018. “We shouldn’t be sur­prised. It has been going on for two years. Since that time, clear­ly, Jamaica has not paid atten­tion to what the US has said, but has forged ahead with its devel­op­ments.” 
“Washington should state whether it would fill the vac­u­um if Jamaica were to pull back from China”, Said Ward.
That’s it in a nut­shell, put up or shut up.

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.

Déjà vu? Maybe, but to those old enough to remem­ber, it sure seems like a sec­ond go-around of testos­terone-laden pos­tur­ing by two mil­i­tary super-pow­ers, and our diminu­tive Jamaica is once again caught in the middle. 

As part of his duties as the prac­ti­cal exec­u­tive head of state of Jamaica, Prime Minister Andrew Holness over the last few days have been on a 9‑day work­ing vis­it to the peo­ple’s repub­lic of China.
At the same time Admiral Craig Faller, com­man­der of the United States Southern Command, who vis­it­ed Jamaica issued a warn­ing to Jamaica.
Quote: “We see that oth­er exter­nal actors, oth­er regions of the world that do not share the same val­ues, are oper­at­ing in con­junc­tion with [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro for their own good.”
“Russia is right there along­side con­tribut­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion, and China is in there as well as part of the dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign.” 

Interestingly, mil­i­tary peo­ple are not allowed to engage in pol­i­tick­ing in the United States. Additionally, Jamaica is not a state, nei­ther is it a ter­ri­to­ry of the United States.
Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of think­ing for them­selves and so Faller’s state­ments were gross­ly unwant­ed, con­de­scend­ing and out of order.

There are sev­er­al the­ses that could be writ­ten about the American-Jamaican expe­ri­ence, not the least of which occurred in the ’70s at the heights of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union in which Jamaica became a pawn.
The idea that Jamaica, and indeed many oth­er poor nations across Africa and Latin-America should be wary of per­ceived Chinese benev­o­lence goes with­out say­ing.
In a con­ver­sa­tion, I had with some friends recent­ly, I likened the Chinese expe­ri­ence to a [Trojan horse], I argued that indeed, Jamaica and Africa should be care­ful of the Chinese gifts and entreaties.
Already there are signs that Chinese mon­ey does come with ter­ri­ble strings many of which are still not vis­i­ble to its debtors.

The Chinese Belt and Road pact, part of a glob­al devel­op­ment ini­tia­tive is des­tined to be suc­cess­ful because like the ini­tia­tives of oth­ers, sup­pos­ed­ly aimed at nation-build­ing, it is not exe­cut­ed at the point of a gun.
In that stealth approach, how­ev­er, the Chinese may be par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous to naïve nations in need.
There should be no doubt about Chinese expan­sion­ist ambi­tions not just in Jamaica, but across the globe. There should nev­er be any doubt that the Chinese are spread­ing around mon­ey with ulte­ri­or motives that ben­e­fit China, and sets China up as a glob­al coun­ter­weight to America’s hegemony.

It is not that Admiral Craig Faller is wrong on the mer­its. His temer­i­ty and gall made him wrong. As a vis­i­tor to Jamaica, Faller had no right to speak on polit­i­cal issues as if Jamaica is Guam, or Puerto Rico.
Jamaica is a small nation 4411 square miles and 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple. If the United States want­ed to use its pow­er and influ­ence for good, Jamaica could be a devel­oped state like Dubai or Singapore today.
Offering that kind of help through loans, grants, and tech­ni­cal exper­tise, the United States would not have to wor­ry about poor Jamaicans try­ing to enter the United States.
The United States has had its chance to be a bet­ter role mod­el to Jamaica, a fledg­ling Democracy mere­ly 57-years old.
After the 1970s which saw many small­er nations being used as pawns between the two com­pet­ing super-pow­ers, Jamaica demon­strat­ed that as a nation she was dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to Communism in 1980 when the American backed Edward Seaga of the JLP was elect­ed, win­ning 51 of the then 60 seats in the Legislature.
After eight years of the JLP, the Manley PNP was returned to pow­er. Since then stew­ard­ship of the coun­try has been shared between the two polit­i­cal parties.

The cold war end­ed under Ronald Reagan’s pres­i­den­cy which ran simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to Seaga’s stew­ard­ship of Jamaica. Contrary to the hype, the Soviet Union col­lapsed under its own weight rather than any­thing Reagan or any­one else may have done.
In the years ensu­ing since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has enjoyed a total and com­plete hege­mon­ic monop­oly across the globe.
During that time the United States has made tremen­dous strides mil­i­tar­i­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise, acquir­ing untold wealth in the pri­vate sec­tor as it spreads its wings as the sole super­pow­er in the world.
At the same time, the tiny Island Nation of Jamaica, a short hop from America’s Florida shores has strug­gled with pover­ty, and crime aggra­vat­ed by the flood of ille­gal American guns.

America had a chance to demon­strate to the world that it stands with those who have stood by her.
Jamaica has always stood stead­fast­ly with the United States, she did so in the ear­ly years of world war two and again in the nine­teen-eight­ies when she resound­ing­ly reject­ed com­mu­nism.
Instead of help­ing Jamaica in a mean­ing­ful way to devel­op her infra­struc­ture, Roadways. Bridges. Water sup­ply. etc, America embarked on wars across the globe, many of which were total­ly unnec­es­sary.
In the mean­time, the United States treat­ed Jamaica as an unwant­ed stepchild. Deportations and dis­en­chant­ment are the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics that per­me­ate the rela­tion­ship between the two.
Still, because of the prospect of a bet­ter life, Jamaicans still line up in Liguanea, try­ing to get a visa to enter the United States. Despite pay­ing tremen­dous sums of mon­ey just to apply for a vis­i­tor visa only a tiny frac­tion of appli­cants are grant­ed a visa. The 90 plus per­cent who are denied a visa do not get their mon­ey back.

