Conservative com­men­ta­tor Erick Erickson says Trump’s secret spilling is “far worse” than reported

Former American intel­li­gence offi­cials are crit­i­ciz­ing TASS’s abil­i­ty to enter the White House as a poten­tial­ly major secu­ri­ty breach, accord­ing to a report by The Washington Post. Surveillance equip­ment like lis­ten­ing devices can be con­cealed in elec­tron­ic equip­ment like cam­eras, accord­ing to these experts, and it was irre­spon­si­ble at best for the White House to allow a for­eign gov­ern­ment with a his­to­ry of spy­ing like Russia to enter a sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment build­ing with them.

While a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial has defend­ed the deci­sion to allow the pho­tog­ra­ph­er in, claim­ing that he “had to go through the same screen­ing as a mem­ber of the U.S. press going through the main gate to the [White House] brief­ing room,” intel­li­gence experts say that sophis­ti­cat­ed sur­veil­lance equip­ment could have passed through such a screen­ing unde­tect­ed. Read more here: http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​5​/​1​1​/​t​h​e​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​u​s​e​-​m​a​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​p​e​r​m​i​t​t​e​d​-​a​-​s​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​-​b​r​e​a​c​h​-​w​h​e​n​-​i​t​-​l​e​t​-​t​h​e​-​r​u​s​s​i​a​n​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​t​a​k​e​-​p​h​o​t​o​g​r​a​p​hs/

Amid grow­ing pub­lic out­rage over the non-val­u­a­tion of 1200 acres of land giv­en to the Chinese devel­op­ers of the North-South link of Highway 2000, Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, is to make a state­ment ‘as ear­ly as tomorrow’.

This, after Contractor General, Dirk Harrison, says he’ll be inten­si­fy­ing his probe into the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar North-South Highway con­tract between the gov­ern­ment and China Harbour Engineering Company, (CHEC).

Public con­cerns have been mount­ing fol­low­ing a rev­e­la­tion by the National Road Operating and Constructing Company, NROCC, in Parliament last week that the 1200 acres of state lands, includ­ing prime real estate at Mammee Bay and Caymanas, were not valuated.

In 2012, then Transport and Works Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, signed a 50-year con­ces­sion agree­ment with CHEC for the con­struc­tion of the highway.

At the time, he talked up the project to Parliament and pro­ceed­ed, despite con­cerns raised by then Contractor General, Greg Christie.

The 1200 acres of land rep­re­sents the government’s invest­ment in lieu of cash. But with­out a val­u­a­tion, it’s uncer­tain if the gov­ern­ment got val­ue for mon­ey on the deal.

Speaking with Nationwide News today, Minister Without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth, Dr. Horace Chang, says the Urban Development Corporation, UDC, has the val­u­a­tions for the land giv­en to the Chinese developers.

He says Prime Minister Holness will make a state­ment on the matter.

In the mean­time, Dr. Chang is seek­ing to allay con­cerns about the via­bil­i­ty of the East-West sec­tion of the Highway.

NROCC’s Managing Director, Ivan Anderson, revealed at last week’s meet­ing of Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee, (PAAC) that it would take at least anoth­er 20 years before the North-South Highway would make a profit.

Mr. Anderson told the PAAC that CHEC is cur­rent­ly spend­ing approx­i­mate­ly USD$30-million in debt ser­vic­ing per annum on the highway.

But he says it’s gen­er­at­ing rev­enues of only USD$18-million per year, mean­ing it’s spend­ing almost twice as much as it’s earn­ing on it.

Dr. Chang, while admit­ting some sec­tions of the high­way will not imme­di­ate­ly turn a prof­it, says he expects the devel­op­ment to be prof­itable over time.

The North-South Highway runs from Caymanas in St Catherine to Mammee Bay in St Ann. It’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut trav­el time.

Meanwhile, for­mer Contractor General, Greg Christie, says the admis­sion that the US-mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar North-South Highway deal is not com­mer­cial­ly viable is an exam­ple of what hap­pens when an anti-cor­rup­tion agency is blocked from ensur­ing transparency.

The admis­sion that the project is not com­mer­cial­ly viable was report­ed­ly made in 2012 to the Office of the Contractor General, OCG, by Managing Director of NROCC, Ivan Anderson.

