Finding them­selves in the unen­vi­able posi­tion if the minor­i­ty par­ty in the House, Republicans now have a chance to lick their wounds over the mon­u­men­tal loss they suf­fered in the last elec­tions. Maybe now its time for some intro­spec­tion about where they went wrong. 

The stale­mate in which the coun­try finds itself with no plau­si­ble end in sight to a man­u­fac­tured cri­sis is only one of the many issues which are plagu­ing the GOP and hurt­ing the coun­try.
It has become evi­dent that Republicans can­not be trust­ed with pow­er.
When in oppo­si­tion they engi­neer strate­gies which at best are reac­tionary and sub­ver­sive.
When vot­ed into office they demon­strate that the actions they take are not in the inter­est of the wider soci­ety, but are tai­lored toward a rather tiny sliv­er of the soci­ety.
That tiny sliv­er is usu­al­ly the whitest and rich­est peo­ple at the top.

The inabil­i­ty of the Congress to get any­thing done was not cre­at­ed by the hap­less Democrats. Truth is, the Democrats are too behold­en, to too many dif­fer­ent inter­ests to stick to any pol­i­cy posi­tion as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple for long and Republicans have always cashed in on that.
Traditionally Democrats gen­er­al­ly end up fold­ing like a cheap tent at the slight­est push­back by Republicans.
Newt Gingrich was able to work with Bill Clinton, despite the reac­tionary nature of his so-called “con­tract with America” insur­gency .
Democrats for their part, basi­cal­ly gave away the house to George W Bush after ⁹⁄₁₁ out of fear he would label them against America.
You will recall Bush’s mantra, “either you are with us or you are against us”?
That scared the hell out of the Democrats, so they gave him more than he demand­ed and the Patriot Act was born.
The con­se­quences of the Bush Presidency and the dam­age done to indi­vid­ual free­doms is incalculable.

The log­jam in the Congress came about because Barack Obama a (black man) ascend­ed to the Presidency.
Republicans at the Congressional and Gubernatorial lev­els decid­ed they would do every­thing in their pow­er to make sure that the poli­cies the new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent ran on did not become law.
The T‑Party was born, not as some gener­ic grass­roots oppo­si­tion to Obama’s so-called Socialists Policies as some would have you believe. But as a con­se­quence of a strate­gic well-fund­ed cam­paign by über-bil­lion­aires the likes of the Koch broth­ers, gam­bling mag­nate Sheldon Adelson, the Mercers, and others.

Now there is a sor­ta-kind Republican in the white house and of course, Congressional Republicans are more than will­ing to have you believe that Democrats have a respon­si­bil­i­ty and indeed a duty to engage in bipar­ti­san­ship.
Of course, why not? The Democrats have always been like a filler par­ty which takes office when peo­ple are tired of Republican betray­al and the destruc­tion of the econ­o­my.
Republican con­tri­bu­tions are to start some wars, dec­i­mate the econ­o­my and back goes the elec­torate to the Democrats. Yup, even a black Democrat, some­thing which nev­er hap­pened before.
And what do you know, it worked.
Then, it’s back to any­thing which calls itself Republican, and the cycle con­tin­ues.
The prob­lem this time for the trea­so­nous Republicans, is that the Democratic major­i­ty is made up of some not so old peo­ple, some not so white peo­ple, and some not so timid peo­ple.
Many of them ran on exact­ly not con­form­ing to pre­vi­ous Democratic ortho­doxy.
As an Opinion writer, I have for the last cou­ple of years writ­ten that Democratic vot­ers want a deci­sive Democratic par­ty, not a Republican-lite Democratic par­ty. I point­ed to the rise of Vermont Socialist, Bernie Sanders as proof that Democratic vot­ers want clear lines of demar­ca­tion between their par­ty and the Republicans.
Like the cleans­ing which went on in the Republican par­ty which removed the so-called (Republicans in name only)[RINO’s]sic, pro­gres­sive Democratic vot­ers are tired of elect­ing Democrats who are Republican-lite.
This time they vot­ed for Democratic can­di­dates who are Democrats, can­di­dates who are Black, Hispanic, Muslims, Native-Americans- Gays, Transgenders and oth­ers, and all of those groups are tired of the Democratic par­ty tak­ing their votes and push­ing a white male agen­da after­wards.

So now that Paul Ryan, the fake gold­en boy genius, has tak­en his mar­bles and gone home leav­ing Kevin McCarthy to be minor­i­ty leader, yes the same Kevin McCarthy who should have been the speak­er before Ryan, he’s now set­tling into the minor­i­ty spot, one of a dying breed of California Republicans.
And what do you know, unlike Mitch McConnell and his band of Putin sup­port­ers in the Senate Kevin McCarthy and his now chas­tened House Republicans have decid­ed to blow some smoke up the nations rear end by throw­ing their racist point man Steven King over­board.
Paul Ryan pre­tend­ed to care but stuck it to the aver­age Joe while enact­ing the agen­da of the 1%. He is now gone, a dis­tant mem­o­ry and a bad taste in the nations col­lec­tive pal­let.
He left with­out doing any­thing pos­i­tive for the nation for which he will be remem­bered.
It’s not like Steve King has­n’t been a vile ran­cid racist scum­bag all his polit­i­cal life, every­one knows King and many, many oth­ers in the Republican Party are not just racist but dumb nation­al­ists.
There are so many more vile crea­tures like Steve King in both the Republican and Democratic par­ties. Some worse than oth­ers.
So I got­ta ask why now, why have Republicans, at least those in the house final­ly decid­ed to strip Steve King of his com­mit­tee assign­ments?
I mean the vot­ers in Iowa’s 4^th District knew who Steve King was all along and despite the out­cry against him they again sent him to Washington?
If Steve King is an igno­ble racist what does it make them?
If Republicans had con­trol of the house would they have done any­thing about their col­league from Iowa’s 4^th dis­trict?
Absolutely not, they have now done this so that they can change the con­ver­sa­tion. So the next time Republicans are accused of racism they can point to Steve King and say here is how we treat Racists in our par­ty when we see it.

Now here is the thing I can­not wrap my mind around, King has always been this way, so it seems to me that lament­ing in a New York Times inter­view as to the rea­son “white suprema­cy” and “white nation­al­ism” have become offen­sive may have been the straw which broke the Camel’s back.
McCarthy said King’s remarks were “beneath the dig­ni­ty of the Party of Lincoln and the United States of America” and “call into ques­tion whether he will treat all Americans equal­ly, with­out regard for race and ethnicity”.“House Republicans are clear: We are all in this togeth­er, as fel­low cit­i­zens equal before God and the law,” McCarthy said accord­ing to [Huffpost​.com].
What baloney, this idea of a Trump wall is exact­ly because America is becom­ing a mul­ti­cul­tur­al, mul­ti-eth­nic coun­ty. Steve King knew and said it, and so does all who sup­port the Republican par­ty.
The immi­gra­tion fights are about the brown­ing of America and so is all of the vot­er sup­pres­sion laws and strate­gies Republicans have ini­ti­at­ed.

Barack Obama mused after win­ning a sec­ond term that maybe the fever would break, in ref­er­ence to the Republican uni­tary oppo­si­tion to him on every issue.
That did not hap­pen, Republicans main­tained their abnor­mal oppo­si­tion to him even as it regard­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al right and respon­si­bil­i­ty to appoint a jus­tice to the Supreme court, upon which the Senate is then required to advise and con­sent.
Republicans did nei­ther!
Mitch McConnell ensured that not only would Judge Merrick Garland not get a hear­ing to be an asso­ciate jus­tice, but Republicans would not even meet with him, and so they did­n’t.
Through that process of bla­tant polit­i­cal obstruc­tion­ism, Neil M. Gorsuch now sits in the seat which should have been Merrick Garland’s.
The Republican attempt to jet­ti­son Steve King so as to save face when accused of racism will fool no one.
The Party of Lincoln was nev­er an anti-racist par­ty as some would have you believe. Racism in America was nev­er a par­ty issue, it has always been a peo­ple issue and it still is.
The mythol­o­gy about Lincoln and his par­ty is just that, a myth and so too is the non­sense that Steve King’s racism flies in the face of the par­ty of Lincoln.
Furthermore, this Republican par­ty is now the par­ty of Trump and it’s pri­ma­ry char­ac­ter­is­tic is Racism.

A CURSORY LOOK AT SOME OF THE CASUALTIES

At the risk of over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, it seems to me that men will sim­ply have to have what they say to women looked over by their lawyers before say­ing them.
Let me has­ten to say that women have been on the wrong end of sex­u­al devian­cy by some men who sim­ply do not know how to act and some who don’t care about act­ing right.
Even as we con­tem­plate how to be bet­ter exam­ples of our­selves it is impor­tant to ensure that we do not throw out the baby with the bath water.
It is nev­er­the­less impor­tant that even with the glee of (#metoo) inno­cent lives are not destroyed by false accu­sa­tions and fake equiv­a­lences to make up for past trans­gres­sions.
We have a real pro­cliv­i­ty to tilt­ing too far to the oth­er side to com­pen­sate for past errors that we over­turn the whole thing.

Over the last cou­ple of years, many pow­er­ful men have been brought down on alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse, sex­u­al assaults, and even sex­u­al harass­ment.
Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, are only a few to have been reduced to neg­a­tive car­i­ca­tures of their for­mer selves.
Bill Cosby is serv­ing a lengthy prison sen­tence for sex­u­al assaults alleged­ly com­mit­ted many years ago out­side the statute of lim­i­ta­tions.
The man who pros­e­cut­ed him ran for the office sole­ly on his desire to bring Bill Cosby down. So much for blind jus­tice.
Now Cosby may very well be a mon­ster who is deserv­ing of where he finds him­self but it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the pha­lanx of over 50 women who made alle­ga­tions about inci­dents of abuse spanned a wide swath of Cosby’s career, from Kristina Ruehli (1965) to Chloe Goins (2008).

Whether we are talk­ing about alle­ga­tions of improp­er con­duct between grownups, or the sor­did inde­fen­si­ble alle­ga­tions against R Kelly the R&b artiste who is alleged to have had a decades-long affin­i­ty for sex­u­al­ly assault­ing under­age girls, or even a man mak­ing improp­er sex­u­al com­ments to a co-work­er, it is all viewed in the same light.
And there­in lies the prob­lem because what is hap­pen­ing now it seems, is an esca­lat­ing fight and a grow­ing chasm between the sex­es, made worse dai­ly by indi­vid­ual occur­rences of mis­con­duct which are processed as part of a larg­er con­spir­a­cy by the evil male[sic].

In the days since the life­time docuseries “sur­viv­ing R Kelly” aired in which music Journalist “Toure” appeared and con­demned R Kelly for the alle­ga­tions against him by a long list of teenage girls includ­ing one to which he was mar­ried, Toure is him­self fac­ing alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment.
In the alle­ga­tions, a woman iden­ti­fied only as “Dani” a make­up artist accused Touré of sex­u­al­ly harass­ing her when she worked with him on a Time Inc. show.
“He couldn’t stop ask­ing me to do anal, how I looked naked, if I had sex over the week­end, what it would be like to fuck me …” Dani wrote in the com­ments. “I had to have the crew stay in the room with me while I got him ready.”

Nothing in these alle­ga­tions can be con­doned or sup­port­ed. Simply put, men have to be bet­ter stew­ards of their sex­u­al urges.
As men, we have to reassess how we respond to women and not do to them what we would not want any­one doing to our daugh­ters, moth­ers, sis­ters, and friends.
As men, we also know that sex­u­al harass­ment is hard­ly a male prob­lem, but men look at sex­u­al harass­ment and even sex­u­al assaults in a pure­ly dif­fer­ent light.
For the most part, even when a man is a vic­tim of unwant­ed sex­u­al attention/​assault, he gen­er­al­ly wears it as a badge of hon­or. And so we do not have a cor­rect rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling of data in which men are the victims.