In response to Faller’s unso­licit­ed state­ments, the Chinese Embassy in Kingston issued a release in which they said the fol­low­ing. “Facts speak loud­er than words. Sino-Jamaica, Sino-Caribbean, and Sino-Latin American coöper­a­tion, which fea­tures equal­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and mutu­al ben­e­fit, is con­ducive to region­al peace, sta­bil­i­ty, and devel­op­ment and will not be stopped by any force.”
“Irre­spec­tive of the inten­tions by Admiral Faller mak­ing those irre­spon­si­ble accu­sa­tions, China will con­tin­u­ous­ly and unswerv­ing­ly work togeth­er with Jamaica and oth­er Latin American and Caribbean coun­tries to joint­ly pro­mote the Belt and Road coöper­a­tion for shared ben­e­fits, con­tribut­ing to the build­ing of a com­mu­ni­ty with a shared future for mankind.” 

The inclu­sion of the terms, equal­i­ty and mutu­al ben­e­fit were par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant in my opin­ion.
There is a per­cep­tion that in rela­tion­ships with the United States and small­er nations there is no equal­i­ty, or respect. Many see those rela­tion­ships as a take it or leave it affair.
Those per­cep­tions will, and have great­ly influ­enced the way poor­er nations respond to Chinese entreaties.
Trojan horse or not.

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 hun­dreds of cas­es of hor­rif­ic mur­ders com­mit­ted in Jamaica each year, that would cause any rea­son­able per­son of sound mind and judg­ment to say this can­not stand.
In most cas­es, the hor­rif­ic details are not shown to the Jamaican peo­ple. Media hous­es some­times do not have the imagery, and in oth­er cas­es have deter­mined that the images are far too grue­some for pub­lic con­sump­tion.
The val­ue of that strat­e­gy is arguable, as many Jamaicans still seem to be in the fog about the sav­agery of the Island’s criminals.

In inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, and now all across the Island, in once-peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ple live in total fear of their own neigh­bors. They know that the men liv­ing next door are dan­ger­ous killers, but they are too ter­ri­fied to even report their activ­i­ties to the author­i­ties.

The last per­son exe­cut­ed in Jamaica was Nathan Foster, who was con­vict­ed of mur­der and hanged in 1988. The Jamaican Parliament then placed a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty until 2009, when it was lift­ed.
Even so, since then, not a sin­gle per­son has faced the death penal­ty regard­less of the hor­rif­ic nature of the crimes they com­mit­ted.
Not only has there been no hang­ings ( the pre­vi­ous method of death for cap­i­tal offend­ers), on the rare occa­sion a mass mur­der­er is con­vict­ed, he is giv­en a laugh­able sen­tence, some­times as lit­tle as five years in prison or less.
The con­flu­ence of cozy com­plic­i­ty with crim­i­nal­i­ty at all lev­els, has served to embold­en tra­di­tion­al crim­i­nals, and has cre­at­ed a new set of even more dan­ger­ous trans-Atlantic crim­i­nal enterprises.

Instead of tak­ing steps to pro­tect the coun­try and its inhab­i­tants from the mind­less killing machines, admin­is­tra­tions of both Political par­ties have opt­ed to go in the oppo­site direc­tion.
By that I mean, they have opt­ed to be more con­cil­ia­to­ry toward the crim­i­nal gangs which are the famil­ial base of the mur­der­ers.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties and ele­ments with­in the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus are affil­i­at­ed with ele­ments in the crim­i­nal under­world.
This was com­mon knowl­edge from decades ago when I was a law enforce­ment offi­cer.
Today, we know this from actions tak­en by the Americans in the can­cel­la­tion of visas and oth­er puni­tive mea­sures against politi­cians and law enforce­ment offi­cials.
We also see these asso­ci­a­tions man­i­fest­ed in the inabil­i­ty and unwill­ing­ness of the police to inves­ti­gate arrest and pros­e­cute cer­tain well-placed crim­i­nals.
In fact, it is well known that the Jamaican police only go after low-lev­el street crim­i­nals, while well-con­nect­ed gang­land afi­ciona­dos and their polit­i­cal spon­sor’s thumb their noses at the law with impunity.

The two polit­i­cal par­ties pay lip ser­vice to the rule of law through high pro­file pho­to-ops and the pas­sage of tooth­less watered-down anti-crime mea­sures, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly decon­struct­ing the poten­tial of the JCF to effec­tive­ly tack­le the gangs.
The pas­sage of the INDECOM Act is one such mea­sure which gives the impres­sion local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly, that the much-maligned police force was indeed guilty of wide­spread extra-judi­cial killings and oth­er acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty.
Sure, there were some extra-judi­cial killings and oth­er acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the con­stab­u­lary, but those were by-prod­ucts of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence and the star­va­tion of the secu­ri­ty forces of vital resources. Show me a coun­try or a secu­ri­ty ser­vice that does not have those dark secrets in their past and present.
This does not mean that we agree with them. We work to make our secu­ri­ty ser­vices bet­ter there­by remov­ing the need for those prac­tices.
The per­cep­tion that the police were inher­ent­ly cor­rupt pre­sent­ed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty in 2010 for the JLPs Bruce Golding to cre­ate INDECOM the Independent Commission Of Investigations and place at its head a known anti-polit­i­cal func­tionary Terrence Williams.
Terrence Williams’s broth­er was a junior min­is­ter in the admin­is­tra­tion.
The pas­sage of the INDECOM Act was one of the rare instances that both polit­i­cal par­ties agreed on a piece of leg­is­la­tion. Coming up with leg­is­la­tion which fur­ther ham­strung the police was some­thing both polit­i­cal par­ties could eas­i­ly agree on.
And they did. The result was a hor­rif­ic piece of leg­is­la­tion which could eas­i­ly be named the [crim­i­nal­i­ty enhance­ment act]. Instead, they named it the INDECOM Act.
The truth of the mat­ter is that this leg­is­la­tion would (a) fur­ther paci­fy the pop­u­la­tion in their favor against the hat­ed police and (b) give them a freer hand to con­tin­ue with their crim­i­nal affil­i­a­tions with a much weak­er and neutered police force.
But they were not done. A pha­lanx of for­eign-based human rights agen­cies set up shop on the Island. The Inter American Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, and oth­ers all of a sud­den cared about poor Jamaicans well-being. Never mind that in the case of the birth­place of those agen­cies, the United States and Britain respec­tive­ly, poor black and brown peo­ple are treat­ed as dis­pos­able com­modi­ties.
Additionally, local human rights groups emerged, all have seats at the table. New leg­is­la­tion must first pass muster with them. Whatever laws are passed are basi­cal­ly tooth­less endeav­ors that do noth­ing to reme­di­ate the bur­geon­ing crime epi­dem­ic.
Jamaica is now con­strained by the United States and England as to how it can treat its most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals. On the con­trary, no one gets to tell either coun­try how to pro­tect its cit­i­zens.
The JCF became a paper elephant.

