In the hus­tle and bus­tle of every­day life and the chal­lenge to sim­ply put food on the table and get by, we are miss­ing some­thing rather con­se­quen­tial and prece­dent-set­ting.
The President of the United States, and his cam­paign has been under inves­ti­ga­tion by Special Counsel Robert Muller to deter­mine whether he, or his cam­paign, con­spired with a for­eign pow­er, [Russia], to defraud the United States in the 2016 Presidential Elections.

As a result, a Special Counsel was appoint­ed, in the per­son of Robert Muller, for­mer Marine, for­mer FBI Director, Lawyer, Former Federal Prosecutor.
Muller’s man­date as Special Counsel, was dif­fer­ent than a Special Prosecutor, a‑la Kenneth Starr
Muller was tasked to look at whether Trump or his cam­paign con­spired with Russia to steal the elec­tions and there­by defraud the United States.
The chal­lenge for the American pub­lic which has an inter­est in jus­tice, fair­ness, the rule of law, and the con­cept that no one should be above the law, is the way the sys­tem is set up.
It is a sys­tem which means for all intents and pur­pos­es, a pres­i­dent can put him­self above the laws and there is pre­cious lit­tle any­one can do about it.

According to what the present Attorney General William Barr revealed so far, Special Counsel Robert Muller did not exact­ly estab­lish a link that could stand the test of a crim­i­nal tri­al that Trump or his cam­paign had crim­i­nal­ly con­spired with Russia to defraud the United States.
That was the very first mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion made by William Baer. coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tions are not nec­es­sar­i­ly crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. Their results are for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and Congress.
The Attorney General took the view that the President had not com­mit­ted obstruc­tion of jus­tice, despite Trumps many acts of inter­fer­ence with the inves­ti­ga­tions in plain sight, notwith­stand­ing that deci­sion was not William Barr’s to make, but the deci­sion of the Congress.
TRUMPS ACTIONS
(1) Firing James Comey, the FBI Director when he refused to pledge loy­al­ty and feal­ty to him.
(2) Lambasting then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recus­ing him­self from the inves­ti­ga­tions.
(3) Eventually fir­ing Jeff Sessions.
(4) Placing an unqual­i­fied polit­i­cal hack Matthew Whitaker in place to head the Justice Department after fir­ing Sessions. (After Whittaker had open­ly declared on Television that he knew how to end the Muller Investigations.
(5) After much out­cry at the Whittaker appoint­ment, nom­i­nat­ing William Barr, a man who wrote an exhaus­tive memo in sup­port of expan­sive Executive pow­er, and his dis­dain for hold­ing a pres­i­dent account­able for obstruct­ing jus­tice.
(6) Demonizing, embar­rass­ing and ulti­mate­ly fir­ing top-tiered Justice and FBI offi­cials who were instru­men­tal in start­ing a counter-intel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tion into Russian inter­fer­ence into the 2016 Elections.
These are only a few of the steps Donald Trump took that are pub­lic, it begs the ques­tion of what kinds of actions he took in pri­vate over the two years that the Special Counsel Investigations were in effect.

The Justice Department and its employ­ees are part of the Executive Branch of Government. Subsequently, an inves­ti­ga­tion under­tak­en by the Justice Department is tech­ni­cal­ly under the con­trol of the chief executive,(the pres­i­dent). Even though the pres­i­dent is the sub­ject of the inves­ti­ga­tion, he has the pow­er under the laws to sup­press the find­ings of said Investigation.
The so-called safe­guards which had allowed this cha­rade to exist for as long as it did, were that pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents were less open­ly hos­tile to the rule of law.
So even though they may have open­ly bro­ken the laws, a‑la, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, in recent times, they still main­tained an expo­nen­tial­ly less dis­dain­ful atti­tude towards the laws of the nation.
The moral of all this, is that those laws were designed specif­i­cal­ly so that a cor­rupt President would not ever see the inside of a jail cell, unless he went into one to see con­di­tions for him­self as President Barack Obam did.
With all of Richard Nixon’s crimes, he resigned before he was tossed from office, but not before cut­ting a deal with Gerald Ford, the only man to have been vice pres­i­dent and pres­i­dent with­out being elect­ed by the vot­ers.
[Ford] par­doned Nixon imme­di­ate­ly h ascend­ed to the pres­i­den­cy, there­by ensur­ing that Richard Millhouse Nixon, the crim­i­nal, nev­er saw the inside of a jail cell.
The guise Ford used to jus­ti­fy his actions was that the Nation need­ed to heal. The irony of that posi­tion was that Richard Nixon know­ing­ly and crim­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed the Constitutional crisis.

For the peo­ple on the left who were of the opin­ion and belief that a find­ing by Robert Muller would result in Donald Trump being led out of the white house in hand­cuffs, it is a bit­ter pill to swal­low that the con­text of Muller’s find­ings will nev­er see the light of day, much less the truth of the crimes which were com­mit­ted in the process of cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing [a pres­i­dent Donald Trump].
There has been too much ener­gy and arro­gance invest­ed in the cre­ation of the sense of mys­tique and excep­tion­al­ism of America and the American Presidency, to allow a report on Donald Trump to destroy it.
Did any­one ever real­ly believe that there would be a report, (regard­less of the Investigator) which would say a for­eign pow­er picked and installed an American President? 

Kirstjen Nielsen says DHS is alert to domes­tic ter­ror threat. Law enforce­ment sources say the agency has gone “silent.”

The Department of Homeland Security has dis­band­ed a unit of intel­li­gence ana­lysts who mon­i­tored domes­tic ter­ror­ism threats even as depart­ment offi­cials admit that the threat of domes­tic ter­ror­ism is grow­ing.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis has reas­signed a group of intel­li­gence ana­lysts who focused on domes­tic threats, result­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant drop in reports and analy­sis about threats from extrem­ists and white suprema­cists, The Daily Beast report­ed. Local law enforce­ment offi­cials told the out­let they are no longer receiv­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion from DHS since the unit was dis­band­ed last year.

“It’s espe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic giv­en the growth in right-wing extrem­ism and domes­tic ter­ror­ism we are see­ing in the U.S. and abroad,” a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial told The Daily Beast.
The move came after new Intelligence and Analysis chief David Glawe reor­ga­nized the divi­sion.
A DHS spokesper­son told the out­let that it works with oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies to gath­er “threat infor­ma­tion regard­less of a threat actor’s ide­ol­o­gy” and shares that infor­ma­tion with oth­er agen­cies.
“The same peo­ple are work­ing on the issues,” a senior DHS offi­cial insist­ed. “We just restruc­tured things to be more respon­sive to the I&A cus­tomers with­in DHS and in local com­mu­ni­ties while reduc­ing over­lap with what the FBI does. We actu­al­ly believe we are far more effec­tive now.”
But Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Mike Abdeen told The Daily Beast that the Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been “most­ly silent” for the past six months despite pre­vi­ous­ly send­ing his office a sig­nif­i­cant amount of infor­ma­tion.
“It’s been very qui­et late­ly,” Abdeen said. “It’s changed with the new admin­is­tra­tion. It doesn’t seem to be as robust, as active, as impor­tant — it is impor­tant, I’m sure, but it’s not a pri­or­i­ty. It doesn’t seem like engage­ment, out­reach, and pre­ven­tion are seen as a pri­or­i­ty as we used to see in the past. There were round­table meet­ings in the past, there was more activ­i­ty, more train­ing, more sem­i­nars. Now it seems like it’s gone away.”

As a result of the “reor­ga­ni­za­tion,” offi­cials said the office must now coör­di­nate with the FBI to share infor­ma­tion with local law enforcement.“While I can­not speak to what is going on at DHS I&A today, the analy­sis pro­vid­ed by I&A per­son­nel on domes­tic extrem­ism was essen­tial dur­ing my tenure at DHS,” for­mer act­ing head of Intelligence and Analysis John Cohen told the out­let. “Based on the cur­rent threat envi­ron­ment, I believe those same efforts are essen­tial today.”
Disbanding the domes­tic ter­ror­ism intel­li­gence unit is a curi­ous move after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a speech at Auburn University last month that her depart­ment would work to pre­vent attacks like the one in New Zealand, where a white nation­al­ist gun­man killed 50 peo­ple at two mosques.
“We, too, have seen the face of such evil with attacks in places such as Charlottesville, Pittsburgh and Charleston,” Nielsen said. “I want to make one thing very clear: We will not per­mit such hate in the home­land.”
Read more here: https://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​4​/​0​2​/​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​d​h​s​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​d​s​-​t​o​-​r​i​s​e​-​i​n​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​m​-​b​y​-​d​i​s​b​a​n​d​i​n​g​-​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​-​u​n​it/

On Thursday, April 4^th, vot­ers in East Portland will get their chance to cast votes for either the JLP’s Ann-Marie Vaz, or the PNP’s Damion Crawford for the seat made vacant after the PNP MP Lynvale Bloomfield was mur­dered in February.
The intense buzz sur­round­ing the by-elec­tion for this seat, brings into sharp focus the val­ue the two major polit­i­cal par­ties place on state pow­er.
Still evi­dent is the old style par­ti­san snip­ing, which gen­er­al­ly ends up in blood­shed.
Thus far, there has been blood­shed and the old par­ti­san Horace Chang in his dual role as General Secretary for his par­ty and Minister of National Security, has imme­di­ate­ly hyped the shoot­ings as polit­i­cal, over the find­ings of his own police Department which point­ed­ly said the shoot­ings were not political.

Now grant­ed that I could­n’t care a Rat’s ass who wins this fias­co on Thursday, it seems to me that Chang has a duty, and indeed a respon­si­bil­i­ty, not just to square his pro­nounce­ments with the find­ings of his police depart­ment, but to be mea­sured in the way he deals with inci­dents such as the shoot­ings in the con­stituen­cy con­sid­er­ing that he is the Minister of National Security.(gag)
But this is the kind of hyper-par­ti­san­ship on which Horace Chang cut his teeth and has flour­ished in, to become the mem­ber of Parliament for one of the Island’s grit­ti­est polit­i­cal gar­risons.
Chang must under­stand that his state­ments as General Secretary of his par­ty can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from Horace Chang the Minister of National Security.
If there is infor­ma­tion which is of help to the police as to who the shoot­ers were and what their motives were, Horace Chang as Garrison MP, and Minister of National Security is best poised to have those answers.
That intel­li­gence should be passed on to the police and not used to stir the pot of polit­i­cal vio­lence.
On the oth­er hand, it is remark­able that Fitz Jackson the oppo­si­tion spokesper­son on National Security can gar­ner infor­ma­tion with such alacrity indi­cat­ing that the deceased was a JLP sup­port­er want­ed by the law, yet he and his par­ty are unable and unwill­ing to sup­port mea­sures which are aimed at curb­ing the law­less­ness and the metasta­ciz­ing gang­land stple killings on the Island.

Most Jamaicans at home and abroad wish­es that polit­i­cal vio­lence is a thing of the past. Rightly so, most of the build­ing blocks of polit­i­cal vio­lence are gone.
Because of bet­ter account­abil­i­ty safe­guards in place, a‑la the Contractor General’s Act. etc, Members of Parliament have few­er dol­lars to toss around to thugs to do their bid­ding.
As a con­se­quence, politi­cians are only use­ful to the thugs as buffers between them­selves and the police.
Thugs are mak­ing their own way, through lot­to-scam­ming, mur­der for hire, Robberies, and oth­er crim­i­nal acts, which ren­ders the politi­cians far less impor­tant.
Being that as it may, politi­cians on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide are still cling­ing to their con­nec­tions in the gar­risons to deliv­er the votes en-block, as Mister Anderson clung to his mur­der­ous shot­ta Wayne, in the fic­tion­al Jamaican flick (SHOTTAS).
For the good and sur­vival of the Jamaican state, it may be a pos­i­tive out­come if life imi­tates art, since Jamaican Politicians refus­es to eschew this type of crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tion.
If they refuse to change, then change should remove them from the equation.

One of the eas­i­est ways for the polit­i­cal gangs which run our coun­try to show matu­ri­ty is to begin to bring peo­ple togeth­er, rather than sep­a­rate them.
We are a small coun­try of fam­i­lies, friends, and neigh­bors, and yes, friends we are yet to meet.
What a dif­fer­ence it would make if the two gangs do away with the par­ty col­ors and show the world that we are one people?

