An eight-ounce plas­tic bot­tle of drink­ing water retails for some­where between US$1 & $1.50 if you pur­chase at retail.
With bulk rate you get a bet­ter deal mon­e­tar­i­ly, as for the qual­i­ty of the drink­ing water, I can­not speak to that.
But water qual­i­ty is hard­ly what I want to talk about today, so there is that.
So at the rate of say US$1 per bot­tle, a gal­lon con­tain­er should cost approx­i­mate­ly US$8. Of course, again, because a gal­lon is con­sid­ered bulk-buy­ing the cost is expo­nen­tial­ly less.

A gal­lon of gaso­line retails for some­where between US$2-$3, on the east coast of the United States, I imag­ine it may be a lit­tle more pricey on the west coast nev­er­the­less the cost of drink­ing water is now greater than the cost of gaso­line.
Who would have thunk it?[sic]
For years now I have been telling friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers that the next major con­flict to engulf the world will prob­a­bly be over clean drink­ing water.

As sci­en­tist con­tin­ue to warn about the dan­ger cli­mate change pos­es to our plan­et, it is not dif­fi­cult to see how ris­ing ocean lev­els could con­t­a­m­i­nate fresh­wa­ter sources.
Droughts and wild­fires caused by defor­esta­tion and chang­ing tem­per­a­tures will force nations to com­pete more aggres­sive­ly for the pre­cious com­mod­i­ty.
The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that 71% of the earth­’s sur­face is water, addi­tion­al­ly, water also exists in the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in ice­caps and glac­i­ers, in the ground as soil mois­ture and in aquifers, and even in you and your dog, accord­ing to one expert.
Nevertheless, not all of that water is drink­able water, and as we are all well aware, we each use a lot of water in our every day lives.
Estimates vary, but each per­son uses about 80 – 100 gal­lons of water per day. Are you sur­prised that the largest use of house­hold water is to flush the toi­let, and after that, to take show­ers and baths? With about 7.7 bil­lion peo­ple on the plan­et, the need for clean drink­ing water is a grow­ing one even as water becomes less abundant.

According to [Sciencedaily], about 70% of water flow reach­ing Egypt is derived from the Blue Nile and Atbara River, both sourced in Ethiopia. Over the past 200 years, rapid­ly increas­ing human activ­i­ty has seri­ous­ly altered flow con­di­tions of the Nile. Emplacement in Egypt of bar­rages in the 1800s, con­struc­tion the Aswan Low Dam in 1902, and the Aswan High Dam in 1965 has since altered water flow and dis­tri­b­u­tion of nour­ish­ing organ­ic-rich soil in the delta.

Egypt’s pop­u­la­tion has recent­ly swelled rapid­ly to about 90 mil­lion, with most liv­ing in the soil-rich Lower Nile Valley and Delta. These two areas com­prise only about 3.5% of Egypt’s total area, the remain­der being a most­ly sandy desert. Due to much-inten­si­fied human impact, the delta no longer func­tions as a nat­u­ral­ly expand­ing flu­vial-coastal cen­ter. Less than 10% of Nile water now reach­es the sea, and most of the nutri­ent-rich sed­i­ment is trapped in the delta by a dense canal and irri­ga­tion sys­tem.

According to the [Financialtimes], For cen­turies, the banks of the Nile have been home to farms pro­duc­ing rice as well as cot­ton and wheat. But now water short­ages, soil degra­da­tion, and pol­lu­tion have cre­at­ed a cri­sis that has under­mined agri­cul­ture in the delta, which is strug­gling to sup­port mil­lions of impov­er­ished farm­ers.

According to [Researchgate], Water scarci­ty has direct impli­ca­tions for food secu­ri­ty in arid regions. Egypt faces an esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tion of water scarci­ty, as its renew­able fresh­wa­ter resources are fixed and the pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing rapid­ly. The per capi­ta sup­ply of fresh­wa­ter is already dan­ger­ous­ly low and pre­dict­ed to plum­met even fur­ther by the year 2025. 

Under British colo­nial rule, a 1929 treaty reserved 80 per­cent of the Nile’s entire flow for Egypt and Sudan, then ruled as a sin­gle coun­try. That treaty was reaf­firmed in 1959. Usually upstream coun­tries dom­i­nate con­trol of a riv­er, like the Tigris and Euphrates, which are much reduced by the time they flow into Iraq from Turkey and Syria. The case of the Nile is reversed because the British colo­nials who con­trolled the region want­ed to guar­an­tee water for Egyptian agri­cul­ture. The sev­en upstream coun­tries — Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda — say the treaty is an unfair ves­tige of colo­nial­ism, while Egypt says those coun­tries are awash in water resources, unlike arid Egypt, which depends on just one.[Thenewyorktimes]

In a July 2017 arti­cle, titled How Egypt Is Slowly Losing Its Hold Over the Nile River [world­pol­i­tic­sreiew] said; Currently, more than 430 mil­lion peo­ple live across the 11 coun­tries that make up the Nile Basin: Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Eritrea. The pop­u­la­tion of the Nile Basin is like­ly to jump to near­ly 1 bil­lion by 2050.
The upstream coun­tries “can’t wait for­ev­er for Egypt to get onboard,” says Aaron Wolf, a pro­fes­sor of geo­sciences at Oregon State University.

As the Amazon burns, wild­fires become a sta­ple across California, mas­sive storms wipe out entire pop­u­la­tion, killing thou­sands and the polar ice caps con­tin­ue to melt at a record pace, it has become clear that the cli­mate cri­sis is not some abstract issue of the future it is here.
Clean drink­ing water will become more and more valu­able even as it becomes more scarce.
Each and every one of the 7.7 bil­lion of us have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be more coignizant of this cri­sis and do our part in con­serv­ing this pre­cious commodity.

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.

Jamaica has been no stranger to shock­ing­ly light sen­tences hand­ed down by judges who have no respect for vic­tims’ rights. In most cas­es, the sen­tence hand­ed down is an insult to the vic­tims, as the offend­er seems to enjoy greater respect from the judi­cia­ry than the crime vic­tims and their fam­i­lies.
Over the last three decades, as the coun­try declared a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to please its colo­nial mas­ters, crime has tak­en a decid­ed­ly north­ward tra­jec­to­ry.
Despite unequiv­o­cal evi­dence that remov­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from the table has embold­ened the Island’s crim­i­nals, unelect­ed lib­er­al judges con­tin­ue to thwart the will of the peo­ple and allow dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to walk with mere slaps on the wrist.
The Island-Nation has always had a roman­tic ide­al­ism when it comes to the per­cep­tion of the sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry.
Hardly any Jamaican will believe you if you tell them that there are cor­rupt judges.
Understandably, it shocks their sen­si­bil­i­ties and dis­rupts the last ves­tiges of hon­esty and safe­ty they have cre­at­ed for them­selves in their own heads about peo­ple with pow­er.
This naïveté suits the tri­al lawyers, clients, and the media prac­ti­tion­ers who heap prais­es on the judges for return­ing the mur­der­ers to the streets as soon as the police arrest them. In the mean­time, gun crimes con­tin­ue to increase even as the bod­ies of the secu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ue to be used in long stretch­es, as they are asked to main­tain States of Emergencies and Zones of Special Operations in myr­i­ad places across the Island.
In announc­ing his lat­est State Of Emergency, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the coun­try, there are enough police and sol­diers to main­tain the lat­est dec­la­ra­tions.
Speaking to a cou­ple of sol­diers, they told me dif­fer­ent­ly. One mem­ber told me that he and his col­leagues were forced to sleep in their vehi­cle after doing their shifts, as there was nowhere else.
No prepa­ra­tion was made for their accommodation.

WONDERING WHY THERE ARE SO MANY GUN CRIMES?

A 19-year-old car­pen­ter was sen­tenced to three years pro­ba­tion on each count for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and ammu­ni­tion.
I won­der what he used the gun and ammu­ni­tion for?

A 19-old was sen­tenced to a fine of $400,000 or two years in prison for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm and three years pro­ba­tion for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of ammu­ni­tion.

A 43-year-old was con­vict­ed of rob­bery with aggra­va­tion. He was sen­tenced to 18 months at hard labor, each for ille­gal firearm pos­ses­sion and rob­bery with aggravation.

In the mean­time, New Zealand’s gov­ern­ment plans to cre­ate a reg­istry of all guns in the coun­try and stiff­en penal­ties on ille­gal gun sales and mod­i­fi­ca­tions. The move comes six months after a gun­man killed 51 peo­ple at mosques in Christchurch. “Owning a firearm is a priv­i­lege, not a right,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday, adding, “That means we need to do all we can to ensure that only hon­est, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens can obtain firearms licens­es and use firearms.”

New Zealand’s homi­cide rate in 2014 was (1) per 100,000, as opposed to Jamaica’s (47) to every 100,000 peo­ple. Between 2007 – 2016 there were 686 peo­ple killed by homi­cide (i.e., mur­der and manslaugh­ter offens­es) In New Zealand.
That is 686 peo­ple killed in a coun­try of rough­ly five mil­lion peo­ple over a (9) nine-year peri­od.
Conversely, a coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple, Jamaica records rough­ly 1600 homi­cides in a sin­gle year.
See infor­ma­tion on World’s homi­cide rates here.
https://​data​.world​bank​.org/​i​n​d​i​c​a​t​o​r​/​V​C​.​I​H​R​.​P​S​R​C​.P5
Jamaica is in the com­pa­ny of El Salvador at 83 and Honduras at 57 per 100,000, respectively.

Why Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship has refused to deal deci­sive­ly with the issue of crime and vio­lence remains some­what of a mys­tery to many, to the major­i­ty of us who served in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, not so much.
The polit­i­cal lead­er­ship had scant regard or respect for the police depart­ment, and for good rea­son.
The major­i­ty of the senior mem­bers of the force were not lead­ers in the true sense of the word. They were polit­i­cal lack­eys, pro­mot­ed not on mer­it but the basis of their sub­servience.
Data and pol­i­cy posi­tions come from the (UWI), the University of the West Indies, the nation’s pre­em­i­nent insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing. A cesspool where left­ist anti-police dog­ma is in no short sup­ply.
Policies are arrived at from the pon­tif­i­cat­ing self-aggran­diz­ing idiots who give text­book ideas that are not test­ed in prac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tions and are gen­er­al­ly unsuit­ed for Jamaica’s unique sit­u­a­tion.
It would make sense that since they do not respect the police enough to hear from them, they would ask an inde­pen­dent police offi­cial from a first-world coun­try to come in and assist them with polic­ing poli­cies.
Unfortunately for the Nation’s law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, they don’t default to their friends and cohorts from the UWI.

The high­er ech­e­lons of the Constabulary, the Judiciary, the legal fra­ter­ni­ty, the media, and every oth­er stra­tum of civ­il soci­ety are now packed with lead­ers from the UWI.
Yes, that same left­ist caul­dron of failed social­ist ide­ol­o­gy. So there is no diver­si­ty of thought. PNP and JLP have dif­fer­ing ideas on how to fleece the nation’s trea­sury and retain pow­er. Nevertheless, when it comes to for­mu­lat­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy, they are all prod­ucts of the very same dirty pool.
Once upon a time, I would write about their refusal to con­sid­er the police’s per­spec­tive when bills are being debat­ed.
Not that expert input is con­sid­ered when vir­gin leg­is­la­tion is being debat­ed in this coun­try.
There is no need to con­sid­er the police when they debate new leg­is­la­tion today. The police hier­ar­chy is no more decou­pled from the left­ist ide­ol­o­gy today than it was two or three decades ago. The police force is now a top-heavy park­ing lot for PhDs. and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic types, all from the same dirty pool.

