” My Government has “reached the point where we are now pre­pared to take these firm and res­olute mea­sures to ensure that the crime mon­ster does not desta­bi­lize the promis­ing future that is in store for Jamaica”.Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness Wednesday, January 17^th.2018.

Speaking up and out on top­i­cal issues affect­ing the coun­try imme­di­ate­ly elic­its a cer­tain degree of risk. Not only is the coun­try’s libel laws oner­ous, the peo­ple are deeply par­ti­san and the soci­ety extreme­ly polarized.
The peo­ple, for the most part, tend to view even the most seri­ous and con­se­quen­tial issues through the nar­row­est of par­ti­san lens. Even those who are edu­cat­ed demon­strates the same frus­trat­ing tendencies.

The gen­er­al con­sen­sus of what patri­o­tism rep­re­sents is to ignore, pre­tend and sweep the hor­rif­ic mur­der sta­tis­tics under the rug and go on as if the world does not know. This insane­ly sil­ly mind­set pre­vails even as oth­er nations are issu­ing trav­el advi­sors to their cit­i­zens wish­ing to vis­it our country.
The mind-numb­ing idio­cy of that kind of approach defies log­ic in an age of social media and instant messaging.

Bunch Of Smoke On Crime, No Fire: Cops Must Get A Clue As Well…

.….….….….….….….…
Last year the Prime Minister gave the coun­try (ZOSO), Zones Of Special Operations leg­is­la­tion, his sup­port­ers hailed as the panacea which would stop the bloodshed.
After care­ful analy­sis, I took the posi­tion that ZOSO was a smoke­screen by the Government designed to pla­cate the pub­lic and the pow­er­ful crim­i­nal rights lobby.
Not only did I argue that it would not be suc­cess­ful, I out­lined cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly why it would not and could not have the results the Government promised. Many of the Prime Ministers sup­port­ers labeled me a mem­ber of the PNP sole­ly on that basis, even as they failed to defend or debunk the rea­sons I indi­cat­ed the law could not work.

Their men­tal­i­ty remind­ed me of Harriet Tubman’s state­ment, quote” I freed a thou­sand slaves and could have freed thou­sands more if only they knew they were slaves”.
When the log­ic is irrefutable like mind­less robots they attack the mes­sen­ger, par­tic­u­lar­ly if he/​she is clear-eyed on what is hap­pen­ing while they chose will­ful ignorance.

“We are now pre­pared to take these firm and res­olute mea­sures.” A shock­ing con­fes­sion by the Prime Minister [not sur­pris­ing to us who knew], that after 1616 report­ed dead last year his Government just sees it fit to act decisively.
Now based on prece­dent, it is advis­able that despite the prime min­is­ter’s words we wait and see what course of actions will be adopted.
Will it be anoth­er flail­ing smack at the charg­ing lion, or will it be a res­olute and deci­sive blast putting down the beast?

Since his reveal­ing admis­sion, sol­diers have poured into the Parish of Saint James in what we are told is a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency. Whether that is the extent to which the Prime Minister and his Administration is will­ing to go still remain to be seen.
However, the Prime Minister has demon­strat­ed by his own words that he is lead­ing from behind on crime.

Quote: “Over the past months, I have been observ­ing pub­lic dis­course very close­ly on this mat­ter. It is an emerg­ing view that now is the time that the Government should take firm and res­olute mea­sures.”

Leaders can­not spit on their fin­ger and stick it in the air to see where the winds blow. Leaders must take bold actions as long as the cause is just and the data sup­ports the action being contemplated.
Jamaicans are extreme­ly opin­ion­at­ed, usu­al­ly to a fault and that includes even when we have no rela­tion­ship with or access to the facts.

The Prime Minister has demon­stra­bly polled pub­lic sen­ti­ments on crime in order to act, much to the hor­ror of con­sci­en­tious peo­ple, not to men­tion those remain­ing rel­a­tives of the six­teen hun­dred and six­teen who were sum­mar­i­ly mur­dered last year.
We do not choose our lead­ers so they may wait to see what we are talk­ing about in the press and social media before they act. The Prime Minister’s admis­sion that pub­lic sen­ti­ment informs his deci­sion should give cit­i­zens much pause.

Jamaica is a small coun­try with a small pop­u­la­tion and a large crim­i­nal pop­u­la­tion con­trary to the Prime Minister’s asser­tion that 99% of the pop­u­la­tion are law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. Not true, Transparency International’s assess­ment dis­proves that asser­tion, the crime sta­tis­tics con­tra­dicts that asser­tion and the num­ber of peo­ple being arrest­ed for their involve­ment in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty dis­agrees with that asser­tion, despite the ran­cid lib­er­al­ism and cor­rup­tion with­in the jus­tice sys­tem and the lack of resources ded­i­cat­ed to law enforcement.

“A huge per­cent­age — 99 per­cent of Jamaicans — are decent, law-abid­ing, upstand­ing peo­ple who want to see this coun­try grow and pros­per. Now, that one per­cent that is caus­ing the desta­bi­liza­tion, we must put in place the laws and the mea­sures to deal with them once and for all…” Holness asserts.
A clear indi­ca­tion of what many peo­ple includ­ing this pub­li­ca­tion believes that the Government knew its approach to crime was piece-meal bullshit.

I call on Jamaicans of all stripes, irre­spec­tive of where you are domi­ciled if you love Jamaica and rec­og­nize that it is not a shit­hole coun­try and you want to keep it that way, Do not be dis­tract­ed by fake patri­ots who believe that sweep­ing the garbage under the car­pet trans­lates into a clean house.
Raise your voic­es and demand change.