Mr. Christie made his com­ment on Twitter today.

Former Transport and Works Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, is quot­ed in the online edi­tion of the Gleaner today as say­ing that pri­or to the deal being inked in 2012 it was the job of the Ministry of Finance to do the val­u­a­tion of lands being pro­vid­ed to Chinese developers.

In 2012, Dr. Peter Phillips was Finance Minister. He’s now President of the Opposition People’s National Party.

Dr. Davies is fur­ther quot­ed as say­ing there was some val­u­a­tion but he does not know if all the dif­fer­ent parcels of the land were valued.

In 2012, Davies signed off on the deal in his capac­i­ty as Transport and Works Minister.

Mr. Christie and Dr. Davies clashed in 2012 when Davies and the for­mer Simpson Miller admin­is­tra­tion took the OCG to court.

The court action had the effect of block­ing the OCG from mon­i­tor­ing the pre-con­trac­tu­al phase of the project.

However, in February 2013, the Supreme Court threw out the motion that was filed by Dr. Davies and the then government.

They were seek­ing leave to chal­lenge the pow­ers of the Contractor General before the Judicial Review Court.

The clash between Mr. Christie and Dr. Davies stemmed from the Minister’s deci­sion to estab­lish an Oversight Panel to over­see three major gov­ern­ment projects.

The Contractor General had accused the gov­ern­ment of try­ing to bypass his office and threat­ened to take legal action against mem­bers of the three-man pan­el if they refused to sup­ply him with reports on its activities.
http://​nation​widera​dio​jm​.com/​p​m​-​t​o​-​m​a​k​e​-​a​-​s​t​a​t​e​m​e​n​t​-​o​n​-​h​i​g​h​w​a​y​-​l​a​n​d​-​r​ow/

ISOLATIONISM :XENOPHOBIA: PULL UP THE DRAW-BRIDGE: BUILD A WALL:KEEP OUT THOSE PEOPLE…naah
England vot­ed to remove itself from the European Union it’s lead­ers now strug­gle to fig­ure out how to extri­cate them­selves ful­ly from the EU with min­i­mal damage.
At the same time Scotland does­n’t even know whether it wants to stay wed­ded to Great Britain.
France wants England to the leave the EU imme­di­ate­ly, a process France knows will take upward of two years and beyond to com­plete accord­ing to qual­i­fied estimates.

France which flirt­ed with elect­ing a far right Xenophobe to it’s pres­i­den­cy, has come to it’s sens­es and elect­ed Emmanuel Macron a 39 year old.
Macron’s ele­va­tion elicit­ed sighs of relief across west­ern Europe.
What was seen as a sharp rise in right wing nation­al­ism in Europe is now blunt­ed as a result of the French vote.

The elec­tion of Macron meant that the Donald Trump endorsed “Marine” Le Pen’s stri­dent xeno­pho­bia has been round­ly reject­ed in France.
Also high on the agen­da was alleged Russian inter­fer­ence in European elec­tions as have been report­ed to have occurred in the last US Presidential elections.

Concerned about their safe­ty as they should, French vot­ers were able to find a path for­ward from the real con­cerns they have about Terrorists enter­ing their coun­try to do them harm and the need to have an open society .
Instead of choos­ing fear , dem­a­goguery and deri­sion they chose hope , open inter­ac­tion and progress.

For the peo­ple of the World’s sixth largest econ­o­my it was a deci­sive vote to shun vile Racism and Xenophobia under the thin­ly veiled veneer of safe­ty and security.
Every coun­try reserve the right to secure it’s bor­der, in fact it is their absolute duty, but secu­ri­ty does not mean demo­niz­ing oth­ers who are in need of a refuge.

To make it seem like an entire nation of peo­ple are poten­tial ter­ror­ists and mur­der­ers is to demon­strate a cal­lous­ness which tran­scend empa­thy and caring.
It is dem­a­gog­ic, igno­rant and self-serving.
French vot­ers stood up with this vote and said “no”.

