Karu F. Daniels

Late con­gress­man and civ­il rights activist Elijah Cummings’ grave isn’t even cold and there’s already news swirling about some­one gun­ning for his House of Representatives seat.

It’s the nature of many busi­ness­es — espe­cial­ly pol­i­tics — but the “who” tongues are wag­ging about is his younger, polit­i­cal­ly ambi­tious (and high­ly edu­cat­ed) widow.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is like­ly the suc­ces­sor to fill his con­gres­sion­al seat, accord­ing to a report from The Washington Examiner.

The long­time Democrat’s death — on Thursday, at age 68, caused by “long­stand­ing health chal­lenges” — came as a shock to many polit­i­cal observers.

Rockeymoore, 48, wed the long­time polit­i­cal lion in 2008, cur­rent­ly serves as the Maryland Democratic Party chair­woman and ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for state gov­er­nor in 2017.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has 10 days to sched­ule a spe­cial elec­tion for Cummings’ 7^th District seat and accord­ing to polit­i­cal sources will like­ly set the date by the mid­dle of next week.

In January, a pri­ma­ry elec­tion is expect­ed to take place with the gen­er­al elec­tion is set for March.

The win­ner will serve out of the remain­der of Cummings’ term, which expires in December of 2020.

An uniden­ti­fied polit­i­cal oper­a­tive said Rockeymoore Cumnmings has no imme­di­ate plans to run for the seat, which remains a Democratic strong­hold, and will pass on the spe­cial election.

It could be bad for “optics” — but great grist for the mill if she just went ahead and do what some think is inevitable.

But tim­ing is everything.

Rockeymoore Cummings, a moth­er of three, has not com­ment­ed on any spec­u­la­tion but the Maryland Democratic Party did release a state­ment on Friday ask­ing for privacy.

“We ask the pub­lic and the press to allow Maryland Democratic Party Chair Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings — and the rest of the Cummings fam­i­ly — time and space to grieve their loss,” said the par­ty, accord­ing to Patch.

A grad­u­ate of Purdue University, the Texas native is the founder of polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm Global Policy Solutions. She pre­vi­ous­ly served as vice pres­i­dent of research and pro­grams for the Congressional Black Caucus and authored The Political Action Handbook: A How-To Guide for the Hip Hop Generation in 2004.

We con­tin­ue to speak out about the spi­ral­ing crime rate in Jamaica and the tone-deaf­ness with which the author­i­ties are han­dling the prob­lem.
Gunmen con­tin­ue to kill at will, even as the gov­ern­ment roll out Zones of Special Operations and declare states of emer­gen­cies.
Despite these stop-gap mea­sures which take the place of real strate­gies, the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion, con­tin­ue to delude them­selves that this is real­ly no big deal.
My friend’s wife once told me of her love for pork, she said she had white rice and pork, and she fell ill. She said she knew the pork had made her ill, but she decid­ed to stop eat­ing rice.
The Administration and the oppo­si­tion in Kingston know what to do about the gang­sters run­ning around killing the inno­cent but they are too in love with them.
So the con­vene con­fer­ences to pull the wool over the peo­ple’s eyes, to cre­ate an illu­sion that they are doing some­thing rad­i­cal about it.
I say to the peo­ple of Jamaica they aren’t!
There is one solu­tion to the gang­sters run­ning unop­posed in our coun­try, and that is strong leg­is­la­tion and no-non­sense polic­ing.

Delusion, how­ev­er, is fool’s gold. Our peo­ple do not like to fol­low rules, we don’t like to obey laws, until of course, we move to places where they will have none of that non­sense.
And so instead of tack­ling the prob­lem head-on, they con­tin­ue to twid­dle their thumbs and pre­tend that this is a mere nui­sance on the path to pros­per­i­ty, or what­ev­er the hell their mantra is.
The real­i­ty is that even if pros­per­i­ty was pos­si­ble in this hotbed of killings and oth­er vio­lent crimes, the stan­dard of liv­ing would still be sub­stan­dard as a result of the pal­pa­ble fear in the coun­try.
The fact of the mat­ter is that there can, and will be no pros­per­i­ty or real growth in an atmos­phere in which so many have access to ille­gal guns.
In the mean­time, the Prime Minister, and the min­ions in his gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to inject them­selves into indi­vid­ual cas­es where police are forced to take action against crim­i­nals. This fur­ther mud­dies the water and ren­ders the work of the secu­ri­ty forces more difficult.