The cen­tral argu­ment prof­fered by Jamaicans for Justice in its suit against the pro­mo­tion of for­mer SSP Delroy Hewitt„ is that the (PCS) Police Service Commission, did not do a com­pre­hen­sive enough inves­ti­ga­tion, before green­light­ing Hewitt’s pro­mo­tion.
The argu­ment of the lob­by was not with­out mer­it for pro­mo­tions going for­ward. The coun­try should be seek­ing to find ways to engage in best prac­tices.
Nevertheless, the way the lob­by went about the case was prej­u­di­cial and biased against SSP Hewitt, a senior police offi­cer of impec­ca­ble char­ac­ter.
Instead of engag­ing the Government and the PSC in dia­logue on the issue Jamaicans For Justice chose to go after a sin­gle police offi­cer it did not like, and in that, it’s biased vendet­ta was laid bare.

The recent rul­ing of the British-based Privy Council, but­tressed the claim made by JFJ, that had the PCS con­duct­ed a lengthy Investigation it would poten­tial­ly have arrived at a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion.
The deci­sion is con­sid­ered aca­d­e­m­ic, because Hewitt is long retired.
Personally, I would not add the word [academic]to any­thing around that rul­ing, as the PSC was not legal­ly bound to con­duct Investigations of can­di­dates before it for pro­mo­tion.
In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, this writer is not a lawyer but it seems to me that the deci­sion of the Privy Council is pure­ly sug­ges­tive, as the PSC did not fail as there was no legal­ly bind­ing duty to adhere to con­duct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions before green­light­ing pro­mo­tions.
The tragedy in this whole débâ­cle is that the Government did not mount a chal­lenge against the case on the basis that JFJ had no legal stand­ing to mount the chal­lenge to Hewitt’s pro­mo­tion.
Neither did it chal­lenge JFJ’s case on the friv­o­li­ty of it, since the PSC had no legal bind­ing duty to con­duct pre-pro­mo­tions inves­ti­ga­tions.
The fact is that the Government did not care because the mat­ter was about the police department.

The real vic­tims of the litany of anti-polic­ing lob­bies, (JFJ includ­ed) which have sprung up over the last three decades or so, are law-abid­ing Jamaicans who are not invest­ed in crime.
Make no mis­take about it, the sup­posed good they are doing is cer­tain­ly not reflect­ed in the data as it relates to the low stan­dard of liv­ing Jamaicans are forced to endure as a result of the Islands expo­nen­tial­ly high crime rate.
For one, abuse of women are on the increase, there is no sys­tem­at­ic effort to get Jamaican men to respect women and not see them as prop­er­ty and or objects to be used and abused.
The plight of chil­dren is still an incred­i­bly sore sub­ject which requires imme­di­ate atten­tion, but sup­port­ing chil­dren’s rights is not as sexy for JFJ and oth­ers, as attack­ing the police.
Murders, Rapes and oth­er sex­u­al assaults are wide­spread, includ­ing sex­u­al assaults per­pe­trat­ed on chil­dren and even babies.
Violent crimes of oth­er nature are also wide­spread through­out the Island, mak­ing vic­tims of lit­er­al­ly every law-abid­ing Jamaican.
Yet the focus of the sup­posed human rights lob­bies is sole­ly focused on how many mur­der­ers are killed by the secu­ri­ty forces.

Jamaicans For Justice has cer­tain­ly not been Jamaica’s first anti-police [rodeo].
Long before they came on the scene, Flo O’Connor was there, and there were oth­ers whom I can­not recall at the moment.
The truth is, dur­ing the ’80s when those bleed­ing ‑hearts were cry­ing about police tak­ing out mur­der­ous gang­sters, homi­cides were just over 500 annu­al­ly.
Criminals were run­ning away from Jamaica and Investments and Jamaicans in the Diaspora were pour­ing in.
Jamaicans in the ’80s were not stu­pid, they real­ized that in order for their stan­dard of liv­ing to improve they could not have mur­der­ous thugs in their midst, so no one real­ly paid much atten­tion to Flo O’Connor, Horace Levy or the others.

Neither O’Connor nor Levy received much trac­tion but some­one saw an open­ing to step into that space and make a name for her­self.
In stepped the White Jamaican baby doc­tor and before long she was an icon, a leg­end, she received a nation­al hon­or, and the entire nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus was answer­able to her.
The long-held glue which bound our police depart­ment pro­fes­sion­als togeth­er, [Esprit de ‑Corps], was maligned as a blue wall of silence it was out the door.
It was­n’t a blue wall of silence, it was a bond which meant cops would give their own lives in sup­port of each oth­er when they are active­ly fight­ing for their lives.
Owen Ellington, the then Commissioner of Police, was too busy pro­mot­ing his friends and fam­i­ly to care that the depart­ment was in deep dis­tress.
Carolyn Gomez’s tox­ic influ­ence had seeped into the Police Academic cur­ricu­lum, and the coun­try was not train­ing cops any­more, it was now in the busi­ness of turn­ing out agents for JFJ.
The sad real­i­ty is that it took rough­ly two decades and thou­sands of inno­cent lives for kar­ma to catch up with Gomez and she was exposed as a fraud­u­lent pur­vey­or of gay porno­graph­ic smut to chil­dren.
Not only did they not take back the nation­al hon­or, but she was also not pros­e­cut­ed. Yes, white skin has the same pow­er in Jamaica as it does in America, it is privileged. 

The dam­age was already done.
Police offi­cers who placed their bod­ies between blood­thirsty killers and inno­cent cit­i­zens were them­selves por­trayed as extra­ju­di­cial killers.
The term “extra­ju­di­cial” was attached to every police-involved shoot­ing, nev­er mind that the guns recov­ered, the inno­cent dead and wound­ed.
The focus became that police were shoot­ing too many crim­i­nals.
Attention was suc­cess­ful­ly deflect­ed away from the homi­cide num­bers to the cops doing the heavy lift­ing.
(a) Perfectly legit­i­mate police fatal shoot­ings were por­trayed as [extra­ju­di­cial killings].
(b) Because plain­clothes cops were the offi­cers fac­ing down the crim­i­nals, and because plain­clothes cops made up only a small por­tion of the force at the time, rough­ly about (6 – 8%), those offi­cers were nec­es­sar­i­ly and ratio­nal­ly fea­tured in vio­lent con­fronta­tions with crim­i­nals.
© The Aura cre­at­ed as a result of the brav­ery and ded­i­ca­tion of those offi­cers (name-brand-cops) served as a use­ful deter­rent to those who would take life as well as those who would engage in gang activ­i­ties.
(d) Those offi­cers were nation­al heroes, not vil­lains. They nev­er received a nation­al hon­or.
Sure there were instances where cops stepped over the line, those actions can­not be denied and should nev­er be con­doned or cov­ered over.
But planes fall from the skies because of pilot error, peo­ple die on oper­at­ing tables, because sur­geons make mis­takes, cars, trucks and bus­es crash because dri­vers make mis­takes, patients die because nurs­es give incor­rect med­i­cine.
I’m not sure why police offi­cers who risk their lives unlike any of the afore­men­tioned, are held to a high­er stan­dard of scrutiny?

Neither the Governing polit­i­cal par­ty nor the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion, will come clean and tell the Jamaican peo­ple that their strat­e­gy has been a colos­sal dis­as­ter.
Neither will the crim­i­nal rights lob­by.
What is left of the police force has esti­mat­ed that there are well over two thou­sand gangs oper­at­ing in the small space of 4411 square miles.
Before it was only the poor and the busi­ness-peo­ple who were being mur­dered but of late a few politi­cians are hav­ing their domes pushed back as well.
Today the police are not engag­ing crim­i­nals as much, this writer is sup­port­ive of that posi­tion.
Why should offi­cers risk being dragged through a shit­ty sys­tem which favors crim­i­nals over them and inno­cent cit­i­zens?
The non-police, com­mis­sion­er of police, recent­ly said he is con­fi­dent that giv­en time every police offi­cer in Jamaica will be a human rights activists.
Every per­son who ever donned the uni­form of a police offi­cer with the right intent is a human rights activist.
It is the com­mit­ment to the rule of law, the pro­tec­tion of the weak which pro­pels them to run toward the dan­ger when every­one runs away from it.
What police offi­cers do not need is a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of polic­ing by some­one who was giv­en the top polic­ing role with­out a sin­gle idea of what polic­ing is.
Jamaicans cer­tain­ly need to rise up against these char­la­tans and frauds who talk about human rights but does not speak to the right their dead rel­a­tives had to the most impor­tant human right.
The right to life!

I am the King of the world’s most pow­er­ful coun­try, I find myself under inves­ti­ga­tions for var­i­ous and sundry breach­es of the laws.
Nevertheless, I lam­bast the pros­e­cu­tors dai­ly.
As if that is not enough, I replace the head of the Agency tasked with doing the Investigations of me, but I was cer­tain­ly not done.
I smeared and tar­nished the char­ac­ter of career pros­e­cu­tors and Investigators as well.
I had my min­ions drag them before the Congress and berat­ed and humil­i­at­ed them and then I fired them.
So they appoint­ed a spe­cial coun­sel which for all intents and pur­pos­es should be friend­ly to me because we are from the very same polit­i­cal party.

When my Attorney General recused him­self and failed to inter­fere in the inves­ti­ga­tions with a view to pro­tect­ing me from the Special Counsel, I fired him too.
I then replaced him with an unqual­i­fied lack­ey who bad-mouthed the Investigations on tele­vi­sion and talked about ways in which he would starve the Special Counsel’s Investigations of resources, even­tu­al­ly shut­ting it down.
There was a wide­spread out­cry and so I imme­di­ate­ly looked for a replace­ment of him who could pass muster with the old guard.
Never mind that I still want­ed an Attorney General who could get con­firmed but I need­ed one who had writ­ten a long mem­o­ran­dum detail­ing his dis­dain for the Special Counsel process and express­ing his sup­port for wider pow­ers for me.
Ah yes, I got my man.
He’s been there before and it seems like he can be trust­ed to do exact­ly what I want him to do.
con­firm him now.

Witch hunt, witch hunt, no col­lu­sion, no col­li­sion is my dai­ly tirade as I won­der about find­ing new ways to inter­fere in these inves­ti­ga­tions which are keep­ing me up at night.
Daily I call for the Investigations to end.
What?
I don’t care if oth­er peo­ple don’t get to demand that an inves­ti­ga­tion into their activ­i­ties gets stopped.
I don’t care that they don’t get to com­plain about the length of time inves­ti­ga­tions are tak­ing, I’m spe­cial.
Now my man is in place and he gets to decide whether that mul­ti-mil­lion Dollar inves­ti­ga­tion gets revealed to the Congress, much less the poor peas­antry.
Oh wait, ha-ha-ha, I just real­ized that even though the Investigations are about my con­duct, I’m allowed to decide on whether its find­ings gets revealed.
Oh s**t, what was I wor­ried about, I head the Justice Department b*****s?
Touché mother‑f*****s, ha, ha, ha.……!

So my boy did his thing after the Republican Special Counsel passed the report he wrote up to him.
He writes the Congress led by the Dumb-crats[sic] a lit­tle cov­er let­ter say­ing that the Special Counsel found no con­spir­a­cy between myself and the Russians.
He left them a lit­tle some­thing to yap about on the issue of inter­fer­ence.
As if it’s not my Justice Department, My FBI, my Country, I can damn well do as I please.

In sum­ming up.
You pay for inves­ti­gat­ing me.
I inter­fere, I get my boy to say no con­spir­a­cy was found.
I get my boy to say he decid­ed not to act on me inter­fer­ing in the inves­ti­ga­tions.
And no you can­not see the report, who do you think you are?
I decide what Democracy is. It is what I say it is.
All of you who sat there and watched and wait­ed these two years as talk­ing heads opined about what the Special Counsel’s inves­ti­ga­tions would find about my actions are real­ly dumb­er than me.
Do you real­ly think that this coun­try would allow the world to know that a hos­tile for­eign pow­er put me in office?
And many of you Libs call me dumb.
Who is dumb now?
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.…..

When you think of some of the things hap­pen­ing in our coun­try it is dif­fi­cult to come away with­out think­ing that they are avoid­ing tried and proven fix­es inten­tion­al­ly.
Solutions to the coun­try’s cor­rup­tion prob­lem are absolute­ly not insur­mount­able. The Island’s lead­ers are not clue­less about this.
Why then would they con­tin­ue to allow Ministers of Government ?Members of Parliament and peo­ple in pub­lic bod­ies to get away with such high lev­els of crim­i­nal corruption?