Instead of bow­ing to hatred fear and iso­la­tion­ism they vot­ed for inclu­sion , empa­thy and progress.
They under­stand that there is no demon­stra­ble path where Isolationism , fear, and mean-spir­it­ed rhetoric will win the day over inclusion.
Viva la France.…

Republicans didn’t want to know what was in this god-awful bill — and can only hope the rest of us don’t either.
GARY LEGUM

After they had vot­ed Wednesday to screw tens of mil­lions of Americans out of the health care and finan­cial pro­tec­tions grant­ed them by the pas­sage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, House Republicans marched over to the White House for a Rose Garden press con­fer­ence. There they ver­bal­ly fel­lat­ed one anoth­er for the brav­ery they had just shown. “Leadership” was the watch­word of the day.

“Thanks to the lead­er­ship of President Donald Trump; wel­come to the begin­ning of the end of Obamacare,” Vice President Mike Pence intoned. “Thank you, Mr. President, for your lead­er­ship,” said the gid­dy-look­ing House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, I am proud … again to say thank you for your lead­er­ship,” drawled the gnomish chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Rep. Kevin Brady. Trump, while not using the word, nonethe­less praised Ryan for the efforts he had under­tak­en to drag out enough votes from his caucus.

It was a sur­re­al cel­e­bra­tion, con­sid­er­ing how far this bill still has to go before it gets to the president’s desk to be con­sid­ered for sign­ing. It was even more sur­re­al for the bla­tant lies com­ing out of the mouths of var­i­ous Republicans about what this bill will do, at least if the final ver­sion remote­ly resem­bles this one. No one in the Rose Garden on Thursday after­noon want­ed to admit it, but the finan­cial and human costs are sim­ply staggering.

As many as 24 mil­lion few­er peo­ple with health insur­ance. An $880 bil­lion cut to Medicaid, which pro­vides health care cov­er­age to rough­ly one 1 of every 5 Americans (and would cov­er more if not for the 19 states that have turned down Obamacare’s Medicaid expan­sion). The defund­ing of Planned Parenthood. Cuts to treat­ment for addic­tion, for nurs­ing home costs, for spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dents. The return of insur­ance com­pa­nies deny­ing cov­er­age for pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. The list of those pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. And on and on and on.
Read more here: http://www.salon.com/2017/05/05/a‑grotesque-failure-of-leadership-republicans-celebrate-but-well-all-pay-for-the-way-they-jammed-the-trumpcare-atrocity-through-the-house/

MOMENTOUS DAY IN AMERICA AS HOUSE REPUBLICANS VOTE TO REPEAL THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

According to our friends over at Huffpost.

On May 29^th I wrote the following :::::
As Police offi­cers and cit­i­zens lives con­tin­ue to be snuffed out in alarm­ing num­bers, the Government is death­ly silent.
In oth­er coun­tries when a police office is killed there is mas­sive push-back from their soci­eties and cer­tain­ly Government.
Under both Political par­ties stew­ard­ship, the ruth­less killing of Police offi­cers illic­it crickets……..
Deafening silence……….
Not Portia, Not Peter Phillips and damn sure not Andrew Holness.
These mis­guid­ed lit­tle morons sit by and make no state­ment, as if the death of police offi­cers is beneath them, the per­rog­a­tive of under­lings to address.
Who the fuck do they think they are ?

I took a lot of flack by sup­port­ers of the Prime Minister who point­ed out that the Honorable Prime Minister had indeed issued a state­ment on the death of con­sta­ble Leighton Hanson and Detective sergeant Thompson anoth­er offi­cer killed albeit days after being shot by hoodlums.
What pains me is that there are police offi­cers and past police offi­cers who are more inter­est­ed in mak­ing the case for politi­cians than they are at lob­by­ing for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions for them­selves, their col­leagues and for­mer colleagues.

Fact I wrote the Article on April 29^th find link here.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​s​-​l​a​c​k​-​o​f​-​d​e​c​i​s​i​v​e​-​a​c​t​i​o​n​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​s​i​b​l​e​-​f​o​r​-​c​o​p​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​gs/

Then on Sunday the Prime Minister issued this state­ment a full day lat­er than my Article was published.

I deeply regret and I am sad­dened at devel­op­ments over the week­end which have result­ed in two mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) los­ing their lives due to the vicious actions of crim­i­nal elements.

