There are med­i­cines for most ail­ments these days, in fact, there are many dif­fer­ent med­ica­tions of each ail­ment.
Now each of those med­ica­tions may have some pos­i­tive effects but have you ever lis­tened to the dis­claimers?
Additionally, can­cer drugs are of no use to dia­bet­ics, nei­ther is it a good idea to apply a drug to a patient if it will react neg­a­tive­ly with oth­er drugs.
Remember the lat­ter state­ment, it will all make sense as we go along.

I was with a group of friends over the week­end and as it always does, pol­i­tics crept into the dis­course. Of course, there were some liba­tions involved, so much of the fil­ters were cast to the side.
Of the six or eight friends involved, all were dyed in the wool Comrades, and then there I was, some­where right of cen­ter. I learned that rea­son, ratio­nale, and facts do not mat­ter in the face of rea­soned, ratio­nal, truth.
They all stuck to the idea that Michael Manley was the great­est Prime Minister in Jamaica’s short his­to­ry. Of course when I asked them to jus­ti­fy those asser­tions no one could.
It becomes rather impos­si­ble to make sense when there are eight or nine hard­core com­rades against, well.….little old me.

Michael Manley had great ideas, like oth­er lead­ers before and after him. Manley, despite his exu­ber­ance and raft of ideas, lacked the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of glob­al pol­i­tics.
Instead of read­ing the T‑leaves and being cau­tious, he went full speed ahead like a bull in a chi­na shop.
If we are hon­est with our­selves, we may final­ly agree that Michael Manley’s tenure had a few good nuggets of social pol­i­cy but all things con­sid­ered, his tenure was a com­plete fail­ure and a dis­as­ter for Jamaica.
Now because the Labor Party has been dis­mal as it relates to mes­sag­ing. And because the PNP has plant­ed func­tionar­ies into all aspects of the body politic, it has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to remove the lie from the con­ver­sa­tion.
Michael Manley applied a drug to a patient with­out an under­stand­ing of how his pre­scrip­tion would inter­act with those the patient was already on.
In short, he installed a square peg into a round hole.

At the height of the cold war the for­mer Soviet Union and the United States maneu­vered for world dom­i­na­tion, with Jamaica only a cou­ple of hours flight from the Florida shores, Michael Manley hitched his wag­on to Cuba and declared he would go to the moun­tain top, hand in hand with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The prob­lem is that while Manley’s wag­on was hitched to Cuba, Cuba was hitched to the Soviet Union, America’s exis­ten­tial foe.
At the time, Jamaica’s econ­o­my was intrin­si­cal­ly tied to the United States. Jamaica could ill afford to upset the Americans which Manley did with reck­less aban­don.
So it mat­tered not that Michael Manley had great ideas to make sure there were no bas­tard chil­dren, improve liv­ing wage, and a raft of oth­er social pro­grams, there was no mon­ey to fund them and that is the issue.
The pro­duc­tive sec­tor went away and it took its mon­ey. The mid­dle class also ran and so too did the best and bright­est pro­fes­sion­als.
Manley remind­ed every­one, not on board with his mis­guid­ed poli­cies that there were five flights per day leav­ing for Miami.
He need­n’t have remind­ed them, they want­ed no part of what he was sell­ing.
Talk is cheap, but we can have a con­ver­sa­tion about what the Americans may have done or not done. The real­i­ty is that one can have great plans but if they are not exe­cut­ed care­ful­ly fail­ure is guar­an­teed.
Micahel Manley guar­an­teed fail­ure when he hitched his wag­on to Cuba. Moral vic­to­ries are of no use to hun­gry bel­lies.
Regardless of what may be said of Michael Manley, he was smart enough to real­ize his mis­takes. And so he returned, hum­bled, chas­tened, look­ing for a sec­ond chance, it was giv­en to him and PJ Patterson.
Jamaican vot­ers have short mem­o­ries and that has caused our coun­try much pain.

Unfortunately, for the his­to­ry books and the Carribean com­mu­ni­ty, the left­ist pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of our cul­ture by the University of the West Indies has sought to rewrite his­to­ry and san­i­tize Michael Manley’s dis­mal record of accom­plish­ment. Instead of fac­ing hard sta­tis­ti­cal data they chose soar­ing ora­to­ry as a barom­e­ter of suc­cess.
On the con­trary, the record of accom­plish­ment by Hugh Lawson Shearer still stands today as the stan­dard by which all are judged in Jamaica and the Carribean even.
That memo has yet to reach the forked tongue pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als the UWI has pro­duced across the CARICOM region.
For this do-noth­ing bunch of left­ists, Michael Manley’s soar­ing rhetoric is com­pa­ra­ble to accom­plish­ment. All of the black lead­er­ship which came out of that era from the Caribbean to Africa were great talk­ers, not doers. In that regard, Michael Manley was a one-eyed king in a room full of blind dudes.
For the rest of us who val­ue deeds over words, Schools, Hospitals, Jobs, Airports and oth­er infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ments are more valu­able than flow­ery rhetoric.
I too liked Michael Manley when he stood up against the white Apartheid régime in Southern Africa. I liked the fact that he want­ed to move our poor work­ing peo­ple away from the shack­les of colo­nial­ism.
Our Country will be for­ev­er grate­ful for his con­tri­bu­tion. On the oth­er hand, we must face the fact that Michael Manley was a flawed man who made crit­i­cal mis­takes that have changed the course of our coun­try.
Unfortunately, most of it has not been for the better.

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

“Di ting wata dung to nut­ten”). Translation. The thing is watered down to noth­ing. In case you are won­der­ing what I’m talk­ing about?
It is the con­sen­sus among the peo­ple who have spent two or three decades in the Jamaica Constabulary Force,(JCF) that they are no longer allowed to enforce the laws.
Many of you polit­i­cal apol­o­gists, (God bless you), can­not see any­thing ratio­nal­ly. Your only prism is polit­i­cal and col­ored either orange or green.

The nation’s vio­lent crime rate is at epi­dem­ic lev­els and ris­ing, but of course, as far as the aver­age vil­lage lawyer we hear opine on this is con­cerned, (“crime de eve weh”), crime is every­where.
It is a kind of faux patri­o­tism born out of a mis­guid­ed belief that iden­ti­fy­ing the can­cer­ous tumor of crime and seek­ing to cau­ter­ize it is less than patri­ot­ic.
So the default option is to ratio­nal­ize it away. It is syn­ony­mous to the for­mer female prison guard turned come­di­an, who joked that she would look at what she described as the gor­geous male crim­i­nals in prison, some of them rapists, and in self­ish lust tell her­self, “but he nev­er killed any­body.”

There is no point in try­ing to pry those peo­ple from their cub­by­holes of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty. If they believe they are not enti­tled to bet­ter, who am I to insist oth­er­wise?
But for the rest of us who know that as a peo­ple we can, and should do bet­ter, we must con­tin­ue to mil­i­tate for change.
We under­stand that we deserve bet­ter than liv­ing like caged ani­mals in a Serengeti of law­less­ness. We can ill-afford to pre­tend that there is no prob­lem, so we will con­tin­ue to speak out. 