In 2018 the Jamaican Judiciary cre­at­ed its own mouth­piece, the Court Management Service (CMS), after senior inves­ti­ga­tors of the JCF draft­ed a doc­u­ment which revealed that judges in St James, Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny are opt­ing more for fines, sus­pend­ed sen­tences, and pro­ba­tion orders for per­sons con­vict­ed for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and ammu­ni­tion.
Of course, the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites believe they are above being crit­i­cized, and God for­bid that the crit­i­cism should come from the low­ly police.
So they issued their own state­ment, quite unusu­al because they pre­vi­ous­ly did not both­er to respond to crit­i­cisms; they are above it all.
“The judi­cia­ry has no objec­tion to “appro­pri­ate scruti­ny,” but it should be done in a fair, bal­anced man­ner, and based on full and accu­rate infor­ma­tion.” The Judges said.
If you have to address being scru­ti­nized, you clear­ly abhor being scru­ti­nized; after all, you are mem­bers of the [inde­pen­dent Judiciary right].

But they weren’t done.

“The judi­cia­ry wel­comes and under­stands the pub­lic inter­est in the dis­pen­sa­tion of crim­i­nal jus­tice, espe­cial­ly at a time when there is height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the high lev­els of some crimes in our coun­try,”
“However, inac­cu­rate, incom­plete, and unver­i­fied infor­ma­tion that unfair­ly gen­er­ates neg­a­tive per­cep­tions of sen­tenc­ing prac­tices brings the judi­cia­ry and our sys­tem of jus­tice into dis­re­pute and cre­ates a sig­nif­i­cant threat to the rule of law and the fab­ric of our democ­ra­cy.“
What pop­py­cock bull­shit!!
The sanc­ti­mo­nious hypocrisy of these crim­i­nal-lov­ing char­la­tans is endan­ger­ing the coun­try, not crit­i­cisms of their dirty deeds.

The sheer arro­gance of this state­ment smacks the elit­ism of the first order.
The trans­par­ent annoy­ance in this [form] response from the Judiciary was an affront to the intel­lect of dis­cern­ing Jamaicans who must know that whether they like it or not, some Judges do accept bribes. That some of the sen­tences being met­ed out reflect that real­i­ty.
Regardless of the smoke, they blow up the nation’s col­lec­tive ass; the issue is not just the wide dis­par­i­ty in the sen­tences; the sen­tences are whol­ly inap­pro­pri­ate.
If judges do not like sen­tenc­ing crim­i­nals to prison, they are free to get off the tax­pay­er’s dole and become defense lawyers.
However, while they remain on the dole, they have a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to fol­low the laws; they do no work for them­selves; they are ser­vants of the Jamaican peo­ple.
As for their sup­posed inde­pen­dence, that went out the door when Justice Bryan Sykes was appoint­ed to act as Chief Justice.
So much for Judicial inde­pen­dence, all of a sud­den, the thin veneer of above-it-all was peeled away, reveal­ing the truth of their lit­tle social club.

The crime sta­tis­tics are not whol­ly the result of light sen­tences, police cor­rup­tion, polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence-incom­pe­tence, or the pop­u­la­tion’s across-the-board pre­dis­po­si­tion to be soft on crim­i­nals; it is a con­flu­ence of all of the above, and then some.
In the same breath, there is no greater group of cheer-lead­ers for the light sen­tences being hand­ed down to mur­der­ers and crim­i­nals arrest­ed with ille­gal weapons and ammu­ni­tion than the crim­i­nal lawyers on the Island.
As offi­cers of the court, the Jamaican bar has become a dis­gust­ing lob­by for crim­i­nals, in a mis­guid­ed mis­un­der­stand­ing of their roles as defend­ers of the inno­cent and uphold­ers of the laws.
At the risk of sound­ing like a bro­ken record, I will con­tin­ue to say the obvi­ous. As Nations across the globe seek to tight­en loop­holes to pre­vent crim­i­nals from under­min­ing their soci­eties, the Island nation of Jamaica con­tin­ues to pla­cate crim­i­nals by giv­ing voice to crim­i­nal rights lob­bies, crim­i­nal defense lawyers and tak­ing into account the feel­ings of crim­i­nals ignor­ing the rights of crime vic­tims.
It is a shock­ing abdi­ca­tion of duty, yet it serves the nar­row polit­i­cal inter­ests of both par­ties and the spe­cial inter­est groups that have made the Island’s mur­der rate their feed­ing tree.

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

There are dif­fer­ent ways to say the same thing. Some say what they want in direct inart­ful ways.
Others are more artic­u­late, more nuanced, more tact­ful in what they say even as they con­vey the very same mes­sage in what they say.
You decide.…

“I’d say to any­body who ques­tions what a won­der­ful inher­i­tance we have in our courts and the rule of law in this coun­try, go spend six weeks in a court in anoth­er coun­try of your choice and come back and tell me what you think about our courts in this coun­try.”

“I’ve got great con­fi­dence in America,”
“And I say to those who don’t, ‘Look else­where, where else would you rather be?”
https://​www​.cnn​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​9​/​1​0​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​n​e​i​l​-​g​o​r​s​u​c​h​-​p​r​e​c​e​d​e​n​t​-​n​o​r​t​h​-​k​o​r​e​a​-​w​a​s​h​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

–if you’re not hap­py here you can leave. That is what I say all of the time. That’s what I said in a Tweet which I guess some peo­ple think is con­tro­ver­sial, a lot of peo­ple love it by the way. A lot of peo­ple love it but if you are not hap­py in the U.S. if you are com­plain­ing all of the time very sim­ply you can leave. You can leave right now. Come back if you want, don’t come back, that’s okay, too. But if you are not hap­py you can leave.
https://​time​.com/​5​6​2​6​8​1​3​/​d​o​n​a​l​d​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​r​a​c​i​s​t​-​t​w​e​e​t​s​-​t​r​a​n​s​c​r​i​pt/

If the way PNP del­e­gates vot­ed on Saturday is indica­tive of the wider elec­torate which sup­ports that par­ty, the nation may be in for decades and decades of medi­oc­rity and stag­na­tion if the PNP is returned to office.
Given a clear choice between a young leader who want­ed to make a clean break from the failed ide­ol­o­gy of [demo­c­ra­t­ic socialism](sic), and the sta­tus quo, which has been an abject fail­ure for the coun­try, they chose the sta­tus quo.

The great­est non­sense against Bunting’s can­di­da­cy, both by (first )Peter Phillips, his “one PNP” cam­paign, and local media, is that (sec­ond) Peter Bunting and his “rise unit­ed” cam­paign was engaged in vote-buy­ing.
The hypocrisy of that argu­ment is lost on only the most hard­core sup­port­ers of Peter Phillips, and oth­ers who may not fol­low Jamaican pol­i­tics.
There has been no elec­tion on the Island in which vote-buy­ing has not played a part in the deci­sion of the poll.
Worse yet, as Peter Phillips sat in a radio stu­dio and bitched about the prac­tice, he as the leader of the par­ty pre­sides over one of the most intran­si­gent gar­risons oper­at­ed by the PNP.
As a mem­ber of par­lia­ment who comes from a gar­ri­son, No one, Phillips includ­ed, has any greater valid­i­ty than mem­bers who pay elec­tors to vote for them.
Vote buy­ing is rep­re­hen­si­ble, but vot­ers have a choice to take the mon­ey and vote for whomev­er they choose. That may have hap­pened to Bunting if reports of vote-buy­ing are true.
People in Garrison com­mu­ni­ties who are forced to vote for a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date at the per­il of death, is a whole dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish.

That aside, Peter Phillips and the old cabal of (eat-a-food­ers) who presided over 22 plus years of Jamaica’s decline has been val­i­dat­ed by the par­ty’s del­e­gates.
The les­son inher­ent in the Saturday vote is that at the crit­i­cal del­e­gate lev­el of the par­ty, there is no recog­ni­tion that the PNP des­per­ate­ly needs to change.
Many sup­port­ers of the gov­ern­ing Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) sees the affir­ma­tion of Peter Phillips to head the PNP as a gift to their par­ty’s chances when next gen­er­al elec­tions are held.
However, the much-need­ed trans­for­ma­tion of the PNP from an old tired out-of-touch left­ist par­ty, to a 21^st-cen­tu­ry par­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the needs of the coun­try, far exceeds any ben­e­fits the JLP may derive from Phillips’ affirmation.

Jamaica has all of the com­po­nents to posi­tion itself as a nation head­ed for full first-world sta­tus in 20 to 30 years. As such the two polit­i­cal par­ties which share pow­er and gov­er­nance must both be agents of pro­gres­sive empow­er­ment if those goals are to be accom­plished.
A polit­i­cal par­ty which is still stuck cham­pi­oning failed big-gov­ern­ment poli­cies is bound to wipe out any gains that the present par­ty may accom­plish.
Even after an unprece­dent­ed ²²¹⁄₂ year run by the PNP, Jamaicans still do not have clean run­ning water in their pipes. Local roads are like the moon’s sur­face and still, in some areas, there are no roads at all.
Hospitals are ver­i­ta­ble hos­pices of death, and there was no build­ing of schools wor­thy of men­tion.
In fact, the only thing that the PNP can be cred­it­ed with is the out of con­trol crime and the den­i­gra­tion of our cul­ture.

The Police Department was allowed to dete­ri­o­rate to the point that it became total­ly inef­fec­tu­al. At every turn, the PNP’s tenure in lead­er­ship has been a colos­sal night­mare for the coun­try, even if not for its cultish sup­port­er.
In ²²¹⁄₂ years, the PNP was not able to iden­ti­fy a sin­gle infra­struc­tur­al project and com­plete it on behalf of the Jamaican peo­ple. On what basis would they expect the peo­ple to return that par­ty to power?

It is for those rea­sons that I believe, that though Peter Bunting is a mem­ber of that par­ty, his oppo­si­tion to social­ism as a direc­tion for the PNP was a valu­able first step for the par­ty and coun­try.
Unfortunately for the coun­try and par­ty, PNP del­e­gates decid­ed to stick with an old dis­joint­ed and cor­rupt out-of-touch polit­i­cal par­ty whose time has come and gone.

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.

The People’s National Party is today Saturday, set to have a lead­er­ship elec­tion between Dr. Peter Phillips MP, the cur­rent leader of the par­ty and Peter Bunting MP, who is chal­leng­ing for lead­er­ship of the par­ty under his cam­paign slo­gan “Rise United”. The new leader is to be select­ed by del­e­gates with­in the par­ty.
Both men are for­mer min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment under past PNP admin­is­tra­tions.
In fact, both men have served as min­is­ters of nation­al secu­ri­ty in dif­fer­ent PNP administrations. 

Peter Phillips is 70-year-old, while Bunting is 59-years-old. Past lead­ers of the PNP Michael Manley, Percival Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller all past Prime Ministers of that par­ty were at Phillips’ age look­ing to exit the stage.
Asked about his deci­sion to con­test this chal­lenge to his lead­er­ship at a time when past lead­ers were look­ing to retire, Peter Phillips told the inter­view­er he could not just walk away sim­ply because some­one thought he was old.

Insofar as age goes, it real­ly does not mat­ter, how old a per­son, is as long as they are able to coher­ent­ly artic­u­late pol­i­cy direc­tions which are cogent and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the future, not stuck in the past.
Having nev­er sat down with either man to talk about their views, it is dif­fi­cult for me to form an opin­ion of either, suf­fic­ing to say that the People’s National Party under its present lead­er­ship is still stuck in the hyper­bol­ic left­ist failed ide­ol­o­gy of the ’70s.
With clenched fists and ref­er­ence to each oth­er as “com­rades”, the PNP exudes ves­tiges of a time , pro­gres­sives and edu­cat­ed Jamaicans want to put in their rearview mir­rors.