Well, well, it seem that our friends over at the Jamaica Observer are final­ly com­ing to their sens­es .…well at least those in the Editorial divi­sion to some degree.
It’s not very often that this medi­um have rea­son to laud aspects of the Jamaican media , nev­er­the­less when they get it right we must com­mend them for doing the right thing.

I like the new term , the “Againsters,” don’t you?
I gen­er­al­ly refer to the peo­ple whom have earned the ire of the edi­to­r­i­al board as the know noth­ing elites from above Cross Roads but I can change.…

My only con­cern with the Editorial is that as could be expect­ed, it missed the most press­ing issue affect­ing the Island.
Literally every issue of which the Article speak below is of para­mount importance.
Nevertheless, the largest issue affect­ing the coun­try and has been for decades, has been the pro­lif­er­a­tion of vio­lent crime.
Yet they missed it.

Newspapers report news .
Editorial boards opine, they shape opinions .
It is up to the peo­ple on Editorial boards who write opin­ion pieces like these to bring press­ing issues to the fore and keep them there.
Is there any won­der that despite the fright­en­ing lev­els of homi­cides , rapes, abduc­tions and gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try the aver­age per­son ratio­nal­izes , nuance and make excus­es for it?

Oh you have cer­tain­ly heard the excuses .
Crime de ebery weh.
A nu Jumeka alone it a gwan.
A ungle peo­ple weh inna scam­ming a ded.
If yu nu gu certin place yu awrite.

The list of stu­pid excus­es is long.
Could it be that the peo­ple who shape opin­ion are not doing what they ought to-to bring the appro­pri­ate lev­els of aware­ness to the top­i­cal issues?
Crime is suck­ing the life blood of the Nation, on aver­age 4 Jamaicans lose their lives vio­lent­ly each day.
Many more are scarred for the long term as a result of vio­lent crimes against their persons.
The trau­ma vis­it­ed on the inno­cent is immea­sur­able, we may nev­er know the col­lec­tive cost it is hav­ing on the society .

What we do know is that it sti­fles the Gross Domestic Product.
Investors are shy about com­ing to risk their mon­ey and their lives.
Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra are not return­ing to live like they once did.
This loss is sig­nif­i­cant as they are keep­ing their resources out of the coun­try as well .

Yet Crime the Elephant in the room is not on the list of the Editorial.
Neither of the projects men­tioned has the sig­nif­i­cance of the impact crime is hav­ing on the coun­try, though they are unde­ni­ably important.
The Editorial labelled the peo­ple “again­sters, per­pet­u­al­ly pes­simistic” they are, but the peo­ple doing the name call­ing are equal­ly with­out vision in my opinion.

Jamaican policymakers must ignore the ‘againsters’.

Jamaica has a group of peo­ple who can be regard­ed as the ‘again­sters’— a per­pet­u­al­ly pes­simistic bunch who can nev­er see any good in any plans for the future.

The ‘again­sters’ opposed Universal Adult Suffrage, which gave the vote to Jamaicans 21 and over, then they opposed mov­ing the vot­ing age from 21 to 18; they thought Independence was fool­ish­ness; they were against the build­ing of the National Stadium and the National Arena. The ‘again­sters’ saw no use­ful pur­pose in a National Housing Trust (NHT); they opposed build­ing a new Parliament; they were against the high­ways and toll roads; they con­demned Emancipation Park and every­thing else that even slight­ly resem­bled a lega­cy project.

Had our pol­i­cy­mak­ers lis­tened to these ‘again­sters’ it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine where Jamaica would be at this time. Look at what the sta­di­um and are­na have become to our world-class athletes.

Try to visu­alise a Jamaica with­out the NHT and its val­ue to thou­sands of home­own­ers; imag­ine the main east-west cor­ri­dor by way of Mount Diablo and Flat

Opposition spokesper­son on Education Ronald Thwaites recent­ly called for manda­to­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice for some young peo­ple who are not on the way to college.
Or in oth­er words what he called “unat­tached youth”.
Ronnie Thwaites A Catholic Deacon, A lawyer, for­mer radio Talk show host Parliamentarian and for­mer Education Minister has a wealth of expe­ri­ence around the issues of youth and the prob­lems they face.
It is all the more curi­ous that Mister Thwaites nev­er used his posi­tion in any of his sev­er­al capac­i­ties to push the Administration of which he was a part for years to adopt his idea into law.