The People’s National Party admin­is­tra­tion squan­dered the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty years ago. In an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₁₂ year unbro­ken run in office, instead of shoring up and expand­ing the struc­ture of the rule of law, the Patterson Administration said “any­thing a any­thing,“a wink and a nod to its crim­i­nal sup­port­ers that they should go out and take what­ev­er they want­ed from whomev­er they please.
At the same time, the Patterson admin­is­tra­tion was busy plun­der­ing the nation­al cof­fers, send­ing the coun­try deep­er and deep­er into pover­ty and debt.
Patterson did not lift a fin­ger to address the nation’s bur­geon­ing crime rate. Instead, he dev­as­tat­ed the JCF’s abil­i­ty to respond to the grow­ing crim­i­nal threat.
Under PJ Patterson’s lead­er­ship, the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force did not train a sin­gle detec­tive, for over ten years.
If we do not con­tin­ue to hone the skills of those whose task it is it bring killers to jus­tice, is there any won­der that the police is unable to make crim­i­nal charges stick?
If you sur­mise that maybe, just maybe that is the way the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship wants it, I believe you are the per­son I am writ­ing to.
Patterson did not make a sin­gle pen­ny avail­able to train a sin­gle detec­tive for more than a decade under his dis­as­trous régime.
Patterson said the coun­try need­ed all offi­cers to be in uni­form, a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage that he did not want the crim­i­nal (“Dons”) who pro­vide var­i­ous ser­vices to the PNP locked away by police.
The crim­i­nal enter­prise that was the Patterson Government ensured that there would not be a pro­fes­sion­al and com­pe­tent police depart­ment to inves­ti­gate and lock up the par­ty faith­ful.
To add insult to injury the left­ist University of the West Indies recent­ly hon­ored Percival Patterson, a total fail­ure and a dis­as­ter for our coun­try. A man whose tenure in office ben­e­fit­ted only him­self and his cronies.
The hon­or was a clear sign that there is no dif­fer­ence of thought between that far-left insti­tu­tion, and the morons it churns out.
It is a ver­i­ta­ble rogue’s gallery of bot­tom feed­ers bestow­ing acco­lades on bot­tom feed­ers. Essentially the awards are not worth the mate­ri­als they are made from.

The Jamaica Labor Party under Bruce Golding was a dis­grace. Ultimately, Golding was forced to step aside, giv­ing rise to Andrew Holness his pro­tégé of sorts.
Neither Bruce Golding nor Andrew Holness respects the rule of law or the offi­cers who enforce them.
Bruce Golding will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the Prime Minister who stood up for a trans-nation­al crim­i­nal, (Christopher Duddus Coke), instead of stand­ing up for the nation.
Today, Andrew Holness is Prime Minister, and though many believe that he is a genius of sorts, we are yet to see that genius exe­cut­ed in either word or deed, as far as secu­ri­ty and crime is con­cerned.
Holness has not demon­strat­ed that he (a) under­stands the impor­tance of the rule of law to a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation, (b) the impor­tance of sup­port­ing & respect­ing those who risk their lives to enforce our laws,© that he under­stands, [or even cares] about the morale of the men and women who work to secure the safe­ty of him­self, his fam­i­ly, and the nation at the per­il of their own lives.

Andrew Holness won his own man­date on February 25^th, 2016, after an abbre­vi­at­ed run as Prime Minister after Bruce Golding was forced to step aside after the Christopher Coke débâ­cle.
Holness arrived with an atti­tude of recrim­i­na­tion against the JCF. He issued blan­ket unver­i­fied state­ments against the JCF. He accused mem­bers of kick­ing down doors and killing inno­cent peo­ple in cold blood.
One thing is cer­tain [as a mat­ter of fact], the vile hearsay invec­tives Holness lev­eled at the JCF is 100% unadul­ter­at­ed hearsay.
Given Jamaica’s hyper-vio­lent soci­ety the police had lit­tle choice but to match force with vio­lent force.
And so under Seaga’ s tenure, when our police were allowed to act, our coun­try had 500 to 600 mur­ders each year.
Today under Holness’ lead­er­ship, despite ZOSO’s and SOE’s the Island is expe­ri­enc­ing homi­cide num­bers three times what obtained under Seaga.
The vio­lent nature of the Island’s crim­i­nals made Holness’ actions and words even more hyp­o­crit­i­cal and dan­ger­ous.
The prob­lem with Holness’ mis­guid­ed posi­tion is that he is Prime Minister and there­fore he is unique­ly posi­tioned to be destruc­tive, if he ever puts his mind to it.
He has put his mind to it!
It is dif­fi­cult for me to rec­on­cile that he means well when he has artic­u­lat­ed how he arrived at his mis­guid­ed posi­tion on crime.
His posi­tion as a mem­ber of par­lia­ment for one of the Island’s gar­ri­son con­stituen­cies peels back the thin veneer of bull­shit, reveal­ing the bla­tan­cy of his hypocrisy.
Instead of stand­ing up for the nation’s future by mak­ing a strong unequiv­o­cal dec­la­ra­tion that the rule of law is sacro­sanct, and demon­strat­ing com­mit­ment through actions, he aligned him­self with JFJ and INDECOM against the police. 

Peel back the thin veneer of bull­shit and Andrew Holness’ pub­lic rela­tions stunt is not just obvi­ous, it is insult­ing­ly cyn­i­cal.
The police offi­cers are receiv­ing no real train­ing which would make them capa­ble of address­ing the threat posed by vio­lent crim­i­nals and even those who would go so far as to chal­lenge the author­i­ty and sov­er­eign­ty of the state.
Holness wants the police to be cour­tesy corps offi­cers, hold down crime sta­tis­tics, solve noth­ing, harm not a sin­gle mur­der­er.
According to one cred­i­ble source in the know, nei­ther is the car­toon­ish mil­i­tary train­ing any bet­ter than that which is being giv­en to the police. It’s a façade the source laments.
But we all knew that mem­bers of the JCF are (a) poor­ly trained and (b) afraid of their own shad­ows.
The end­less social media videos pro­vide ample evi­dence that law-abid­ing Jamaicans should be ter­ri­fied for their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty.
The inad­e­qua­cy of the train­ing and lead­er­ship vac­u­um, sup­port struc­ture and the ter­ror of being per­se­cut­ed by Andrew Holness’ INDECOM, is more than enough for police offi­cers to run the oppo­site direc­tion from the call of duty.