Far too often we fail to process infor­ma­tion prop­er­ly. We have a pre­dis­po­si­tion to always hav­ing to com­part­men­tal­ize the infor­ma­tion to which we are exposed and place it into neat lit­tle box­es.
This type of desire to always label and tuck away infor­ma­tion neat­ly in the recess­es of our minds does not always lend itself to under­stand­ing the con­text in which things hap­pen and the way we receive infor­ma­tion today ver­sus just two decades ago.
The loads of data to which we are now exposed as a result of social media and ²⁴⁄₇ cable news can some­times make it seem like the sky is falling.
We get over­whelmed into think­ing that every­thing we once held dear, has been uproot­ed and we are slid­ing into an abyss.
But is this kind of think­ing real­ly true?

I don’t think so. Fewer peo­ple are dying from wars, dis­eases, and crime over­all, than say 50 years ago.
Many issues which were once dirty lit­tle secrets, pedophil­ia, sex-traf­fick­ing, sex­u­al assaults, and sex­u­al harass­ment are now out in the open.
Technology has brought every­thing into sharp­er focus and as a con­se­quence what we may be deal­ing with is a lit­tle bit of infor­ma­tion over­load.
Excessive Internet and social media use can impact your men­tal health? While it’s a help­ful tool for edu­ca­tion, work, social inter­ac­tion, and enter­tain­ment, overuse can take a toll on your health, says Saju Mathew, M.D., a pri­ma­ry care physi­cian at Piedmont. 
Reading too much neg­a­tive news and too much com­put­er time can increase your anx­i­ety.
Is that caus­ing this anx­i­ety between the sex­es?
Are the anx­i­ety and anger jus­ti­fied at a time when women are appear­ing in larg­er num­bers in the work­force and once cov­ered up secrets are now out in the open?
Or is there a larg­er push to dri­ve a wedge between the gen­ders and our for­mer way of life?

We are now being told that we should not refer to young chil­dren as girls and boys because they are too young to decide what they want to be.
Businesses are being required to pro­vide sep­a­rate ablu­tion areas for trans peo­ple and mar­riage between same-sex cou­ples is now the law of the land.
Does that play into the sense of anger around how the issues of sex­u­al harass­ment and sex­u­al assaults are viewed?
In the world of hyper-polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and gen­der equal­i­ty, there are seem­ing­ly no longer any clear­ly defined bound­aries.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of new­ly mint­ed California Governor Gavin Newsom has decid­ed that in the name of gen­der equal­i­ty she will not take on the title of “first lady” of California but instead will go with “first-part­ner.
“The work I do real­ly par­al­lels and com­ple­ments Gavin’s work because it’s about awak­en­ing people’s con­scious­ness, shift­ing hearts and minds, atti­tudes and behav­iors,” Siebel Newsom said in a Los Angeles Times pro­file pub­lished in November. 
The gov­er­nor has been an advo­cate for gen­der issues, includ­ing women’s and LGBTQ rights.”https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​j​e​n​n​i​f​e​r​-​s​i​e​b​e​l​-​n​e​w​s​o​m​-​g​a​v​i​n​-​n​e​w​s​o​n​_​u​s​_​5​c​3​7​5​2​8​6​e​4​b​0​c​4​6​9​d​7​6​b​9​9a7

There should be zero tol­er­ance for sex­u­al assaults, sex­u­al harass­ment or even sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion. Yet I won­der whether we are doing our­selves any favors when we lump sex­u­al assaults and or harass­ment into the same cat­e­go­ry as a man telling a co-work­er she looks great?
Because if we are, I sense that the work­place will become a place where nei­ther gen­der will want to be.
A while back I wrote an arti­cle speak­ing to faith and the LGBT, (Queer and Trans com­mu­ni­ty ). I argued then that as far as those com­mu­ni­ties are con­cerned, it was not just a mat­ter of get­ting the straight com­mu­ni­ty to see their com­mu­ni­ty as equals.
There is a far more sin­is­ter motive behind their push . The idea seems to be designed to bend the straight com­mu­ni­ty’s way of think­ing and yes it’s about awak­en­ing people’s con­scious­ness, shift­ing hearts and minds, atti­tudes and behav­iors.
Not in the way you are think­ing. Not toward equal­i­ty and jus­tice but toward sub­ju­ga­tion and total feal­ty to their way of thinking.

Much of the #metoo move­ment is jus­ti­fi­able come­up­pance for too many men who believe/​d that women are dis­pos­able crea­tures cre­at­ed only for their plea­sure and con­ve­nience.
Nevertheless, there is much lump­ing of indi­vid­ual cas­es designed to cre­ate the impres­sion that men are on a sex­u­al tear against women.
It is a strat­e­gy which is result­ing in even more dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for men, many of whom are inno­cent.
People will use what­ev­er weapons they have to inflict harm. Allegations of sex­u­al mis­con­duct have real and far-reach­ing con­se­quences against those they are lev­eled against.
Unfortunately, some women are no more less inclined to using sex­u­al alle­ga­tions as a weapon against men than some men are inclined to abuse women.
The ques­tion then becomes ‚who ben­e­fits from a dis­cor­dant divide between the sexes?

If you ever raised your voice in objec­tion to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, under­stand that you may very well be the poten­tial tar­get of an evil smear cam­paign.
If they can­not find some­thing on which to dis­cred­it you they will find a way to dredge up some­thing that sounds believ­able.
Over the years as the debate raged about the need for greater soci­etal accep­tance of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty I argued that there was no soci­etal refusal to accept­ing homosexuality/​Lesbianism.
Potential employ­ers were not in the busi­ness of ask­ing whether one was gay or straight.
People lived their lives the way they chose to. It was the gay com­mu­ni­ty which insist­ed that the way we looked at mar­riage across the globe was out­dat­ed, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and was like lava which need­ed to under­go a metamorphosis.

FEMINISM

The way they see it is that we are liv­ing in a hor­ri­ble patri­ar­chal world which needs dis­man­tling.
For some rea­son or oth­er, some black women seem to think that fem­i­nism is their fight to wage, their hill to die on.
My ques­tion to them, includ­ing the black intel­lec­tu­als who sub­scribe to the fem­i­nist ide­ol­o­gy, is this, where is the fem­i­nist com­mu­ni­ty as you strug­gle to under­stand why police just shot and killed your black son?
Lesbian black women seem to go to excep­tion­al lengths to demon­strate that they have larg­er tes­ti­cles than men.
They dress and try to look hard­er than the tough­est thug on the streets and their hatred of men seem to take on a par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous tinge.
The web­site ( every​dayfem​i​nism​.com) while beg­ging for mon­ey to stay on the inter­net , argues for 5 Reasons Our ‘Sons’ Need Feminism, Too.
*Boys can seem insu­lat­ed from the harm done by the patri­archy, and that makes it eas­i­er to neglect shar­ing our fem­i­nism with our sons. After all, they have an advan­tage in this crap­py patri­ar­chal sys­tem. It seems like they’ll, more or less, be okay.
I’m a work­ing-class mom strug­gling to make ends meet while bring­ing up a tod­dler, so I get how hard this stuff is.

I beg your par­don, I would wager that you were not a fem­i­nist before you had that tod­dler.
I would also wager that fem­i­nism was not a thought when you were decid­ing on the man with whom you made that tod­dler.
Now all of a sud­den you are a rabid fem­i­nist because you are left to raise a kid on your own, most like­ly because of your crap­py deci­sion mak­ing?
The writer went on.
*The truth is, you don’t and can’t know the gen­der of a baby, or even most young tod­dlers. No mat­ter how we par­ents feel about it, there is always a chance that our kids won’t turn out to iden­ti­fy with the gen­ders assigned to them at birth.
I’m cis­gen­der (mean­ing that I iden­ti­fy with the gen­der that was assigned to me at birth) but not every­one is, and there is no guar­an­tee that any one par­tic­u­lar child will be.
Any child born could turn out to be trans­gen­der, and you (and the kid) might not know right away! It’s also a real­i­ty that some chil­dren are born inter­sex and doc­tors may or may not notice this upon birth.
The fact is that when we say a new­born baby is a boy or a girl, what we’re real­ly doing is pre­dict­ing their gen­der, and while some­times our pre­dic­tions are right, they’re also some­times very wrong.
And if your child turns out to be trans­gen­der, you also have no way of know­ing when your child will know that about them­selves and feel ready to talk to you about it. 

Although you may find the fore­gone laugh­able, it is cer­tain­ly not a par­o­dy. This is the kind of infor­ma­tion which is dom­i­nat­ing the inter­net and cable tele­vi­sion, even­tu­al­ly shap­ing how peo­ple see them­selves and oth­ers.
They are lit­er­al­ly ques­tion­ing even bio­log­i­cal facts, by that stan­dard, a baby boy is not a baby boy until the boy decides it wants to be a boy.
And oh by the way, an apple is not an apple unless the apple decides it is an apple.
If you some­times won­der how come so many peo­ple in the Evangelical move­ment could move so far afield that they would sup­port a can­di­date like Donald Trump a ser­i­al phi­lan­der­er for President, you may have just hap­pened upon some of those answers here.
That is not to say that Trump was a moral alter­na­tive to the dystopi­an real­i­ties we are being asked to embrace, but at least he believes fun­da­men­tal­ly in the same things in which they believe.
He shares some of the broad­er ideas they share.
Even though he is inher­ent­ly flawed, in their eyes he is not a rev­o­lu­tion­ary depar­ture from the val­ues they have held all their lives.

My col­lege sopho­more son jok­ing­ly used the term “Toxic mas­culin­i­ty” in a light fam­i­ly con­ver­sa­tion recent­ly.
We all laughed and jok­ing­ly chid­ed him that col­lege was turn­ing him against men as the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion (“tox­ic”) used in any con­text to define men was a pejo­ra­tive label designed to cre­ate anger, mis­trust, and even hatred of all things male.(https://​fem​magazine​.com) explains “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty”) this way.
Toxic mas­culin­i­ty enforces the soci­etal ide­ol­o­gy that males must attain con­trol in rela­tion­ships, the house­hold, and in most pub­lic sit­u­a­tions. This atti­tude pro­motes aver­sion towards express­ing emo­tions that would be deemed as fem­i­nine for fear of emas­cu­la­tion. This is direct­ly linked to the misog­y­nis­tic men­tal­i­ty that male qual­i­ties are supe­ri­or to fem­i­nine qual­i­ties.

So if a man ever believed in a social order in which he is the head of the house­hold. And if he is sup­posed to lead in love, and pro­vide for , and pro­tect his fam­i­ly as God com­mands him to ‚he is indulging in poi­so­nous male behav­ior.
It is impor­tant to note that this philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion is a 180 degree diver­gence from the struc­tures on which Christian soci­eties are built.
If the new prin­ci­ples are anti­thet­i­cal and dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to our foun­da­tion­al Christian prin­ci­ples, whose philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tives do they advance? 

The Government has a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to secure the nation. It has zero duty or respon­si­bil­i­ty to acqui­esce to any demands made by the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion as long as it is car­ry­ing out its man­date with­in the con­fines of the con­sti­tu­tion.
Elections have con­se­quences, the (PNP) failed at secur­ing the nation and that explains why the par­ty is on the out­side look­ing in and scream­ing for rel­e­vance on every issue.