It is incred­i­bly hard to make a case against those who talk about police cor­rup­tion.
Nevertheless, when we look at the cor­rupt acts com­mit­ted in the open by politi­cians it is breath­tak­ing­ly shock­ing.
From the Iran sug­ar deal. to Outameni, Petrojam, The Dutch
Trafigura scan­dal, the Cuban Light bulb scan­dal to the present day scan­dal involv­ing Ruel Reid nei­ther sides have clean hands.
Ask your­selves how Kern Spencer could walk away with­out being con­vict­ed in the Cuban light bulb scan­dal?
Then look at the so-called Judiciary and ask your­selves how a sit­ting Resident Magistrate could throw a mon­key wrench in the pros­e­cu­tion’s case and be pro­mot­ed instead of removed and imprisoned?

Want to talk about cor­rup­tion?
Lets look at the cor­rup­tion involved in the Firearm’s Licencing Authority today.
Law abid­ing Jamaicans who ful­fill every cri­te­ria and tick every box can hard­ly receive approval to pur­chase a firearm for their pro­tec­tion.
But a well con­nect­ed crim­i­nal with some mon­ey to toss around can eas­i­ly secure such approval.
This was a func­tion under the Police , much like the issuance of Passports.
The politi­cians promised that they would strip out the cor­rup­tion from the process when they removed both func­tions from the police.
Today both the Passports and the firearm process­es are two of the most cor­rupt organs of government.

My com­ments are in no way one of sup­port for those func­tions to be returned to the police, far from it.
I mere­ly intend to point to the across the board cor­rup­tion drain­ing the eco­nom­ic lifeblood from the coun­try.
The Customs depart­ment has always been a cesspool of cor­rup­tion, today more than ever it is a rot­ten morass of cor­rup­tion graft and bribes.
The Registrar General’s Department, you don’t pay you are not about to receive a birth cer­tifi­cate.
The Motor Vehicles Department is infa­mous for its cor­rupt exam­in­ers, no mat­ter how good a dri­ver you are you will not receive a pass­ing grade to secure a dri­vers license unless you pay up.
Inside the post office, they opened peo­ple’s mail and steal what­ev­er they want.
It is as a result of this across the board thiev­ery that Transparency International arrived at its rather gen­er­ous 84% cor­rupt rat­ing for Jamaica.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that across all agen­cies of the over-bloat­ed gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy, it is some­where clos­er to 95% corrupt. 

It is against this back­ground that I con­tin­ue to call for greater train­ing, remu­ner­a­tions, and leg­isla­tive sup­port for the police.
It is against this back­ground that I call for the repeal of the INDECOM act, and greater invest­ments into the jus­tice deliv­ery process.
I believe that when there is pro­fes­sion­al­ism, trans­paren­cy, account­abil­i­ty, com­pe­ten­cy, hon­esty, and clar­i­ty in the jus­tice deliv­ery sys­tem those who work in the sys­tem has no choice but to uphold best prac­tices or leave.

On this score, nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has clean hands. In some cas­es, the argu­ments that those in oppo­si­tion are sim­ply mad because they are on the out­side look­ing in are not with­out mer­it.
I shall post the speech giv­en by Andrew Michael Holness when he ascend­ed to the top exec­u­tive posi­tion in our country.

Your Excellencies, the Governor General, the Most Honourable Sir Patrick Allen and Lady Allen.
Leader of the Opposition the Most Honorable Portia Simpson Miller Former Prime Ministers:
The Most Honorable Edward Seaga and Mrs Seaga
The Most Honorable PJ Patterson
The Honorable Bruce Golding and Mrs Golding.
My fel­low Jamaicans
Good after­noon.

I rec­og­nize that I stand here today only by the Grace of God. It has not been an easy jour­ney to this podi­um, but earnest labor and fer­vent prayers con­quer all. To God be the glo­ry.It is with a deep sense of grat­i­tude, hon­or and humil­i­ty that I took the Oath of Office moments ago, ful­ly con­scious of the mag­ni­tude of expec­ta­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ty I have assumed, but equal­ly ener­gized and opti­mistic about a pros­per­ous future for Jamaica. I pledge to serve the peo­ple of Jamaica faith­ful­ly, with all of my ener­gies, all of my heart, mind and soul.
I stand here today hap­py to be rep­re­sent­ing the voice, vision, vote and vic­to­ry of Jamaica.
We may have dif­fer­ent voic­es and dif­fer­ent votes on a sim­i­lar vision, regard­less of our dif­fer­ences, Jamaica was vic­to­ri­ous at the General Elections. It is not per­fect, but we can all be proud of the peo­ple, sys­tems, and insti­tu­tions that make up our democracy.

Meaning of the Mandate

On the day of Election, I wit­nessed a young man car­ry­ing, cra­dled in his arm, an obvi­ous­ly bed-rid­den elder­ly man from a polling sta­tion. I was touched by the sight. In the bus­tle of the busy school yard, as they passed, the elder­ly man point­ed his ink stained fin­ger at me and said, “Andrew, do the right thing!”I stand here hum­bled by the awe­some pow­er of you, the peo­ple, and I com­mit to doing right by you. The peo­ple are sov­er­eign and their views and votes must nev­er be tak­en for grant­ed.
The peo­ple of Jamaica did not vote in vain. They expect a gov­ern­ment that works for them and by the same expec­ta­tion, an Opposition that is con­struc­tive. This his­toric elec­tion deliv­ered the small­est major­i­ty but also the clear­est man­date: Fix Government! With this man­date: There is no major­i­ty for arro­gance
There is no space for self­ish­ness. There is no place for pet­ti­ness. There is no room for com­pla­cen­cy and There is no mar­gin for error. I am under no illu­sion as to the mean­ing of this man­date. We have not won a prize. Instead, the peo­ple are giv­ing us a test. There is no absolute agency of pow­er. This means that the win­ner can­not take all, or believe we can do it alone.

Leading Partnerships for Prosperity

To achieve the vision of shared pros­per­i­ty through inclu­sive eco­nom­ic growth and mean­ing­ful job cre­ation, now more than ever, Government must lead, acti­vate, empow­er and build real part­ner­ships. I intend to lead a Government of part­ner­ship. The solu­tions to our prob­lems do not rest with Government alone. The sum total of our poten­tial exceeds our prob­lems; our col­lec­tive capa­bil­i­ties are greater than our chal­lenges, but it is only through part­ner­ship that these capa­bil­i­ties and this poten­tial can be seized, har­nessed and real­ized for the good of Jamaica. Partnerships require trust, clear assign­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ty and an ele­vat­ed sense of duty.
There is only so much trust that pledges and state­ments of com­mit­ment can buy. I under­stand that the Jamaican peo­ple now want to see action in build­ing trust. This is part of fix­ing gov­ern­ment. Everyone who will form the next gov­ern­ment must be seized of this expec­ta­tion. From the politi­cian mak­ing pol­i­cy to the civ­il ser­vant pro­cess­ing an appli­ca­tion, we must act duti­ful­ly to ful­fill our respon­si­bil­i­ties. Trust requires the actu­al­iza­tion of our com­mit­ments. We will ful­fill our commitments.

Our actions can achieve so much more if they are coör­di­nat­ed. We will bring greater coör­di­na­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty and focus to the role of gov­ern­ment so that the objec­tives of part­ner­ship can be clear. There is no doubt that sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of Jamaicans have lost hope in our sys­tem, but I am encour­aged that a far larg­er num­ber main­tains faith, keeps hope and con­tin­ues to pray that Jamaica will grow and pros­per.
I am ener­gized by the expres­sions of will­ing­ness to work with our new Government in the inter­est of Jamaica. The sense of duty is alive and well. There is more hope than despair and this cre­ates a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to form part­ner­ships for prosperity.

Partnership with Families

You know, I am now joined in Parliament by my life part­ner Juliet.
Family is the ulti­mate part­ner­ship. And that is why my Government will focus resources on sup­port­ing fam­i­lies. By increas­ing the income tax thresh­old we will restore the eco­nom­ic pow­er of house­holds to par­tic­i­pate in not only grow­ing our GDP but more impor­tant­ly grow­ing the gen­er­al well­be­ing of the soci­ety.
Here’s how the part­ner­ship with fam­i­lies, and the work­ing heads of house­holds will work.
Our gov­ern­ment will ease your tax bur­den, but you must spend and invest wise­ly, use the addi­tion­al mon­ey to acquire a house for your fam­i­ly or improve the house you already have, or buy Jamaican-made goods. This how we will increase local effec­tive demand in hous­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and agri­cul­ture. This is how you can play a part in cre­at­ing in jobs while sat­is­fy­ing your well­be­ing.
We will con­tin­ue our pol­i­cy of tuition-free edu­ca­tion and no user fee access to health care. However, will enable you to save in an edu­ca­tion bond for your children’s edu­ca­tion and in a nation­al health insur­ance scheme your health­care.
We will enhance our social safe­ty net for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies, and will pro­vide sup­port for par­ents in cri­sis, but you must be respon­si­ble and send your chil­dren to school. Our men must take care of their chil­dren, and cou­ples must be respon­si­ble in hav­ing the chil­dren they can afford.

Our gov­ern­ment com­mits to cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ment in which fam­i­lies can flour­ish and form com­mu­ni­ties of social mobil­i­ty from which every ghet­to youth can be star. However, every fam­i­ly mem­ber must do his or her part by being per­son­al­ly, social­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble.
I am sure Juliet will under­stand if I seek to build anoth­er part­ner­ship in Parliament. Leader of the Opposition, Portia Simpson Miller has giv­en long and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to the coun­try and I believe the man­date is say­ing, we may not be on the same side of the road, but as much as pos­si­ble we should hold hands in coöper­a­tion to over­come obsta­cles for the good of the coun­try. We have evolved with­out for­mal struc­ture a very good part­ner­ship in edu­ca­tion and we intend to con­tin­ue our infor­mal col­lab­o­ra­tions in this area and pur­sue oth­er such areas of coöper­a­tion between Government and Opposition mem­bers.
I still believe it is a use­ful sym­bol of nation­al uni­ty for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to appear togeth­er in zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions. I again extend the invitation.

Partnership for Growth with Private Sector

The pri­or­i­ty of this Government is to grow the econ­o­my and cre­ate mean­ing­ful jobs. In so doing, we will more rapid­ly and sus­tain­ably reduce debt. I am sure we all agree that much of Jamaica’s devel­op­ment has been achieved with­out growth, which has left us with much debt. This is unsus­tain­able. Going for­ward, Jamaica’s devel­op­ment must rest on its abil­i­ty to cre­ate propo­si­tions of val­ue and attract invest­ments to con­vert the val­ue into wealth. In this mod­el, Government is not the main investor, it is the Private Sector whether they be large enter­pris­es or small busi­ness. In the eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship with the Private Sector, Government’s role, among oth­ers, is: 

To ensure the rule of law. Create a safe, secure, and fair envi­ron­ment for busi­ness. Make mar­kets where none exist. Ensure trans­paren­cy and access to infor­ma­tion ‑and cre­ate an effi­cient and sup­port­ive pub­lic sec­tor bureau­cra­cy.
In exchange, we want the Private Sector to unleash invest­ments in the local econ­o­my. We want to see the return of the pio­neer­ing dri­ve to cre­ate new indus­tries, the entre­pre­neur­ial will­ing­ness to take risk, and the inno­v­a­tive insight to do things bet­ter. I am heart­ened by the sig­nals com­ing from the Private Sector. I believe they have got the mes­sage about the part­ner­ship for growth and job cre­ation. Now is the time for growth.

Partnership with inter­na­tion­al partners

We are not naïve about the chal­lenges we face regard­ing our debt and the need to main­tain fis­cal dis­ci­pline. This is why we will con­tin­ue with the prin­ci­ple of joint over­sight of our Economic Programme and per­for­mance.We rec­og­nize the impor­tance of, and val­ue our rela­tion­ship with our bilat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al friends. These rela­tion­ships have been crit­i­cal in secur­ing sta­bil­i­ty.
We believe in pre­serv­ing sta­bil­i­ty, but we must now build upon this, in a pro­duc­tive part­ner­ship with them to achieve inclu­sive growth and job cre­ation. There are many more areas of part­ner­ships that we must for­mal­ly pur­sue for nation­al devel­op­ment and as our gov­ern­ment is installed over the com­ing days these will become evident.

