It some­times seem like the head does not have any clue what the feet are doing in Jamaica.
You almost get the impres­sion that the tail wags the dog.
Whether it is Government’s absolute lack of spine in deal­ing with crime.
Or it’s nev­er end­ing insis­tence that it is com­ing up with crime fight­ing ini­tia­tives , then essen­tial­ly back­track by say­ing the police will not be allowed to go after dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals on it’s watch.
I was dumb­found­ed to hear Andrew Holness talk­ing about abu­sive polic­ing not being in his character.
As sim­plis­tic, patron­iz­ing and down­right igno­rant as that state­ment was it was what he said fol­low­ing that which made my blood boil.

“The option of going out and tear­ing down peo­ple’s homes shoot­ing before being cer­tain or using abu­sive force is not avail­able to us , and for me as a per­son , that is not in my char­ac­ter, and, there­fore as leader of this coun­try , that will nev­er hap­pen under my watch”.

Frankly I have no idea where to start.
It’s real­ly easy for Holness to make stu­pid ‚dis­parag­ing, state­ments which he will absolute­ly not be able to sub­stan­ti­ate with one sin­gle iota of fact .
This is hyper­bole, and as such must be denounced for the igno­rant bull­shit that it is.
At the same time he is mak­ing this ridicu­lous state­ment he is pro­tect­ed up to his stu­pid ass by police.
This nean­derthal com­ment should be called out for what it tru­ly is, a thin­ly dis­guised dog-whis­tle to gun­men in his con­stituen­cy and oth­ers that the police will not come for them as long as he is Prime Minister.

The idea that hard nosed polic­ing is syn­ony­mous with abuse of civ­il and human rights is unin­tel­li­gent, unin­formed, and down­right dumb.
Maybe Holness should have called in some retired police offi­cers who under­stand how it’s done before mak­ing an absolute ass of him­self with that embar­rass­ing yet dis­parag­ing statement.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous Article I have nev­er seen a sit­u­a­tion where I have ever had a prob­lem with any­one when I have to do my duty as long as I respect­ful­ly explain to peo­ple what exact­ly it is I was doing and why.
“Sorry maam/​sir , but I am doing this for your safe­ty” goes a long way.
Those who have a prob­lem with that are the ones who belong in jail.
Better yet, since Holness have no respect for local law enforce­ment , he could have asked some­one white from one of the coun­tries to which they go grov­el­ling for loans and grants.

I am glad Holness con­firmed what I said in an ear­li­er arti­cle . The ini­tia­tives he has announced thus far and are about to announce addi­tion­al­ly, are band aids on gun­shot wounds.
Crime is ben­e­fi­cial to all of them .

AND THEN THERE IS THIS..
Most of you are aware of the ker­fuf­fle sur­round­ing Lisa Hanna’s com­ments that the music of Addiija Palmer should not be played on the pub­lic airwaves.
Palmer who goes by the moniker Vybes Kartel is a con­vict­ed mur­der serv­ing a life sen­tence in prison.

Palmer’s music may be char­ac­ter­ized as a mix of misog­y­ny and mur­der induc­ing dia­tribes which many appro­pri­ate­ly find offensive.
The Prime Minister who recent­ly com­ment­ed on the state of whats hap­pen­ing in the dance halls took much heat for dar­ing to have an opin­ion on the con­tent and con­se­quence of the music.

Generally I don’t give a s**t about politi­cians being ridiculed or exco­ri­at­ed. However in this case both the Prime Minister and the par­lia­men­tar­i­an are correct.
What is offen­sive is that the brain-dead zom­bies who sup­port this kind of putrid misog­y­ny and mur­der induce­ment bile under the belief that it is edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing has report­ed­ly been send­ing Lisa Hanna death threats.

Yesterday I wrote that no Prisoner has the right to make music while in Prison. Prisoners who are sen­tenced to hard labor should be doing hard labor in what­ev­er form the Corrections depart­ment deem law­ful­ly appropriate.
That does not include sit­ting in a jail house mak­ing records which fur­ther den­i­grate and erode soci­etal norms .Some have argued that they should be allowed to make music and the pro­ceeds of that music giv­en to the vic­tims of crime.
I disagree.

Allowing these mur­der­ous cretins the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so makes heroes and role mod­els of them, some­thing to which they have no right.
There is a fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nect in the under­stand­ing of many Jamaicans who fail to under­stand that prison was not designed to be coun­try clubs.
When you com­mit a crimes and is found guilty by a court of law you have for­feit­ed many of the rights you once enjoyed;
There is no agree­ing with my posi­tion on this then say­ing, “But”.
There are no Buts.…

THE STUPIDITY KNOWS NO BOUND..

Responding to reports that Palmer was still mak­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing music and that the music though offen­sive was still being played on the pub­lic air­waves the Broadcasting Commission the body charged with deter­min­ing what should and should not be allowed on the air­waves said this.
“To be clear, as it con­cerns con­victs, their priv­i­lege or abil­i­ty to cre­ate music whilst incar­cer­at­ed is gov­erned by cor­rec­tion­al rules.”

True , no one should be con­fused about that . Even though we all know that the cor­rec­tions depart­ment has been one of the most cor­rupt Government agency on the Island.

The Commission went on :“We were made to under­stand that the Correctional Services were inves­ti­gat­ing the alle­ga­tions and that no deter­mi­na­tion had been made on the mat­ter,”(In ref­er­ence to evi­dence that Palmer was mak­ing music in Prison)
The Commission also stat­ed that they learnt that the prison rules were under review to deal specif­i­cal­ly with that issue.
Laughable, don’t be sur­prised to learn that Kartel is actu­al­ly being tak­en out of prison to record his music and do what­ev­er the hell else he choses.

Now we get to the meat and pota­toes . A ( http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​B​r​o​a​d​c​a​s​t​i​n​g​-​C​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​-​d​e​n​i​e​s​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​a​b​i​l​i​t​y​-​f​o​r​-​V​y​b​z​-​K​a​r​t​e​l​-​s​-​m​u​s​i​c​-​o​n​-​a​i​r​w​a​ves ) on Saturday went to great pains to explain the following
Quote : There is no pro­vi­sion in law bar­ring the trans­mis­sion of music, sim­ply because it was cre­at­ed by a con­vict­ed per­son. Only if it were proved that the music was cre­at­ed in con­tra­ven­tion of a law gov­ern­ing the Correctional Services and a broad­cast­er know­ing­ly facil­i­tat­ed that con­tra­ven­tion, could there be a law­ful deter­mi­na­tion that the broad­cast­ing rules were breached.

If my mem­o­ry serves me right I believe the brouha­ha was about the con­tent of the music?, Where the music is made is a periph­er­al issue because the artist is a con­vict­ed mur­der­er who should not have the priv­i­lege of mak­ing music whilst incarcerated.
Where is the broad­cast Commission by the way ?
Do they reside on the plan­et Uranus?
How come they are not con­ver­sant with the cor­ro­sive smut which is being prop­a­gat­ed as music on the Public airwaves?
Or are they too busi­ly con­sumed with their lit­tle coun­try-club life styles, that they have no time to do what they are charged with doing?

Of course there are no pro­vi­sions in law bar­ring the trans­mis­sion of music sim­ply because that music was cre­at­ed by a con­vict­ed person.
The issue is about the musi­cal con­tent, not it’s place of ori­gin. Secondly there should be a law pre­vent­ing con­vict­ed mur­der­ers from doing more dam­age to soci­ety by unleash­ing this putrid bile they put out as music.
That“s the issue.….