This admin­is­tra­tion is play­ing a dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal game under the guise of ZOSO’s and SOE’s. Both mea­sures amount to mass sat­u­ra­tion of pub­lic spaces with the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, not the strate­gic goal of crime elim­i­na­tion.
Holness and the JLP are inter­est­ed in win­ning elec­tions as is the oppo­si­tion PNP. Political par­ties do not go after crim­i­nals in Jamaica. Being a crime-fight­ing leader like the great Hugh Lawson Shearer is way out­side the realm of what any­one should expect from Andrew Holness in present-day Jamaican.
The hyp­ocrites and vil­lage lawyers will find ways to crit­i­cize Shearer but one thing is cer­tain there is not a sin­gle damn law-abid­ing Jamaican who would not trade places and go back to the days of Shearer.
We can­not expect Holness to be Shearer, but by God, we can at least expect him to be like the flawed Edward Seaga.
Does he have to be a Bruce Golding?
One can under­stand that politi­cians want to win elec­tions. Within that frame­work, it is also under­stand­able that politi­cians would want to do as lit­tle harm as pos­si­ble to their chances to gain and hold onto pow­er.
Those con­cerns are expo­nen­tial­ly height­ened because of (a) a high­ly polar­ized crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing pop­u­la­tion and (b) a poor­ly edu­cat­ed pop­u­lace.
Unfortunately for the nation, the lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties large­ly comes from the same ran­cid pool sit­u­at­ed up at Mona com­mons.
PNP and JLP same shit. Same cor­rupt­ed and con­vo­lut­ed men­tal­i­ty.
Gone are the days when the dif­fer­ence between the two polit­i­cal par­ties were dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent.
There was no ques­tion of the dif­fer­ence between the par­ty of Seaga and that of Michael Manley. The lines of demar­ca­tion were dis­tinct. Voters had a real choice.
Today Holness and Peter Phillips come from the same stink­ing pool of left­ist shit­tery. And although Phillips will nev­er change from being a stu­pid com­rade, Andrew Holness is cer­tain­ly a prod­uct of the same failed left­ist crap­o­la. The par­ty of Bustamante, Sangster, Shearer, and Seaga is now a car­bon copy of Michael Manley’s dystopi­an nightmare.

When a politi­cian comes up to you to talk about pros­per­i­ty, or that he can do bet­ter than the ones in pow­er, look at the unchecked killings going on around you, know that he is play­ing you for a fool.
This is a time for patri­ots to stand up to these two cor­rupt polit­i­cal par­ties and let them know that it is Jamaica first.
That paper­ing over the crime sta­tis­tics using the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy is not accept­able, and it will not be tol­er­at­ed.
That we are not stu­pid, we are onto their devi­ous and decep­tive game of crime sup­pres­sion in cer­tain areas. We see the esca­la­tion in oth­er areas, we also see the nation­al num­bers and know that not a damn thing is being done about tam­ing the dan­ger­ous mon­ster of vio­lent crime.
That we will no longer sup­port this dan­ger­ous and cyn­i­cal plan to play pol­i­tics while they,(both par­ties) dis­re­spect our police.
Long after these lead­ers are gone we will still need our police and we will damn sure need our country.

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

By Anne Branigin

In a rul­ing late Monday, Federal District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said for­mer White House coun­sel Don McGahn must obey a sub­poe­na to tes­ti­fy before Congress. The sub­poe­na, issued in April, came from the House Judiciary Committee as part of its inves­ti­ga­tion into pos­si­ble obstruc­tion of jus­tice by President Donald Trump.

As NBC News reports, in her deci­sion, Jackson also reject­ed a key argu­ment put for­ward by the Justice Department in defense of the admin­is­tra­tion — that as a for­mer close advis­er to the pres­i­dent, McGahn is absolute­ly immune to demands he appear before Congress.

From NBC News:

“It is clear to this Court for the rea­sons explained above that, with respect to senior-lev­el pres­i­den­tial aides, absolute immu­ni­ty from com­pelled con­gres­sion­al process sim­ply does not exist,” Jackson said in her ruling.

“Presidents are not kings,” she added.

“This means that they do not have sub­jects, bound by loy­al­ty or blood, whose des­tiny they are enti­tled to con­trol,” Jackson said. “Rather, in this land of lib­er­ty, it is indis­putable that cur­rent and for­mer employ­ees of the White House work for the peo­ple of the United States…”

McGahn, how­ev­er, can “invoke exec­u­tive priv­i­lege where appro­pri­ate” dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny, the judge said. 

If you’re con­fused about where in the Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion carousel of crazy McGahn fits, don’t wor­ry — April of this year might as well be four years ago in Trump-time.

House Judiciary Democrats want­ed McGahn to tes­ti­fy and turn over doc­u­ments relat­ed to for­mer spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Russian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Mueller’s report indi­cat­ed that Trump ordered McGahn to tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, “Mueller has to go.”

From an ear­li­er NBC News report:

“McGahn spoke with the President twice and under­stood the direc­tive the same way both times, mak­ing it unlike­ly that he mis­heard or mis­in­ter­pret­ed the President’s request. In response to that request, McGahn decid­ed to quit,” the report said. “He called his lawyer, drove to the White House, packed up his office, pre­pared to sub­mit a res­ig­na­tion let­ter with his chief of staff, (and) told (then-White House Chief of Staff Reince) Priebus that the President had asked him to ‘do crazy shit.’

“McGahn ulti­mate­ly did not quit and the President did not fol­low up with McGahn on his request to have the Special Counsel removed,” the report said.

Lawyers advo­cat­ing on behalf of the House Judiciary Democrats urged Judge Jackson to make a deci­sion quick­ly since the group wants to hold its own impeach­ment hear­ings, sep­a­rate from the five-day hear­ings recent­ly con­clud­ed by the House Intelligence Committee.

The Justice Department said it will appeal Jackson’s rul­ing and seek a stay of her order. But while White House press sec­re­tary Stephanie Grisham indi­cat­ed that the DOJ was “con­fi­dent” the administration’s absolute immu­ni­ty posi­tion would be vin­di­cat­ed, NBC News points out that no court has ever upheld the argu­ment that close advis­ers to the pres­i­dent can’t be forced to appear before Congress.

If his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion, McGahn, girl: You bet­ter shine your shoes, pop some vit­a­min B, and get Fenty-ready for the cam­eras, because you’re tes­ti­fy­ing. https://​www​.the​root​.com/​b​l​a​c​k​-​f​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​j​u​d​g​e​-​s​t​r​i​k​e​s​-​c​r​u​c​i​a​l​-​b​l​o​w​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​1​8​4​0​0​4​8​336

We see it dai­ly in the streets, in the alter­ca­tions between police offi­cers try­ing to do their jobs and defi­ant scofflaws who chal­lenge their author­i­ty.
In the ways that motorists ignore the rules of the road and do as they please.
It has been going on for years in the nation’s class­rooms as well, stu­dents defy and fight teach­ers because they know their par­ents will come to school prop­er­ty and assault teach­ers.
We see it in the way motorists oper­ate on the road­ways. In the way, peo­ple speak loud­ly on their cell­phones in places where they should­n’t, as if we all want to hear their con­ver­sa­tions.
We see it in the nation’s par­lia­ment, the uncouth coarse­ness which pass­es for a leg­isla­tive process.
And sure as night fol­lows day, some will instan­ta­neous­ly argue that our nation’s par­lia­ment is tame com­pared to some oth­er coun­tries.
As if a moun­tain of wrongs even­tu­al­ly equals right.
We could go on and on and on about the break­down in our soci­ety and at some stage, we have to ask what the hell is going on?

The mur­ders and the rapes, the bru­tal­i­ty being inflict­ed, broth­er on broth­er, neigh­bor on neigh­bor is inces­sant. Years ago a famed local psy­chol­o­gist blan­ket-labeled the entire Island, ‘mad”.
It would be wrong for me to argue with the diag­no­sis of a trained pro­fes­sion­al. Nevertheless, it just seemed too sim­plis­tic, and maybe even intel­lec­tu­al­ly lazy, to throw up our hands in exas­per­a­tion, and declare the entire Jamaica, .……mad.
So lets ratio­nal­ly dis­sect whats going on. Human beings will push the enve­lope as long as there are no con­se­quences for their actions. We Jamaicans are at the tip of that spear. From time to time I write about crime and the debil­i­tat­ing effect it is hav­ing on our coun­try, I argue repeat­ed­ly, that crime thrives on the acqui­es­cence of the nation.