Had the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion sought to change the par­a­digm by invest­ing in the recruit­ment, train­ing and equip­ping of the JCF with the resources spent on INDECOM Jamaica would have had a first world police depart­ment, with first-world capa­bil­i­ties.
The gov­ern­ment of Jamaica spent: $366.492 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2016/​2017 on INDECOM, while the agency received $230.616 mil­lion from oth­er sources.
According to INDECOM, it receives fund­ing from var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al donors. This gives rise to the ques­tion, why?
Why are for­eign groups fund­ing a watch­dog group instead of assist­ing the Jamaica Constabulary Force with the resources it needs to fight trans-nation­al crime and terrorism?

INDECOM insists; that since incep­tion, it has also received sup­port by way of spon­sor­ship from inter­na­tion­al part­ners: the Department for International Development (DFID), the United States International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), European Union (EU) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). DFID and EU pro­vide annu­al fund­ing used to off­set expens­es of the Commission to include pay­ments of salaries and inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized train­ing pro­grams. For 2017, the con­tri­bu­tions of our inter­na­tion­al spon­sors were direct­ly linked to the suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of the Commission’s host­ing of the Caribbean Use of Force in Law Enforcement Conference in May. https://​www​.inde​com​.gov.

It should be not­ed that INDECOM does no law enforce­ment work. And so the finan­cial resources it receives from its over­seas spon­sors, sup­pos­ed­ly from the United States, for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, are either(a) mis­used or (b) ques­tion­able in its des­ig­na­tion.
It is the JCF that is tasked with law enforce­ment, includ­ing the fight against ille­gal nar­cotics.
Why would the Americans in good faith give mon­ey to a [police over­sight group], under the guise of Narcotics and Law Enforcement?
If the Americans were seri­ous about Narcotics and law enforce­ment its mon­e­tary con­tri­bu­tion would have gone to the JCF for train­ing and equip­ping offi­cers to effec­tive­ly fight the scourge of illic­it drugs com­ing into the Island from South America and the guns del­ug­ing the Island from America’s own shores.

The entire­ty of the issues dri­ving crime on the Island is myr­i­ad and com­plex. Nevertheless, the fore­gone pro­vides a glimpse into the bel­ly of the beast.
Out of the incom­pe­tence and com­plic­i­ty of the two polit­i­cal par­ties comes the cre­ation and pro­lif­er­a­tion of mur­der­ous crim­i­nal gangs.
Jamaica has always strug­gled with main­tain­ing the rule of law, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cer­tain hotspots cre­at­ed and main­tained by .…..you guessed it.
Politicians.
However, the steps tak­en by the two polit­i­cal par­ties have led to a state of dread and fear across the Island. One such case which is chron­i­cled on Thursdays Observers, gives a mor­bid glimpse of what is real­ly hap­pen­ing even as politi­cians con­tin­ue to paint a pic­ture of progress and perfection.

OBSERVER STORY

JOEITH Lynch, 18, and her moth­er Charmaine Rattray were not total strangers to the group of about eight or nine maraud­ing gun­men who in July 2011 shot and hacked them to death before behead­ing them. But the ‘mem­o­ry’ of the sav­agery of that night was enough to dri­ve three of the five to con­fess their involve­ment, claim­ing that it was either they car­ry out the bru­tal crimes or be killed.

Caution state­ments entered on behalf of three of the five who yes­ter­day plead­ed guilty in the Supreme Court in down­town Kingston at the begin­ning of the tri­al, detailed the moments lead­ing up to the hor­rif­ic crimes and the days fol­low­ing, claim­ing they have been tor­ment­ed by mem­o­ries of the incident.

“I got involved in it though I could­n’t do noth­ing about it. Either I was involved or I would be killed. Is not some­thing that I wish­ful­ly want­ed to take part of. I know I was deal­ing with some seri­ous peo­ple. It was either I go or I die,” Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn read from one of the statements.

According to the accused, he was called and told that the two were to die because they had been wit­ness­es to the death of Scott Thomas (anoth­er indi­vid­ual in the area who was killed short­ly before) and “them talk too much”.

He said late that night about nine of them, all mem­bers of the noto­ri­ous Klansman Gang, went to the house in Lauriston, St Catherine, where he heard one female say “I did noth­ing” twice after the door was kicked off, fol­lowed by Lynch cry­ing for help and shout­ing the name of one of the accused who was known to her, fol­lowed by a gun­shot. He said the head of the moth­er was chopped off and tak­en away and he was sent back inside for Lynch’s head which he threw into a gul­ly as instruct­ed because it was “bleed­ing too much”.

One of the accused, who hap­pens to be a rel­a­tive of Lynch, in his cau­tion state­ment, said on the night in ques­tion he was home when he was approached by one of his cronies who told him that they were going on the road that night. He claimed that when he met with him lat­er that night he gave him a cut­lass and a file. They were joined by a few more men at which time he was told that “a Crystal (Joeith) and har mad­da wi a guh fah ’cause the gen­er­al sey dem fi dead”.

He said after the front door to the wom­en’s dwelling was kicked off, one of his allies said, “Si di gal deh, chop her up”. He claimed he pre­tend­ed to chop her three times, then chopped her the fourth time, but not with his “strength”. He said he was then asked, “A so yuh chop some­body?” before the cut­lass was tak­en away from him by anoth­er who pro­ceed­ed to fur­ther chop Lynch, who screamed his name twice before she was shot in the head by that individual.

He said he heard her moth­er in the oth­er room say­ing “The blood of Jesus is against you” before he heard gun­shots in that room. The accused claimed he then ran from the house in pur­suit of anoth­er indi­vid­ual who had been chopped by him dur­ing the ordeal. He does not, how­ev­er, know what hap­pened afterward.