Said Thwaites: 

“I believe our prime min­is­ter recent­ly vis­it­ed Israel, and they have a sys­tem like that because they are fear­ful of war and unrest,” Thwaites noted.

“Our state of crime and social unrest exceeds, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, the indices of a civ­il war, and for all of the oth­er mea­sures that we will take, led by the lead­ers of crime fight­ing in this coun­try, they are like­ly to be more expen­sive, they are like­ly to be more puni­tive than nec­es­sary, if we only had a prop­er sys­tem of reori­en­ta­tion,” he stated.
Thwaites argued any such pro­gram should leave out weapons training.
The call came amidst a bill being shep­herd­ed through the house by Andrew Holness the Prime Minister which would cre­ate 700 spaces in the JDF for such youths.

As a polit­i­cal leader it behoove Mister Thwaites to read up on the ben­e­fits of mil­i­tary ser­vice, both manda­to­ry and voluntary.
Several nations adopt and use manda­to­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice to their advan­tage , not just for mil­i­tary rea­sons. cer­tain­ly the Swiss are not fight­ing wars but they have used that mod­el to their advantage.

I applaud the Prime Minister for this move , as well as for­mer min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty Peter Bunting who sup­port the bill while voic­ing con­cerns that the bill once it become law would effec­tive­ly low­er the age of recruits to the JDF from 18 to 17 years old.
Despite my sup­port for this pro­gram I believe it does not go near­ly far enough in address­ing the prob­lem of youth unemployment.

On March 19^th last year I wrote an arti­cle titled” it may be time for manda­to­ry ser­vice and arm­ing the pop­u­la­tion”.
I argued then for manda­to­ry mil­i­tary train­ing for young peo­ple not going to col­lege. I also made the case for arm­ing the cit­i­zen­ry which I believe Government will be forced to look at eventually.
I said then that this could eas­i­ly be done through leg­is­la­tion which puts in place seri­ous back­ground checks which includes psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and manda­to­ry con­tin­u­ous train­ing while increas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly the penal­ties for gun crimes.
This by itself is not a sil­ver bul­let which will dri­ve down crime, but it is one more thing which will seri­ous­ly and pos­i­tive­ly impact this out of con­trol crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica which nei­ther the Government nor the police seem to know how to handle.

Lets see if sim­ple com­mon sense approach­es like these can catch on giv­ing hope to young peo­ple while help­ing to reduce vio­lent crime.

It May Be Time For Mandatory Military Service And Arming The Population.…

Report: Michael Flynn Asked For Immunity In Exchange For Testifying On Trump’s Russia Ties

A mere day after I wrote that the Government is doing jack shit to stem the tide of murders which has enveloped the country the private sector in the western parishes of the Island have excoriated the Government for not doing enough on crime.
Now granted that the private sector is only speaking out because their bottom line is being affected, it still brings to the fore the seriousness of what’s happening on the Island.

According to the Jamaicaobserver​.com, Up to Tuesday of this week there were 51 mur­ders record­ed in St James, two more than the 49 that were tal­lied over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
Westmoreland has seen 39 mur­ders, com­pared to 20 over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
The once peace­ful serene parish of Hanover record­ed its sec­ond triple mur­der since the start of the year bring­ing the mur­der tal­ly in the parish to 21 since January.

In typ­i­cal busi­ness speak, the rapa­cious, self­ish, busi­ness sec­tor proved what I always believed,“crimes com­mit­ted against vis­i­tors are “for­tu­nate­ly low,” President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourism Association (JHTA) Omar Robinson, said.
It could eas­i­ly be con­strued that the JHTA’s pres­i­dent only cares about tourists , not local lives, but I do not think that is the mes­sage he wished to convey.

President of the Westmoreland Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Oral Heaven, argued that crim­i­nals are on the loose because not enough is been done by the gov­ern­ment to pun­ish them.
Well you don’t say, really?
“My think­ing is that if we enforce the laws that we have on the books and take this crime mon­ster seri­ous­ly by real­ly doing the inves­tiga­tive work to find out who these crim­i­nals are, and throw the full book at the crim­i­nals, then they will think twice before com­mit­ting these acts,” Heaven argued.
Seem log­i­cal to me, in fact that has been my posi­tion for decades.