A recent­ly con­vened con­fer­ence between the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader, had the very same group of peo­ple who should nev­er ever be part of pol­i­cy­mak­ing in atten­dance.
Seated at the table were Jamaicans For Justice, the nation’s pre­em­i­nent anti-police agi­ta­tor, and oth­ers. At a time when five peo­ple lost their lives in one day in one small sec­tor of the city.
They con­tin­ue to fol­low the same path of obsti­na­cy, embrac­ing the very same band of idiots who present them­selves as experts and yet they expect dif­fer­ent results, and so the gang­sters laugh and con­tin­ue to kill with impuni­ty. Which makes one won­der whether they are killing with immu­ni­ty from the polit­i­cal leadership? 

They con­tin­ue to lis­ten to so-called experts like the squir­rel­ly Horace Levy who once stat­ed that the police’s assess­ment of what con­sti­tutes gangs was wrong. In his esteemed knowl­edge, the col­lec­tion of men who hang on the cor­ners in the dan­ger­ous inner-city com­mu­ni­ties were not gangs, they were mere ‘cor­ner-crews.’
These are the peo­ple who are influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy. These are the secu­ri­ty experts advis­ing on crime.
As a for­mer street cop who tra­versed almost every square yard of the tough and for­bod­ing inner-city areas of Kingston and Saint Andrew under the per­il of death, I nev­er heard any­thing so non­sen­si­cal. But these are the self-impor­tant buf­foons that the anti-police admin­is­tra­tion in Jamaica House sub­scribe to.
Instead of strong and unequiv­o­cal sup­port to the law enforce­ment agen­cies, the admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts are direct­ed at strength­en­ing JFJ and INDECOM at the expense of the hard-work­ing peo­ple in law enforce­ment.
I nev­er for­got my great Aunt always talk­ing about “what a ting wen dish tow­el tun table claat.“
That is where the nation’s secu­ri­ty is now pre­cip­i­tous­ly posi­tioned, in the hands of rank ama­teurs and self-pro­claimed experts.

The prob­lem for Jamaica is not that we haven’t seen this tem­plate that the crim­i­nals are using. In 201 we saw where their heads were. Earlier this year we got anoth­er glimpse of their capa­bil­i­ties in Guinep Tree May Pen. So it’s not as if there isn’t prece­dent.
Out of 2010 encounter with the entrenched pseu­do-gov­ern­ment of Christopher, Duddus Coke , was more than enough data-points from which the Government could eas­i­ly have extrap­o­lat­ed strate­gies, and cre­at­ed a seri­ous set of laws which would once and for all set a course for­ward which would secure the coun­try for gen­er­a­tions to come.
The incom­pe­tence and crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty of the then PNP admin­is­tra­tion cou­pled with the full acqui­es­cence of the JLP, ensured that there would be no lessons learned from what could eas­i­ly be a sit­u­a­tion in which the coun­try became a nar­co-state.
These are the kinds of things the two polit­i­cal par­ties have sub­ject­ed the coun­try to. The rea­son being that with­in their ranks are crim­i­nals who are ben­e­fit­ting from the mur­der-may­hem.
As one per­son puts it yes­ter­day, they are turn­ing our coun­try into a dynasty where their chil­dren fol­low into their foot­steps by own­ing seats in the par­lia­ment and the atten­dant unen­cum­bered access to pub­lic funds.
Rather than thank the secu­ri­ty forces the two bunch of crim­i­nals in both polit­i­cal gangs band­ed togeth­er to demo­nize the secu­ri­ty forces for their valiance in annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to the Island.
Several mem­bers gave their lives. The filthy politi­cians on both sides, in an effort to appease the thugs and the rab­ble, blamed the secu­ri­ty forces for their own failures.

October 17^th; Heavily armed fight­ers sur­round­ed secu­ri­ty forces in a Mexican city on Thursday and made them free one of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s sons, after his cap­ture trig­gered gun­bat­tles and a prison break that sent civil­ians scur­ry­ing for cov­er. Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said a patrol by National Guard mil­i­ta­rized police first came under attack from with­in a house in the city of Culiacan, 1,235 km (770 miles) north­west of Mexico City.