Disregard the cur­ry goat and red stripe crowd who believe that as long as they can eat and drink and gyrate to dance­hall lyrics, all is well.
We were giv­en a beau­ti­ful coun­try by our fore-par­ents, they slaved and died for it we owe it to our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren to leave it bet­ter than we got it.

We will not do so by pre­tense and deni­a­bil­i­ty, not by throw­ing our sup­port to crim­i­nals but by stand­ing up against cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty, tox­ic vices which are suck­ing the lifeblood of our country.
Nothing suc­ceeds like suc­cess, sol­id lead­er­ship can ill afford to wait for a pop­u­la­tion with hard­ly any sem­blance of peace and secu­ri­ty to deter­mine what peace and secu­ri­ty look like.

Forget about pub­lic sen­ti­ment and do the right thing, in the end, peo­ple will real­ize that they are safer. Political con­sid­er­a­tions can­not always be the guid­ing principle.

Sixteen hun­dred and six­teen (1616) is the num­ber of peo­ple which were report­ed­ly killed unlaw­ful­ly in Jamaica last year.
There are many who believe that the num­ber of peo­ple mur­dered last year was far high­er than that which has been report­ed to the police.
That extra­or­di­nary num­ber though fright­en­ing does not tell the whole sto­ry, as many peo­ple who did not die imme­di­ate­ly from being shot may have died lat­er. Scores of oth­ers have been shot and have not died.

The Editorial of the JamaicadailyGleaner​.com today spoke to the killings and the polit­i­cal con­sen­sus which is need­ed to fight this monster.
This writer has been mak­ing that very point for years, even as crime con­tin­ues to esca­late year over year with the excep­tion of 2010.

THE POLICE

The pre­vail­ing nar­ra­tive in this debate today is that crime can­not be dealt with using force.The irony of that non­sense is that the killers are using vio­lence, force, and intim­i­da­tion, while their lob­by the crim­i­nal rights com­mu­ni­ty con­vinces the nation’s lead­er­ship that these scum­bags must be han­dled with baby soft soap and tal­cum powder.

This talk­ing point has dom­i­nat­ed the debate for so long and with­out push­back that even the mem­bers of the Police depart­ment have accept­ed this bull­shit as gospel.
We now have a senior com­mand struc­ture with­in the JCF which fun­da­men­tal­ly believe all they have to do is show up and talk. That lunatic con­cept of paci­fy­ing crim­i­nals now hold sway instead of an adher­ence to their sworn oath to uphold the laws.
One offi­cer told me a cou­ple of days ago the thing with the hier­ar­chy is now about who has more degrees than the other.

And so the ques­tion aris­es as to what was the cat­a­lyst for the pre­cip­i­tous drop in crime in 2010?
There were 1,682 report­ed mur­ders in 2009, Since 2011 the mur­der rate has con­tin­ued to fall fol­low­ing the down­ward trend start­ed in 2010, with increas­es in police patrols, cur­fews, and more effec­tive anti-gang activ­i­ties. In 2012, the Ministry of National Security report­ed a 30 per­cent decrease in murders.

In 2010 there were 1,428 a full 254 Jamaicans were allowed to con­tin­ue on with their God-giv­en lives over the pre­ced­ing year of 2009.
Since noth­ing trends down in Jamaica except the peo­ple’s stan­dard of liv­ing, it begs the ques­tion, what event pre­cip­i­tat­ed that drop in homicides?
What event con­tin­ued on through 2012 result­ing in a 30% drop from the year 2009?

Glad you asked.
It was the force­ful expul­sion of gang­sters from Tivoli Gardens and the ulti­mate expul­sion of Christopher Dududs Coke from that enclave to stand tri­al in the United States on transna­tion­al crim­i­nal charges.
Nothing gets crim­i­nals run­ning and hid­ing than the threat, bet­ter yet, phys­i­cal force to their persons.

The idea that in these cru­cial times we are going to make an impact on the oper­a­tions of cal­lous mur­der­ous with­out brute force is an illog­i­cal pile of horse shit.
Far too many in senior lev­els of the force are com­fort­able in their kha­ki tan mon­key suits, strut­ting around with the ridicu­lous swag­ger-canes than be dressed for oper­a­tional­ly per­form­ing polic­ing duties.
If this bunch is forced to ten­der their res­ig­na­tions and reap­ply for their jobs it would be inter­est­ing to see how many would qual­i­fy for the jobs they hold to a qual­i­fied pan­el of real polic­ing experts.

POLITICIANS

The Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and People’s National Party(PNP) have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to our coun­try. The role of polit­i­cal par­ties has been described this way.
Political par­ties per­form an impor­tant task in gov­ern­ment. They bring peo­ple togeth­er to achieve con­trol of the gov­ern­ment, devel­op poli­cies favor­able to their inter­ests or the groups that sup­port them, and orga­nize and per­suade vot­ers to elect their can­di­dates to office.

If the fore­gone is true then the two main polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple of the coun­try to move now to form a coali­tion of com­mon cause, to let it be known that this law­less­ness will not stand.
That com­mon cause can­not be mere words but a demon­stra­ble com­mit­ment not to engage in crim­i­nal behavior.
No sup­port, suc­cor, or help to any­one engaged in crim­i­nal con­duct. The 63 con­stituen­cies across the Island must be free from the belief that crim­i­nals can find sanc­tu­ary with the back­ing of politicians.

No politi­cian own any con­stituen­cy, as such the piss-ass crim­i­nals who rep­re­sent these con­stituen­cies under the belief that those areas are their pri­vate fief­doms must come to an end.
Any politi­cian who con­tin­ues to show an incli­na­tion to be def­er­en­tial to crim­i­nals or in any way move to ham­per or obstruct the work of law enforce­ment must be removed by the polit­i­cal par­ty or by some oth­er more deci­sive means.