But it still leaves me to won­der why the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty did not see fit to form an effec­tive lob­by to make sure that the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the coun­try sit up and take notice?
Surely Andrew Holness and the JLP could not pos­si­bly thumb their noses at the entire busi­ness community.
The prob­lem is that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, unlike the pri­vate sec­tor in oth­er coun­tries, is sin­gu­lar­ly focused on mak­ing mon­ey with­out rec­og­niz­ing that insta­bil­i­ty seri­ous­ly under­mines their abil­i­ty to extract max­i­mum returns on their investments.
The crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty cer­tain­ly has . Carolyn Gomes has caused immense dam­age , she even got a National hon­or and now Horace Levy , Terrence Williams and oth­ers are cer­tain­ly look­ing to get theirs.

Heaven went on to say “I feel that gov­ern­ment should do more than just lip ser­vice and put sys­tems in place that will catch these crim­i­nals and bring them to jus­tice.”
Just yes­ter­day I opined that the Government’s lat­est piece of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion which it says will empow­er the police and sub­se­quent­ly reduce crime was a shit sand­wich designed to give polit­i­cal cov­er to the JLP while ensnar­ing the secu­ri­ty forces as they did to them in 2010 after the Tivoli Gardens incident.

The Jamaican Government , regard­less of which par­ty forms the Administration, has as it’s most pri­ma­ry duty the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the citizenry.
This respon­si­bil­i­ty far out­weighs the desire the gov­ern­ing par­ty may have to hold onto power.
Politics is a vehi­cle toward the bet­ter­ment of peo­ple’s lives. People’s lives are not dis­pos­able so that polit­i­cal par­ties can hold power.
That is the rea­son I am utter­ly infu­ri­at­ed at the lack of effort that the Andrew Holness Administration has brought to this issue.
Instead, and more infu­ri­at­ing­ly , the Prime Minister has gone to lengths to cre­ate a whole lot of smoke and intro­duced mir­rors to con­fuse the peo­ple that his admin­is­tra­tion is doing something.

I sup­port­ed this Prime Minister and this par­ty through­out the years it has been in oppo­si­tion . I did so because I under­stand fun­da­men­tal­ly that the People’s National Party (a pop­ulist party)cannot be count­ed on to do the right thing.
I am extreme­ly angry and dis­ap­point­ed to hear Andrew Holness say quote “we are not going to use any law­less­ness to fight crime”.
Who asked him to do that?
Then he went fur­ther ” The days of kick­ing down peo­ple door and infring­ing on their civ­il rights are over”.
Is this a Prime Minister whose job it is to secure the nation , or is this a mouth­piece of the crim­i­nal rights lobby?

I have said that the peo­ple must decide when enough is enough .
The pri­vate sec­tor has not pro­vid­ed the lead­er­ship on crime it is capa­ble of giving.
Maybe now it will begin to take a stern­er stance forc­ing the Government to pay atten­tion to the demands of the coun­try rather than line up mir­rors and blow­ing smoke up our col­lec­tive asses.
Failing which we the peo­ple must begin the cam­paign to remove this admin­is­tra­tion from office.
The Government’s pri­ma­ry job is to pro­vide secu­ri­ty it isn’t doing that.

The coun­try can ill afford to have a leader and a gov­ern­ment which is more con­cerned about the rights of dan­ger­ous killers than of stop­ping the killings.
We can­not allow Andrew Holness and his bunch of lieu­tenants and the oth­ers from the oth­er side to con­tin­ue to turn our coun­try into a mas­sive desert with tiny lit­tle Oasis of respite and calm.
Oasis where they and their friends are seclud­ed and protected.

A false state­ment made with delib­er­ate intent to deceive; an inten­tion­al untruth; a false­hood. Synonyms: pre­var­i­ca­tion, fal­si­fi­ca­tion.(source, dic​tio​nary​.com).

Well geez, this is becom­ing quite a thing of late .
Me say­ing once again that I stand with a mem­ber of the People’s National Party!
It seem that the PNP does great from the Opposition bench­es. Maybe the time is right for us to have a type of uni­ty Government from all polit­i­cal sides of the Isle.
It would elim­i­nate much of the par­ti­san ran­cor and poten­tial­ly give small­er polit­i­cal par­ties a voice and a seat at the table.
The Israelis had demon­strat­ed that it can be done. Other nations have done so suc­cess­ful as well.

