Israel’s attor­ney gen­er­al on Thursdayannounced he will indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on cor­rup­tion charges, local media report­ed. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said he planned to charge Netanyahu with bribery, fraud and breach of trust. All charges are sub­ject to a hear­ing, which will like­ly take place after a snap elec­tion to be held in April. 
Police inves­ti­ga­tors rec­om­mend­ed pros­e­cut­ing Netanyahu on sev­er­al counts last year, set­ting up months of pub­lic spec­u­la­tion over when Mandelblit would announce the charges. The indict­ment is now like­ly to be a focal point of the cam­paign as Netanyahu vies for a fifth term in office. 
Netanyahu’s Likud par­ty unsuc­cess­ful­ly staged a last-ditch effort to pro­tect him, peti­tion­ing the high court ear­li­er Thursday to block Mandelblit’s announcement. 

Netanyahu has sur­vived mul­ti­ple scan­dals over his decades in Israeli pol­i­tics ― rang­ing from pub­licly admit­ting to an extra­mar­i­tal affair on the evening news to fac­ing graft and bribery alle­ga­tions ― but has nev­er before faced an offi­cial indict­ment. Although cor­rup­tion and graft charges are not unusu­al in Israeli pol­i­tics, the coun­try has also nev­er had a sit­ting prime min­is­ter con­vict­ed of a crime. Police inves­ti­gat­ed Netanyahu in three sep­a­rate cas­es. The first case accus­es Netanyahu of improp­er­ly accept­ing about $270,000 in lux­u­ry gifts, such as cig­ars and jew­el­ry, from bil­lion­aires James Packer and Arnon Milchan. Netanyahu alleged­ly helped Milchan with tax exemp­tions and oth­er favors. In anoth­er case, police believe Netanyahu tried to make a deal to get favor­able press cov­er­age in one of Israel’s biggest news­pa­pers in exchange for dam­ag­ing a rival pub­li­ca­tion. The third case also con­cerns Netanyahu alleged­ly try­ing to engi­neer pos­i­tive press ― this time push­ing through reg­u­la­to­ry deci­sions to ben­e­fit the country’s biggest telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny, Bezeq, which owns a pop­u­lar Israeli website. 

The cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion into Netanyahu’s sus­pect­ed deal­ings began in 2016, but inten­si­fied when the prime minister’s for­mer chief of staff Ari Harow began coop­er­at­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors in the sum­mer of 2017 in a bid to avoid jail time. Israeli police made mul­ti­ple rec­om­men­da­tions last year to indict Netanyahu, say­ing that there was suf­fi­cient evi­dence to charge him. Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, was also indict­ed on fraud charges last year for mis­us­ing $100,000 in state funds in a sep­a­rate case.Netanyahu has gone to great lengths to char­ac­ter­ize the alle­ga­tions against him as a “witch hunt” from “the left and the media” intend­ed to force him out of office. He’s asked to pub­licly con­front the state’s wit­ness­es against him, called the alle­ga­tions a “joke” and claimed that announc­ing the indict­ments before an elec­tion would be unfair­ly dam­ag­ing to his cam­paign. Earlier this year, he gave a nation­al­ly tele­vised address to dis­pute the alle­ga­tions and again cast him­self as the vic­tim of a polit­i­cal plot. 

Although Netanyahu dis­missed the inves­ti­ga­tions, he also tried to bar­gain with the attor­ney gen­er­al and request­ed in mid-January that any indict­ment announce­ment be delayed until after the elec­tion. Israeli law does not require a prime min­is­ter to step down even if they are indict­ed, how­ev­er, and Netanyahu has made it clear he will con­test the charges against him as he attempts to remain in pow­er. Prior to the charges, Netanyahu was wide­ly expect­ed to win re-elec­tion in April’s vote, but fall far short of the num­bers need­ed for major­i­ty rule. In pre­vi­ous months he was able to main­tain a shaky coali­tion gov­ern­ment between his Likud par­ty and allies made up of far-right and reli­gious par­ties. If Netanyahu does man­age to win in April and suc­cess­ful­ly form a gov­ern­ment, he stands to become Israel’s longest-serv­ing prime minister.

Netanyahu is one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest defend­ers abroad, tout­ing the president’s deci­sion to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in his cam­paign videos and offer­ing sup­port for Trump’s bor­der wall with Mexico.

Nick Robins-EarlySenior World News Reporter, HuffPostSuggest a correction

In the meantime,Police identify victims of Westmoreland triple murder.

Yesterday I talked about the fact that INDECOM has become the best asset the crim­i­nal under­world in Jamaica has at its dis­pos­al.
There is always push-back when we talk about the Independent Commission of Investigations(INDECOM).
This is so because over the last four decades Jamaica swung so far on the anti-police-o-meter[sic] , that Jamaicans can­not under­stand that INDECOM in its present con­struct is a swing way too far in the oth­er direc­tion.
It is with­in that envi­ron­ment that one has to keep say­ing to the indoc­tri­nat­ed pop­u­lace, that we are not opposed to over­sight of police. It is with­in that envi­ron­ment that even serv­ing police offi­cers are not opposed to over­sight.
It is not what they want to hear how­ev­er, telling them that police offi­cers past and present and even future cops under­stand the idea of account­abil­i­ty.
But they can­not let go of the nar­ra­tive they have cul­ti­vat­ed for them­selves, that we aren’t opposed to over­sight, because once they do so, they will have to deal with the point by point argu­ments that police offi­cers past and present have made in rela­tion to the INDECOM Act, which makes the agency problematic.

For starters, when there is an [inde­pen­dent] agency look­ing at the actions of the police, actions which for years some have argued were exces­sive and out of the bounds of nor­mal pro­to­cols, it is a good thing.
What isn’t a good thing, is when the [inde­pen­dent agency] start­ed out as a mon­ster and has metas­ta­sized into an uncon­trol­lable out of con­trol par­tial­ly tax­pay­er-fund­ed weapon of self-inter­est.
No police offi­cer can col­lect a state­ment from an onlook­er at an event hap­pen­ing in the street and on the strength of that affi­davit alone, hope to gain a con­vic­tion in a court of law.
In the bro­ken, left­ist courts sys­tem we have, even with good evi­dence mur­der­ers are allowed to walk free on the flim­si­est of tech­ni­cal­i­ties.
On the oth­er hand, INDECOM gets a state­ment from a (paid mourn­er), who said he/​she saw a police offi­cer shoot an (inno­cent unarmed choir­boy), who was on a (fast track to the University of the West Indies), in his bed­room at (three in the morn­ing) and its enough to arrest and con­vict a cop.
While we are on the sub­ject let me insert this bit of irony for posterity.

AS AN ASIDE
Constable Chucky Brown was sen­tenced to life in prison with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole until he has served 51 ‑years in prison.
Chucky Brown, the gullible eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed ham was remov­ing mur­der­ers from the streets.
Gangsters who kill inno­cents with­out com­punc­tion, babies includ­ed, on the rare occa­sion they are found guilty, gets sev­en years and are gen­er­al­ly out in four, if the court of appeals does not let them out before that.
No mur­der­er to my knowl­edge, has ever received that kind of sen­tence. Yet it is a shin­ing exam­ple of where the coun­try is in its sup­port and tol­er­ance to crime

As bad as that is, cops today may be bet­ter served by watch­ing the clock and doing the bare min­i­mum. This is a good way to avoid and nav­i­gate the mine­field that the JLP and PNP have cre­at­ed for police offi­cers in our coun­try.
Even offi­cers who are out on traf­fic duty should con­sid­er not both­er­ing the law­less taxi and bus oper­a­tors.
Because of course, issu­ing a tick­et to an errant bus oper­a­tor who has mul­ti­ple unpaid tick­ets and con­fis­cat­ing his bus is an encounter which will cause a mob of law­less blood-thirsty ani­mals to threat­en your life.
Not to men­tion that the law­less cretin will attack you forc­ing you to have to defend your­self.
And God for­bid, that he died because you auto­mat­i­cal­ly just com­mit­ted an extra-judi­cial killing. (We’ll get back to that).
It will be fol­lowed by false state­ments to INDECOM, we’ve all heard the state­ments of events seem­ing­ly from an alter­nate uni­verse.
There will be zero state­ments from the inter­lop­er at 103 Old Hope Road in sup­port of offi­cers and there will be no state­ment urg­ing cit­i­zens to obey the laws.
It will absolute­ly not elic­it out­rage from Jamaica House, because the occu­pant of that office from his child­hood years thought of the police as the bad guys.
The Commissioner of police can­not speak out because he is the arche­type of the sys­tem they cre­at­ed.
Those in JAMAICA House will not speak out, they cre­at­ed the sys­tem. And the oth­ers who lay in wait to seize pow­er, won’t con­demn it either, the sys­tem works just fine for their exis­tence.
Somehow, they will con­vince you that they are work­ing for you but the police are so cor­rupt that the sys­tem is not work­ing as it should.

Nevertheless, as a friend point­ed out yes­ter­day our police are the National Scapegoat. They manip­u­late the pub­lic into think­ing that all the prob­lems of crime and dis­or­der are because of cor­rupt police. The pub­lic is not dis­cern­ing enough to rec­og­nize that the sys­tem is deeply flawed. The same police that get cussed and dissed here, shine in the UN Peacekeeping mis­sions and var­i­ous Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries. This is due to good laws, reg­u­la­tions, infra­struc­ture, poli­cies, pro­ce­dures and hav­ing the right peo­ple in the right place at the right time.
We chose based on crony­ism, nepo­tism and oth­er trib­al char­ac­ter­is­tics and pro­vide out­dat­ed ram­shackle “sys­tems” to take care of busi­ness. It’s like using the Wright Brothers air­plane to car­ry pas­sen­gers in the jet age”. 

For years, decades even, unin­formed dem­a­gogues have made a name for them­selves, and cre­at­ed and made anti-police dog­ma the nation’s largest growth indus­try.
From Flo O’Connor to Wilmott Perkins, From Ronald Thwaites to Horace Levy, from Barbara Gloudon to Carolyn Gomez to every oth­er mal­con­tent look­ing for a ride to infamy, they have made attack­ing the police their cause celeb.
But it’s not just about those indi­vid­u­als who have lived off the police, entire agen­cies and dis­ci­plines have also jumped on the band­wag­on and helped to bring the coun­try to where it is today.
The media knew full well that the all too pre­dictable demon­stra­tions which fol­lowed the unfor­tu­nate shoot­ing of thugs who chal­lenged the police and lost, were staged.
They knew that the peo­ple were forced to go out and say that they wit­nessed the shoot­ing. Never mind that the inci­dent hap­pened in the mid­dle of the night usu­al­ly in some house the police went to look for a want­ed thug.
The Media knew the sto­ries were con­coct­ed and the demon­stra­tors were some­times paid for or the par­tic­i­pants threat­ened to go out and lie.
None of the afore­men­tioned made a damn dif­fer­ence. The mass hys­te­ria and the buzz it cre­at­ed was good for rat­ings and that was all that mat­tered.
But the chick­en has now come home to roost. None is exempt, even the pro­tect­ed polit­i­cal class is no longer exempt.
Whether it’s a Member of Parliament get­ting stabbed to death in his home, or eight get­ting shot in Westmoreland yes­ter­day the chick­ens have f*****g come home to roost. 

But if we set aside the Media’s role in the pro­lif­er­a­tion of lies and mass hys­te­ria, I would like to once again look at the term (extra­ju­di­cial killing) which has been the fire­wall for the anti-police crowd.
I can­not say that there haven’t been extra-judi­cial killings in the JCF. God knows some of the peo­ple who have infil­trat­ed the agency have com­mit­ted all kinds of crim­i­nal acts, it is pret­ty dif­fi­cult to mount a defense of polic­ing some­times.
Like every oth­er crime cred­it­ed to police an extra-judi­cial killing here and there, may very well be in there with the rest of them.
And that is all it took for the anti-police trolls to co-opt the term and use it to describe every inci­dent in which the police are forced to defend them­selves in the third most vio­lent nation on earth.

Let that sink in for a moment.
The peo­ple who talk the most about “EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLINGS’ have zero con­cepts of what con­sti­tutes the same.
Worse yet, they have nev­er served in law enforce­ment and do not under­stand the rules of engage­ment, or the life and death deci­sions offi­cers are forced to make in mil­lisec­onds.
That does not stop them from speak­ing about the sub­ject with author­i­ty in their lit­tle cir­cles, on their sil­ly lit­tle tele­vi­sion pro­grams, in their lit­tle con­fer­ence rooms, and on the radio as they pon­tif­i­cate to the Lumpenproletariat.
Never mind that their pon­tif­i­ca­tion is based on what they read from the tiny lit­tle cir­cles in which they exist, based on no cred­i­ble under­stand­ing of what it is like to make life and death deci­sions in under a sec­ond.
What they have effec­tive­ly done is to cre­ate an end­less cycle of talk­ing points neg­a­tive­ly car­i­ca­tur­ing the police as vio­lent unchecked killers who kill inno­cent peo­ple.
The police, not hav­ing the means to respond, became the hat­ed vil­lains, in a soci­ety now inun­dat­ed with vio­lent mur­ders, rapes, and oth­er vio­lent crimes.