We can no longer have no-go com­mu­ni­ties any­where in the 4’411 square miles which is Jamaica.
We must have a coun­try of laws in which Andrew Holness and Peter Phillips are hand­cuffed and cart­ed off to jail if they dare inter­vene in police operations.
We can­not con­tin­ue to have inci­dents like the one we wit­nessed in Boscobel in which a so-called don a com­mon piece of shit is killed and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are forced to sit in their cars because the crim­i­nal cod­dling cretins who sup­port the punk decides to wreak anar­chy while the police stand by help­less­ly and haplessly.

The Prime Minister can­not remain silent as if some­one else is in charge of the coun­try. His num­ber one respon­si­bil­i­ty is the secu­ri­ty of the nation.
The leader of the oppo­si­tion and his par­ty can­not con­tin­ue to play pol­i­tics with crime and sit there chomp­ing at the bit hop­ing to ride to office on the high crime wave.Where is the sense of coun­try over self, where is the sense of duty, where is the com­mit­ment to leave a bet­ter coun­try than the one you all inherited?

These are the com­po­nents which are required to put a stop to this mad­ness once and for all. If the politi­cians are unwill­ing to act the peo­ple will be forced to act and the polit­i­cal class will recieve a very rude awakening.

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is now in pan­ic mode, but wait there is much more to come in this cav­al­cade of mur­der which is envelop­ing Jamaica.
It will get a lot worse before the arc is bent toward a solution.The winds of divi­sion, dis­cord, and dis­re­spect the People’s National Party (PNP)and the Jamaica Labor Party(JLP) cre­at­ed has result­ed in the whirl­wind of anar­chy today.

The inces­sant bar­rage of anti-police invec­tive on tele­vi­sion and non­sen­si­cal talk radio was bound to have a rever­ber­at­ing neg­a­tive effect on the police the strate­gists calculated.
What they nev­er planned for was the lit­tle fact that the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. They nev­er cal­cu­lat­ed that a ris­ing tide rais­es all boats.
Politicians will be killed as well, just wait a lit­tle longer. In fact, they start­ed with a parish coun­cilor in Clarendon recent­ly. Naturally, there is not much cause for alarm just yet among the rul­ing class, the [big fish] Members of Parliaments all have secu­ri­ty details, or so they think.

I won­der if their police secu­ri­ty detail will spare them from the AK47’s and oth­er auto­mat­ic weapon­ry in the hands of the gangs?
I won­der how long the details will remain vig­i­lant when their bel­lies are emp­ty and their chil­dren are being killed because the polit­i­cal class has cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment in which ter­ror­ists are embold­ened to attack them wher­ev­er, killing them and their families?

The trag­ic irony in all of this is that the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the Island believes that it is best to tie the hands of the pro­tec­tors while demand­ing greater effec­tive­ness and account­abil­i­ty from them.
It is an Orwellian log­ic which smacks either of hypocrisy, stu­pid­i­ty or both.

The polit­i­cal lead­er­ship starves law enforce­ment of Remunerations. Effective and prac­ti­cal train­ing. Equipment(tools of the trade). Legislative and Psychological sup­port.

At the same time, the Government and indeed the Opposition par­ty have sup­port­ed actions which are anti­thet­i­cal to the reduc­tion of crime and ter­ror on the Island.
These actions have effec­tive­ly con­demned the Island to be the failed crim­i­nal state it is becom­ing.

Neither the Governing JLP nor the Opposition PNP has done much of any­thing out­side pay­ing the occa­sion­al lip ser­vice to the cri­sis occur­ring in the country.
Conversely, they demo­nize the Police, strength­en the forces arrayed against the police and have shock­ing­ly insti­tut­ed poli­cies in which agen­cies of the very gov­ern­ment has as their pri­ma­ry func­tions cam­paigns of mil­i­tan­cy against the police, agents of the same Government.

Nowhere else in the world am I able to see any instances of this lunatic prac­tice where agen­cies of the same gov­ern­ment of any nation cre­ate and prac­tice hos­til­i­ty against that coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces.
The pre­vi­ous Administration of the PNP was total­ly clue­less on the one hand as it relates to crime and was on the oth­er hand total­ly com­plic­it in not lift­ing a fin­ger to do what was need­ed to fix some of the struc­tur­al prob­lems which were fuelling crime.

The JLP Administration came into office with an atti­tude that its focus was going to be on the economy.
Somewhere in the mix of the JLP’s lead­er­ship mix­up was an unhealthy dose of arro­gance, naïveté, and ignorance.
Real growth, much less any degree of pros­per­i­ty, can only come from a sta­ble and free soci­ety in which the poten­tial of the peo­ple can be unleashed to it’s fullest extent.

Being free to live free from crime and its inju­ri­ous cir­cum­stances is an inte­gral part of that equation.
Governments can­not cre­ate pros­per­i­ty. Governments can be engines of growth through their abil­i­ty to pro­vide secu­ri­ty and infra­struc­ture upon which wealth is created.

The Andrew Holness Administration has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to stop this car­nage now!
The oppo­si­tion par­ty needs also to rec­og­nize it’s con­sti­tu­tion­al duty as part of the Government.
As a result, it is up to the PNP and JLP to come togeth­er in the inter­est of sav­ing Jamaica.
The idea of using crime as lever­age for polit­i­cal mileage must stop if the dam­age both par­ties cre­at­ed is to be arrested.

The Power that Holness want to hold onto and Peter Phillips want to taste may very well become a poi­son pill as there will be no Jamaica to govern.
What our lead­ers are doing will neces­si­tate for­eign troops on our soil. When that hap­pens we will see what all of the grand­standers in the soci­ety will do.