“That’s all mi do, that’s all mi know what hap­pen; mi nevah know dem a go cut off dem head. Next morn­ing mi wake up and hear, mi feel so sad. After dat mi have sleep­less nights at home, and that’s all mi know, mi can’t sey a dat deh man cut off di peo­ple dem head cah mi nevah deh deh when di head dem a cut off,” he said in the statement.

Yesterday, the first wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion tes­ti­fied that upon being alert­ed about the inci­dent while on patrol in the wee hours of the morn­ing he pro­ceed­ed to the dwelling where, upon enter­ing, he observed the muti­lat­ed, head­less bod­ies of the women in pools of blood in their bed­rooms with “blood all over” the beds, three to four spent shell cas­ings in one room, and one spent shell in the other.

Yesterday, DPP Lewellyn said the post-mortem results for Rattray showed that she had received eight chop wounds with the cause of death being trau­mat­ic shock caused by mul­ti­ple shots and chop wounds.

Lynch’s cause of death was also trau­mat­ic shock and mul­ti­ple chop wounds. She was shot in the head and also chopped in the face and on her hands.

The DPP, not­ing the men’s state­ments, point­ed out that “duress is not a defense to mur­der”. She said fur­ther that the men “knew they were going on a move to cause death, even if they did not indi­cate that they did the chop­ping or the shoot­ing”, though admit­ting to being armed with either a gun or a cut­ting implement.

“They were all there aid­ing and abet­ting… they were in com­mon design to cause the death of these women,” Llewellyn said, ref­er­enc­ing case law to detail why the pros­e­cu­tion had set­tled on the charge of non-cap­i­tal murder.

Yesterday, three of the five, in a sur­prise twist, plead­ed guilty to non-cap­i­tal mur­der, while the remain­ing two accused plead­ed not guilty to murder.

Currently, non-cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es, which can be tried with sev­en jurors, refer to those in which the par­tic­u­lar offense is not pun­ish­able by death.

The DPP, in mak­ing the open­ing sub­mis­sion and refer­ring to the three said, “The alle­ga­tions are per­haps the facts now that the men have plead­ed guilty.”

All five sus­pects lived on Rio Cobre Drive, a short dis­tance away from the home of the vic­tims. It is alleged that between 11:30 pm on July 19, 2011, and 5:45 am July 20, 2011, both deceased were shot, chopped and behead­ed. Both women had been alleged­ly warned that they were marked for death but the elder female stub­born­ly refused to relo­cate from the area, report­ed­ly say­ing “if is fi mi time is fi mi time”.

Prior to yes­ter­day’s pro­ceed­ings, the DPP had indi­cat­ed that she intend­ed to ask for the death penal­ty for the men who have been in cus­tody for nine years.

Social inquiry reports are to be pro­vid­ed for the three and Supreme Court Judge Justice Vivienne Harris said the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for the men is set for Wednesday, December 11, at 2:00 pm.

The tri­al for the remain­ing two con­tin­ues today at 10:00 am and is expect­ed to last two weeks.

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.

If you believe that either of the two polit­i­cal par­ties is going to do any­thing about the seri­ous crime prob­lem in our coun­try you are wrong.
The fact is that despite a show of bi-par­ti­san kum­baya between the two par­ties, nei­ther of the two par­ties or their lead­er­ship, indi­vid­u­al­ly, or com­bined, will do a damn thing toward decon­struct­ing the lit­er­al and ide­o­log­i­cal gar­risons which have pit­ted Jamaicans against Jamaicans from as ear­ly as the ear­ly 1960s. 

THE PNP

As far as the People’s National Party is con­cerned the par­ty’s very exis­tence is con­tin­gent on the con­tin­u­a­tion of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions.
For read­ers who are not steeped in the nuances of the Jamaican cul­ture, zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions are referred to col­lo­qui­al­ly, and local­ly as [gar­risons].
The term [Garrison] is defined as; “a place where troops are sta­tioned in a fortress or town to defend it”.
In Jamaica’s case, they are polit­i­cal con­stituen­cies, held by one par­ty or the oth­er, not manned by offi­cial sol­diers of the state, but defend­ed by gun­men loy­al to the par­ty which holds that polit­i­cal con­stituen­cy.
Votes are deliv­ered en-bloc to the mem­ber of par­lia­ment, but are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive­ly of the wish­es of the peo­ple who live in those geo­graph­i­cal areas.
Fear of death is the gen­er­al rea­son peo­ple vote the way they do in those areas.
Over the decades’ polit­i­cal hand­outs and oth­er good­ies have solid­i­fied the polit­i­cal opin­ions in the zones of exclu­sions, mak­ing the views of those who live in them vir­tu­al­ly and tru­ly polit­i­cal­ly homogo­nous.
The PNP has more than twice the num­ber of gar­risons as the rul­ing JLP.
As such, the PNP is less like­ly to want to decon­struct a sys­tem that ben­e­fits the par­ty polit­i­cal­ly.
The con­tin­u­a­tion and expan­sion of the gar­risons in the nation’s pol­i­tics erode the very foun­da­tion of our demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
Additionally, the PNP has always ben­e­fit­ted from the lack of edu­ca­tion or mise­d­u­ca­tion of the poor­est Jamaicans, many of whom live.….…in the zones of exclu­sion.
When peo­ple are not allowed to think for them­selves, they are told how to vote, in exchange for a few hand­outs, they can­not become who they were des­tined to be. Garrisons dimin­ish peo­ple, but those who con­trol the gar­risons are not about to give up the pow­er they have over those peo­ple who are enthralled by them with cult-like loyalty.