Every one of the bot­tom-feed­ers who has made names for them­selves from demo­niz­ing the police has reaped boun­ti­ful rewards for their actions.
National hon­ors, seats in par­lia­ment, and oth­er perks have been bestowed on them all. And so the next gen­er­a­tion of bot­tom feed­ers are already in the pipeline wait­ing to feed on the dead car­cass which the police force has become.
The Emperor’s ass is show­ing but don’t tell him it is. No one lined up to watch the spec­ta­cle haugh­ti­ness and self-aggran­dize­ment cre­at­ed, has the char­ac­ter to say this is crazy you are naked.
No one is coura­geous enough to tell the Emperor that when we had name brand cops, inno­cent dead Jamaicans were way down and dead and incar­cer­at­ed crim­i­nals were way up.
Because the naked Emperor is con­vinced still, that if we love the crim­i­nals they will change their ways. If we look after their rights they will decide to become mod­el cit­i­zens.
As the death toll of the inno­cent ris­es, the gangs are get­ting more embold­ened and the bod­ies are pil­ing up.
The Emperor’s ass is showing.

Say what you want about some of the deci­sions around the peri­od right about the time we gained our inde­pen­dence, but I love them. You know ..say about Bustamante’s deci­sion to tell the Police to bring in the Rasta’s dead or alive.“
The revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­ans all write in glow­ing terms, the strug­gles of the “Rastas” lead­ing up to the Coral Gardens inci­dent in which Rastafarians end­ing up in a con­fronta­tion with the police in a strug­gle between the State and anarchy.

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One of the things which made me an eter­nal skep­tic as it relates to how some of these sto­ries are told is the fact that I lived in Jamaica for 31 years.
That expe­ri­ence gave me a pret­ty good idea how to read between the lines rather than read what’s writ­ten on them some­times.
I damn sure was not around dur­ing the Coral Gardens inci­dent but hav­ing looked at the inci­dent across sev­er­al accounts, I real­ized that the pre­vail­ing nar­ra­tive has been a san­i­tized ver­sion which has not only result­ed in the Holness Administration apol­o­giz­ing to Rastas and giv­ing them a (M$10) resti­tu­tion as they did in Tivoli Gardens, but end­ed up shap­ing the direc­tion and atti­tudes of the coun­try to present day.

Regardless of who writes the nar­ra­tive, the sto­ry is the same. The gen­er­al slant is writ­ten in a way that makes it impos­si­ble not to be sup­port­ive are at least empa­thet­ic, when the entire text is excul­pa­to­ry of the Rastafarians with all incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence and the rea­sons for Bustamante’s orders left out.
Here is what I mean .….….….….

“BAD FRIDAY inau­gu­rates the first in depth account of Jamaica’s own Easter Rising — in any medi­um. When, at Easter 1963, Rastafarians rose up at Coral Gardens, on what was once part of the infa­mous Rose Hall plan­ta­tion, they were seek­ing to avenge them­selves against a ‘Babylonian’ sys­tem of ram­pant social injus­tice. By bring­ing to us the poignant tes­ti­mo­ny of the men and women who wit­nessed and whose lives were for­ev­er scarred by these events, Bad Friday oblig­es us to con­front the shock­ing lev­el of state vio­lence that was unleashed against not only the indi­vid­u­als involved, but also against the entire Rastafarian com­mu­ni­ty of Jamaica, most par­tic­u­lar­ly in the parish of St. James where the ris­ing occurred. And like the slave ris­ings of an ear­li­er time, absolute­ly no mer­cy was shown by the régime in pow­er. How iron­ic it was that the events and their vio­lent after­math should have occurred in the very first year of the new post­colo­nial Jamaica. In this sense, Coral Gardens was an omen, if one was need­ed, that things were going to go bad­ly in the Afro-slave yard in Jamaica. Now, thanks to this evoca­tive film, we are able to appre­ci­ate the full hor­ror of the events from that dis­tant time and what they por­tend­ed. I salute and con­grat­u­late every­one involved in the mak­ing of this redemp­tive and tru­ly valu­able work of his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry.”
- Robert A. Hill, University of California, Los Angeles.

Notice the same tropes char­ac­ter­iz­ing the event, writ­ten by peo­ple who have their own ideas of how the nar­ra­tive is to be shaped?
Enveloping the nar­ra­tive in broad­er cov­er­age of oppres­sion and social injus­tice, they knew quite well that peo­ple of col­or and black peo­ple, in par­tic­u­lar, would be hard pressed not to find com­mon cause with the Rastafarians ref­er­enced in this accounting.

It was fifty years ago April 11, 1963 when the Jamaican state used an alter­ca­tion at Coral Gardens on the out­skirts of Montego Bay, Jamaica to mount a vio­lent cam­paign against the Rastafarian com­mu­ni­ty in Western Jamaica. This events of April 21963 involved a group of Rastafarians and at the end of the inci­dent, eight were killed and two police­men per­ished in the inci­dent. The brethren had claimed free­dom of move­ment for them­selves and for oth­er oppressed Jamaicans. They were being pre­vent­ed from walk­ing along the areas of the Coast close to the Half Moon Bay Hotel. These areas were being seg­re­gat­ed in order to make the Montego Bay area ready for inter­na­tion­al invest­ments in tourism.
This writer vivid­ly remem­bers that events of April 1963 because it was the same day we interred the remains of my younger sis­ter who had joined the ances­tors. We lived in an area where we knew broth­ers and sis­ters. We also knew Rastas from the dif­fer­ent work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties across Montego Bay and its envi­rons. That week­end is now known among free­dom-lov­ing Caribbean per­sons as the week­end of Bad Friday. The con­ti­nu­ities from that peri­od of repres­sion are to be found in many areas of the social life of Jamaica and the Caribbean. The chil­dren of the class forces that orches­trat­ed that repres­sion has now aligned with nation­al­ists and even for­mer Rastas who are the con­duits for the exploita­tion of the peo­ple.

Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. His recent book is Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. He is the author of: Rasta and Resistance From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney; Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation; Pan Africanism, Pan Africanists and African Liberation in the 21^st Century; and Barack Obama and 21^st Century Politics. Follow on Twitter @Horace_Campbell.

I cit­ed just two exam­ples of writ­ings in which the writ­ers have latched onto Rastafarian vic­tim­hood. In both exam­ples, the writ­ers decid­ed on shap­ing the nar­ra­tive them­selves, instead of telling the sto­ries and allow­ing the facts to dic­tate the essence of the events as they occurred.
They co-opt­ed the san­i­tized ver­sion of events which Jamaica’s pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als have scrubbed and repack­aged and sold, not just to Jamaicans, but to out­siders, in a mad rush to embrace Rastafarianism.
For those unable to under­stand why, look no fur­ther than the late Robert Nesta Marley, Jamaica’s Rastafarian Reggae artiste who brought inter­na­tion­al musi­cal acclaim to the Island.
Marley is wor­shiped as a lit­er­al God, in some cir­cles. If Marley and oth­ers like him were to be can­on­ized for pos­ter­i­ty, their Rastafarian faith also had to be scrubbed of it’s enti­tled and vio­lent past.

Here are some facts which they just failed to incor­po­rate into the sto­ry which once under­stood, not only cast a dif­fer­ent light on those events but makes Andrew Holness’ apol­o­gy that much more galling and rep­re­hen­si­ble.
By the late 1950s, a group of Rastafarians had begun to attract atten­tion from over­seas with the vis­it of mem­bers of the USA-based First Africa Corps who joined the Claudius Henry-led mil­i­tants at a camp in Red Hills.
In April of 1960, the police car­ried out a raid on the camp, arrest­ing Henry and seized a num­ber of weapons.
Henry and a hand­ful of the group’s mem­ber­ship were charged with trea­son.
 Rudolph Franklin, a Cornwall College grad­u­ate who had embraced the Rastafarian faith, became embroiled in a land dis­pute with the Kerr-Jarrett fam­i­ly in west­ern Jamaica.
Franklin was report­ed­ly farm­ing ille­gal­ly (cap­ture land, squat­ting)on lands in the Tryall area. From the reports, the landown­ers had engaged the ser­vices of the police to remove the ille­gal squatting/​farming on their land and, dur­ing an alter­ca­tion with one of the police offi­cers, Franklin was shot five times and left for dead in a church­yard.
His body was lat­er dis­cov­ered by school­child­ren and removed to a local hos­pi­tal where he was treat­ed, but on his release, he was charged with pos­ses­sion of gan­ja. Franklin was sen­tenced to six months in prison and, accord­ing to those who knew him, he was an embit­tered per­son when he was released in ear­ly 1963.

Rudolph Franklin (the mil­i­tant leader of the Rasta group) set the Ken Douglas Shell ser­vice sta­tion on fire), Lloyd Waldron and Noël Bowen (all Rastafarians), two police­men, Corporal Clifford Melbourne and Inspector Bertie Scott and three oth­er civil­ians died in the Coral Gardens event.
Prime Minister Sir Alexander Bustamante vis­it­ed the parish along with the com­mis­sion­er of police and head of the Jamaica Defence Force. Bustamante is report­ed to have declared, “Bring in all Rastas, dead or alive…“
Damn right mis­ter Prime Minister!
Police from neigh­bor­ing parish­es were dis­patched to Coral Gardens and Rastafarians, were round­ed up and arrest­ed.
two of Franklin’s accom­plices, Carlton Bowen and Clinton Larmond, were charged with mur­der and went on tri­al in July 1964. They were found guilty and sen­tenced to hang fol­low­ing a month-long tri­al presided over by Justice Ronald Small, father of cur­rent Queen’s Counsel Hugh Small. Bowen and Larmond were hanged on December 2, 1964.

Alexander Bustamante under­stood the threat posed to the coun­try by the insur­gent Rastafarian move­ment which had incor­po­rat­ed for­eign ele­ments into our coun­try and was, in fact, stock­pil­ing arms in their camp in Red Hills and oth­er places as far back as the ear­ly 1960s.
Andrew Holness, with the bless­ings of the inept and cor­rupt People’s National Party(PNP) , has con­verse­ly apol­o­gized for vio­lent felons who basi­cal­ly com­mit­ted trea­son against their coun­try and killed inno­cent police offi­cers. Additionally, Holness and his cabal of elites includ­ing those in the Opposition PNP has wrought incred­i­ble harm to our coun­try not just through their mis­treat­ment of our police but by their cod­dling of crim­i­nals.
To add insult to injury Rastafarians and their off­springs have been paid with the tax dol­lars of serv­ing police offi­cers, while the off­springs of Corporal Clifford Melbourne and Inspector Bertie Scott receives noth­ing.
What the Government did in cahoots with the Opposition par­ty is col­lude to spit on the graves of those two heroes., A sim­i­lar sequence of events replayed itself in Tivoli Gardens. Again both polit­i­cal par­ties, and it was Déjà vu. They repeat­ed exact­ly what they did at Coral Gardens.
Ask your­selves then, why would crim­i­nals of all stripes not kill police offi­cers, burn police sta­tions, dis­obey laws, and do what­ev­er they please, know­ing that the nation will apol­o­gize to them for law enforce­ment both­er­ing them?[sic]
Sooner or lat­er there will be a pay­day down the road, entire com­mu­ni­ties are aware of that.
That is the essence of Jamaica.

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I’m ashamed to admit that endorsing AIPAC positions was all about the Benjamins for me and my candidate.

By Ady Barkan

Over the week­end, Republican House minor­i­ty leader Kevin McCarthy said he would seek to for­mal­ly sanc­tion the first two Muslim con­gress­women, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, because their crit­i­cism of Israel’s occu­pa­tion of Palestine was even more rep­re­hen­si­ble than Congressman Steve King’s defense of white suprema­cy. What moti­vat­ed McCarthy’s false accu­sa­tions of anti-Semitism? On Twitter, Omar sug­gest­ed, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” quot­ing Puff Daddy’s ’90s paean to cash mon­ey. Omar sub­se­quent­ly spec­i­fied that she was talk­ing about spend­ing from the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, bet­ter known as AIPAC, the pow­er­ful pro-Israel lob­by­ing organization.

By Monday morn­ing, AIPAC had mobi­lized its allies to con­demn Omar’s com­ment for play­ing into cen­turies-old anti-Semitic tropes that wealthy Jews con­trol the world. Even the Democratic lead­er­ship put out a state­ment con­demn­ing her. All because she dared to point out that the emper­or has no clothes.

As a Jew, an Israeli cit­i­zen, and a pro­fes­sion­al lob­by­ist (ahem, activist), I speak from per­son­al expe­ri­ence when I say that AIPAC is tremen­dous­ly effec­tive, and the lubri­cant that makes its oper­a­tion hum is dol­lar, dol­lar bills.
In 2006, fresh out of col­lege, I land­ed a job as the first real staffer on a long-shot Democratic con­gres­sion­al race in deep-red Ohio. My boss, Victoria Wulsin, was a charm­ing hip­pie doc­tor with a lefty per­spec­tive on inter­na­tion­al affairs. She was skep­ti­cal of mil­i­tary force and opposed to the Israeli occu­pa­tion of Palestine. 

About a month after win­ning the Democratic pri­ma­ry, we were strug­gling to gain atten­tion or mon­ey. Nobody gave us a chance to win. One polit­i­cal-action orga­ni­za­tion, how­ev­er, did reach out to us. It wasn’t Emily’s List, although Vic was fierce­ly pro-choice. It wasn’t a labor union or even a doc­tors’ asso­ci­a­tion. It was AIPAC. A local Democratic vol­un­teer leader of the Cincinnati AIPAC chap­ter sat down in Vic’s liv­ing room and I recall him say­ing that he would like to raise $5,000 for our cam­paign and would also like to see Vic take a pub­lic stance on two rel­a­tive­ly obscure issues relat­ing to Iranian sanc­tions, arms sales to Israel, or some oth­er such top­ic that very few vot­ers in the dis­trict cared about.