After enter­ing the house, they found four men, includ­ing Ovidio Guzman, who is accused of drug traf­fick­ing in the United States. The patrol was quick­ly out­matched by car­tel gun­men, how­ev­er, and it was with­drawn to pre­vent lives being lost, the gov­ern­ment said. Simultaneously, fight­ers swarmed through the city, bat­tling police and sol­diers in broad day­light. They torched vehi­cles and left at least one gas sta­tion ablaze. “The deci­sion was tak­en to retreat from the house, with­out Guzman, to try to avoid more vio­lence in the area and pre­serve the lives of our per­son­nel and recov­er calm in the city.

This is what hap­pens when cor­rupt gov­ern­ments side with crim­i­nal ele­ments against the secu­ri­ty forces. This is not hap­pen­ing in an abstract sense, nor in some dis­tant lands thou­sands of miles away. This hap­pened in Mexico, a part of the same Latin-American and Caribbean region of which Jamaica is a part.
I incor­po­rat­ed this sto­ry into this arti­cle because this hap­pened time and again in Jamaica, and the excuse is always the same. “The secu­ri­ty forces with­drew to save lives”. What a load of crock.
I saw the Jamaican Prime Minister at a scene hold­ing a baby while one woman explained her side of a sto­ry to him. Of course, the police are always wrong, and the crim­i­nals are always choir­boys. After lis­ten­ing, Holness told the crowd that the police may have caught the crim­i­nal but they alien­at­ed the com­mu­ni­ty.
Never mind that the police have a duty to go wher­ev­er crim­i­nals are and haul them off to jail under the col­or of law, regard­less of whether the crime-infest­ed com­mu­ni­ties like it or not.
Holness is the head of the gov­ern­ment, he was hear­ing one side of the sto­ry, he had no idea where the truth lay. Instead of telling the peo­ple that there are agen­cies and pro­to­cols in place to take care of com­plaints, he went on to berate the police, with­out any evi­dence.
These are the kinds of bla­tant­ly moron­ic and sopho­moric things he brought to the table as the leader of our coun­try. His anti-police bias is beneath the office of the Prime Minister’s office and should not be tol­er­at­ed.
It is for this rea­son that I won­der at the intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty of the police offi­cers who place their lives at risk to pro­tect peo­ple like these in both polit­i­cal par­ties.
It is the same kind of char­ac­ter defi­cien­cy and lack of moral char­ac­ter which char­ac­ter­izes Mexico’s lead­ers. A cor­rupt and duplic­i­tous con­nivance with the crim­i­nal under­world which makes Mexico a per­pet­u­al third world coun­try. It is the same char­ac­ter­is­tic that defines Jamaica.

Since this admin­is­tra­tion fails to see this threat for what it is, and since the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is worse at gov­er­nance, we are left with the hope that the tail will even­tu­al­ly wag the dog. Maybe then we can pick up the pieces and start over.
At least that is my dream, the pool is far too filthy and contaminated.

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.

Donald Trump report­ed­ly believed the let­ter had been some­thing to be proud of, and mul­ti­ple reports cit­ed a Democratic aide from the meet­ing who said Trump opened the meet­ing by boast­ing about his “nasty” let­ter to Erdogan. 

Trump’s let­ter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

So Andrew Holness and Peter Phillips are hold­ing talks report­ed­ly regard­ing the nation’s crime epi­dem­ic. This is a good thing that should always have been the way for­ward from the begin­ning. Crime should nev­er be a polit­i­cal foot­ball.
Better late than nev­er. It is a start, if they are seri­ous about doing what they can to work togeth­er on this all-impor­tant issue.

According to one local pub­li­ca­tion, the meet­ing will com­mence at 2:00 pm; both Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Opposition Leader Peter Phillips, as well as Minister of National Security, Horace Chang and the Opposition’s spokesman on nation­al secu­ri­ty, Fitz Jackson will rep­re­sent the rul­ing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), respec­tive­ly; and the event is being orga­nized by the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce.
A num­ber of stake­hold­ers, includ­ing the pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies such as the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA); the church­es; the trade unions; civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions; and human rights advo­cate are expect­ed to attend the meet­ing, which will be a fol­low up to an ini­tial meet­ing last week Thursday between Holness and Phillips.

