“We have some­thing com­ing up here called Haitian Flag Day. We have got Haitian Flag Day. We got

Jamaica Day. We have got Bahamas Day. When the hell we going to have Turks and Caicos Day?”

I total­ly agree with Washington Misick Turks and Caicos Islands Finance Minister ‚when you relo­cate to anoth­er country,you ask that coun­try to accept you, by default you agree to be assim­i­lat­ed into that nation’s culture.
That nation has absolute­ly no oblig­a­tion to grant spe­cial des­ig­nat­ed priv­i­leges to you to cel­e­brate spe­cial days to hon­or your for­mer country.
In many cas­es if your coun­try was that great you would not have moved away to begin with .
“If these peo­ple want to be part of us we can­not encour­age, we can’t sup­port them with all these days, if we are going to be Singapore. If you are going to be in this coun­try, be in this coun­try, part of this coun­try. If you want to be in Jamaica, if you want to be in Haiti or The Bahamas, stay there,”.

Misick’s com­ments have gen­er­at­ed a pha­lanx of com­ments in some cir­cles with some peo­ple accus­ing him of Xenophobia.
According to The Jamaica Observer the small Island nation chain has a total pop­u­la­tion of 31,458, of which 12,030 were British Overseas Territories Citizens and/​or Belongers, 10,981 are Haitians, 1,768 are Jamaicans, 1,476 from the Dominican Republic, 818 from the United States of America, 524 from The Bahamas, 403 from Canada, 381 from the United Kingdom, 374 from Guyana, and 262 from oth­er countries.
Each group come with their own cul­ture each usu­al­ly with their own demands on their adopt­ed coun­try. TCI is a tiny nation which can ill afford to give up their sense of iden­ti­ty, at present they are a minor­i­ty in their own country.
Whether we agree or not the finance min­is­ter is on point in say­ing  “If you want to be here, you con­tribute here; if you don’t want to be here, if you want to be some­where else, then American Airlines flies here many times a day,”.

Dissenters should place the shoe on the oth­er foot and say how they would feel if oth­er groups came to Jamaica and asked to be allowed to stay then start to demand all kinds of spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed privileges.

Testifying before the Commission of Inquiry set up sup­pos­ed­ly to flush out what went on in Tivoli Grades in 2010 Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds stat­ed ‚“As a coun­try, most of us in this

room — I think the only per­son who can claim excep­tion is Sir David Simmons — are a part of the prob­lem, includ­ing the secu­ri­ty forces,”.
Hinds allud­ed to sys­tem­at­ic break­downs in the way Tivoli Gardens was allowed to oper­ate as a State with­in the Jamaican state. His com­ments were the most poignant and point­ed of any senior mem­ber of the JCF I have ever heard , past or present on the issue of the sys­tem­at­ic fail­ure of lead­er­ship which has plagued our country.
It is com­mend­able that Hinds has also tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for some of those fail­ures of lead­er­ship, even though I dis­agree in prin­ci­ple that every Jamaican share in some way in allow­ing Tivoli to become a place where Jamaica’s laws did not apply.
Over the years since my depar­ture from the JCF I sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly kept up a drum­beat , point­ing to forces with­in the Jamaican state which were aid­ing and abet­ting in the break­down of the rule of law and social order.

Many Jamaicans read­i­ly yet cor­rect­ly point to Politicians , Police and the Church as the chief archi­tects of our coun­try’s decades-long pre­cip­i­tous down­ward spi­ral. Even though the Police must accept some blame, it is impor­tant to under­stand the Jamaican sys­tem of gov­ern­ment and the role polit­i­cal direc­tion plays in the ways laws are enforced, or not.
As such I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe the Police must be absolved of some of the blame for the chaos which was not only Tivoli but Jamaica’s many zones of polit­i­cal exclusions.
No oth­er enti­ty has played a big­ger part in cre­at­ing the Jamaica of today, while being total­ly let off the hook of respon­si­bil­i­ty, than that which pass­es for Media in our country.
Over the many years I have watched as the unac­count­able media unleashed a bar­rage of un-sub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions of abuse against police sole­ly on the say-so of local polit­i­cal players.
Radio talk shows blan­ket­ed the air­ways with anti-police pro­pa­gan­da dis­guised as talk-shows.
I heard Barbara Gloudon tell the coun­try to throw stones on police stations.
We wit­nessed to our hor­ror morn­ing tele­vi­sion hosts class police offi­cers as john-crows ( scav­enger vul­ture) on nation­al tele­vi­sion because the police had the gall to arrest one of their crack smok­ing col­leagues in Barbican square.

Anti police dog­ma gave rise to Garnet Roper, Wilmott Perkins, Ronald Thwaites, Barbara Gloudon, and many oth­ers who rose to fame and some degree of for­tune on the backs and on the blood of Jamaica’s police officers.
Even so, it was­n’t just the know-noth­ing bab­blers who shaped opin­ions and per­cep­tions, those who posed as legit­i­mate Journalists joined in the free-for-all in the way the news was pre­sent­ed to an incitable and gullible public.
Hinds touched on that some­what say­ing “We allowed the gang pro­pa­gan­da to hold sway over these cit­i­zens. …[No] police oper­a­tion was [ever] called an oper­a­tion; they were called an incur­sion or an attack or an inva­sion. What we would have done is cement­ed in the sub­con­scious of these cit­i­zens that they were not part of Jamaica, they must be left to their own vices because this soci­ety sees them as off-limit,”.

As far as the inquiry goes I am not sure I under­stand the selec­tion of Barbados David Simmons as chair­man of the com­mis­sion look­ing into the cir­cum­stances of the May 2010 operation.

Simmons a for­mer Barbados Chief Justice seems by words and actions lack­ing in fun­da­men­tal appre­ci­a­tion and respect for law enforce­ment. He also has thus far through his utter­ances, demon­strat­ed a lack of under­stand of the vio­lence law enforce­ment faces in Jamaica dai­ly. On that basis David Simmons is unfit to hear evi­dence and arrive at a fair con­clu­sion in this Inquiry. It becomes pret­ty easy to pre­empt his find­ings and state Simmons find­ings will be heavy on blame for police and our mil­i­tary and syrupy on praise and empa­thy for the poor inno­cent peo­ple of Tivoli Gardens.[sic]

Tivoli Gardens did not become a no-go-zone for police overnight it took decades in devel­op­ing into a state with­in a state. It was not the only (Garrison) zone of polit­i­cal exclu­sion which exist­ed, it was just the best orga­nized. As such it became a tem­plate to Jamaica’s crim­i­nal under­world, to them it rep­re­sent­ed a safe haven , a sanc­tu­ary against Jamaican law enforcement.
It was no sur­prise that Christopher Coke asked for mer­ce­nar­ies across the coun­try to come and defend the sanc­tu­ary of Tivoli Gardens against the Jamaican state.
It was lit­tle sur­prise then that mer­ce­nar­ies heed­ed his call, picked up their weapons and head­ed to Tivoli Gardens.

Bishop Herro Blair a known Labor Party sym­pa­thiz­er stat­ed when he went to Tivoli Gardens in the days lead­ing up to the joint Police Military assault to annex Tivoli, he saw more guns than he have ever wit­nessed in his entire lifetime.
Every damn Jamaican knew what was at stake that day in 2010. Jamaicans are not fools. What we do not need is an old colo­nial mind­ed for­eign­er with an anti­quat­ed title to tell us anything.
This inquiry was not designed to find answers as to why peo­ple died.
It was designed to for­ev­er pin the death of 73 peo­ple on the Jamaica Labor Party, with a view to fur­ther alien­at­ing the peo­ple from the party.
The Administration of Portia Simpson Miller does not care a rats ass about what hap­pened to laborites that day, this fish­ing expe­di­tion is pure­ly political.