There is noth­ing wrong with an oppo­si­tion par­ty voic­ing its con­cern on an issue.
What I do not under­stand is the rea­son behind the admin­is­tra­tion hav­ing to fight with the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion about the way it wants to imple­ment strate­gies to secure the nation.
Why does the Government need to have meet­ings with the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and oth­ers to forge con­sen­sus on nation­al secu­ri­ty and crime?
Why is there a need for the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion to have respec­tive legal teams meet to dis­cuss and agree on crime-con­trol pow­ers?
What good can come out of tri­al lawyers (lit­er­al­ly all with the same left­ist world view, from the same schools, with the same anti-law-enfrce­ment bias­es) decide on a way for­ward on crime?

According to a release issued from the meet­ing last Monday between Andrew Holness and Peter Phillips a range of issues were dis­cussed.
Heading this raft of issues on deal­ing with crime was … human rights.
How the fuck can a coun­try devise strate­gies for deal­ing with a rag­ing mur­der epi­dem­ic with the cen­tral theme being human rights?
Every strat­e­gy deal­ing with crime should be dis­cussed, for­mu­lat­ed and exe­cut­ed with human rights as a fore­gone con­clu­sion.
Human rights can­not be a dis­cus­sion in crime strate­gies.
It is already built in that the duty of law enforce­ment is to pro­tect and serve and in that is a built-in under­stand­ing that one should not and can­not abuse the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect.
With that under­stood, plan­ners must get on with the busi­ness of secur­ing the coun­try with­out the inces­sant bull­shit about human rights.

The real­i­ty is that the tri­al lawyers, the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion, some in the gov­ern­ment and their many prox­ies in the broad­er soci­ety are all mak­ing a killing[no pun intend­ed] from the crime and mur­der epi­dem­ic in the coun­try.
Security Companies, Mortuaries, Bands, whole­sale liquor estab­lish­ments, bars, and a wide array of oth­er par­a­site indus­tries have sprung up and are flour­ish­ing around the mur­ders to the point there is no real inter­est in stamp­ing out the mon­ster.
Why fix the prob­lem if there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing tons of cash from it?
What bet­ter way to tie the hands of law-enforce­ment than to con­stant­ly bring up the ques­tion of human rights?
What cop or well think­ing mem­ber of the soci­ety is going to be opposed to human rights being a cen­tral theme with­out risk­ing the wrath of the intel­li­gentsia and even the hang­ers-on who do not under­stand shit about anything?

What’s real­ly hap­pen­ing is that there is a del­i­cate bal­ance being main­tained between keep­ing the killings under wraps so that the tourists are not scared away and appear­ing to fight crime with­out doing too much to seri­ous­ly dis­rupt the net­works which are doing the killings.
Far too many peo­ple are mak­ing real mon­ey from the sta­tus quo.
As long as they can keep con­vinc­ing the gullible pop­u­la­tion that look­ing after their human rights is pre­serv­ing and ensur­ing their safe­ty they will get away with the scam.
Unfortunately for those Jamaicans who can­not afford gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties with ²⁴⁄₇ secu­ri­ty, those who can­not have licensed firearms [usu­al­ly the same group] they will just have to con­tin­ue to live the exis­tence of poten­tial sta­tis­tics every sin­gle day they wake up.

Those who read­i­ly accept the canard that ensur­ing their human rights and their secu­ri­ty are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive endeav­ors will even­tu­al­ly, giv­en enough time, be dead right.
In secur­ing a com­mu­ni­ty, a state or a coun­try you do one thing.
You go after the bad guys!
There is no con­flict, con­trary to the bull­shit that Jamaica’s oppo­si­tion Party, (the PNP) is sell­ing, between get­ting the bad guys and observ­ing human rights.
In fact, where the fuck is the oppo­si­tion par­ty’s loy­al­ty?
Is it to the crim­i­nal net­works or is it to the Jamaican people?

The aver­age cop who does not have his head up the ass of one of the two polit­i­cal par­ties, is so brow­beat­en into observ­ing human rights he is inca­pable of mak­ing an arrest.
In some cas­es, he is not even sure if he should make an arrest even when the offens­es are occur­ring right in front of him.
The rules are too vague, the lines too blurred for them to do their jobs with­out risk­ing prison and finan­cial ruin.
Such is the envi­ron­ment in which law ‑enforce­ment oper­ate and mur­der­ers thrive.
It is time that the peo­ple wake up to the real­i­ty that they are being tak­en for a ride, the coun­try is far too small, the solu­tions far too sim­ple for our coun­try to have such an intran­si­gent and entrenched crime prob­lem.
Someone wants it that way.….….….….……

LIKE AND SHARE

As a new year begins to take shape the very same issues which dom­i­nat­ed the news last year large­ly remain unsolved still.
And true to form in my native Jamaica the big fish are all jock­ey­ing to get their names in the local news­pa­pers to con­tin­ue their rel­e­vance as big fish in a tiny ticky-ticky pool.

POLITICAL

Now there is a raft of issues on the front burn­er, not the least of which is the Opposition leader, Peter Phillips grand­stand­ing about not being able to meet with the coun­try’s Prime min­is­ter until January 7^th to dis­cuss his par­ty’s dis­qui­et with the con­tin­u­a­tion of the states of emergencies(SOE), and then qui­et­ly meet­ing with the Prime Minister to dis­cuss the issue.
As I wrote yes­ter­day Peter Phillips seems to think that he is the Prime Minister based on the way he has been behav­ing in exert­ing lever­age he clear­ly does not have.
Now it appears some­one told him “take the damn meet­ing” and so he did.

THE RULE OF LAW

Then there are oth­er issues of import in the coun­try, like the rule of law.
This brings into focus the reg­u­lar pigs who eat con­stant­ly at the slop trough of decep­tion and lies.
Speaking to local media one such pig, well known crim­i­nal lawyer Bert Samuels opined:
That law­mak­ers enact spe­cial sanc­tions for law-enforce­ment per­son­nel proven to have “plant­ed” evi­dence on an accused per­son to secure a con­vic­tion. For Bert Samuels, the max­i­mum penal­ty for such action should be twice the sen­tence pre­scribed for the crim­i­nal charge against the accused per­son.
As a fur­ther deter­rent, Samuels wants law-enforce­ment per­son­nel found to have plant­ed evi­dence to secure a con­vic­tion to share the finan­cial bur­den where their actions result in a suc­cess­ful law­suit against the State.
“In any suc­cess­ful civ­il suit aris­ing from an acquit­tal where evi­dence was plant­ed, the offi­cer should be com­pelled to pay one-half of the dam­ages award­ed,” he sug­gest­ed in a let­ter to The Gleaner.

Here’s the thing, in prin­ci­ple I do not dis­agree with any­thing that Bert Samuels said in his state­ments.
As a staunch sup­port­er of the rule of law, I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly sup­port these ideas with­out equiv­o­ca­tion.
We can­not have a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety if our laws are not applied fair­ly across the board.
What I take issue with is the mes­sen­ger Bert Samuels.

Bert Samuels is a prod­uct of the ghet­to.
He is from the oth­er side of the Cassava Piece gul­ly which is Glen Drive in Kingston 8.
Bert Samuels has rep­re­sent­ed crim­i­nals from all spec­trums of the soci­ety as is his right and duty.
What I nev­er heard, is Bert Samuels speak­ing out on the wan­ton blood­shed that those he has rep­re­sent­ed have vis­it­ed on our coun­try.
The fact that one is a crim­i­nal defense lawyer does not strip one of his respon­si­bil­i­ty to be a good cit­i­zen.
Criminal defense lawyers, are offi­cers of the courts. They have a moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to speak out against crim­i­nal con­duct.
The fact that one defends crim­i­nals should not pre­clude one from speak­ing out against crime and crim­i­nals.
Yet on these moral per­spec­tives Bert Samuels, the well-known defense lawyer has been eeri­ly silent.
When it comes to doing the right thing Bert Samuels is unable to walk and chew gum at the same time and that ren­ders his opin­ions inconsequential.

POLICE

Three offi­cers who were on tri­al in the case dubbed the death squad tri­al” (by the dirty media hous­es) were freed yes­ter­day with­out hav­ing to defend them­selves against the charges of mur­der lev­eled against them by INDECOM.
Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, District Constable Howard Brown, and Constable Carl Bucknor had the case against them tossed for want of pros­e­cu­tion by the judge.
The offi­cers were charged with the mur­der of Andrew Bisson who was killed on September 5, 2011, dur­ing a police oper­a­tion.
Why do I even both­er to men­tion this?
Well to begin with, con­trary to the Gleaner’s report­ing these offi­cers were not acquit­ted.
An acquit­tal means you face tri­al and is found not guilty.
In this case, the judge moved to end the tri­al because the pros­e­cu­tion could not meet its own pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al thresh­old.

Why is this impor­tant?
This is impor­tant because, in the very same case, for­mer cop Chucky Brown impli­cat­ed him­self to INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors who were hell-bent on crim­i­nal­iz­ing the death of Bisson and these offi­cers were going to be made to pay one way or the oth­er.
Brown was led astray by INDECOM, not only was Brown not offered immu­ni­ty to lie to con­vict his col­leagues, he will most like­ly be spend­ing the greater part of the remain­der of his life in prison.
And for what?
To sat­is­fy the blood-lust of Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell.
I hope these offi­cers get to the busi­ness of suing the Government for every pen­ny to which they are entitled. 

The People’s National Party in Jamaica, the Opposition par­ty to the Governing Jamaica Labor Party took the posi­tion over the last cou­ple of weeks that it would pull its sup­port from the State’s Of Emergency declared in Saint James and parts of Saint Catherine.
The expla­na­tion giv­en by the PNP is that the secu­ri­ty forces, are sim­ply scrap­ing up large num­bers of young men and lock­ing them up and not enough of these young peo­ple are being charged with crimes.

Now, I can tell you per­son­al­ly that that has been one of the Achilles heels of the secu­ri­ty forces when they are giv­en addi­tion­al pow­ers to clamp down on crim­i­nal con­duct, as some­one who spent a decade in law enforce­ment between 1982 and 1992.
There are two inter­twined facts though in that real­i­ty which I would like to quick­ly point to and they are (1) when the secu­ri­ty forces deploy these huge drag­nets they do scrape up some of the vio­lence pro­duc­ers as well as some oth­ers.
Some are inno­cent and some not so inno­cent, if you under­stand Jamaica’s crim­i­nal net­works.
(2) This is a mat­ter which the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion could have approached the admin­is­tra­tion on with a view to find­ing a solu­tion to that par­tic­u­lar sore point the par­ty says it is both­ered by.
Doing so would ren­der oth­er periph­er­al issues moot if the pri­ma­ry issue of over deten­tion was addressed.
Those oth­er points per­tained to (a)the length of time in deten­tion and(b) the treat­ment of detainees while in detention.

Remarkably, the source of the data on which the oppo­si­tion claimed to have for­mu­lat­ed it’s deci­sion large­ly came from the Public Defender and an antag­o­nis­tic anti-police lob­by called Jamaican’s For Justice.
Now, there are sev­er­al issues with these two sources, (a) the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed to a select com­mit­tee of the nation’s par­lia­ment by the Public Defender Arlene Harrison-Henry has been wide­ly dis­cred­it­ed as inac­cu­rate and vast­ly exag­ger­at­ed by the police, the very source from which the PD stat­ed she received the data.
To date that crit­i­cal issue has not been set­tled, except for a state­ment put out by the PD which stat­ed that she “stands by her state­ments to the com­mit­tee”.
But how can that sim­ply be the end of that? Can a pub­lic offi­cial, paid by tax dol­lars, give an erro­neous account­ing to the peo­ple’s par­lia­ment and sim­ply say that she stands by what she said and that’s it?
Can she sim­ply say “I said what I said” with­out giv­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion or cor­rect­ing the record and it is sim­ply left at that?
She has done nei­ther to date, yet the Opposition’s claims that peo­ple are being improp­er­ly treat­ed are built on the state­ments of a pub­lic offi­cial who have been caught lying, and who refus­es to retract those lies.
(b) The word of JFJ has no val­ue, it is one-sided biased, anti-law enforce­ment crim­i­nal sup­port­ing lob­by run by igno­rant dem­a­gogues and there­fore JFJ is unde­serv­ing of any fur­ther mention.