Communism is a failed polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, so too is social­ism. The Soviet Union and China were the two bas­tions of Communism in the 20^th cen­tu­ry.
Today, the Soviet Union does not exist, for­mer states, with the excep­tion of maybe one or two, are inde­pen­dent states which have large­ly adopt­ed west­ern-style demo­c­ra­t­ic mar­ket-dri­ven poli­cies. Russia and China have both dereg­u­lat­ed their economies allow­ing for mar­ket forces to pro­vide wealth and oppor­tu­ni­ties for their peo­ple.
In actu­al­i­ty, not only has Communism failed, so too has the con­cept of demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism.
It is to this sink­ing ide­ol­o­gy that the present PNP under Peter Phillips has con­tin­ued to teth­er itself.

To his cred­it, Peter Bunting is a younger leader who has cred­i­ble pri­vate sec­tor bona fides. Bunting is a wealthy for­mer busi­ness­man whom I believe Is the bet­ter choice of the two, giv­en his oppo­si­tion to demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism as a polit­i­cal direc­tion.
The present JLP admin­is­tra­tion under the lead­er­ship of Prime Minister Andrew Holness is a par­ty which under­stands,( to some degree) how the pri­vate sec­tor is sup­posed to work for the bet­ter­ment of the coun­try.
The PNP seem­ing still strug­gles to under­stand that cit­i­zens are not sup­posed to depend on Government for jobs and or hand­outs.
A PNP under Peter Bunting in my esti­ma­tion, will give our coun­try two par­ties with bright young lead­ers who under­stand that the Government should not be an enabler but a facilitator.

It is with that in mind why I hope the del­e­gates in that par­ty select Peter Bunting to lead the par­ty into the future and away from the old ways of the past.

RIP. Robert Mugabe.
For all of the neg­a­tive things which will be said about Robert Mugabe, by those against whom he stood tall, as a bul­wark of black pride against white dom­i­na­tion. For all of his fail­ings and frail­ties as a human being, he will for­ev­er be a cham­pi­on of black intel­lec­tu­al­ism and strength against colo­nial domination. 

Robert Mugabe became prime min­is­ter of Zimbabwe in 1980 and served as the coun­try’s pres­i­dent from 1987 until his forced res­ig­na­tion in 2017. 

Who Was Robert Mugabe?

Robert Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In 1963, he found­ed ZANU, a resis­tance move­ment against British colo­nial rule. Mugabe became prime min­is­ter of the new Republic of Zimbabwe after British rule end­ed in 1980, and he assumed the role of pres­i­dent sev­en years lat­er. Mugabe retained a strong grip on pow­er, through con­tro­ver­sial elec­tions, until he was forced to resign in November 2017, at age 93.

Early Years and Education

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), just months after Southern Rhodesia had become a British Crown colony. As a result, the peo­ple of his vil­lage were oppressed by new laws and faced lim­i­ta­tions to their edu­ca­tion and job opportunities.

Mugabe’s father was a car­pen­ter. He went to work at a Jesuit mis­sion in South Africa when Mugabe was just a boy, and mys­te­ri­ous­ly nev­er came home. Mugabe’s moth­er, a teacher, was left to bring up Mugabe and his three sib­lings on her own. As a child, Mugabe helped out by tend­ing the fam­i­ly’s cows and mak­ing mon­ey through odd jobs.

Although many peo­ple in Southern Rhodesia went only as far as gram­mar school, Mugabe was for­tu­nate enough to receive a good edu­ca­tion. He attend­ed school at the local Jesuit mis­sion under the super­vi­sion of school direc­tor Father O’Hea. A pow­er­ful influ­ence on the boy, O’Hea taught Mugabe that all peo­ple should be treat­ed equal­ly and edu­cat­ed to the ful­fill­ment of their abil­i­ties. Mugabe’s teach­ers, who called him “a clever lad,” were ear­ly to rec­og­nize his abil­i­ties as considerable.

The val­ues that O’Hea impart­ed to his stu­dents res­onat­ed with Mugabe, prompt­ing him to pass them on by becom­ing a teacher him­self. Over the course of nine years, he stud­ied pri­vate­ly while teach­ing at a num­ber of mis­sion schools in Southern Rhodesia. Mugabe con­tin­ued his edu­ca­tion at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, grad­u­at­ing with a Bachelor of Arts degree in his­to­ry and English in 1951. Mugabe then returned to his home­town to teach there. By 1953, he had earned his Bachelor of Education degree through cor­re­spon­dence courses.

In 1955, Mugabe moved to Northern Rhodesia. There, he taught for four years at Chalimbana Training College while also work­ing toward his Bachelor of Science degree in eco­nom­ics through cor­re­spon­dence cours­es with the University of London. After mov­ing to Ghana, Mugabe com­plet­ed his eco­nom­ics degree in 1958. He also taught at St. Mary’s Teacher Training College, where he met his first wife, Sarah Heyfron, whom he would mar­ry in 1961. In Ghana, Mugabe declared him­self a Marxist, sup­port­ing the Ghanaian gov­ern­men­t’s goal of pro­vid­ing equal edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to the for­mer­ly des­ig­nat­ed low­er classes.

Early Political Career

In 1960, Robert Mugabe returned to his home­town on leave, plan­ning to intro­duce his fiancée to his moth­er. Unexpectedly, upon his arrival, Mugabe encoun­tered a dras­ti­cal­ly changed Southern Rhodesia. Tens of thou­sands of black fam­i­lies had been dis­placed by the new colo­nial gov­ern­ment, and the white pop­u­la­tion had explod­ed. The gov­ern­ment denied black major­i­ty rule, result­ing in vio­lent protests. Mugabe too was out­raged by this denial of blacks’ rights. In July 1960, he agreed to address the crowd at the protest March of 7,000, staged at Salisbury’s Harare Town Hall. The pur­pose of the gath­er­ing was for mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion move­ment to protest the recent arrest of their lead­ers. Steeling him­self in the face of police threats, Mugabe told the pro­tes­tors about how Ghana had suc­cess­ful­ly achieved inde­pen­dence through Marxism.

Just weeks lat­er, Mugabe was elect­ed pub­lic sec­re­tary of the National Democratic Party. In accor­dance with Ghanaian mod­els, Mugabe quick­ly assem­bled a mil­i­tant youth league to spread the word about achiev­ing black inde­pen­dence in Rhodesia. The gov­ern­ment banned the par­ty at the end of 1961, but the remain­ing sup­port­ers came togeth­er to form a move­ment that was the first of its kind in Rhodesia. The Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) soon grew to a stag­ger­ing 450,000 members. 

The union’s leader, Joshua Nkomo, was invit­ed to meet with the United Nations, who demand­ed that Britain sus­pend their con­sti­tu­tion and read­dress the top­ic of major­i­ty rule. But, as time passed and noth­ing had changed, Mugabe and oth­ers were frus­trat­ed that Nkomo did­n’t insist on a def­i­nite date for changes to the con­sti­tu­tion. So great was his frus­tra­tion, that by April of 1961, Mugabe pub­licly dis­cussed start­ing a gueril­la war — even going so far as to declare defi­ant­ly to a police­man, “We are tak­ing over this coun­try and we will not put up with this nonsense.”

Formation of ZANU

In 1963, Mugabe and oth­er for­mer sup­port­ers of Nkomo found­ed their own resis­tance move­ment, called the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), in Tanzania. Back in Southern Rhodesia lat­er that year, the police arrest­ed Mugabe and sent him to Hwahwa Prison. Mugabe would remain in jail for over a decade, being moved from Hwahwa Prison to Sikombela Detention Centre and lat­er to Salisbury Prison. In 1964, while in prison, Mugabe relied on secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions to launch guer­ril­la oper­a­tions toward free­ing Southern Rhodesia from British rule.

In 1974, Prime Minister Ian Smith, who claimed he would achieve true major­i­ty rule but still declared his alle­giance to the British colo­nial gov­ern­ment, allowed Mugabe to leave prison and go to a con­fer­ence in Lusaka, Zambia (for­mer­ly Northern Rhodesia). Mugabe instead escaped back across the bor­der to Southern Rhodesia, assem­bling a troop of Rhodesian guer­ril­la trainees along the way. The bat­tles raged on through­out the 1970s. By the end of that decade, Zimbabwe’s econ­o­my was in worse shape than ever. In 1979, after Smith had tried in vain to reach an agree­ment with Mugabe, the British agreed to mon­i­tor the changeover to black major­i­ty rule and the UN lift­ed sanctions.

By 1980, Southern Rhodesia was lib­er­at­ed from British rule and became the inde­pen­dent Republic of Zimbabwe. Running under the ZANU par­ty ban­ner, Mugabe was elect­ed prime min­is­ter of the new repub­lic, after run­ning against Nkomo. In 1981, a bat­tle broke out between ZANU and ZAPU due to their dif­fer­ing agen­das. In 1985, Mugabe was re-elect­ed as the fight­ing con­tin­ued. In 1987, when a group of mis­sion­ar­ies were trag­i­cal­ly mur­dered by Mugabe sup­port­ers, Mugabe and Nkomo at last agreed to merge their unions into the ZANU-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and focus on the nation’s eco­nom­ic recovery.

Presidency

Within just a week of the uni­ty agree­ment, Mugabe was appoint­ed pres­i­dent of Zimbabwe. He chose Nkomo as one of his senior min­is­ters. Mugabe’s first major goal was to restruc­ture and repair the coun­try’s fail­ing econ­o­my. In 1989, he set out to imple­ment a five-year plan, which slack­ened price restric­tions for farm­ers, allow­ing them to des­ig­nate their own prices. By 1994, at the end of the five-year peri­od, the econ­o­my had seen some growth in the farm­ing, min­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. Mugabe addi­tion­al­ly man­aged to build clin­ics and schools for the black pop­u­la­tion. Also over the course of that time, Mugabe’s wife, Sarah, passed away, free­ing him to mar­ry his mis­tress, Grace Marufu.

By 1996, Mugabe’s deci­sions had begun to cre­ate unrest among the cit­i­zens of Zimbabwe, who had once hailed him as a hero for lead­ing the coun­try to inde­pen­dence. Many resent­ed his choice to sup­port the seizure of white peo­ple’s land with­out com­pen­sa­tion to the own­ers, which Mugabe insist­ed was the only way to lev­el out the eco­nom­ic play­ing field for the dis­en­fran­chised black major­i­ty. Citizens were like­wise out­raged by Mugabe’s refusal to amend Zimbabwe’s one-par­ty con­sti­tu­tion. High infla­tion was anoth­er sore sub­ject, result­ing in a civ­il ser­vant strike for pay increas­es. The self-award­ed pay rais­es of gov­ern­ment offi­cials only com­pound­ed the pub­lic’s resent­ment toward Mugabe’s administration.

Objections to Mugabe’s con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal strate­gies con­tin­ued to impede his suc­cess. In 1998, when he appealed to oth­er coun­tries to donate mon­ey for land dis­tri­b­u­tion, the coun­tries said they would­n’t donate unless he first devised a pro­gram for help­ing Zimbabwe’s impov­er­ished rur­al econ­o­my. Mugabe refused, and the coun­tries refused to donate.

In 2000, Mugabe passed an amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that made Britain pay repa­ra­tions for the land it had seized from blacks. Mugabe claimed that he would seize British land as resti­tu­tion if they failed to pay. The amend­ment put fur­ther strain on Zimbabwe’s for­eign relations.

Still, Mugabe, a notably con­ser­v­a­tive dress­er who dur­ing his cam­paign had worn col­or­ful shirts with his own face on them, won the 2002 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Speculation that he had stuffed the bal­lot box led the European Union to place an arms embar­go and oth­er eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Zimbabwe. At this time Zimbabwe’s econ­o­my was in near ruins. Famine, an AIDS epi­dem­ic, for­eign debt and wide­spread unem­ploy­ment plagued the coun­try. Yet Mugabe was deter­mined to retain his office and did so by any means nec­es­sary — includ­ing alleged vio­lence and cor­rup­tion — win­ning the vote in the 2005 par­lia­men­tary elections.