When a new addi­tion to the delib­er­a­tive body, (the sen­ate), is engaged in a cru­sade to allow more exple­tives into pub­lic spaces, why would any­one won­der why a vale­dic­to­ri­an would feel empow­ered to infuse exple­tives into his address?
Hype.….Jamaicans thrive on hype, the young politi­cian reads his own press, and he is pumped on the adren­a­line that fame brings. To show his street bona fides, he pro­pos­es some­thing he ought to know is anti­thet­i­cal to the nation’s well­be­ing in the long run, but still, he per­sists.
Because the hype is far more impor­tant to him, than sim­ply being a good exam­ple to those com­ing up after him.
The Valedictorian could have walked away know­ing that for as long as he lives he will be remem­bered as that year’s vale­dic­to­ri­an, but the desire to gain a hype was far too strong a pull for him, and so he will be remem­bered as the vale­dic­to­ri­an who brought coarse­ness to the game.

Decency and deco­rum have become a thing of the past, those who ought to know bet­ter have become will­ing pas­sen­gers, on a train des­tined for derail­ment. The lev­el of crazy in our soci­ety is wear­ing thin on our pro­fes­sion­als.
Politicians fight­ing with doc­tors in hos­pi­tals. Teacher los­ing it in her class­room as a result of dis­re­spect­ful kid. Police offi­cer hang­ing onto the hood of a car for dear life because motorist knows he will not be held account­able for his actions.
This is law­less­ness, and it does not mean that the entire nation is mad. It means that those whose job it is to pro­tect our coun­try has failed dismally.

Our nation can­not claim that there is no tem­plate for suc­cess, there is.
We admire many nation’s suc­cess­es, we talk a great deal about them. The ques­tion becomes, “how come we can­not just copy what they are doing”?
The truth is that as soon as we get over our admi­ra­tion, and look at what it takes to get to their lev­el we back away because as a nation we lack dis­ci­pline.
We lack the dis­ci­pline to do what’s right. We lack the dis­ci­pline to sus­pend our affin­i­ty for the sweet sug­ary rush of cot­ton can­dy.
We tell our­selves that the nec­es­sary veg­an-diet could nev­er work for us in our unique cir­cum­stances. (Because of course, we are spe­cial), *sar­casm.*
And we con­tin­ue with the sug­ar rush. I think we all know where that will even­tu­al­ly take us.

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

There is real­ly no safe way to hold a ser­pent, you can grab it by the head and try not to get stung, but that’s about it.
The present impeach­ment inquiry which Donald Trump forced the Democrats to engage in, is very much like a ser­pent. There are real­ly no good out­comes for the Democrats, despite the fact that they are the ones act­ing in defense of the con­sti­tu­tion.
One of the chal­lenges fac­ing the Democrats is that a large sec­tion of the elec­torate will walk off a cliff with Trump even though they know they are going to die.
That kind of fanati­cism is not born out of any­thing that Donald Trump has done on their per­son­al or col­lec­tive behalf. It is a result of what Donald Trump rep­re­sents as a racist, white suprema­cist who hates the same peo­ple they hate.

Donald Trump under­stood that- that sleep­er-cell of white resent­ment was always there, despite the unval­i­dat­ed faith, and soar­ing ora­to­ry laced with belief in them, by the likes of Barack Obama and Corey Booker.
Trump under­stood that those peo­ple are will­ing to blame their own fail­ings on oth­ers who do not look like them­selves.
As a mouth­piece for that sub­set, Trump was on point when he said he could shoot some­one on fifth avenue, and he would not lose any votes.
Today as the 44^th White male, and the 45^th man to occu­py 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as President, his sup­port remains as sol­id as it ever was, and the Republican par­ty he leads is now a racist, xeno­pho­bic cult.
That ought to put to rest the whole ques­tion as to why Trump’s sup­port remains sol­id despite the egre­gious things he has done since elect­ed to office.
No one wants to say it so I will. They are irre­deemable racists.

It is impor­tant to record for pos­ter­i­ty, that the Republicans have no desire to defend the Constitution, nev­er­the­less, that does not mean that the Democratic par­ty should abdi­cate its duty to pro­tect and defend the con­sti­tu­tion.
As such, it is crit­i­cal to under­stand that the Democrats are duty-bound to con­duct inquiries into Donald Trump’s actions.
When this peri­od of American his­to­ry is writ­ten the Democrats can take a bow that they are the patri­ots who stood up in defense of the United States Constitution.

It does not require a rock­et sci­en­tist to fig­ure out the strat­e­gy Trump and his shame­less Republican back­ers have in mind. As the world has seen in the hear­ing, as was the case dur­ing the Muller inves­ti­ga­tion, they are not inter­est­ed in facts.
They are inter­est­ed in obfus­ca­tion, deflec­tion, and diver­sions. Unfortunately for the coun­try, here is one polit­i­cal par­ty that does­n’t care whether a hos­tile pow­er inter­fered in the most sacred ele­ment of democ­ra­cy, the right to free and fair elec­tions.
But this was nev­er some­thing which both­ered Republicans, they have con­sis­tent­ly worked at cre­at­ing ways to ensure that black and brown peo­ple are lim­it­ed in their abil­i­ty to vote.
It is just sad and rep­re­hen­si­ble that as they have fought to lim­it the vote of peo­ple who are unlike­ly to vote for them they have opt­ed to have a hos­tile pow­er skew the vote on their behalf.
It was not long that some of these same peo­ple had wrapped them­selves in the American flag and pre­tend­ed to be patri­ots.
In fact many of them still do.

Republicans are wait­ing for Democrats to file arti­cles of impeach­ment, upon which the sen­ate can do either of two things, (1) Summarily dis­miss the charges. However, the Republicans who have con­trol of the sen­ate under the régime of Mosco Mitch McConnell will try to make it seem like they are fol­low­ing the laws. Or (2) hold a sham abbre­vi­at­ed tri­al, and quick­ly find that Trump broke no laws and com­mit­ted no impeach­able offense.
The ille­git­i­mate dis­missal of the charges or the (not guilty sham find­ing) then becomes an elec­tion-year weapon. Remember their nar­ra­tive that the Muller inves­ti­ga­tions were a hoax? The nar­ra­tive today that the House Intelligence impeach­ment inquiry is a par­ti­san witch hunt?
The pre­dictable sen­ate out­come will be dis­in­for­ma­tion on steroids. It will be dif­fi­cult for any Democratic can­di­date to stand up to that onslaught, much less over­come it.
With a whole state Television channel(FOX) ded­i­cat­ed to dis­in­for­ma­tion. Sinclair’s tele­vi­sion sta­tions across the nation. Twenty-four-hour talk radio and Facebook and oth­er enti­ties ded­i­cat­ed to churn­ing out dis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da ²⁴⁄₇, it will be a tough row to hoe for whichev­er Democratic can­di­date emerge as the nominee.