Vic and I both thought of our­selves as pro-peace, not pro-Israel. We both felt icky about doing it; it was too hawk­ish and too quid pro quo. But we were des­per­ate. So I read the AIPAC posi­tion papers that the vol­un­teer left with us, I wrote up a state­ment say­ing that Vic sup­port­ed AIPAC’s stance on its two pet issues of the cycle, she approved it, I post­ed it online, and the checks prompt­ly arrived in the mail there­after. We didn’t win, but the mon­ey helped us get close.

It was, I am ashamed to say, def­i­nite­ly about the Benjamins. We nev­er would have done it oth­er­wise. AIPAC’s pow­er is about more than mon­ey, cer­tain­ly. It’s about great orga­niz­ing (they built a local chap­ter, and sent a local Democratic vol­un­teer emis­sary who then facil­i­tat­ed the con­tri­bu­tions). It’s about dili­gence (they paid atten­tion to Vic’s cam­paign long before any­one else, and were hap­py to donate to both us and the mil­i­taris­tic, pro-Likud Republican incum­bent). Their lob­by­ists on the Hill are the best in the busi­ness, and their leg­is­la­tor jun­kets to the Holy Land are mas­ter­ful­ly orches­trat­ed. But mon­ey is cen­tral to the whole system.

Technically, AIPAC doesn’t make the polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions. Instead, as it notes proud­ly on its web­site, indi­vid­ual mem­bers of its “Congressional Club,” like that Cincinnati res­i­dent, do the bundling and donat­ing direct­ly, both as indi­vid­u­als and through Political Action Committees that AIPAC and its mem­bers have set up. Omar is right to point all this out. These dynam­ics are not unique to the Israel-Palestine issue, how­ev­er, and there is no rea­son that Americans should be sur­prised or offend­ed by what she and I are say­ing. The NRA and the broad­er gun lob­by oper­ate in the same way. Same with ExxonMobil and the fos­sil-fuel lob­by. But since Omar and Tlaib are pow­er­ful new spokes­women for the move­ment to end the Israeli occu­pa­tion, dele­git­imiz­ing them is a cen­tral aim of the Israel lobby.

AIPAC and its part­ners, which include Christian Zionists and mil­i­tary con­trac­tors, are a cen­tral pil­lar of the Israeli occu­pa­tion. Without con­gres­sion­al sup­port, the Likud/anti-Palestine/pro-occu­pa­tion project would be rad­i­cal­ly under­mined. The mon­ey that AIPAC and the rest of the lob­by spend is indis­pens­able to that work. That’s why they spend it. Pointing this out is not anti-Semitic.

We do, in fact, have a grow­ing anti-Semitism prob­lem in America. But Omar and Tlaib are not a part of it. They are allies of mine and of Jews across this coun­try who are fight­ing for peace, racial jus­tice, immi­grants’ rights, and the defeat of fas­cism. The anti-Semites are the Nazis and white suprema­cists who marched and mur­dered in Charlottesville, whom Donald Trump called “very fine peo­ple,” and the MAGA sup­port­er who mas­sa­cred wor­ship­pers at a Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue.
The Israel lob­by flexed its mus­cles in response to Omar’s tweet. Almost all of Capitol Hill, sad­ly includ­ing the Democratic lead­er­ship that I have sup­port­ed, was up in arms. It flexed with equal poten­cy last month in mar­shal­ing through the Senate a clear­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al law to ban speech pro­mot­ing a boy­cott of Israel.

For 12 years, I have har­bored minor pri­vate shame for advis­ing Vic to endorse AIPAC’s posi­tion papers and more sig­nif­i­cant shame for not doing enough to stop the oppres­sion of the Palestinian peo­ple. I am speak­ing up now because it may be my last chance. Although I am only 35, I am dying. As I write these words, I am sit­ting with my wife in the wait­ing room of the Santa Barbara hos­pi­tal emer­gency room, slow­ly bleed­ing from my stom­ach into a pile of gauze. I had a feed­ing tube insert­ed four days ago but it isn’t heal­ing prop­er­ly. I am los­ing the abil­i­ty to swal­low, because I have ALS, a poor­ly under­stood neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­ease with no treat­ment, which seized my body 28 months ago and has basi­cal­ly par­a­lyzed me since. My hands do not work and almost nobody can under­stand my mum­bling, so I am using amaz­ing tech­nol­o­gy that tracks the loca­tion of my eyes and allows me to slow­ly type out these words with my pupil-tips.

This is my chance to redeem my Jewish guilt, to speak out against the oppres­sion that is being per­pe­trat­ed in my name, and I do not intend to let a minor obsta­cle like ALS stop me. Young Jews across America increas­ing­ly agree with Omar and me, and that is mak­ing the Israel lob­by very ner­vous. As it should: The occu­pa­tion is too immoral, ille­gal, and inhu­mane to sur­vive an open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tion in the mar­ket­place of ideas. That is why AIPAC and its asso­ciates work to silence crit­i­cism of Israel by accus­ing its detrac­tors of anti-Semitism and claim­ing that nobody may ever talk about how the Israel lob­by uses mon­ey to build power.

The ugly truth is that the Israel lob­by, like oth­er pow­er­ful lob­bies led by Jew and gen­tile alike, wields its mon­ey strate­gi­cal­ly and effec­tive­ly. Outrage should be direct­ed not at those who point this out (most often Muslims and peo­ple of col­or) but at the suf­fer­ing of the Palestinian peo­ple and the simul­ta­ne­ous depen­dence of the Republican Party on gen­uine anti-Semites.I do not expect to live to see the lib­er­a­tion of the Palestinian peo­ple. But I main­tain hope that my tod­dler son will. If he does, it will be because young American Jews like him do the hon­est self-reflec­tion taught by our fore­bears, take pride in our tra­di­tion of jus­tice, and join in sol­i­dar­i­ty and strug­gle with fel­low Semites like Omar.
Ady BarkanTWITTERAdy Barkan is an orga­niz­er with the Center for Popular Democracy and the founder of the Be A Hero PAC. His mem­oir, Eyes to the Wind, will be pub­lished by Atria Books in the fall. 

Yesterday we talked about the bla­tant hypocrisy of the Jamaica Observer’s Bill Johnson poll, which focus­es on sup­posed police cor­rup­tion.
We are not obliv­i­ous to police cor­rup­tion and would do any­thing in our pow­er to end that prac­tice.
Nevertheless, unlike the myopic and mis­guid­ed cabal and the low­er deck peanut-gallery in our coun­try, we are con­ver­sant that there is no coun­try with­out the rule of law. So we sup­port our police offi­cers who enforce our laws. We embrace our offi­cers who run to the dan­ger when we are too chick­en shit to stand up for our­selves.
And we reject the notion that the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion in our police forces cit­i­zens to embrace crim­i­nal [DONS].
Bull, peo­ple embrace the so-called [Dons] because Government reneges on its respon­si­bil­i­ty to deliv­er basic goods and ser­vices.
As a con­se­quence, even though we are opposed to cor­rup­tions of all kinds, includ­ing in our beloved (JCF), we are also mind­ful that what the politi­cians and their sur­ro­gates are doing is scape­goat­ing the police by pro­ject­ing onto the police their crimes, to cov­er up their own dark deeds.
In 2017 Former Contractor General Greg Christie in an Oped in the very same [OBSERVER] wrote:
“Corruption in Jamaica is “entrenched and wide­spread”. “Jamaica must give seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to what lies ahead should the Government and the country’s law­mak­ers fail to deci­sive­ly and aggres­sive­ly con­front its cor­rup­tion prob­lem”.
Less than two years lat­er, the very same dishrag com­mis­sioned and pro­mot­ed a poll talk­ing about police cor­rup­tion, as if that is the source of our prob­lem.
https://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​J​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​s​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​-​c​h​o​k​e​d​-​b​y​-​c​a​n​c​e​r​-​o​f​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​i​o​n​_​9​3​6​09-

One of the things I talked about yes­ter­day, was the need to under­stand any cor­rup­tion in the police depart­ment, (real or per­ceived), against the unusu­al­ly high lev­els of cor­rup­tion across the wider soci­ety.
Having said that, and at the risk of re-lit­i­gat­ing what I wrote yes­ter­day, I will get to the task of today, which is to attempt to bring a wider per­spec­tive on police cor­rup­tion so that we may bet­ter under­stand police cor­rup­tion in our own coun­try.
Additionally, pos­si­bly to gain a bet­ter per­spec­tive so that we may relate in a less hyper­bol­ic sense to the prob­lem and devel­op strate­gies toward end­ing it with­out the ran­cor and lies which has char­ac­ter­ized it thus far.

Is it true that some unsa­vory char­ac­ters have infil­trat­ed the JCF over the years? Absolutely, they have always been there, much like some unsa­vory char­ac­ters have found their way onto the supreme court and into Jamaica House and God for­bid let us not even both­er men­tion­ing Gordon House.
In fact, the unsa­vory nature of some of the char­ac­ters who have graced our pub­lic insti­tu­tions, has had some impact on the size of the dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty.
By virtue of that, it becomes a sce­nario which feeds itself, the more that good peo­ple leave, the worse the insti­tu­tions become.
Let us put an end to the con­stant abuse of our hard­work­ing police offi­cers. For too long the two crim­i­nal gangs which run our coun­try, have suc­cess­ful­ly chan­neled the nation’s anger at their cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tions onto the hap­less and defens­less police.

According to the United States Institute of Peace(USIP) , Police cor­rup­tion is a uni­ver­sal chal­lenge in peace­build­ing. On November 16, 2011, USIP host­ed a pan­el of dis­tin­guished experts who dis­cussed the root caus­es and poten­tial reme­dies.
Some experts argue that efforts to curb police cor­rup­tion are hope­less, or at best sec­ondary. Others main­tain that attack­ing oppres­sive, unfair abus­es is where reform efforts must start. 
The fact that these dis­cus­sions are occur­ring around polic­ing in the world’s most pow­er­ful, wealthy and sophis­ti­cat­ed nation proves that this is a uni­ver­sal prob­lem.
The ques­tion of police cor­rup­tion may be viewed in sev­er­al ways and is not con­fined to the gen­er­al knee-jerk per­cep­tions of some who would write or talk about this subject.

Tim Dees, A Retired cop and crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sor, Reno Police Department, Reno Municipal Court, and Pyramid Lake argues that most researchers clas­si­fied cor­rupt cops into two major groups: The “grass eaters” who did­n’t active­ly seek out oppor­tu­ni­ties to make ille­git­i­mate mon­ey, but took advan­tage of what came their way, and the “meat eaters,” cops who active­ly solicit­ed bribes and pay­offs, engaged in thefts and rob­beries (usu­al­ly of crim­i­nals with drugs or large sums of mon­ey), and gen­er­al­ly used their offi­cial posi­tion as a plat­form for crim­i­nal enter­prise. 
Nevertheless, Dees argues that these prac­tices are rel­a­tive­ly rare these days.
Unfortunately, the afore­men­tioned types of cor­rup­tion reflect only the top lay­er of veneer which gets pro­gres­sive­ly worse the more you peel from the Onion.
Police cor­rup­tion in most devel­oped coun­tries goes far deep­er than accept­ing a cup of cof­fee like the “grass eaters.”
It tran­scends the tak­ing of bribes or rip­ping off drug deal­ers like the ” meat eaters.”

One of the most stub­born types of police cor­rup­tion is the igno­ble prac­tice of man­u­fac­tur­ing evi­dence to frame and con­vict inno­cent cit­i­zens.
Hold on there, I am not talk­ing about Jamaica.……I am talk­ing about the coun­try most Jamaicans line up in 100-degree heat, hand over their bor­rowed cash, in the hopes of get­ting a visa to.
This is one of the most rep­re­hen­si­ble forms of cor­rup­tion, yet it is prob­a­bly one of the most per­va­sive types of cor­rup­tion which has haunt­ed American polic­ing since the begin­ning of time par­tic­u­lar­ly for African-Americans.
Yes, you know darn well that it is the very same America which all of you are lin­ing up to enter.
As a trainee at the Jamaica Police Academy, we were taught that it is bet­ter for the guilty to go free than for an inno­cent per­son to be pros­e­cut­ed and jailed.
As a result of this per­va­sive prob­lem across America, many police depart­ments have been forced to enter into con­sent decrees with the US Justice Department to work on end­ing those prac­tices.
Nowhere in the world are so many peo­ple arrest­ed, tried and impris­oned on evi­dence which is man­u­fac­tured by cor­rupt law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it prosecutors.

Domestic chal­lenges relat­ed to the abuse of entrust­ed pow­er for pri­vate gain, is Transparency International’s def­i­n­i­tion of cor­rup­tion.
According to Transparency International close to a third of African-Americans sur­veyed see the police as high­ly cor­rupt.
Whites gen­er­al­ly are less sus­pi­cious of the police, white suprema­cy is enforced by the police which ben­e­fits them.
In cities all across America, from New York to Baltimore, from Camden to Washington DC, all across Kansas City, to Los Angeles California, real cor­rupt prac­tices in police depart­ments dwarfs any­thing the poor­ly trained Jamaican police could ever dream up.