THE JLP

The JLP also has its share of gar­risons, the infa­mous Tivoli gar­dens is a JLP strong­hold. It has been char­ac­ter­ized as the moth­er of all gar­risons. It has been one of the Achilles heels of the Jamaica Labor Party, which began as the law and order par­ty.
Somewhere along the road, the JLP decid­ed that it had to match the PNP which had sold itself as the par­ty of the lit­tle man. That pop­ulist mantra did not match the his­to­ry of the PNP which began with elit­ists founders like Norman Manley the for­eign-edu­cat­ed Barrister.
The par­ty of Alexander Bustamante the blue-col­lar guy, found itself being described as the par­ty of the rich elites.
That label stuck to the JLP through­out the 70s, 80s, 90s and even to the present day.
The JLP as a polit­i­cal par­ty in the real­i­ty of today, is not immune to the temp­ta­tions of polit­i­cal pow­er. Like the PNP it has allowed itself to buck­le to temp­ta­tion and has fall­en vic­tim to cor­rup­tion.
Party lead­ers from Edward Seaga to Bruce Golding, did not do near­ly enough to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves from the worst actors with­in the crim­i­nal under­world.
Andrew Holness, the present Prime Minister, is a per­son­al ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a gar­ri­son con­stituen­cy. He arrived in Jamaica House a stu­dent of the old guard. That old guard must be def­er­en­tial to the forces with­in the com­mu­ni­ties which place politi­cians in pow­er. Those forces are nev­er aligned with the rule of law.
Additionally, Holness school­ing which fur­ther shapes his world view, was straight out of the left­ist University of the West Indies, not known for its sup­port for the rule of law either.
Andrew Holness, is a prod­uct of the old pol­i­tics, and though he would like to por­tray him­self as a new kind of leader, he is no dif­fer­ent than oth­ers before him who berat­ed and dis­re­spect­ed law enforce­ment and by exten­sion, the rule of law.
It isn’t that Andrew Holness wants a coun­try infest­ed with dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals. I have nev­er spo­ken to him, but from his actions on oth­er fronts, it is clear that the Prime Minister wants to accom­plish great things for the Jamaican peo­ple. The ques­tions are not about the PM’s inten­tions, they are about his ideas on how to accom­plish his goals. 

Hyper-par­ti­sans are quick to dis­re­gard or seek to dis­cred­it any­one who seeks to shine a light on those they hold in high regard. That is okay with this writer. Understand that we all need heroes. It is impor­tant to appre­ci­ate that no one per­son has all of the answers and the Prime Minister like every­one else, should acquaint him­self with those real­i­ties.
It is not enough just to have oth­er peo­ple with ideas, it is impor­tant to find enough qual­i­fied peo­ple with diver­gent views on the same sub­ject.
Tragically for the rule of law and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of Jamaica, the coun­try is stuck in a bi-polar state of the black dog and the black mon­key.
Neither par­ty’s lead­er­ship has demon­strat­ed that they under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the present dilem­ma, much less the will­ing­ness to change them.

Absent that con­sen­sus, we end up as we are today, in a stale­mate in which both polit­i­cal Party’s lead­er­ship are jock­ey­ing for posi­tion in the race to the bot­tom. No polit­i­cal leader wants to make bold state­ments on crime.
Apart from their own per­son­al and finan­cial inter­ests in the cul­ture of crime, they dare not speak out,-out of fear of the media, the crim­i­nals in their con­stituen­cies, as well as the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups which have infest­ed our coun­try.
As a con­se­quence, the coun­try is immersed in a nev­er-end­ing cycle of vio­lence and death, because nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has the cajones to step on the serpent.

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.

In the first of a two-part series, yes­ter­day we pub­lished Mexico and Jamaica’s march into failed state­hood). It is a pat­tern we dis­cern, and a set of sim­i­lar­i­ties which exists in the way Mexico and Jamaica have approached the chal­lenges they face in deal­ing with the mur­der­ous crim­i­nal gangs, and nar­co-ter­ror­ists in the two coun­tries.
One of the myths about how we should deal with dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, is that soci­eties can (1) con­vince crim­i­nals to cease and desist,[ be it drugs and gun-run­ning, extor­tion human-traf­fick­ing or what­ev­er], or, (2) live with, and accept their exis­tence and the can­cer­ous harm they bring to our soci­eties.
Personally, I do not sub­scribe to either of the two options and nei­ther should you.
Criminals push the enve­lope until soci­ety puts a stop to the lib­er­ties they take against the law-abid­ing. The mon­ey and pow­er they derive from their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, they do not give up because they are asked to.
Those deriv­a­tives must be wrest­ed from them, con­fis­cat­ed and put to the greater good.
The very acts of try­ing to paci­fy gang­sters, are viewed as weak­ness­es.
Gangsters and nar­co deal­ers are quick to fill the pow­er vac­u­ums which results from Government inac­tion and com­plic­i­ty.
Jamaican author­i­ties give the cit­i­zens the impres­sion that they are con­flict­ed about crime.
In actu­al­i­ty, many are deeply invest­ed in the crime cul­ture. They are own­ers and share­hold­ers in secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and oth­er busi­ness­es which depend on a high crime rate to sur­vive.
Mark Shields, a British cop( colo­nial over­seer), was brought in sup­pos­ed­ly to mod­ern­ize the Jamaican police depart­ment, he got in on the act.
He mar­ried a Jamaican bride, and is now involved in the pri­vate secu­ri­ty indus­try. Why fix the sys­tem when they can prof­it from it?

I ref­er­enced Mexico as I seek to high­light anoth­er soci­ety faced with sim­i­lar con­di­tions as hap­pen­ing in my own beloved Jamaica. Of course, there are oth­er nations in our hemi­sphere that could poten­tial­ly have tak­en the place of Mexico with the same effect. Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua come to mind.
The lat­ter three, how­ev­er, are well along the failed state high­way, so much so that their cit­i­zens are leav­ing in droves. This is cre­at­ing a huge human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis for Mexico and the US which have their own prob­lems.
When we are hon­est enough to admit facts we begin to real­ize that as peo­ple are leav­ing Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, so too would peo­ple leave Jamaica but for the fact that we are an island and not a coun­try with land bor­ders.
In 2014, 4 in 10 Jamaicans said giv­en a chance they would leave our coun­try. That num­ber may be a lot high­er today.
In the case of Mexico, as in Jamaica, one of the cru­cibles which have result­ed in the present law­less­ness, is the ram­pant cor­rup­tion on the part of Government offi­cials.
Corruption inex­orably leads to the pre­cip­i­tous decline in the rule of law and the growth of law­less­ness and mur­der, the type our coun­try is now experiencing.