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Over 1600 Jamaicans were slaugh­tered by ter­ror­ist thugs last year, thus far this year they are on a mer­ry clip to kill as many this year if not more.

We say to Prime Minister Andrew Holness stop play­ing this polit­i­cal game you are play­ing. We say to Peter Phillips and his band of cultists, stop play­ing pol­i­tics and put coun­try first.

OVER 1600 JAMAICANS MURDERED LAST YEAR, THEY WERE NOT KILLED BY THE POLICE SO GUESS WHAT THESE FRAUDS ARE DEATHLY SILENT.

These are just a frac­tion of the many faces which have deceived the Jamaican peo­ple into think­ing that the epi­dem­ic of crime blan­ket­ing the coun­try is sole­ly a func­tion of police incompetence.[though the police are arguably incompetent].

The most sacred right any human being has is the right to life.Without life, any oth­er right he or she may be enti­tled to is ren­dered moot.
The police may not have the right to stop and search some­one under the law. And so we can argue and demo­nize them with­out think­ing that the like­li­hood of being stopped and searched goes a long way in pre­vent­ing some­one from walk­ing around with a gun.
If that per­son does not walk around with a gun he can­not shoot some­one with whom he gets into a pet­ty argument.

When we stop the police from tak­ing pro-active mea­sures as sim­ple as a stop and frisk we are by default autho­riz­ing and embold­en­ing crim­i­nals to walk with their weapons and that is how we end up with mas­sive­ly increased mur­der numbers.

It is stun­ning that those who pur­port to care about human rights and human dig­ni­ty does not care about the fun­da­men­tal right the inno­cent have to live.
It is absolute silence, crick­ets, com­ing from the frauds pic­tured above.
It is as if the peo­ple who died were not Jamaicans who had a right to live their lives like every­one else.
I call on these fraud­u­lent char­la­tans and oth­ers like them to explain to the Jamaican peo­ple the rea­son for their silence?

They are extreme­ly vocif­er­ous when law enforce­ment offi­cers are forced to take out hard­ened crim­i­nals who deny inno­cent Jamaicans their most fun­da­men­tal right, the right to life.
What is the basis for your silence?
Does the inno­cent who are killed not qual­i­fy to have advo­ca­cy on their behalf?
I say they do and that is the rea­son we char­ac­ter­ize you pic­tured above, as frauds and char­la­tans who only care about the rights of blood­thirsty killers.

We will change that des­ig­na­tion, we will change our char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of you as crim­i­nal rights advo­cates when you change your tune and speak to the loss of lives of the inno­cent and not only advo­cate for those who take inno­cent lives.

Despite all of the fail­ings of the Police high com­mand as a unit for effec­tive polic­ing in Jamaica, the present wave of mur­der and may­hem can­not be laid at the feet of the police alone.
Neither will the throw­ing of Commissioner of Police George Quallo under the bus suf­fice to dis­tract from the fright­en­ing num­ber of 1600 plus dead Jamaicans last year.

Andrew Holness came to the Job of Prime Minister deter­mined to micro-man­age crime, in a way that I can only char­ac­ter­ize as, “in an “up by elit­ist Mona kind way”.
You all remem­ber when Bruce Golding said that his Government would not be dic­tat­ed to by Mona, in ref­er­ence to the US embassy?
Well, I’m not talk­ing about that part of Mona, I’m actu­al­ly talk­ing about the “Intellectual ghet­to” as per Mutty Perkins.

Andrew Holness had ample time to look at what the coun­try need­ed before he was elect­ed and took on the job of Prime Minister. Holness is young, edu­cat­ed and is sup­pos­ed­ly smart.
Having lis­tened to Holness’s utter­ances since he assumed exec­u­tive lead­er­ship of the coun­try, has caused me much dis­may. He has me ques­tion­ing whether he ful­ly under­stands how a mod­ern soci­ety works.

There are a cou­ple of things which seem to elude Andrew Holness despite what I con­clude is a gen­uine desire on his part to want a pros­per­ous Jamaica.
The prob­lem with his Utopian dream is that there can be no pros­per­i­ty in an atmos­phere of mur­der and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
Attracting invest­ment and retain­ing it by any quan­tifi­able mea­sure in Jamaica’s present cir­cum­stance is tan­ta­mount to attempt­ing to fill a bas­ket with water.

#1 At best, a coun­try can have but mar­gin­al suc­cess com­pared to what it could nor­mal­ly accom­plish, if the specter of mur­der and ter­ror­ism is not removed, even giv­en the best of con­di­tions in the wider world.

#2 Bad mouthing the police by align­ing with Terrence Williams of INDECOM and the Media elites like Cliff Hughes and oth­ers who make a liv­ing from telling lies and opin­ing about police fail­ings, is not exact­ly the pre­scrip­tion for hav­ing a secu­ri­ty force which wants to work for you.
Each and every politi­cian must under­stand, the dif­fer­ence between cam­paign­ing and the com­plex­i­ties of governing.
Andrew Holness still has­n’t yet learned that lesson.