Refusal to Cede Power

On March 29, 2008, when he lost the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the oppos­ing Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mugabe was unwill­ing to let go of the reins and demand­ed a recount. A runoff elec­tion was to be held that June. In the mean­time, MDC sup­port­ers were being vio­lent­ly attacked and killed by mem­bers of Mugabe’s oppo­si­tion. When Mugabe pub­licly declared that as long as he was liv­ing, he would nev­er let Tsvangirai rule Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai con­clud­ed that Mugabe’s use of force would skew the vote in Mugabe’s favor any­way, and withdrew.

Mugabe’s refusal to hand over pres­i­den­tial pow­er led to anoth­er vio­lent out­break that injured thou­sands and result­ed in the death of 85 of Tsvangirai’s sup­port­ers. That September, Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed to a pow­er-shar­ing deal. Ever deter­mined to remain in con­trol, Mugabe still man­aged to retain most of the pow­er by con­trol­ling secu­ri­ty forces and choos­ing lead­ers for the most vital min­istry positions.

At the end of 2010, Mugabe took addi­tion­al action to seize total con­trol of Zimbabwe by select­ing pro­vi­sion­al gov­er­nors with­out con­sult­ing Tsvangirai. A U.S. diplo­mat­ic cable indi­cat­ed that Mugabe might be bat­tling prostate can­cer the fol­low­ing year. The alle­ga­tion raised pub­lic con­cerns about a mil­i­tary coup in the event of Mugabe’s death while in office. Others voiced con­cerns about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vio­lent inter­nal war with­in the ZANU-PF, if can­di­dates sought to com­pete to become Mugabe’s successor.

2013 Election

On December 10, 2011, at the National People’s Conference in Bulawayo, Mugabe offi­cial­ly announced his bid for the 2012 Zimbabwe pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. The elec­tion was post­poned, how­ev­er, as both sides agreed to draft a new con­sti­tu­tion, and resched­uled for 2013. People of Zimbabwe came out in sup­port of the new doc­u­ment in March 2013, approv­ing it in a con­sti­tu­tion ref­er­en­dum, though many believed that the 2013 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion would be marred by cor­rup­tion and violence.

According to a Reuters report, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from near­ly 60 civic orga­ni­za­tions with­in the coun­try com­plained of a crack­down by Mugabe and his sup­port­ers. Critical of Mugabe, mem­bers of these groups were sub­ject to intim­i­da­tion, arrest and oth­er forms of per­se­cu­tion. There was also the ques­tion as to who would be allowed to super­vise the vot­ing process. Mugabe said that he would not let Westerners mon­i­tor any of the coun­try’s election.

In March, Mugabe trav­eled to Rome for the inau­gur­al mass for Pope Francis, who was new­ly named to the papa­cy. Mugabe told reporters that the new pope should vis­it Africa and stat­ed, “We hope he will take us all his chil­dren on the same basis, basis of equal­i­ty, basis that we are all in the eyes of God equal,” accord­ing to a report by The Associated Press.

In late July 2013, amid dis­cus­sion regard­ing the cur­rent and high­ly antic­i­pat­ed Zimbabwean elec­tion, an 89-year-old Mugabe made head­lines when he was asked whether he planned to run again in the 2018 elec­tion (he would be 94 then) by a reporter from The New York Times, to which the pres­i­dent respond­ed, “Why do you want to know my secrets?” According to The Washington Post, Mugabe’s oppo­nent, Tsvangirai, accused elec­tion offi­cials of throw­ing out near­ly 70,000 bal­lots in his favor that were sub­mit­ted early.

In ear­ly August, Zimbabwe’s elec­tion com­mis­sion declared Mugabe the vic­tor in the pres­i­den­tial race. He earned 61 per­cent of the vote with Tsvangirai receiv­ing only 34 per­cent, accord­ing to BBC News. Tsvangirai was expect­ed to launch a legal chal­lenge against the elec­tion results. According to the Guardian news­pa­per, Tsvangirai said the elec­tion did “not the reflect the will of the peo­ple. I don’t think that even those in Africa that have com­mit­ted acts of bal­lot rig­ging have done it such a brazen manner.”

Arrest of American Citizen

In November 2017 an American woman liv­ing in Zimbabwe was charged with sub­vert­ing the gov­ern­ment and under­min­ing the author­i­ty of — or insult­ing — the president. 

According to pros­e­cu­tors, the defen­dant, Martha O’Donovan, a project coör­di­na­tor for the activist Magamba Network, had “sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sought to incite polit­i­cal unrest through the expan­sion, devel­op­ment and use of a sophis­ti­cat­ed net­work of social media plat­forms as well as run­ning some Twitter accounts.” She faced up to 20 years in prison for the charges.

The arrest raised con­cerns that Mugabe’s gov­ern­ment was attempt­ing to con­trol social media ahead of the 2018 nation­al elections.

Military Takeover and Resignation

Meanwhile, a more dire sit­u­a­tion was emerg­ing in Zimbabwe with the onset of what appeared to be a mil­i­tary coup. On November 14, not long after Mugabe’s dis­missal of vice pres­i­dent Emmerson Mnangagwa, tanks were spot­ted in the coun­try’s cap­i­tal, Harare. Early the fol­low­ing morn­ing, an army spokesman appeared on TV to announce that the mil­i­tary was in the process of appre­hend­ing crim­i­nals who were “caus­ing social and eco­nom­ic suf­fer­ing in the coun­try in order to bring them to justice.”

The spokesman empha­sized that this was not a mil­i­tary takeover of the gov­ern­ment, say­ing, “We wish to assure the nation that his excel­len­cy the pres­i­dent… and his fam­i­ly are safe and sound and their secu­ri­ty is guar­an­teed.” At the time, Mugabe’s where­abouts were unknown, but it was lat­er con­firmed that he had been con­fined to his home.

The fol­low­ing day, Zimbabwe’s The Herald pub­lished pho­tographs of the elder­ly pres­i­dent at home, along with oth­er gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary offi­cials. The offi­cials were report­ed­ly dis­cussing the imple­men­ta­tion of a tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment, though no pub­lic state­ment had been made on the matter.

On November 17, Mugabe resur­faced in pub­lic at a uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, an appear­ance believed to mask the tur­moil behind the scenes. After ini­tial­ly refus­ing to coöper­ate with pro­posed plans to peace­ful­ly remove him from pow­er, the pres­i­dent report­ed­ly agreed to announce his retire­ment dur­ing a tele­vised speech sched­uled for November 19.

However, Mugabe made no men­tion of retire­ment dur­ing the speech, instead insist­ing he would pre­side over a December con­gress of the ZANU-PF gov­ern­ing par­ty. As a result, it was announced that the par­ty would launch impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings to vote him out of power.

On November 22, short­ly after a joint ses­sion of the Zimbabwean Parliament con­vened for the impeach­ment vote, the speak­er read a let­ter from the embat­tled pres­i­dent. “I have resigned to allow smooth trans­fer of pow­er,” Mugabe wrote. “Kindly give pub­lic notice of my deci­sion as soon as possible.”

The end of Mugabe’s 37-year tenure was met with applause from Parliament mem­bers, as well as cel­e­bra­tions on the streets of Zimbabwe. According to a spokesman for the ZANU-PF, for­mer vice pres­i­dent Mnangagwa would take over as pres­i­dent and serve the remain­der of Mugabe’s term until the 2018 elections.

Just before the elec­tions on July 30, 2018, Mugabe said he could not sup­port his suc­ces­sor, Mnangagwa, after being forced out by the “par­ty I found­ed,” and sug­gest­ed that oppo­si­tion leader Nelson Chamisa of the MDC was the only viable pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. That drew a strong response from Mnangagwa, who said, “It is clear to all that Chamisa has forged a deal with Mugabe, we can no longer believe that his inten­tions are to trans­form Zimbabwe and rebuild our nation.”

Tensions over the elec­tions also spilled out into the pub­lic, with demon­stra­tions turn­ing vio­lent over what was announced to be the ZANU-PF’s par­lia­men­tary vic­to­ry and Mnangagwa’s tri­umph. MDC Chairman Morgan Komichi said his par­ty would chal­lenge the out­come in court.

Death

Mugabe died on September 6, 2019, at Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore where he was under obser­va­tion for sev­er­al months for an undis­closed ill­ness.
“It is with the utmost sad­ness that I announce the pass­ing on of Zimbabwe’s found­ing father and for­mer President, Cde Robert Mugabe,” Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa wrote on Twitter. “Cde Mugabe was an icon of lib­er­a­tion, a pan-Africanist who ded­i­cat­ed his life to the eman­ci­pa­tion and empow­er­ment of his peo­ple. His con­tri­bu­tion to the his­to­ry of our nation and con­ti­nent will nev­er be for­got­ten. May his soul rest in eter­nal peace.” 
https://​www​.biog​ra​phy​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​f​i​g​u​r​e​/​r​o​b​e​r​t​-​m​u​g​abe

THE JAMAICAN PRIME MINISTER ANDREW HOLNESS HAS ONCE AGAIN DECLARED STATES OF EMERGENCIES IN THE PARISHES OF SAINT CATHERINE AND CLARENDON.
These new dec­la­ra­tions are in addi­tion to states of emer­gen­cies in the west­ern parish­es of Hanover, Westmoreland and Saint James.
Clearly, this strat­e­gy is not work­ing as crime con­tin­ue to increase in oth­er areas and gen­er­al­ly only sub­side a bit even in the areas in which these dec­la­ra­tions are made.

Even as there is a con­cert­ed push to realign what they see has insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­en­fran­chise­ment against their gen­der, women cer­tain­ly have no prob­lem when issues are slant­ed in their favor.
As moth­ers of our young men, we cer­tain­ly have not heard them speak out about the cri­sis our young men are fac­ing.
This reveals a sense of hypocrisy in women, which caus­es me to think that what women want is not par­i­ty but total con­trol.
The nations crime rate is direct­ly relat­ed to the dis­il­lu­sion­ment of our boys who have been for decades left to fend for them­selves while the fam­i­lies resources are invest­ed in the edu­ca­tion of girls.
This is not to say that there are not instances where girls are abused and mistreated. 

Jamaica is a case study in this dys­func­tion which began as a push to grant women auton­o­my and par­i­ty, not just in the work­place but across the broad­er soci­ety.
Today, despite the evi­dence that the one-sided approach is hav­ing a neg­a­tive effect on the small coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion, there is hard­ly a whim­per as the peo­ple who now hold the pow­er are the peo­ple who are ben­e­fit­ting from the dis­par­i­ty.
The University of the West Indies report­ing on stu­dent intake year over year, shows that female stu­dents admit­ted to that insti­tu­tion more than dou­bles the num­ber of male stu­dents admit­ted.
Who are these edu­cat­ed young women going to mar­ry, or is mar­riage between a man and woman soon to be tossed out with all oth­er tra­di­tion­al norms?
This is not acci­den­tal, the num­ber of all-girls high schools far out­strips that of all-boys schools. Social orga­ni­za­tions are installed and fund­ed not just by the gov­ern­ment, but by pri­vate insti­tu­tions in a kind of knee-jerk response to the sup­posed prob­lem of dis­crim­i­na­tion against women and girls.

The truth of the mat­ter is that in many cas­es in a house­hold in which there are a boy and girl, and resources are scarce, the default option is for the girl to be edu­cat­ed and the boy left to fend for him­self.
Women and girls expe­ri­enc­ing issues may go to any num­ber of places to get help, includ­ing (1) The Bureau of Gender Affairs (2) Woman Incorporated (Crisis Centre). (3) Sistren Theatre Collective (4) Women’s Centre Of Jamaica Foundation. (5) Women’s media watch. (6) Women’s Resource And Outreach Centre (WROC. And much more.