In Mexico, offi­cials at the high­est lev­els, as is in Jamaica, have not only turned a blind eye to the devel­op­ment of crim­i­nal enter­pris­es, there is strong evi­dence that polit­i­cal lead­ers are heav­i­ly invest­ed in crim­i­nal con­duct on the one hand, and being facil­i­ta­tors on the oth­er, or both.
In both Mexico and Jamaica the pow­er­ful polit­i­cal class has act­ed as a buffer between law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal enter­pris­es.
In Mexico’s case, there have been lead­ers who emerged with the desire and deter­mi­na­tion to take the fight to the drug car­tels. However, lim­its on their times in office and entrenched cor­rup­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor cre­at­ed the impres­sion that the strat­e­gy could and did not work.
As pres­i­dent of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, Felipe Calderón presided over one of the blood­i­est eras in his country’s his­to­ry. Calderón’s crit­ics say his deci­sion to deploy the mil­i­tary against the drug car­tels led to the mas­sive increase in killings.
President Calderone explained that he had no regrets about the way he decid­ed to fight the drug war. If he could do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing, he said. 

The for­mer pres­i­dent points to research that sug­gests vio­lence was already on the rise by the time he was elect­ed. He says ram­pant cor­rup­tion in state and local gov­ern­ments under­mined his strat­e­gy. And he offers data that sug­gests mur­ders were actu­al­ly falling in some key cities by the time he left office. Other research showed that no oth­er coun­try in the Western Hemisphere expe­ri­enced an increase in homi­cide rate or absolute num­ber of homi­cides as large as Mexico’s. The vio­lence only con­tin­ued to climb under his suc­ces­sor, Enrique Peña Nieto.

It is easy to under­stand that the entrenched nature of the cor­rup­tion in Mexico would result in those killings. The nar­co king­pins hit back to show their pow­er and dis­dain for the author­i­ty of the state.
During the ’80s and 90, ‘s the killings and bomb­ings in Colombia esca­lat­ed as Pablo Escobar hit back with every­thing he had, as he fought to avoid extra­di­tion to the United States.
In 2010 vio­lence peaked as Christopher Duddus Coke’s mili­tia band­ed with oth­er gangs to pro­tect Coke from extra­di­tion to the United States as well.
The inescapable truth is that dis­lodg­ing entrenched crim­i­nal empires in a sit­u­a­tion in which pub­lic offi­cials are cor­rupt is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult.
The longer coun­tries wait to erad­i­cate crim­i­nal empires the more dif­fi­cult it becomes to suc­ceed against them. Removing them with­out blood­shed is impos­si­ble.
During the American civ­il war, the Union gen­er­al George Mclellan built up a huge army but refused to move against the trea­so­nous rebels. President Abraham Lincoln was forced to remove him and put in his place a man who was unafraid to do what it takes to win a war.
Given McClellan’s pen­chant for cau­tion, had Linclon not act­ed to remove him the United States would not exist as we know it today. 

Wars mean spilled blood, it is nev­er our desire to see blood spilled, but the deci­sion to go to war with the state is always up to those who thumb their noses at the laws. It is not the fault of the state to deci­sive­ly put down such revolt.
Make no mis­take about it, we are at war with those who take the lives of the inno­cent. If we are to have any sem­blance of a civ­il soci­ety we have to make the hard choic­es at some point that the state must pre­vail.
That the greater good of the nation must take prece­dent over our fear of upset­ting bleed­ing-heart crim­i­nal sup­port­ers, who pre­tend to be watch­dogs and pro­tec­tors of human rights.
Wars are not won through appease­ment. Wars are won by real lead­ers who make the hard choic­es to con­front evil head-on, unafraid to buck the trends, unmind­ful of crit­i­cisms.
The biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the sac­ri­fices of heroes are those who sac­ri­fice noth­ing.

A cor­rupt Colombia crit­i­cized Los-Pepes dur­ing the dark days of Pablo Escobar’s reign. Sure, Los Pepe, spilled blood, but they saved a nation. Today Colombia is not a Scandanavian pro­to­type, but she is a coun­try that was giv­en a new start. Today Colombians can live in rel­a­tive peace and secu­ri­ty. They can raise their chil­dren free from dai­ly bomb­ings and the specter of immi­nent death.
The longer Jamaica dithers and allows the law­less­ness to take hold the clos­er she inch­es to becom­ing a failed state.
No invad­ing army will restore the rule of law. We either stop the law­less­ness now or become once and for all a failed state run by gang­sters. We are pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to that point.

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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Karu F. Daniels

Late con­gress­man and civ­il rights activist Elijah Cummings’ grave isn’t even cold and there’s already news swirling about some­one gun­ning for his House of Representatives seat.

It’s the nature of many busi­ness­es — espe­cial­ly pol­i­tics — but the “who” tongues are wag­ging about is his younger, polit­i­cal­ly ambi­tious (and high­ly edu­cat­ed) widow.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is like­ly the suc­ces­sor to fill his con­gres­sion­al seat, accord­ing to a report from The Washington Examiner.

The long­time Democrat’s death — on Thursday, at age 68, caused by “long­stand­ing health chal­lenges” — came as a shock to many polit­i­cal observers.

Rockeymoore, 48, wed the long­time polit­i­cal lion in 2008, cur­rent­ly serves as the Maryland Democratic Party chair­woman and ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for state gov­er­nor in 2017.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has 10 days to sched­ule a spe­cial elec­tion for Cummings’ 7^th District seat and accord­ing to polit­i­cal sources will like­ly set the date by the mid­dle of next week.

In January, a pri­ma­ry elec­tion is expect­ed to take place with the gen­er­al elec­tion is set for March.

The win­ner will serve out of the remain­der of Cummings’ term, which expires in December of 2020.

An uniden­ti­fied polit­i­cal oper­a­tive said Rockeymoore Cumnmings has no imme­di­ate plans to run for the seat, which remains a Democratic strong­hold, and will pass on the spe­cial election.

It could be bad for “optics” — but great grist for the mill if she just went ahead and do what some think is inevitable.

But tim­ing is everything.

Rockeymoore Cummings, a moth­er of three, has not com­ment­ed on any spec­u­la­tion but the Maryland Democratic Party did release a state­ment on Friday ask­ing for privacy.

“We ask the pub­lic and the press to allow Maryland Democratic Party Chair Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings — and the rest of the Cummings fam­i­ly — time and space to grieve their loss,” said the par­ty, accord­ing to Patch.