We all know that the police implored peo­ple to leave the community.
Not just that , bus­es were pro­vid­ed for their depar­ture. Some argue peo­ple could not take up the offer because they would be seen as trai­tors. We under­stand that point , but the bus­es were pro­vid­ed nonethe­less, the police did what they had to do.
David Simmons seem to be woe­ful­ly unaware that all those pro­vi­sions were put in place to ensure cit­i­zen safe­ty. We saw the white ‑T-shirt clad crowds who marched demand­ing that they leave Coke alone while pro­claim­ing their undy­ing love

and desire to die for him.
We saw the attacks on Police stations.
We saw police offi­cers gunned down.
We say the police sta­tions go up in flames .

Rather than hold­ing a fraud­u­lent inquiry which will yield noth­ing sub­stan­tive beyond blame for the police and the Labor par­ty, let there be be a truth com­mis­sion set up to fer­ret-out how and why Jamaica was allowed to slide so deeply into gar­ri­son cul­ture. This should be done toward ensur­ing that nev­er again will it be allowed to happen.
As Hinds said, “Jamaica is still indebt­ed to the secu­ri­ty forces” for the con­duct of the oper­a­tion that result­ed in the sub­se­quent arrest of Coke, and “to bring back Tivoli Gardens as part of Jamaica”.

As a young offi­cer on the Rangers Squad my col­leagues and I took sus­tained gun­fire from Tivoli Gardens in the mid 80’s as we hun­kered down in the Denham Town Police station.
The Superintendent at the sta­tion gave us orders not to return fire even as gun­shots whizzed through win­dows shat­ter­ing glass.
We were sent there from the Mobile Reserve to prop-up and defend his sta­tion against exact­ly that attack.
The group of six mem­bers of the Rangers squad myself includ­ed were damn sure not afraid to tac­ti­cal­ly enter that enclave and put down the attack based on our train­ing and ded­i­ca­tion to duty. The Superintendent was just too polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed and piss scared to do his job, all he had to do was get out of our way.
He could­n’t even do that.
When the shoot­ing sub­sided most of the win­dows had no glass, all shat­tered from Tivoli’s mer­ce­nar­ies. Our truck was destroyed.
I don’t need any­one telling me whats wrong with my coun­try , I know darn well whats wrong and how we got there.…
Read and share.

At the 72^nd Annual Joint Central Conference of the Police Federation held at the Hilton Rose Hall, National Security Minister Peter Bunting told police to sim­ply “turn a blind eye to peo­ple smok­ing weed”.
Presently the Police are not allowed to arrest offend­ers who have small quan­ti­ties of mar­i­jua­na. A small quan­ti­ty based on the recent Amendment is  two ounces of the weed.
The new amend­ment makes two ounces and under a tick­et-able offense rather than an arrest-able offense. The prob­lem is that the Government has not made tick­ets avail­able to the police so the Minister’s direc­tive to the police is sim­ply to “turn a blind eye”.

The Jamaica Observer report­ed that Opposition Spokesman on National Security Derrick Smith, in his address to the con­fer­ence, described the Government’s amend­ment to the Dangerous Drugs Act as an added load to mem­bers of the police force.“The recent amend­ments to the Dangerous Drugs Act, decrim­i­nal­iz­ing the use of gan­ja, are noth­ing but addi­tion­al, unnec­es­sary bur­den brought to bear on

the backs of police,” Smith argued.
Under Jamaican laws the police would be mired in the morass of mak­ing on the spot deter­mi­na­tions whether an offend­er should be tick­et­ed or arrest­ed. This would be a colos­sal waste of police resource at a time when seri­ous crimes are trend­ing upward.
Of course the only way the police would be able to make those assess­ments as it relates to weights, would be to have scales.
You guessed it, they have no scales. Engaging in this ven­ture would cer­tain­ly get the police lost in the weeds[pun intended].

On the face of it, the aver­age observ­er would see this as a vic­to­ry for users of mar­i­jua­na. They would be right. Whats the big deal in police ignor­ing peo­ple smok­ing or pos­sess­ing small quan­ti­ties of the weed?
The sim­ple answer is that there is a two-fold answer to that question.
♦Jamaicans are to a cer­tain degree not par­tic­u­lar­ly respect­ful of the rule of law , or worse those who enforce the laws. This could be a prob­lem with smok­ers of the weed with bad atti­tudes, believ­ing they have been per­se­cut­ed by the prover­bial “Babylon“may very well see this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to blow some smoke in a “di police bway face”,this is a recipe for dis­as­ter , this will not go down well with police.
Justice Minister Senator Mark Golding recent­ly urged Jamaicans not to make a mock­ery of the police or the law, mak­ing it clear that decrim­i­nal­iza­tion should not be con­fused with the Government pro­mot­ing gan­ja smoking.
Hold that thought.……

The bar­ri­ers sur­round­ing Cannabis are crum­bling around the world as more and more stake-hold­ers point to what they believe are med­i­c­i­nal val­ues from the use of the weed. But when an Administration Minister say to us “decrim­i­nal­iza­tion should not be con­fused with the Government pro­mot­ing gan­ja smok­ing”, it not only gives us pause but offers a per­fect segue into the sec­ond point.
♦ The Government has oth­er motives behind this issue, even though there is evi­dence the walls around Ganga use are crum­bling world-wide.

The rela­tion­ship between police and Jamaica’s under-class has been a testy one for decades , there is not much love lost between the par­ties. Though not con­fined to the use of Cannabis, the rela­tion­ship has not been helped by the laws which pre­vi­ous­ly gave police wide pow­ers of arrest of per­sons hav­ing even minus­cule amounts of the weed.
Jamaica has a large Rastafarian com­mu­ni­ty which large­ly deter­mined that the weed is some kind of holy

sacra­ment. They fun­da­men­tal­ly hold the belief that the coun­try’s laws on Cannabis ought not to include them based on those beliefs. Additionally there is a huge cross sec­tion of young unem­ployed male who use the weed. Not to be out­done many farm­ers plant the weed as a mat­ter of course, even though they may not con­sid­er them­selves Ganja-farm­ers per sey.

When you add all of the fore­gone the Administration of Portia Simpson Miller under­stands full well that there is a huge wind-fall of good­will to come from the decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of the weed. That poten­tial good­will may con­tin­ue for years as poor,uneducated peo­ple point to the PNP as the par­ty in touch with their desires and needs. Ah come on why would they not have tick­ets for the police , if as Minister Golding pro­claim the Administration was not pro­mot­ing Ganga use?
How con­ve­nient that there are no tickets !!!
In I972 Michael Manley swept to pow­er on a raft of pop­ulist promis­es. The imple­men­ta­tion of those poli­cies cre­at­ed tremen­dous neg­a­tive upheaval in the Jamaican soci­ety and for the econ­o­my. Many of the poli­cies were not bad poli­cies, how­ev­er the dog­mat­ic imple­men­ta­tion of those poli­cies cre­at­ed after shocks still being felt today.
Today there may be some feel-good moments for some to say “well what about these”?