Maybe I missed, it but I did not see any­thing about the police or the mil­i­tary being there in their capac­i­ty as experts. You know since they are the ones who have to strate­gize and exe­cute what­ev­er comes out of this crap­shoot.
How in God’s name can there be a con­fer­ence con­vened with­out the prin­ci­pal experts being front and cen­ter with the data, detail­ing the chal­lenges, explain­ing what they need to get the job done?

No, Horace Chang does not know, nei­ther does Fitz Jackson, nei­ther has any expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment or secu­ri­ty mat­ters, they are polit­i­cal hacks.
This is anoth­er exam­ple of why crime con­tin­ues to trend upward to the point that these two groups of jok­ers are forced to sit down togeth­er.
Why are so-called human rights activists even allowed into that conference?

So we have the very same bunch of self-right­eous all-know­ing nean­derthals sit­ting around talk­ing about how not to be hard on crim­i­nals. That should absolute­ly work at crime reduc­tion.
The Prime Minister not­ed in the par­lia­ment that crime had gone down 35% in the west­ern parish­es in which the (SOE’s) has been in effect. Of course, he did not both­er men­tion­ing that over­all crime has gone up across the Island.
It is like flog­ging a dead horse, but what do I know?
There is one solu­tion which works against crim­i­nals, it is an all-out assault on their meth­ods, on their oper­a­tions, tak­ing their mon­ey, tak­ing their hous­es, and putting them away for good.
Oh, wait.……This can­not come out of this con­fer­ence, because in that group are crim­i­nals, who will not leg­is­late against them­selves.
Therein lies the problem.

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.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D‑Md.) dead at 68 The world is indeed a less hon­or­able and noble place today.
R.I.P.…

It was refresh­ing to hear the Prime Minister talk about the ensu­ing cor­rup­tion imbroglio involv­ing Ruel Reid, Fritz Pinnock and oth­ers recent­ly.
Addressing a JLP Area Council One meet­ing at the Girl Guides Association of Jamaica head­quar­ters in St Andrew, the PM said he was sad­dened by the débâ­cle that has engulfed his admin­is­tra­tion.
“There is no ques­tion that it (Reid’s arrest) sad­dens me, that it sad­dens the entire par­ty, and I know you who sit here as well, you are indeed very sad­dened, very con­cern about what hap­pened.”

“I want to make it clear that … the Jamaica Labour Party that now has lead­er­ship and respon­si­bil­i­ty for the future of this coun­try, the insti­tu­tion of the par­ty, is strong­ly against any­thing that could be char­ac­ter­ized as cor­rup­tion, malfea­sance, and abuse of pub­lic funds,” Holness stat­ed, adding that con­cerns being raised are being tak­en seri­ous­ly by the par­ty.

“We will do every­thing in our pow­er to ensure that wher­ev­er there is cor­rup­tion, wher­ev­er there is the mis­use of pow­er, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic resources, that this admin­is­tra­tion will ensure that the mech­a­nisms are in place to fer­ret it out and bring them before the courts.” 
“This Government under­stands that, so when we sit togeth­er as a Cabinet, when we sit togeth­er as a par­ty, we have to look into our­selves, we have to reflect on what it is that we need to do, and the first thing is that the Government must nev­er inter­fere in the inde­pen­dent process­es to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute cor­rup­tion.”

More than any­thing else he said, the Prime Minister said the fol­low­ing; “You play a very impor­tant role in hold­ing Government to account. And what I know about the del­e­gates and work­ers of the Jamaica Labour Party is that dem love dem par­ty bad, but dem love dem coun­try more.” 

So he does get it. That was a charge to par­ty faith­ful as to where their loy­al­ties ought to be. Of course, many in atten­dance who were cheer­ing the Prime Minister com­plete­ly missed that charge, and one would guess it went over the heads of the major­i­ty of the hyper-par­ti­sans in the par­ty.
That is what this writer has been say­ing to laborites. Nations have polit­i­cal par­ties for nation­al devel­op­ment. Not the oth­er way around.
We make the grave mis­take in believ­ing that our loy­al­ties ought to be with the polit­i­cal par­ties of our choice. Our loy­al­ties should be to our nation.
No, I don’t care about the argu­ment that Comrades loy­al­ty is to their par­ty. We do not become our adver­saries, we set exam­ples for them to fol­low.
The People’s National Party has always had a cult-like per­sona. Members of the Jamaica Labor Party should not try to out-cult mem­bers of the PNP.