A grad­u­ate of Purdue University, the Texas native is the founder of polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm Global Policy Solutions. She pre­vi­ous­ly served as vice pres­i­dent of research and pro­grams for the Congressional Black Caucus and authored The Political Action Handbook: A How-To Guide for the Hip Hop Generation in 2004.

We con­tin­ue to speak out about the spi­ral­ing crime rate in Jamaica and the tone-deaf­ness with which the author­i­ties are han­dling the prob­lem.
Gunmen con­tin­ue to kill at will, even as the gov­ern­ment roll out Zones of Special Operations and declare states of emer­gen­cies.
Despite these stop-gap mea­sures which take the place of real strate­gies, the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion, con­tin­ue to delude them­selves that this is real­ly no big deal.
My friend’s wife once told me of her love for pork, she said she had white rice and pork, and she fell ill. She said she knew the pork had made her ill, but she decid­ed to stop eat­ing rice.
The Administration and the oppo­si­tion in Kingston know what to do about the gang­sters run­ning around killing the inno­cent but they are too in love with them.
So the con­vene con­fer­ences to pull the wool over the peo­ple’s eyes, to cre­ate an illu­sion that they are doing some­thing rad­i­cal about it.
I say to the peo­ple of Jamaica they aren’t!
There is one solu­tion to the gang­sters run­ning unop­posed in our coun­try, and that is strong leg­is­la­tion and no-non­sense polic­ing.

Delusion, how­ev­er, is fool’s gold. Our peo­ple do not like to fol­low rules, we don’t like to obey laws, until of course, we move to places where they will have none of that non­sense.
And so instead of tack­ling the prob­lem head-on, they con­tin­ue to twid­dle their thumbs and pre­tend that this is a mere nui­sance on the path to pros­per­i­ty, or what­ev­er the hell their mantra is.
The real­i­ty is that even if pros­per­i­ty was pos­si­ble in this hotbed of killings and oth­er vio­lent crimes, the stan­dard of liv­ing would still be sub­stan­dard as a result of the pal­pa­ble fear in the coun­try.
The fact of the mat­ter is that there can, and will be no pros­per­i­ty or real growth in an atmos­phere in which so many have access to ille­gal guns.
In the mean­time, the Prime Minister, and the min­ions in his gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to inject them­selves into indi­vid­ual cas­es where police are forced to take action against crim­i­nals. This fur­ther mud­dies the water and ren­ders the work of the secu­ri­ty forces more difficult.

A recent­ly con­vened con­fer­ence between the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader, had the very same group of peo­ple who should nev­er ever be part of pol­i­cy­mak­ing in atten­dance.
Seated at the table were Jamaicans For Justice, the nation’s pre­em­i­nent anti-police agi­ta­tor, and oth­ers. At a time when five peo­ple lost their lives in one day in one small sec­tor of the city.
They con­tin­ue to fol­low the same path of obsti­na­cy, embrac­ing the very same band of idiots who present them­selves as experts and yet they expect dif­fer­ent results, and so the gang­sters laugh and con­tin­ue to kill with impuni­ty. Which makes one won­der whether they are killing with immu­ni­ty from the polit­i­cal leadership? 

They con­tin­ue to lis­ten to so-called experts like the squir­rel­ly Horace Levy who once stat­ed that the police’s assess­ment of what con­sti­tutes gangs was wrong. In his esteemed knowl­edge, the col­lec­tion of men who hang on the cor­ners in the dan­ger­ous inner-city com­mu­ni­ties were not gangs, they were mere ‘cor­ner-crews.’
These are the peo­ple who are influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy. These are the secu­ri­ty experts advis­ing on crime.
As a for­mer street cop who tra­versed almost every square yard of the tough and for­bod­ing inner-city areas of Kingston and Saint Andrew under the per­il of death, I nev­er heard any­thing so non­sen­si­cal. But these are the self-impor­tant buf­foons that the anti-police admin­is­tra­tion in Jamaica House sub­scribe to.
Instead of strong and unequiv­o­cal sup­port to the law enforce­ment agen­cies, the admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts are direct­ed at strength­en­ing JFJ and INDECOM at the expense of the hard-work­ing peo­ple in law enforce­ment.
I nev­er for­got my great Aunt always talk­ing about “what a ting wen dish tow­el tun table claat.“
That is where the nation’s secu­ri­ty is now pre­cip­i­tous­ly posi­tioned, in the hands of rank ama­teurs and self-pro­claimed experts.

The prob­lem for Jamaica is not that we haven’t seen this tem­plate that the crim­i­nals are using. In 201 we saw where their heads were. Earlier this year we got anoth­er glimpse of their capa­bil­i­ties in Guinep Tree May Pen. So it’s not as if there isn’t prece­dent.
Out of 2010 encounter with the entrenched pseu­do-gov­ern­ment of Christopher, Duddus Coke , was more than enough data-points from which the Government could eas­i­ly have extrap­o­lat­ed strate­gies, and cre­at­ed a seri­ous set of laws which would once and for all set a course for­ward which would secure the coun­try for gen­er­a­tions to come.
The incom­pe­tence and crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty of the then PNP admin­is­tra­tion cou­pled with the full acqui­es­cence of the JLP, ensured that there would be no lessons learned from what could eas­i­ly be a sit­u­a­tion in which the coun­try became a nar­co-state.
These are the kinds of things the two polit­i­cal par­ties have sub­ject­ed the coun­try to. The rea­son being that with­in their ranks are crim­i­nals who are ben­e­fit­ting from the mur­der-may­hem.
As one per­son puts it yes­ter­day, they are turn­ing our coun­try into a dynasty where their chil­dren fol­low into their foot­steps by own­ing seats in the par­lia­ment and the atten­dant unen­cum­bered access to pub­lic funds.
Rather than thank the secu­ri­ty forces the two bunch of crim­i­nals in both polit­i­cal gangs band­ed togeth­er to demo­nize the secu­ri­ty forces for their valiance in annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to the Island.
Several mem­bers gave their lives. The filthy politi­cians on both sides, in an effort to appease the thugs and the rab­ble, blamed the secu­ri­ty forces for their own failures.