SO WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

The solu­tion is to gath­er the evi­dence and release it to the pub­lic. Or impeach him in the house but do not send the arti­cles to the Senate.

They should not send the arti­cles of impeach­ment to the sen­ate giv­ing Mitch McConnell the abil­i­ty to manip­u­late the process. Trump is already tam­per­ing with jurors to a poten­tial sen­ate tri­al, as he is secret­ly meet­ing with Republican sen­a­tors, the very peo­ple who would decide his inno­cence or guilt in an impeach­ment tri­al. Even the ones who he has berat­ed in the press as pompous fools.
This is essen­tial­ly jury tam­per­ing, but when Trump does these things they are not against the law. In fact, as far as his lawyers and sup­port­ers are con­cerned, as pres­i­dent, he is inca­pable of break­ing the law.
Such is the God-like sta­tus giv­en this men­da­cious men­di­cant.
Republicans have long held that it should be up to the vot­ers to decide whether to remove Trump from office.
DEMOCRATS should indulge them. Use the find­ings of the inquiry as cam­paign fod­der, but do not file arti­cles of impeach­ment. No use going into a fight if you know you are going to lose.
The strat­e­gy ought to be the Powell doc­trine.
“Don’t go to war if there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that you can lose, but if you have to fight take all your weapons to war use them all and go home”.

Democrats are not oblig­at­ed to file arti­cles of impeach­ment. They can opt to let the vot­ers decide.
Will the lying Republicans have a prob­lem with that strat­e­gy, you bet your ass they will, but Democrats are not oblig­at­ed to please them. Remember it was they who said the next pres­i­dent should decide who the next supreme court jus­tice should be when Obama nom­i­nat­ed Merrick Garland?
Every bit of infor­ma­tion gleaned from that inquiry should e weaponized and a scorched earth strat­e­gy devel­oped to remove this can­cer.
That should also mean remov­ing every sin­gle Republican Senator up for re-elec­tion and every house mem­ber as well.
Not a sin­gle one of those liars who refused to defend the con­sti­tu­tion vot­ed for the inquiry. Every one of them should be tar­get­ed for removal, regard­less of how red their state or dis­trict is.

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

One of the things I find com­pelling is the way politi­cians treat African-American vot­ers as a mono­lith, con­trolled by Black Pastors.
Now I do under­stand why they would want to go to Black Churches when they want to reach the African-American vot­ing core. After all, Black women are the back­bone of the black church and black women are the most reli­able vot­ing block in the coun­try.
And so polit­i­cal aspi­rants believe that regard­less of what harm they did to the African-American com­mu­ni­ty in the past, all they have to do is to vis­it a black church, offer up a mea cul­pa and all is for­got­ten.
But hold up there Busta, that ain’t gonna always fly.
The coun­ty exec­u­tive in my neck of the woods told me that my pas­tor endorsed his can­di­da­cy after I dis­agreed with him on an issue.
Okay, truth be told, I dis­agree with him on every­thing. He is white, male and Republican, hard­ly any­thing on which he and I can agree.
I flat­ly told him that my Pastor does not speak for me.

Which brings me to the cur­rent crop of aspi­rants for the Democratic Nomination in 2020.
In my esti­ma­tion, one of the rea­sons that so many white male can­di­dates have failed to reg­is­ter any sup­port in the pri­maries may be attrib­uted to their lack of appeal to Black voters.
Take con­gress­man Tim Ryan from Ohio for exam­ple, he nev­er seemed to grasp that the pres­i­den­cy is much larg­er than Ohio’s 13^th con­gres­sion­al district.
Dude, you were run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy not to remain in the con­gress, dur­ing the debates his every answer was about his dis­trict. The fact is that African-Americans make up the base of the Democrat par­ty, blacks have pre­cious lit­tle in com­mon with Ryan’s 13^th conservative/​democrat dis­trict in Ohio, and so he was out real quick.

There were sev­er­al oth­er white male can­di­dates, Bennet. Bullock. Delaney. Steyer and of course Buttigieg, nei­ther of these men have fig­ured out a way to appeal to black vot­ers despite the fact that they are run­ning on the Democrat tick­et. Bernie Sanders marched with Dr. King and still, he can­not seem to shake the nag­ging sus­pi­cion with which many black vot­ers view his can­di­da­cy.
Neither of them will be the nom­i­nee for their par­ty of choice it appears. 

This brings us to Michael Bloomberg the for­mer Democrat turned Republican, turned Independent, turned Democrat, bil­lion­aire three-term Mayor of New York City.
He decid­ed that he wants to be pres­i­dent, because the present crop of Democrats does­n’t seem to meet with his approval.
You know one fake bil­lion­aire was able to worm his way into 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, so as a real bil­lion­aire he should be able to do it quite eas­i­ly, right?
He should ask Tom Styer how his can­di­da­cy is work­ing out.

I’ll nev­er for­get that Michael Bloomberg felt that the lying decep­tive Rudolph Giuliani must have been indis­pens­able in 2003 after his sec­ond term end­ed. Michael Bloomberg and Mark Green one of the Democrat can­di­dates vying to be may­or of the city agreed that if they won the elec­tion they would allow Giuliani to stay on for an extra three (3) months as Mayor to super­vise the rebuild­ing efforts in the city. Fernando Ferrer the oth­er demo­c­rat can­di­date said no.
The pow­er-hun­gry Giuliani waged an intense lob­by­ing effort to stay in office argu­ing: “It will give peo­ple in the city who have fears about what’s going to hap­pen, and how it’s going to hap­pen, a cer­tain sense of con­fi­dence.“
What non­sense, it was an unvar­nished pow­er-grab but Bloomberg allowed his crony to do it because he had plans of his own.
Fernando Ferrer would have none of it argu­ing; “I know the pol­i­tics of the moment might dic­tate a dif­fer­ent posi­tion, but I am deeply con­cerned about the prece­dent this would set.”
Now, remem­ber it was the same Giuliani who made the deci­sion to place the city’s com­mand and con­trol cen­ter in the world trade cen­ter tow­er, even after the tow­ers were attacked ten years ear­li­er.
At the time Giuliani was lob­by­ing for more time in office in clas­sic dic­ta­to­r­i­al fash­ion, the state’s Republican Governor George Pataki was also all for it.
The New York Civil Rights Coalition was harsh­ly crit­i­cal of the plan, accus­ing Giuliani of bul­ly­ing the may­oral can­di­dates and being “dis­rup­tive to elec­toral democ­ra­cy.”
According to Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg agreed to his plan immediately.