The Role of the Prime Minister

In all these part­ner­ships for pros­per­i­ty, there must be coör­di­nat­ed effort. That is my role. I will ensure that: Government is coör­di­nat­ed and strate­gi­cal­ly direct­ed Decisions are tak­en quick­ly. Targets are set. The nation is informed and that. Everyone under my appoint­ment is held to account for their action or lack there­of.
Institutional Reform
There is a sense of expec­ta­tion of change. It is not lost on me that I am the first of the Post-Independence gen­er­a­tion to lead Jamaica. More than any­thing else we want to see Jamaica take its true place as a devel­oped coun­try in the next 50 years. The strug­gle is not so much polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence as it is eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence. It is through our eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence that we secure real polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.
However, after 53 years of inde­pen­dence, there is need for insti­tu­tion­al review of the Jamaican State both in terms of mod­ern­iza­tion of the insti­tu­tions of the State, and the struc­ture of the State. Government has to improve its busi­ness process­es and become more effi­cient as a reg­u­la­tor and a ser­vice provider.

There is need for us to have a say in the fun­da­men­tal insti­tu­tions that define Jamaica, the rights we secure for our cit­i­zens and how we want Jamaica to be. We will give form to that voice in a ref­er­en­dum to decide on the con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters and social mat­ters.
Independent Jamaica must remove the cul­ture of depen­den­cy from our midst. We must teach our chil­dren that there is no wealth with­out work, and no suc­cess with­out sac­ri­fice. We must remove the belief from the psy­che of our chil­dren that the only way they can step up in life is not by how hard they work, but by who they know.
As Prime Minister I have a duty to align our incen­tives and reward sys­tems for those who work and fol­low rules. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where the man who plays by the rules is reward­ed!
It is impor­tant that the cit­i­zens of Independent Jamaica have a sense of enti­tle­ment to good ser­vice from their coun­try. However, increas­ing­ly this is not being bal­anced with a duty of ‘giv­ing back’. Jamaica has ben­e­fit­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the civic pride and sense of nation­hood that drove so many to give gen­er­ous­ly of their tal­ent and trea­sures to build our great nation.
The spir­it still exists, to a great extent, local­ly and in our Diaspora. However, we have to be more active in pro­mot­ing civic respon­si­bil­i­ty, vol­un­teerism and ‘giv­ing back’, par­tic­u­lar­ly among our youth. And we have to inte­grate the incred­i­ble tal­ents and assets of the Jamaican Diaspora in local devel­op­ment. Too often I hear com­plaints from the Diaspora that they expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty in giv­ing to Jamaica. Giving should be easy, as part of our Partnership for Prosperity which includes the Diaspora, we will make it eas­i­er for you to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of your homeland.

Jamaica is too rich in peo­ple and tal­ent to be a poor coun­try. With good gov­er­nance and a prospec­tive out­look, Jamaica, with­in a decade or less, could emerge as a boom­ing econ­o­my and a pros­per­ous soci­ety.
Jamaica is geo­graph­i­cal­ly cen­tral in the Caribbean. My vision is to turn Jamaica into the cen­tre of the Caribbean. A cen­tre of finance, trade and com­merce, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, and the cen­tre of arts, cul­ture, and lifestyle region­al­ly. This is all pos­si­ble with­in our life­time. Despite any neg­a­tives, Jamaica still has a pow­er­ful and allur­ing brand ampli­fy­ing our voice and influ­ence in the world.
We can­not be sat­is­fied with things as they are. My dream is to ful­fill your dream. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where there is hope and oppor­tu­ni­ty. Where we can encour­age our chil­dren to dream big and be opti­mistic about their life chances. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where our young peo­ple can find mean­ing­ful work. A Jamaica where you feel safe to live, work and raise your chil­dren. A Jamaica that is boom­ing and investors and entre­pre­neurs can have a con­fi­dent out­look on the econ­o­my. A place where we can retire and tru­ly enjoy as par­adise. All of this is pos­si­ble. We must start now. Time for a part­ner­ship. Time for action!

PNPYO CALLS FOR RUEL REID TO BE FIRED AS PRINCIPAL OF JC

The PNP Youth Organisation wel­comes news that the Principal of Jamaica College, Ruel Reid has been fired as Minister and has also resigned from the Senate. This devel­op­ment has only come about because of a dili­gent Parliamentary Opposition led by Dr. Peter Phillips, who called atten­tion to Mr. Reid’s stew­ard­ship over cor­rupt prac­tices at the Ministry.
That the Prime Minister has seen it fit to fire Mr. Reid, tells the pub­lic that what is being uncov­ered in Ministry of Education could very well be worse than what was unearthed at Petrojam. 

The PNPYO is there­fore demand­ing that Ruel Reid steps down as Principal of Jamaica College and not be allowed to serve on any State Boards in the near future. His pro­longed sec­ond­ment was already improp­er and to keep him in this posi­tion of lead­er­ship sends the wrong mes­sage to the stu­dents who would be under his influ­ence and guidance.The role of Principal must be held by one who is firm on prin­ci­ple, integri­ty and good judge­ment. Mr. Reid has proven that he does not meet such high stan­dards.
We fur­ther ask that the Custos of St. Andrew, HON. DR. PATRICIA DUNWELL review this mat­ter to deter­mine whether Mr. Reid could right­ly con­tin­ue to hold the office of Justice of the Peace (JP). The Ministry of Justice requires that a JP be a per­son of unques­tion­able integri­ty and who com­mands the respect and con­fi­dence of the local community. 

We believe that the Prime Minister’s loss of con­fi­dence in Ruel Reid to con­tin­ue his tenure as Minister and Senator is a clear indi­ca­tion that he is no longer suit­ed to bear the seal of such an office as Justice of the Peace. With infor­ma­tion yet unfold­ing, his actions may well war­rant a dis­missal on the grounds out­lined in Section 9, sub­sec­tion 4a(i and ii) of the Justices of the Peace Act, 2018.

— END —

In an unprece­dent­ed and unex­pect­ed move, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness has fired Education Minister Ruel Reid.
Reid has also resigned from the Senate.

In a state­ment to the Nation Holness said the fol­low­ing.
This morn­ing I met with Minister Ruel Reid regard­ing cer­tain alle­ga­tions in the pub­lic domain.
In keep­ing with the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance, I request­ed and received Minister Reid’s res­ig­na­tion. Minister Reid has also resigned from the Senate.
The Minister’s res­ig­na­tion will ensure that any inves­ti­ga­tion into mat­ters of con­cern will not be in any way imped­ed by his pres­ence or over­sight of the Ministry.
The Ministry of Education Youth and Information will now fall under the tem­po­rary super­vi­sion of the Office of the Prime Minister which will start its own review of the min­istry and its agencies.

According to local report­ing, the Auditor General’s Department is cur­rent­ly under­tak­ing a per­for­mance audit of the depart­ment.
It was, how­ev­er, the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion which is cred­it­ed with rais­ing ques­tions amidst reports of mis­use of pub­lic funds and cor­rup­tion at the edu­ca­tion min­istry and sug­gest­ed that it was equiv­a­lent to the scan­dal uncov­ered at Petrojam, the state-owned oil refin­ery. Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips, speak­ing dur­ing a post-Budget press con­fer­ence, said the alle­ga­tions are relat­ed direct­ly to Caribbean Maritime University and the use of funds sent to the min­istry by the HEART Trust for the Career Advancement Programme as well as the Technical, Vocational, Educational and Training (T‑VET) Rationalisation Project.(Jamaica Geaner​.com)

It is that kind of over­sight which the coun­try must encour­age rather than the tit-for-tat, back and forth which has char­ac­ter­ized oppo­si­tion par­ties behav­ior pre­vi­ous­ly.
Although there is far from suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic domain for a rea­son­able con­clu­sion to be drawn, the actions of the Prime Minister in fir­ing Reid, tells us that the sto­ry is seri­ous enough despite the PM’s con­tention that the min­is­ter’s removal will ensure that any inves­ti­ga­tion into mat­ters of con­cern will not be in any way imped­ed by Reid’s presence.

I urge the Prime Minister to call in the Police to con­duct a free and fair inves­ti­ga­tion even as the Auditor General’s office is work­ing on a par­al­lel track.
One inves­ti­ga­tion will not impede the oth­er, and should not be seen as anti­thet­i­cal to each oth­er.
Regardless of the out­come, the law must take its course. If breach­es of the laws are found fir­ings are not enough.
The full force of the law must be brought to bear as it would for any oth­er Jamaican.
It is about time that those entrust­ed with pub­lic posi­tions of trust under­stand that pub­lic offices and pub­lic posi­tions of pow­er are not oppor­tu­ni­ties to get rich.
It would also demon­strate that the Prime Minister is com­mit­ted to the rule of law and does not believe that the laws are only there for some people.

In the mean­time the Opposition PNP issued the fol­low­ing state­ment under the sig­na­ture of the oppo­si­tion leader Peter Phillips.

Statement on the Matter of Corruption at the Ministry of Education and Related Agencies
Dr. Peter Phillips, PNP President and Leader of the Opposition
March 20, 2019.
The hasty removal of the Minister of Education is in response to our demand at the Press Conference on Monday, March 18, 2019, for a full inves­ti­ga­tion of activ­i­ties at Ministry of Education in light of cred­i­ble reports of cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic funds involv­ing the Ministry of Education and its asso­ci­at­ed agen­cies. Our report indi­cates the depth of the can­cer of cor­rup­tion and dis­hon­esty engulf­ing the Holness Administration.
Reports received indi­cate that not only the cen­tral Ministry but agen­cies includ­ing the Caribbean Maritime University, the National Education Trust and the HEART Trust which was sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to OPM have all been impli­cat­ed in the web of cor­rup­tion.
This is the 2^nd senior Minister of Government that has been forced to resign in less than a year under the shad­ow of cor­rup­tion affect­ing agen­cies for which they have been respon­si­ble and account­able. We should remem­ber also that inves­ti­ga­tions in the Petrojam scan­dal by the National Integrity Commission and MOCA are still not com­plet­ed. Furthermore, the Prime Minister who had car­riage of the Ministry of Energy has still not pro­vid­ed the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion to the Parliamentary Committee.
I am again call­ing upon the Auditor General and the National Integrity Commission, as well as secu­ri­ty agen­cies includ­ing JCF, MOCA and the Financial Investigation Division (FID) to ful­ly inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions which have caused the Minister’s res­ig­na­tion. We expect them to act with integri­ty and urgency to hold those who broke the law account­able.
Indeed, we note that the Prime Minster has not yet said what was the basis on which he asked for the res­ig­na­tion of the MOE and we are call­ing up on him to do so imme­di­ate­ly.
Also, in light of dis­turb­ing reports, that the Security agen­cies are being ham­pered in the con­duct of their inves­ti­ga­tions, we are call­ing up on all the heads of the Security agen­cies to act with integri­ty and urgency, mind­ful that they rep­re­sent the line of defense against wan­ton cor­rup­tion and the abuse of tax­pay­ers mon­ey.
The People’s National Party stren­u­ous­ly objects to the Prime Minister’s deci­sion to take the Ministry of Education with­in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and sub­ject to the Prime Minister’s per­son­al con­trol.
First of all, the Ministry of Education is much too impor­tant to be giv­en par­tial over­sight in the con­duct of day-to-day activ­i­ties, which are absolute­ly essen­tial to the future of our nation’s chil­dren.
Secondly, the expe­ri­ence of the role of the Office of the Prime Minister in its man­age­ment of Petrojam does not give the coun­try con­fi­dence.
We can­not for­get the infa­mous Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in Petrojam which was done under Prime Minister Holness’ watch. He is yet to table all the doc­u­ments linked to the res­ig­na­tion of the for­mer Human Resource Manager at Petrojam, nor has he pro­vid­ed the rel­e­vant advice that the lawyers gave to Petrojam on this mat­ter.
The coun­try can­not afford the Office of the Prime Minister to act once again to cov­er up the mis­deeds of Minsters. The peo­ple of Jamaica deserve much better!

This sto­ry is devel­op­ing and may be updat­ed as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.