♦There are no bas­tard chil­dren anymore.
♦ Poor peo­ple have tak­en back some of the lands from the old colonialists.
So too have Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe but the coun­ty, once Africa’s bread-bas­ket is now a basket-case.
Rampant pover­ty and hunger has turned Zimbabweans into refugees.
♦Micro-dams. Project land-lease. Free edu­ca­tion. Everyone equal. Jamal.etc.…
♦ Did the end jus­ti­fy the means?
It most cer­tain­ly did not, in terms of mate­r­i­al val­ue to the country.
However inso­far as the PNP is con­cerned, this list of sweet tast­ing cot­ton-can­dy-type reforms” cre­at­ed a cult-like fol­low­ing of the mass­es toward the PNP which has remark­ably kept them in office for 28 of the past 40 years.
The PNP not a par­ty to miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty, clear­ly sees this mar­i­jua­na sub­ject as anoth­er water­shed issue which will cement their hold on pow­er exponentially.
Unfortunately for the Opposition JLP there is not much it can do from the pow­er­less oppo­si­tion benches.

We live in an evolv­ing glob­al­ized world, as such nations now adhere to sim­i­lar prin­ci­ples and rules as part of a broad­er International com­mu­ni­ty. Nations in their own inter­ests , sign onto Charters as a sign that they are part of the com­mu­ni­ty of nations. Unfortunately many small­er nations which sign these char­ters do so not because they agree in prin­ci­ple with what’s in the char­ter, but because they are lit­er­al­ly forced to.
No nation should be forced to adhere to prin­ci­ples that it feel is anti­thet­i­cal to it’s core beliefs for the sake of expe­di­en­cy. This is true in Jamaica’s case, because of it’s size, or lack there­of, and it’s inabil­i­ty to sus­tain itself financially .

Jamaica has been deal­ing with this on the issue of Homosexuality.
The Jamaican peo­ple are large­ly opposed to the prac­tice of same sex relationships.
Jamaican law makes it a crime for two men to engage in sex­u­al inter­course , con­sen­su­al or not.
However it would be a tremen­dous stretch to find a case where any­one was ever arrest­ed ‚much less pros­e­cut­ed for engag­ing in homo­sex­u­al acts.
The International com­mu­ni­ty , large­ly west­ern Europe and the United States ‚are vehe­ment­ly opposed to Jamaica’s bug­gery laws. Jamaica has been under tremen­dous pres­sure from these quar­ters to abol­ish the bug­gery laws from its penal code.
What the pro­po­nents of legal­ized homo­sex­u­al­i­ty do not real­ize is that you can­not leg­is­late peo­ple’s attitudes.
If peo­ple’s atti­tudes could be leg­is­lat­ed Racism would be a thing of the past in America. Unfortunately despite numer­ous Federal statutes on the sub­ject of racism, that vise is just as preva­lent as when King and oth­ers marched for social jus­tice 50 years ago.

Despite prob­lems in their own coun­tries on the issue of homo­sex­u­al accep­tance and police bru­tal­i­ty, the United States and Western European Nations have tak­en it upon them­selves to dic­tate to small­er more depen­dent nations like Jamaica, how their laws ought to be con­fig­ured on these issues.
No nation could begin to dic­tate to the United States or any European nation what their laws should be , or how they should be tailored.
Nevertheless Canada the United States and Britain have engaged in a sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern of assum­ing to dic­tate to Jamaica what it’s laws ought to be on the issues of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and alleged police abuse.
Canada has even threat­ened eco­nom­ic ter­ror­ism on the Jamaican econ­o­my in the past. We have report­ed on this in this very medi­um. Bruce Golding for­mer Jamaican Prime Minister found him­self forced from office under the guise that he did not release a sus­pect the United States want­ed. The truth is Golding was set up to fall on the very issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty when he answered “not in my cab­i­net” to a British Journalist’s ques­tion on whether he would allow Gays to serve in his Government.

At the United Nations’ work­ing group’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR)of its human rights record, Mark Golding Jamaica’s Justice Minister point­ed to our coun­try’s long and cher­ished his­to­ry of pro­mot­ing and pro­tect­ing human rights”.
This was not enough for the large inter­na­tion­al bul­lies in attendance .
The Americans want Jamaica to “decrim­i­nal­ize con­sen­su­al same-sex con­duct between adults”.
Britain wants the “intro­duc­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion to include sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gender”.
“Sweden rec­om­mends the Government of Jamaica repeal the legal pro­vi­sions mak­ing same-sex inti­ma­cy among men — described as ‘gross inde­cen­cy and bug­gery’ — illegal,”

Australia had strong words on the lev­el of police killings in Jamaica, although wel­com­ing the estab­lish­ment of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) in 2011 to inves­ti­gate these killings.“Australia rec­om­mends Jamaica give INDECOM the pow­er it needs to inves­ti­gate crim­i­nal acts com­mit­ted by the police,” said the Australian mis­sion to the UN.
This how­ev­er has to take the cake:
The US also had a rec­om­men­da­tion for the Jamaican Government regard­ing “exces­sive or unlaw­ful use of force” by both the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Jamaica Defence Force. Its rep­re­sen­ta­tives sug­gest­ed inten­si­fied efforts to inves­ti­gate those alle­ga­tions, as well as to ensure pros­e­cu­tion where appropriate.
Are the Americans seri­ous when they dare to make these sug­ges­tions? And where is Golding while these acts of unmit­i­gat­ed pre­sump­tu­ous­ness are being per­pet­u­at­ed? Did he just sit there with­out pre­sent­ing facts and fig­ures to push back against the unmit­i­gat­ed gall of the conferees?
Did Golding just sit there like a petu­lant child absorb­ing chas­tise­ment by the cadre of hyp­o­crit­i­cal pharisees?

Frankly as Jamaicans we do not care what Sweden or Australia, think period .
It would be wise, pru­dent and indeed advis­able if the pompous same-sex-lov­ing Brits would con­tem­plate pay­ing Jamaicans for the hun­dreds of years of slav­ery and the unimag­in­able pogrom it vis­it­ed on our ancestors.
Since they have no moral com­pass and sub­se­quent­ly will not pay, nei­ther will they for­give any of Jamaica’s debt they are hold­ing, Jamaicans should not be par­tic­u­lar­ly mind­ful of what they believe.
When the time comes that us Jamaicans can dic­tate how much resti­tu­tion they pay us for slav­ery , maybe that will be a time when we con­sid­er what they think.

The Americans for their part, has got to be the most laugh­able in their demands. Have they no shame?
Why would the United States even attempt to speak to any oth­er nation on the issue of dis­crim­i­na­tion or police abuse?
The Nation the United States, was built on Segregation, manipulation,discrimination,and intim­i­da­tion. I could sym­pa­thize with America’s lec­tur­ing oth­er coun­tries had she man­aged to extri­cate and remove her­self from the 400 year-old premise of Caucasian superiority.
The fact is she has­n’t , as such she has no moral author­i­ty to lec­ture anyone.
Every year thou­sands of Americans are killed under dubi­ous cir­cum­stances by America’s thou­sands of police forces. Victims are gen­er­al­ly Blacks, Latinos, and poor whites.
In fact no one even knows the true num­ber of peo­ple killed by police across the coun­try. There are no true audit or require­ments which would give an accu­rate account of the exact numbers.
The ACLU report­ed that through exhaus­tive dig­ging it ascer­tained that for the month of January 2015 over 200 peo­ple were killed by police in the the United States.