Anyway I am real­ly talk­ing about PNP mem­ber of Parliament Lisa Hanna’s recent call to the Government to stop the music of Dj Vybes Kartel from pol­lut­ing the pub­lic airwaves.
Miss Hanna’s call drew a cho­rus of protest,condemnation and even death threats from some mem­bers of the cabal of deplorables who sup­port the con­vict­ed murderer.
No sur­prise there , if some­thing is destruc­tive and degen­er­a­tive one can safe­ly bet that there will be mass sup­port for it in our country.

In fair­ness to the incar­cer­at­ed artiste, mur­der music has been around before him. Nevertheless he and oth­ers like him have long exceed­ed the bound­aries of decen­cy on the type of music they create.
The result today is a smoul­der­ing cesspool of lyrics which depict mur­der, may­hem, misog­y­ny, and sado masochis­tic desires parad­ing as music. Artiste know full well that when they push the enve­lope the forces of order pull back allow­ing them to do what they want.

Amid the noise which emanat­ed from Ms Hanna’s call was rev­e­la­tion that the Dj is still record­ing his misog­y­nist, mur­der music, though serv­ing a life sen­tence for murder.
But this was exact­ly what Hanna was opposed to, it was the fact that the degen­er­a­tive lyrics were allowed on the pub­lic airwaves.
The Disc Jockey’s sup­port­ers have adamant­ly argued that these are archived music record­ed before he was imprisoned.
Of course these claims have as much authen­tic­i­ty as the mourn­ers who claim they saw police mur­der gun­men in their bed at 3:00 in the morning.

Whether the artiste is record­ing from inside the prison, or his music is archived is hard­ly the point . Neither can be placed at the feet of Vybes Kartel . I said as much in an arti­cle sev­er­al days ago.
The issue is a con­se­quence of the deep cor­rup­tion with­in the sys­tem which allows (1) filthy lyrics on the pub­lic air­waves and (2) the con­tin­ued cor­rup­tion with­in the prison sys­tem, which by the way is lost on no one.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous Article , it is well known that the Corrections Department has for years been a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty. It has con­tin­ued as an open secret with suc­ces­sive Administrations from both polit­i­cal par­ties refus­ing to lift a fin­ger to do any­thing about it.

Enter the Junior Minister in the Ministry of Justice Pearnel Charles Jr.
Charles came out against Lisa Hanna’s call last week say­ing he is not in agree­ment with the recent sug­ges­tion by Hanna of the whole­sale ban­ning of the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of mur­der con­victs. “It’s a very sim­plis­tic view to say you’re con­vict­ed, and you’re mak­ing this impact, so we are going to sen­sor your music. Remember, some­times you may be the cre­ator of the music and may have sold the rights to your music. That is why we have to have a clear and cogent dis­cus­sion on sev­er­al issues: ban­ning somebody’s music because they are con­vict­ed, and ban­ning music that aris­es from unau­tho­rized record­ings (which) wouldn’t be ban­ning. That music is just illegal.”

Despite that non­sense posi­tion, just a week lat­er the very same Pearnel Charles Jr. had this to say to Prison warders.
“I am on a mis­sion and all cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers must hear me very clear­ly. I do not intend to be deterred by any man or woman. The Department of Correctional Services will become the pre­mier exam­ple of effi­cien­cy; it will have to draw up its socks.” 
“You are fore­warned. What is hap­pen­ing and what will hap­pen you can’t stop it. So any­one who feels they need to resign, you can bring the paper to my desk. Anyone who feels that they can­not take the heat, call the super­in­ten­dent and tell them,” 

“That means every­body else get ready. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all per­sons who might have, whether direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, been involved in any activ­i­ty that could be or appear to be cor­rupt or crim­i­nal, you get one chance – desist! That’s it. From hence­forth don’t call any­body and ask for any oth­er chances because we are mov­ing up. “I will not be ever pushed away from my focus. I don’t lose, so we have no choice but to win.” http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​J​u​n​i​o​r​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​e​r​-​t​e​l​l​s​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​-​w​a​r​d​e​r​s​-​t​o​-​r​e​s​i​g​n​-​o​r​-​f​a​c​e​-​t​h​e​-​h​e​a​t​_​9​1​638