The congresswoman was smeared — nothing she said warranted the criticism she received. But progressives should not fall into the trap of denying that anti-Semitism exists on the left.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Back in February, Representative Ilhan Omar tweet­ed that American polit­i­cal lead­ers’ sup­port for Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby” — a Puff Daddy quote that some were quick to con­demn as invok­ing the anti-Semitic theme of Jews buy­ing influ­ence. The fresh­man con­gress­woman, who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia at the age of 12, quick­ly issued an unequiv­o­cal apol­o­gy, say­ing she was “grate­ful for Jewish allies and col­leagues who are edu­cat­ing me on the painful his­to­ry of anti-Semitic tropes.”

A cou­ple of weeks lat­er, after a town-hall meet­ing at Washington’s Busboys and Poets, where Omar remarked that she want­ed “to talk about the polit­i­cal influ­ence in this coun­try that says it is OK for peo­ple to push for alle­giance to a for­eign coun­try,” Omar’s oppo­nents accused her of claim­ing American Jews had a “dual loy­al­ty” — anoth­er vin­tage anti-Semitic trope. Even though she was clear­ly refer­ring to the pres­sure she her­self felt as a mem­ber of Congress and a sup­port­er of Palestinian rights, that didn’t stop the House Democratic lead­er­ship from mov­ing a res­o­lu­tion that, while it didn’t men­tion Omar by name, was clear­ly aimed at her. 

Yet, by the time that House res­o­lu­tion came to a vote, the text con­demned both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim big­otry as “hate­ful expres­sions of intol­er­ance” — along with white-suprema­cist attacks “tar­get­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly per­se­cut­ed peo­ples, includ­ing African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and oth­er peo­ple of col­or, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, immi­grants, and oth­ers.” When the res­o­lu­tion passed by a mar­gin of 407 to 23, with almost the entire Democratic del­e­ga­tion, includ­ing Omar, vot­ing in favor, some of the same com­men­ta­tors who’d con­demned the Democratic lead­er­ship for “smear­ing” Omar now decid­ed the episode had end­ed hap­pi­ly after all. 

Read more here http://​then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​i​l​h​a​n​-​o​m​a​r​-​a​n​t​i​-​s​e​m​i​t​i​s​m​-​a​i​p​ac/

One of the most dif­fi­cult things to accom­plish is to get peo­ple to think out­side their com­fort zones.
We, humans, are cer­tain­ly prod­ucts of our envi­ron­ment.
As for us Jamaicans who were raised on JLP and PNP ortho­doxy, see­ing rea­son out­side of the con­fines of those polit­i­cal blink­ers is near­ly impos­si­ble.
Unfortunately for the coun­try, because of this blink­ered men­tal­i­ty, the lead­er­ship of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties has very lit­tle to fear from engag­ing in cor­rup­tion and step­ping out­side the bounds of the law.

A rev­o­lu­tion­ary change is nec­es­sary, the immi­nence is up to the peo­ple.
I believe it was Norman Manley who was cred­it­ed with the state­ment quote;‘There can be no real vic­to­ry with­out a few bro­ken skulls.“
Whether Jamaica’s evo­lu­tion will be one of a pop­u­lar peo­ple’s upris­ing or an intel­lec­tu­al awak­en­ing is impos­si­ble to say.
But if the blood-let­ting and the car­nal­i­ty are to be halt­ed there will have to be a shift, a par­a­digm shift even,_______________ in the way we think, in the way we act, in the way we expect our coun­try to be run.
Presently there is lit­tle sign that we are even cog­nizant of the right path to take.
The new nor­mal is the dai­ly killings with the bod­ies of entire fam­i­lies wiped out by gang­sters.
The new nor­mal is lit­tle babies describ­ing in graph­ic detail the sex­u­al organs of their par­ents and the actions their par­ents engage in sex­u­al­ly.
The new nor­mal is the record­ing of that despi­ca­ble nar­ra­tion from a child no more than an infant and the pro­mul­ga­tion of it on social media for likes.

Often we hear of a desire to return to the way we were. It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a return to the way we were when many who cre­at­ed the “way we were” are no longer around.
Through the pas­sage of time, death, immi­gra­tion, and prob­a­bly more con­se­quen­tial the change forced on the silent major­i­ty to remain silent, at the per­il of vio­lent death, our coun­try has changed for­ev­er.
When the mass of crim­i­nals and oth­ers being returned to the coun­try, some after a life­time of crime abroad, are added to the mix, it seems to me the sta­tus quo is here to stay.

Contrary to the hyper­bol­ic argu­ments you hear and the faux attempts at patri­o­tism the vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans have told poll­sters they would emi­grate if they could.
In fact, those who make the loud­est noise about not leav­ing Jamaica have been those who have not been able to leave.
In 2015 alone The United States Embassy in Kingston con­firmed that Jamaicans spent J$3 bil­lion) try­ing to obtain visas to the United States.
And that is only to one coun­try. Every day Jamaicans line up at the British and Candian con­sulates as well as con­sulates of oth­er coun­tries try­ing to find a way to have a bet­ter life.
According to a 2016 sur­vey com­mis­sioned by Respect, Jamaica and the local office of UNICEF, 81 per­cent of Jamaica’s youth between 14 and 40 years of age would leave the coun­try imme­di­ate­ly if they could. 
The only coun­try they ruled out as a pos­si­ble choice was the nation of Afghanistan.
As far as Transparency International is con­cerned our coun­try is 84% cor­rupt.
These are only a few of the neg­a­tive trends which dic­tates that regard­less of who is in pow­er polit­i­cal­ly, the real­i­ty is that we are head­ed in the wrong direc­tion.
There seems to be no under­stand­ing that their eco­nom­ic sur­vival and growth is hinged on their abil­i­ty to remove vio­lent crime and cor­rup­tion from the soci­ety.
Failing which, regard­less of the smoke and mirrors and the mirages, the Island could be doing expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter by attract­ing new Investments. Those Investments are out­side the Chinese takeover which is anoth­er iter­a­tion of slav­ery.
Nevertheless, the empha­sis is on whose par­ty is in pow­er so that scarce hand­outs may be derived.
It was sad when it first start­ed, it is sad today, yet the real­ly sad thing is that we appear to be frozen in accept­ing that we can­not change it.
Instead of root­ing out the mur­der­ers and demand­ing there is no more cor­rup­tion, soci­ety seem­ing­ly has evolved into accep­tance of cor­rup­tion and vio­lent mur­ders as its cho­sen path.

We should nev­er grade our­selves against the world’s worst actors. Instead, we should look at what works for the best and see whether we can co-opt some of their best prac­tices and see if they can work in our unique sit­u­a­tion.
Make no mis­take about it, the Jamaica of yester-year is no more, not only has the val­ues changed, but the peo­ple have also changed.
The sad real­i­ty is that for many Jamaicans who yearn for the land of peace and seren­i­ty of the past, that ship has long sailed.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Jamaica Defense Force JDF has worked side by side for decades. Together both of these Institutions of Government have giv­en blood sweat and tears to nation-build­ing.
In the fight to secure the Nation as it relates to pro­tect­ing Jamaica’s expan­sive unpro­tect­ed shore­line, both the (JCF’S)Marine Patrols and the(JDF’s) Coast guard have logged innu­mer­able amounts of hours while the nation sleeps.
Despite their efforts, because of the expanse of unpro­tect­ed shore­line and the lack of resources, guns and drugs con­tin­ue to flood the Island from Haiti and Latin America.

In the inte­ri­or of the coun­try, the (JDF) has assist­ed the (JCF) with logis­ti­cal as well as numer­i­cal sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the need aris­es for declar­ing the State of Emergency, or when the Nation faces an exis­ten­tial threat, like the one faced in 2010 with the Tivoli Gardens annex­a­tion to the Jamaican state.
I can per­son­al­ly attest to the rela­tion­ships forged on a per­son­al lev­el with mem­bers of the Military as a young con­sta­ble sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve.
We did Rat-Patrols, rap­peled from JDF Helicopters in the moun­tains of Montpelier to destroy Ganga fields, staked out ille­gal airstrips and much more.
On all of those assign­ments, whether it was one police offi­cer and a bunch of sol­diers or sev­er­al police offi­cers and even more sol­diers, we were a brotherhood.

Having laid out the way the two Organizations are inex­tri­ca­bly linked, I want to reg­is­ter my dis­gust at the idea that any­one, much less some­one with direct con­trol over the nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus would expand or exploit any fis­sure or crack (even per­cep­tion wise)which may exist between the two, for polit­i­cal or more omi­nous pur­pos­es.
And so today I want to talk about an age-old per­cep­tion with­in the pop­u­la­tion that sol­diers are more trust­wor­thy, less cor­rupt.
In doing so I wish to offer a bit of per­spec­tive in this con­tin­ued assault on the (JCF) by cer­tain peo­ple at the top of this Administration.
At the same time, I wish to once again explain that sol­diers fight wars and are seen as heroes. Even though mem­bers of the (JDF) nev­er have to go to war, the Military does not go out to haul crim­i­nals off to jail, and so sol­diers are not viewed the same way that police offi­cers are.
In a coun­try like Jamaica which is deemed to be 84% cor­rupt, the flir­ta­tious love affair which exists between the mil­i­tary and the pop­u­lace is quite under­stand­able. Arguably more con­se­quen­tial is the issue of crimes and acts of cor­rup­tion among mem­bers of the (JDF), these are gen­er­al­ly kept out of the pub­lic eye and are dealt with by the mil­i­tary, quite unlike inci­dents which involve the police which is plas­tered in pub­lic spaces for all to see.

Rather than inject much more of my own thoughts about cor­rup­tion with­in the JDF I will co-opt the words of some past mem­bers of both the (JCF) and (JDF) who like myself are nau­se­at­ed at the idea that there are moves afoot to dis­re­spect the (JCF) while extolling false virtues assigned to the (JDF).
None of this should be a thing but when mem­bers of the (JCF) are pushed aside and replaced with heads of the (JDF) to head the force under the guise that the police are too taint­ed and the mil­i­tary trust­wor­thy we are forced to speak out.
When the ZOSO in St James was basi­cal­ly sold as a JDF oper­a­tion with the (JCF) In a sup­port role we are forced to speak out.
When there is a hot­line to the (JDF) because of a sup­posed lack of trust for the police, even as the police hot­lines are con­fi­den­tial we call bull­shit.
When the Commissioner of Police, a usurp­er from the (JDF) brings over his dri­ver to the (JCF) sup­pos­ed­ly because he has spe­cial skills or the com­mis­sion­er do not trust the police and have him pro­mot­ed to Assistant Superintendent of Police, we call them out as cor­rupt.
When the Commissioner of police pur­port not to trust the men and women under his com­mand, he is in the wrong job as my friend said.

So here are a few of the com­ments on this issue, I’ll let them tell it.

Corruption and crim­i­nal­i­ty come from our soci­ety.
I being an ex-sol­dier knows that there is a lot of sol­diers back in my time being incar­cer­at­ed for var­i­ous crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. Guns have gone miss­ing in camp and from New Castle with­out the pub­lic’s knowl­edge. Soldiers and ex-sol­diers have been impli­cat­ed in train­ing crim­i­nal gun­men. Reporters can’t go into camp and get that infor­ma­tion but police high­light every case in which they arrest the police or ex-police offi­cer. Every orga­ni­za­tion has crim­i­nals and cor­rup­tion in it. Soldier shoots girl­friend, girl­friend fam­i­ly, Soldiers shoots girl­friend, sol­dier robs bread van in cross roads.
You hard­ly hear much about the end because they are not all over the Island like the cops. Soldiers col­lect mon­ey from gan­ja-farm­ers in West, allow­ing them to reap their crops then burn a small por­tion.
Soldier drowns their senior ranks at sea, as boat load of gan­ja gone miss­ing.
Let us deploy these sol­diers at every police sta­tion and give them the pow­ers of arrest and also a tick­et book then we can talk about the squeaky clean­ers of the army.
Most Jamaicans are always and will for­ev­er be stu­pid. It is like a dieheart­ed polit­i­cal lack­ey, their par­ty is always the best regard­less of all the malfeances and atroc­i­ties they commit.

There was a time back when sol­diers based at Vernamfield Clarendon, actu­al­ly every week they arranged for and cause gan­ja planes to land on the strips and col­lect gan­ja, think­ing now are paragons of virtue?