According to pro­po­nents of the Affordable care Act, (ACA), the law has insured more than 20 mil­lion Americans who before did not have Health Insurance.
Opponents say it is a bad law which dri­ves up health care cost and forces Americans to sign up for a plan they may not want at the risk of being fined.
Sounds like two log­i­cal argu­ments right?

Well lets take a cur­so­ry look at the argu­ments from both sides.
Former President Barack Obama the President after whom the law was pejo­ra­tive­ly nick­named (Obama care), nev­er missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind Americans that the law is imperfect.
He has long argued that if any­one have bet­ter ideas how to insure all Americans while keep­ing costs down he would be hap­py to work with them on mak­ing the law better.

There were indeed hic­cups on the roll out of the law. For exam­ple when the President famous­ly told peo­ple if they liked their Doctor they could keep their Doctor.
That turned out to be impractical .
It is impor­tant to under­stand that a pro­gram of that mag­ni­tude would cer­tain­ly have hic­cups on it’s roll out and implementation.

Republicans brayed that Medicaid and Social secu­ri­ty would be the death of the Republic when those pro­grams were pro­posed . Those two pro­grams are still here and so is the Republic.
The thing threat­en­ing the Republic is cer­tain­ly not Medicaid , Social Security , or the ACA for that matter.
It is the ill pre­pared , ill-equipped occu­pant of the White House.

It goes with­out say­ing that ele­ments of the law are vast­ly ben­e­fi­cial to and pop­u­lar with the American peo­ple. Even those who ben­e­fit from the Affordable Care Act, yet are vehe­ment­ly opposed to Obama Care…
Young peo­ple being able to stay on their par­ents insur­ance until they are twen­ty six(26) if they are unem­ployed is a huge positive.
What was once char­ac­ter­ized as pre-exist­ing con­di­tions, which pre­vent­ed peo­ple from buy­ing health Insurance no longer the sta­tus quo is a big deal .

According to CNSNEWS​.com the final word count of the ACA amount­ed to approx­i­mate­ly 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations.
It is one of the most con­se­quen­tial piece of enti­tle­ment reg­u­la­tion since FDR“s New Deal.
Of course this was going to have hic­cups. Of course this was always going to need fine tun­ing. That’s just the way things work, it takes time to work out the kinks.

So what’s behind the Republicans inces­sant attempts to repeal the ACA?
Republicans have long embraced a fis­cal mod­el for big gov­ern­ment and pro­grams like Medicare and Social Security, which they want to privatize.
According to Forbes​.com  con­trib­u­tor John Wasik, the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has con­sis­tent­ly endorsed a pri­va­ti­za­tion mod­el for Medicare that he’s pro­posed every year since 2011, although his par­ty has always want­ed to take apart the program.

The right wing Washington Examiner even though argu­ing for Republicans , admit­ted that there have actu­al­ly been 54 votes to repeal so far — Those were votes that ranged from defund­ing mea­sures that would have crip­pled Obamacare to delay­ing mea­sures that would have put off some of the very same pro­vi­sions in the law that President Obama has delayed uni­lat­er­al­ly, to mea­sures fix­ing por­tions of the law that passed both hous­es of Congress with bipar­ti­san sup­port and were signed by the president.

The sin­gle-mind­ed assault by Republicans on the ACA has always been two-fold .
(1) a hatred for any pro­gram which will have to be fund­ed from the Federal bud­get to assist poor Americans.
(2) A yet unspo­ken racist agen­da to deny a pro­gram like health­care to sur­vive , hav­ing being one of the sig­na­ture accom­plish­ments of the Nations first black president.
If Republicans were inter­est­ed in pro­vid­ing care for Americans need­ing health care, they would have joined forces with President Obama and Democrats in craft­ing a plan which would be fined tuned as prob­lems emerge.

To a man they objected.
To a man they turned their back on a pro­gram which has at it’s Genesis the com­po­nents of the Massachusetts health care cham­pi­oned by none oth­er than Republican Governor Willard Mitt Romney.

Despite sub­stan­tial amounts of data which shows that most of the peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from Obama care are poor whites liv­ing in ruby-red Republican states. Republicans are stead­fast­ly focused on repeal­ing the law.

According to the https://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com , As Republicans bar­rel head­long towards repeal­ing the Affordable Care Act, new fac­toids and data are slow­ly drib­bling out to reveal just what a mess they are about to make, includ­ing for count­less num­bers of their own constituents.

In red states, a total of at least 3 mil­lion peo­ple are cur­rent­ly get­ting sub­si­dies. This doesn’t include the swing states that Donald Trump won. If you add those in, that swells the total to over six mil­lion peo­ple. * Some of the states with the high­est pop­u­la­tions of peo­ple get­ting sub­si­dies are rep­re­sent­ed by GOP Senators. This includes Florida (more than 1.4 mil­lion); Texas (more than 913,000); North Carolina (more than 499,000); Georgia (more than 427,000); and Pennsylvania (more than 321,000). Many oth­er states with GOP sen­a­tors also have siz­able pop­u­la­tions get­ting subsidies.

Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich is not a big fan of repeal, he has vowed not to sit idly by as Republics rip away health care pro­tec­tion from cit­i­zens of his state .
It is unclear at this time what options Kasich has at his disposal.

Sure Republicans want to cut enti­tle­ments , they have always ran on the need to have small­er Government. No real­ly fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble per­son should be opposed to fis­cal prudence.
But has Republican’s rhetoric matched the facts on fis­cal conservatism?
How can a polit­i­cal par­ty tell tax-pay­ers that they are on their own on health-care?

Whether you agree that repeal­ing the ACA amounts to “you are on your own” is imma­te­r­i­al. The fact is that for mil­lions of Americans who pre­vi­ous­ly did not have health care (Obama care) is a mat­ter of life and death.
The fact that the GOP is now forced to talk about repeal and replace is tes­ta­ment to the com­plex­i­ties of tak­ing away health Insurance of over twen­ty mil­lion peo­ple and leav­ing them to die.
Republican Congressional Representatives going back to their dis­tricts are get­ting an ear­ful from their con­stituents who are not will­ing to have their health insur­ance ripped away.

The irony, and ulti­mate hypocrisy of the GOP’s zealotry on fis­cal pru­dence makes no sense when the spend­ing pie of the American Government is looked at.

Republicans have not seen a social pro­gram which would ben­e­fit tax­pay­ers that they have not demo­nized. This is shock­ing when one con­sid­er that the mon­ey pay­ing for these pro­grams belong to the American tax­pay­ers themselves .

On the con­trary, they have nev­er seen spend­ing which ben­e­fits the Military Industrial Complex that they do not want to throw more mon­ey at.
Much of the hatred for the afford­able care act is about Obama .

As I point­ed out ear­li­er, poor Republicans who are on the afford­able care act, have been some of the most vocal oppo­nents of Obama Care.
You can’t make this up.
Republican lead­er­ship knew that sell­ing hatred for the law would be expo­nen­tial­ly eas­i­er if they pejo­ra­tive­ly Labeled it Obama Care.
From sto­ries of death pan­els to end­less­ly long lines which would see Americans wait­ing to be seen by their doc­tors, all of the mis­in­for­ma­tion and lies have failed to materialize.
That’s now a prob­lem for the Republicans.