As we pre­pare this Article , res­i­dents in Cleveland are ral­ly­ing against a Judge’s rul­ing set­ting free a cop who was among a group who gave chase to an African-American cou­ple in their old­er mod­el car. Police fired over 147 bul­lets into the car. The cop in ques­tion fired 49 bul­lets ‚many after the car had stopped, he jumped onto the hood of the car emp­ty­ing two clips into the couple.
Prosecutors argued he used the cou­ple for tar­get practice.
The cou­ple had no weapon, their crime was that their car back­fired as they drove pass police headquarters.
The judge ruled that because the pros­e­cu­tor could not prove that the accused cop’s bul­lets actu­al­ly were the bul­lets which end­ed the cou­ple’s lives, he would not find him guilty.
Yes they stretch the law to pro­tect their own.
All across America Racial ani­mus is on the rise. The homo­sex­u­al­i­ty issue is still not set­tled. The Supreme Court is yet to rule on the Constitutionality of same-sex-mar­riage. Many States are push­ing back hard against the Obama Administration’s push to force them to accept and agree to Sodomy.

Jamaica should not change any of it’s laws to accom­mo­date or facil­i­tate any coun­try which takes it onto them­selves to dic­tate the way her laws are con­fig­ured. Jamaica’s Homosexuals are sub­ject to the same laws and pro­tec­tion as every­one else. Jamaica has a far way to go in the equi­table and fair dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice . So too does the United States, Britain, Canada, and all of the others.
Let all nations fix their own unjust sys­tems and prac­tices before they point fingers.
Despite Jamaica’s size she has an envi­able record of deal­ing cor­dial­ly and just with all of it’s cit­i­zens, can any of the big bul­lies say the same?

Have you ever won­dered why Police abuse and kill peo­ple and there nev­er seem to be redress or a seri­ous attempt to cease and desist from those practices ?
Here’s what Commissioner William Bratton the leader of the NYPD, the world’s largest police depart­ment had to say about film­ing cops who abuse citizens.

“The cam­eras are every­where, but when they start lit­er­al­ly get­ting in your face, inter­rupt­ing arrests, it starts to become prob­lem­at­ic,”. Bratton spoke crit­i­cal­ly about the prac­tice of film­ing police

encoun­ters, say­ing it is often “agi­tat­ing sit­u­a­tions.”Bratton was speak­ing at The Atlantic’s “New York Ideas” symposium.
This com­ment is the most brain-dead as well as tone-deaf thing that Bratton could have said on the issue, and you know what in most cas­es it’s a total lie.
Police gen­er­al­ly are opposed to being filmed when they oper­ate. Even though cit­i­zens are well with­ing their legal rights to film police action as long as film­ing does not place offi­cers in dan­ger or hin­der their work.Generally police quick­ly estab­lish a perime­ter when they oper­ate, this they usu­al­ly do to pre­vent peo­ple film­ing them.
They are gen­er­al­ly abu­sive and abra­sive when they do. So Bratton’s com­ments have no basis in fact.

Bratton’s com­ments are par­tic­u­lar­ly appalling in light of a litany of police killings and abuse of cit­i­zens many of which are right there in the behe­moth New York Police Department which seem to be a de-fac­to gov­ern­ment in the city all by itself, answer­able to no one.
Rather than mov­ing to trans­form the way his agency is per­ceived , Bratton’s com­ments indi­cate a dou­bling-down on abro­gat­ing the rights of citizens.

In a state­ment, Loyda Colon, co-direc­tor of The Justice Committee, called Bratton’s remarks “out­ra­geous and offen­sive.” Colon not­ed that The Justice Committee “encour­ages all New Yorkers to sup­port pub­lic safe­ty by watch­ing and film­ing police activ­i­ty as a means of deter­ring and doc­u­ment­ing abuse, a prac­tice we call ‘Cop Watch.’ ” “Bratton’s mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of this prac­tice rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about why he wants to avoid pub­lic scruti­ny and demon­strates his unwill­ing­ness to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for his offi­cers’ dis­re­spect of and vio­lence against our com­mu­ni­ties,” Colon added.

Bratton is engaged in clas­sic blam­ing of the vic­tim, the absur­di­ty of those com­ments ought to give every sane per­son, even the most ardent cop-apol­o­gist seri­ous pause.

Every per­son has a fun­da­men­tal right to film or pho­to­graph events occur­ring in pub­lic. No per­son can have an expec­ta­tion of pri­va­cy while in pub­lic spaces.
Cops gen­er­al­ly see them­selves above the laws , yet these rules apply to them also.
Police have wide lat­i­tude to do their jobs. They are vest­ed with fright­en­ing pow­ers includ­ing the pow­er to take life.
They have pow­er to arrest any­one who gets in their way while they are car­ry­ing out their law­ful duties. Obstruction of Governmental Administration is pun­ish­able by up to a year in jail. For defen­dants arrest­ed in New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island), this sen­tence will be served on the infa­mous Rikers Island.
Cops gen­er­al­ly tack on the charge of resist­ing arrest for good mea­sure when charg­ing “Obstruction “. The resist­ing charge gen­er­al­ly car­ry the same penalty .
Fortunately for many arrest­ed by NYPD cops, some Judges are able to see through the lies.
Fair judges cor­rect­ly dis­miss the resist­ing charge, oth­ers in the pock­ets of the police union don’t.
In many instances NYPD cops charge sus­pects with resist­ing arrest with­out a sup­port­ing charge that neces­si­tat­ed the arrest in the first instance.

Why then is Bratton and his boys opposed to being filmed?
For the sim­ple rea­son that they will not be able to use those lies to incar­cer­ate peo­ple they don’t like or deem trou­ble makers.
Incredibly the res­i­dents of NYC are inclined to believe the police depart­ment is work­ing to trans­form itself from a good ‑old-boys net­work of blue-clad thugs who inher­it the job passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Some res­i­dents actu­al­ly believe that the depart­ment no longer beat and kill peo­ple unlaw­ful­ly. Some are inclined to believe that they do not plant evi­dence, sum­mar­i­ly lie and fal­si­fy reports. Some actu­al­ly believe these guys are work­ing in their interest.
The fact is for a large cross-sec­tion of the city the only cops they see are the abu­sive crim­i­nal cops who show them no respect. Bill Bratton was just in front of the city coun­cil ask­ing for an addi­tion­al 1000 cops to add to the over 35,000 stand­ing army he present­ly have under his con­trol. Many in the city coun­cil are quite will­ing to add anoth­er 1000 blue clad un-account­able cops to the mam­moth army that is already on the city’s payroll.

If you thought Bratton was done you are wrong he went on to say quote :
“There are so many cop-haters out there. Everybody wants to get that cam­era out, and not record the good things that are hap­pen­ing. They are all try­ing to incite or record an offi­cer step­ping out of line.”

Are you kid­ding me ? Of course it’s about record­ing them step­ping out of line.
Why would Bratton not see a prob­lem with cops step­ping out of line?
Fix your cops com­mis­sion­er, and stop wor­ry­ing about cit­i­zens engag­ing in their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed func­tion of film­ing them to ensure that peo­ple’s rights are protected .