The first RPG (Rocket Propel Grenade launch­er) recov­ered in Jamaica was in 1997 and was recov­ered by the police in Kingston 11 in pos­ses­sion of a sol­dier at top jun­gle or tank, Kingston 12.
The importer of this weapon was the nephew of Member of Parliament, and he was­n’t arrest­ed and charged for the shoul­der held weapon.
The man fled to anoth­er juris­dic­tion and the sol­dier was on bail, and he fled the country.

In 1999 a for­mer mem­ber of the Jamaican Defense Force who was a mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force and sta­tioned at Half-Way-Tree Police Station (name with­held) gave his police uni­form to a Canadian fugi­tive who was able to escape from the Kingston Public Hospital under police guard.
The fugi­tive was a white man, and the police offi­cer was half white. The fugi­tive was held a few weeks lat­er in Rose Town, Kingston 11 liv­ing with the for­mer sol­diers fam­i­ly mem­bers.
He was allowed to resign because they did not want to embar­rass the army because there were red flags dur­ing his antecedent inves­ti­ga­tions, but he got help from with­in the organization.

There were two (2) Trailer loads of guns and ammu­ni­tion found near a high rise build­ings down­town Kingston (near the Coronation Market). Those Containers were tak­en to JDF-HQ where they went miss­ing. You who are talk­ing about Soldiers hon­esty, please do some research and let us know your findings.

There was a Soldier name, Kenamar Johnson, who usu­al­ly trained gun­men in web lane, Clarendon to use, Ak and m16. He was a Sniper for the JDF and a hit man for the Web Lane Gang. He was even­tu­al­ly killed by Police in Clarendon, after he was dis­missed from the army.

Why Soldiers are more liked than police 🤔, first thing comes to mind (pow­ers of arrest), when you serve as an occu­py­ing force and have the pow­ers of arrest, I can tell you that peo­ple don’t like you as much…

So there, I believe there ought to be an account­ing by both the (JDF) and def­i­nite­ly the (JCF), of all mem­bers of the mil­i­tary who have been arrest­ed and charged with a crime and appro­pri­ate case dis­po­si­tions done involv­ing each case.
Just like the inci­dents of police cor­rup­tion are always right­ly in the open.
One of the things which I have sug­gest­ed the (JCF) can be bet­ter at, despite the lack of resources and sup­port from Government, is to do an over­all bet­ter job on its own.
These are some of the areas in which the Agency can col­lect this data and archive it, so that the Agency can use the data to debunk the lies and dis­re­spect com­ing from the two crim­i­nal gangs which run the coun­try, as well as to for­mu­late strate­gies.
Members of the (JCF) at all lev­els, have done tremen­dous harm to the Agency, for that there is no excuse.
The crimes attrib­uted to mem­bers are inex­plic­a­ble and inde­fen­si­ble.
The cor­rup­tion in the (JCF) is nev­er­the­less a func­tion of a wider soci­etal decay and lack of moral­i­ty which has its’ gen­e­sis at the high­est lev­els of Governmental Administrations.
Before the Politicians exploit for their own pur­pos­es, the dif­fer­ences between the two orga­ni­za­tions, it is impor­tant that they look in the mir­ror and first pluck the beam from their own eyes, then remove the cor­rupt crim­i­nals who are among them right there in the People’s house.
When there is moral lead­er­ship from the top the peo­ple have no choice but to fall in line.

There is a set of facts which is not being debat­ed as it relates to the con­tro­ver­sial issue of Joel Hamilton’s sojourn to becom­ing an Assistant Superintendent of Police.
From JDF staff Sergeant to District Constable in the JCF, then to civil­ian and now an Assitant Superintendent of Police.
Before we get to the hard facts of this mat­ter we need to briefly take a look at the con­se­quences of what occurred.
It is hav­ing a neg­a­tive effect on the JCF, peri­od.
Regardless of what the JCF spokesper­son says, it is not just about the facts of the mat­ter, the per­cep­tion is far more con­se­quen­tial than they would have you believe.
Sufficing to say, that the expla­na­tion out­lined by Dahlia Garrick, the head of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion arm of the JCF, is as jum­bled and inco­her­ent, as it is nonsensical. 

Before we get to the facts how­ev­er, we need to remem­ber that mem­bers of the JCF Rank and file are basi­cal­ly hostages in the job they under­take to pro­tect and serve.
They are not allowed an opin­ion on Social Media crit­i­cal of their boss­es or their polit­i­cal over­lords.
They are under penal­ty of seri­ous prison time, just for dar­ing to leave with­out first advis­ing their mas­ters, 6‑months in advance of their intend­ed depar­ture.
After a shoot­ing in which they are injured or oth­er­wise trau­ma­tized, they are forced to give affi­davits which could decide whether the actions they took in ser­vice to oth­ers could land them in prison for life.
No oth­er Jamaican has that bur­den placed on them, in fact, no oth­er Jamaican can be forced to give a state­ment account­ing for their action.
No oth­er Police Department does this to its offi­cers.
Though not a Military force, the JCF is the only Agency of Government which has these stip­u­la­tions forced on them.
Not to men­tion that those stip­u­la­tions have been added after the vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple serv­ing today had already start­ed serv­ing.
These poli­cies are intend­ed to snuff out dis­sent.
Essentially they should die in ser­vice to their coun­try but should not have an opinion.

Deputy Superintendent Dahlia Garrick, pushed back at the crit­i­cisms, say­ing the for­mer JDF staff sergeant was nev­er
pro­mot­ed to the rank of assis­tant super­in­ten­dent.
.
.
Wait.…what?
Instead, she said that Hamilton, who has near­ly two decades of secu­ri­ty expe­ri­ence, resigned as dis­trict con­sta­ble before he was appoint­ed through the nor­mal chan­nels.
Okay, wait just a f*****g minute there.
So an [appoint­ment] is not the same as a pro­mo­tion? You know if this state­ment was­n’t so inher­ent­ly retard­ed it would actu­al­ly be fun­ny.
What nor­mal chan­nel?
Did he go to the Police College to be trained, grad­u­at­ed and eval­u­at­ed before being giv­en such a senior Rank?
The answer is a resound­ing “No”. So how is the process of his ele­va­tion assumed to be through the nor­mal chan­nels?
This is exact­ly what Comedians mean when they say some­one is (brain-fuck­ing you).[sic]
Whoever sent her out to say that, has no respect for her, nei­ther do they have respect for the Jamaican peo­ple.
Notice I did not say any­thing about respect for the serv­ing mem­bers who are dis­tressed by this?
That is a fore­gone con­clu­sion!
The idea that an appoint­ment of that kind is rou­tine is in a word, “Bullshit.“
The idea that the Assistant Superintendent Rank was left open for exact­ly that pur­pose is false in this case, Joel Hamilton brings(a) absolute­ly noth­ing to the JCF which is not already there and (b) even if he did, he should have been sent to the Academy to do basic train­ing as a police offi­cer before ele­vat­ed to that Rank.
His ele­va­tion is a [ fuck-you ]to the hard-work­ing men and women of the JCF.
As I said before, they know it but they do not give a shit, who cares about these low-lev­el cops any­way?
The Jamaican econ­o­my is not near­ly large enough to absorb all the degrees being hand­ed out by the col­leges.
Somehow polit­i­cal favors have to be repaid, friends have to be posi­tioned, peo­ple have to eat- a‑food, what bet­ter place to put them than in the JCF.
A place where the poor­est peo­ple in the coun­try could, through ser­vice and risk-tak­ing, acquire some degree of pow­er.
They can­not have that any­more, and so they demo­nized the force as inher­ent­ly cor­rupt, inca­pable of reform.
They starved it of resources and refused to pay cops a liv­able wage.
Through high attri­tion, they man­aged to put their friends and cronies in place, all the time dis­re­spect­ing the Agency and mak­ing the case for replac­ing the peo­ple in it with bet­ter peo­ple more qual­i­fied peo­ple.
Only they are not.
These peo­ple from Utopia will ride in on gold­en Unicorns of Education, or in this case supe­ri­or expe­ri­ence in security.[sic]
What total and unadul­ter­at­ed bull­shit?
A sol­dier who was basi­cal­ly a body­guard has supe­ri­or train­ing and expe­ri­ence in secu­ri­ty which the JCF, the Nation’s pre-emi­nent secu­ri­ty Agency does not have?
While you con­tem­plate that bla­tant (brain-fuck ), or if you want to be polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, while you con­tem­plate that affront to your intel­lect, imag­ine that the JCF has nev­er had an instance in which a (VIP) in its charge has ever been lost. (
With the excep­tion of Roy McGann and his spe­cial cor­po­ral body­guard, Errol Whyte). Since they believe in the supe­ri­or­i­ty and trust­wor­thi­ness of the JDF every­one from the Prime Minister on down, and across both polit­i­cal par­ties should have their secu­ri­ty detail come from the JDF. I say this with the great­est degree of sar­casm but I also say it with the great­est degree of hope.

What the men and women in the trench­es are com­plain­ing about is not to be brushed aside.
They con­tend that Antony Anderson was brought in under the pre­text that cor­rup­tion was rife in the JCF.
So much so, that they had to bring in some­one from the out­side to be police com­mis­sion­er.
Antony Anderson played into that nar­ra­tive, promis­ing that he would not engage in the Owen Ellington style of lead­er­ship in which friends and fam­i­ly were pro­mot­ed to senior posi­tions they were not pre­pared for.
As far as the rank and file are con­cerned, this appoint­ment is exact­ly what Anderson promised he would not do.

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THE CONSTABLES (DISTRICT) ACT [Date of Commencement: 16^th May, 1899]

Appointment of dis­trict con­sta­bles

 (1) The Commissioner of Police may, with the sanc­tion of the Governor-General, appoint in any parish, such num­ber of per­sons as he may think nec­es­sary, being house­hold­ers res­i­dent in such parish, to be dis­trict con­sta­bles, whose pow­er and author­i­ty under this Act shall extend to all parts of the Island. 

Day in day out we talk in this medi­um about things which are unhealthy to our nation being tak­en for grant­ed and every­one sim­ply falls in line.
This sense of apa­thy, or igno­rance of best prac­tices allows those hold­ing the reins of polit­i­cal pow­er to con­tin­ue to push the bounds of nor­mal­cy and decen­cy.
In the above para­graph high­light­ed in blue, I cit­ed part of the District Constable Act as doc­u­ment­ed in [jamaicala​won​line​.com].
The pur­pose of this is to look at the author­i­ty under which the per­son act­ing as Commissioner of Police may appoint District Constables with the sanc­tion of the Governor-General.

Which brings me to the point of this Article.
A sim­mer­ing caul­dron of anger and resent­ment is brew­ing at the actions of the Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson.
Anderson who hails from the JDF, was brought in to be Commissioner of Police after a stint as the first National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister.
Anderson brought with him his dri­ver, a Jamaica Defense Sergeant, we have been reli­ably informed that Anderson appoint­ed that dri­ver a District Constable.

Now so far there is noth­ing unto­ward that a for­mer mem­ber of the JDF would want to join the JCF, albeit in an aux­il­iary role.
It has cer­tain­ly hap­pened before. In oth­er cas­es, for­mer mem­bers of the JDF has applied and entered the JCF, under­went the train­ing and became full-fledged mem­bers of the JCF and has served with dis­tinc­tion.
Now, remem­ber that the rea­sons giv­en to the Jamaican pub­lic for the con­tin­ued appoint­ment of for­mer heads of the JDF to head the JCF are that the Senior Corps of the JCF has been taint­ed and a new approach is need­ed.
Of course, if you join the JDF as an offi­cer and spend your career not inter­act­ing with crim­i­nals it is expect­ed that you will be seen as pris­tine and above board.
Before the knack on the JCF was that they were dumb and une­d­u­cat­ed, that can­not be used any­more, so they go to the default cor­rup­tion option to appoint their friends to these posi­tions of power.

Force orders March 7^th, 2019
Tucked away on page [13]
The Governor-General, act­ing on the advice of the Police Service Commission, has approved the appoint­ment of Mr. Joel Hamilton to the rank of Assistant Superintendent with effect from 2019-01-19. 