In speech after speech, Andrew Holness told his audi­ences that the police would not be allowed to kick in doors and kill peo­ple under his administration.
The prob­lem with that shame­less bit of pan­der­ing, is that kick­ing doors in is the work that police do when crim­i­nals do not want to sur­ren­der to being arrested.
It is dirty, it is harsh, it is not pret­ty to see but that is what hap­pens when crim­i­nals decide to try to kill inno­cent civil­ians and police officers.
[I am not in any way jus­ti­fy­ing sit­u­a­tions in which offi­cers betray their oaths and take inno­cent lives or take lives when they did not have to]

Terrence Williams Not About Investigating Dirty Cops But About Self Promotion, Grandstanding, And Smear.…

Based on his unequiv­o­cal sup­port for the crime enhance­ment INDECOM Act and his bad-mouthing of polic­ing meth­ods which did not com­port with the dic­tates of the elit­ist cabal of uptown, Holness all but guar­an­teed a police work slow down.
As I asked in an arti­cle a while back. why would Jamaican police risk their free­dom and their lives for a coun­try which does not val­ue their sacrifice?

The log­i­cal con­clu­sion is that in the same way the aver­age Jamaicans do not under­stand how liv­ing in a coun­try of law enhances their lives, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Peter Phillips and all who fol­low them do not under­stand that con­cept either.

Sadly, their igno­rance and incom­pe­tence are caus­ing the death of hun­dreds if not thou­sands of peo­ple each year.
Our coun­try is at war, it requires sol­diers to fight that war. The Prime Minister’s stance will only cause more deaths not end them.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blogger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

The retiring senator has always been a shameless tool of billionaire campaign donors, and a partisan errand boy for the likes of Donald Trump.

Much of the chal­lenges faced by Latin and South America, parts of Africa and the Caribbean, stems from deep­er issues oth­er than the obvi­ous default rea­son of poverty.
If we are able to dis­pense with the pre­con­ceived notion that pover­ty is the defin­ing crime-dri­ving char­ac­ter­is­tic we may be able to have a meet­ing of the minds on the role polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion plays in the metas­ta­siz­ing effect of crime.

Before we talk about cor­rup­tion it may be a good idea to look also at the idea that for the most part high crime pro­duc­ing coun­tries have large­ly been nations which have had a hard time gov­ern­ing them­selves after been freed from the chains of colonialism.

Among some of the nations which have strug­gled with deep social issues are Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico.
In many cas­es the prob­lem of crime has wors­ened as a direct result of Government’s inac­tion or in oth­ers their direct action.
In Colombia and Mexico, two of the Nations which have waged decades-long wars against nar­co-traf­fick­ers, a large part of the rea­son the prob­lem has been so intractable has been the cor­rup­tion of pub­lic offi­cials at all levels.

Colombia is a nation which I gen­er­al­ly point to as a mod­el of decid­ed lead­er­ship against crime and corruption.

Much of Colombia’s change may be attrib­uted to the hard-line politi­cian named Alvaro Uribe after he took over the Colombian pres­i­den­cy. He would go on to rule the coun­try for eight years, until 2010, scor­ing major vic­to­ries against vio­lent groups on the left and right. President Uribe was barred con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly from run­ning for a third term.

Today in the words of Colombia’s offi­cial tourist slo­gan: “The only risk is want­i­ng to stay.” As for Colombians them­selves, a world­wide poll con­duct­ed late last year by WIN/​Gallup International Association found they are not just in pass­ably good spir­its. They are the most con­tent­ed peo­ple on the plan­et, with a “hap­pi­ness score” of 75 — almost dou­ble the glob­al aver­age. (Canadians were No. 18 with a score of 48.)

The mur­der rate remains trou­bling accord­ing to ( the star​.com) by most accounts — 33.2 delib­er­ate homi­cides per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion in 2011 — but that fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed a sharp decline since Uribe took pow­er in 2002 when the rate was more than twice as high, at 70.2.
President Uribe was barred con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly from run­ning for a third term in office in 2010, and his anoint­ed suc­ces­sor, Juan Manuel Santos, was elect­ed in his place.

As late as 2002 The large cities — Bogota, Medellin, Cali — were still most­ly shut­tered at night, and inter-city roads were fre­quent­ly impass­able owing to the threat of rob­bery or kid­nap. Meanwhile, the drug gangs were flour­ish­ing, and vast swathes of the coun­try­side were con­trolled by armed rebels.

The bad sta­tis­ti­cal indices — those for extor­tion, kid­nap­ping, and mur­der — are way down, while the good indi­ca­tors are sharply up, includ­ing employ­ment, tourist arrivals, for­eign direct invest­ment and eco­nom­ic growth. Savvy out­siders now con­sid­er Colombia a safe place to invest their mon­ey and a great coun­try to vis­it, a land where per­son­al secu­ri­ty no longer needs to be a major con­cern, at least not for those who stay clear of drugs and politics.

Despite all of these pos­i­tives, not every­one is hap­py with the sharp turn­around in Colombia made pos­si­ble by President Uribe’s strong band deci­sive leadership.

Gimena Sanchez, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a U.S.-based think tank, says many unre­solved prob­lems lurk behind Colombia’s new and improved façade, includ­ing some 3,000 extra-judi­cial killings com­mit­ted by the armed forces dur­ing Uribe’s two terms.

“Now we’re see­ing an increase in killings of human-rights defend­ers,” she says. “The con­flict has shift­ed, but the per­cep­tion that every­thing is great and there are no prob­lems isn’t true. It’s not the full pic­ture.”

Sounds famil­iar?
Despite the mete­oric rise in the con­fi­dence of the Colombian peo­ple in the dra­mat­ic turn around of their coun­try, the buzz­words are the very same.
Never mind that there is gen­er­al­ly no evi­dence to back up claims of extra­ju­di­cial killings claims from the those who pur­port to be advo­cates for human rights they make those scur­rilous claims anyway.