Look around you and tell me where you see a men’s cri­sis cen­ter geared toward the uplift­ment of boys and men.
There has nev­er been a sys­temic pol­i­cy to keep women dis­en­fran­chised con­trary to the fem­i­nist dog­ma being fed the pub­lic by the mouth­pieces on radio and tele­vi­sion.
Sure, Jamaica was not exempt from the tra­di­tion­al unwrit­ten under­stand­ing that men went out to work and women stayed home with the chil­dren. However, nei­ther has Jamaica been exempt from the rad­i­cal shifts which have changed that par­a­digm, not the least of which are eco­nom­ics and fem­i­nism.
As a con­se­quence, women in Jamaica has increas­ing­ly occu­pied offices of polit­i­cal and exec­u­tive pow­er since the Island was jet­ti­soned from the coat-tails of Britain.
In fact, Jamaica is one of the lead­ing nations as it relates to female empow­er­ment across the globe.
But this has not come with­out a price. Our boys have been for­got­ten in the process and the nation’s crime rate is a direct reflec­tion of that.

The nation’s attor­ney General Marlene Malahoo Forte today report­ed that up to 80% of young girls first sex­u­al inter­ac­tion is forced,(meaning they were raped).
The attor­ney gen­er­al says the Andrew Holness led admin­is­tra­tion takes the issue of sex­u­al vio­lence seri­ous­ly and is com­mit­ted to doing all it can to ensure that the right laws and penal­ties are in place.
The Government may be best advised to look at the neglect of our young men and the lack of care being placed in their edu­ca­tion and well-being.
If we do not arrest these dis­par­i­ties, I am afraid that the lev­el of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty being expe­ri­enced in the rapes and killings thus far, will only be the tip of the iceberg.

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.

byTracey Onyenacho

There is an idea that pub­lic safe­ty can­not exist with­out the pres­ence of police and law enforce­ment; how­ev­er, the his­to­ry of polic­ing will show a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The con­cept of police offi­cers was estab­lished by Europeans who immi­grat­ed to Turtle Island (lat­er known as the United States). Federal law enact­ed these white peo­ple as vig­i­lantes who were required to report, catch and pun­ish any enslaved peo­ple who ran away from plan­ta­tions dur­ing slav­ery. As police forces became more estab­lished, offi­cers includ­ed prop­er­ty crimes into their reper­toire, where “prop­er­ty” includ­ed enslaved peo­ple. Even after the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, Black peo­ple were policed by fed­er­al and state laws that restrict­ed both their move­ment and rest. With pri­vate police forces pro­tect­ing cor­po­ra­tions and landown­ers from work­ers’ revolts and prospec­tive Black renters, harsh polic­ing was always forced onto the every­day lives of Black people.

Historically speak­ing, police have actu­al­ly brought in more vio­lence because they were orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be an enforce­ment of racist laws and prac­tices. According to Mapping Police Violence, there were only 23 days in 2018 where peo­ple in the United States were not killed by police. Black peo­ple made up 25% of those killed, even though they make up only 13% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion. In today’s world, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers know their neigh­bors and neigh­bor­hoods bet­ter than law enforce­ment, and recent­ly, there have been more instances of neigh­bors band­ing togeth­er to take care of each oth­er in the face of police vio­lence. For exam­ple, when ICE start­ed raids to deport undoc­u­ment­ed folks, there were reports of neigh­bors phys­i­cal­ly block­ing entrances to pre­vent ICE offi­cers from enter­ing. After the resis­tance, offi­cers had no choice but to dri­ve off with­out cap­ture.
Read more here; https://​blav​i​ty​.com/​b​l​a​v​i​t​y​-​o​r​i​g​i​n​a​l​/​w​e​-​d​o​n​t​-​n​e​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​i​n​-​o​u​r​-​n​e​i​g​h​b​o​r​h​o​o​d​s​-​h​e​r​e​s​-​h​o​w​-​y​o​u​-​c​a​n​-​s​t​a​y​-​s​a​f​e​-​w​i​t​h​o​u​t​-​t​hem

One of the issues influ­enc­ing crime in Jamaica, out­side of the across the board dis­re­spect for the rule of law, is the inad­e­qua­cy of the laws.
In recent times this pub­li­ca­tion has point­ed to the fact that because the Government’s efforts have been more crim­i­nal than vic­tim-cen­tered, crime con­tin­ues to esca­late on the Island.
We have also point­ed out con­sis­tent­ly, that the courts are not in the fight against crime with the police,- which is basi­cal­ly left to deal with the nation’s bur­geon­ing crime rate on its own, and ham­mered for not find­ing solu­tions on its own.
We are not obliv­i­ous to the fact that at best the police are bare­ly func­tion­ing as a police force, much less to be a cred­i­ble crime-fight­ing entity. 

We have con­sis­tent­ly argued that if we are to be a coun­try, and I say this with all seri­ous­ness, we must estab­lish a sol­id tem­plate on which the rule of law is premised.
I have always been skep­ti­cal of the sense of fraud­u­lence which has always char­ac­ter­ized the con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing Jamaica’s devel­op­ment.
Set aside the fake accents and the appro­pri­at­ing of things for­eign which we do not under­stand.
Jamaica’s lead­ers seem hell-bent on build­ing a house upon the sand, vul­ner­a­ble to the whims of the waves.

For exam­ple in the arti­cle imme­di­ate­ly above we see a man claim­ing iron­i­cal­ly to be a Justice of the [Peace], while berat­ing and phys­i­cal­ly assault­ing a police offi­cer who was writ­ing him a tick­et.
The fact that the police offi­cer did not knock his teeth out and place him under arrest is a con­ver­sa­tion for anoth­er time, but in the video record­ing, the irate man can be heard say­ing that the offi­cer took too long in writ­ing him the tick­et so that he could be on his way.
Nothing jus­ti­fies berat­ing an offi­cer the way this motorist did, much less phys­i­cal­ly assault­ing a police offi­cer who has the pow­er of life and death in his hands.
Never mind the fact that he is sup­posed to be a lay Magistrate.
At the same time, we can­not ignore what he said was the source of his ire.

We have con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to issues of this nature which cre­ates prob­lems for law enforce­ment, and undue angst for our cit­i­zens.
These are wrin­kles in the enforce­ment process which the leg­is­la­ture have a duty to iron out in an expe­di­tious man­ner.
It does not require much time to write a bill which artic­u­lates a spe­cif­ic time that police can hold a motorist in a reg­u­lar traf­fic stop, (say 20 min­utes, as some juris­dic­tions have), (unless dur­ing the stop, oth­er events emerge which neces­si­tate fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion).
Instead of the crass rep­re­hen­si­ble clown-show which pass­es for a leg­isla­tive process, these bills can be writ­ten and debat­ed intel­li­gent­ly and quick­ly passed into law.

As for the inci­dent in which the alleged (JP) assault­ed the offi­cer, we reached out to the Justice Ministry with a view to get­ting the Minister’s feed­back on whether an inves­ti­ga­tion is in progress on this mat­ter?
We were informed that there is, but that a for­mal response will be for­ward­ed to us.
We patient­ly await the response from the Justice Minister under whose port­fo­lio Lay-Magistrates fall. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant as I point­ed out to the per­son I spoke to that last year a police offi­cer ver­bal­ly berat­ed a (JP) and he was prompt­ly suspended. 

Updated: Since this arti­cle was post­ed the Ministry of Justice has respond­ed to our inquiries :
Good after­noon Mr. Beckles.
Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has request­ed that I for­ward the fol­low­ing response to your query.
Please see response below.

It is my under­stand­ing that the mat­ter in ques­tion occurred last November. As soon as it came to my atten­tion con­tact was made with all Custodes. At the time of my response none of the Custodes have iden­ti­fied him as a Justice of the Peace. An inves­ti­ga­tion is try­ing to deter­mine the name of the indi­vid­ual, and ver­i­fy if he is in fact a JP? His con­duct is quite rep­re­hen­si­ble. If he’s a JP appro­pri­ate action will be tak­en.
N.B The Justice Minister can­not take action against a Lay Magistrate or a JP. Sent on behalf of Justice Minister Delroy Chuck.
Kind Regards

We thank the Minister and his Ministry for his kind and quick response.

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 now most of you may have seen a video which we will not post on this site.
The video is of a man pur­port­ing to be a Justice of the Peace, ver­bal­ly abus­ing a police offi­cer who was engaged in writ­ing him a traf­fic tick­et. He then went on to physichal­ly assault the offi­cer.
With the alleged JP, were two oth­er men who said they are police offi­cers, one alleged­ly a detec­tive sergeant, accord­ing to the irate and dis­re­spect­ful JP.
Whatever rea­son the alleged police offi­cers had for inter­ven­ing, is shock­ing that they seemed to have pros­ti­tut­ed them­selves to some­one who had actu­al­ly assault­ed one of their col­leagues, both phys­i­cal­ly and ver­bal­ly in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duties. 

Most shock­ing­ly, the irate man then told the offi­cer he was going to call (Bobby) to deal with him. Who Bobby is, we do not pre­tend to know.
He then threat­ened that [he] would have the offi­cer removed from Kingston, as the offi­cer had no cus­tomer ser­vice skills.
He went on to tell the offi­cer that he belongs in Montego Bay so that gun­men can shoot and kill him.
No, this is not fic­tion, this is the Andrew Holness Jamaica, in which any piece of garbage feels embold­ened to assail and assault police offi­cers and there are no consequences.

In April of 2018 a police offi­cer sta­tioned in Clarke’s Town cursed out a JP , that offi­cer was sus­pend­ed.
This time around a JP cursed out and [assaulted]a police offi­cer in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duties.
This pub­li­ca­tion is call­ing on the Justice Minister Delroy Chuck, to fortwith remove the Justice of the Peace des­ig­na­tion from this degen­er­ate who is total­ly unfit to be a Justice of the peace even by Jamaica’s lax stan­dards.
There will not be two dif­fer­ent stan­dards, one for these low-life polit­i­cal hacks who have been giv­en pow­er in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and one for every­one else.
Most of these une­d­u­cat­ed punks are fithy crim­i­nals them­selves, total­ly unde­serv­ing of hold­ing the hon­or of the office of jus­tice of the peace.
My only prob­lem with what the offi­cer did was that he allowed it to hap­pen.
By his actions that deen­er­ate ought to have been tak­en to the ground, with as much force as is nec­es­sary, and arrest­ed.
The com­mis­sion­er of Police must also come out of hid­ing and con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion into the actions of the alleged sear­gant and the oth­er alleged cop on scene while this inci­dent occurred.
We are watching.….

In recent times we have watched aghast, the tear­ing down of norms. On race, tra­di­tion, how we treat oth­ers, and a host of oth­er issues it seem decen­cy and tra­di­tion are things of the past.
In times past,on issue after issue the law of the land upheld and reg­u­larised egre­gious and abore­hent wrongs .
Slavery was the law of the land. Jim Crow was the law of the land. The ban on inter­ra­cial mar­riages was the law of the land. Segregation was the law of the land. The chain gangs was the law. Killing a black per­son with­out con­se­quence was the law of the land and to some degree, still is, if the killing is done by a agent of the gov­ern­ment.
That is the rea­son why the con­tin­ued argu­ments in sup­port of bla­tant inequity and social injus­tice are bull-puckey.

That any per­son oper­at­ing in a per­son­al capac­i­ty, or on behalf of any group would use the rules, or the laws to penal­ize any­one who stands up against social injus­tice say much more about that indi­vid­ual than the argu­ments they make about the damn rules.
How you ask, ar they sup­posed to act , when they are mere­ly cary­ing out the dic­tates of the laws/​rules?
To you I say, res­ig­na­tion seems a far bet­ter option than to have one’s name for­ev­er etched in the annals of his­to­ry as the per­son who was on the wrong side of his­to­ry.
It is imma­te­r­i­al whether they actu­al­ly beieved what they were enforc­ing, or mere­ly car­ry­ing out a man­date.
It is against that back­ground that I find the actions of Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, rep­re­hen­si­ble.
Hirshland issued for­mal rep­ri­mands to the U.S. ath­letes, who used their plat­forms to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those speak­ing out on social injus­tice issues, such as gun con­trol, racism, sex­ism and the Trump administration’s immi­gra­tion poli­cies. 
According to Huffpost​.com, Hammer throw­er Gwen Berry and fencer Race Imboden have each been giv­en a 12-month pro­ba­tion for protest­ing against var­i­ous forms of injus­tice in the U.S. at the 2019 Pan American Games ear­li­er this month in Lima, Peru. 