Tucked away on page 13 of the 45-page cir­cu­lar was the afore­men­tioned. You may be won­der­ing what is strange about it?
Okay, I need you to con­cen­trate here. This Mr. Joel Hamilton who is so neat­ly tucked away on page 13 with­out much fan­fare, where it could eas­i­ly slip by with­out any notice or com­mo­tion is the very same JDF dri­ver Antony Anderson brought over to the JCF and made him a District Constable.
That same Joel Hamilton is now an Assistant Superintendent of Police.
I know that you thought this sup­posed mod­ern­iza­tion of the JCF would once and for all eschew the Owen Ellington era of bla­tant and crass nepo­tism.
No, it has not stopped, it is sim­ply being done in a man­ner which ben­e­fits a dif­fer­ent set of peo­ple.
Those of us who served in the JCF know that the aver­age joe on the street is more enam­ored with mem­bers of the JDF and with good rea­son.
It is not unique to Jamaica it is a world-wide thing, sol­diers do not gen­er­al­ly haul crim­i­nals off to jail, what’s not to love?
And so Antony Anderson, like Hardley Lewin and Trevor McMillan before him came to the JCF as out­siders because the pow­ers who run the coun­try and their friends in high soci­ety con­vinced the larg­er pop­u­lace that there is no one suit­able or qual­i­fied enough to head the JCF.
Never mind that these are peo­ple who large­ly have come up through the ranks and have earned grad­u­ate degrees.
The fact of the mat­ter is that Anderson is no dif­fer­ent than Owen Ellington, or any oth­er Commissioner of Police has ever been.
Someone once said, ” the true test of a man is to give pow­er to him and watch how he con­ducts him­self”. If ever this was an appro­pri­ate quote, this inci­dent per­son­i­fies it.
The real­ly dis­heart­en­ing thing here is that I see jus­ti­fi­ca­tions used from time to time to shut down dis­qui­et over brazen instances of nepo­tism like this one.“Oh he brings spe­cial skills.“
Law enforce­ment Agencies hire peo­ple as con­sul­tants all the time. In fact, while I was at the Academy Mister Branford taught English but Mister Baranford was nev­er giv­en a police Rank.
There is absoloute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for giv­ing Rank to a civil­lian employ­ee in a police depart­ment which is struc­tured as a pyra­mid.
It kills morale, demo­ti­vates and cre­ate ran­cor.
This is wrong no mat­ter how it is spun. 

From what we learned this man brings noth­ing to the JCF which is not already there.
Unless of course being a dri­ver now requires some spe­cial skill. Of course, they will lie to you that he brings all kinds of dif­fer­ent tal­ents to the JCF.
The truth is it will be a lie.
The peo­ple above 35 ‑years old who have been serv­ing in the JCF are not like­ly to ever be pro­mot­ed above where they are at the moment. The sup­posed mod­ern­iza­tion of the JCF will even­tu­al­ly see those who have worked but are above the age of 35-years old dis­card­ed as col­lat­er­al dam­age.
Unfortunately, the qual­i­ty of ser­vice offered to the pub­lic by the JCF will not improve regard­less of the mon­e­tary expen­di­ture, because the fun­da­men­tal tenets of fair­ness, decen­cy and best prac­tices are miss­ing.
Like the now-defunct Air Jamaica, the JCF is being used as a means to place friends and fam­i­ly in posi­tions of pow­er.
It looks dif­fer­ent but it’s the same old eat-a-food for those in power.

I recent­ly wrote an arti­cle in sup­port of Representative Omar a first-term Democrat from Minnesota as the white Nationalist Republican Party and the pathet­ic Democratic Party, the Republican-lite Party piles onto her.
The pil­ing on is as a result of state­ments Omar made regard­ing AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israeli Zionist lob­by which has more than an over­sized role and influ­ence on America’s for­eign and local poli­cies.
Omar’s in a state­ment hint­ed that American sup­port for Israel is fueled by mon­ey from the pro-Israel lob­by­ing group AIPAC.
Omar lat­er apol­o­gized as a firestorm erupt­ed from lumpen who blind­ly give alle­giance to Israel.

“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grate­ful for Jewish allies and col­leagues who are edu­cat­ing me on the painful his­to­ry of anti-Semitic tropes.”
“My inten­tion is nev­er to offend my con­stituents or Jewish Americans as a whole,” Ms. Omar wrote, adding, “I unequiv­o­cal­ly apologize.” 

Donald Trump is President.
Steve King is still in the Congress, so too is Mark Meadows. Louie Gohmert. Steve Scalise and the end­less line of racists who attack whomev­er they chose with­out con­se­quence.
Nancy Pelosi the Democrat speak­er of the House has­n’t drawn up any res­o­lu­tion in con­dem­na­tion of them.
And the white Supremacist Republican par­ty would­n’t even con­sid­er doing so when they were in charge.
Yet Pelosi is in the process of tabling a res­o­lu­tion in con­dem­na­tion of Congresswoman Omar’s free speech, even though we are told that it will not men­tion Congresswoman Omar direct­ly.
This is in addi­tion to Marco Rubio ® Florida and Ben Cardin (D) Maryland bill, which would crim­i­nal­ize any American who boy­cotted the state of Israel.
This is the rea­son why peo­ple have no faith in the Democrat Party. And of course the act­ing jews on the Democrat side like Nita Lowey (D)NY, who believe that every­one must bow down in slav­ish feal­ty to the apartheid state.

Make no mis­take about it, no one should be fooled in not speak­ing out about American sup­port for the Apartheid state of Israel and the war crimes and crimes against human­i­ty being com­mit­ted by the Israeli army (IDF) against the Palestinian peo­ple.
Neither should any­one have any doubts about Israel’s hor­ri­ble human rights abus­es vis­it­ed upon real Hebrew African Jews who are return­ing to the land of their ances­tors, Palestine.
Attempts to label dis­senters “Anti-Semitic” is a clever strat­e­gy designed to shut down those who speak out against Israel’s apartheid poli­cies and it’s dis­dain for International norms and laws under the United Nation’s charter.

Nita Lowey.(Democrat tweet­ed)
(Lawmakers must be able to debate w/​o prej­u­dice or big­otry. I am sad­dened that Rep. Omar con­tin­ues to mis­char­ac­ter­ize sup­port for Israel. I urge her to retract this state­ment and engage in fur­ther dia­logue with the Jewish com­mu­ni­ty on why these com­ments are so hurtful).

Congresswoman Omar said noth­ing wrong and should not have apol­o­gized, much less hav­ing apol­o­gized repeat­ed­ly.
What they are after is not an apol­o­gy as Congresswoman Omar will dis­cov­er as she matures in the process.
They are after com­plete loy­al­ty and obe­di­ence to the dic­tates and poli­cies of the Apartheid state.
Policies pushed in America by AIPAC and the many oth­er Zionist Lobbies despite the fact that their teach­ings and poli­cies are direct­ly anti­thet­i­cal to her faith and beliefs.
When will the Congress pass a Resolution apol­o­giz­ing to us for slav­ery, Jim Crow, The Prison Industrial Complex and the con­tin­ued killing of our peo­ple by their var­i­ous strate­gies in place to dec­i­mate us? ( see polic­ing killings)
I bet you even the thought of that would have the likes of Steve Scalise up in arms against such a pro­pos­al.
To add insult to injury Congresswoman Omar has received hate­ful attacks on her sim­ply because she is of the Muslim faith. No Democrat or Republican has stepped for­ward in sup­port of her except con­gress­woman Ocasio Cortez.
Steve Scalise fur­ther tried on FOX hate TV to smear Congresswoman Omar ques­tion­ing whether she should even be receiv­ing intel­li­gence briefings.

Steve Scalise attend­ed white suprema­cist ral­lies and received back­ing from them. Should Scalise be receiv­ing intel­li­gence brief­ing?
The white suprema­cist groups which sup­port Steve Scalise pose the great­est secu­ri­ty threat to America and have been respon­si­ble for the great­est loss of life from the mass killings they have engaged in on American soil.
Scalise’s state­ments regard­ing Congresswoman Omar is a direct assault on her Muslim faith.
For Scalise and his par­ty and those in the Democrat Party who are gang­ing up on Representative Omar, it is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to let her know that as a (Muslim) an (African-American) and a( woman) she should sit down and be quiet.

The cow­ards and frauds in the Democrat Party who love to beat the drums about [Religious free­doms], [wom­en’s rights], and [First Amendment rights] have sac­ri­ficed what­ev­er cred­i­bil­i­ty they may have had left, in ser­vice to an Apartheid state for­mer President Jimmy Carter said is worse than what obtained in South Africa.
Guess what President Jimmy Carter should know.

It real­ly does­n’t mat­ter who the chef is, or who is stir­ring the pot. If the ingre­di­ents in the stew are not the right ones the out­come can­not be good. 

The essay I am about to write, whether con­densed or expan­sive will be well rep­re­sent­ed and encap­su­lat­ed in the above para­graph.
I will be rather brief nev­er­the­less, as I once again try to lay out rea­sons why the path we are on as it relates to crime and inse­cu­ri­ty in our coun­try is the wrong path.
There are two calls which gen­er­al­ly suc­ceed a killing or set of killings in our coun­try.
(1) What is the Commissioner of Police doing about it?
(2) What about a new crime Plan?

The fact of the mat­ter is that even if we were to appoint the best per­son imag­in­able, and even if we were to co-opt the best pos­si­ble crime plan any­one could devise for our unique sit­u­a­tion, sin­gu­lar­ly or togeth­er, these ini­tia­tives would have a neg­li­gi­ble, or no real pos­i­tive mea­sur­able effect.
Here’s why!
The police can only arrest peo­ple for crimes which are on the books.
I hard­ly think there is any­one who would dis­agree with the idea that our laws have not kept pace with the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the coun­try’s local crim­i­nals, much less those who are being deport­ed back to the Island.

And so we rec­og­nize that good laws which are well-inten­tioned, con­struct­ed and cod­i­fied, are an inte­gral part of what ought to be in the mix in order to have opti­mum results.
We do not have laws which ade­quate­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tar­gets those who plan, facil­i­tate, finance, and exe­cute crim­i­nal behav­ior. Subsequently, even if we have the best Commissioner of police in place, the absence of good laws makes it impos­si­ble for a mean­ing­ful dent to be made in crime.

The struc­tur­al inad­e­qua­cies and entrenched bul­warks which have been insti­tu­tion­al­ized and entrenched in the laws and pub­lic bod­ies make it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for bet­ter out­comes on the crime front.
The entire gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture is a giant incu­ba­tor for crime to hatch and flour­ish.
Unless we method­i­cal­ly tear down and rebuild the gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture which wit­ting­ly and in some cas­es unwit­ting­ly sup­ports crim­i­nal con­duct, all of the efforts sup­pos­ed­ly geared at the elim­i­na­tion of crime will be for naught. In the mean­time, lives con­tin­ue to be lost needlessly.

In order to under­stand why vio­lent crimes are so entrenched in our cul­ture, we have to face our own short­com­ings and pro­cliv­i­ties.
We are a vio­lent peo­ple which is neg­a­tive. Secondly, we are a peo­ple high­ly tol­er­ant of crim­i­nal con­duct.
Thirdly we are a cul­ture which reveres and is high­ly def­er­en­tial to infa­mous crim­i­nals regard­less of the deprav­i­ty with which they went about com­mit­ting the mur­ders and oth­er acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty attrib­uted to them.
For the most part, soci­ety has mort­gaged away the future sta­bil­i­ty of the nation on what can be derived now.
This is prob­a­bly most evi­dent in the inner sanc­tums of the gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties in which mur­der­ous thugs are giv­en def­er­en­tial treat­ment for a few dol­lars.
Young girls and boys are sur­ren­dered to the lust of local thugs because they hand out a few scraps from the ill-got­ten gains they have acquired, usu­al­ly at the expense of some­one’s life.

Yet the soci­ety sees noth­ing wrong with it, not the Media, not the Courts, not even the Government which has an oblig­a­tion to cre­ate sys­tems and prac­tices which secures the pop­u­la­tion. (Government par­ty-neu­tral)
In the decades fol­low­ing Independence, our nation has demon­strat­ed that we are capa­ble of com­pet­ing with any­one. In the areas of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, sports and what­ev­er else we put our heads to.
Even our much berat­ed and maligned police offi­cers are bea­cons of light when placed in the right envi­ron­ment. Nevertheless, we have also demon­strat­ed a fatal weak­ness for immoral­i­ty and myopia on the dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences crime is hav­ing on society.