As they strug­gle to come up with a plan which will insure more Americans , it seem that what will even­tu­al­ly emanate from Republican;s efforts is a fix of Obama Care.
Sure what­ev­er comes out of the Congress will not be Obama Care. It may very well be Trump care.
What will not change is the fact that Barack Obama will go down as the President who gave all Americans the right to have Health Care.
That is a fact which can­not change.

It is a fact which will for­ev­er be record­ed in American History.
Now they must repeal it, their base will not have it any oth­er way. They will have to replace it. They sim­ply can­not take health insur­ance from 20 mil­lion peo­ple and sim­ply walk away with­out seri­ous backlash.
They now own it , yet what­ev­er they do Barack Obama will for­ev­er be the President who gave Americans the right to be able to pur­chase health care even if they are sick .

When Government attack the established Press labeling it Fake news without evidence that the Press is doing anything untoward ‚it behoove all of us who are in the business of recording history to be very alarmed.

There has to be con­cern when a leader stand in front of the media, berate the media, label­ing it fake news , brand­ing it the ene­my of the American people.
The United States is the old­est func­tion­ing Democracy. Imperfect though it is, the United States stood as a bea­con of hope for free­dom and free speech, even though it still has not yet attained that moral height to which it still aspire.

In a way, it is like that myth­i­cal shin­ing city on a hill of which Ronald Reagan spoke. Mythical ‚yet hun­dreds of mil­lions seek that per­fect Union in a still imper­fect world.
It is that America of which Barack Obama spoke with such elo­quence , that America still per­fect­ing itself.

I am remind­ed of a bunch of desert trav­el­ers whose stage­coach was robbed and their hors­es stolen.
Stranded and in deep trou­ble their trou­bles mul­ti­plied when a gun­slinger approached . The strand­ed group viewed him with utter revul­sion and dis­dain but he had some­thing they needed.
He had water and he knew how to get them out of the desert. He told them to fol­low him, some­thing they decid­ed to do after much hand-wringing.
They con­clud­ed that this no good gun­slinger only want­ed to exploit them as oth­ers had just recent­ly done.
Notwithstanding , out of options and thirsty, they reluc­tant­ly decid­ed to fol­low after him.

They begged him just for a lit­tle taste of the water from his canteen.
He promised them he would allow them a taste as soon as they got over the next ridge.
Exhausted and parched he made the same promise ridge after ridge, after ridge. Utterly exhaust­ed and near death they stum­ble and fall , drag­ging them­selves along. They cursed him for being inhu­mane and with­out conscience.
Then final­ly a town appeared .
Exhausted, and thirsty to the point of death they stum­bled into the town.
Refreshed and reju­ve­nat­ed after quench­ing their thirst they turned to the gun­slinger who stood silent­ly by..

“How could you have denied us water , that was all we asked”?
It was then that he showed them his can­teen, it was rid­dled with bul­let holes.
It had no water in it. It could hold no water. He too had encoun­tered dan­ger­ous men in a gun­fight he escaped with his life , but his can­teen was not so lucky.
He told them that it was only through the promise of a few sips of water that he was able to keep them going .
That’s how they were saved.

America has always struck me this way, imper­fect yet inspi­ra­tional. It has always offered the [promise of free­dom] , free­dom of expres­sion and the free­dom to be all one can be.
Inspirational, yes, prac­ti­cal you decide .
That promise has inspired peo­ple of all races and creed, all reli­gious and ide­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sions , sex­u­al and eth­nic back­grounds to seek out America to ful­fill their own ideals.
As Barack Obama would say “that is the America I know”.

“The peo­ple are the only cen­sors of their gov­er­nors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true prin­ci­ples of their insti­tu­tion. To pun­ish these errors too severe­ly would be to sup­press the only safe­guard of the pub­lic lib­er­ty. The way to pre­vent these irreg­u­lar inter­po­si­tions of the peo­ple is to give them full infor­ma­tion of their affairs thro’ the chan­nel of the pub­lic papers, & to con­trive that those papers should pen­e­trate the whole mass of the peo­ple. The basis of our gov­ern­ments being the opin­ion of the peo­ple, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a gov­ern­ment with­out news­pa­pers or news­pa­pers with­out a gov­ern­ment, I should not hes­i­tate a moment to pre­fer the lat­ter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capa­ble of read­ing them”.

Believing that Government’s assault on the free Press is some­thing of a joke, is to mis­un­der­stand how incred­i­bly easy it is for demo­c­ra­t­ic Nations to quick­ly slide into auto­crat­ic dictatorships.
Just ask the Russians how quick­ly Vladimir Putin moved to solid­i­fy pow­er in Russia.
In America Democrats have no pow­er in the Senate . They have no pow­er in the House. They have no pow­er in the Executive Branch.
This assault is not hap­pen­ing in a vac­u­um . It is designed to seize con­trol of the most effec­tive medi­um avail­able to peo­ple today.
No , not the Press.
The Internet.
This is the ground work for clamp­ing down on what peo­ple like myself and mil­lions oth­ers can say using inde­pen­dent medi­ums like social media and pri­vate blogs.
In order to con­trol the peo­ple you must first con­trol the message.

We have seen the mas­sive assault of Trump and his acolytes on the right of the Federal Judiciary to be inde­pen­dent ref­er­ees in this three part co-equal sys­tem of Government.
Of course the Press is not with­out fault , but as Jefferson said “The peo­ple are the only cen­sors of their gov­er­nors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true prin­ci­ples of their institution”.
If not the Press/​people , which is the final line of defense, then who?

First Lady Melania Trump received a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture Wednesday.

She was joined by Sara Netanyahu, whose hus­band Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the White House meet­ing with President Donald Trump.

According to ABC News, the two women were accom­pa­nied by muse­um direc­tor Lonnie Bunch and Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton.  http://​the​grio​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​2​/​1​6​/​m​e​l​a​n​i​a​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​a​f​r​i​c​a​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​m​u​s​e​um/

Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for a work­ing vis­it but received all the trap­pings of a state visit.
It was clear that Netanyahu is buoyed at the thought of not hav­ing to deal with President Obama anymore.
Netanyahu received the roy­al treat­ment includ­ing the Marine Corps hon­or guard.

Central to the impasse between the Palestinians and Israel is the Issue of a state for the Palestinian people.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long said that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch.
Speaking at the White House today Netanyahu basi­cal­ly killed any prospect of a two-state solu­tion to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While Netanyahu was meet­ing with Trump, it is report­ed that CIA direc­tor Pompeo met with Palestinian President Abbas in the Middle East.
Hardly equal or com­pa­ra­ble treatment.

Today Donald Trump who pro­fess­es to be agnos­tic on the pol­i­cy had this to say.
“So I’m look­ing at two-state or the one-state,” Trump said. “I was think­ing for a while that the two-state was look­ing like the eas­i­er of the two.”
He con­clud­ed that the mat­ter is up to Israel and Palestine to decide. “I’m hap­py with the one they like best,” he said.
There is lead­er­ship for you if ever there was one, toma­to, tomatoe!

Israel has long insist­ed that the rea­son they can­not have peace, and a mov­ing for­ward on this sen­si­tive issue, is that the Palestinians refuse to denounce their pledge to destroy Israel.
For their part, the Palestinians have insist­ed that they are liv­ing under severe oppres­sion as a result of Israeli occupation.
Several Presidents includ­ing recent ones, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have told the Israelis that end­ing the build­ing of set­tle­ments would be help­ful as the par­ties seek a path to peace.