There may very well be a case to be made about Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ pol­i­tics, I will leave that to the hyper-par­ti­sans but I do find that as far as Jamaican pol­i­tics goes, he does try to seek con­sen­sus in gov­er­nance.
This is a con­cept com­plete­ly alien to the oppo­si­tion PNP’s track record, which seems to be, my way or the high­way.
And shock­ing­ly it seems to me, that the leader of the PNP, Peter Phillips believes that he is the Prime Minister, or that he has the same degree of lever­age as the PM even as an unpop­u­lar oppo­si­tion leader.
First of all, giv­en the posi­tion of the Opposition on this issue, I would not be try­ing to bring them to the table but I’m not the PM and that is why Andrew Holness is the Prime Minister and I am not.
So the Prime Minister invit­ed the Opposition leader to a sit down to have a dis­cus­sion of the oppo­si­tion’s con­cerns tomor­row.
As I thought would be the case, Phillips wrote to the Prime Minister stat­ing the fol­low­ing.
“Given the very short notice, it is not pos­si­ble for our team to meet tomor­row. The ear­li­est the team can be assem­bled is January 7, 2019.” 

Now because I don’t have any idea what the oppo­si­tion lead­er’s sched­ule looks like, maybe some­one can edu­cate me on what exact­ly Peter Phillips may have to do which ren­ders him unable to meet with the nation’s chief exec­u­tive until January 7^th?
In the mean­time, I’m going to assume that he is grand­stand­ing and lever­ag­ing pow­er that he does not have.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, the PNP of today is no more inter­est­ed in work­ing to solve this exis­ten­tial crime prob­lem than the PNP under Portia Simpson Miller want­ed to walk the gar­risons with Andrew Holness.
The SOE’s can­not be the admin­is­tra­tion’s crime strat­e­gy, but for want of a bet­ter way for­ward it has saved numer­ous lives last year and that is not up for debate.
The Jamaican peo­ple have to decide for them­selves whether they want the PNP to con­tin­ue to use a tox­ic and dan­ger­ous anti-police out­side lob­by (JFJ) and par­ti­san moles like the Public Defender to help them to sab­o­tage the gov­ern­men­t’s progress on crime?

People are walk­ing away from their homes in places like Mandeville, parish­es like Hanover once con­sid­ered havens of peace and qui­et.
This Opposition par­ty seems quite con­tent for this to con­tin­ue until the Chinese buy up all of these prop­er­ties and Jamaicans are left as sub­servient slaves to for­eign­ers in their own coun­try.
That is the coun­try the PNP wants to gov­ern, a bro­ken dys­func­tion­al, pover­ty-strick­en dystopi­an hell hole.
In fact, that is the modus operan­di of the par­ty. A par­ty which loves squalor, crime and abject pover­ty. A time test­ed strat­e­gy the par­ty has used to attract the worst ele­ments in our coun­try to look to them for lead­er­ship.
In oth­er words, peo­ple look­ing for free­ness across the board.
Free hous­es, free elec­tric­i­ty, free water and free mon­ey to live on. That is not the way to build a coun­try and we have already seen this play­book before.

I had a delight­ful yet spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion with my beau­ti­ful aunt Sandy who was vis­it­ing New York from Jamaica last Summer, which last­ed all the way as we drove up from Brooklyn to Poughkeepsie.
Aunt Sandy is an edu­ca­tor who lives in Jamaica, she loves her “patios” dear­ly. To be referred to as (pat­wa) from hence­forth.
Me I love my pat­wa equal­ly, but I’m clear-eyed about its lim­i­ta­tions and is some­what hes­i­tant about its poten­tial.
That is not to sug­gest that my dear aunt does­n’t. She just believes that as far as pat­wa goes, it is already where it ought to be and on that, we could not agree.
We are in win­ter now, and after much think­ing and men­tal tur­moil, I am still where I was on our dis­cus­sion.
I still say pat­wa is not a lan­guage but a col­lo­qui­al vehi­cle of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, in oth­er words a dialect. 

So I decid­ed to look at the def­i­n­i­tions of both “dialect” and “lan­guage”, so here goes.
Dialect: A region­al vari­ety of lan­guage dis­tin­guished by fea­tures of vocab­u­lary, gram­mar, and pro­nun­ci­a­tion from oth­er region­al vari­eties and con­sti­tut­ing togeth­er with them a sin­gle lan­guage [Merriam Webster]
Makes sense to me since we learned that our beloved native pat­wa had its gen­e­sis in sev­er­al lan­guages, dialects and unique tongues brought over by our enslaved ances­tors which have been fused with the English, Portuguese and oth­er European tongues.

Language: (1a) The words, their pro­nun­ci­a­tion, and the meth­ods of com­bin­ing them used and under­stood by a com­mu­ni­ty.
b(1): audi­ble, artic­u­late, mean­ing­ful sound as pro­duced by the action of the vocal organs
(2): a sys­tem­at­ic means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing ideas or feel­ings by the use of con­ven­tion­al­ized signs, sounds, ges­tures, or marks hav­ing under­stood mean­ings.(Merriam Webster)
Okay, so I took the lib­er­ty to high­light a few of the defin­ing words and terms which I believe are ger­mane in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between what is stan­dard lan­guage and the less for­mal dialect.

My con­tention is not that pat­wa isn’t to be cher­ished and advanced for what it’s worth. My dis­qui­et with char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as a lan­guage is born out of the belief that it is pre­ma­ture to do so.
Now, I under­stand that emo­tion­al­ism some­times clouds our think­ing and our sense of patri­o­tism gets in the way of ratio­nal eval­u­a­tion at times.
So I’m quite sure that my thoughts on this issue will run afoul of some patri­ots who are hell-bent on main­tain­ing that it is what they say it is because it is patent­ly Jamaican.
Of course, that was not the way my aunt Sandy and I dis­cussed it, we were cor­dial and even jovial even as we dis­agreed vehemently.

I have to remind all as I remind­ed aun­tie Sandy, that pat­wa was the col­lo­qui­al means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the black, poor­er class of peo­ple in our coun­try.
We who came from the peas­antry were looked down on with scorn and deri­sion because we spoke the way we did by the upper Saint Andrew Gentry.
Until of course many from the peas­antry took advan­tage of edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and joined the gen­try, or so they thought, smile.
By then the Gentry had become dark­er even if not any less offen­sive.
So, in oth­er words, pat­wa was scoffed at, scorned and ridiculed when the poor­er class of peo­ple used it until the gen­try went through its meta­mor­pho­sis and decid­ed that it was social­ly accept­able.

Now, all of a sud­den because pat­wa has their stamp of approval it is social­ly accept­able.
In oth­er words, it is not fash­ion­able and accept­able unless and until they say it is.

Despite all of that and the fact that I was roy­al­ly pissed at the gen­try dur­ing my pub­lic ser­vice years when they would ask me ” where were you trained”?
(Fake accents includ­ed)
Ha ha, how could a poor boy speak the Queens English so well, your kind clear­ly can only speak the pat­wa!
That is not the rea­son I say our beloved pat­wa is not a lan­guage.
Sure we use it to com­mu­ni­cate among our­selves, and yes, some for­eign­ers are fas­ci­nat­ed with it as they would with a cute lit­tle pup­py.
Nevertheless, each and every per­son who writes it spells the words dif­fer­ent­ly. The sen­tences are con­struct­ed at the whim and fan­cy of the writer and to a cer­tain degree that is a part of the charm of our Jamaican lin­go.
There is no con­sen­sus on how each word is to be spelled and doc­u­ment­ed and used uni­ver­sal­ly.
Because we have not yet for­mal­ized those process­es which are out­lined in the def­i­n­i­tion of lan­guage and because no one but us, plus a few curi­ous tourists under­stand what we are talk­ing about and would not under­stand any of it, even if its writ­ten, by the new gen­try , until then it is a dialect and noth­ing else.
Most impor­tant­ly, it is when we have a stan­dard way of writ­ing, spelling, and under­stand­ing words and are able to be test­ed on them that we are best able to deter­mine whether we are learn­ing what is being taught us.
It is not about each per­son doing his or her own thing his or her own way.
Auntie Sandy and I will agree to dis­agree on this one.

You cer­tain­ly don’t have to come but you do and you do so dai­ly, and some­times you let us know that you do not agree with us and we are blessed that you take the time to dis­agree with us.
Know for sure that we are grat­i­fied, hum­bled and increas­ing­ly awed by your pres­ence and your loy­al­ty to this blog-site.
You have encour­aged us, chas­tised us and you have com­pli­ment­ed us.
We appre­ci­ate all.
As a new year emerges we promise that we will endeav­or to speak the truth and we hope that you will con­tin­ue to tell us just how you feel.
In the mean­time we want to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to wish you and your a won­der­ful and enjoy­able Christmas and a new year that is rich in bless­ings pros­per­i­ty and good health.
Thank you all and a mer­ry Christmas to you.

It is an increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult endeav­or to talk about hon­esty, integri­ty, ser­vice, hon­or, and char­ac­ter when peo­ple are focused on self and sur­vival.
In this age of “me”, in which wrong is cel­e­brat­ed and right berat­ed, break­ing through the noise becomes inher­ent­ly more dif­fi­cult.
How do we build a soci­ety on graft, cor­rup­tion, dis­hon­esty, and theft?
How do we turn around a nation’s psy­che to a place of major­i­ty con­sen­sus that hon­esty integri­ty and ser­vice are ele­ments of virtue and that acts of cor­rup­tion are degen­er­a­tive vices?
The break­down in our social order and the resul­tant blood­shed and may­hem are stark reminders of this degeneration. 

In this the tech­no­log­i­cal age putting a cop on every cor­ner or bet­ter yet on every doorstep guar­an­tees noth­ing. Crimes are being com­mit­ted with the click of a mouse, from lot­to ‑scam­ming, to sex traf­fick­ing, from gun sales to under­age inter­net porn and every­thing in between.
A long list of crimes is being com­mit­ted with­out the prac­ti­tion­ers show­ing them­selves.
When the nation on a whole cel­e­brates the release from prison of con­vict­ed felons and those whose jobs it is to put them away are treat­ed as pari­ahs who do we expect the young­sters to emu­late?
When the peo­ple who put their lives in dan­ger to remove the bad guys from the streets are treat­ed worse than the bad guys why are we aghast that many of them choose to become the bad guys, after all, we are all human beings? 