As long as there is col­lu­sion between politi­cians and their cronies in civ­il soci­ety, who are will­ing to lie to the Jamaican peo­ple about the police to dis­tract from their crimes, we will con­tin­ue to edu­cate those not too far gone.
When I write I don’t real­ly want to “cuss,” but I believe that the peo­ple I some­times refer to as shit­heads, have now grad­u­at­ed to shit­hous­es.
They con­tin­ue to beat the same old drums about the police, to the same old mis­in­formed peo­ple, about how the police are the cause of their prob­lems, while they rip off every buck they can, and get away with it.
We need a rev­o­lu­tion in our coun­try, you decide what kind you need.

Before I even begin to address some of the under­ly­ing issues which I find sil­ly and gross­ly spu­ri­ous about the recent Bill Johnson Poll con­duct­ed for the Jamaica Obsever, I will lay out a frame­work which dis­qual­i­fies those who com­mis­sioned the poll and the results of the poll.
Under the ban­ner”, Corruption haunts police force,” anoth­er incom­pe­tent excuse for a media house has gone out and slav­ish embar­rassed itself in pro­mot­ing a poll it com­mis­sioned to dis­cred­it the men and women of the Jamaica Constabulary Force who risk life and limb for pit­tances against some of the most blood-thirsty mur­der­ers in the world.
I will not dig­ni­fy the specifics of the so-called find­ings of the polls, suf­fic­ing to say that I will lay out a cou­ple of rea­sons why this poll must be viewed as spu­ri­ous at best and the find­ings dis­card­ed for the trash it is.

(1) Jamaica strug­gles might­i­ly with cor­rup­tion across the entire spec­trum of nation­al life. The entire pub­lic sec­tor is a cesspool of cor­rup­tion in which graft, favors, pay­offs, theft, nepo­tism and oth­er forms of cor­rup­tion have so infect­ed the infra­struc­ture it has become the rule rather than the excep­tion.
In fact, accord­ing to Transparency International, the Country recent­ly slipped in the cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion Index and is some­where around 84% cor­rupt, 100% being the most cor­rupt.
With a coun­try bur­dened with that kind of cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion, how does any­one jus­ti­fy sin­gling out a group of pow­er­less, dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple, who risk every­thing for every­one else, for con­tin­ued ridicule and crit­i­cism?
Who do you ask about cor­rup­tion in the police depart­ment when the aver­age per­son has a son or daugh­ter killing and rob­bing peo­ple?
Who do you ask when illic­it gains from lot­to-scam­ming spread across sev­er­al indus­tries and are putting food on the tables of so many?
Who do you poll when there are so many mur­der­ers and oth­er law­break­ers walk­ing around, know­ing that the police is the only thing which stands between them and what they want to accomplish?

(2) For years I have per­son­al­ly writ­ten about the con­nec­tion between the polit­i­cal par­ties and gun-tot­ing gangs in the nation’s inner cities.
I con­ced­ed this point to no one, as a young police offi­cer, I was on the receiv­ing end of one of those illic­it guns in 88.
Through these writ­ings, I have con­sis­tent­ly, through fac­tu­al point­ers, demon­strat­ed how both polit­i­cal par­ties have used the police depart­ment as a scape­goat to deflect from their crim­i­nal­i­ty cor­rup­tion, and incom­pe­tence.
That is why I am con­vinced that with the ongo­ing Petrojam Scandal, the admin­is­tra­tion is more than hap­py to have atten­tion shift­ed to some­thing else.
Why not the tra­di­tion­al point of hate?
And what pass­es for media, the dis­hon­est, intel­lec­tu­al­ly lazy bunch of elit­ist, (fake accents and all) are quite will­ing to con­tin­ue this straw­man narrative.

(3) There are rough­ly 126 rep­re­sen­ta­tives between both polit­i­cal par­ties at the Constituency lev­el.
Add those appoint­ed to the Senate and toss in Parish Councillors and at best you get a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple.
If Jamaicans real­ly took stock of the lev­el of cor­rup­tion with­in this small group of a cou­ple hun­dred, they would be in the streets with pitch­forks, machetes, and torch­es which would make the Morant Bay rebel­lion seem like a walk in the park.
More impor­tant­ly, the cor­rup­tion cost to the coun­try car­ried out by this very small group, not just through bla­tant theft, but through the pro­cure­ment process, fake con­tracts and oth­er clever acts of thiev­ery, the cost per year runs into bil­lions of dol­lars.
The loss of con­fi­dence which keeps out investors and poten­tial returnees is incal­cuable.

(4) Juxtapose that with rough­ly 8’000 police offi­cers, an expo­nen­tial­ly larg­er group of peo­ple with­in the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty of 2.8 mil­lion. Whatever the cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion index involv­ing the police force, it pales dras­ti­cal­ly when com­pared to the cor­rup­tion of the polit­i­cal class. In terms of Dollars and cents, there is no com­par­i­son.
But say­ing that does not begin to uncov­er the lev­els of cor­rup­tion which runs in this lit­tle coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion.
From Jamaica House to Gordon House, from The high­est court to the board­rooms, Jamaica’s cor­rup­tion is leg­endary.
Whether it is the hood­lums who are set free on minor tech­ni­cal­i­ties by the court of appeals, or the deep cor­rup­tion which drains the Island of bil­lions which ought to go to build­ing infra­struc­ture and improv­ing the lives of cit­i­zens.
Or it is the mas­sive theft of pub­lic funds which does­n’t even get inves­ti­gat­ed.
Except, of course, if you are a mis­guid­ed cop who decid­ed to incrim­i­nate him­self and allow him­self to be used by an agency which hates the police.
Then there is account­abil­i­ty. That account­abil­i­ty is life in prison and the stip­u­la­tion that you have to spend an unprece­dent­ed 51 years in prison before being eli­gi­ble for parole.
Never mind that the heads of the well-armed gangs are sit­ting right there in the par­lia­ment pass­ing laws which fur­thers the pro­tec­tion of gangs and ties the hands of the police.

Sure there are far too many cor­rupt police offi­cers, that is not a Jamaica prob­lem, it is a world­wide prob­lem, because peo­ple make police offi­cers.
The high lev­els of cor­rup­tion with­in the legal com­mu­ni­ty is far greater than any­thing in the JCF based on their num­bers in the larg­er pop­u­la­tion.
So too are the cor­rupt judges worse than the police based on their num­bers as well.
Would I like to see zero police cor­rup­tion? You bet your ass. But I am a prag­ma­tist who under­stands that when you source water from a dirty pool, the water you get will be dirty too.

All in all, the con­tin­ued beat­ing of the drums and the inces­sant return to demo­niz­ing the poor defense­less police must be seen for what it is.
Bullshit!!!

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.) had time Wednesday morn­ing when she clapped back at President Trump’s call for her to resign, not­ing that the pres­i­dent has traf­ficked in hate his whole life.
In a tweet, the president’s pre­ferred mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion because he’s basi­cal­ly a 13-year-old 7^th grad­er, Omar tweeted:

Hi @realDonaldTrump- You have traf­ficked in hate your whole life — against Jews, Muslims, Indigenous, immi­grants, black peo­ple and more. I learned from peo­ple impact­ed by my words. When will you? 

You know that Omar’s ini­tial tweet end­ed with “When will you, bitch?” Fine, she didn’t say “bitch,” but I feel like there is an implied bitch at the end of the state­ment. OK, fine, maybe I just want it say bitch.The Hill notes that Omar’s tweet comes after the pres­i­dent called for her res­ig­na­tion, or at the very least her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee “over her tweet ques­tion­ing the influ­ence of the Israel lob­by, name­ly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in Washington D.C.”
Omar apol­o­gized for the tweet not­ing, “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,” Omar wrote. “My inten­tion is nev­er to offend my con­stituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be will­ing to step back and think through crit­i­cism, just as I expect peo­ple to hear me when oth­ers attack me for my iden­ti­ty. This is why I unequiv­o­cal­ly apologize.”

Trump told reporters Tuesday that Omar’s apol­o­gy was “lame” and reit­er­at­ed his demand for her resignation.“Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress,” Trump said at a Cabinet meet­ing. “And I think she should either resign from Congress or she should cer­tain­ly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
Trump failed to men­tion that he’s a racist-filed whoopee-cush­ion who lives off a diet of baby goat’s blood and fast food, who would be fine if we went back to Jim Crow laws and only has one black friend: Ben Carson. 

https://​www​.the​root​.com/​r​e​p​-​i​l​h​a​n​-​o​m​a​r​-​c​l​a​p​s​-​b​a​c​k​-​a​t​-​t​h​e​-​b​i​g​o​t​-​i​n​-​c​h​i​e​f​-​y​o​u​-​h​-​1​8​3​2​5​9​3​435

The firestorm of protest com­ing from both Republicans and the dis­gust­ing Democrats with regard to the rather fac­tu­al and tame com­ments made by fresh­man Democratic Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar has demon­strat­ed just how deep into the pock­ets of the Jewish Lobby (AIPAC) both polit­i­cal par­ties are.
The fresh­man Minnesota Democrat is fac­ing back­lash after imply­ing in a tweet that politi­cians pushed for poli­cies ben­e­fi­cial to Israel because they are finan­cial­ly behold­en to pro-Israel lob­by­ing groups like AIPAC. 
Since then, rep­re­sen­ta­tive Omar, one of the first Muslim woman to be elect­ed to the Congress has been fac­ing a with­er­ing back­lash, includ­ing from the lead­er­ship of her own par­ty.
Even more shock­ing is the attack on her by the dis­gust­ing­ly racist Donald Trump, who has had no prob­lem offend­ing every group of peo­ple, not white and male.

Since the back­lash, Representative Omar has apol­o­gized, which she absolute­ly should not have done.
Omar said she unequiv­o­cal­ly” apol­o­gized for the remarks, but insist­ed that she would remain firm in her oppo­si­tion to the out­size role that she said lob­by­ing mon­ey plays in Washington pol­i­tics.
Before we even begin to address the pathet­i­cal­ly dis­gust­ing Democrats and the pre­dictable servile Republicans, I must at least offer a part­ing men­tion of the gall of the inher­ent­ly cor­rupt and insane­ly incom­pe­tent, and amoral Donald Trump. How dare Donald Trump call for any­one’s res­ig­na­tion, or even hav­ing an opin­ion on some­one else’s conduct?

Sen’s. Ben Cardin, D‑Md and Marco Rubio, R‑FL both spon­sored a bill which would make it a crime for any American or American Company which boy­cotts the state of Israel. The Rubio Bill seeks to counter the glob­al Boycott, Divest and Sanctions move­ment against Israel over its treat­ment of Palestinians and the set­tle­ments. The country’s first Palestinian American woman in Congress, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has spo­ken about the rights of Americans to sup­port the BDS issue.“This is the U.S. Where boy­cotting is a right & part of our his­tor­i­cal fight for free­dom & equal­i­ty,” Tlaib said in a week­end tweet. “Maybe a refresh­er on our U.S. The con­sti­tu­tion is in order, then get back to open­ing up our gov­ern­ment instead of tak­ing our rights away.”
If the bill becomes law, any American found in breach of that law could face 25-years in prison for join­ing in a boy­cott of the Zionist State.

According to the Associated Press, Rubio’s mea­sure infringes on free speech. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I‑Vt., tweet­ed, “It’s absurd that the first bill dur­ing the shut­down is leg­is­la­tion which pun­ish­es Americans who exer­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. 
J Street’s President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a state­ment: “While mil­lions of Americans suf­fer from the effects of the ongo­ing gov­ern­ment shut­down, it’s out­ra­geous that Senate Republican lead­ers are pri­or­i­tiz­ing leg­is­la­tion that tram­ples on the First Amendment and advances the inter­ests of the Israeli set­tle­ment move­ment. Not a sin­gle Democrat should vote to enable this farce.” 

The for­gone is intend­ed sim­ply to lay the frame­work for estab­lish­ing the utter stu­pid­i­ty of the push­back against Representative Omar’s views, when there are so much more con­se­quen­tial pow­er moves being pushed on the American peo­ple by the Jewish lob­by AIPAC, and the amoral politi­cians who would take away the rights of Americans free speech, over their sup­port for a for­eign coun­try.
Any dis­agree­ment with the tac­tics and poli­cies of the Zionist apartheid state are met with swift and con­cen­trat­ed onslaught spear­head­ed with the label “anti-Semitic.“
Fear of being labeled “anti-Semitic effec­tive­ly silences any­one who would dare speak out, even in the face of Israel’s raw aggres­sion and crimes against human­i­ty com­mit­ted against unarmed Palestinians.

The faux out­rage is dis­gust­ing, even if we could force our­selves to ignore the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by the Zionist state. Atrocities against unarmed Palestinian men, women, and chil­dren and even aid work­ers and jour­nal­ists doing their jobs.
There would still be the silence of Republicans and Democrats as the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak­ing to the issue of African asy­lum seek­ers to Israel com­ment­ed.
“We will return south Tel Aviv to the cit­i­zens of Israel, they are not refugees, but infil­tra­tors look­ing for work.“
The Zionist state is now com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent in size from what it was in 1947 when it was formed. In fact, it is dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than when it defeat­ed the hap­less Arab assault in the so-called six-day war of 1967.
Since that war, not only has Israel tak­en con­trol of the Golan Heights and oth­er parts of the Palestinian ter­ri­to­ry it con­tin­ues to this day to ille­gal­ly mis­s­ap­pro­pri­ate the prop­er­ty of the Palestinian people.