In the 18-year peri­od lead­ing up to 2002 when President Uribe took office, the process knows as La Violencia, claimed upwards of 200,000 lives in Colombia.
Colombia’s mur­der rate around the turn of the cen­tu­ry was the high­est in Latin America. In 2002, at least 28,387 peo­ple were killed in the coun­try, accord­ing to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Its homi­cide rate of 68.9 per 100,000 peo­ple in 2002 was more than 10 times high­er than Costa Rica (6.3) and near­ly twice that of Guatemala (37.0) and Venezuela (38.0).

Despite the changes and the con­sis­tent annu­al down­ward trend of homi­cides in Colombia, there are those who are fix­at­ed on what author­i­ties did to bring san­i­ty to their country.
Those crit­i­cisms are usu­al­ly made from the com­fort and safe­ty of coun­tries with none of the exis­ten­tial threats the nations they tar­get face.
Jamaica has a deci­sion to make, unfor­tu­nate­ly, it does not seem like there is a Jamaican Uribe any­where in the two polit­i­cal parties
There is nev­er­the­less no short­age of Jamaican style Gimena Sanchez.

The total number of deportations is down under Trump, but don’t confuse that with leniency.

By Julianne Hing

Detainees leave the cafe­te­ria at the Stewart Detention Facility, a Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic) immi­gra­tion facil­i­ty in Lumpkin, Georgia. (AP /​Kate Brumback)

Depor­ta­tions are down. In the2017 fis­cal year, which end­ed in September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deport­ed 226,119 peo­ple — 14,000 few­er than the pre­vi­ous year. Barack Obama broke records by deport­ing more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple dur­ing his eight years in office. But no one should con­fuse a drop in depor­ta­tions under Donald Trump with leniency.

There are, broad­ly speak­ing, two kinds of depor­ta­tion: those peo­ple who are quick­ly kicked out of the coun­try for get­ting caught cross­ing the US-Mexican bor­der, and those who are already liv­ing in the United States and are round­ed up from with­in the “inte­ri­or.” One big rea­son for the decrease in depor­ta­tions is that few­er peo­ple are cross­ing into the coun­try from Mexico. That pool of easy stat-boost­ers had already been dry­ing up under Obama, and it con­tin­ues to decline — though in its end-of-year report, ICE claimed that the trend could reflect “an increased deter­rent effect” from the agency’s “stronger inte­ri­or enforce­ment efforts.”

If one looks only at what are called “inte­ri­or removals,” Trump has deport­ed more peo­ple than Obama did in his final two years. In fact, in his first eight months in office, Trump deport­ed 61,094 peo­ple from with­in the inte­ri­or, 37 per­cent more than Obama did in the same peri­od in 2016.

ICE arrests are also up under Trump. Between his inau­gu­ra­tion and September 30, ICE arrest­ed 42 per­cent more peo­ple for immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions than it did over the same peri­od in the pre­vi­ous year. Immigration-court back­logs are key to under­stand­ing why Trump’s depor­ta­tion num­bers aren’t even high­er: If a per­son has lived in the coun­try for more than two years and has not been pre­vi­ous­ly sub­ject to a depor­ta­tion order, they’re enti­tled to a hear­ing before an immi­gra­tion judge. Processing those cas­es takes time.

As it is, Trump has autho­rized his agents to do things that oth­er admin­is­tra­tions declined to do. Obama said that he was focused on remov­ing “felons, not fam­i­lies.” These days, any­one who’s deportable — from restau­rant-own­ing, decades-long res­i­dents to DACA-approved Dreamers — is a pri­or­i­ty. ICE is now will­ing to arrest peo­ple with no crim­i­nal record, peo­ple who are guilty only of immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions. Even ICE’s gang-enforce­ment oper­a­tions — designed, sup­pos­ed­ly, to cap­ture the most hard­ened crim­i­nals — have net­ted a dis­turb­ing num­ber of peo­ple with no crim­i­nal record. It’s an unleash­ing that, to immi­grants, feels like a kind of terrorism.

To make mat­ters worse, ICE agents stalk places that were once no-go areas for appre­hend­ing immi­grants: church­es, cour­t­hous­es, even school drop-off sites. In November, dozens of pub­lic defend­ers gath­ered for an impromp­tu protest out­side a Brooklyn cour­t­house just after ICE agents arrest­ed a man who had shown up at court. That arrest was one of approx­i­mate­ly 40 such inci­dents in 2017 in New York City alone — a 900 per­cent increasecom­pared with last year, accord­ing to the Immigrant Defense Project. Lawyers and judges have report­ed sim­i­lar activ­i­ty in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and the rest of New York State. Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson said that she’s giv­en up on four domes­tic-vio­lence cas­es since Trump’s elec­tion, because the vic­tims were too afraid that ICE would be lurk­ing to appear in court.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has also pres­sured local police forces to do immi­gra­tion-enforce­ment work. In March, ICE began pub­lish­ing a list of juris­dic­tions that declined to hon­or its detain­er requests to hold immi­grants in cus­tody for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. The list, intend­ed to shame local­i­ties, has been sus­pend­ed, but the spir­it of it remains. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been engaged in legal bat­tles with mul­ti­ple munic­i­pal­i­ties, from San Francisco to Chicago, over the administration’s threats to defund so-called sanc­tu­ary cities. Read more here: https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​w​h​y​-​n​u​m​b​e​r​s​-​a​l​o​n​e​-​o​b​s​c​u​r​e​-​t​h​e​-​r​e​a​l​-​d​e​p​o​r​t​a​t​i​o​n​-​s​t​o​ry/

Democrats are all star­ry-eyed at the prospect that at the bare min­i­mum, come next year Nancy Pelosi will yank the gav­el from the puny hands of Paul Ryan a man who has demon­strat­ed he stands for noth­ing and will capit­u­late to anything.
Paul Ryan the man who could­n’t sup­port Trump before he could, a man who has now drawn an alt-right oppo­nent in the per­son of Paul Nehlen for his con­gres­sion­al seat in his home state of Wisconsin, a man who does­n’t know if he wants to stand and fight or run and hide from the challenge.