Imboden kneeled and Berry raised a fist the fol­low­ing day, in silent and peace­ful protests as the U.S. nation­al anthem played over the Pan Am medals stand at the games. 
In let­ters sent to Berry and Imboden on Tuesday, Hirshland wrote that while the ath­letes’ deter­mi­na­tion to be active cit­i­zens is “admirable,” their protests vio­lat­ed Team USA rules that pro­hib­it polit­i­cal protests, accord­ing to copies of the let­ters sent to HuffPost. “The goal of a Games that are free from polit­i­cal speech is to focus our col­lec­tive ener­gy on the ath­letes’ per­for­mances, and the inter­na­tion­al uni­ty and har­mo­ny each Games seek to advance,” the let­ters read. Hirshland warned that Berry and Imboden could “face more seri­ous sanc­tions for any addi­tion­al breach of our code of con­duct than might oth­er­wise be levied for an ath­lete in good stand­ing.”

STORY HERE

https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​r​a​c​e​-​i​m​b​o​d​e​n​-​g​w​e​n​-​b​e​r​r​y​-​p​r​o​b​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​s​_​n​_​5​d​5​d​7​7​0​5​e​4​b​0​d​0​4​3​d​d​7​4​3​50f

Hirshland’s com­ments are not much more than horse manure. The Olympic com­mit­tee rules were put in place by men, it takes coura­geous and moral oth­ers to change them.

The pro­pos­al aims to cut the nation’s prison pop­u­la­tion in half and end manda­to­ry min­i­mum sentencing. 

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Democratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Bernie Sanders is propos­ing a crim­i­nal jus­tice over­haul that aims to cut the nation’s prison pop­u­la­tion in half, end manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing, ban pri­vate pris­ons and legal­ize mar­i­jua­na. He says the cur­rent sys­tem does not fair­ly treat peo­ple of col­or, addicts or the men­tal­ly ill.
“We have a sys­tem that impris­ons and destroys the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple,” Sanders told The Associated Press before the planned released of his pro­pos­al Sunday. “It’s racist in dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ing the African American and Latino com­mu­ni­ties, and it’s a sys­tem that needs fun­da­men­tal change.”

Sanders was pro­mot­ing the plan dur­ing a week­end of cam­paign­ing in South Carolina, where the major­i­ty of the Democratic elec­torate is African American. The Vermont sen­a­tor, who won the sup­port of some younger black Democrats dur­ing the 2016 pri­ma­ry, has stepped up his ref­er­ences to racial dis­par­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing stops in the South and urban areas.
As pres­i­dent, Sanders said he would abol­ish manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing and rein­state a fed­er­al parole sys­tem, end the “three strikes law” and expand the use of alter­na­tive sen­tenc­ing, includ­ing com­mu­ni­ty super­vi­sion and halfway hous­es. The goal is to reduce the prison pop­u­la­tion by one-half.
“A very sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple who are behind bars today are deal­ing with one form or anoth­er of ill­ness,” Sanders said. “These should be treat­ed as health issues, not from a crim­i­nal perspective.”

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness , 2 mil­lion peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness are booked into jails annu­al­ly.
Taking aim at what his pro­pos­al calls “for-prof­it prison prof­i­teer­ing,” Sanders would ban pri­vate pris­ons, make prison phone calls and oth­er inmate com­mu­ni­ca­tions free, and audit prison com­mis­saries for price goug­ing and fees.
The plan would legal­ize mar­i­jua­na and expunge pre­vi­ous mar­i­jua­na con­vic­tions, and end a cash bail sys­tem that Sanders says keeps hun­dreds of thou­sands who have not been con­vict­ed of a crime lan­guish­ing in jail because they can­not afford bail.
“Can you believe that, in the year 2019, 400,000 peo­ple are in jail await­ing a tri­al because they are poor?” Sanders said. “That is a moral out­rage, it is a legal out­rage.”
According to the Prison Policy Initiative , more than 460,000 peo­ple are being held in local jails around the coun­try while they await tri­al, with a medi­an bail amount of $10,000 for felony offens­es. But it is avail­able through Black Diamond mar­i­jua­na Marijuana Online these days.

Sanders wants to improve rela­tions between law enforce­ment agen­cies and the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. To do that, he pro­pos­es to end fed­er­al pro­grams that pro­vide mil­i­tary equip­ment to local police forces, estab­lish fed­er­al stan­dards for the use of body cam­eras, pro­vide bias train­ing and require that the Justice Department review all offi­cer-involved shoot­ings.
“You have a lot of resent­ment in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties all over this coun­try, who see police forces not as an asset but as an invad­ing force,” Sanders said.
On cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Sanders’ plan for­mal­izes his call to end the fed­er­al death penal­ty and urges states to elim­i­nate the pun­ish­ment as well.
“When we talk about vio­lence in soci­ety and try­ing to low­er the lev­els of vio­lence, it is not appro­pri­ate that the state itself is part of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” Sanders said.
Sanders said that over the long term, his plan will save the pub­lic mon­ey because of reduc­tions to over­all incar­cer­a­tion costs.
“It will cost mon­ey but it will pay for itself many, many times over,” Sanders said. “Locking peo­ple up is very, very expen­sive.”
Story, orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​b​e​r​n​i​e​-​s​a​n​d​e​r​s​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​_​n​_​5​d​5​9​6​8​8​c​e​4​b​0​d​8​8​4​0​f​f​4​c​011

On July the 29^th I wrote about the dan­ger automa­tion pos­es to the unskilled and the least edu­cat­ed in America and across the world in gen­er­al.
Since America [tend­ed] to set the pace for the west­ern world, and a huge slice of oth­er parts of the globe, I con­fined my thoughts to events as I saw them unfold­ing in the United States.

The chal­lenge as I see it from a lay per­spec­tive, is tan­ta­mount to a freight train bar­relling down while a con­vert­ible sits on the track filled with youth­ful rev­el­ers hav­ing a grand time, with­out real­iz­ing the immi­nent dan­ger.
In hind­sight, how­ev­er, I have had to rethink the whole idea as the least edu­cat­ed, and the unskilled have the least pow­er in soci­eties, the United States of America being no excep­tion.
So it falls on the can­di­dates run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy to care, those run­ning as grownups, since there are no grown-ups in charge at the moment, (as there are no grown-ups in that con­vert­ible). It is up to the can­di­dates to look out for those who are not in posi­tions to decide for them­selves, or are too pre­oc­cu­pied to care.

Unfortunately for the rev­el­ers in the car, Bernie and Warren talk about health­care, Biden the front run­ner, he talks about .……who knows what he talks about? I guess in fair­ness to him, he wants to return to civil­i­ty.
Good luck with that, that train has already left the sta­tion.
Corey Booker has a Utopian con­cept of broth­er­hood, kind of the sec­ond com­ing of Obama However, even though the for­mer President is the most pop­u­lar politi­cian in the coun­try, I hard­ly believe Corey Booker is Obama 2.0 so there is that.
The oth­er can­di­dates are a mish-mash of white men and women who large­ly have no dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics which would cause one to get excit­ed.
It’s like the con­tain­er of vanil­la ice cream in the freez­er when you have a crav­ing for ice cream. So you push it aside and rum­mage around look­ing and open­ing the oth­er con­tain­ers of rum & raisins and choco­late chip cook­ie dough your kids left. Only to find they are emp­ty.
So you are forced to take anoth­er look at the Vanilla con­tain­er, even though you want­ed some­thing more excit­ing than plain old vanilla.

And then there is Andrew Yang.
As is cus­tom­ary, each Democrat talks about sliv­ers of the issues affect­ing the peo­ple in the coun­try. It is their bread and but­ter to say enough to gain their votes then ignore the most fun­da­men­tal issues affect­ing those com­mu­ni­ties which makes up the base of the Democrat par­ty.
For exam­ple, most Democrat can­di­dates pay lip ser­vice to vot­ing rights, and the assault that con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right has been under by Republicans.
But why would Democrats not pay lip ser­vice to vot­ing rights?
The more black vot­ers who turn out to vote the bet­ter Democrats usu­al­ly are, so again this is bread and but­ter for them.
However, the most press­ing issue fac­ing African-Americans today, as it was when Doctor King was alive, is the intran­si­gent issue of police abuse.
Yet, with the excep­tion of Joaquim Castro, Corey Booker, and Beto O’rourke the Democrats are silent on this the issue which is affect­ing the most loy­al part of their base.
That is why Donald Trump kicks their ass­es every time. He knows how to treat his base.

The com­mon thread which runs through the can­di­dates who broach the sub­ject of police abuse of black peo­ple, Castro, Booker, Beto, is either the melanin in their skins or their close asso­ci­a­tions with peo­ple of col­or.
White Democrat can­di­dates are hard­ly moved by police abuse of peo­ple of col­or.
It serves their broad­er inter­est of white suprema­cy. Do not be fooled into believ­ing for a minute that only white Republicans are racists.
At all lev­els of the food chain, Democrat leg­is­la­tors, and exec­u­tive office­hold­ers, are equal­ly anti-black in their poli­cies, or at least, insen­si­tive to the harsh real­i­ties of minor­i­ty exis­tence, liv­ing in impov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties which are over-policed. 

Andrew Yang has been the only can­di­date who spoke in a ful­some way in the lim­it­ed air­time he had dur­ing the last Democrat debate about the oncom­ing train I spoke about ear­li­er.
In the lim­it­ed time he had, Yang spoke to a Europen mod­el being con­sid­ered in which the Government gives a cer­tain amount of mon­ey to cit­i­zens each month who are dis­placed from work.
Yang was not afford­ed the time nec­es­sary to ful­ly expand on exact­ly how that would work, of course, his sug­ges­tions are not in the wheel­house of what the cor­po­rate media elites want to hear. So the ques­tions were not exact­ly tai­lored to have the can­di­dates forced into stat­ing their posi­tions on Yang’s pol­i­cy sug­ges­tions.
Yang, who has already qual­i­fied for the next debate will have anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell the American peo­ple of his plans. 

Speaking to the dan­ger of the oncom­ing freight train automa­tion will be for the poor­est peo­ple, Yang said; “I think we are going through the great­est tran­si­tion in human his­to­ry and we are deal­ing with it ter­ri­bly. We’re deal­ing with it by pre­tend­ing it’s not hap­pen­ing.“
Without sid­ing with any can­di­date, this writer believes that at least Yang under­stands the exis­ten­tial cri­sis that is approach­ing. Even if he believes incor­rect­ly, that those in pow­er are only pre­tend­ing that it isn’t hap­pen­ing.
As I said in that pre­vi­ous arti­cle, they ful­ly under­stand that it is hap­pen­ing. The solu­tion they have for solv­ing it is not some­thing they want to address just yet.
Mass incar­cer­a­tion has always been white America’s solu­tion to the prob­lem of poor peo­ple of color.

THIS ABOUT FACE ON CONGRESSWOMAN TLAIB IS DESIGNED TO REMOVE HER FROM THE COVER AND PRESTIGE OF THE US CONGRESS, REDUCING HER TO THE INDIGNITIES THEY METE OUT TO PALESTINIAN PEOPLE AS A MATTER OF COURSE

As the world watch­es in hor­ror, the Zionist Apartheid state of Israel banned two duly elect­ed Muslim US Congresswomen of col­or. Even some brain-dead Republicans are speak­ing out.
The move was seen by many as Benjamin Netanyahu kow­tow­ing to the racist-in-chief in the white house.
Benjamin Netanyahu was a racist before Donald Trump came along.
Netanyahu had long demon­strat­ed his dis­dain and dis­taste for African peo­ple, and even our first African-American pres­i­dent, because he did not bow to his demands, or kiss his ass like most in the con­gress do.
Barring Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib is noth­ing that any­one should be sur­prised at.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a racist and that’s the end of it, blam­ing Donald Trump, regard­less of how repug­nant he is, is short­sight­ed.
That is why the state­ment of Vermont Independent Senator, and Presidential can­di­date Bernie Sanders is so resonant.