How do we achieve that bet­ter coun­try where peace and tran­quil­i­ty is the norm?
How do we cre­ate a soci­ety where cit­i­zens can go about the busi­ness of their lives and their chil­dren can grow up to be all they can be?
“The glo­ry of jus­tice and the majesty of law are cre­at­ed not just by the Constitution — nor by the courts — nor by the offi­cers of the law — nor by the lawyers — but by the men and women who con­sti­tute our soci­ety — who are the pro­tec­tors of the law as they are them­selves pro­tect­ed by the law”. [Robert Kennedy]
In a nation that is becom­ing increas­ing­ly cor­rupt, where we can­not even agree on truth, where wrong is laud­ed and doing right is ridiculed where do we begin the turn­around?
It seems to be that the pub­lic bod­ies which are sup­posed to be set­ting exam­ples for the nation to fol­low are them­selves cesspools of lies, mis­in­for­ma­tion, cor­rup­tion, and graft.
Government agen­cies are indi­vid­ual fief­doms of polit­i­cal resis­tance to new admin­is­tra­tions, essen­tial­ly nul­li­fy­ing the will of vot­ers. Entrenched tech­nocrats and career bureau­crats lie, cheat and dis­tort facts all toward the ful­fill­ment of their own agendas. 

There is an inher­ent tragedy in all of this sor­ry mix which makes rem­e­dy­ing our soci­ety that much more dif­fi­cult.
It is that the voic­es which speak the truth, the ones who know what we need to do to stop the mad­ness has been silenced.
Some have been silenced by death oth­ers are too afraid of being bul­lied or even killed, so they remain silent. Even as the minor­i­ty tells them that walk­ing over the cliff is good for them.
Too deeply entrenched are the ten­ta­cles of cor­rup­tion, and dis­hon­esty that the mere men­tion of those vices attracts an imme­di­ate back­lash from the beneficiaries.

We know we have a prob­lem when as a soci­ety we seek to prof­it from the demise of our fel­low man rather than seek ways to stop the wan­ton destruc­tion.
We have become so des­per­ate for mate­r­i­al trap­pings and the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion derived from ‘things,” we have become dis­in­ter­est­ed par­tic­i­pants in our col­lec­tive demise.

The fol­low­ing is the PNP’s press­er out­lin­ing the rea­sons it has decid­ed not to sup­port an exten­sion of the State of Limited Emergency.
I have had my say in this very medi­um as to what my per­son­al views are on this sub­ject.
Nevertheless, I was amused by Peter Bunting, the last fail­ure at National Security the PNP had while they were in office.
In a shame­less social-media, post-Bunting exclaimed.

PNP VOTED FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE CONSTITUTION

The PNP vot­ed for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy as it has done on numer­ous oth­er occa­sions in the past.
Dead Jamaicans be damned.
Just a few years ago Peter Bunting was such a fail­ure he was call­ing for God to come down and stop the killings.

That he would have the temer­i­ty to come out talk­ing about PNP vot­ed for Rights and Constitution demon­strates that he and his par­ty fun­da­men­tal­ly take the Jamaican peo­ple for total illit­er­ates.
The great­est right an indi­vid­ual has is the right to life,.
The PNP does not care that well over 300 few­er Jamaicans died this year than last year.

If this con­tin­ues the PNP has noth­ing to bitch about so as a par­ty they tac­ti­cal­ly decid­ed to pull sup­port from the mea­sures which is demon­stra­bly sav­ing hun­dreds of lives this year alone.
A sup­port they were reluc­tant to give in the first place but could­n’t with­hold because of the optics and the poten­tial fall­out from not doing so.
The great­est dan­ger to the Jamaican nation is the illit­er­a­cy of its elec­torate which allows the PNP to con­tin­ue being relevant.

(1a) Is the fact that well over 300 few­er peo­ple have been mur­dered this year so far over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year important?(b) Why is a 21% drop in vio­lent crimes incon­se­quen­tial to the PNP, is the par­ty ben­e­fit­ting from crime, the nation needs to know the truth?

(2) Does any of the peo­ple talk­ing about rights and the con­sti­tu­tion have expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment or crim­i­nol­o­gy?

(3) Do they under­stand that in lit­er­al­ly every coun­try in which the rule of law is sacro­sanct where some mod­icum of peace and tran­quil­i­ty exist, they have had to go through their own grow­ing pains which includ­ed the sus­pen­sion of some con­sti­tu­tion­al norms from time to time?

(4) How can Jamaicans who claim to be smart peo­ple, in par­tic­u­lar, those in the bour­geoise‘ who came out of the (intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to), be so dense, dog­mat­ic, and inher­ent­ly stu­pid?
The great­est right a per­son has is the sacred right to life. Jamaica is not a devel­oped coun­try so the pre­tense will get us nowhere.
The coun­try has a seri­ous prob­lem with vio­lent crimes.
Maybe we should all stand down and stop with the pol­i­tics.

No one agrees with lock­ing up peo­ple indef­i­nite­ly with­out charge, and the secu­ri­ty forces have to cor­rect that but to hear peo­ple make this non­sen­si­cal claim about human rights is astound­ing.
The only thing that mat­ters to them is the spir­it and text of the con­sti­tu­tion when it suits them to wrap them­selves in it and pre­tend to be guardians of the fort.

This archa­ic doc­u­ment which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly address the com­plex­i­ties of our time is a shack­le and is unre­spon­sive to present day needs.
The PNP has had don­key years to be rel­e­vant and do some­thing for the throngs of illit­er­ate peo­ple who con­tin­ue to vote for that cult.
If they cared so much about Constitutional rights why have the PNP with its many years in office, done noth­ing to move our coun­try to a Republican democ­ra­cy?

Instead what the par­ty has done is try to move the coun­try into the Caribbean Court of Justice where they would have the pow­er to call their cronies who grad­u­at­ed from the Mona or Cave Hill cam­pus­es of the University to do their bid­ding.
In the mean­time, Jamaicans are still pledg­ing their loy­al­ties to a for­eign sov­er­eign who could­n’t care a rats ass about them.

Even the American con­sti­tu­tion, the old­est instru­ment of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance has under­gone amend­ments.
If the PNP care about the rights of Jamaicans, the par­ty should throw its sup­port behind a new con­sti­tu­tion.
Do it now or shut up with the lies about Human Rights

THE PNP NOW OWNS THE KILLINGS

The PNP must now own the vio­lence and loss of lives regard­less of any sup­posed meet­ings with the per­son stand­ing in as com­mis­sion­er of police, or pub­lic sec­tor groups.
The impor­tant voic­es in all of this are the aver­age every­day Jamaicans who are not crim­i­nals, the peo­ple who sim­ply want to live their lives in peace and with dig­ni­ty.

There should be no mis­con­cep­tion that the well over 300 few­er peo­ple who have died this year over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year is attrib­ut­able to two sce­nar­ios.
(1)Displacement of crim­i­nals and (2) the very issue of deten­tion that the PNP so duplic­i­tous­ly hangs its hat on.
When locked up, the mur­der­ers can­not kill peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties.
As for­mer Florida Democratic can­di­date for Governor Andrew Gillum said a (“hit hog will holler”), the People’s National Party has a large fol­low­ing of gang­land fig­ures who are feel­ing the pinch of the new secu­ri­ty mea­sures insti­tut­ed by the gov­ern­ment.

This cha­rade about human rights is noth­ing but a well-pack­aged appease­ment to that com­mu­ni­ty.
And so the PNP is more con­cerned about its gun­men than it is about the law-abid­ing Jamaican peo­ple who are able to live and breathe a lit­tle eas­i­er as a result of the SOE’s.
And did I men­tion that the peo­ple want it to remain?

LIKE AND SHARE

Below is a let­ter from the leader of the People’s National Party (PNP) to the Nation’s Prime Minister regard­ing actions his par­ty took in decid­ing not to sup­port an exten­sion of the lim­it­ed State of Emergency in two parishes.

As could be expect­ed from Peter Phillips the let­ter was argu­men­ta­tive, tit-for-tat, and juve­nile in spir­it, while undu­ly com­bat­ive and infan­tile in it’s lack of sub­stance.
Phillips demon­strat­ed that he and his par­ty are fun­da­men­tal­ly more pre­oc­cu­pied with the opin­ions of inter­est groups than he is with the real­i­ties on the ground.
It is impor­tant to note that though there is a 21% decline in homi­cides over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year the Opposition leader made no men­tion of the few­er dead and maimed Jamaicans.
Clearly, those most con­se­quen­tial ele­ments are unim­por­tant to the esteemed oppo­si­tion leader.
What mat­ters it seems is the inces­sant need to gain the pop­ulist high ground.

This let­ter demon­strates a cou­ple of things which I shall hereto­fore try to high­light.
(1) That the Opposition PNP can only gov­ern from behind, vis a vis, tak­ing posi­tions which are pop­u­lar.
There is noth­ing wrong with con­sul­ta­tions and gain­ing con­sen­sus, but good gov­er­nance is not always about doing what peo­ple like.
Populist posi­tions are not always right and they gen­er­al­ly result in unsound poli­cies.
Real lead­er­ship is tak­ing unpop­u­lar well thought out posi­tions which are in the nation­al good for the long term.
(2) Consulting with one lawyer or a mil­lion lawyers from the very same UWI does not mean sound con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples, they all group­think.
One mil­lion so-called experts val­i­dat­ing bad deci­sions results in a bad deci­sion still.
(3) Probably most con­se­quen­tial is the fact that the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion lacks the matu­ri­ty which is free of polit­i­cal oppor­tunism and the poten­tial for gain from cheap pop­ulist pos­tur­ing to lead our sophis­ti­cat­ed coun­try deep into the 21^st century. 

The SOE is not a long-term crime-fight­ing tool. Nevertheless, over 300 few­er dead Jamaicans this year over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year, and a 21% reduc­tion in homi­cides over­all is noth­ing to scoff at.
That the PNP chose this hill to die on shows it’s lack of empa­thy and care, the num­ber of peo­ple being killed is total­ly unim­por­tant to the par­ty and it did not even elic­it a men­tion.
The PNP opt­ed instead to advance the more polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent pop­ulist path which appeals to those liv­ing, the ever-res­o­nant issue of “RIGHTS.“Unfortunately most Jamaicans who are focused on rights are unaware of their respon­si­bil­i­ties as cit­i­zens.
The PNP has always weaponized that.

It’s some­times dif­fi­cult to hear your­self think in all of the noise and inco­her­ent non­sen­si­cal gib­ber­ish on the top­i­cal issues of the day.
It is not that each and every per­son does­n’t have a right to their opin­ion, it’s just that they also want to have their own facts.
So, on the ger­mane issue of vio­lent crimes in Jamaica and the deci­sion by the oppo­si­tion People’s National Party (PNP) to with­draw sup­port from the States of Emergency you may just imag­ine the lev­el of par­ti­san gib­ber­ish out there?

Difficult though it is to cut through the near-impen­e­tra­ble par­ti­san stub­born­ness, facts are still facts, and so we will con­tin­ue to present the facts regard­less of what the likes of Fitz Jackson and Peter Phillips and oth­ers say are the rea­sons the par­ty pulled its sup­port from the mea­sure which is slat­ed to expire in January.
Before we get too far afield, it is impor­tant that in the inter­est of clar­i­ty we state fac­tu­al­ly that the PNP has nev­er sup­port­ed the Law Enforcement agen­cies in their fight for the secu­ri­ty and soul of our coun­try.
Instead, the par­ty has tak­en mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces for fools tac­ti­cal­ly gam­bling that cheap pop­ulism with the broad­er elec­torate is a bet­ter bet than the small­er group of vot­ers in the secu­ri­ty forces.
As for as respect goes for the PNP police and sol­diers are sec­ond class cit­i­zens.
Tactically that gam­ble has paid off for the par­ty and truth­ful­ly they need­n’t both­er to wor­ry about some mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces who can’t tell their heads from a broomstick.