But this arti­cle is not about a weak Republican Speaker of the House it is about a weak Democratic Party which has man­aged to turn off most of its white work­ing class, union­ized work­ers dri­ving them into the arms of the likes of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.
Is race a part of this dynamic?
You bet!

But lets us nev­er for­get that many of these very same vot­ers in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio vot­ed twice for Barack Obama choos­ing him first over Hillary Clinton in the pri­maries, over war hero John McCain and in 2012 over Mitt Romney.
All three are white, Obama is black.

I was con­vinced that Barack Obama was going to be the first Black President, but I became dou­bly sure when I heard two elder­ly white women talk­ing in hushed tones in the cere­al aisle of my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket ” I don’t trust that Hillary, I’m vot­ing for that nice [fellow]Obama”.
The oth­er chimed in “me too.”

Barack Obama is now a twice-elect­ed ex-pres­i­dent with high approval rat­ings, what is not exact­ly clear is what has become of the Democratic party?
Or the bet­ter ques­tion is, what is the Democratic party?
Even as a polit­i­cal junkie I strug­gle to iden­ti­fy the Democratic par­ty, what is it where is it, is the Democratic Party Nancy Pelosi a woman even some in her own cau­cus says should step aside because she is a light­ning rod?
Is it, Tom Perez the head of the DNC, or is it Charles Schumer the New York senior sen­a­tor from Brooklyn?

The Republican par­ty is a tight­ly woven intri­cate machine that cul­ti­vates its vot­ers from the grass­roots, it has scores and scores of grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions and groups which are active­ly engaged in cul­ti­vat­ing and nur­tur­ing new swaths of vot­ers at all levels.
There is no dis­cern­able coun­ter­bal­ance on the Democratic side.

The fact of the mat­ter is that Black vot­ers are the most loy­al vot­ers in the Democratic par­ty. As one writer recent­ly wrote, Black peo­ple vote the Democratic par­ty into office so that they can nom­i­nate white peo­ple for posi­tions of power.
That state­ment though true does­n’t begin to sum­marise the extent to which blacks the pow­er behind a fick­le and weak Democratic par­ty are being ignored by their par­ty of choice.

Black women, in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­ue to work won­ders by turn­ing out in phe­nom­e­nal num­bers to elect their can­di­dates of choice as they did in Alabama not because they were nec­es­sar­i­ly in love with Democrat Doug Jones but out of Revulsion for a big­ot­ed alleged pedophile in Roy Moore.
It’s now time for the Democratic par­ty, what­ev­er that is, to ele­vate Blacks to their right­ful posi­tion of pow­er with­in the par­ty or face a pos­si­ble exo­dus of blacks from the party.
A mass exo­dus of blacks from the Democratic par­ty would mean the end of the par­ty, con­sid­er­ing that it has no grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions active­ly cul­ti­vat­ing new voters.

Black vot­ers should not wait for par­ty boss­es they must now demand that the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty hear their voic­es and give them the respect they deserve or launch a takeover of the Republican par­ty. Racist whites in the Republican par­ty who don’t like it can run back to the Democratic par­ty as they did to the Republican par­ty after the sign­ing of the civ­il rights act.
Hey, it’s pos­si­ble, the tea par­ty [Patriots] did it, why not?

It’s time for the patterns and practices of the Democratic Party — the candidates we put forth and the voters we pursue — to change.

Exit polls showed that black vot­ers were deci­sive in elect­ing Democrat Doug Jones to the United States Senate. White vot­ers under-per­formed their past turnout in gen­er­al and spe­cial elec­tions, but a strong major­i­ty of those who did show up cast their bal­lots for a race-bait­ing homo­phobe accused of molest­ing young children.

But Palestinians will continue to seek ways to secure their rights to freedom and equality.

If you want to know what a fail­ing state look like, take a look at Jamaica.
Yes, this is state­ment is insid­i­ous, brazen and will attract a huge back­lash, not that I ever wor­ry about those, because it is a cor­rect assess­ment of our coun­try at present.

Definition of a failed state: A state whose polit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic sys­tem has become so weak that the gov­ern­ment is no longer in control.
According to the Global Policy Forum, Failed states can no longer per­form basic func­tions such as edu­ca­tion, secu­ri­ty, or gov­er­nance, usu­al­ly due to frac­tious vio­lence or extreme pover­ty. Within this pow­er vac­u­um, peo­ple fall vic­tim to com­pet­ing fac­tions and crime.

From this def­i­n­i­tion, you may extrap­o­late that a fail­ing state would have a veneer of con­trol by the gov­ern­ment but peel­ing that veneer away will reveal the true state of that rot­ting failure.

The Jamaican Prime Minister yes­ter­day stood in the nation’s par­lia­ment and did the Jamaican nation a tremen­dous dis-ser­vice by apol­o­giz­ing to the com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens for the 2010 secu­ri­ty incursion.
There is pre­cious lit­tle bi-par­ti­san­ship in Jamaican Politics but as was to be expect­ed Peter Phillips and his oppo­si­tion PNP was in agree­ment with the apology.

An under­stand­ing of Jamaican Politics will inform, that the only issues which evoke bi-par­ti­san­ship in Jamaica seem to be the things which fur­ther erodes the rule of law and social order.
Phillips, want­i­ng to gain one-upman­ship told the house a truth com­mis­sion was nec­es­sary to address not only the issues of May 2010 but events dat­ing back to the 1960s and 1970s.
The idea to apol­o­gize to this com­mu­ni­ty which has thumbed its col­lec­tive nose at the Jamaican state for decades and more so under the Jungle lead­er­ship and con­trol of International crim­i­nal Christopher (Duddus) Coke came from the David Simmons-led com­mis­sion of inquiry.