Cops on the beat do what they are told to do. They hear the con­ver­sa­tions from their seniors at the precinct lev­el , they hear from their union and they sure as hell hear from their bosses.
In a city run by a Mayor and not the Police depart­ment, the Mayor would be all over these unsa­vory , ill-advised and das­tard­ly com­ments from a police chief whose offi­cers are fre­quent­ly being accused of exces­sive use of force.
Unfortunately de Blasio can­not get involved in dis­ci­plin­ing Bratton his sub­or­di­nate. After all it was Bratton who gave him cov­er recent­ly when the two cops were killed in Queens. NYPD’s finest staged a insur­rec­tion which start­ed with them turn­ing their backs on him.
It took Bratton to smooth things over, since then deBlasio can­not extri­cate his nose from the rear end of the police department.
Mayor de Balasio is not about to chas­tise Bratton , on that we are sure.

NYPD Commissioner William Bratton was heck­led as he asked the New York City Council for mon­ey to hire 1,000 more cops.
Mayor de Blasio $78.3 bil­lion dol­lar bud­get did not include any mon­ey for new hires. The strength of the NYPD present­ly stands at about 35,0000 cops. de Blasio’s argu­ments for not imme­di­ate­ly adding more cops is that the dra­mat­ic drop in stop-and-frisk frees up cops to tack­le more seri­ous issues.
I would argue it would prob­a­bly be more effec­tive­ly in reduc­ing poten­tial­ly volatile sit­u­a­tions between com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and the mas­sive police army which is the New York City Police Department.

Some crit­ics argue that low lev­el crimes are down and rather than adding cops the depart­ment should be

reduc­ing the size of the depart­ment. The New Daily news reports that over­all, crime in the city is down 7%, includ­ing a 10% decrease in the city’s hous­ing projects, where crime had jumped 31% from 2009 through 2013. But vio­lent crime is up city­wide. There have been 115 mur­ders, a 12.7% increase over the 102 killings that hap­pened by this date in 2014. According to the Ministry of National Security’s web­site the The Establishment of the JCF is 9930 plus fifty five (55) super­nu­mer­ary posi­tions mak­ing a total of 9985, but the cur­rent strength is 8441.

New York City has a pop­u­la­tion of 8 mil­lion peo­ple of vary­ing back­grounds. The city is the world’s largest. Statistics show seri­ous crimes trend­ing upward with homi­cides been 115 a 12.7% increase over the 102 killings that hap­pened by the cor­re­spond­ing date in 2014.
Jamaica has a pop­u­la­tion of 2.8 mil­lion and a land mass of 4411 square miles. I recent­ly wrote that the Jamaica Constabulary Force can do a bet­ter job despite the woe­ful inad­e­qua­cies it has to deal with from those in the polit­i­cal direc­torate. According to the US State Department, Jamaica’s per capi­ta mur­der rate remains high, at 37 per 100,000; there are only six coun­tries where the most recent inter­na­tion­al­ly report­ed mur­der rate exceeds this fig­ure. The police are only able to resolve (make arrests) in 45 per­cent of homi­cides annu­al­ly, and they only con­vict per­pe­tra­tors in sev­en per­cent of the homi­cide cases.

All things con­sid­ered, we believe the Jamaica Constabulary can do a bet­ter job , despite the lim­i­ta­tions and lack of resources. The Department must man­age it’s most valu­able resource , (it’s offi­cers ) in ways which are more pro­duc­tive, giv­ing cit­i­zens bet­ter val­ue for mon­ey. This builds trust between the com­mu­ni­ties and the Police, some­thing which is a must, as both par­ties need each other.
Recently I read that Commissioner Carl Williams demand­ed that mem­bers refrain from wear­ing oth­er gar­ments which are not depart­ment issue. For those not in the “know” that means, offi­cers gen­er­al­ly wear the more com­fort­able and prac­ti­cal den­im work clothes and a peak cap , much like the ones worn by swat or spe­cial police teams the world over.

In defense of the rank-and-file, offi­cers who have to ride hors­es, motor-cycles- or give foot chase to crim­i­nals can­not effec­tive­ly do so wear­ing a sil­ly pair of pants with a cum­mer­bund. The fact that some­one stu­pid­ly came up with that as a prac­ti­cal work dress does not mean that the depart­ment must con­tin­ue on with that mind-bog­gling lunacy.
How about giv­ing offi­cers com­fort­able clothing?

This is up to the Government, peo­ple pro­duce when they are made to believe they mat­ter. Change the imprac­ti­cal colo­nial dress and bring the depart­ment into the 21^st cen­tu­ry. It should not be too dif­fi­cult in light of the salary they are paid. If offi­cers have decent dress which the high com­mand insist on, they will wear them. While you are at it put all gazetted offi­cers in the same prac­ti­cal work uni­form and trash the skirts women wear. Every woman who joins the depart­ment should wear pants, skirts are impractical.

As I stat­ed before, retrain­ing is crit­i­cal. The train­ing the Academy has is imprac­ti­cal, out­dat­ed and inef­fec­tive. I must con­fess I am a not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ver­sant with every aspect of the present training

cur­ricu­lum. What I do know is that I have seen more than enough cas­es where sev­er­al offi­cers stand around as a col­league strug­gles with a sus­pect he is try­ing to place under arrest.
In oth­er cas­es I have seen female offi­cers who offer zero help to her male col­league who is being assault­ed in the process of effect­ing an arrest. Either you are a cop or you are not.
What kind of train­ing allows this? It mat­ters not that you may teach prop­er tech­niques and pro­to­cols at the Academy, if offi­cers are not uti­liz­ing them ‚there is some­thing wrong with the train­ing. It is a failure.
Could it be that offi­cers fear get­ting involved because they do not want to end up on sus­pen­sion for doing their jobs?
Maybe !!!

If so, that is some­thing Commissioner Williams needs to address with the nation’s Parliament. Police over­sight is crit­i­cal, it can­not be crippling.

Many of my read­ers did not exact­ly agree with the assess­ment of my pre­vi­ous Article that mem­bers of the JCF can do more. I have con­sis­tent­ly argued that it can be done because we did it before, with high­ly mea­sur­able success.
Jamaican cops are not the only cops fac­ing bud­getary or man­pow­er cuts. At the same time offi­cers must see them­selves as deliv­er­ers of a service.
Security deliv­ery is a ser­vice, offi­cers from Carl Williams on down must see them­selves as in the busi­ness of secu­ri­ty deliver.
Each offi­cer must ask him/​herself whether he/​she is giv­ing the pub­lic val­ue for money?

It real­ly does not take much to under­stand that peo­ple are the same regard­less of color.
Me I’m just a guy who will tell you what I believe, yet respect your right to believe what you believe.
I believe God cre­at­ed this plan­et and all oth­er plan­ets and galax­ies. I know that some­thing does not come from nothing.
God alone cre­ates stuff from noth­ing, he cre­at­ed not just us but even the great unknown galax­ies of which we can only imagine.
I under­stand that peo­ple regard­less of col­or, are sim­ply peo­ple. Like flow­ers in a Meadow, blue , white , black, yel­low.….. flow­ers all.
Like Cattle, black, white, brown,.….… cat­tle all.
Like the birds, green yel­low, blue, white black, mul­ti-hued, a beau­ti­ful cor­nu­copia of bril­liance. God cre­at­ed them all, a Rainbow of beau­ty, all part of his mag­nif­i­cent, grace and love.
The blood we give is not sep­a­rat­ed by col­or , it is red.
The blood we receive in life sav­ing sit­u­a­tions is dis­tin­guished by type.
When we receive it we nev­er won­der whose life-sav­ing blood did I receive?
Was it black blood or white blood, was it Jewish or Arabic, was it Asian or Latino?
We nev­er do because in the great scheme of things it does not mat­ter, we received blood.
What we are hap­py about is that through the kind­ness of those who donate, the won­ders of mod­ern Science and the gra­cious­ness of God, we get a sec­ond chance at life.
Trust me I should know.