The chart above gives a break­down of homi­cides report­ed to police between 2000 and 2016.
Let us remem­ber that in the year 2005, the very same Peter Phillips who is now the leader of the oppo­si­tion was the Minister of National Security.
That year saw mur­ders reach 1674.
Peter Phillips said then that the nation need­ed res­olute mea­sures to fight crime.
What was Peter Phillips the in-pow­er politi­cian sub­scrib­ing to then?

For his part, Peter Bunting took over the National Security port­fo­lio in 2012. He ben­e­fit­ted from the work of the secu­ri­ty forces which saw mur­ders drop after the Tivoli Gardens incur­sion. Murder rose on his watch prompt­ing him to state that the coun­try need­ed divine inter­ven­tion.
Now I don’t have a prob­lem with the PNP doing what it thinks will ben­e­fit the par­ty polit­i­cal­ly.
What I find rep­re­hen­si­ble is that the par­ty would lie about its motives for putting pol­i­tics above the lives of peo­ple.
Thus far this year there has been a 21% decrease in mur­ders as a result of the addi­tion­al pow­ers giv­en the secu­ri­ty forces and the mass of secu­ri­ty bod­ies in trou­ble spots.

The PNP has every right to decide to wade in the blood of dead Jamaicans to polit­i­cal vic­to­ry but in this medi­um, we will spend every day bring­ing this fact to the silent major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple.
I could­n’t care less who runs the gov­ern­ment, what I care about are few­er dead bod­ies.
It is not the first time that the PNP has done this and they must be made to own it, they should be held account­able as the anti-law enforce­ment par­ty in our coun­try.
The argu­ments prof­fered by Peter Phillips that the num­ber of peo­ple scooped up in secu­ri­ty drag­nets and held with­out charge are legit­i­mate ones.
If Peter Phillips legit­i­mate­ly under­stood that the role of the Opposition par­ty is also part of the gov­ern­ing struc­ture he would have opt­ed for a more respon­si­ble approach.
If Peter Phillips, Fitz Jackson et al cared about National secu­ri­ty as they crave state pow­er that issue is some­thing they could eas­i­ly have worked out with the heads of the secu­ri­ty agencies.

The num­ber one rea­son Peter Phillips gave for his par­ty’s deci­sion not to sup­port an exten­sion of the SOE was the issue of mass deten­tion.
Then he quot­ed JFJ, a vir­u­lent and antag­o­nis­tic anti-police, anti-law ‑enforce­ment lob­by which all but enhances the process of crim­i­nal­i­ty on the Island.
Phillips inad­ver­tent­ly gave away his hand when he cit­ed the anti-police lob­by. JFJ has a doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of using fraud­u­lent infor­ma­tion to ginn up dis­sent against the police depart­ment.
That includes using fraud­u­lent num­bers to report to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights In Washington DC.
This writer has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about that for years and I would be remiss if I did not men­tion that the head of that crim­i­nal rights lob­by Carolyn Gomes was forced to step down in dis­grace over the pro­lif­er­a­tion of homo­sex­u­al lit­er­a­ture to minors.
In oth­er coun­tries that would cer­tain­ly have con­se­quences of up to a stiff prison sen­tence, not so in Jamaica.

There is no ques­tion that SOE’s and ZOSO’s can­not be the stan­dard for fight­ing crime. A sus­tained and sus­tain­able crime-fight­ing method­ol­o­gy is need­ed.
Nevertheless, the killings in Jamaica was a mat­ter of nation­al emer­gency requir­ing an emer­gency response.
A 21% reduc­tion in homi­cides over the same peri­od last year trans­lates into rough­ly 325 few­er dead Jamaicans.
The fact that the PNP is will­ing to play games with these facts demon­strates that the par­ty does not care about the peo­ple they pre­tend to care about.
They nev­er did, what mat­ters to the PNP has always been hold­ing state pow­er and enrich­ing them­selves crim­i­nal­ly at the pub­lic’s expense. 

There is a legit­i­mate polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion to be had about whether the gov­ern­ing par­ty came to the table with a full under­stand­ing of what it takes to gen­er­ate the pros­per­i­ty it promised.
This writer has spo­ken to that ques­tion repeat­ed­ly. National secu­ri­ty can­not be a polit­i­cal foot­ball.
The oppo­si­tion PNP did not have a strat­e­gy to stop the blood­let­ting a mere three years ago. Peter Phillips called for deci­sive actions, Peter Bunting called for divine inter­ven­tion.
What the nation needs are solu­tions and nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has demon­strat­ed that it has the will and capac­i­ty to do what is required.
The PNP must tell the nation the truth that it’s big donor crim­i­nal sup­port­ers who are unable to hold mas­sive dance par­ties and oth­er activ­i­ties are rest­less and threat­en­ing to with­draw sup­port from the par­ty.
Let’s stop with the pre­tense, let’s stop with the lies,Let’s stop with the plat­i­tudes about human rights,

In a stun­ning yet total­ly prece­dent­ed case of Déjà vu, Jamaica’s oppo­si­tion, People’s National Party(PNP) have once again refused to sup­port proac­tive mea­sures tak­en by the Government to stem the Island’s vio­lent crime wave and loss of life.
What makes this more con­se­quen­tial is the fact that they decid­ed to pull sup­port from the mea­sure right before the Christmas sea­son.
Even though the autho­riza­tion does not expire until January 31, 2019, the sig­nal to the Island’s crim­i­nals could not be more clear.

In seek­ing to strad­dle the fence by pla­cat­ing the crim­i­nal world while at the same time pre­tend­ing to be a respon­si­ble polit­i­cal par­ty, Opposition leader Peter Phillips said the fol­low­ing.
“Not one police offi­cer or mil­i­tary per­son­nel have to be moved from St James after the expi­ra­tion of the SOE,” the Opposition par­ty said on Twitter “Police can still cur­few, cor­don, search and arrest sus­pects. The only dif­fer­ence is they will not be able to detain indis­crim­i­nate­ly and indef­i­nite­ly.”
I find the use of the term [indis­crim­i­nate] slan­der­ous, hyper­bol­ic, inflam­ma­to­ry, igno­rant, incen­di­ary and gross­ly unin­formed.
Let me be clear the PNP does not care about the offi­cers in the field, nei­ther does the par­ty lead­er­ship care about the fact that Jamaicans are dying in alarm­ing num­bers and the SOE is intend­ed to help stop the bleed­ing.
They did the very same thing in 2010 and they were not pun­ished for it.
The PNP wants an issue on which to con­test the next nation­al elec­tions, the econ­o­my is doing pret­ty good, unem­ploy­ment is down and there are reports that as a result of the SOE and ZOSO ini­ti­at­ed by the Government along with oth­er ini­tia­tives the nation is mov­ing in the right direc­tion.
Murders are down 21.7 per­cent, shoot­ings are down 21.4 per­cent, rape down 12.2 per­cent, aggra­vat­ed assault down 11 per­cent. Additionally, there have been sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in the year-to-date reports of mur­ders across sev­er­al police divi­sions, the most notable being St. James, where there has been more than a 70 per­cent reduc­tion in mur­ders. accord­ing to the police.” 

These facts are not lost on Peter Phillips and the bunch of PNP thugs who dou­ble as par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.
A sim­ple cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis shows that the incon­ve­niences to a few peo­ple, who are caught up in a drag­net, (though unde­sir­able ) are minus­cule when com­pared to the few­er deaths which result from the SOE’s pres­ence in the affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.
And most impor­tant­ly the peo­ple in the area are beg­ging the Police offi­cers and sol­diers not to leave.
So the irrefutable con­clu­sion is that the par­ty wants dead bod­ies to run on polit­i­cal­ly, and they are going to get those bod­ies one way or the other.

This par­ty which did not take long to morph into a force anti­thet­i­cal to the good of Jamaica has been respon­si­ble for the degra­da­tion of the Jamaican cul­ture for decades now.
A total destruc­tion of the Island’s econ­o­my in the 1970s and evis­cer­a­tion of the mid­dle ‑class has been the par­ty’s claim to fame. The PNP has been the only polit­i­cal par­ty to sus­pend the rights of cit­i­zens as it jailed all of the major play­ers and politi­cians in the then oppo­si­tion Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) dur­ing the ’70s.
Regardless of the san­i­tiz­ing process being under­tak­en in left­ist aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles and by the myr­i­ad inter­est groups on behalf of the par­ty, noth­ing has been able to explain or wash away the stench of the many scan­dals of theft, graft, and unabashed cor­rup­tion the par­ty has engaged in since it’s inception. 

The fact that the PNP has decid­ed to play pol­i­tics once again with peo­ple’s lives means that they will be made to own the vio­lence now.
If they decid­ed that this is the strat­e­gy on which they want to hang their hats for the next gen­er­al elec­tions, fine.
But we will do every­thing in our pow­er to make sure they own the results.
For too long this par­ty has played fast and loose with the lives of the police and the nation for polit­i­cal gain.
We will make sure that peo­ple are remind­ed of their strategy.

Legislators can write the best bills with the best research data and when those bills are vot­ed into law they may end up hav­ing only a mar­gin­al effect on that nation’s progress.
That is so because Governing is a pact between those who gov­ern and those who are gov­erned.
If the peo­ple refuse to be gov­erned by any rules and the Government acqui­esces to that sort of low-lev­el anar­chy, it is only a mat­ter of time before the entire thing erupts into a conflagration.

A few days ago I wrote the above arti­cle in which I bemoaned the lack of account­abil­i­ty in Government(par­ty-neu­tral).
This I believe is hav­ing a debil­i­tat­ing effect on the nation’s abil­i­ty to curb the run­away vio­lent mur­ders and return to the rule of law.
On that note, I would wish to asso­ciate myself with an arti­cle which appeared in Wednesday’s(Jamaica Observer) writ­ten by Elizabeth Morgan a spe­cial­ist in inter­na­tion­al trade and pol­i­tics.
In a bril­liant syn­op­sis, Morgan wrapped the fol­low­ing in her lead para­graph.

You leave home to tack­le the may­hem on our roads with fear and trem­bling; in the mod­ern, sophis­ti­cat­ed ten­e­ment yards you are afraid to talk to neigh­bors who are invad­ing your space with rau­cous behav­ior; you encounter rude and crude peo­ple in dai­ly activ­i­ties; men turn pub­lic spaces into pub­lic toi­lets expos­ing them­selves to all; there is no respect for self or any­one else; cor­rup­tion and crime have over­tak­en the soci­ety. Discipline and pru­dence are out the win­dow. Selfishness and fol­ly reign.
 http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​i​n​d​i​s​c​i​p​l​i​n​e​-​a​n​d​-​j​a​-​s​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​_​1​5​1​966

It is not often that an arti­cle of this qual­i­ty appears in the local papers which slices straight down the mid­dle and address­es the burn­ing issues of the day.
She did so with­out the pre­dictable (BS) and nuances we have become accus­tomed and numb to.
I have con­sis­tent­ly argued that we may have lost the gen­er­a­tions liv­ing now but there is no rea­son that we can­not get back to the basics.
There is no rea­son we can­not begin the process of incul­cat­ing val­ues, respect, and love into our chil­dren from the for­ma­tive years.
God, fam­i­ly coun­try are good prin­ci­ples on which to raise our young­sters, good peo­ple make good com­mu­ni­ties, good com­mu­ni­ties make good coun­tries.
A three-minute read on a social media thread reveals the lev­el of dys­func­tion in the minds of the peo­ple.
The lev­el of igno­rance and fer­tile space for wrong­do­ing is stun­ning. This did not take gen­er­a­tions to become a real­i­ty it took only a cou­ple of decades.
If we want to have a coun­try, now is the time to begin revers­ing this malignancy.