That Commission com­mis­sioned by Phillips own Party whilst in Government was designed to score polit­i­cal point rather than out of any con­cern for the peo­ple who died or suf­fered in Tivoli Gardens.
To sug­gest that the intent of that com­mis­sion was to fer­ret out the truth in fur­ther­ance of the peo­ple of that com­mu­ni­ty is tan­ta­mount to Donald Trump say­ing he fired Jim Comey because he was mean to Hillary Clinton.

The par­ti­san Kangaroo Tivoli Gardens com­mis­sion which was set up by Portia Simpson Miller the then intel­lec­tu­al­ly infan­tile Prime Minister was a dis­grace of a com­mis­sion. That com­mis­sion had a demon­stra­ble bias against the secu­ri­ty forces and its head Barbadian David Simmons had a clear dis­dain for things Jamaican.

In order to under­stand why a truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion com­mis­sion would be in the best inter­est of a nation, it would be instruc­tive to look at the mod­el adopt­ed by Nelson Mandela after he assumed the Presidency in South Africa in 1995.

[Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa (TRC), a court-like body estab­lished by the new South African gov­ern­ment in 1995 to help heal the coun­try and bring about a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of its peo­ple by uncov­er­ing the truth about human rights vio­la­tions that had occurred dur­ing the peri­od of apartheid. Its empha­sis was on gath­er­ing evi­dence and uncov­er­ing infor­ma­tion — from both vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors — and not on pros­e­cut­ing indi­vid­u­als for past crimes, which is how the com­mis­sion main­ly dif­fered from the Nürnberg tri­als that pros­e­cut­ed Nazis after World War II. The com­mis­sion released the first five vol­umes of its final report on Oct. 29, 1998, and the remain­ing two vol­umes of the report on March 21, 2003.] https://​www​.bri​tan​ni​ca​.com/​t​o​p​i​c​/​T​r​u​t​h​-​a​n​d​-​R​e​c​o​n​c​i​l​i​a​t​i​o​n​-​C​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​-​S​o​u​t​h​-​A​f​r​ica.

The events which neces­si­tat­ed the Security forces entry into the com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens in 2010 bears zero resem­blance to the events which occurred in South Africa.
Without re-lit­i­gat­ing events which occurred there it is impor­tant to under­stand the seri­ous­ness of a sit­u­a­tion in which the nations secu­ri­ty forces can­not enter a part of a coun­try which can fit almost twice into the state of Connecticut one of the small­est states in the United States.
Daily the Police recov­er stach­es of guns across the Island and at the ports of entry.
Additionally, for­eign law enforce­ment agen­cies inter­cept large ship­ments which could only tru­ly be explained as going to fur­nish an army.
So while Rome burns the nation’s lead­ers fid­dle and those who should be low­er­ing the lifeboats are busy orga­niz­ing the deck chairs on the sink­ing Titanic.

I am all for a truth com­mis­sion in which Peter Phillips and every oth­er politi­cian from both polit­i­cal par­ties are will­ing to truth­ful­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly tes­ti­fy to every crime they ever com­mit­ted and every action they ever took which has brought us to this place.
If they are unwill­ing to do that then I stren­u­ous­ly implore them not to waste any more mon­ey on these flights of fancies.

In light of what occurred in 2010, the Government and Opposition ought to be engaged in bi-par­ti­san sup­port of our secu­ri­ty forces, ensur­ing that they get all of the sup­port they deserve to do the job that is asked of them.
Instead, both Government and oppo­si­tion are active­ly and pre­ten­tious­ly engaged in destruc­tur­ing the pow­ers and for­ti­tude of the secu­ri­ty forces abil­i­ty to do their jobs.

So here are the facts.
While the Government con­tin­ues to pre­tend that the seri­ous and exis­ten­tial threats fac­ing the Island can be reme­died by stu­pid ZOSO’s, the coun­try is being flood­ed with weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and spare parts for those weapons.
The arse­nal in the hands of the crim­i­nal under­world far exceeds that which the police has. Earlier this year police offi­cers in St Ann try­ing to inter­cept a want­ed ter­ror­ist faced live grenades which injured one offi­cer, in addi­tion to the auto­mat­ic weapons fire.

Instead of expe­di­tious­ly and decid­ed­ly tak­ing steps to ensure that our coun­try will not be tak­en over by ter­ror­ists neces­si­tat­ing a for­eign takeover to restore order the entire polit­i­cal lead­er­ship is engaged in pla­cat­ing a com­mu­ni­ty which has for decades oper­at­ed out­side the nation’s laws.
Then they won­der why young men pick up guns?
It is the guar­an­teed way for them to gain respect from the peo­ple who nev­er respect­ed any­one before.

Former nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Michael Flynn plead­ed guilty Friday to lying to the FBI, becom­ing the first Trump White House offi­cial to face crim­i­nal charges and admit guilt so far in the wide-rang­ing elec­tion inves­ti­ga­tion led by spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller.

Flynn also agreed to coöper­ate with Mueller’s probe, which focus­es on Russian med­dling in the 2016 elec­tion and pos­si­ble coör­di­na­tion between Russia and Donald Trump’s cam­paign aimed at send­ing the Republican busi­ness­man to the White House. More here: http://​www​.chicagotri​bune​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​w​o​r​l​d​/​ct-michael-flynn-charged-20171201-story.html