In January of 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered African refugees out of the apartheid state. Israel receives Billions of dol­lars in American aid each year, a large part of that mon­ey is tax­es col­lect­ed from African-Americans and oth­er eth­nic minori­ties.
Describing African refugees num­ber­ing about 40 000 as “infil­tra­tors”, Netanyahu said they had two choic­es. They could either accept a once-off pay­ment of $3500 (R42300) and relo­cate to anoth­er African coun­try or spend the rest of their life in jail in Israel. They have until March to decide.
The announce­ment drew imme­di­ate out­rage. But for those fol­low­ing the dai­ly tra­vails and humil­i­a­tion endured by African refugees in Israel, it was the brazen­ness of Netanyahu’s crass plan that has appalled us. [Said www​.iol​.co​.za]

One res­i­dent described Africans as “rapists and mur­der­ers”. Others con­firmed that some­thing had to be done to reclaim their city and coun­try. “There used to be space for our chil­dren, but now it’s like Africa here — like we are not in Israel any­more. They are tak­ing all the space and the Israeli fam­i­lies have no space left,” one man said.
But there real­ly isn’t any­thing to be sur­prised about. The deci­sion to push Africans out is part of a sto­ry of preser­va­tion of the Jewish state from “infil­tra­tors”. This is a coun­try obsessed with “eth­nic puri­ty”. Take the events around its found­ing in 1948 when about 700 000 Palestinians were boot­ed out of their homes and made per­ma­nent refugees. [www​.iol​.co​.za]
These Israelis who labeled Africans rapists and mur­der­ers had no trou­ble sup­port­ing the IDF gun­ning down inno­cent demon­stra­tors, includ­ing women and chil­dren and even inno­cent babies.

The hypocrisy of the American politi­cians who have sur­ren­dered their souls to the dev­il would be laugh­able if it weren’t so con­se­quen­tial.
This lit­tle intro­duc­tion to Israel’s racist and Xenophobic atti­tudes does not even begin to scratch the sur­face. American law­mak­ers know all about the atroc­i­ties, but have zero prob­lems with them.
Their dis­gust­ing attack on a Muslim woman who shares a dif­fer­ent faith than theirs is appalling.
Republican politi­cians right here in America run cam­paigns which are vis­cer­al­ly racist and they occur with­out any­one bat­ting an eye against them.
Duncan Hunter an indict­ed crim­i­nal, ran one of the most shock­ing ads against a Palestinian-American can­di­date. Republicans, includ­ing Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minor­i­ty leader, and Californian, who now wants sanc­tions against Ilhan Omar said nothing.

This is a farce, con­sci­en­tious Jewish peo­ple right here in America see through it. So too are oth­ers, not of the ilk of those con­demn­ing Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for her rather tame and absolute­ly true com­ments.
Yes, it is absolute­ly about mon­ey, they have sold their souls and dig­ni­ty for money. 

I had no idea that the Government had embarked on a process of cut­ting and in some cas­es elim­i­nat­ing secu­ri­ty detail for past min­is­ters of Government.
In fact, to be hon­est, I had total­ly for­got­ten that a strug­gling Jamaica, a poor devel­op­ing coun­try, was engaged in the prac­tice of giv­ing secu­ri­ty detail to past min­is­ters. All this while the poor cit­i­zens of the coun­try, not so lucky or rich enough to live behind high walls are left to the mer­cy of the crim­i­nals those very same politi­cians cre­at­ed.
Now that the issue is once again front and cen­ter I do recall a for­mer min­is­ter of National Security Dwight Nelson(now deceased) com­plain­ing, that the then PNP admin­is­tra­tion had pulled his secu­ri­ty detail at one point.

NOW THIS.…...

“It is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling that while we are expe­ri­enc­ing vicious attacks on our elect­ed or for­mer elect­ed offi­cials, and height­ened the lev­el of threats, the gov­ern­ment has pro­posed to with­draw or min­i­mize the secu­ri­ty details of the for­mer min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment,” PNP General Secretary Julian Robinson said in a media release

Robinson was speak­ing to the killing of Dr. Lynvale Bloomfield, a mem­ber of par­lia­ment for East Portland, who was mur­dered over a week ago at his home, as well as the recent killing of for­mer coun­cilor for the White Horses Division in St Thomas, Madge Morris.
Also address­ing the issue of the two killings, which direct­ly impact­ed the PNP, oppo­si­tion leader Peter Phillips said “It is par­tic­u­lar­ly shock­ing as the par­ty con­tin­ues in mourn­ing over the trag­ic death of our [com­rade] and col­league, Dr. Lynvale Bloomfield, a mem­ber of par­lia­ment for East Portland, who was mur­dered over a week ago at his home.” 

Can I say just how stu­pid and total­ly 1970’s the con­tin­ued use of the term [“Comrade”] is in 2019?
That they con­tin­ue to Harken to and refuse to let go of a term used by failed Communists and reac­tionary social­ists in ref­er­ence to each oth­er, speaks vol­umes about where the PNP con­tin­ues to be.
Communism and the brand of Socialism to which the PNP sub­scribers have been an abject fail­ure with no rep­re­sen­ta­tive suc­cess sto­ry to which the PNP can point to for validation.

Now to the grip­ing about secu­ri­ty details.
To begin with, there should be zero police pro­tec­tion afford­ed any past politi­cians in Jamaica (of either par­ty).
If I had my way there would be none afford­ed even serv­ing min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment.
My rea­son­ing behind that posi­tion is sim­ple. Jamaica’s politi­cians are a bunch of ego­tis­ti­cal losers.
They cre­at­ed the envi­ron­ment of divi­sion and envy. They cre­at­ed the gar­risons which became incu­ba­tors of crim­i­nal­i­ty.
They cre­at­ed the ani­mos­i­ty between the police and the cit­i­zens by using the JCF as a scape­goat dis­trac­tion for their fail­ures to take the appro­pri­ate steps to secure the coun­try.
They con­tin­ue to main­tain con­tact with crim­i­nals who secure their elec­tions in those zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions.
Jamaica is a small devel­op­ing coun­try which can ill afford the extrav­a­gance of secu­ri­ty for past failed politi­cians.
Let them be exposed to the stench of the morass they created.

I don’t want to hear a sin­gle word of bitch­ing about politi­cians killed. No life is more impor­tant than anoth­er, it is time that Jamaica’s half baked idi­ot­ic politi­cians learn this les­son.
Actions have con­se­quences.
The atmos­phere of envy, mis­trust, divi­sion, and law­less­ness cre­at­ed by the two polit­i­cal gangs which pass­es for polit­i­cal par­ties is now pro­duc­ing the whirl­wind which is threat­en­ing to engulf them all.
It is about time and none too soon.

What would hap­pen to Jamaica if both the PNP and JLP decid­ed to cut ties with the crim­i­nal gangs to which they are tied and throw their sup­port to the law enforce­ment agen­cies?
I’ll tell you what would hap­pen, we would have Jamaicans liv­ing abroad, return­ing to invest in their coun­try, cre­at­ing untold employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and wealth in our coun­try.
None of this can hap­pen, how­ev­er, because a small cadre of politi­cians placed them­selves above coun­try and have cre­at­ed a sys­tem which is ded­i­cat­ed to their own inter­est coun­try be damned.

We Jamaicans are quick to talk about “Jamaica nice,” and yes, of course, God has blessed us with a beau­ti­ful coun­try with some of the most pris­tine beach­es any­where.
The Carribean Sea, which caress­es our shores, oh so gen­tly, is as clear and beau­ti­ful as the blue moun­tain peak is impos­ing in its majesty.
The rivers, streams, and trib­u­taries, mean­ders end­less­ly until they dis­ap­pear beneath a soil so fer­tile our farm­ers pro­duced more than we could ever eat.
For the most part, our peo­ple have been the kind­est, most lov­ing and neigh­bor­ly.
The far­ther inland you trav­el the bet­ter your expe­ri­ence becomes. But now all of that is in jeop­ardy of being lost.
The coun­try is still beau­ti­ful, but peo­ple are los­ing their souls.
Greed and envy replaced com­pas­sion and kind­ness.
The joy of shar­ing with our neigh­bors is replaced with the greed of lot­to cheat-sheets and high-pow­ered weapons.

Our peo­ple were not always blood­thirsty hooli­gans tear­ing at the car­cass of each oth­er’s corpses. We were lov­ing peo­ple, who looked after each oth­er and each oth­er’s chil­dren.
No one group of peo­ple is respon­si­ble for our slide into the abyss of the morass. But none is more cul­pa­ble than those who have been giv­en more pow­er to act on our behalf.
Once the ’70s stepped in Jamaicans began to wit­ness a shift in the way pol­i­tics was retailed.
Gone was the harm­less ban­ter come elec­tion time, replaced with a more sin­is­ter and omi­nous nar­ra­tive that what­ev­er wealth the wealthy had was arrived at illic­it­ly and every­one poor was enti­tled to half of it.

We all know the con­tin­u­ous nar­ra­tive around that cen­tral theme. A mas­sive flight of cap­i­tal and skilled pro­fes­sion­als result­ed.
Political strong­men moved into peo­ple’s homes and our coun­try was changed for­ev­er.
The next crop of politi­cians learned also that if they devised a way to keep the peo­ple fight­ing amongst them­selves, on their behalf, they could rape and pil­lage the nation’s resources with­out con­se­quence as long as they tossed a few strong­men a few bones to divide up amongst the peas­antry.
No mat­ter how gullible the Lumpenproletariat was, the new­ly mint­ed polit­i­cal class which gov­erned as a pseu­do Plutocracy need­ed a scape­goat when the [Lumpen] becomes agi­tat­ed.
When pub­lic funds are mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed, there are bound to be short­ages in the dis­pen­sa­tion of pub­lic ser­vices.
When the Lumpen ris­es up the Plutocracy needs a diver­sion.
The JCF which was born out of the Morant Bay rebel­lion was the per­fect diver­sion.
[https://​www​.ency​clo​pe​dia​.com/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​e​n​c​y​c​l​o​p​e​d​i​a​s​-​a​l​m​a​n​a​c​s​-​t​r​a​n​s​c​r​i​p​t​s​-​a​n​d​-​m​a​p​s​/​m​o​r​a​n​t​-​b​a​y​-​r​e​b​e​l​l​ion]

The police are empow­ered no fur­ther than to be rev­enue col­lec­tors, the plu­toc­ra­cy has no fear that a peas­ant upris­ing will end up affect­ing them neg­a­tive­ly. They feel insu­lat­ed from it all. After all their real pow­er bases are in the depressed crime-rid­den gar­risons in which the police is pub­lic ene­my num­ber one.
In 2010 the secu­ri­ty forces were forced to act in Tivoli gar­dens in what was a ver­i­ta­ble war between the state and mer­ce­nar­ies loy­al to a drug lord. Heavily armed, they dared the state to touch them.
In the end, wars have casu­al­ties and there is usu­al­ly col­lat­er­al dam­age.
Tivoli Gardens was no exception.

Not want­i­ng a shift in the polit­i­cal par­a­digm, the rul­ing JLP and the Opposition PNP which gen­er­al­ly does not agree on any­thing, agreed to a kan­ga­roo com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate what hap­pened in Tivoli Gardens.
Again the secu­ri­ty forces were the scape­goat and resti­tu­tion and an apol­o­gy giv­en the rogue com­mu­ni­ty which had thumbed its nose at the rule of law. Killing police offi­cers and burn­ing police sta­tions in the process.
The Security forces were round­ly con­demned and indi­vid­ual offi­cers sin­gled out for par­tic­u­lar ridicule and deri­sion.
What stuck in my throat to this day is that they brought in a for­eign­er David Simmons to head the com­mis­sion which heaped scorn on our police and mil­i­tary.
David Simmons is a retired judge from Barbados, a for­mer colony of England, which has its col­lec­tive head so far up her Majesty’s rear end she can feel them breathe.

For the PNP con­demn­ing and rein­ing in the police offered the per­fect diver­sion. That par­ty main­tains con­trol of many more gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties than the JLP.
In those com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ple vote as a mono­lith and the num­ber of votes cast in elec­tions gen­er­al­ly out­num­ber the num­ber of qual­i­fied elec­tors expo­nen­tial­ly.
The PNP was not about to see its base of sup­port messed with.
As for the JLP, it too con­trols Garrison com­mu­ni­ties, albeit few­er, but the par­ty under­stood fun­da­men­tal­ly what a par­a­digm shift in the way the secu­ri­ty forces are allowed to oper­ate would shift the bal­ance of pow­er ulti­mate­ly to the work­ing class and away from the small bunch of gov­ern­ing plu­to­crats.
INDECOM was born.

I would be remiss if I did not men­tion the bur­geon­ing and thriv­ing list of lob­by groups which sprung up all claim­ing to be human rights orga­ni­za­tions.
FAST. JFJ. IACHR. And a pletho­ra of dis­joint­ed indi­vid­u­als also latched onto the anti-police growth indus­try which has tak­en over the coun­try.
None were more caus­tic and dan­ger­ous than the Carolyn Gomes led JFJ.
And of course, any­one who buys into the nar­ra­tive that the police is evil and deserv­ing of shack­les gets reward­ed.
Carolyn Gomes was giv­en a nation­al hon­or by the gov­ern­ment. In the end, the lie of JFJ caught up with Gomes and she was exposed for mak­ing porno­graph­ic mate­r­i­al avail­able to minors.
She was forced to step aside in dis­grace and one of her min­ions reward­ed with the top spot.
Out of that whole lob­by­ing effort, Bruce Golding in cahoots with the PNP gave the nation INDECOM to over­see the secu­ri­ty forces.
INDECOM brings brought ego and harass­ment to the secu­ri­ty force mem­bers. Members of the secu­ri­ty forces stepped back from stick­ing their necks out and vio­lent crimes skyrocketed.