October 17^th; Heavily armed fight­ers sur­round­ed secu­ri­ty forces in a Mexican city on Thursday and made them free one of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s sons, after his cap­ture trig­gered gun­bat­tles and a prison break that sent civil­ians scur­ry­ing for cov­er. Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said a patrol by National Guard mil­i­ta­rized police first came under attack from with­in a house in the city of Culiacan, 1,235 km (770 miles) north­west of Mexico City.

After enter­ing the house, they found four men, includ­ing Ovidio Guzman, who is accused of drug traf­fick­ing in the United States. The patrol was quick­ly out­matched by car­tel gun­men, how­ev­er, and it was with­drawn to pre­vent lives being lost, the gov­ern­ment said. Simultaneously, fight­ers swarmed through the city, bat­tling police and sol­diers in broad day­light. They torched vehi­cles and left at least one gas sta­tion ablaze. “The deci­sion was tak­en to retreat from the house, with­out Guzman, to try to avoid more vio­lence in the area and pre­serve the lives of our per­son­nel and recov­er calm in the city.

This is what hap­pens when cor­rupt gov­ern­ments side with crim­i­nal ele­ments against the secu­ri­ty forces. This is not hap­pen­ing in an abstract sense, nor in some dis­tant lands thou­sands of miles away. This hap­pened in Mexico, a part of the same Latin-American and Caribbean region of which Jamaica is a part.
I incor­po­rat­ed this sto­ry into this arti­cle because this hap­pened time and again in Jamaica, and the excuse is always the same. “The secu­ri­ty forces with­drew to save lives”. What a load of crock.
I saw the Jamaican Prime Minister at a scene hold­ing a baby while one woman explained her side of a sto­ry to him. Of course, the police are always wrong, and the crim­i­nals are always choir­boys. After lis­ten­ing, Holness told the crowd that the police may have caught the crim­i­nal but they alien­at­ed the com­mu­ni­ty.
Never mind that the police have a duty to go wher­ev­er crim­i­nals are and haul them off to jail under the col­or of law, regard­less of whether the crime-infest­ed com­mu­ni­ties like it or not.
Holness is the head of the gov­ern­ment, he was hear­ing one side of the sto­ry, he had no idea where the truth lay. Instead of telling the peo­ple that there are agen­cies and pro­to­cols in place to take care of com­plaints, he went on to berate the police, with­out any evi­dence.
These are the kinds of bla­tant­ly moron­ic and sopho­moric things he brought to the table as the leader of our coun­try. His anti-police bias is beneath the office of the Prime Minister’s office and should not be tol­er­at­ed.
It is for this rea­son that I won­der at the intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty of the police offi­cers who place their lives at risk to pro­tect peo­ple like these in both polit­i­cal par­ties.
It is the same kind of char­ac­ter defi­cien­cy and lack of moral char­ac­ter which char­ac­ter­izes Mexico’s lead­ers. A cor­rupt and duplic­i­tous con­nivance with the crim­i­nal under­world which makes Mexico a per­pet­u­al third world coun­try. It is the same char­ac­ter­is­tic that defines Jamaica.

Since this admin­is­tra­tion fails to see this threat for what it is, and since the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is worse at gov­er­nance, we are left with the hope that the tail will even­tu­al­ly wag the dog. Maybe then we can pick up the pieces and start over.
At least that is my dream, the pool is far too filthy and contaminated.

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.

Donald Trump report­ed­ly believed the let­ter had been some­thing to be proud of, and mul­ti­ple reports cit­ed a Democratic aide from the meet­ing who said Trump opened the meet­ing by boast­ing about his “nasty” let­ter to Erdogan. 

Trump’s let­ter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

So Andrew Holness and Peter Phillips are hold­ing talks report­ed­ly regard­ing the nation’s crime epi­dem­ic. This is a good thing that should always have been the way for­ward from the begin­ning. Crime should nev­er be a polit­i­cal foot­ball.
Better late than nev­er. It is a start, if they are seri­ous about doing what they can to work togeth­er on this all-impor­tant issue.

According to one local pub­li­ca­tion, the meet­ing will com­mence at 2:00 pm; both Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Opposition Leader Peter Phillips, as well as Minister of National Security, Horace Chang and the Opposition’s spokesman on nation­al secu­ri­ty, Fitz Jackson will rep­re­sent the rul­ing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), respec­tive­ly; and the event is being orga­nized by the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce.
A num­ber of stake­hold­ers, includ­ing the pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies such as the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA); the church­es; the trade unions; civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions; and human rights advo­cate are expect­ed to attend the meet­ing, which will be a fol­low up to an ini­tial meet­ing last week Thursday between Holness and Phillips.

Maybe I missed, it but I did not see any­thing about the police or the mil­i­tary being there in their capac­i­ty as experts. You know since they are the ones who have to strate­gize and exe­cute what­ev­er comes out of this crap­shoot.
How in God’s name can there be a con­fer­ence con­vened with­out the prin­ci­pal experts being front and cen­ter with the data, detail­ing the chal­lenges, explain­ing what they need to get the job done?

No, Horace Chang does not know, nei­ther does Fitz Jackson, nei­ther has any expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment or secu­ri­ty mat­ters, they are polit­i­cal hacks.
This is anoth­er exam­ple of why crime con­tin­ues to trend upward to the point that these two groups of jok­ers are forced to sit down togeth­er.
Why are so-called human rights activists even allowed into that conference?

So we have the very same bunch of self-right­eous all-know­ing nean­derthals sit­ting around talk­ing about how not to be hard on crim­i­nals. That should absolute­ly work at crime reduc­tion.
The Prime Minister not­ed in the par­lia­ment that crime had gone down 35% in the west­ern parish­es in which the (SOE’s) has been in effect. Of course, he did not both­er men­tion­ing that over­all crime has gone up across the Island.
It is like flog­ging a dead horse, but what do I know?
There is one solu­tion which works against crim­i­nals, it is an all-out assault on their meth­ods, on their oper­a­tions, tak­ing their mon­ey, tak­ing their hous­es, and putting them away for good.
Oh, wait.……This can­not come out of this con­fer­ence, because in that group are crim­i­nals, who will not leg­is­late against them­selves.
Therein lies the problem.

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.
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