So what is it then which make some peo­ple believe they are supe­ri­or to others?
To ful­ly grasp the depth of this issue we must first accept that some peo­ple do not believe they should

com­pete on a lev­el play­ing field. They believe in hav­ing a leg up, being giv­en a jump-start ahead of the pack.
This goes to the heart of white enti­tle­ment in America. It’s the per­va­sive attach­ment it feels to white privilege.
More than half a cen­tu­ry after Malcolm X and Dr. King were forcibly removed from the stage for shin­ing a light on America’s igno­ble affin­i­ty for injus­tice, the prob­lem of Racism in America is more entrenched than ever.
Racism is not some­thing peo­ple are born with. It is learned behav­ior. What that means is that in homes all across America peo­ple do and say things to their chil­dren which per­pet­u­ates the belief that some­how white peo­ple have some genet­ic or bio­log­i­cal trait which make them supe­ri­or to oth­er races, more impor­tant­ly the Black race.
Those are the very peo­ple who say Black peo­ple make every­thing about race , even as they are the great­est ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the entrenched built-in inequities with­in the system.
Those are they who will point to President Obama’s Presidency. There is a black guy in the White House, what more do you peo­ple want.

The fact is , Obama was elect­ed President of the United States because of the pop­u­lous Democratic Northern States, the Pacific North west and California, geo­graph­ic areas with rich diverse populations

and a bonan­za of elec­toral votes.
Obama received less than 7% of the vote in some coun­ties of sev­er­al south­ern states and in oth­er areas of the coun­try , where appar­ent­ly they haven’t received the memo it is the 21 century.

It is clear to assume that in many of these coun­ties Obama did not receive a sin­gle white vote.
So lets dis­pense with the absurd lie that he was over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed and re-elect­ed on the white vote.
True lots of decent white peo­ple vot­ed for the President, but he swept to pow­er on an avalanche of hope , opti­mism and pride felt in a lot of peo­ple of col­or and vary­ing spe­cial defin­ing characteristics.
Bottom line, Obama was elect­ed twice on the strength of the vote of intel­li­gent edu­cat­ed white kids, an out­pour­ing of black, and Latino votes, women Gays , and oth­er minori­ties. His vic­to­ries had noth­ing to do with old­er whites hav­ing a come to Jesus moment real­iz­ing that Racism is utter­ly stu­pid, weak-mind­ed and pathetic.
Nevertheless whites con­tin­ued to per­pet­u­ate the myth that they are supe­ri­or by point­ing to cer­tain areas.
What they for­get to tell you is that the rea­son they were ahead in those areas was because they owned the ball, they made the rules and the con­trolled the Refs.
They nev­er both­er to men­tion that the con­di­tions they cre­at­ed makes it almost impos­si­ble for blacks to win.

If you did­n’t know bet­ter you would think whites were bet­ter box­ers until Max Schmeling found him­self on his back look­ing up at the rafters with the birds swirling around whistling in his head.
They were bet­ter at base­ball until blacks got a toe-hold dom­i­nat­ed it and pret­ty much walked away from it.
They were bet­ter at bas­ket­ball until .….
Well they were nev­er bet­ter. Once they let our peo­ple in it was a wrap… Basketball does not require expen­sive Gymnasiums, black kids play in the streets.
They were bet­ter at Golf until Tiger.
They were bet­ter at Tennis until Arthur Ashe and Mister Williams decid­ed his two lit­tle girls were going to play Tennis and they were going to be good at it.
They were bet­ter at ice-hock­ey , well they don’t build any hock­ey rinks in the hood.
They are bet­ter at swim­ming yet they do not build swim­ming pools in the hood either.
The White House was the epit­o­me of white dom­i­nance and superiority.
Then came Barack !!!
It is immoral and disin­gen­u­ous to kill the fathers then laugh at the father-less children.

They are bet­ter intel­lec­tu­al­ly. What they fail to men­tion was that not to long in the past , blacks would be killed if they were caught reading.
Once blacks emerged from that they were not allowed into good schools.
When the Federal Government said “Oh yes you must co-exist in the same Schools” it required Federal troops to make it a reality

It is immoral when you cre­ate the envi­ron­ment in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem which crim­i­nal­izes the young black men you hate, then make laws which says “Oh you can­not be a lawyer , you can’t be a Judge because you have a record”. Oh and you can’t get a job, because of your incarceration>
Ps. One more thing you can­not vote either.
Welcome to the prison Industrial complex.

But moral­i­ty and hon­or were nev­er guid­ing prin­ci­ples of those who sought to place them­selves above oth­ers ‚cit­ing fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter­is­tics they them­selves created.
The press­ing issue of the day is Police aggres­sion against young Black men.
The fact is that Police aggres­sion is not exclu­sive to black peo­ple. It may be exam­ined in the con­text of the per­cent­age of Blacks in the Population and the num­ber of Blacks who find them­selves suf­fer­ing incred­i­ble pain at the hands of Police.
It is also of incred­i­ble sig­nif­i­cance that we take keen note of the bla­tant dis­crep­an­cy in the way events are processed and report­ed in the Media.
Importantly is the response of law enforce­ment to sit­u­a­tions in the Black com­mu­ni­ty when com­pared to sim­i­lar or worse sit­u­a­tions in the white community.

As far as report­ing goes many peo­ple have already dis­card­ed what we know as the main stream media, replac­ing them with up to the sec­ond report­ing made pos­si­ble social media and the Internet.
Now peo­ple receive images and audio in the most organ­ic untouched form.
No longer are we forced to wait until the cor­po­rate media feeds us what they want us to hear , watered down and sprin­kled with what they want us to think.
Why then despite what we see in front of our eyes are white peo­ple detached from the killings and abuse?
Why do they defend the police regard­less of the evidence?
They do because every ille­gal action by the police to a per­son of col­or is in fur­ther­ance of white supremacy.
They will tell you they are not racists , they will even tell you they do not ask for any spe­cial privileges.

What they can­not tell you is that the do not ben­e­fit from it !
Every-time a cop ask a Black man what he’s doing in a cer­tain area deemed a white area, he is enforc­ing white supremacy.
These injus­tices can­not be pinned to police offi­cers alone.
They are per­va­sive in Housing . Education. The crim­i­nal Justice sys­tem. Banking. The Health Sector. Government.
Institutionalized one-up-man-ship is built into the sys­tem, whether whites want it, ask for it or not, they ben­e­fit from it.
They know it , they believe in it and they will not give it up with­out a fight. It’s the only way they have ever know, com­pet­ing on a play­ing field con­struct­ed to suit and ben­e­fit them.

The issue of police killings have dom­i­nat­ed the news for well over a year.
In the age of social-media which makes dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion as easy as the press of a button,each and every case is ampli­fied which in turn cre­ates more anx­i­ety and anger toward the police.
On these pages we have not been shy in div­ing into what we believe are clear instances of state abuse of cit­i­zens through their agents the police.
Decency and moral­i­ty dic­tate that con­sci­en­tious peo­ple stand on the side of what’s right. It is only when we speak out against injus­tice, stare it down, that we may elim­i­nate it from among our midst and cre­ate a bet­ter world in the process.