President Barack Obama, who at best had a frosty rela­tion­ship with Netanyahu, report­ed­ly was fed up with the Israeli Prime Minister’s atti­tude and bravado.
It was also report­ed that after Bill Clinton’s first meet­ing with Netanyahu, the then pres­i­dent asked an aide ” who the f**k does he think he is”? I am the pres­i­dent of the United States not him”!

The Israelis insists that to repel Palestinian attacks on its cit­i­zens, they are forced to estab­lish buffer zones around Israeli pop­u­la­tion cen­ters. This makes sense if you are liv­ing in Israel, or is a sup­port­er of the Zionist state.
On the oth­er hand, the Palestinians have been liv­ing under Israeli occu­pa­tion for decades, they have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent view as it relates to their land.
The prob­lem is that once Israel des­ig­nates these so-called buffer zones, areas, which are pri­mar­i­ly annex­a­tions of more Paleslands, Israeli set­tlers move in to build.
This cre­ates a need for new buffer zones.
It is a self per­pet­u­at­ing strat­e­gy which only aid the Israelis.

Clearly hav­ing seen the back of Obama, and a new per­son in the white House he can flat­ter, Benjamin Netanyahu could not wait to get back to Washington.
The bom­bast of Benjamin Netanyahu and the need Trump has to be stroked does not bode well for the Palestinians or the prospect of a Palestinian state any­time soon.
Interesting times ahead, not just for the two state Palestinians have yearned for, but also as it relates to Trump’s pledge to move the American US embassy to Jerusalem.

READ . COMMENT. SHARE.

One China policy.

Word out of the White House is that Donald Trump made a gigan­tic step toward eas­ing ten­sions with China the World’s largest super pow­er. Reports indi­cate Trump assured Chinese President Xi Jinping that he would hon­or the “One-China” pol­i­cy fol­lowed by Washington since the 1970s.
Normally this would not be news except that as part of his Presidential cam­paign Trump blast­ed many of the poli­cies of the Obama Administration and many which pre­dat­ed Obama, label­ing them bad deals which dis­fa­vor America.

China regards Taiwan as part of main­land China.
After win­ning the elec­tions, Trump received a con­grat­u­la­to­ry phone call from the President of Taiwan (which China regards as a break­away province).
This report­ed­ly angered Beijing.

Trump had long sug­gest­ed that he intend­ed to use the One-China pol­i­cy as a bar­gain­ing chip to extract con­ces­sions from Beijing.
Now after tak­ing office, it appears Trump real­izes that there are some things which are not transactional.
Trump is report­ed to have assured Xi in a lengthy phone call on Wednesday that he would hon­or the policy.

Iran Nuclear deal …

The Hill, com is also report­ing that Trump has also decid­ed to hon­or the Iran nuclear deal inked by the Obama Administration.
Trump made major hay out of the deal claim­ing it is the worst deal in the his­to­ry of the world.
It appears, how­ev­er, that Donald Trump is now fac­ing the stark real­i­ty that igno­rant cam­paign blus­ter is a far cry from run­ning a coun­try and deal­ing with oth­er Sovereign nations.

For years Trump in igno­rance lam­bast­ed and exco­ri­at­ed President Obama as weak. Having now won the White House, he is now forced to accept the impor­tant real­i­ty that he can­not bul­ly Nations.

Obama care…

On the Affordable Care Act, Trump told his sup­port­ers from the start of his can­di­da­cy, that on day one, if elect­ed President, he would repeal the afford­able care act.
The afford­able care act , pejo­ra­tive­ly referred to as Obama care by it’s crit­ics many of whom are kept alive by the Act, has not been per­fect . However Analysts say over twen­ty mil­lion more Americans have health Insurance who pre­vi­ous­ly were not covered.

Major points of the afford­able care Act is that (1) Insurance com­pa­nies are no longer allowed to refuse cov­er­age to peo­ple based on pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tions .(2) Children can stay on their parent’s plan until 26; when they turn 26, they qual­i­fy for spe­cial enroll­ment. Dependent cov­er­age is also offered by employ­ers. (3) Under the ACA you can’t be charged more due to gen­der or health sta­tus on indi­vid­ual or small group plans sold after 2014. However there are cer­tain fac­tors such as age, tobac­co use, fam­i­ly size, and geog­ra­phy which can be used to deter­mine insur­ance costs to the consumer.

Three weeks into his Presidency Donald Trump told his Medium of choice Fox News which does not chal­lenge him on any­thing, that it will prob­a­bly take untill next year to repeal and replace the law.
Another instance of a promise broken

Again,r emem­ber that Trump spent years crit­i­ciz­ing President Barack Obama even before he announced his run for the Presidency.
He labeled the for­mer President weak and naïve on most of these mea­sures yet he is keep­ing them in place.
Already Donald Trump has demon­strat­ed that any per­son can blovi­ate, it requires lev­el head­ed peo­ple to be leaders.

Comment, like and share.

Stunning News ..
A Federal Judge in Washington State has just ruled that tRUMP’s exe­cut­ing order ban­ning immi­grants from 7 coun­tries is no longer in order.
This means that this mat­ter will now go to a Federal appeals court to be stayed, upheld, of nullified.
Sources whom have spo­ken to Customs and Border Patrol have said those agen­cies have said as of now things are back to the sta­tus quo , they will obey the order..
It is like­ly that this will even­tu­al­ly go to the supreme court which has only 8 mem­bers at this time as a result of Republicans refusal to even give a hear­ing to for­mer President Obama’s nom­i­nee Merrick Garland.

I was no fan of Robert Montague’s appoint­ment at the time Andrew Holness named him to head the National Security Ministry. I believed then that he had noth­ing to bring to this Ministry ‚and was a fun­da­men­tal indi­ca­tor that the Holness Administration did not view the exis­ten­tial threat crime pos­es with the seri­ous­ness it deserved.
You do not send a jan­i­tor to do a brain surgery. It’s as seri­ous, yet as sim­ple as that.
The longer Montague remain in this port­fo­lio the more mur­der­ers are going to con­tin­ue their unim­ped­ed rampage.

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

Montague has effec­tive­ly estab­lished him­self as a buf­foon bet­ter suit­ed for the com­e­dy cir­cuit , than a seri­ous Executive, ful­ly con­ver­sant of the seri­ous­ness of the task he has been tapped to undertake.

One is almost forced to be char­i­ta­ble toward Montague as a result of the silli­ness of his utter­ances. We are forced to see him as com­ic relief rather than the prin­ci­pal National secu­ri­ty exec­u­tive of the Island he should be.

From lec­tur­ing cops about their need to wear con­doms . To talk­ing about dut­ty crim­i­nals [sic]to utter­ances about his obeah-man uncle , this so called Agronomist who was forcibly mor­phed into being a Security Minister has demon­stra­bly shown he is nowhere near being ready for prime time.
One can argue that Robert Montague’s sil­ly state­ments are just fun­ny and should be ignored, but I don’t see any­one laugh­ing about the esca­lat­ing amount of murders .

The longer this buf­foon remains in this capac­i­ty which is clear­ly out­side his skill-set, the more he makes a cha­rade and a car­toon spec­ta­cle of the Andrew Holness Administration as it relates to crime.