In the end, Michael Bloomberg allowed Giuliani to stay on after his term end­ed. Conceivably not out of any desire to see con­ti­nu­ity in the rebuild­ing process after the events of September 11^th, 2001, but because he had plans of his own to strong-arm the city coun­cil to change the term lim­its law.
The law only allowed for two terms up to Giuliani’s tenure.
During his tenure as Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican Mayor was a reg­u­lar lit­tle Napoleon.
Bloomberg sup­port­ed and cham­pi­oned a ban on large sug­ary drinks. Simply put, Michael Bloomberg felt that as Mayor of New York City he and his Board of Health, had the right to dic­tate to New Yorkers what size sodas they were allowed to have.
I’m not sure whether Communist nations and oth­er dic­ta­tor­ships tell their cit­i­zens how much sug­ar they can and can­not con­sume? Obviously, Michael Bloomberg had not acquaint­ed him­self with the fail­ings of the 18^th amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion.
In a 4 – 2 epic smack­down of Bloomberg’s mea­sure, Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. of the New York State Court of Appeals wrote in a 20-page deci­sion, that the city’s Board of Health “exceed­ed the scope of its reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty.”
The American Beverage Association at the time argued: “the pro­pos­al would have cre­at­ed an uneven play­ing field for thou­sands of small busi­ness­es in the city and lim­it­ed New Yorkers’ free­dom of choice.”
This issue was about (free­dom of choice), even if one agrees that maybe its not such a bad idea to con­sume less sug­ar, it is nev­er a good idea when the Government becomes the arbiter of what one should and should­n’t con­sume.
Bill de Blasio, the present Mayor of the city sup­port­ed Bloomberg’s over-reach at the time.

In a March 2007 arti­cle for New York Magazine Chris Smith wrote; Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come to Pier 76, just off the West Side Highway, on a crisp Tuesday after­noon in March to open new sta­bles for an NYPD mount­ed unit, and he’s down­right gid­dy, his voice ris­ing as he lists the fea­tures of the $8.7 mil­lion facil­i­ty. “The four-legged mem­bers of Troop B need­ed a hayloft!” he exclaims. “As well as stalls! An equip­ment room, a heat­ed exer­cise area, and their own show­er!”
At the time, fam­i­ly home­less­ness was on the rise. The sit­u­a­tion was wors­ened by a Bloomberg pro­gram called Housing Stability Plus, which shrank pay­ments to fam­i­lies liv­ing in sub­si­dized units. Yes, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican bil­lion­aire Mayor shrank pay­ments to fam­i­lies liv­ing in sub­si­dized hous­ing. It is usu­al­ly the least pow­er­ful, poor­est peo­ple who live in those sub­si­dized hous­ing units.
Smith wrote; Unemployment is down, but to me, one of the most haunt­ing images of 2006 was the thou­sands of des­per­ate peo­ple lined up in mid­town hop­ing for a chance at a hand­ful of jobs at the new M&M can­dy store in Times Square. Deaths of chil­dren “known” to the child-wel­fare sys­tem sky­rock­et­ed last year. 
And Sean Bell an inno­cent African-American man, was mur­dered by NYPD COPS on the ear­ly morn­ing of the day he was sup­posed to be married.

As Michael Bloomberg basked in his new police horse-sta­ble with equip­ment rooms, heat­ed exer­cise areas, and show­ers, a reporter asked him “What about the Bell sup­port­ers who are angry that more cops weren’t indict­ed”? 
Smith wrote that the mood soured as soon as Sean Bell’s name was men­tioned. Bloomberg retort­ed in response to the ques­tion; “We’re a coun­try of laws!” he says sharply. “The dis­trict attor­ney made his case to the grand jury, the grand jury has indict­ed three peo­ple, they will have their day in court, and jus­tice will be served, what­ev­er that is.”
Bloomberg cared much more about the new show­place for hors­es than the fact that his goons had mur­dered an inno­cent young man on the day he was to be mar­ried.
Sean Bell and many oth­ers were mur­dered, bru­tal­ized and harassed as a result of the bro­ken win­dows pol­i­cy called “stop and frisk”, start­ed by the oth­er Republican Gestapo Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.
Michael Bloomberg con­tin­ued it, and allowed Black and Brown peo­ple of the city to be sub­ject­ed to untold ter­ror by out of con­trol cops who saw the laws as a license to abuse those they did not like. 

According to the New York Daily News, In 2013, a judge ruled the prac­tice had been applied in an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al way and a fed­er­al mon­i­tor was appoint­ed to over­see reforms. 
Michael Bloomberg railed against the judge’s deci­sion at the time and sup­port­ed its con­tin­u­ance despite the fact that the NYPD had start­ed reduc­ing the use of stop-and-frisk on its own, an effort cham­pi­oned by Mayor de Blasio when he took office in 2014.
Bloomberg sup­port­ed the prac­tice for years even after he left office.

Nevertheless, on Sunday, November 17^th, 2019 the same Michael Bloomberg was at his friend A R Bernard Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. The afore­men­tioned is the largest mega-church in the tri-state area boast­ing a mem­ber­ship of forty thou­sand peo­ple.
No par­tic­u­lar group votes with more depend­abil­i­ty than African-American women. There is no bet­ter place to find African-American women than the black church.
And so Michael Bloomberg, oppor­tunis­tic for­mer Democrat, turned Republican, turned Independent, is now con­ve­nient­ly a Democrat again try­ing to weasel his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He is at least polit­i­cal­ly savvy enough to know that you are going nowhere in the Democrat par­ty with­out win­ning the black vote.
So here he was address­ing the largest black con­gre­ga­tion between here and Texas.
The oth­er con artist now occu­py­ing the white house is no genius, despite his claim that he is a sta­ble genius. Nevertheless, he was savvy enough to rec­og­nize that there is a rough­ly 35% of dis­af­fect­ed, racist whites some­where out there who need­ed some­one with a mega­phone.
By virtue of his name and for­tune Michael Bloomberg has a loud mega­phone, what he needs is a fol­low­ing and that is the rea­son he was in A R Bernard’s church on Sunday morning.

Bloomberg: “I now see that we could and should have act­ed soon­er, and act­ed faster, to cut the stops.”
“I wish we had and I’m sor­ry that we didn’t, but I can’t change his­to­ry,” he con­tin­ued. “However, today I want you to know that I real­ized back then that I was wrong and I’m sor­ry.”
“The fact is, far too many peo­ple were being stopped while we tried to [reduce crime] and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of them were black and Latino.”
“Because of the num­ber of stops of inno­cent peo­ple, because it had been so high, resent­ment had built up.” “We erod­ed what we had worked so hard to build: trust. Trust between police and com­mu­ni­ties, trust between you and me”.
“And the ero­sion of that trust both­ered me deeply. And it still both­ers me. And I want to earn it back.”
I call Bullshit on Michael Bloomberg’s mea cul­pa.
Decades after his con­tin­ued stri­dent defense of a pol­i­cy that brought untold agony and hurt to so many.
All of a sud­den this oppor­tunis­tic con artist is sor­ry?
I don’t think so. It is cyn­i­cal, trans­par­ent, and it is reprehensible.

But there is one threat greater to our peo­ple than these devi­ous self-serv­ing politi­cians. It is the pas­tors who allow these weasels to come into their church­es, know­ing that the major­i­ty of the con­gre­ga­tions look to them not only for spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship, but polit­i­cal guid­ance.
On Sunday morn­ing, in bring­ing his friend Michael Bloomberg to the stage A R Bernard told his con­gre­ga­tion; “Come on, CCC, show some love and appre­ci­a­tion.”
Appreciation for what?
Years of police bru­tal­i­ty which brought death, pain, and despair to count­less African-American and Caribbean-American fam­i­lies?
In the 60s the Black church was at the fore­front of the civ­il rights strug­gle. Since then, church­es pay no tax­es on their mon­e­tary intake, as long as they stay out of the polit­i­cal are­na.
It was an inge­nious way for the sys­tem to neu­tral­ize the black church.
Today, except for a few instances, black church lead­er­ship is all about the tithes and offer­ings and not about the inter­est of their con­gre­gants.
It is time for black vot­ers to tell the Michael Bloombergs of the world that their pas­tors do not speak for them.