President Obama, through exec­u­tive order has banned the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from pro­vid­ing cer­tain mil­i­tary equip­ment to police depart­ments. Effective imme­di­ate­ly, the gov­ern­ment will no longer pro­vide local law enforce­ment with armored vehi­cles, grenade launch­ers and bay­o­nets. Other items like explo­sives and riot equip­ment will be trans­ferred to police only if they pro­vide addi­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and assur­ances that the gear will be used responsibly.

The pres­i­den­t’s action is part of a broad­er effort to relieve ten­sions between law enforce­ment and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties after the deaths of sev­er­al black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore; and oth­er cities. In Ferguson, for exam­ple, local police rolled out armored tanks and riot gear in response to protests over the 2014 death of Michael Brown, a reac­tion that many saw as mak­ing the sit­u­a­tion dra­mat­i­cal­ly worse.

“The idea is to make sure that we strike a bal­ance in pro­vid­ing the equip­ment, which is appro­pri­ate and use­ful and impor­tant for local law enforce­ment agen­cies to keep the com­mu­ni­ty safe, while at the same time putting stan­dards in place so that there’s a clear rea­son for the trans­fer of that equip­ment, that there’s clear train­ing and safe­ty pro­ce­dures in place,” White House Director of Domestic Policy Cecilia Muñoz said in a Sunday call with reporters. Huffpost​.com.

I would be remiss if I did not address some of the behav­ior of young black men even as these trans­for­ma­tion­al changes are occurring.
Yes there is insti­tu­tion­al­ized Racism in America.

Yes the Justice sys­tem is slant­ed toward cer­tain peo­ple and against oth­ers, we get that.
Yes many cops are hor­ri­ble crea­tures who should nev­er ever don a uniform.
But the real­i­ty is that too many young African American men walk around look­ing for trouble.
As a small busi­ness own­er in small town America no one sees this more than I do.
Not all police offi­cers are monsters
Not all young black men are evil crea­tures to be put down .
But far too many place them­selves in posi­tions where they believe oth­ers will be intim­i­dat­ed by them.
We saw Michael Brown strong arm the store clerk.
No, the offi­cer did not see him do it , he was not aware of it when he came in con­tact with him.
However we did see Michael Brown strong-arm the clerk, we can­not pre­tend it did not happen.
It can­not be par for the course . It can­not be the way things work.

If you fan­cy your­self a thug, and a gang­ster, believ­ing the world owe you some­thing you may just run

into some­one who ain’t hav­ing it .
We hear much talk about jobs and opportunities.
Opportunities will come to those who are actu­al­ly look­ing to make some­thing of their lives.
Far too many young black men are inter­est­ed in sell­ing drugs as a way of life.
It mat­ters not how low the unem­ploy­ment num­bers are, they will always be out of a legit­i­mate job because they do not want a job.
They would much rather walk around in packs cre­at­ing mis­chief and resist­ing arrest when cops attempt to arrest them.Here’s hop­ing that the mas­sive mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police depart­ments will stop.
Here’s hop­ing more cops drop the brava­do and stop act­ing like their neigh­bors are a for­eign enemy.
Here’s hop­ing that the sys­tem of jus­tice will become fair, more just.
Here’s hop­ing that the pres­i­den­t’s lat­est move will have some mea­sur­able effect.
It is not a panacea but it is a step in the right direction

Pope Francis can­on­ized two Palestinian Nuns to the cha­grin of Zionist Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Marie Alphonsine Ghattas – to be known as St Marie Alphonsine – was born in Jerusalem and ded­i­cat­ed her life to women’s edu­ca­tion and left behind a net­work of con­vents, schools and reli­gious cen­tres, known as the Rosary Sisters. She died, aged 80, in British Mandate Palestine in 1927. Mariam Bauardy Haddad, was born in the vil­lage of Ibillin in what is now Israel’s Galilee region in 1846 and died in Bethlehem in1878. She estab­lished a Carmelite con­vent in Bethlehem which still exists today.

The Vatican con­firmed it had con­clud­ed a treaty which effec­tive­ly recog­nis­es Palestinian state­hood, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from Israel, which says such recog­ni­tion pre­empts essen­tial peace negotiations.
Only there are no peace nego­ti­a­tions. On the eve of the March 17^th Israeli Elections, Netanyahu out-right­ly stat­ed there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.
Former President Jimmy Carter a tire­less cam­paign­er for peace, dur­ing and since leav­ing office has long dis­missed the war­mon­ger­ing Netanyahu as a viable part­ner for peace.
As far as Netanyahu is con­cerned the Palestinian peo­ple should hang in lim­bo for­ev­er with­out a homeland.
Both women have been can­on­ized in hon­or of mir­a­cles said to have been attrib­uted to prayers made to them after their deaths. Some prac­tices of the Christian church con­tin­ue to defy log­ic, com­mon sense, or the­o­log­i­cal precedence.
Informed peo­ple today know the dead has no pow­er to answer prayers or do any­thing else for that mat­ter. Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, so does Pope Francis. So lets dis­pense with the fairy-tales and deal with the politics.

Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians must know that hav­ing this Pope on their side means poten­tial­ly hav­ing rough­ly 1.1 bil­lion Catholics sym­pa­thet­ic to their cause with anoth­er 14 mil­lion con­verts annually.
Going to the Vatican as a path to State-hood , sym­bol­ic or not, is a shrewd tac­ti­cal move by Abbas and the Palestinians . This move caus­es Netanyahu a great deal of con­ster­na­tion and heart-burn.
In response to the Vatican’s Treaty rec­og­niz­ing Palestinian Statehood, Benjamin Netanyahu said Jerusalem has his­tor­i­cal­ly only been the cap­i­tal of the Jewish peo­ple, and so it will remain, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Sunday at the gov­ern­men­t’s offi­cial Jerusalem Day Ceremony at Ammunition Hill.
Jerusalem is also cen­tral to the Palestinians accord­ing to the ADL. For the Palestinians, Jerusalem, or al-Quds, will be the cap­i­tal of the future Palestinian state, bas­ing their claim on reli­gion, his­to­ry and their demo­graph­ic pres­ence in the city.
Palestinians point to their large, long pres­ence in Jerusalem, which cur­rent­ly con­sti­tutes 30 per­cent of the city’s pop­u­la­tion. Religiously, Palestinians lay claim to Muslim holy sites (in con­flict with Jordanian claims), as well as those holy to Palestinian Christians.

Based on these two dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppos­ing per­spec­tives there will be no meet­ing of the minds between Israelis and Palestinians unless some­one changes their mind.
In the mean­time Israel is rapid­ly build­ing more and more set­tle­ments against the wish­es of even their great­est backer and bene­fac­tor the United States and some European countries.
Of course Netanyahu’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the land-grab is that any space left by Israel will be filled by rad­i­cal Islam, backed by Iran.
Using the term Radical Islam, effec­tive­ly reduces every Palestinian man ‚woman and child to a Terrorist which must be con­tained and terminated.
Ironically, the rea­son the Palestinians are using crude weapons to fight against Israel’s mighty 21^st cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary, is exact­ly because of Israel’s occu­pa­tion and con­tin­ued annex­a­tion of their land since 1947.

The European Union which most­ly con­sists of right-wing Governments with the excep­tion of France and a few oth­ers post­poned a vote to rec­og­nize Palestine as a state late last year. Pressure from their oppo­si­tions forced their hand after Sweden vot­ed to rec­og­nize Palestine as a state. Lawmakers failed to reach a con­sen­sus on the exact word­ing of the motion, sources in Israel and Europe said.
Though buoyed by the post­pone­ment Netanyahu blast­ed the Swedes stat­ing quote.  “This is what is going to pro­duce peace? To ask Israel to put the sub­urbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the hands of Islamic mil­i­tants? This is irre­spon­si­ble. It’s not con­ducive to peace,”.