Despite hav­ing estab­lished him­self as a source for par­o­dy , noth­ing Montague has said has been more neg­a­tive­ly con­se­quen­tial­ly than his lat­est comments.
Reacting to com­ments attrib­uted to jour­nal­ist Ian Boyne which cor­rect­ly called for tougher more stri­dent mea­sures against the Island’s crim­i­nals , Montague said the following.

“No, no, no. The basis of effec­tive polic­ing is human-rights polic­ing,” declared Montague as he react­ed to the pro­pos­al. “The days of kick­ing down peo­ple’s doors and plant­i­ng evi­dence on them are long gone. For the last 40 years we have tried the same thing with a lit­tle tweak­ing here and there. We have had task forces, spe­cial squads, and where are we today?”

The absur­di­ty of Montague’s com­ments should be lost on no one.
To sug­gest that police offi­cers were kick­ing down doors and plant­i­ng evi­dence in peo­ple’s homes is an insid­i­ous and bla­tant act of defama­tion against mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces who have for decades sac­ri­ficed much includ­ing their lives so that idiots like Montague can live off the pub­lic’s dime.
Despite the vast imper­fec­tion of the JCF I am per­son­al­ly offend­ed by this type of dem­a­goguery by some­one who nev­er sac­ri­ficed any­thing for our coun­try and whom have been giv­en much.
I have been shot in the line of duty pro­tect­ing our country,and polit­i­cal men­tal midgets on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide, to include Robert Montague.
In all that time I nev­er plant­ed evi­dence on any­one , nei­ther has any­one with whom I have ever worked in pro­tect­ing our country.

Let me be clear, Jamaican police offi­cers have done much which should be con­demned, so too has oth­er police depart­ments across the world. What we can­not do is allow the whole­sale tar­ring and feath­er­ing being per­pet­u­at­ed by intel­lec­tu­al infants like Montague.
Nevertheless for Montague to make those insid­i­ous and defam­a­to­ry state­ments while at the same time head­ing the agency which over­sees the police and Military proves that (1) Montague is not with the secu­ri­ty forces, and (2) proves that at best he is a glo­ri­fied unin­tel­li­gent jackass.

I ask this clown show this ques­tion in rela­tion to his ques­tion , We have had task forces, spe­cial squads, and where are we today?”
Dumbkoff where would Jamaica be with­out those actions?
It’s easy to ques­tion where are we today, when you have 24 hour police pro­tec­tion. Mind you , the very same police offi­cers who are risk­ing life and limb to pro­tect your dumb ass even as you defame them.

Might I remind Montague , Holness ‚and oth­ers, it was the sac­ri­fices of the secu­ri­ty forces which allowed the Labor Party to be in Government today.
The Jamaican vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly expelled Bruce Golding from Jamaica house as a result of what hap­pened with the Christopher Coke extra­di­tion request, and the resul­tant Tivoli Gardens incursion.
Without the secu­ri­ty forces which Montague now defamed, the Island’s mer­ce­nar­ies would have had total con­trol of the coun­try today.

Holness can talk all he wants about high-tech gad­gets and the likes, which he intends to employ in the fight against crime . With Robert Montague at the helm of the National Security Ministry, none of the ini­tia­tives Holness out­lined will have the desired results.
Let this be under­stood, Jamaica needs a take no pris­on­ers , kick ass approach toward crime.
Pussyfooting and fan­cy talk have not , and will not get it done.
Robert Montague is mak­ing a spec­ta­cle out of nation­al secu­ri­ty and no one is laughing.

Jamaica hab enuff law, wi nu need nu more law .

That’s a view many Jamaicans have when the ques­tion of crime comes up.
There is not much truth to that how­ev­er. Most of our nation’s laws were writ­ten before the Island gained Independence from Britain.
Those laws were writ­ten to deal effec­tive­ly with the issues of the day.
The puni­tive com­po­nents in those laws, both cus­to­di­al and oth­er­wise, reflect­ed the val­ue placed on things and mon­ey and the val­ues of the time.

Over the years the lack of teeth has fos­tered a dis­re­spect for our laws , a process which was bound to result an increase in crime.
And it has.
Times change , back in the 70’s there was no inter­net so there was no need to have laws gov­ern­ing the internet.
There were not many reports of child traf­fick­ing, now there are, so there is a need for laws to deal with those.
That is not to say that the lack of teeth in our laws is sole­ly respon­si­ble for the dra­mat­ic esca­la­tion of crim­i­nal­i­ty since 1962 to today.
The list of fac­tors which forms that per­fect storm is well know and has been described and debat­ed ad nauseam

The prob­lem is not that Jamaicans can­not obey laws. It’s non­sen­si­cal to assume or sug­gest also that Jamaicans have a propen­si­ty or a pre­dis­po­si­tion toward com­mit­ting crimes.
Despite the large amounts of Jamaicans sent back to the Island through the depor­ta­tion process, the vast major­i­ty of our peo­ple who immi­grate to oth­er coun­tries are law abid­ing. So we have estab­lished that as a peo­ple we can obey laws.
We have demon­strat­ed arguably, that we do not have any gene in us which makes us com­mit crimes over and above any oth­er group­ing of people.

SO WHAT IS IT ABOUT US ?

Before we get to the answer to that ques­tion , lets toss out pover­ty as a decid­ing factor .
Many impov­er­ished nations have far less crime than Jamaica per capi­ta . Cuba,one such coun­try ‚is locat­ed just 90 miles off our shore.
All across Asia and Africa peo­ple live in far greater pover­ty than most Jamaicans are exposed to.
Yet they record sig­nif­i­cant­ly less homi­cide that Jamaica does . Even coun­tries which are far larg­er and much more pop­u­lous record sig­nif­i­cant­ly less crime.

The notion that we can close down the pris­ons and sim­ply pro­vide jobs for every­one and we will some­how be able to sleep with our doors unlocked, or as in Jamaica’s case leave some of the grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions unlocked is sim­ply stupid.
Would there be a less­en­ing of crime if every­one has a job?
Probably?
But not as much as some would like to have you believe.
Which brings us to why , why is there so much crime in Jamaica?

GREED, ENVY, WANTING TO LIVE ABOVE THEIR MEANS , AND SYSTEM WHICH DOES NOT PUNISH CRIMINALS !!!

A peo­ple who pro­mote gang­sters , demo­nizes police offi­cers, and nur­ture and give aid and com­fort to crim­i­nals have no busi­ness expect­ing to live free from crime.
Post a com­ment to social media which dogs police offi­cers, or glo­ri­fies gang­sters , sit back and watch.
Like flies to feces they con­verge diss­ing the cops and glo­ri­fy­ing the gangsters.

Is our coun­try now a coun­try of major­i­ty crim­i­nals then?
Hard to tell, but if Transparency International is to be believed, we may have passed that tip­ping point long ago.
According to Transparency International Jamaica is ranked 83 out of 176 coun­tries; falling 14 places in the coun­try rankings.
In 2015, Jamaica ranked 69 out of 168 coun­tries. Jamaica’s CPI score is 39 out of 100… falling two points from its 2015 score of 41.
The Corruption Prevention Index ranks 176 coun­tries on a scale of 0 to 100.
Zero rep­re­sents ‘Highly Corrupt’ while 100 rep­re­sents ‘Very Clean’.