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

Over the last two days, in two sep­a­rate arti­cles, we spoke to what appears to be a brew­ing ide­o­log­i­cal strug­gle between the Powerful United States and its emerg­ing counter-weight, the People’s Republic of China.
As I argued in the first arti­cle, this is a sense of déjà vu for the tiny Island Nation of Jamaica which saw, it’s pro­duc­tive sec­tor destroyed, an incred­i­ble brain-drain occur, and her econ­o­my evis­cer­at­ed in the 1970s as the United States and the Soviet Union bat­tled for world dom­i­na­tion.

As the ide­o­log­i­cal war­fare raged between America’s cap­i­tal­ist agen­da and the Soviet’s com­mu­nist push, small­er nations found them­selves at the cen­ter of proxy wars between the two hege­mon­ic pow­ers as they com­pet­ed, not just for real estate but for their doc­trine to be the defin­ing doc­trine world­wide.
Despite the immea­sur­able dam­age done to Jamaica in the 1970s, the Island was arguably luck­i­er than oth­er small nations that found them­selves at the cen­ter of the fight between the two giants in what became known as the cold war.
Tragically for Cuba, anoth­er Carribean Island just 90 miles from Jamaica’s west­er­ly shore, events in the 1960s brought America’s force down on the Cuban peo­ple. A force that has sti­fled and brought untold suf­fer­ing to the Cuban peo­ple.
The counter-argu­ments that Communism has been respon­si­ble for the dev­as­ta­tion of Cuba is worth dis­cussing. However, Several nations, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Eastern Europe were gob­bled up into the Soviet Empire, after the fall of com­mu­nism, those coun­tries have done remark­ably well for them­selves.
Cuba has not, and can­not do the same eco­nom­i­cal­ly. America’s embar­go, and the stran­gle­hold it has placed on the Cuban econ­o­my, crip­pling sanc­tions, and oth­er means, makes it impos­si­ble for the Cuban econ­o­my to grow, regard­less of Cuba’s domes­tic politics.

In what appears to be the sec­ond iter­a­tion of what hap­pened to Jamaica in the ’70s, there are some omi­nous clouds devel­op­ing which ought to be of grave con­cern to Jamaicans regard­less of where they live.
In two sep­a­rate inter­views giv­en to local media enti­ties, both the American ambas­sador to Jamaica and the head of the United States Southern mil­i­tary com­mand found it nec­es­sary to lec­ture Jamaica about her rela­tion­ship with China.
In both instances Admiral Craig S. Faller head of Southern Command and US Ambassador to Jamaica Donald Tapia gave inter­views, and in those inter­views seem to have for­got­ten that Jamaica was not one of America’s Colonial out­posts but a sov­er­eign inde­pen­dent nation.
The text and temer­i­ty of both offi­cials seemed to sug­gest that Jamaicans (a) were inca­pable of under­stand­ing the unfore­seen con­se­quences of Jamaica’s rela­tion­ship with China, (b) Jamaican offi­cials were inca­pable of mak­ing deci­sions in Jamaicas best strate­gic inter­est.
Interestingly, the U.S. itself is indebt­ed to the People’s Republic of China to the tune of $1.11 tril­lion as of May 2019.
It is safe to say that the US is ful­ly con­ver­sant with China’s moti­va­tions when they invest in America’s trea­sury bonds. So too should we assume that Jamaica under­stands what’s at stake when it bor­rows from China?

In the United States sys­tem of Justice, there is a term in law that deter­mines whether a par­ty wish­ing to sue in Federal court has the right to do so.
That term is called ‘standing”. Before that case can progress in the sys­tem, the sys­tem has to deter­mine whether the plain­tiff has the right to make the case in the first place.
Accordingly, the argu­ments of both American offi­cial may be on point as it relates to the need for Jamaica to be extreme­ly cau­tious about her deal­ings with the People’s Republic of China, the ques­tion is whether either or both offi­cials have the “stand­ing” to make those admon­ish­ments to Jamaica.
It was Mark Twain who said; “Nothing so needs reform­ing as oth­er peo­ple’s habits”. It goes with­out say­ing that the United States has no stand­ing to dic­tate to Jamaica how to con­duct her affairs.
Sure, Jamaica needs to be clear-eyed about China’s strate­gic inten­tions, which are tied to their loans, so too does the United States need to change its approach to inde­pen­dent sov­er­eign nations.

What Jamaicans do not need are lec­tures and a talk­ing to, like an errant child. Jamaicans are not unciv­i­lized, une­d­u­cat­ed lit­tle out­post natives. What Jamaica needs is respect, low-inter­est loans, tech­ni­cal exper­tise and invest­ments which will help to lift the small nation’s econ­o­my to a place where her peo­ple will have no need to leave out of eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety.
Regardless of China’s long-term strate­gic inter­est, it is dif­fi­cult to turn down low-inter­est loans and infra­struc­tur­al expan­sion which are crit­i­cal to the ulti­mate devel­op­ment of the country.

The United States has assist­ed Jamaica in numer­ous ways that have been help­ful. Many Jamaicans will read­i­ly point to some­thing which they have indi­vid­u­al­ly ben­e­fit­ted from. To those Jamaicans, it is dif­fi­cult to make the case that there are larg­er more con­se­quen­tial con­sid­er­a­tions out­side those minor ben­e­fits.
Others talk about the fact that there are prob­a­bly hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jamaicans liv­ing and work­ing in the United States.
What they fail to rec­og­nize is the ease with which Americans can vis­it and live in Jamaica, much unlike the reverse.
The pol­i­cy that Americans must have a pass­port to trav­el out­side the coun­try is of the mak­ing of the United States, it has noth­ing to do with oth­er nations.
Previously Americans could trav­el to Jamaica with only a dri­ver’s license.
Jamaica has no way of know­ing whether or not Americans trav­el­ing to the Island have crim­i­nal records. In fact, many do have crim­i­nal records and many do com­mit crimes while vis­it­ing. Many com­mit crimes while liv­ing in Jamaica.
In these instances, there is no reci­procity of respect in the Jamaica-America relationship. 

So yes, there have been much that the Americans have done as a large pow­er to assist Jamaica, hur­ri­cane and oth­er dis­as­ter relief, and a gen­er­al slate of across the board assis­tance, none of which can change Jamaica or pro­pel her into the 21^st cen­tu­ry.
Low-inter­est loans and tech­ni­cal assis­tance does give the Island the abil­i­ty to move for­ward. They allow for much-need­ed high­ways link­ing all sec­tions of the coun­try togeth­er, much the same way that President Dwight Eisenhower embarked on a mas­sive high­way build­ing project across the United States dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy.
Eisenhower under­stood that inter­state com­merce was crit­i­cal to expand­ing and grow­ing the American econ­o­my.
Andrew Holness also under­stands that cre­at­ing road­ways across the Island is crit­i­cal to island development. 