Israel’s ambas­sador to the UN, Ron Prosor, launched a bit­ter attack against Europe for sup­port­ing uni­lat­er­al Palestinian state­hood. “Israel is tired of hol­low promis­es from European lead­ers,” he told del­e­gates the UN General Assembly dur­ing a dis­cus­sion on the Palestinian ques­tion. “The Jewish peo­ple have a long mem­o­ry. We will nev­er ever for­get that you failed us in the 1940s. You failed us in 1973. And you are fail­ing us again today.”

Every European par­lia­ment vot­ing to rec­og­nize a Palestinian state “is giv­ing the Palestinians exact­ly what they want — state­hood with­out peace,” he said. “By hand­ing them a state on a sil­ver plat­ter, you are reward­ing uni­lat­er­al actions and tak­ing away any incen­tive for the Palestinians to nego­ti­ate or com­pro­mise or renounce vio­lence. You are send­ing the mes­sage that the Palestinian Authority can sit in a gov­ern­ment with ter­ror­ists and incite vio­lence against Israel with­out pay­ing any price.”

In an usu­al­ly harsh tirade, Prosor lam­bast­ed Sweden for hav­ing rec­og­nized a Palestinian state. “The Swedish gov­ern­ment may host the Nobel Prize cer­e­mo­ny, but there is noth­ing noble about their cyn­i­cal polit­i­cal cam­paign to appease the Arabs in order to get a seat on the Security Council,” he said. Stockholm has shown “no sense, no sen­si­tiv­i­ty and no sen­si­bil­i­ty. Just non­sense,” he said.

Notwithstanding on Wednesday December 17^th 2014 the vote came on the same day as a meet­ing of sig­na­to­ries to the Geneva con­ven­tions warned that Israel must respect inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law in the occu­pied Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries. The rare inter­na­tion­al meet­ing in Switzerland of the high con­tract­ing par­ties to the Geneva con­ven­tions was boy­cotted by Israel, the US, Canada and Australia. In a fur­ther upset for Israel, the EU’s sec­ond-high­est court ordered the removal of Hamas from a ter­ror­ist black­list, cit­ing legal prob­lems with the list­ing, though it added that the Islamist group’s assets would remain frozen for three months pend­ing an almost cer­tain appeal.

Once again the United States allowed it’s loy­al­ties to the Zionist State to trump whats right. For decades Israel strength­ened by the United States and oth­er west­ern nations, have cir­cum­vent­ed International laws which oth­er nations are required to abide by.
It is time that Israel end it’s occu­pa­tion and quit pre­tend­ing that the tram­pled Palestinian peo­ple are a real threat to it’s sov­er­eign­ty and survival.
Israel, based on the strength of it’s mon­ey and pow­er­ful friends is assured sur­vival. It is disin­gen­u­ous to per­pet­u­ate the myth that Israel’s great con­cern is Palestinian refusal to rec­og­nize it’s right to exist.
Hopefully this Vatican char­ter though not a panacea, will be one more step to full recog­ni­tion for the right of the Palestinian peo­ple to emerge from under the boots of Israel’s apartheid dominance.

The Jamaica Gleaner report­ed that the PNP affil­i­at­ed Clansman crim­i­nal gang is suck­ing the life-blood out of legit­i­mate busi­ness­es in the nation’s old cap­i­tal of Spanish Town.
The report con­ced­ed that the reign of ter­ror is not con­fined to Spanish Town but has woven it’s way to Half-Way- Tree and Portmore.
Okay so this is not news, we are mere­ly regur­gi­tat­ing old news because the sit­u­a­tion is so dire.
In it’s Saturday Editorial the Gleaner bemoans the fact that the police know who the crim­i­nals are, know approx­i­mate­ly how much mon­ey they are suck­ing out of busi­ness-peo­ple yet they take no action.

I wrote yes­ter­day about police com­mis­sion­er Carl Williams com­ments that police inef­fi­cien­cy is to be blamed for some of the nation’s crime prob­lems. We were less than rev­er­en­tial to the good­ly Dr, Williams’ com­ments, because we believe it is his job to fix the depart­ments problems.
As we opined yes­ter­day Commissioner Williams was hired to lead the depart­ment in it’s fight against law­less­ness and crim­i­nal­i­ty in the tiny Island nation of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple, not tell us what we already know.

Grandstanding and fin­ger-point­ing will not solve crime. Williams must step up now and imple­ment seri­ous mea­sures which will bring some lev­el of assur­ance to the pub­lic or seek some oth­er employment.

I believe I gave up on the Jamaica Constabulary Force 24 years ago when I walked away after only 10 years.
I walked away because more than half of the serv­ing mem­bers were dead-wood, receiv­ing a salary but hav­ing no impact on crime.
From the most senior kha­ki-clad pot-bel­lied gazetted offi­cers to the last joined con­sta­ble, the depart­ment was a cesspool of inef­fi­cien­cy, out­dat­ed bull-shit and friend look­ing out for friends.
Twenty four years lat­er the depart­ment seem to be lit­tle more than just that.
The agency was always rich on form but a pau­per on substance.
Throughout my brief car­rear there were some over-achiev­ers who toiled end­less­ly, those offi­cers reaped tremen­dous results but were nev­er reward­ed and cer­tain­ly were not sup­port­ed or encour­aged by the department.

Subsequently those offi­cers walked away leav­ing the dead-wood and a cadre of pre­tenders from the UWI who are there only for the paycheck.
That is not to say there are no good cops in the JCF any­more, far from it, the prob­lem is lack of senior lead­er­ship which under­stands how to pro­duce good results.
One of the things we hear con­sis­tent­ly is that the police do not have enough equip­ment , of course that is true it was always true.
Jamaica’s polit­i­cal sys­tem is one which favors the indi­vid­ual , it is not a coun­try of laws.
No Administration is going to ade­quate­ly fund the depart­ment, pay offi­cers well and give them the respect they deserve.
Are you kid­ding me ? most of the coun­try’s politi­cians would be behind bars.
Instead they cre­ate a “yard-bway” sys­tem in the police.(Yard bway)colloquial Jamaican term which means a type of servant.
Officers have to either align with one polit­i­cal par­ty or anoth­er, or they can kiss advance­ment goodbye.
Juxtapose that with ram­pant nepo­tism and abu­sive and incom­pe­tent senior lead­er­ship the JCF is a colos­sal waste of tax­pay­ers money.
A pri­vate com­pa­ny with the rate of returns of the JCF would have been insol­vent decades ago.

The sim­ple truth is that the inep­ti­tude of the police though part­ly the fault of politi­cians, is large­ly a func­tion of incom­pe­tence in its senior man­age­ment structure.
Most are fat , lazy , half-baked idiots.
The rest which came in from the UWI to prop up senior man­age­ment are there because there are no jobs in they country.
The are not true believ­ers. It takes a cer­tain type of ded­i­cat­ed per­son to be an effec­tive cop peri­od, to do so in a coun­try like Jamaica requires even more grav­i­tas. Those offi­cers are not nur­tured pro­tect­ed and encouraged.

Like every oth­er arm of Government the police is sim­ply a drain on tax-payers.
The police depart­ment can do a marked­ly bet­ter job with the resources it has it isn’t that difficult.
There sim­ply is a cri­sis of lead­er­ship and will.