After an unprece­dent­ed 14 ¹⁄₂ years in office the PNP estab­lished a course for Jamaica.
That course was set and main­tained by Percival James Patterson and con­tin­ued by Portia Simpson Miller. That is not to say these two mis­cre­ants who served as Prime Minister, dur­ing that peri­od were the only ones respon­si­ble for the Nations path as a crime state.
Edward Seaga and lit­er­al­ly every oth­er politi­cians who entered the Parliament have con­tributed immense­ly to the present situation.

There is how­ev­er, a more seri­ous com­po­nent to whats hap­pen­ing in Jamaica. The human rights lob­by has gained incred­i­ble trac­tion over the way things gets done to the point nei­ther par­ty has the balls to deal seri­ous­ly with crime out of fear of their wrath.
The prob­lem for what­ev­er law abid­ing Jamaicans who still remain is that crime works for the mul­ti nation­al cor­po­ra­tions which keeps the econ­o­my afloat.
It also work for the local econ­o­my . Just look at the eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty which has emerged from the kill culture.
Security com­pa­nies. Funeral par­lors. Grave dig­gers. Musical bands. Masons. Sound sys­tems. Carpenters and cof­fin mak­ers are just of few which are expe­ri­enc­ing eco­nom­ic boon from the mur­der mayhem.

Nevertheless it’s the Multi National Corporations which lend mon­ey to coun­tries like Jamaica with strin­gent eco­nom­ic caveats and Usury type inter­est rates which dic­tates our policies.
They are also the ones who fund the human rights groups ‚which by the way are lit­tle more than trea­so­nous agi­ta­tors in many regards.
In the large west­ern nations ‚the homes coun­tries of the human rights agi­ta­tors, the US, Canada and Britain these agen­cies absolute­ly no power.
Lenders like the IMF the Paris Club and oth­er agen­cies which loan mon­ey to Jamaica and oth­er devel­op­ing coun­tries like our know darn well that the eco­nom­ic poli­cies they demand we adhere to inevitably lead to social unrest.

If we are able to get out act togeth­er and become eco­nom­ic sus­tain­able why would we need them?
Who would they lend to?
So now you begin to under­stand why the Inter American com­mis­sion for human rights is very pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial in small debtor nations like Jamaica, but nev­er sees a prob­lem with police killing unharmed peo­ple of col­or for no rea­son in America?
The soon­er we begin to under­stand that our prob­lems are ours to fix the way we see fit and not as some for­eign enti­ty dic­tates the bet­ter off we will be.

As a coun­try we must start by repeal­ing the inde­com act, the Bruce Golding Trojan horse to the coun­try. Begin the process of chang­ing the laws to reflect the times.
For the short term a sim­ple ban and an order to remove all zinc fences with­ing a cer­tain time, fail­ing which the Government removes them, is a start toward reduc­ing crime.
Any replace­ment wall should not be more than five feet high but may be enhanced with barbed wire or or oth­er par­ti­tion mate­r­i­al through which the police can see.
These are sim­ple yet effec­tive meth­ods Government can take right now toward reduc­ing crime in the short run while lay­ing the ground­work toward seri­ous and sus­tain­able crime reduction/​elimination which must begin now.

How often have I spoken to the issue of visible black people allowing themselves to be used by enemies of their communities as props to solidify their racist narrative?

Steve Harvey come­di­an, tele­vi­sion-star, host of fam­i­ly feud, entre­pre­neur and radio per­son­al­i­ty became the most recent vic­tim of this strategy,.
He is stunned, and says he is bad­ly hurt at the blow-back he is receiv­ing. But Steve is not a total fool .….…or is he?
don­ald trump[sic] ignored requests to attend an event hon­or­ing black jour­nal­ists . He ignored invites from the NAACP. He refused to have dia­logue with the Congressional Black Caucus. He has not met with the Urban League. He has not met with a sin­gle African-American Mayor.
He has not even met with a rec­og­nized body of African-American Clergy.

Steve Harvey said he met with trump because he real­ly wants to help the inner cities !
Question : Steve you are not an elect­ed may­or , Governor , not even dog-catch­er, please explain in what way you envis­aged a meet­ing between your­self and trump would help inner cities?

You see Steve you got played.
You are on tele­vi­sion dai­ly dish­ing out rela­tion­ship advice .
You are reach­ing mil­lions of view­ers dai­ly , that is what don­ald trump found useful.
He real­ly has no need for you Steve, but he knows you are well know. Having a pho­to-op with you imme­di­ate­ly reach­es mil­lions of viewers .
That allows him to some­how shake the fact that he is a dan­ger­ous racial demagogue.

You Steve, walked right into that trap because you got car­ried away with your own sense of importance.
Oh to be a fly on the wall Steve when they devised that strat­e­gy to meet with you.
You great­ly dimin­ished your­self Steve and for that I am real­ly sorry.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY.
January 16^th Martin Luther Kings birth­day, the ever schem­ing don­ald trump had some­one over to the gild­ed tow­er in midtown .
It’s not too dif­fi­cult to imag­ine who trump and his peo­ple thought up, to have a pho­to-op with on the birth­day of Dr King.
This of course after he ear­li­er tweet­ed the following.…

Oh Malcolm,Malcolm, Malcolm.…

In all fair­ness to Steve, he deserve a chance to explain himself.
Now Steve explained him­self , do you agree with him, and even if you do , does that release Steve from the accu­sa­tion he was used as a prop?

As news broke that Jamaican author­i­ties had reject­ed the $5.5 bil­lion dol­lar deal from Great Britain , social Media lit up with opinions.
The deal would have seen the Former colo­nial pow­er help­ing to fund the con­struc­tion of a new prison on the Island but would also result in hun­dreds of pris­on­ers being dumped on the Island as well.
According to esti­mates the $5,5 bil­lion that the British pro­posed to con­tribute would have rep­re­sent­ed only 40% of the actu­al cost.
Which would leave the Island hold­ing the bag on find­ing fund­ing for the oth­er 60% which would amount to just under 8 billion.
As well as tak­ing on hun­dreds of pris­on­ers some­how con­nect­ed to the Island already in British pris­ons and accept­ing Jamaicans in Britain who run afoul of their laws into perpetuity.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​a​v​i​d​-​c​a​m​e​r​o​n​-​r​u​l​e​s​-​o​u​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​r​e​p​a​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​d​u​r​i​n​g​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​v​i​s​it/

As astro­nom­i­cal as those mon­e­tary fig­ures are for Jamaica , it is the intend­ed British dump of over 300 pris­on­ers on the Island which ought to shock Jamaicans everywhere.
None of those peo­ple were con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting any crimes on the Island.
It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that accept­ing the deal would have opened up a con­duit for Britain to dump any per­son vague­ly con­nect­ed to Jamaica who com­mits on offence in Britain onto the Island.

Prison Deal A £25m Gift Wrapped Trojan Horse.

The ini­tial deal was first offered to the pre­vi­ous PNP Administration led by for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller .
As far as the PNP is con­cerned they had made no deci­sion on whether or not to accept the deal which was offered to the Island on the occa­sion of the vis­it of then Prime Minister David Cameron.
Nevertheless sources close to the par­ty revealed that the Portia Simpson Administration was lean­ing heav­i­ly toward accept­ing the deal , large­ly because the British Government would have pro­vid­ed monies to care for pris­on­ers the pris­on­er to be sent back for a peri­od of about two years.
What was alleged­ly pro­posed to care for each pris­on­er by British author­i­ties dif­fered vast­ly from what Jamaica is able to allot to the care of a sim­i­lar pris­on­er on the Island.
That sweet­en­er was enough of an entice­ment to have the tongues of for­mer admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials wagging.