We have a soci­ety in which the entire sys­tem is flawed, yet the blame is placed on the seg­ment of the struc­ture which has the least pow­er, speak­ing of the police.
On the one hand, we have a Bench, Bar, and Prosecution which large­ly grad­u­at­ed from the Norman Manley Law School. This cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion which is almost a con­flict of inter­est just not in the tra­di­tion­al sense.
It is bad enough that all of the peo­ple who pop­u­late the Judgeships, the Prosecutor’s office, and the Private Bar almost all come from the same school. But when the School is a left­ist Institution like the University of the West Indies is, it becomes incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to get pro­fes­sion­als to staff the dif­fer­ent areas of the jus­tice sys­tem who have a clear under­stand­ing of the dan­gers crime pos­es to society.

To add insult to injury the polit­i­cal class pret­ty much all come from the same left­ist insti­tu­tion, and so are the social work­ers, and oth­er peo­ple who staff the jus­tice sys­tem. So too are the legions who staff the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies.
Essentially, but for a few cas­es, the entire work­force at the high­er lev­els of gov­ern­ment all came out of the gates of the UWI Mona Campus or the Cave Hill Campus in Trinidad to a less­er extent. Even so, it makes no dif­fer­ence, as the very same left-wing ide­ol­o­gy is the hall­mark of that insti­tu­tion in Trinidad as well.
It has always been so.
The straw which broke the prover­bial Camel’s back has been the push to edu­cate the lead­ers of the sin­gle police force which has the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the Island’s 2.8 mil­lion inhab­i­tants.
And now the police depart­ment has become a lum­ber­ing behe­moth of over 10’000, top heavy with lead­ers who grad­u­at­ed from .….….…. you guessed it. The University of the West Indies.

Prior to the influx of peo­ple with degrees into the JCF, the Agency was derid­ed and ridiculed as a bunch of une­d­u­cat­ed or at best poor­ly edu­cat­ed losers who could­n’t find work else­where.
Today the force is prob­a­bly the most edu­cat­ed any­where in the world with many serv­ing mem­bers hav­ing grad­u­ate Degrees.
Unfortunately, for law-abid­ing Jamaicans, that amass­ing of knowl­edge has not trans­lat­ed into a bet­ter crime-fight­ing force.
In fact, there is a good argu­ment to be made that the force is worse than 30 years ago when we hard­ly had any­one in the depart­ment with degrees.
In actu­al­i­ty, it is a net pos­i­tive to have high­ly edu­cat­ed, high­ly moti­vat­ed peo­ple serv­ing in all areas of gov­ern­ment, includ­ing law enforce­ment.
Nevertheless, they have to want to be police offi­cers, not just wear the uni­form and col­lect a pay­check.
The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that many of the peo­ple in lead­er­ship posi­tions today real­ly have no heart for polic­ing but the small econ­o­my in the coun­try does not offer many oppor­tu­ni­ties after grad­u­at­ing from — -the University.

Still, it would be a mis­take to blame the hap­less police depart­ment and its top-heavy cabal of lead­ers with Doctorates and Masters Degrees for the Nation’s woes.
The truth is that the nation is an anom­aly. It is one of the few places any­where where peo­ple gen­uine­ly bend over back­ward to accom­mo­date crim­i­nals and to make excus­es and ratio­nal­ize away vio­lent crim­i­nal acts as nor­mal.
The entire Governing struc­ture is built around the enhance­ment of crime.
Many argue and dis­agree with my assess­ment but can­not come up with a cred­i­ble expla­na­tion for the rea­sons behind the coun­try’s inabil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate and put away know crim­i­nals like Christopher (Duddus)Coke or his father before him.
No one can explain why on the rare occa­sion that a mur­der­er like Vybz Kartel is found guilty of Murder and appro­pri­ate­ly sen­tenced to prison the Appellate Court is almost cer­tain to release him on some incon­se­quen­tial tech­ni­cal­i­ty.
Who is pay­ing off these Judges?
Why is it that there is no one of promi­nence locked away at the Tower-street or the Horizon cor­rec­tion­al facility/​
The answer is clear, the sys­tem is cor­rupt and slant­ed to keep con­nect­ed crim­i­nals out of prison.
Now the ghet­to youths know it and they refuse to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than the light-skinned upper class peo­ple from upper Saint Andrew.

So how do you fix all this you ask?
I do not pre­tend to have all of the answers, but we need a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent atti­tude on crime nation­al­ly.
The so-called Conservative Prime Minister now occu­py­ing Jamaica House is a prod­uct of the left­ist UWI.
It is a con­tra­dic­tion in actu­al terms. There can be no Conservatism com­ing out of an insti­tu­tion which has, through its entire exis­tence been a caul­dron of left­ist, com­mu­nist dog­ma.
There is not a sin­gle insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing which is geared at prepar­ing the work­force based on Conservative prin­ci­ples of God, Family, coun­try.
None geared at teach­ing about small­er Government, root­ing out cor­rup­tion, and build­ing a pri­vate sec­tor in which the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it can thrive and achieve its full poten­tial.
There is no Institution which teach­es peo­ple not to depend on Government but to depend on themselves.

In so much as Socialism ‑or more specif­i­cal­ly Democratic-Socialism has been an abject fail­ure to Jamaica, so too must the UWI take respon­si­bil­i­ty.
As the Institution which had a vir­tu­al monop­oly on high­er learn­ing, the University of the West Indies has failed the peo­ple and coun­try through the mis­guid­ed poli­cies and peo­ple which came out of its doors.
To this day the cor­rup­tion in the var­i­ous Government agen­cies may be placed square­ly at the feet of the grad­u­ates of that insti­tu­tion who seem­ing­ly are self-absorbed Autocrats, in it for them­selves.
We can­not get mean­ing­ful laws because the peo­ple whose job it is to cre­ate those laws and to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment in which law-abid­ing peo­ple can have con­fi­dence came from a sys­tem in which the rule of law is just a pass­ing thought.

In the mean­time, America will have to con­tin­ue to take away our transna­tion­al crim­i­nals when­ev­er its inter­est is affect­ed.
Murderers, Drug Dealers, Lotto-Scammers all. But it is not America’s job to pun­ish Jamaica’s crim­i­nal scum.
It is for Jamaica to get its act togeth­er and stop play­ing games with this crit­i­cal issue.
Failure by the two polit­i­cal par­ties leg­isla­tive­ly and behav­ioral­ly. Failure by the Judiciary which likes to claim inde­pen­dence for itself.
Failure by the pub­lic sec­tor and pub­lic bod­ies to demand account­abil­i­ty and action on crime have brought us to where we are today.
A coun­try in an unde­clared cold civ­il war. A small nation of 2.8 mil­lion and a crime rate in the top five most vio­lent nations on the plan­et.
Yet that evokes no out­rage, it elic­its no sense of shock or alarm. The cry right now is to free (wurl boss) a con­vict­ed mur­der­er whose claim to fame is to cre­ate dement­ed, degen­er­a­tive lyrics.
May God help us.

But don’t expect to hear about it on the nightly news.

By Ben Ehrenreich

As famine and drought spread through Somaliland, a vil­lager car­ries bags of rice, sug­ar, dates and palm oil back to his house after col­lect­ing food from a char­i­ty, May 2017. (Joe Giddens /​PA Wire)There’s a blur where the hori­zon once was, a ques­tion mark nag­ging at every sen­tence you might think to form. The daf­fodils are pret­ty, but aren’t they a lit­tle ear­ly this year? Is it okay to enjoy the warmth of the sun on your bare arms in February? Some of us get to expe­ri­ence cli­mate change as some­thing like a mood, an unwel­come sixth sense that allows us to imag­ine every­thing we know and love in ruins. It becomes con­crete only in sud­den, head­line-grab­bing bursts: a typhoon here, a wild­fire there, anoth­er species some­where lost. It’s real enough, we know, but main­ly we expe­ri­ence it as a shad­ow cast by some­thing that hasn’t hap­pened yet. To some of us, at least.

It is not every­where so abstract. In 2017, I vis­it­ed the inde­pen­dent but unrec­og­nized nation of Somaliland, the north­ern third of what usu­al­ly gets called Somalia. Crisscrossing the road­less savan­nah, I quick­ly learned that cadav­ers meant a vil­lage was near. Usually they start­ed a few miles out: main­ly sheep and goats, but also camels and don­keys dry­ing to leather on the bare, red earth. The pre­vi­ous year, the autumn rains had failed to arrive. The spring rains didn’t come either. Everywhere peo­ple told me drought had tak­en as much as 90 per­cent of their herds — the pri­ma­ry form of cap­i­tal in an over­whelm­ing­ly pas­toral econ­o­my. And every­where I saw peo­ple on the move: in des­per­ate search of pas­ture, or, hav­ing already lost every­thing, of some oth­er source of sus­te­nance. New com­mu­ni­ties were form­ing on the edges of the cities, ragged camps of the dis­placed, once-proud herders reduced to gath­er­ing grav­el for pen­nies a day with no prospects ahead but fur­ther loss. 

That was near­ly two years ago. Last year, the spring rains came hard, but the herds were gone, the dam­age done. Most of the country’s wealth had been reduced already to bones. The fall’s rains were weak again, and hunger is once more on the march. In the Horn of Africa, invis­i­bly to most Western eyes, the cat­a­stro­phe of cli­mate change has already altered everything.

Last week, the inter­na­tion­al NGO CARE pub­lished its third annu­al report on the world’s 10 most-under-report­ed human­i­tar­i­an crises. Being a bat­tle­ground in the US war on ter­ror still gets you in the news some­times, which is like­ly why Somalia did not rate a men­tion, but its neigh­bor, Ethiopia, received the unwel­come hon­or of mak­ing the list twice. It held sec­ond place for hunger in its east, where the same drought that hit Somalia two years ago has left more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple in need of human­i­tar­i­an aid, and sev­enth place for mas­sive dis­place­ment in the south, where vio­lence broke out between pas­toral and agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties last spring. (Throughout the con­ti­nent, drought is spurringdead­ly con­flicts between herders and farm­ers over land rights.) By the end of the sum­mer, near­ly a mil­lion peo­ple had fled their homes.

This year, CARE high­light­ed the fact that almost all of these crises can be traced in large part to cli­mate change. In Sudan, unpre­dictable rain­fall has meant “fre­quent droughts,” occa­sion­al flood­ing, and “extreme hunger.” In the island nation of Madagascar, “at the front­line of cli­mate change,” cyclones and drought have put 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple at risk of hunger and, accord­ing to UNICEF, a stag­ger­ing 49 per­cent of the country’s chil­dren have been left stunt­ed by mal­nu­tri­tion. In the Philippines, 2018’s fiercest storm, “super-typhoon” Mangkhut, fed by the heat of the warm­ing oceans, dis­placed more than a mil­lion peo­ple. In Niger, deser­ti­fi­ca­tion has spurred vio­lence and dis­place­ment, just as it has in Chad, where near­ly half the pop­u­la­tion is now chron­i­cal­ly mal­nour­ished. The major source of fresh water in the region, Lake Chad, has shrunk to one-twen­ti­eth the area it once cov­ered. In Haiti it was drought again, plus three dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­canes over two con­sec­u­tive years, leav­ing near­ly 3 mil­lion peo­ple in need of imme­di­ate aid.

The num­bers, all those mil­lions upon mil­lions, are abstract. The real­i­ties are not. Imagine a child you can­not com­fort, a par­ent you can­not save, a lover lost in the con­fu­sion, a home you’ll nev­er see again. Imagine all pos­si­bil­i­ties fore­closed, and then begin mul­ti­ply­ing those imag­in­ings by thou­sands, and thou­sands of thou­sands, and on.Of course, cli­mate change is far from the only cause of all this suf­fer­ing. Infrastructure was already poor or absent, inequal­i­ty and insta­bil­i­ty already pro­found. All of these crises took shape in a glob­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem in which wealth and resources flow in one direc­tion — from poor coun­tries to rich ones — and mis­ery flows in the oth­er. But the droughts and the storms have trig­gered what Christian Parenti has called a “cat­a­stroph­ic con­ver­gence” in which dis­as­ters do not mere­ly hap­pen simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, but “com­pound and ampli­fy each other.” 

Read more here: https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​c​l​i​m​a​t​e​-​c​h​a​n​g​e​-​m​e​d​i​a​-​h​u​m​a​n​i​t​a​r​i​a​n​-​c​r​i​s​es/