Two days ago a young woman, a vis­i­tor to the United States came into my busi­ness-place. She would be leav­ing the coun­try in about two weeks so she want­ed to have cell phone ser­vice for the remain­der of her stay with­out pay­ing a lot of mon­ey.
Her friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers had obvi­ous­ly tak­en her to a com­pa­ny store to get ser­vice which cost her (a vis­i­tor), over eighty dol­lars per month(US$80), a sum which rep­re­sent­ed well over a hun­dred per­cent cost increase com­pared to what she could have sourced in my establishment.

Unfortunately for her the estab­lish­ment where she pur­chased the device and ser­vice had no time for her so her fam­i­ly mem­bers brought her to the .……[Jamaican store to fix her prob­lem].
She told me what she want­ed, but lied about the type of account she had unwit­ting­ly signed up for.
In seek­ing to get the req­ui­site infor­ma­tion in order to be of help to her she became eva­sive and com­menced talk­ing over me. 
So I told her in an [unusu­al­ly] calm voice that she should take her phone and her­self back to where she pur­chased it if she was going to talk over me and make demands.
She stopped, looked into my eyes long enough to real­ize that she was out of options and I was dead seri­ous.
I was even­tu­al­ly able to give her ser­vice on the same device for much less of what she was ini­tial­ly pay­ing per month.
This brought a big smile to her face. She thanked me and told me “yu too per­fect.”!
Insisting that she con­duct her­self in a respect­ful and dig­ni­fied man­ner, in her eyes is per­fec­tion. More stun­ning­ly, Perfection is a pejo­ra­tive, a neg­a­tive.
Crassness, coarse­ness, rude­ness, dis­re­spect, bad man­ners are the aspi­ra­tional tenets Jamaicans now aspire to.
It is what gets them noticed.

In the years in which I have writ­ten for this site, I have like a bro­ken record spo­ken out at the indis­ci­pline, which has tak­en over our coun­try.
Not only have I bemoaned the break­down in the rule of law, but I have also con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the need to get back to insti­tut­ing respect and basic man­ners in our homes.
I have point­ed to our pub­lic insti­tu­tions from the par­lia­ment on down The coarse dis­course, cor­rup­tion, graft, and theft is reflec­tive of a wider soci­etal rot which is lit­er­al­ly stunt­ing the growth and devel­op­ment of this pris­tine lit­tle Island. 
The thing which offends me most are those peo­ple who live abroad and have to con­duct them­selves accord­ing to the laws of their adopt­ed coun­tries but revert to hooli­gan­ism as soon as they land in Jamaica.
This has got to stop. The gov­ern­ment must stop equiv­o­cat­ing and pass laws with seri­ous con­se­quences for law­break­ing.
There is noth­ing wrong with hav­ing tough laws, if peo­ple do not want to be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by them they will obey them. 

Crime should not be politi­cized.
Why, because it affects us all and the con­se­quences it impos­es on soci­ety are far too con­se­quen­tial for us to be pulling in dif­fer­ent direc­tions on it.
One would think that with that in mind, the issue of how to com­bat crime effec­tive­ly would take on an a‑political tone and demeanor.
Not so, it is too shiny an object for politi­cians to ignore when it comes to seek­ing polit­i­cal mileage. 
Never mind that the prob­lem is not new, that the prob­lem is also a major issue when each polit­i­cal par­ty is in office.
As soon as a par­ty is out of office the oth­er side becomes the worst ever on the issue.

Now, despite the fore­gone, It is nev­er­the­less under­stood that polit­i­cal par­ties are not reli­gious insti­tu­tions.
In fact, since we can’t even place our trust in reli­gious insti­tu­tions we clear­ly can­not place our trust in any insti­tu­tions, least of all, rapa­cious pow­er-hun­gry polit­i­cal par­ties.
The Holness Administration has tak­en some steps, albeit, ones which can­not be the extent of the admin­is­tra­tion’s long-term strat­e­gy on crime.
Those steps include the Creation of Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO), in tar­get­ed areas and the oft-cri­tiqued lim­it­ed states of emergencies(SOE’s) in a few oth­ers.
Like oth­ers, I too have opined on both initiatives. 

My take is that nei­ther ini­tia­tive can be the objec­tive but a means to an end.
Simply put, I believe that the pol­i­cy on crime should be far more bush-clear­ing with less dec­o­rat­ing.
Now is the time that the dirty work of erad­i­cat­ing dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers from our midst must be done before installing a long-term crime pol­i­cy. 
What is irrefutable, is that the tem­po­rary mea­sures insti­tut­ed by the admin­is­tra­tion are hav­ing some mea­sure of suc­cess.
If only one inno­cent life is saved by these mea­sures, there is no argu­ment to be made(outside con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its) for their dis­con­tin­u­a­tion, much less when hun­dreds of lives are being saved.

Having a polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion make hay out of crime is to be expect­ed.
Having the People’s National Party(PNP) try to cre­ate lever­age is nau­se­at­ing, con­sid­er­ing that it was only a cou­ple years ago, a clue­less and exas­per­at­ed Minister of National Security Peter Bunting, threw up his hands and declared that the only thing which can save Jamaica from its present crime epi­dem­ic was “divine inter­ven­tion.“
Now I too under­stand the pow­er of “divine inter­ven­tion,” but I’m also mind­ful that faith with­out works is dead and as Paul said in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ that strength­ens me”.
We ask for his help then get up and do what we can to fix our sit­u­a­tions. That is what the Government is doing.
The polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion should seek lever­age else­where and shun the pop­ulism it has used since its incep­tion as a polit­i­cal par­ty.
For the good of the nation, no one should want to see the admin­is­tra­tion fail on crime.
The cost is sim­ply too great.

Since the cost in blood and trea­sure is too great to play games, it is impor­tant that we have all hands on deck , yes, admin­is­tra­tion and oppo­si­tion alike.
What is incon­ceiv­able and must not be tol­er­at­ed are moles and ter­mites with­in the gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture, active­ly eat­ing away at the foun­da­tions.
I could go on and on about how a house divid­ed against itself can­not stand and any num­ber of oth­er clich­es.
But there is no need to state the obvi­ous. If there are per­sons with­in the Government who are paid with tax dol­lars and are work­ing duplic­i­tous­ly to thwart any aspect of the Government’s objec­tive it is impor­tant that they are removed in the inter­est of the country.

It is not out of the ordi­nary that employ­ees in a demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment would opine on poli­cies they may not like.
Sometimes we put our foot in our mouths when we tread in areas we do not under­stand.
So I under­stood then, how the Public Defender could have put her foot in her mouth when she pre­ma­ture­ly called for an end to the state of emer­gency in Saint James in April of this year.
Like many Jamaicans, the argu­ments put for­ward by the Public Defender are the same.
We real­ly do not like scrap­ing up large groups of young men and detain­ing them as a crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.
Nevertheless, those con­cerns have to be bal­anced with the greater urgency of stop­ping the wan­ton loss of life.
See [PD’s call here]
http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​7​/​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​e​m​e​r​g​e​n​c​y​-​m​u​s​t​-​e​n​d​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​d​e​f​e​ner

Unfortunately, the Public Defender did not even both­er to demon­strate that she under­stood, let alone care about the blood­shed.
Her sin­gu­lar focus was on the young men who may or may not be guilty of any crimes, who are picked up and have to suf­fer the indig­ni­ty of spend­ing a cou­ple of days in jail.
None of us want this to be the way we fight crime, but some­times our hand is all we have to plug the dike.
I nev­er got the impres­sion that offi­cials like Arlene Harrison-Henry, Earl Witter before her, Terrence Williams of INDECOM and oth­ers sees them­selves as arms of the gov­ern­ment which ought to work cohe­sive­ly for the greater good of the gov­ern­men­t’s objec­tives.
Instead, they oper­ate as parts of the gov­ern­ment which has gone rogue.
Here is what Arlene Harrison-Henry said to the media last April which clear­ly shows that by her own words she does not see her role and that of her office as part of the Government. 

Speaking of detainees…
 “You release them after spend­ing three, four and five days in cus­tody, and less than 10 per­cent have been charged. That has seri­ous con­se­quences as to whether that was law­ful,” argued Harrison Henry. “Even under a state of emer­gency, there is a min­i­mum thresh­old that [they] have to meet before[they] deprive you of your lib­er­ty. [They] have to see you behav­ing a cer­tain way or com­mit­ting an offense.”

Mrs. Harrison-Henry’s own words are demon­stra­bly clear that she views the secu­ri­ty forces (an arm of gov­ern­ment) adver­sar­i­al­ly. Even though the ill-begot­ten office she holds was unnec­es­sary, she and her staff are paid with tax dol­lars and that makes her and all employ­ees of that office sub­ject to the dic­tates of the gov­ern­ment.
She has no right to be run­ning a sep­a­rate oper­a­tion that is anti­thet­i­cal to the direc­tion in which the admin­is­tra­tion is going.
Regardless of which admin­is­tra­tion nom­i­nat­ed her to the post, if she does not sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion’s man­date she has a duty to resign.
She should not be allowed to sub­vert the pol­i­cy posi­tions of the gov­ern­ment through the use of lies and half-truths.

The shock­ing real­i­ty is that the lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion that the Public Defender tes­ti­fied to in the par­lia­ment recent­ly were total­ly un-nec­es­sary regard­less of her polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tion.
Stating the facts about what she saw truth­ful­ly did not mean that she was not doing her job.
In oth­er coun­tries lying to the par­lia­ment is at least a fir­ing offence if not a crim­i­nal one.
Lying to the nation and smear­ing the police made her office a joke.
Lying to the nation showed that she can­not be trust­ed.
The Public Defender would do all Jamaicans a favor if she did the right thing and ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion.
Failing which she should be shown the door.
Public office is about hon­or. ser­vice. self­less­ness. duty. commitment.character.
If we expect that from oth­er pub­lic offi­cials we must also ask the same of the pub­lic defend­er.
 

READ, LIKE,SHARE, MAKE SURE THE ADMINISTRATION HEAR US ON THIS

I gen­er­al­ly have noth­ing good to say about Republicans for the sim­ple rea­son that the Republican Party advances and sup­ports lit­er­al­ly every­thing I hate and hate every­thing I sup­port.
On the issues of Race. Poverty. Health-Care. Immigration. The Environment. Foreign Policy. and every oth­er issue in between, my views are vast­ly dif­fer­ent than those espoused by the Republican party.

The idea of black Republicans is even more revolt­ing to me as I have stat­ed in pre­vi­ous arti­cles. 
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. , Trump’s Housing Secretary Ben Carson and the likes of Ken Blackwell for­mer Ohio Secretary of state all are black men who have demon­stra­bly act­ed in ways that have been destruc­tive and par­tic­u­lar­ly vicious against their own race. 

As I have said time and again the destruc­tive nature of the Republican par­ty makes it impos­si­ble for me to under­stand why any per­son of col­or would sup­port a par­ty which actu­al­ly hates them.
Nevertheless, some­times the abil­i­ty to use a cer­tain course to pow­er far out­weighs prin­ci­ples and it’s impor­tant to always remem­ber that to each his own.
Which brings me to South Carolina’s Republican Senator Tim Scott.
Tim Scott has been win­ning elec­tions in South Carolina’s most­ly white Districts from 1995 when he ran in a February 1995 spe­cial elec­tion to the Charleston County Council at-large seat vacat­ed by Keith Summey, who resigned his seat after being elect­ed as Mayor of North Charleston.