Such is the char­ac­ter of JAMAICA, despite the noise about pros­per­i­ty by the JLP and the sup­posed virtues of Socialism, a failed polit­i­cal con­struct cham­pi­oned by the cor­rupt PNP.
One of the most vis­i­ble com­po­nents of the strat­e­gy to scape­goat the Police is the fre­quen­cy with which Commissioners of police are appoint­ed and fired.
This sleight of hand gives the impres­sion that a com­mis­sion­er of police has the means to mag­i­cal­ly make crime go away.
The truth of the mat­ter is that though sev­er­al of the top cops have been inept polit­i­cal hacks, the truth is that all have been giv­en the prover­bial bas­ket to car­ry water.
The lack of resources the police are forced to con­tend with is nev­er about the mate­r­i­al inad­e­qua­cies only, but more impor­tant­ly, the agency is not allowed to ful­ly enforce the laws.
And so com­mis­sion­ers of police come and go and some try their best while fail­ing to speak out at the bla­tant pow­er play and micro han­dling the plu­to­crats engage in with the police depart­ment while speak­ing out of the two sides of their filthy mouths.
On the one side, they talk about the need to low­er or curb crime, even though their polit­i­cal enclaves are ver­i­ta­ble crime fac­to­ries.
On the oth­er hand, they make it impos­si­ble for the police to enforce the laws through the myr­i­ad tac­tics I have outlined.

I believe no Commissioner of police has done more to acqui­esce to the dic­tates of the cor­rupt plu­toc­ra­cy than the com­pro­mised Owen Ellington who stepped down under spu­ri­ous cir­cum­stances.
In a series of moves intend­ed to pla­cate the pub­lic, rather than speak­ing out against the plu­toc­ra­cy Ellington gave away the store through a series of strate­gies he devel­oped.
In some instances what he gave up the pub­lic had no right to. That includ­ed mak­ing the (police force orders)pub­lic.
The Force orders is a week­ly pub­li­ca­tion which com­mu­ni­cates dic­tates from the Commissioner and his staff to the depart­ments and offi­cers. It includes per­son­nel move­ment along with oth­er per­son­nel mat­ters.
Nothing in the force orders is infor­ma­tion which the pub­lic has a rea­son­able inter­est in hav­ing.
Additionally, Ellington intro­duced mea­sures which all but made the police a laugh­ing stock.
One such direc­tive is as fol­lows.

Tactical Retreat. Our police offi­cers are cul­tured to pay the ulti­mate price rather than retreat from an armed crim­i­nal attack.
We are work­ing on a set of pro­ce­dures which could accom­mo­date “tac­ti­cal retreat” as an option to pre­serve human life with­out under­min­ing the sense of pride and hon­or of front-line offi­cers. We will begin the con­ver­sa­tion with the idea that a tac­ti­cal retreat does not sig­nal an aban­don­ment of the cause. 

Owen Ellington knew noth­ing about deal­ing with or con­fronting crim­i­nals. He was reared in one office or anoth­er with­in the depart­ment.
There is noth­ing wrong with a tac­ti­cal retreat as it relates to polic­ing. That can be (a) so that a hostage nego­tia­tor may talk to a per­son who has tak­en hostages.
(b) So that an armed sus­pect may be allowed room to move away from inno­cent civil­ians.
© So that offi­cers may set up a wider, more effec­tive and com­pre­hen­sive perime­ter around a hot zone.
In none of these cas­es does it mean sur­ren­der­ing to crim­i­nals or allow­ing crim­i­nals to leave unpun­ished.
The hap­less Owen Ellington naive­ly believed that for Frontline offi­cers, it was all about a sense of pride and hon­or, not to retreat, or about ” aban­don­ment of the cause.”
For front­line offi­cers, it has noth­ing to do with any of what Owen Ellington placed into his pol­i­cy posi­tions. It is about pro­tect­ing life and enforc­ing laws.
That is what it has always been about but an office cop would have no idea about that now would he?
Today Officers are run­ning away from crim­i­nals and crowds alike, made to be a laugh­ing stock.
Police offi­cers hid­ing in super­mar­kets and offices for doing their jobs.
Tactical retreat Own Ellington style?
Or cow­ardice and a lack of tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude, you decide.

As a for­mer police offi­cer, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly incensed when a police offi­cer is attacked and hurt or worse just for doing his or her job.
This is not about whether or not we agree with every­thing the police does, but about that offi­cer’s expec­ta­tion that he or she will return home safe­ly after their shift as they ought to.
That is not too much to ask. Even sol­diers on a bat­tle­field do their lev­el best to return from wars, police offi­cers do too.

And so over the years, one of the things that I have per­son­al­ly ham­mered home to read­ers and to the JCF lead­er­ship,(assum­ing that they do read) is the need for more and bet­ter train­ing which reflects the seri­ous­ness of the times.
To that end, many of my friends and even some of my most ded­i­cat­ed read­ers have dis­agreed with me on the lev­el of train­ing being afford­ed new recruits to the JCF.
I con­tend that not only is the train­ing archa­ic and use­less, but train­ing should be ongo­ing for offi­cers, espe­cial­ly as it relates to firearms, tac­tics, and threat assess­ments.
Police offi­cers should have a well laid out Gymnasium with all of the mod­ern ameni­ties at the acad­e­my. Strength and fit­ness train­ing should be a part of the recruit train­ing.
More than any­thing else, the archa­ic and use­less drills ought to be a thing of the past.

While we talk about police train­ing it also makes sense to expand on the dif­fi­cul­ty which lies in polic­ing Jamaica.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, even with­in the CARICOM region, police offi­cials are crit­i­cal of Jamaicans and their lack of respect for the rule of law.
And so it is not out of the ordi­nary to hear tall tales (many unfound­ed) of the way Jamaicans are treat­ed by law enforce­ment offi­cials whether it’s in the Cayman Islands, Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago or wher­ev­er?
That is not to say that the stig­ma attached to us Jamaicans does not neg­a­tive­ly affect folks who may be inno­cent, or at best, not as guilty. 

The dif­fi­cul­ties of which I speak are var­ied and many, but I will list a few here which may in some cas­es be unique to Jamaica.

(1) TERRAIN
Jamaica is a par­tic­u­lar­ly hilly coun­try This is in many respects unri­valed in our region. The chal­lenges which come with the hilly ter­rain are many, but it makes the task of appre­hend­ing dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals that much more dif­fi­cult.
Like the fave­las in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the ter­rain makes enforce­ment a night­mare to vary­ing degrees.

(2)POLITICS
Over the years the cor­ro­sive influ­ence and con­trol Politics has had over law enforce­ment in our coun­try have prob­a­bly had the most dis­as­trous con­se­quences to date.
Sadly, those who are at the top of the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus are in many cas­es the most sus­pect when it comes to how nation­al secu­ri­ty secrets are han­dled (see how Christopher Duddus Coke learned that the Americans want­ed him extradited).

The present Minister of National Security Horace Chang, who said he inher­it­ed a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny (speak­ing of the police depart­ment). He cer­tain­ly could not wait to place his foot in his stu­pid mouth on the Spaldings shoot­ing.
Speaking to a Lion’s Club of Kingston lun­cheon at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel Chang dived into the mat­ter which is fresh and still under inves­ti­ga­tions
“Had he had any of the equip­ment of mod­ern polic­ing, he could have been eas­i­ly trained that in the face of a hos­tile crowd of ven­dors and taxi dri­vers who can be quite aggres­sive to the police, to use one of the non-lethal weapons to inter­cept and con­trol the crowd.” .

(a) The fuck­ing idiot is the Minister respon­si­ble for the police, so if they are lack­ing equip­ment he is respon­si­ble.
(b) Secondly, this was not about crowd con­trol, it was a case where a uni­formed police offi­cer was vio­lent­ly attacked.
Chang’s assess­ment is rub­bish, it has no bear­ing on what we have seen on that video.
“The guns would be for a killer crowd. Those (the absent tools) are basic equip­ment and we have not equipped our police force effec­tive­ly.”
In the esti­ma­tion of this Minister of National Security, the crowd which destroyed a police ser­vice vehi­cle, and forced two offi­cers to seek refuge in a super­mar­ket before they were res­cued, was not a killer crowd.
This could be han­dled with a can­is­ter of pep­per spray and a baton.[sic]
These are the abject fools who are run­ning our coun­try. These are the law­mak­ers. Now do you need to ask why Jamaica is so fucked up?

Not too long ago I wrote about the fact that the Democratic par­ty and the mod­er­ates who run it, still cling to the mis­guid­ed idea that they can con­tin­ue to be Republican-lite and still hold togeth­er the var­ied mosa­ic coali­tion which now defines the par­ty.
For a long time, the Democratic par­ty strad­dled the fence on social issues, by avoid­ing the lib­er­al label, man­ag­ing to win nation­al office, but los­ing bad­ly to Republicans at the state and local lev­els.
Not stand­ing up for social jus­tice as the par­ty should, even as the Republican par­ty has made clear that it stands opposed to any kind of social jus­tice and con­sol­i­dates itself into a white peo­ple’s polit­i­cal par­ty.
The rise of Donald Trump to take over what was left of the par­ty trans­formed by Newt Gingrich, and the silent acqui­es­cence of the whipped into shape remain­der of the elect­ed Republicans, made it clear that the Republican par­ty is now a white pow­er party. 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​i​c​-​p​a​r​t​y​-​s​e​e​m​i​n​g​l​y​-​o​b​l​i​v​i​o​u​s​-​t​o​-​i​t​s​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​e​r​s​-​n​e​e​ds/

The truth is that many Democratic strate­gists and talk­ing heads have missed the signs just as bad­ly as the politi­cians have.
The old coali­tion of so-called blue-col­lar work­ers, code for (une­d­u­cat­ed whites), which formed the core of the old Democratic par­ty, has been shat­tered by the pow­er of tar­get­ed strate­gies bankrolled by bil­lion­aires like Charles and David Koch.
In States like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan assaults against Unions by bought and paid for Republican politi­cians like Scott Walker, who was recent­ly defeat­ed in Wisconsin, and Rick Snyder in Michigan, all but ren­dered the unions pow­er­less as states under Republican lead­er­ship adopt right to work laws which evis­cer­at­ed the unions.

As the polit­i­cal land­scape con­tin­ues to shift, many of those so-called blue-col­lar work­ers have moved on to the Republican par­ty which has sold them a bill of goods based on the col­or of their skin.
For the most part iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics have tak­en over for those vot­ers, even though their inter­est is more aligned with the poli­cies of the Democratic par­ty.
White iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics present a stronger pull than the pock­et­book needs these vot­ers had which were bet­ter addressed by Democratic policies.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​h​o​w​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​s​-​g​o​t​-​c​o​m​p​l​e​t​e​l​y​-​s​t​e​a​m​r​o​l​l​e​d​-​b​y​-​t​h​e​-​r​i​g​ht/

If I said it once, I must have said it a thou­sand times, the Republican par­ty has clear­ly defined lines of demar­ca­tion. The Democratic par­ty bleeds vot­ers to Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and every oth­er fly-by-night who comes along because pro­gres­sives who once sup­port­ed the Democratic par­ty no longer wants a tepid par­ty which is still search­ing for its own iden­ti­ty.
Yet the par­ty still strug­gles with its mes­sag­ing, even after Ralph Nader gave us George Bush and Bernie Sanders gave us Donald Trump, the Democratic par­ty and its bone­head­ed strate­gists still cling to the idea that the par­ty needs to stick with cen­trist wishy-washy pol­i­cy posi­tions.
Television talk­ing heads who are unable to read the tea leaves yap about the need for the par­ty to main­tain a cen­trist posi­tion, despite the clear and deci­sive upset win in New York by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the rise of Stacy Abrams in Georgia, Andrew Gillum’s and Beto Orourke’s near win in Florida and Texas respec­tive­ly, but most of all the repu­di­a­tion of Claire McCaskill in Missouri.

The Democratic par­ty today has as its most loy­al base African-Americans, who con­tin­ue to vote in over­whelm­ing num­bers in sup­port of Democratic can­di­dates wher­ev­er they are. Including in the ruby red state of Alabama.
Yet the par­ty has failed to address the needs of its most loy­al base. Something no one could ever accuse Republicans of doing.
Despite the soci­etal and social ills which con­front the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, police vio­lence and abuse, pover­ty, hous­ing, and lend­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion and the long list of mal­adies asso­ci­at­ed with being black in America, the par­ty has remained silent as “Black lives mat­ter” has been cast in the media as a pseu­do-ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.
Still, the par­ty fail to under­stand why the likes of for­mer Starbucks CEO, bil­lion­aire, Howard Schultz would see an open­ing which gives him the idea he could be the next bil­lion­aire President(assum­ing that Trump is).
Democrats are com­plain­ing that Schultz would inex­orably siphon off votes from them osten­si­bly hand­ing a sec­ond term to Donald Trump.
How about posi­tion­ing the par­ty in a clear direc­tion, so that the likes of Schultz see no open­ing to run for pres­i­dent and more impor­tant­ly sup­port your base.
How about not hav­ing to beg peo­ple not to run?