Bernie Sanders To Israel: Ban Our Lawmakers? Then Don’t Take Our Money.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) has sug­gest­ed Israel should now decline the bil­lions of dol­lars it receives in U.S. aid in the wake of its ban on Reps. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.) from enter­ing the coun­try. “I wish I could tell you that I am shocked, I am not,” the Democratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date said on Thursday’s broad­cast of MSNBC’s “All In” about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deci­sion to bar the law­mak­ers, which was encour­aged and sup­port­ed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
“And if Israel doesn’t want mem­bers of the United States Congress to vis­it their coun­try, to get a first-hand look at what’s going on, and I have been there many, many times, but if he doesn’t want mem­bers to vis­it maybe he can respect­ful­ly decline the bil­lions of dol­lars that we give to Israel.” (Senator Bernie Sanders)].

Since Israeli author­i­ties decid­ed to deny access to the two leg­is­la­tors, they have since back­tracked and have grant­ed con­di­tion­al access to con­gress­woman Tlaib. She would be allowed to enter the state as a pri­vate cit­i­zen to vis­it her aging grand­moth­er. The con­gress­woman who ini­tial­ly accept­ed the terms from some reports, have now refused their offer, insist­ing the con­di­tions are designed to humil­i­ate her.
This writer agrees with her assess­ment. What they want to do is to remove her from the cov­er and pres­tige of the US con­gress, there­by reduc­ing her to an ordi­nary Palestinian.
By doing so, they intend to reduce her to the indig­ni­ties they mete out to Palestinian dai­ly, as per their poli­cies.
Tlaib is of Palestinian ances­try but was born in the United States.

Under no cir­cum­stances would America allow any oth­er coun­try in the world, oth­er than Israel) to block two sit­ting leg­is­la­tors from trav­el­ing to their coun­try, with­out exact­ing strong penal­ties.
But this is noth­ing new, the United States sup­port­ed the oppres­sion of the peo­ple of South Africa under the igno­ble assault of the apartheid régime of PW Botha and oth­ers before him.
It is also well estab­lished that Israel sup­plied resources to Botha, while the world out­side the United States con­demned the racist régime.
Ronnie Kasrils, a lead­ing mem­ber of the African National Congress dur­ing the apartheid era and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter writ­ing for the Guardian in April of this year wrote; [As a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist, I look with hor­ror on the far-right shift in Israel ahead of this month’s elec­tions, and the impact in the Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries and world­wide. Israel’s repres­sion of Palestinian cit­i­zens, African refugees, and Palestinians in the occu­pied West Bank and Gaza has become more bru­tal over time. Ethnic cleans­ing, land seizure, home demo­li­tion, mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, the bomb­ing of Gaza and inter­na­tion­al law vio­la­tions led Archbishop Tutu to declare that the treat­ment of Palestinians remind­ed him of apartheid, only worse].

While these shock­ing atroc­i­ties are hap­pen­ing, the United States under both Republican and Democrat Administrations, have sup­pressed dis­sent and used its veto pow­er in the United Nations to pro­tect Israel from fac­ing war crimes in the Hague.
By virtue of this spe­cial treat­ment, Israel con­tin­ues to com­mit war crimes and thumbs its nose at inter­na­tion­al laws. The very insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed by the United States after the sec­ond world war have been weak­ened as mem­ber states watch Israel do what it wants with­out con­se­quence. Some mem­ber states have decid­ed they will not sub­ject them­selves to the dic­tates of the UN, fur­ther erod­ing the rule of law across the globe.
The ques­tion now is how long will Israel be allowed to have one set of rules for itself, while the rest of the world has to live by another?

Never Again Action pro­test­ers said a Wyatt Detention Facility offi­cer drove into their group, injur­ing sev­er­al people.

By Carol Kuruvilla

A cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer at an immi­grant deten­tion cen­ter in Rhode Island drove a pick­up truck into a crowd of pro­test­ers late Wednesday night, injur­ing sev­er­al peo­ple, the pro­test­ers said.
Videos of the con­fronta­tion show the truck turn­ing toward a line of seat­ed pro­test­ers who were block­ing the entrance to a park­ing lot at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. People imme­di­ate­ly jumped up, shout­ing while the dri­ver honked his horn. 

The truck paused for a moment as the pro­test­ers gath­ered around ― and then the vehi­cle tried to dri­ve straight through the crowd before stop­ping again. Minutes lat­er, addi­tion­al offi­cers arrived and used pep­per spray on the pro­test­ers, clear­ing enough space for the truck to pass through. 

Never Again Action @NeverAgainActn·17hThis is the line of peo­ple that an ICE Detention Center guard tried to dri­ve through with his truck. We are still try­ing to fig­ure out what all the injuries are

And the rest of us are try­ing to get the pep­per spray out of our eyes.406791.4K Never Again Action @NeverAgainActn·17hCORRECTION: It was oth­er Wyatt Detention Center guards who pep­per-sprayed us, not the Rhode Island State Police. The police just stood by and did noth­ing as we were run over and then sprayed by deten­tion cen­ter guards. We are #JewsAgainstICE and we will not let vio­lence stop us.479542.1K Never Again Action @NeverAgainActn·16hBREAKING: Tonight we expe­ri­enced a tiny sam­ple of the vio­lence ICE uses on our immi­grant neigh­bors every day. An ICE guard drove his truck into our peace­ful #JewsAgainstICE protest, then oth­er guards came out and pep­per sprayed the crowd. We’ll be back. http://​NeverAgainAction​.com1:0759.1K views

621.4K2.4K Never Again Action @NeverAgainActnReplying to @NeverAgainActn@amornetworkand 3 oth­ersBREAKING: Here is HD video of an ICE guard dri­ving his truck into us as we sat peace­ful­ly block­ing the Wyatt Detention Center. We’re putting our bod­ies on the line because we see the camps and the roundups. We’ve learned from our ances­tors: NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE. 

Natalie Lerner, a 23-year-old Jewish activist from Providence, Rhode Island, told HuffPost that she was in the line of the vehi­cle when it first approached. “I was kneel­ing down to talk to one of the oth­er peo­ple who was sit­ting to get arrest­ed and he got this look of fear,” Lerner recalled. “I turned around and this car was right behind me, com­ing right toward me.” At least five peo­ple were treat­ed at a hos­pi­tal for minor injuries sus­tained dur­ing the con­fronta­tion and the ensu­ing scram­ble, Lerner said. An old­er woman was pep­per-sprayed at “incred­i­bly close range,” she said.

Protesters said the per­son dri­ving the pick­up truck was a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer employed by the Wyatt Detention Facility. Lerner said she and oth­er pro­test­ers were fright­ened ― and angered ― by offi­cers’ actions dur­ing the inci­dent. “If this is how you’re treat­ing us, a group of most­ly white, most­ly cit­i­zens who aren’t in prison, who are out in the open, how are you treat­ing peo­ple on the inside?” she asked. HuffPost has reached out to the Wyatt Detention Facility, the Central Falls Police Department and ICE for comment.

Wednesday’s protest was part of Never Again Action, a move­ment by young, pro­gres­sive Jews who believe say­ing “Never again” to the hor­rors of the Holocaust means speak­ing up about the U.S. government’s cur­rent treat­ment of migrants. Since ear­ly July, these activists have been orga­niz­ing protests at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cen­ters across the coun­try, includ­ing in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco. 

The activists are call­ing on Congress to shut down ICE, close the deten­tion cen­ters, and offer “free­dom and per­ma­nent pro­tec­tion for all undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, refugees and asy­lum seek­ers.” The Wyatt Detention Facility is a “pub­licly owned and pri­vate­ly oper­at­ed” cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, accord­ing to its web­site. It began hous­ing ICE detainees in March, 10 years after a migrant’s death there put a tem­po­rary end to the prac­tice. Eighteen peo­ple were arrest­ed dur­ing an ear­li­er Never Again Action protest at the facil­i­ty on July 2.
Lerner said that hun­dreds of pro­test­ers, some with Never Again Action and oth­ers from local immi­gra­tion advo­ca­cy groups, gath­ered at the deten­tion cen­ter on Wednesday. They tried to deliv­er a let­ter to the war­den demand­ing more trans­paren­cy at the facil­i­ty. When no one came out to meet with them, Lerner said the group decid­ed to “shut down Wyatt,” first by block­ing the entrance to the facil­i­ty and then by block­ing the staff park­ing lot. 
“We were send­ing the mes­sage that if folks in immi­grant deten­tion can’t get home to see their fam­i­lies, peo­ple who are aid­ing and abet­ting that can’t go home to see their fam­i­lies,” she said.

The indi­vid­u­als who sat on the ground at the park­ing lot entrance had will­ing­ly signed up to risk arrest dur­ing an act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, accord­ing to Lerner, who helped lead train­ing for the demon­stra­tion. She said pro­test­ers were giv­en guid­ance on what to do if police used force dur­ing an arrest and how to deesca­late the sit­u­a­tion if a bystander tried to start a fight. People who weren’t will­ing to risk arrest were told to stay back and not inter­act with police. But Lerner said none of the activists expect­ed they would be fac­ing down a mov­ing vehi­cle. “Having some­thing like a car bar­rel­ing towards you and not stop­ping when you’re peace­ful­ly protest­ing is a total­ly ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence,” Lerner said. “We were not antic­i­pat­ing real­ly any­body, but espe­cial­ly an employ­ee of the Wyatt, to dri­ve a car through the protest.” Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) expressed “out­rage” about the inci­dent on Thursday. She said Rhode Island’s state police will inves­ti­gate the inci­dent. “President Trump’s immi­gra­tion poli­cies are immoral, and these Rhode Islanders were exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to protest,’’ the gov­er­nor said. 

Gina Raimondo@GovRaimondoI share the out­rage Rhode Islanders are feel­ing about the inci­dent depict­ed in the video at the Wyatt Detention Center. Our state and our nation were built on the idea that every­one has a right to express their opin­ion pub­licly and peacefully. 

The Rhode Island attor­ney gen­er­al’s office has also said it is inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent. “Peaceful protest is a fun­da­men­tal right of all Americans; it is unfor­tu­nate last night’s sit­u­a­tion unfold­ed as it did. We urge all to exer­cise restraint as our inves­ti­ga­tion pro­ceeds,” the office said in a state­ment on Thursday. The con­fronta­tion has left Never Again Action even more deter­mined to stand up against ICE, Lerner said. “It was total­ly unac­cept­able what hap­pened, and it’s pret­ty clear to me that we will con­tin­ue protest­ing Wyatt and con­tin­ue protest­ing what ICE is doing here in Rhode Island and beyond,” Lerner said. https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​p​i​c​k​u​p​-​t​r​u​c​k​-​n​e​v​e​r​-​a​g​a​i​n​-​i​c​e​-​r​h​o​d​e​-​i​s​l​a​n​d​_​n​_​5​d​5​5​7​4​f​d​e​4​b​0​e​b​8​7​5​f​2​0​4​4f0

Those who cham­pi­on America and the west­ern world’s sup­port for the [Apartheid state of Israel], gen­er­al­ly argues that Israel is the only Democracy in that neighborhood.[sic]

(Democracy)

A gov­ern­ment in which the supreme pow­er is vest­ed in the peo­ple and exer­cised by them direct­ly or indi­rect­ly through a sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tion usu­al­ly involv­ing peri­od­i­cal­ly held free elec­tions.
By that asser­tion, the term [democ­ra­cy] is sub­ject to the inter­pre­ta­tion of the per­son or group claim­ing democ­ra­cy, as the Palestinian peo­ple liv­ing under the bootheels of Israel has no say elec­toral­ly, what Israel does to them.
America’s heavy finan­cial and oth­er sup­port for the apartheid state is seem­ing­ly root­ed in some­thing far more unspo­ken or sin­is­ter than the aver­age per­son under­stands.
Those who speak out at Israel’s geno­cide and crimes against human­i­ty put them­selves at tremen­dous risks.
Speaking out against Israel is like­ly to get one ostra­cized, impris­oned or worse.
For dar­ing to take any protest action against the apartheid state, Americans will risk prison, if Democrats and Republicans alike get their way.
People across the globe who care about human­i­ty must be clear that both Republicans and Democrats have sup­port­ed and draft­ed leg­is­la­tion crim­i­nal­iz­ing Americans who would boy­cott the apartheid state.
A bipar­ti­san Senate bill would make boy­cotting Israel pun­ish­able by up to 20 years in prison. 