So what’s changed over the space of a sin­gle week which trig­gered this sil­ly bom­bas­tic blather?
Now let me be fair to Pearnel Charles Jr.
He did say that among the things the Government intends to do are changes to leg­is­la­tion and pro­ce­dures to ensure account­abil­i­ty and enforce­ment, and that X‑ray scan­ning machines will be installed at Tower Street and St Catherine adult cor­rec­tion­al cen­ters, as well as the Horizon Adult Remand Center in Kingston.

Metal detec­tors and new entry man­age­ment pro­to­cols, a poly­graph of all recruits and cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, a re-zon­ing of spaces in all pris­ons, the expan­sion of closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) cov­er­age across the sys­tem and the enhance­ment of the use of cel­lu­lar jam­ming tech­nol­o­gy were the oth­er mea­sures announced.

Fine, those are great ideas but how will this be imple­ment­ed in these old decrepit prisons ?
The prob­lem it seem to me is the char­ac­ter of Correctional offi­cers from top to bottom.
If the prob­lems are indeed as many Jamaicans say they are in the Nation’s pris­ons, how will the new tech­nol­o­gy make a dif­fer­ence in the hands of the same cor­rupt people?

We have heard this kind of brava­do before, it was Bruce Golding who made sim­i­lar com­ments and what we got was INDECOM.
It is con­cern­ing to me that the Junior Minister would engage in such blovi­at­ing gib­ber­ish, instead of work­ing dili­gent­ly to mod­ern­ize the Department , by allow­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to help root out the crim­i­nals with­in the system.
And while we are at it where is Terrence Williams in all of this ?
The Corrections depart­ment falls under his remit to investigate.
Where is he?
Maybe he is too busy smear­ing the Police to do his job.

Oh what a dif­fer­ence a week make .
At the time Ms Hanna made the state­ment I said this was a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for full bipar­ti­san­ship as a show of uni­ty to the coun­try that at least on a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple the polit­i­cal lead­ers can come together.
What Charles did was to dis­agree , then in the space of a sin­gle week, by his own words encap­su­lat­ed lit­er­al­ly every­thing his col­league from the oth­er side intend­ed in the first place.

STATE Minister for nation­al secu­ri­ty, Senator Pearnel Charles Jnr, says he has asked a legal team and the Commissioner of Corrections Ina Hunter to pro­vide a clear under­stand­ing of the inter­pre­ta­tion of the laws and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the pro­duc­tion of music in max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prisons.

“There are a num­ber of ques­tions that were asked in rela­tion to the cat­e­go­ry of inmates, (such as) whether an inmate involved in an appeal… is able to be involved in the reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme; you hear a lot of things in the pub­lic domain as to whether an appel­lant could record at the stu­dio that is there, or whether an appel­lant would be exclud­ed from using the stu­dio under a reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme,” Charles told the Jamaica Observer yes­ter­day.

He not­ed that the main con­cern for the pub­lic now — sparked by strong opin­ions on the issue by spokesper­son on youth and cul­ture Lisa Hanna — is the alle­ga­tions of ille­gal pro­duc­tion of music by inmates held in these facilities.

Charles, in the mean­time, said he is not in agree­ment with the recent sug­ges­tion by Hanna of the whole­sale ban­ning of the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of mur­der con­victs. “It’s a very sim­plis­tic view to say you’re con­vict­ed, and you’re mak­ing this impact, so we are going to sen­sor your music. Remember, some­times you may be the cre­ator of the music and may have sold the rights to your music. That is why we have to have a clear and cogent dis­cus­sion on sev­er­al issues: ban­ning somebody’s music because they are con­vict­ed, and ban­ning music that aris­es from unau­tho­rized record­ings (which) wouldn’t be ban­ning. That music is just ille­gal,” he said. Read sto­ry here : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​G​o​v​-​t​-​s​e​e​k​s​-​l​e​g​a​l​-​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​-​o​n​-​m​u​s​i​c​-​i​n​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​s​_​9​1​110