In a recent arti­cle, the New York Times con­tend­ed that the Democratic can­di­dates have all expressed sor­row for posi­tions they took in the past as the diverse coali­tion which makes up the par­ty is far less for­giv­ing of can­di­dates who do not under­stand their com­plex needs.
Despite the clear lurch to the right the Republican par­ty has tak­en, the Democratic par­ty still mean­ders along as the par­ty which isn’t the Republican par­ty. Devoid of char­ac­ter, devoid of a clear iden­ti­ty.
Recent reports indi­cate that because of the clear pro­gres­sive stance many new house mem­bers and state rep­re­sen­ta­tives have tak­en, for­mer vice pres­i­dent Joe Biden is still weigh­ing whether he can mount a viable can­di­da­cy for the nom­i­na­tion of his par­ty.
Real Democratic vot­ers do not want a wishy-washy Republican-lite par­ty. They need a polit­i­cal par­ty which rep­re­sents their interest.

In an address to the University of the West Indies Leaders Engaged, Activated, and Dedicated Annual Breakfast held at The Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston on January 27^th, Government Senator Kamina Johnson-Smith sought to allay the grow­ing con­cerns that women are being employed at twice the rate of men.

Johnson Smith insist­ed that space has to be made for women who have been shack­led by cul­tur­al norms.
“I don’t think to pro­mote women in a sit­u­a­tion where women have not been pro­mot­ed before in a space that has been pre­dom­i­nant­ly male, that it means male mar­gin­al­iza­tion.
“I am always quite sur­prised at how easy it is for con­ver­sa­tions to change nowa­days to male mar­gin­al­iza­tion when you are speak­ing about male empow­er­ment.”

One of the rea­sons we can­not solve prob­lems for our peo­ple is that we refuse to accept facts as facts and work from those base­lines.
Former President Barack Obama lament­ed the very same thing after leav­ing office.
Speaking to Republican intran­si­gence and the rea­sons noth­ing gets done Obama argued,“When we can­not agree on a base­line of facts, it is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to accom­plish any­thing.“
In Jamaica, like in the US, politi­cians are will­ing to ignore data, facts which do not sup­port their nar­ra­tive are dis­card­ed as opin­ions and left to die on the work­room floor and poli­cies are devel­oped which end up hav­ing the oppo­site effect of what they were intend­ed.
All because pol­i­cy-mak­ers have their own agen­das which gen­er­al­ly does not line up with the will of the majority.

It is impor­tant to con­sid­er that while Johnson-Smith was heap­ing scorn on the data which had been released by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, show­ing that female work­ers are being employed at twice the rate of men.
And while address­ing a group of peo­ple from the University of the West Indies, that very insti­tu­tion is hav­ing severe prob­lems field­ing a bal­anced slate of fresh­man stu­dents each year.
Someone in that group could have direct­ed the Senator to the ghast­ly fresh­man num­bers at the UWI each year in which females are up to 85% of the fresh­man class, year after year.

file:///C:/Users/excellence/Downloads/C.P.8^d%20-%20Statistical%20Five-Year%20Review%20of%20Trends%20in%20Enrolment%20and%20Graduation%20(1).pdf

There are expo­nen­tial­ly more all-girls schools in Jamaica than boy schools.
There are also myr­i­ad agen­cies ded­i­cat­ed to the sup­port and uplift­ment of girls and women. I have list­ed a few here for the ben­e­fit of the Senator’s edu­ca­tion and fideli­ty to truth.
(1) The Bureau of Women’s Affairs (gen­der affairs)Act as a cat­a­lyst to ensure that the Government address­es the prob­lems that con­front women, giv­en the impact of patri­archy and sex­ism. 
(2) Woman Incorporated (Crisis Centre) Offering cri­sis coun­sel­ing, refer­ral ser­vices, and a 24-hour hot­line. The issues addressed by Woman Inc. include rape, incest, domes­tic vio­lence, domes­tic cri­sis, and sex­u­al harass­ment.
(3) Sistren Theatre Collective  Brings pres­sure to bear on soci­ety to change neg­a­tive stereo­types of women.
(4) Women’s Centre Of Jamaica Foundation  Objective is to moti­vate young moth­ers to choose edu­ca­tion instead of con­tin­u­ous moth­er­hood. 
(5) Women’s Media Watch The orga­ni­za­tion works to improve the images of women in the media.
(6) Women’s Resource And Outreach Centre Provides a place for women and youth in the Lyndhurst and Greenwich com­mu­ni­ty to learn the route self-empow­er­ment.

This list does not begin to scratch the sur­face but it gives clear and unequiv­o­cal exam­ples of the dis­par­i­ty in sup­port ser­vices and to whom they are ded­i­cat­ed.
It would be inter­est­ing to have the good Senator or one of her lack­eys fur­nish me with a list of equiv­a­lent ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the uplift­ment and sup­port of boys and men.

(1) The Bureau of Women’s Affairs 
The bureau’s man­date to act as a cat­a­lyst to ensure that the Government address­es the prob­lems that con­front women, giv­en the impact of patri­archy and sex­ism. 
(2) Woman Incorporated (Crisis Centre)
Offering cri­sis coun­sel­ing, refer­ral ser­vices, and a 24-hour hot­line. The issues addressed by Woman Inc. Includes rape, incest, domes­tic vio­lence, domes­tic cri­sis, and sex­u­al harass­ment. 
(3) Sistren Theatre Collective
Brings pres­sure to bear on soci­ety to change neg­a­tive stereo­types of women.
(4) Women’s Centre Of Jamaica Foundation 
Established in response to the high lev­el of teenage preg­nan­cy 
(5) Women’s Media Watch 
Works to improve the images of women in the media as one way of reduc­ing vio­lence.
(6) Women’s Resource And Outreach Centre (WROC)
Provides a place for women and youth in the Lyndhurst and Greenwich com­mu­ni­ty to learn the route to self-empowerment. 

In a typ­i­cal fam­i­ly in which resources are scarce, the boy is left to fend for him­self while the sin­gle moth­er, or both par­ents ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to send­ing the girls to school.
Jamaica’s youth is in cri­sis, but nowhere is it more evi­dent than in the male pop­u­la­tion.
The sad real­i­ty is that the women are get­ting an edu­ca­tion and the boys are seek­ing com­men­su­rate pow­er and respect through the bar­rel of a gun.
How will the nation move for­ward when a Government Senator ignores empir­i­cal data in order to push a fem­i­nist agen­da which is exact­ing incred­i­ble costs on the coun­try in blood and trea­sure?
In the push to lev­el the play­ing field and estab­lish equi­ty, the fem­i­nist move­ment does not care about any out­come except the out­comes which jus­ti­fy quo­tas in wom­en’s favor, regard­less of the con­se­quences.
A ris­ing tide rais­es all boats. If we are to have a bet­ter and just soci­ety we work for a soci­ety in which all are treat­ed equal­ly.
While the women take on jobs clear­ly some are not cut out for in the quest for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness the men stand on the cor­ners crush­ing weed in the mid­dle of their hands.
Later on, soci­ety pays dear­ly when they decide to take out their anger for their lack of rel­e­vance and the per­cep­tion that the game is rigged against them.
Guess what it is.

The young Jamaican male has become the car­i­ca­ture of what the fem­i­nist move­ment casts him to be.
Pants sag­ging off his ass, Guinness stout under one arm, while he crush­es dried Ganga in his palm.
A good for noth­ing male prod­uct of the patri­archy who sires mul­ti­ple chil­dren, none of whom he sup­ports.
He is vio­lent and spon­ta­neous and is pre­dis­posed to using vio­lence as a means of con­flict res­o­lu­tion.
Sounds about right ‑right? Well, if you think the mur­der sta­tis­tics are fright­en­ing now, swal­low the non­sense of Kamina Johnson-Smith and ignore the data.
I’ll hope to see you on the oth­er side of the revolution. 

Is there any­one else as annoyed as I am at the US Senator from South Carolina, no, not the Black one, the one who called him­self a friend of John McCain but has become Donald Trump’s water boy, (speak­ing of Lindsay Graham).
What the hell hap­pened to this guy? Was he always this full of it while John McCain was alive or has some­thing sin­is­ter hap­pened to Lindsay Graham?

Every year thou­sands and thou­sands of raids are car­ried out in neigh­bor­hoods across the coun­try by the thou­sands of mil­i­ta­rized police depart­ments. These mil­i­ta­rized raids are gen­er­al­ly car­ried out in black and brown neigh­bor­hoods, some­times with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for res­i­dents of the prop­er­ties on which these raids are exe­cut­ed.
Far too often the infor­ma­tion which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the raids are faulty, and even fraud­u­lent, result­ing osten­si­bly in dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for inno­cent vic­tims who are left to pick up the pieces.

I have nev­er ever heard Lindsay Graham con­demn the police for act­ing inap­pro­pri­ate­ly or abus­ing their pow­ers.
In 2014 Cops in Georgia act­ing as if they were sol­diers on a bat­tle­field crit­i­cal­ly injured 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh — known as “Baby Bou Bou.”
Serving a late-night “no-knock” war­rant on May 28, 2014, at a home where they believed Bou Bou’s father’s nephew, a sus­pect­ed meth deal­er, was stay­ing when they lobbed a flash-bang grenade inside. The nephew was­n’t home, and the grenade — designed to dis­ori­ent its tar­get — land­ed in Bou Bou’s crib.
The cops lied to the court but were nev­er­the­less found not guilty for almost killing the inno­cent child.
Lindsay Graham did not have a word of con­dem­na­tion for the overzeal­ous wannabe sol­diers who almost killed an inno­cent baby.
But the South Carolina Senator has writ­ten to the FBI demand­ing answers on why the agency did not sim­ply ask Roger Stone the Trump asso­ciate to turn him­self in.

The FBI turned up in force and arrest­ed Roger Stone ear­ly in the morn­ing as they do in most oth­er cas­es when they need to arrest crim­i­nal sus­pects.
That includes Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s per­son­al lawyer.
I believe any­one not liv­ing under a rock already knows who Roger Stone is.
I mean the guy is as old as a rock and has prid­ed him­self as a polit­i­cal dirty trick­ster of sorts from as far back as the Reagan years, maybe as far back as Nixon’s days.
Finally, Stone’s luck has run out and he has been indict­ed by Special Counsel Robert Muller’s team for his part in the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into alleged Russian col­lu­sion with the Trump cam­paign in the 2016 General elec­tions.
Why is Lindsay Graham stick­ing his nose into an active inves­ti­ga­tion over which he has no con­trol?
To begin with, the FBI has evi­dence that Graham does not have.
Lindsay Graham, though a US Senator, has no juris­dic­tion, author­i­ty or con­trol over either the FBI, or the Muller Investigations and as such the agency do not have to even respond to Senator Grahams posturing.

If we set aside those raids in which law enforce­ment break down doors only to real­ize that the infor­ma­tion on which they act­ed was false or mis­lead­ing.
And if we set aside the cas­es in which they break down doors and arrest real sus­pects in the all too famil­iar mil­i­tary-style raids, we would still be left with the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of peo­ple of col­or, gen­er­al­ly young black men who are mur­dered by police across the coun­try each year and Lindsay Graham has nev­er found his voice to speak out against those atroc­i­ties.
What Lindsay Graham is doing as a result of his grand­stand­ing is demand­ing a sep­a­rate set of rules for white men with pow­er.
No knock raids and raids like that car­ried out at Roger Stone’s house, you know where the FBI agents knocked and demand­ed that Stone open the door should only hap­pen to “those peo­ple”, peo­ple of col­or and poor peo­ple who do not mat­ter.
The FBI, I am sure, have sev­er­al rea­sons why they did not ask Roger Stone to report to be arraigned.
Not the least of which could be that he may poten­tial­ly destroy evi­dence ger­mane to their inves­ti­ga­tions.
Roger Stone has dared the agency to come and arrest him. He had T‑shirts made up dar­ing the Muller team and have told every­one who would lis­ten that he expect­ed that he would be indict­ed.
Guess what, they may have done just that.
Roger Stone may also have posed a flight risk, we do not know and nei­ther does the Senator from South Carolina.
All in all Roger Stone deserved no more def­er­ence that the guy on the street. Yet he was quick to tell the truth that the FBI Agents were real­ly quite cour­te­ous to him.
Lindsay Graham in seek­ing to be Trump’s water boy, is mak­ing a roy­al jack­ass of him­self.
John McCain would not rec­og­nize Lindsay Graham as a result of just how low he has sunken.

The 2020 presidential candidate has faced down creepy gossip about a past relationship for 20 years. It should stop — now.
By Joan Walsh

Democratic women had a lot to cel­e­brate this week­end. With the for­mal entrance of California Senator Kamala Harris to the 2020 pres­i­den­tial race, it was offi­cial: Three of the top prospects are women. Although Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have mere­ly said they’re explor­ing a run, both women drew big crowds on their first trip to Iowa, which holds its first-in-the-nation cau­cus­es next February 3. (Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard has also announced, but she has yet to hold a cam­paign event or con­firm hir­ing staff.) Warren’s strong start led The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs to anoint her as the Iowa “fron­trun­ner,” even as nation­al polls show for­mer vice pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the lead.

Kamala Harris, at least tem­porar­i­ly, blew by Warren on Sunday, draw­ing a crowd of more than 20,000 to her home­town of Oakland, California, for her offi­cial announce­ment. To be fair, since nei­ther Gillibrand nor Warren has declared, they have not yet invest­ed the mon­ey or advance work into stag­ing this kind of super-event. It wasn’t just the ador­ing crowds, though: I’ve been cov­er­ing Harris for 16 years, since her first race for San Francisco dis­trict attor­ney in 2003, and I’ve nev­er seen her so inspir­ing, quot­ing Frederick Douglass and Bobby Kennedy.