Now that the JLP Government has appro­pri­ate­ly reject­ed this Trojan horse, mem­bers of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and the usu­al bleed­ing hearts in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are quick to point out that the nation’s pris­on’s are below inter­na­tion­al standards.
Their self right­eous cru­sade is devoid of any con­sid­er­a­tion of the exist­ing crime sta­tis­tics, and the toll mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes are hav­ing on the psy­che of the country.
The coun­try’s lead­er­ship should not waste a sin­gle night’s sleep wor­ry­ing over the com­fort lev­el of crim­i­nals . They made con­scious deci­sions to com­mit heinous crimes.
They made their beds they ought to sleep in them.

At the time of Cameron’s arrival on the Island the then leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister Andrew Holness opined that the mon­ey being sug­gest­ed for the prison would be bet­ter put to use in education.
I do not have specifics on why the offer was reject­ed by the gov­ern­ment, suf­fic­ing to say that the very idea that our coun­try would be accept­ing pris­on­ers who had not been con­vict­ed of any crime in Jamaica is a non-starter.

At the same time the the Opposition lead­er’s state­ment that those funds could be bet­ter served if allo­cat­ed to edu­ca­tion missed the mark then.
If part of, or whol­ly the rea­son the deal was reject­ed final­ly, they also miss the mark now.
Conflating nation­al secu­ri­ty and edu­ca­tion is reck­less and a clear dere­lic­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty to a crit­i­cal and fun­da­men­tal func­tion of Government, which is to pro­tect the nation.
We need an edu­cat­ed workforce.
We also need pris­ons to put peo­ple who are threats to soci­etal order.
It’s not a zero sum game we need both.
We do know that edu­cat­ed , employed peo­ple may be less like­ly to com­mit crimes.
What we also know is that many of the crimes being com­mit­ted on the Island have at their gen­e­sis some very edu­cat­ed and well-placed people.
We need pris­ons for them,..

Conflating edu­ca­tion with nation­al secu­ri­ty require­ments is reck­less at it’s core. It plays into the mis­in­formed idea that if only peo­ple are edu­cat­ed and have jobs they do not com­mit crimes.
That has been the nar­ra­tive guid­ing nation­als secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy for too long, a mind­set which is tied to the Privy Council’s deci­sion to pre­vent hang­ing of murderers.
The mod­els they gen­er­al­ly point to are (1) in Asian nations which some­times have strin­gent laws which are heavy on their puni­tive com­po­nent which they nev­er both­er to mention.
Or (2) the Scandinavian mod­els which are large­ly eth­nic mono­lith­ic wealthy soci­eties in which Governments take care of much of their cit­i­zens most basic needs.
Of course there are going to be less crimes in those societies.
Jamaica is nowhere near where Scandinavia is so we must build prisons.
This deal seemed to have been just a bad one for Jamaica.

On this par­tic­u­lar issue the Government should ignore the bark­ing of the Political oppo­si­tion. If the past PNP Administration thought it was such a great deal they would have been hap­py to sign Jamaica away for it.
How the Government responds to the lit­tle mon­grels in the eat-a-food crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty is it’s problem.
You ele­vat­ed them and gave them clout , deal with their haranguing…

The Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has reject­ed the $5.5 bil­lion offer of the United Kingdom (UK) to help build a mod­ern prison in Jamaica.

Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Kamina Johnson Smith made the announce­ment in the Senate this morn­ing end­ing almost six months of wait for the answers.

She said the terms of the offer “were not ben­e­fi­cial to Jamaica as a whole”. She did not state exact­ly the unfa­vor­able terms. She also declined to answer ques­tions from Opposition Senator Lambert Brown, who tabled the ques­tions, on whether nego­ti­a­tions are under­way to get favor­able terms.“The mat­ter is closed at this time”. Leader of Opposition Business Mark Golding also could not get an answer on when the offer was rejected.

Johnson Smith said the ques­tions, among oth­ers, were not appro­pri­ate and cit­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. However, she said the ques­tions could be sent to the secu­ri­ty min­istry. “Transparency, where is it?” Brown fired at the Government side. Johnson Smith lat­er accused the Opposition of “grand­stand­ing”. The issue is sen­si­tive for the prime min­is­ter because, while lead­ing the oppo­si­tion last year, he told then British Prime, Minister David Cameron, who announced the deal, that the mon­ey would be bet­ter spent on education.

A known con­di­tion of the deal includ­ed Jamaica accept­ing about 300 British pris­on­ers of Jamaican her­itage to com­plete their sen­tence here. The UK’s $5.5 bil­lion for the 1,500-bed facil­i­ty would only be 40 per cent of the cost. Jamaica would have to find the rest. Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry has said cur­rent prison con­di­tions are below min­i­mum con­sti­tu­tion­al requirements.
Read more her: http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​1​1​3​/​a​n​d​r​e​w​-​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​a​d​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​r​e​j​e​c​t​s​-​u​k​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​-​d​eal

One of the many criticisms which dogged former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller during her two stints as PM was her many overseas trips.

Though a non-sup­port­er of Mrs Miller and her par­ty, at the time I stat­ed my belief that her trav­els and meet­ings with for­eign heads of states were a cru­cial part of her job description.
Nevertheless ‚I believed then, as I do now ‚that those over­seas trips must be geared at extract­ing max­i­mum ben­e­fits for the Jamaican peo­ple, as it must to be the pre­sump­tion that for­eign lead­ers are hav­ing those meet­ings to get max­i­mum advan­tage for their nations.
As such I was con­strained in my crit­i­cisms of the for­mer Prime Minister on her for­eign trips. I believed she had the right to pur­sue eco­nom­ic and oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for Jamaica.
I also believe that it is the right of the new Prime Minister of Jamaica to do the very same thing as part of his duties as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the country.

We should nev­er lose sight of the fact that coun­tries do not have friend­ships , they have interests.
As we applaud moves aimed at secur­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for our peo­ple we can ill-afford to be star­ry-eyed polit­i­cal­ly, about the fact that for­eign Leaders invite oth­er lead­ers because they believe that form­ing, or strength­en­ing bonds, or even the mere optics of such meet­ings, advances their agendas.

Benjamin Netanyahu a mas­ter of manip­u­la­tion, and the art of the optics ‚was not shy about thank­ing Andrew Holness for not join­ing a UNESCO vote against Israel. (already acknowl­edg­ing that Israel wants to show it has friends which sup­port it’s policies) .
So in this par­tic­u­lar case the inter­est of Israel was already served.
It would be fool­hardy to believe that his Invitation to the Jamaican PM was intend­ed to be any­thing more than an, “in your face” pho­to-op to UNESCO.
In the end Jamaica may stand to lose more than it gains from this visit.

The vote of which Netanyahu spoke, was the UNESCO’s World Heritage com­mit­tee vote, it was con­vened in Istanbul Turkey.
According to Israel the res­o­lu­tion was designed to, (in their words) “erase any Jewish con­nec­tion to Jerusalem”.
The fol­low­ing coun­tries are on the exec­u­tive: Angola, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Finland, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Tunisia, Turkey, United Republic of Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
For years Israel has lob­bied to break the almost mono­lith­ic vote of the African con­ti­nent in it’s sup­port for the Palestinian peo­ple in their strug­gle against Israeli occu­pa­tion and oppression.