Jamaicans love the United States of America, giv­en a chance, Jamaicans would unan­i­mous­ly opt to trav­el and live in the United States, more so than they would, the People’s Republic of China or any oth­er nation.
Nevertheless, those same Jamaicans will get rather defen­sive when their coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty is not respect­ed.
They are quite aware of what China is doing, but at the same time, they are mes­mer­ized at the high­ways being built across their own coun­try.
Those infra­struc­ture projects are a source of pride, and no amount of lec­ture will damp­en that pride.
The United States may have missed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly solid­i­fy its rela­tion­ship with an all-impor­tant strate­gi­cal­ly placed ally.
Maybe a lit­tle more respect would have result­ed in some bet­ter loan agree­ments, grants, and tech­ni­cal sup­port.
Jamaica has done a lot of heavy lift­ing try­ing to live up to American demands. On a per­son­al note, I have risked my own life for years in the fight against illic­it drugs, because the Americans want­ed us to.
The for­mer [Air Jamaica] was forced to pay enor­mous fines to the United States for the sins of inge­nious mar­i­jua­na smug­glers.
Today Jamaica is flood­ed with ille­gal American made guns. Instead of help­ing to bol­ster the crime-fight­ing efforts of the Islands law enforce­ment, the United States seeks to attach puni­tive mea­sures to those who come down hard on the Islands crim­i­nals.
Maybe a change of atti­tude will go a long way, instead of a lecture.

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

Trump’s man in Jamaica Ambassador Donald Tapia has tak­en the same tack as Southern Command head, Admiral Craig Faller, in talk­ing down to Jamaica about the dan­ger China pos­es as a result of Sino-Jamaica rela­tions.
Make no mis­take about it, every word and every con­cern com­ing out of Washington DC’s mouth­pieces are true, just not wel­come from them.
The prob­lem is the gall and temer­i­ty of Washington DC to want to dic­tate terms to Jamaica as to who her friends should be as well as how she should con­duct her affairs.
Can you imag­ine the Jamaican ambas­sador in the United States telling the American Government how to con­duct for­eign affairs?
I am still try­ing to under­stand the ratio­nale for America’s unwant­ed pater­nal­is­tic propen­si­ties.
In response to Admiral Faller’s state­ments while in Jamaica we wrote yes­ter­day, that as a guest in Jamaica the Admiral was out of order and way ahead on his skis to be lec­tur­ing Jamaica about her rela­tion­ships.
Sure China is a two-head­ed snake, but as a coun­try, Jamaica has to make deci­sions in her inter­ests and the choic­es are not always between good and bad. Those choic­es are some­times choos­ing one of two evils.

In a more com­pre­hen­sive lec­ture than that of Fallers, yet in a mode as dis­joint­ed as his boss’s infan­tile style, Tapia went on a tear: “China is a drag­on with two heads. If China came to Jamaica pre­sum­ably with no strings attached, then why did you nego­ti­ate 1,200 acres of the most prime real estate with them? Because they need a return on their invest­ment,” Tapia told the local Gleaner pub­li­ca­tion.
Those are facts, but they are of no con­cern to either Tapia or the United States.

Tapia; “There is no way that you will be able to fund that high­way in 50 years. The nego­ti­a­tion was 1,200 of the most beau­ti­ful acres on the water that you gave to China, and they said they would devel­op it.” 
Again true, true, true, but the United States has always had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to assist Jamaica in a mean­ing­ful way which would remove her from pover­ty.
Jamaica with a first-world infra­struc­ture is in America’s strate­gic inter­est as she will be bet­ter able to retain its peo­ple and devel­op her econ­o­my.
America nev­er cared too much about Black peo­ple, so a devel­oped Jamaica would mean few­er Jamaicans seek­ing to enter the United States.
The United States has act­ed against Jamaica’s fidu­cia­ry inter­est in the past.
The harm done to Jamaica in the ’70s, was the price the coun­try paid for eschew­ing socialism/​communism. Some argue it was a great vic­to­ry against those forces, oth­ers say it was a pyrrhic victory.

Tapia denounced as unfair the Jamaican Government’s con­ces­sions to China Harbour Engineering Company – and oth­er con­struc­tion firms aligned to Beijing that engage in major infra­struc­ture projects.
This too is true but last time I looked Jamaica did not belong to America, nei­ther is she answer­able to the United States for her deci­sion mak­ing, no more than the United States is answer­able to her.
Again the US had it’s chance if it cared about Jamaica to help her with her devel­op­ment. Instead, Jamaicans are deport­ed from the US with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy and reg­u­lar­i­ty for the most minor infrac­tions.
Jamaica is awash in illic­it American guns, that are killing inno­cent cit­i­zens at an alarm­ing rate each year.
Extradition and depor­ta­tions are the char­ac­ter­is­tics that seem to define the American-Jamaican expe­ri­ence today.
Not mutu­al respect and devel­op­ment which should favor the two nations.

Said, Tapia: “When they (China) go into a coun­try, they go after two things – the min­er­als and the ports. I could tell you hor­ror sto­ries of coun­tries where they have tak­en over the ports because those coun­tries could not pay for their invest­ment; China usu­al­ly has a great pro­pa­gan­da sto­ry as to why it has hap­pened.”
“When America invests in the ener­gy and edu­ca­tion sec­tors, we are build­ing a long-last­ing effect and will con­tribute to sta­bil­i­ty and help to stem the brain drain. Those who talk about free speech, free enter­prise and human rights are for­get­ting that those three things go togeth­er with Jamaicans, who are free­dom-lov­ing peo­ple, and one day, the chick­ens will come home to roost. So, take all you can from them, but remem­ber that the West is stand­ing there with you.”

We have sure­ly seen what it looks like when America stands with Jamaica, and though the rela­tion­ship between the two nations is crit­i­cal, it sure­ly has­n’t been a rela­tion­ship based on mutu­al respect.
According to https://​trav​el​.state​.gov/ as of the fis­cal year 2018, the United States Embassy in Kingston’s refusal rate for grant­i­ng (B)visitor visas to Jamaicans was 54. 46%, as opposed to 5.1% for the Apartheid state of Israel.
The only coun­tries with high­er refusal rates are African nations like Liberia, with 64.36%, Libya with 73.73%, and some Asain nations like North Korea, Laos and oth­ers.
It is sure­ly the pre­rog­a­tive of the United States, how it han­dles its busi­ness, includ­ing who is allowed in as against who it keeps out. Jamaica’s geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty sure­ly has­n’t helped in her rela­tion­ship with her pow­er­ful neigh­bor to the north.
Jamaica’s rela­tion­ship with the United States is pure­ly strate­gic as it relates to America’s inter­est in stop­ping the drugs enter­ing her ports and main­tain­ing Jamaica as a syco­phan­tic under­ling who will ensure none of America’s adver­saries gains her affections.

(Former Jamaican ambas­sador and deputy per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the United Nations, told The Gleaner yes­ter­day that America had telegraphed its dis­plea­sure with Sino-Jamaican pacts since the vis­it by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in February 2018. “We shouldn’t be sur­prised. It has been going on for two years. Since that time, clear­ly, Jamaica has not paid atten­tion to what the US has said, but has forged ahead with its devel­op­ments.” 
“Washington should state whether it would fill the vac­u­um if Jamaica were to pull back from China”, Said Ward.
That’s it in a nut­shell, put up or shut up.

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