“When we have chil­dren in cages cry­ing for their moth­ers and fathers, don’t you dare call it bor­der secu­ri­ty,” she declared mid-speech. “That’s a human-rights abuse and that’s not our America.” I don’t have a can­di­date; I hope to stay neu­tral in this thrilling and his­toric 2020 race at least until 2020 — but Sunday was a great day for Democratic women, who­ev­er you sup­port.
Except when it wasn’t: The day began with the right wing buzzing over a sup­posed bomb­shell from for­mer San Francisco may­or Willie Brown, “con­firm­ing” what has nev­er been a secret, in his gad­fly week­ly col­umn for the San Francisco Chronicle: that he dat­ed Harris in the mid-1990s, when he was run­ning for may­or. “Extramarital affair with Kamala Harris?” Fox News blared. “Former San Francisco Mayor, 84, admits it hap­pened.” Townhall, RedState, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker and a host of oth­er wingnut sites piled on, some more per­vy than oth­ers (I won’t give them the traf­fic by link­ing). But main­stream out­lets picked up the news, too. “Willie Brown on Kamala Harris: ‘We dat­ed. I influ­enced her career,’” USA Today told us. NBC polit­i­cal reporter Jonathan Allen con­fessed on Twitter that “both Republicans & Democrats have whis­pered ‘Willie Brown’ to me in recent weeks when the sub­ject of Harris’ run has come up. That’ll hurt her, they say.” Allen, cor­rect­ly, went on to pre­dict the whis­pers will “back­fire” on Harris’s oppo­nents. But the whis­per­ing — and shout­ing — is appalling, on so many levels. 

For one thing, it shows the short mem­o­ries and/​or dis­turb­ing lazi­ness of many polit­i­cal reporters: Brown can’t “admit” to any­thing that’s been well known in San Francisco polit­i­cal cir­cles since it was going on, in the mid-1990s. Harris’s rela­tion­ship with Brown came up fre­quent­ly when she ran for DA in 2003. In fact, it was an enor­mous issue: She faced down charges that he’d helped her career — and he prob­a­bly did; what suc­cess­ful pol hasn’t had help from some­one pow­er­ful? — and giv­en her two plum state-com­mis­sion assign­ments. Worse than that were the lurid rumors about their rela­tion­ship I heard “on back­ground” — from oth­er Democrats. It was sex­ist and appalling — the sex lives of California Democrats like Brown him­self, and many of his con­tem­po­raries, bur­nished their leg­ends. Harris’s roman­tic past was sup­posed to shame and side­line her. It sick­ened me, and I wrote that at the time. In the end, it was her own work in the San Francisco and Alameda County DA’s offices, not Brown’s “help,” that con­vinced vot­ers to take a chance on Harris, and reject the aging pro­gres­sive incum­bent Terence Hallinan (who was him­self accused of sex­u­al harass­ment by sev­er­al women while he served on the Board of Supervisors; he set­tled with one out of court).
Now, some are claim­ing that Harris is hid­ing her past with Brown; appar­ent­ly, she didn’t men­tion him in her new book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. Newsflash: This hap­pened almost a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago. She was around 30. No one has an oblig­a­tion to dis­cuss the men they dat­ed that long ago. Early in her career, she was open about it: She had to be. The night Brown was elect­ed as may­or she shared the stage, and famous­ly pre­sent­ed him with a base­ball cap embla­zoned “Da Mayor.” (You can eas­i­ly find the pho­to on the Google.)

Others are tak­ing a mor­al­iz­ing approach: Brown was “mar­ried,” so she con­duct­ed an extra­mar­i­tal affair. Newsflash: While liv­ing in the San Francisco Bay Area and even work­ing under Speaker Willie Brown in the California State Assembly, it took me years to learn that the Democratic leader was still mar­ried. That’s because he was a noto­ri­ous wom­an­iz­er, who used to joke that his age, com­bined with his girlfriend’s, could nev­er break 100 (at 84, he bet­ter have relaxed those rules, lest he breaks the law). He nonethe­less remained close to his wife; he report­ed­ly promised he would nev­er divorce her. Still, the late, leg­endary colum­nist San Francisco colum­nist Herb Caen even pre­dict­ed Brown and Harris would mar­ry.
Read more here: https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​k​a​m​a​l​a​-​h​a​r​r​i​s​-​w​i​l​l​i​e​-​b​r​o​wn/

The cri­sis in Venezuela should be worked out by the Venezuelan peo­ple and should under no cir­cum­stances be engi­neered by any for­eign pow­er.
At the moment the United States is con­duct­ing an aggres­sive inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged Russian inter­fer­ence into its 2016 elec­tions.
As such, the US has no author­i­ty to tip the scales in Venezuela one way or the oth­er and nei­ther does any oth­er nation. 

What is right for the United States must also be right for the rest of the world.
But you would­n’t know it from lis­ten­ing to über -war-hawk John Bolton, Donald Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er.
Bolton, a well-known war­mon­ger who would nev­er allow an oppor­tu­ni­ty to go to war to go unex­ploit­ed, wormed his way into the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and got the job he want­ed, that of nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er.
Donald Trump cam­paigned on pulling America out of what he called “stu­pid wars,” in his unique inco­her­ent gib­ber­ish, Trump man­aged to artic­u­late a pol­i­cy which indi­cat­ed that he did not believe in an America in which the coun­try is the police­man of the world.

Despite those self-serv­ing protes­ta­tions by Trump, his admin­is­tra­tion has moved to rec­og­nize Juan Guido’s deci­sion to declare him­self inter­im pres­i­dent of Venezuela.
The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has also tak­en steps to hand to Juan Guido the accounts that Venezuela has out­side the coun­try.
Those moves are designed to top­ple the pres­i­den­cy of Nicolas Maduro.
Regardless of what one thinks of Nicolas Maduro’s pres­i­den­cy or the way he acquired it, it is incon­ceiv­able to imag­ine a sce­nario in which the United States would allow a for­eign pow­er to active­ly decide who is pres­i­dent of the United States.
Or is it?
Without for­eign cur­ren­cy, Venezuela can­not con­duct busi­ness and the Venezuelan econ­o­my will osten­si­bly collapse.

Donald Trump preach­es America First, he rarely invokes democ­ra­cy and human rights and has expressed glow­ing admi­ra­tion for dic­ta­tors such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Siding with Juan Guido sup­pos­ed­ly to restore democ­ra­cy in Venezuela rings hol­low.
The Atlantic argued: Asked to explain the president’s anom­alous stance on Maduro dur­ing a con­fer­ence call with reporters on Wednesday, a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, not­ed that both Venezuela and the United States are bound to a multi­na­tion­al char­ter they adopt­ed in 2001 that enshrines rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy as the pre­vail­ing polit­i­cal sys­tem in the Western hemi­sphere. But the ratio­nale rang hol­low. If we’ve learned one thing from Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, it’s that he doesn’t feel the least bit teth­ered to inter­na­tion­al agree­ments when he believes they aren’t in the nation­al inter­est.

Asked about the poten­tial of a mil­i­tary incur­sion into Venezuela, John Bolton remarked to the press that the President has main­tained that all options are on the table.
Bolton tried to make the case that such actions would be to pro­tect Americans in Venezuela.
All options should not be on the table if America sim­ply brings its diplo­mats home. Countries kick diplo­mats out all the time. This time should be no dif­fer­ent.
As the cri­sis in Trump’s pres­i­den­cy height­ens it seems like yet anoth­er wag-the-dog mil­i­tary exer­cise could be in the works to dis­tract atten­tion away from a floun­der­ing pres­i­den­cy.
America has a chief exec­u­tive who has been named as a co-con­spir­a­tor in a felony. There is a pro­duc­tive and ever threat­en­ing Special Counsel inves­ti­ga­tion which seems set to engulf Donald Trump.
His bor­der wall inspired Government shut­down end­ed after 35 days with the Democrats hold­ing fast under the lead­er­ship of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s lead­er­ship.
With lit­tle to no leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments to point to and anoth­er pres­i­den­tial cam­paign begin­ning to take shape on the hori­zon.
The sad yet dan­ger­ous irony in all of this is that a pres­i­den­cy which came into exis­tence on the promise to extri­cate America from stu­pid wars,[sic] may very well be con­tem­plat­ing start­ing anoth­er stu­pid war, with the express intent of build­ing pub­lic sup­port for a pres­i­den­cy many deem illegitimate.

It is hard to imag­ine a case in which the People’s National Party has made a greater ass of itself than get­ting involved in the events in Venezuela on the side of ille­git­i­mate President Nicolas Maduro.
It is remark­able, yet total­ly pre­dictable that the (PNP) would mis­take a man who rigged the vote and made him­self President to be a [duly elect­ed] president.

As is to be expect­ed the local media hous­es also jumped onto the band­wag­on in sup­port of Maduro under the same guise.
The fact that the United States to a large extent have sup­port­ed and may have been instru­men­tal in Mr Juan Guaido declar­ing him­self inter­im pres­i­dent, may be play­ing a part in the PNP’s deci­sion to sup­port Maduro.
However it is not just the US which has sup­port­ed the move by Guaido, so too has Canada, and quite a few Latin American and European coun­tries.

Arguing for sup­port of Maduro The Observer Editorial page head­lined (A plea for Venezuela).
Simply put, nations that sub­scribe to the ide­al of democ­ra­cy can­not, on one hand — and right­ly so we believe — dis­miss Mr Nicolas Maduro’s claim to the pres­i­den­cy, then turn around and embrace Mr Guaido’s announce­ment. For Mr Guaido, in mak­ing that claim, is act­ing in like man­ner to his polit­i­cal foe.

In an Editorial which lit­er­al­ly sup­ports the deci­sion not to sup­port Maduro’s pres­i­den­cy, but for the para­graph say­ing Jamaica should, the Editors made plau­si­ble and con­vinc­ing argu­ments as to why Maduro should not be pres­i­dent, includ­ing the fol­low­ing.
Readers will recall that in 2014 after a fall in oil prices sparked a major eco­nom­ic cri­sis for Venezuela, Mr Maduro’s Government greet­ed anti-gov­ern­ment protests with force, result­ing in the deaths of 43 peo­ple. In 2017, when pro­test­ers, in four months of demon­stra­tions, called for Mr Maduro to step down, 125 peo­ple were killed. Also, 18 months after the Opposition won con­trol of the National Assembly by a land­slide in December 2015, Mr Maduro, in a bla­tant dis­play of his dis­re­gard for democ­ra­cy, cre­at­ed a Constituent Assembly tasked with rewrit­ing Venezuela’s con­sti­tu­tion. That move was regard­ed as designed to super­sede the National Assembly in order to legit­imize his grip on power.

The Editorial laid out a case by case basis for exact­ly why Nicolas Maduro should not be pres­i­dent, while claim­ing that quote:Nations that sub­scribe to the ide­al of democ­ra­cy can­not, on one hand — and right­ly so we believe — dis­miss Mr. Nicolas Maduro’s claim to the pres­i­den­cy.
It is exact­ly that kind of regres­sive think­ing which caused the PNP to crit­i­cize the Government’s stance against the Maduro régime.
It is for those rea­sons that the PNP’s Lisa Hanna was out mak­ing state­ments to the media in sup­port of Nicolas Maduro.
And it is that kind of lack of crit­i­cal think­ing by the PNP which has kept the coun­try immersed in pover­ty over the years and got the coun­try into the morass it did in the 70’s.
It is that kind of unin­tel­li­gent thought process which caus­es the PNP to with­draw it’s sup­port from the Government’s appli­ca­tion of the lim­it­ed states of emer­gency.
If the steps Nicolas Maduro took to acquire and main­tain con­trol of the gov­ern­ment in Venezuela are ille­gal then his claim to the pres­i­den­cy are no more legit­i­mate than that of Juan Guaido.

Without going into too much details, here is an ultra brief syn­op­sis of Nicolas Maduro’s polit­i­cal life.
After enter­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis when the Supreme Tribunal removed pow­er from the National Assembly, months of protests occurred in 2017, lead­ing Maduro to call for a rewrite of the con­sti­tu­tion and result­ing in at least 153 deaths. The Constituent Assembly of Venezuela was elect­ed into office 30 July 2017, with the major­i­ty of its elect­ed mem­bers being pro-Maduro.^[24][25] On 20 May 2018, Maduro was reelect­ed into the pres­i­den­cy in what the Atlantic Council and Financial Times described as a show elec­tion^[26][27] which had the low­est vot­er turnout in Venezuela’s mod­ern his­to­ry.^[28] Like Chávez, Maduro has been accused of author­i­tar­i­an lead­er­ship,^[29] with main­stream media describ­ing him as a dic­ta­tor, espe­cial­ly fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of the recall move­ment that was direct­ed towards him.(Wikipedia).

The People’s National Party has con­sis­tent­ly hitched it’s wag­on to despot­ic ille­git­i­mate gov­ern­ments and ide­olo­gies in the same way it has made deci­sions which has had demon­stra­bly cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for Jamaica since 1962.
In some cas­es the PNP could sim­ply have remained silent, as it should have in the Nicolas Maduro’s case.
But the PNP has nev­er been known to exer­cise good judge­ment. Not when Michael Manley hitched his wag­on to Fidel Castro,who had hitched his wag­on to a dying Soviet empire.
Not even in exer­cis­ing good judge­ment in eschew­ing and dis­card­ing the clenched fists, stu­pid berets and using the moniker “com­rade”.