This is of course with the excep­tion of Tanzania, which has always vot­ed with oth­er non-African nations in sup­port of the state of Israel. These include Croatia, Finland, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, or at least abstain, accord­ing to the (Jerusalem Post).
Jamaica’s vote with Israel came as a result of mas­sive lob­by­ing from Israel.
The Question now must be ‚what will Jamaica derive from this vote which will cer­tain­ly raise eye­brows from quar­ters opposed to Israel on principle?

I have no prob­lem with the PM look­ing at out­side mod­els which may be emulated.
As Andrew Holness said , Jamaica has long looked at Israel’s advances in agri­cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy etc as a mod­el which can be applied to Jamaica.
Nevertheless it is impor­tant to note that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, for the first time in Israel’s his­to­ry, pulled America’s veto pro­tec­tion which shield­ed the state of Israel from UN con­dem­na­tion for it’s con­tin­ued ille­gal land-grab , and set­tle­ment building.
Every time that Israel takes a bit more of Palestine through it’s ille­gal build­ing of set­tle­ments, it auto­mat­i­cal­ly extends out­ward it’s perime­ter of defense, which it states is nec­es­sary for the defense of Israel.

That is the rea­son the last two American Presidents, George W Bush and Barack Obama, both insist­ed that in order for the peace process to be enhanced Israel must stop the ille­gal build­ing of set­tle­ments on Palestinan lands.
It must also be not­ed that Israel’s poli­cies toward the Palestinian peo­ple and it’s treat­ment toward African Jews (real Hebrew peo­ple) has drawn strong con­dem­na­tion from across the globe, to include for­mer President Jimmy Carter, who con­tends the Israeli state is the clos­est thing to an Apartheid state.
As we speak many Hebrew peo­ple dar­ing to return to Israel are spat upon and abused, many are locked up in a mon­ster prison in the Negev desert.
It’s impor­tant that as we seek to bol­ster and cre­ate new rela­tion­ships we do not align our­selves with inter­ests which are anti­thet­i­cal to our core values.

Democracy is not what any one coun­try say it is, democ­ra­cy is an ever evolv­ing concept.
Even in the United States the World’s sec­ond largest democ­ra­cy we see now, that the cher­ished prin­ci­ple called democ­ra­cy is in dan­ger. When those not even yet in office are show­ing that democ­ra­cy is what they say it is.

Read, com­ment, and share.

Finally, Andrew Holness has start­ed to fig­ure it out , we won’t take any cred­it for inces­sant­ly beat­ing the drums on this issue , suf­fic­ing to say tak­ing con­trol of the crime sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try is of para­mount con­cern to this medium.

In a nor­mal elec­tion, a pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion would be a cel­e­bra­tion of our democ­ra­cy whether your side won or lost, and an exam­ple of the country’s bedrock faith in the peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er. It should be amply clear by now that the elec­tion of 2016 was no nor­mal election.

As a result, for­mer labor sec­re­tary Robert Reich thinks a Democratic boy­cott of Trump’s swear­ing in is entire­ly appro­pri­ate. And that includes for­mer pres­i­dents. On Wednesday, Reich wrote a Facebook post argu­ing that any­one who attends the Jan. 20 event — unless they are protest­ing — is giv­ing tac­it sup­port to a man who broke all demo­c­ra­t­ic norms dur­ing the cam­paign and con­tin­ues to show zero remorse for doing so, in short, a “dan­ger­ous demagogue.”

The post was appar­ent­ly prompt­ed by a call the Berkeley pro­fes­sor received from a politi­cian he respects about attend­ing. Maybe it was one of the Clintons, giv­en the some­what shock­ing rev­e­la­tion on Tuesday that the Clintons were invit­ed, as were oth­er for­mer pres­i­dents and their wives, and would attend.

Here is Reich’s post in its entirety:

I got a call this morn­ing from a politi­cian I respect who told me he was attend­ing Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion not because he backs Trump but because he believes in pro­mot­ing uni­ty over par­ti­san­ship and sup­port­ing a peace­ful tran­si­tion of power.

I told him that’s why politi­cians of both par­ties nor­mal­ly attend an inau­gu­ra­tion. But the issue here has noth­ing to do with par­ti­san­ship or a nor­mal tran­si­tion of pow­er. It’s not mat­ter of Democrat ver­sus Republican, or left ver­sus right.

The issue here is how for­mer pres­i­dents and oth­er politi­cians should respond to some­one who has shown him­self to be a dan­ger­ous demagogue.

Donald Trump became pres­i­dent by lying, demean­ing women, den­i­grat­ing racial and eth­nic minori­ties, deny­ing intel­li­gence reports of for­eign inter­ven­tion in our elec­tion, excus­ing vio­lence against oppo­nents, and under­min­ing the free­dom and inde­pen­dence of the press. And since being elect­ed he’s held ral­lies and issued tweets in which he’s con­tin­ued to tell big lies, retal­i­ate against crit­ics, call oppo­nents “ene­mies,” avoid press con­fer­ences and dis­miss con­flicts of finan­cial interest.

I told him that, in my view, attend­ing Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion gives tac­it sup­port and approval to some­one who pos­es a clear and present dan­ger to our democracy.

What do you think? Read more here : http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​1​/​0​5​/​r​o​b​e​r​t​-​r​e​i​c​h​-​n​o​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​g​o​-​n​e​a​r​-​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​i​n​a​u​g​u​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​e​v​e​n​-​f​o​r​m​e​r​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​s​_​p​a​r​t​n​er/

Everyone deserves the ben­e­fit of the doubt, though not a fan of politi­cians, this writer and this medi­um believes that the Prime Minister , though late in this recog­ni­tion, deserves a chance to make good.
The prime min­is­ter naive­ly believed that there could be sig­nif­i­cant or mea­sur­able growth in an atmos­phere of crime and mayhem.
This medi­um has over the years cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly point­ed out to both the for­mer Administration and and to this new one, that crime is the sin­gle largest imped­i­ment to growth and pros­per­i­ty on the Island.

With mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes on the rise , and the com­mis­sion­er of police out of answers and step­ping down, Holness now seem to have had a come-to-jesus-moment.
To the prime min­is­ter’s sense of recog­ni­tion that there is a prob­lem I say “duh” .
What took you so long to rec­og­nize that the killing of almost two thou­sand Jamaicans each year is untenable.
What took you so long to rec­og­nize that this was not get­ting better?

This crime sit­u­a­tion can­not, and will not be fixed by throw­ing more bod­ies at it . It cer­tain­ly will not be fixed by chang­ing the com­mis­sion­er , even though there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Carl Williams’ con­tin­ued tenure.
The prime min­is­ter allud­ed to what he saw as a shift in the atti­tude of Jamaicans toward crime.
I find it curi­ous , because what I believe I am hear­ing is that the leader of the nation was wait­ing to hear peo­ple say they have had enough of the killings.

Is that not lead­ing from behind?
Leaders do not spit on their fin­ger and place it in the wind to decide what direc­tion to take.
Leaders lead because it’s the right thing to do. Leaders make deci­sions and take action regard­less of pop­u­lar per­cep­tions and opinions.
There is noth­ing good in the deaths of hun­dreds of peo­ple each year. There is noth­ing defen­si­ble about the rape and abuse of inno­cent women girls and boys.
Taking deci­sive action against depraved rapist and killers does not require a nation­al shift in per­cep­tions of a nation. It requires lead­er­ship from those elect­ed to lead.