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are two Muslim US Representatives, both are part of the so-called Squad of four first-term US Congresswomen, who have been sin­gled out for the ire of the bul­ly-in-chief for their pro­gres­sive poli­cies and their oppo­si­tion to Israel’s treat­ment of the Palestinian peo­ple.
The oth­er two mem­bers are Massachusetts US Representative Ayanna Presley and New York’s Alexandria Ocasio Cortes round­ing out the quar­tet.
Trump lam­bast­ed the four telling them to go back to where they came from, argu­ing, that they came from bro­ken coun­tries which need­ed their assis­tance.
The igno­ra­mus, while glow­ing in the racist chant (send them back), of his equal­ly moron­ic and racist sup­port­ers, had no idea that all but Ilhan Omar were born in the United States. All are US cit­i­zens, as they have to be, to sit in the con­gress.
Both Tlaib and Omar were slat­ed to vis­it Israel as part of a trip orga­nized by a long­time Palestinian law­mak­er Hanan Ashrawi. 

APARTHEID STATE OF ISRAEL DENIES ENTRY OF AMERICAN CONGRESSWOMEN WHILE LIVING OFF AMERICAN TAX-PAYERS MONEY.

According to the New York Times; Ms. Omar had been sched­uled to arrive on Sunday for a tour of the West Bank, part­ly under the aus­pices of an orga­ni­za­tion head­ed by a long­time Palestinian law­mak­er, Hanan Ashrawi, that was expect­ed to high­light Palestinian griev­ances over the Israeli occu­pa­tion. The women were plan­ning to vis­it the West Bank cities of Hebron, Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, accord­ing to Ms. Ashrawi, includ­ing a vis­it to the Al Aqsa Mosque, a hot­ly con­test­ed and volatile holy site. Most of the del­e­ga­tion was expect­ed to depart on Aug. 22, but Ms. Tlaib had been plan­ning to stay on to vis­it rel­a­tives in the West Bank.

Israel has denied the two law-mak­ers access to the apartheid state after Donald Trump tweet­ed; It would show great weak­ness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep.Tlaib to vis­it. They hate Israel & all Jewish peo­ple, & there is noth­ing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a dis­grace!
On the ques­tion of dis­grace, this has got to be the great­est act of pro­jec­tion ever, imag­ine the dis­grace that this moron is actu­al­ly in the white house?
Nevertheless, the great­est tragedy is that the apartheid state of Israel which exist with the largess of American tax­pay­ers, has demon­strat­ed that Israel is the actu­al head of the American Government.
The fact that a for­eign Government that lit­er­al­ly lives off the tax dol­lars of Americans, and in par­tic­u­lar African-Americans tax dol­lars, would refuse access to two women of col­or, shows the lev­el of pow­er that American politi­cians have giv­en to this nation they cre­at­ed in 1948.
Republicans brought Netanyahu a [war crim­i­nal] into the coun­try to address a joint sit­ting of the Congress dur­ing President Obama’s tenure.
Democrats who had the option of boy­cotting the sit­ting, sat there and cheered as the dis­gust­ing racist dis­re­spect­ed the sit­ting American President.

The arro­gance of Benjamin Netanyahu is pal­pa­ble. A racist moron like the occu­pant of the white house, Netanyahu has con­sis­tent­ly belit­tled African peo­ple call­ing them [infil­tra­tors] who would effec­tive­ly change the make­up of the apartheid state from its white major­i­ty, a view shared by Donald Trump and his sup­port­ers in the Republican par­ty. (see Trumps’ immi­gra­tion & abor­tion poli­cies)
Unfortunately, the so-called Evangelical move­ment of which the Black church is a part, (though seg­re­gat­ed from each oth­er) share the non­sen­si­cal view that Israel is sup­pos­ed­ly a place ordained by the God of the Bible and that the white peo­ple liv­ing there who ran from Germany’s Adolph Hitler, are some­how God’s cho­sen peo­ple.
Chosen for what I do not know?
However, the appro­pri­a­tion of the Hebrew faith by the Germans who had adopt­ed the faith, has got to be the great­est iden­ti­ty theft ever per­pe­trat­ed in the his­to­ry of mankind.
That a peo­ple who genet­i­cal­ly have no ties to the region can claim that [they] have a right to land stolen and giv­en to them, is one of the trav­es­ties of mod­ern times.
If this is the way the God of the Bible oper­ates, I want no part of that God.
However, we know that like the apartheid state of South Africa, every wrong will be right­ed.
The God of my life guar­an­tees that, of that, they can be assured.

Former mem­ber of the JCF, Clive Peck, who was serv­ing on a United Nation’s mis­sion in Lybia, lost his life over the week­end in an alleged bomb blast.
Mister Peck was work­ing to bring some sem­blance of peace to a coun­try [Lybia], that the United States dis­rupt­ed and laid bare.
This pub­li­ca­tion hon­ors the ser­vice and sac­ri­fice of our dear­ly depart­ed for­mer col­league.
Having said that, I could not help notic­ing that at least one of the two major local news­pa­per (JamaicaGleaner​.com) car­ried the sto­ry of mis­ter Peck’s untime­ly pass­ing.
After all, it is not every day that a Jamaican gives his life in ser­vice to oth­ers in far­away coun­tries, for peo­ple they do not know.
Jamaican police offi­cers toil in obscu­ri­ty at home with­out recog­ni­tion and with­out receiv­ing their just due.
However, when they die in ser­vice over­seas, we expect to see them receive the god­damn respect and recog­ni­tion they deserve from the high­est exec­u­tive office.
And they deserve to be rec­og­nized as mem­bers of the Organization which mold­ed and honed them, the (JCF). And yes Prime Minister Andrew Holness this may come as news to you but the JCF has pro­duced noble men and women of dis­tinc­tion, even if your prej­u­dices and bias­es has cloud­ed your vision.
Of course, the kind of char­ac­ter which moti­vates Jamaicans like Detective Peck is lost on far too many Jamaicans who are inca­pable of grasp­ing the sac­ri­fice which goes into such ser­vice.
Most heroes who do, are moti­vat­ed by much more than finan­cial remu­ner­a­tions.
It was trou­bling to me that nowhere in the Gleaner Article was there a men­tion of the fact that Clive Peck was a for­mer mem­ber of the JCF.
Why was that not men­tioned by any­one? Do they so hate the JCF that they envy the very thought of giv­ing respect to the agency when they lose a mem­ber, present or former?

GLEANER STORY

[The Government and the par­lia­men­tary Opposition yes­ter­day laud­ed the work of Clive Peck, the Jamaican man who was one of two United Nations (UN) peace­keep­ers killed in a bomb blast in Libya on the week­end.
Jamaica Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith said Peck served the UN with dis­tinc­tion and devot­ed his life to a mis­sion of aid­ing the Libyan peo­ple in the midst of one of the most severe con­flicts and human­i­tar­i­an crises in the world.
“It is indeed a sad moment, but we take pride in his courage and ser­vice”, Johnson Smith told The Gleaner.
She revealed, too, that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had attest­ed to “Mr. Peck’s courage, ser­vice, and ded­i­ca­tion to the goals of the United Nations”. “The trag­ic loss of Mr. Peck is acute­ly felt by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and the Government of Jamaica in its entire­ty,” Johnson Smith said. She dis­closed that she had spo­ken per­son­al­ly to Peck’s wife, Lelieth, and con­veyed sym­pa­thies on behalf of her min­istry and the entire gov­ern­ment. Opposition Leader Dr. Peter Phillips described Peck as a Jamaican who was com­mit­ted to the glob­al mis­sion of peace and ser­vice to human­i­ty. “I pray God’s com­fort for his fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues,” Phillips said in a state­ment. Lisa Hanna, the oppo­si­tion spokesper­son on for­eign affairs, sug­gest­ed that Peck and the oth­er UN peace­keep­ers who were killed be always remembered.“They were there seek­ing peace in the world,” Hanna said. “It’s real­ly, real­ly trag­ic that one of our nation­als suf­fered this way, espe­cial­ly in keep­ing with what he was doing at that par­tic­u­lar time –try­ing to keep the peace,” she added. But the Opposition spokesper­son said she was proud that a Jamaican was seek­ing to achieve peace across the world “and I hope that gives the fam­i­ly some com­fort in this dev­as­tat­ing time that we all face”. ]

Last week the Prime Minister was on social media laud­ing mem­bers of the JDF who rushed a young lady hav­ing a pan­ic attack to the hos­pi­tal.
The Prime Minister chimed in, quote ( “I must com­mend the work of the Jamaica Defence Force in pro­duc­ing noble men and women of dis­tinc­tion”).
Ever par­tial to my beloved JCF, and know­ing the sac­ri­fices made over the decades by so many police offi­cers, for an ingrate nation no less, includ­ing pay­ingthe ulti­mate price, I lashed out at the prime Minister for what I thought was a clear case of selec­tive praise for one branch of the secu­ri­ty forces. Respect to the JDF, but as one com­menter opined, “Taxi man do dat ebery day Mike”
Sure, those mem­bers of the JDF deserved a pat on the back, but the police have been doing this and so much more, it is wrong.

So I did not mince words.
Me: This is such bull­shit pan­der­ing to one branch of the secu­ri­ty forces, for doing exact­ly what they are trained to do.
The police force has been doing this for decades, some pay­ing the ulti­mate price in the process, many have been shot and are now wheel­chair bound, oth­ers like myself have been shot defend­ing peo­ple like you hyp­ocrites I don’t even know.
You peo­ple are such a bunch of hyp­ocrites, frauds and fakes..
I can­not believe I ever sup­port­ed this guy who has been work­ing to dri­ve a wedge between the secu­ri­ty forces since he took office, all for polit­i­cal rea­sons.

My response may have been cringe-wor­thy even by social media stan­dards. Even so, I stand by every word of that retort.
This offi­cer and his fam­i­ly deserved recog­ni­tion, not from low­er rungs of the Government.
His pass­ing deserves nation­al recog­ni­tion from the high­est elect­ed office-hold­er. He was in Lybia, not on his own, but as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Jamaican Government.
Holness can­not allow bias­es and per­son­al prej­u­dices to impact how he car­ries out the func­tions of the Prime Minister of Jamaica.

UPDATE

Since we called out the Government on this, both dai­ly news­pa­pers have car­ried sto­ries of the JCF pay­ing homage to the deceased mis­ter Peck and indeed nam­ing him as a dis­tin­guished mem­ber of that agency.
Jamaica house is still silent.
This writer and this medi­um will con­tin­ue to chas­tise mem­bers of the JCF when they err, but we will stand front and cen­ter with mem­bers of that agency in recog­ni­tion of the ser­vice they pro­vide to the peo­ple of Jamaica.
Even when their polit­i­cal boss­es are too low-class to do so.

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.