Scott, a for­mer finan­cial advis­er, and busi­ness­man who owns an insur­ance agency, (Tim Scott Allstate) pos­si­bly did not see a path for­ward in pol­i­tics unless he declared and ran as a Republican.
Tim Scott is the Republican US Senator from South Carolina and Tim Scott final­ly stood up today when I did not believe he had the balls to do what’s right.
Here is the sto­ry from our friends at @ https://​www​.msn​.com

Sen. Tim Scott said Thursday he will oppose the nom­i­na­tion of Thomas Farr to the fed­er­al bench, assur­ing the con­tro­ver­sial pick will not be con­firmed. The South Carolina Republican was the decid­ing vote in deter­min­ing whether Farr, wide­ly accused of efforts to dis­en­fran­chise black vot­ers, would be con­firmed.
Scott’s deci­sion comes after four days of intense dra­ma and spec­u­la­tion about what the Senate’s only black Republican would do.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R‑Arizona, made it clear ear­li­er in the day he, too, would oppose Farr’s nom­i­na­tion. Senate Republicans could only afford to lose one vote and still con­firm Farr. Senate Republicans con­trol 51 seats, and all 49 Democratic cau­cus mem­bers were expect­ed to oppose Farr.

In a brief state­ment explain­ing his deci­sion, Scott cit­ed a 1991 Department of Justice memo that was leaked just this week, days before the Senate was set to vote on Farr’s con­fir­ma­tion. It detailed Farr’s involve­ment in “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” activ­i­ties by the 1984 and 1990 cam­paigns of then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R‑North Carolina.
Farr worked for the cam­paign in 1984 and rep­re­sent­ed the 1990 cam­paign as a lawyer.
Helms’ 1990 re-elec­tion cam­paign against for­mer Charlotte may­or Harvey Gantt, who is black, includ­ed charges of vot­er intim­i­da­tion for post­cards mailed to pri­mar­i­ly black vot­ers warn­ing of pos­si­ble arrest at the polls. The Department of Justice inves­ti­gat­ed the vot­er intim­i­da­tion claims and set­tled with the Helms cam­paign in a con­sent decree.

“I am ready and will­ing to sup­port strong can­di­dates for our judi­cial vacan­cies that do not have lin­ger­ing con­cerns about issues that could affect their deci­sion-mak­ing process as a fed­er­al judge,” Scott said in his state­ment. “This week, a Department of Justice memo writ­ten under President George H.W. Bush was released that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activ­i­ties. This, in turn, cre­at­ed more con­cerns. Weighing these impor­tant fac­tors, this after­noon I con­clud­ed that I could not sup­port Mr. Farr’s nomination.”The 1991 memo said that “Farr was the pri­ma­ry coör­di­na­tor of the 1984 ‘bal­lot secu­ri­ty’ pro­gram con­duct­ed by the NCGOP and 1984 Helms for Senate Committee. He coör­di­nat­ed sev­er­al ‘bal­lot secu­ri­ty’ activ­i­ties in 1984, includ­ing a post­card mail­ing to vot­ers in pre­dom­i­nant­ly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to chal­lenge vot­ers on elec­tion day.”
Farr told atten­dees at a 1990 meet­ing that the need for “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” mea­sures, such as post­cards, “was not as com­pelling as in 1984, since, unlike in 1984, the state had a Republican governor.”

In 1990, the Helms cam­paign sent post­cards to black vot­ers who may have changed address­es warn­ing of “vot­er eli­gi­bil­i­ty and the penal­ties for elec­tion fraud.” Farr said he did not know about the deci­sion to send the post­cards, and the memo does not state that he did.
Scott spent the past days study­ing this memo and speak­ing direct­ly to the document’s author. He spoke to the author Wednesday for at least part of a near­ly 45-minute peri­od as his col­leagues vot­ed on lim­it­ing debate on Farr’s nom­i­na­tion. Scott agreed to the lim­it.
On Thursday, just half an hour before Farr’s con­fir­ma­tion vote was set to take place on the Senate floor, Scott invit­ed sev­er­al col­leagues to his office to dis­cuss the memo and hear from the author, via con­fer­ence call, once again.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R‑Florida, told McClatchy as he head­ed to that meet­ing he was still inclined to vote for Farr but as a prac­tice always dis­cussed nom­i­nees with Scott, espe­cial­ly when race has been a fac­tor.
“Was (Farr) a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing a client, telling them what they were legal­ly allowed to do, or was he a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant deter­min­ing strat­e­gy and tar­get­ing? I don’t know the answer to that. It was a long time ago,” Rubio explained. “But I think that’s kind of what we’re focused in on.“
Sen. Susan Collins, R‑Maine, anoth­er sen­a­tor at the meet­ing and a mem­ber of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had ear­li­er in the week said she would con­firm Farr but was now “tak­ing a look at this infor­ma­tion which was not avail­able previously.”It’s not clear whether Scott would have ulti­mate­ly per­suad­ed them to also vote against Farr, but he has a track record of being influ­en­tial. 
Earlier the sum­mer, Scott announced he would oppose Ryan Bounds, a nom­i­nee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who as a Stanford University stu­dent-pro­duced writ­ings that mocked mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Scott’s oppo­si­tion influ­enced Rubio and oth­er Republicans to also say they would vote against Bounds, result­ing in GOP lead­ers hav­ing to pull the nom­i­nee just min­utes before the con­fir­ma­tion vote was set to take place.

North Carolina’s Eastern District cov­ers 44 coun­ties stretch­ing from Raleigh to the Atlantic coast. The pop­u­la­tion of the dis­trict is 27 per­cent African-American, and no black judge has ever been seat­ed on the court. The seat has been vacant since Jan 1, 2006.

Farr was nom­i­nat­ed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and 2007, but nev­er received a vote. President Barack Obama nom­i­nat­ed two African-American women for the court, but nei­ther received a vote. Farr was nom­i­nat­ed for the seat by President Donald Trump in 2017 and again in 2018.

Farr’s nom­i­na­tion has been bit­ter­ly con­test­ed by Democrats and civ­il rights groups, who cit­ed Farr’s work for Helms and more recent work defend­ing North Carolina’s Republican law­mak­ers in law­suits over vot­er ID and ger­ry­man­der­ing. A pan­el of fed­er­al judges said the 2013 vot­er ID law tar­get­ed African-American vot­ers with “almost sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion,” strik­ing it down.
“Thomas Farr is not fit to serve. He has a long, long his­to­ry of being hos­tile to vot­ing rights and vot­er sup­pres­sion,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Wilson, North Carolina Democrat and for­mer chair­man of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Farr’s sup­port­ers, includ­ing North Carolina Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, have point­ed to his “well qual­i­fied” rat­ing from the American Bar Association. Tillis said Democrats engaged in a “Kavanaugh-esque attempt to dis­cred­it him,” ref­er­enc­ing the fight over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh who faced alle­ga­tions of decades-old sex­u­al assault dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing.
Tillis said Thursday that Farr’s back­ers were “still work­ing on it” and that he was “hope­ful” sup­port­ers would pre­vail over skep­tics.
On Wednesday, Scott was sig­nal­ing an open­ness to vote for Farr, but told reporters on Capitol Hill he was both­ered that his par­ty was “not doing a very good job of avoid­ing the obvi­ous pot­holes on race in America and we ought to be more sen­si­tive when it comes to those issues.
“There are a lot of folks that can be judges, in states includ­ing North Carolina, besides Tom Farr,” Scott added.

The pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of Government is to pro­vide safe­ty and secu­ri­ty to its peo­ple.
Today we do not build walls to keep out invaders because walls can be scaled, and tun­nels are made under walls.…..
[Oh wait I spoke too soon]. I meant to say that smart lead­ers do not do that. I for­got that some still believe that hid­ing behind walls is a great defen­sive mech­a­nism.
But I digress…

The secu­ri­ty nations pro­vide for their cit­i­zens is not con­fined to keep­ing the peace with hos­tile neigh­bors, it includes pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tion from threats for­eign and domes­tic.
When the domes­tic threat assess­ment is dis­sect­ed, Government must make deci­sions to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion not just from those who would will­ful­ly cause harm but from those who would reck­less­ly and care­less­ly cause harm to oth­ers as well.

That is why I sup­port the Government’s attempt at the restruc­tur­ing of the Road Traffic Act.
The Road Traffic Act of 2018 was passed in the House of Representatives but was stalled in the Senate because of con­cerns raised by the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners.
The bill has been stalled in the Senate and accord­ing to Ruel Reid who was act­ing as leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness, the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion will be con­sid­ered at a “lat­er date”.

The rea­son Reid gave for the delay is that the Government want­ed time to lis­ten to the con­cerns of the pub­lic trans­porta­tion oper­a­tors and to pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tion.
Adding, quote;“This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for the matur­ing of our democ­ra­cy, where stake­hold­ers feel that the Government will lis­ten to them if they have gen­uine con­cerns.”
“We are not in a dic­ta­tor­ship, we are in a democ­ra­cy, and so we will val­ue our impor­tant stake­hold­ers.”

There is so much wrong with all this but here is the thing. 
Why would a bill be passed in the low­er house with­out hear­ings and debate on the bill?
Hasn’t the ill-advised INDECOM Act taught these par­lia­men­tar­i­ans any­thing?
How in God’s name can a leg­isla­tive body pass a mean­ing­ful bill with­out hear­ing from stake­hold­ers, look­ing at data, and see­ing how all of the infor­ma­tion fits into the strate­gic goals of the government?

The much need­ed Road Traffic Act is long over­due, it will replace an archa­ic and out­dat­ed law which has no real teeth and does not pro­vide the lev­el of pro­tec­tion the pub­lic need today.
The trans­port lob­by which is a high­ly vocal, high­ly dis­or­ga­nized and high­ly dis­rup­tive loose­ly-knit body should be heard in this, but their point of view as it relates to penal­ties should not hold any sway.
We sim­ply can­not have the inmates run­ning the asy­lum any longer.

The need for an updat­ed Road Traffic law was made nec­es­sary by the very same mem­bers of the afore­men­tioned undis­ci­plined Transport sec­tor. the car­nage on the roads, from unli­censed taxi-cabs, dark-tint­ed cabs over­tak­ing at dan­ger­ous points where such activ­i­ties is pro­hib­it­ed. Drinking alco­hol and smok­ing weed while dri­ving. Speeding dan­ger­ous­ly. And a host of oth­er ille­gal activ­i­ties have cost thou­sands of lives over the last decade alone.
The Government must bring this dis­rup­tive sec­tor to heel.
Not only has this sec­tor refused to obey the laws they have engaged in ter­ror­ist acts against the state’s bus­es by throw­ing rocks into the win­dows and set­ting them alight.

The Government can­not allow the very same peo­ple who neces­si­tat­ed the new law in the first place to deter­mine what the penal­ties should be for their trans­gres­sions and utter dis­dain for the rule of law.
We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to have the law-break­ers to have a say in what kind of penal­ty is met­ed out to them the law-break­ers.
If there are any [irra­tional­i­ty] in the bill which needs fix­ing, that should be done.
However, under no cir­cum­stances should the law­less trans­port sec­tor and their taxi-oper­a­tors, many of whom are hard­core crim­i­nals, have a say in the penal­ties that are in the pro­posed law.
Good gov­er­nance is about con­sen­sus, it is not about bow­ing down to a lob­by as a pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion did in the lead up to the (INDECOM Act).
This law is still under­go­ing work and has demon­stra­bly cost count­less lives and innu­mer­able heartache thus far.
It is impor­tant that the Government get this one right and not screw up as a pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion has on (INDECOM).
A gov­ern­ment must lead from the front regard­less of pop­u­lar per­cep­tions.
It can­not be about spit­ting on one’s fin­ger and see­ing where the wind blows.