The over­ar­ch­ing point as far as I am con­cerned is that even though the Prime Minister said the Government must nev­er inter­fere in the inde­pen­dent process­es to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute cor­rup­tion.” It sends a chill down my spine, because that state­ment demon­strates that there is a lot more work to be done to build fire­walls around our crim­i­nal jus­tice process.
Even though I applaud the Prime Minister for open­ly mak­ing the state­ments he did, I wished he had gone far­ther by address­ing the state­ments made by Delroy Chuck his Justice Minister who can­not seem to keep his mouth shut.
There are many ways to inter­fere in the crim­i­nal jus­tice process. Chuck’s assault on law-enforce­ment was clear­ly a gra­tu­itous and cor­rupt attempt at influ­enc­ing a case which we are told is still under inves­ti­ga­tion.
That kind of inter­fer­ence is cor­rup­tion and it needs to be called out for what it is.
Since we can­not un-hear what we already heard, I am not inclined to be respon­sive to the idea that he with­drew the state­ment he made.
That a Minister of Government would inter­vene, (ver­bal­ly or oth­er­wise) in an active inves­ti­ga­tion, and a case that has not come to a res­o­lu­tion, which involves a for­mer col­league, is the very def­i­n­i­tion of corruption.

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.

St. Paul’s Betty McCollum is rad­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive on U.S. pol­i­cy toward Israel. Why don’t you ever hear about it?

By Jessica Schulberg

Over the past few years, one mem­ber of Congress has stood up to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), denounced Israel’s poli­cies, which she likened to “apartheid,” and pushed laws that would place human­i­tar­i­an con­di­tions on U.S. mil­i­tary aid to Israel. Human rights advo­cates praise her, and she is pop­u­lar in her pro­gres­sive dis­trict. But she is nei­ther the face of the pro­gres­sive left nor the bogey­man of Fox News. Unless you’ve lived in Minnesota — or read MinnPost — there’s a good chance you’ve nev­er heard of her. 

Her name is Betty McCollum, and she has rep­re­sent­ed St. Paul for almost 20 years. 

President Donald Trump — who loves to attack Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), one of the first Muslim con­gress­women, for her crit­i­cism of Israel — has nev­er once tweet­ed McCollum’s name. That the Democratic con­gress­woman who leads the van­guard of pro­gres­sive U.S. pol­i­cy toward Israel in Congress is not the sub­ject of con­stant bad-faith attacks from the right is a tes­ta­ment to her prag­ma­tism. But it also expos­es the incon­sis­ten­cy of the out­rage cam­paign direct­ed at Omar and the oth­er mem­bers of the so-called “Squad,” a group of pro­gres­sive first-term law­mak­ers who are all women of color.

“Rep. Omar has a his­to­ry of launch­ing vir­u­lent anti-Semitic screeds,” Trump claimed at a cam­paign ral­ly in Minneapolis on Thursday. “She is a dis­grace to our coun­try and she is one of the big rea­sons that I am going to win and the Republican Party is going to win Minnesota in 13 months,” he continued. 

Trump’s attacks on the Squad, which also includes Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.), “are inten­tion­al­ly done to rile up the racist instincts of a por­tion of his base,” said Dylan Williams, of the left-lean­ing pro-Israel group J Street. “This dou­ble stan­dard that’s being applied to these con­gress­women is very clear, and it’s not a stan­dard that has been applied to oth­er con­gres­sion­al crit­ics of Israeli pol­i­cy and the occu­pa­tion.” Omar, who is Black, Muslim and an immi­grant from Somalia, rep­re­sents “a per­fect storm of char­ac­ter­is­tics that they could try to attack and por­tray as the prob­lem to a white evan­gel­i­cal base,” said Yousef Munayyer, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. 

“Rep. McCollum,” Munayyer added, “didn’t fit the poster.”

McCollum, who grew up in South St. Paul, trained as a social stud­ies teacher. After she grad­u­at­ed, she had a hard time find­ing full-time work, so she took on long-term sub­sti­tute teach­ing jobs and worked part-time at Sears. In 1984, McCollum’s tod­dler daugh­ter frac­tured her skull falling off a play­ground slide that didn’t have enough sand at its base. The girl recov­ered quick­ly, but the city didn’t do any­thing about the play­ground until after McCollum pushed for it at a City Council meet­ing — a vic­to­ry that prompt­ed her to run for local office. She served on the City Council and in the Minnesota state­house before she was elect­ed to Congress in 2000. 

There is no one moment that prompt­ed McCollum to become one of the most out­spo­ken mem­bers of Congress on Israel and Palestine. She tends to talk about the con­flict as just one of the many human rights crises bedev­il­ing the world. As a law­mak­er, she has shown a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in pol­i­cy aimed at pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble kids: She has worked to pro­vide HIV-AIDS assis­tance to orphans, pre­vent child mar­riage and fix crum­bling schools for Native American chil­dren. 

In 2006, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of groups that pro­vide human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance to Palestinians warned McCollum of a loom­ing human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter. At the time, law­mak­ers were prepar­ing to vote on the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, a bill osten­si­bly intend­ed to iso­late Hamas, the group that has been des­ig­nat­ed by Israel and the U.S. as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion and that had recent­ly won a major­i­ty in the Palestinian par­lia­ment. The bill, human­i­tar­i­an work­ers explained, would make it hard­er for aid orga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide life­sav­ing med­ical care to Palestinians. McCollum lis­tened and was one of two mem­bers who vot­ed against advanc­ing the bill out of committee.

The bill, which was backed by AIPAC, passed eas­i­ly in the House. But McCollum’s dis­sent­ing vote set her up for a feud with one of the most pow­er­ful lob­by­ing groups in the coun­try. On a Friday after the vote, McCollum’s chief of staff, Bill Harper, got a phone call from Amy Rotenberg, an AIPAC mem­ber who had met with McCollum on behalf of the orga­ni­za­tion. McCollum’s “sup­port for ter­ror­ists will not be tol­er­at­ed,” Rotenberg said, accord­ing to Harper. Rotenberg, who declined an inter­view, described Harper’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the con­ver­sa­tion as a “seri­ous distortion.”

“Bill Harper’s descrip­tion of the con­ver­sa­tion with me was false in 2006 and it is false now,” Rotenberg wrote.

McCollum was shocked. She wrote a let­ter to AIPAC’s exec­u­tive direc­tor slam­ming the group for attempt­ing to use “threat and intim­i­da­tion to sti­fle legit­i­mate pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences.” She banned AIPAC rep­re­sen­ta­tives from her offices pend­ing a for­mal apol­o­gy from the lob­by­ing group. It was a lone­ly time to go up against AIPAC. J Street, the left-lean­ing alter­na­tive to AIPAC, didn’t exist yet. Members told McCollum that she had “writ­ten her death sen­tence,” she said. 

“I went, ‘OK, if I lose an elec­tion over stand­ing up for med­ical sup­plies for kids, OK, I’m ready to go!’” McCollum said. “When I came back, the whis­per kind of was, ‘You can survive!’”

McCollum nev­er got a pub­lic apol­o­gy, but she did even­tu­al­ly let AIPAC rep­re­sen­ta­tives back into her office. “But they don’t bul­ly her or do what they do to oth­er mem­bers,” said Brad Parker, a senior advis­er at Defense for Children International Palestine.

McCollum wins reelec­tions in her pro­gres­sive dis­trict by huge mar­gins — she received 91% of the vote in the 2018 pri­ma­ry and beat her Republican oppo­nent by 36 per­cent­age points. She has no inter­est in run­ning for Senate, she said. 

In 2015, when a group of activists start­ed orga­niz­ing in oppo­si­tion to Israel’s mil­i­tary deten­tion of Palestinian chil­dren, McCollum’s office was one of the first places they vis­it­ed on Capitol Hill. Palestinian human rights is an out­lier issue on Capitol Hill — “You don’t even have access to a lot of offices; they don’t want to deal with Palestinian orga­ni­za­tions,” said Parker, whose group briefed McCollum’s team on the issue. “Those bar­ri­ers don’t exist with Betty.”

They showed McCollum’s team a 2013 UNICEF report that described Israeli sol­diers remov­ing Palestinian kids from their homes in the mid­dle of the night, blind­fold­ing them and tak­ing them to an inter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter. The kids were beat­en, deprived of sleep and forced to sign con­fes­sions in a lan­guage they did not under­stand, with­out a lawyer present, the report said. 

“It’s like, ‘Wait a sec­ond. We’re giv­ing mon­ey, the U.S. gov­ern­ment, to UNICEF, to do this report — and we’re giv­ing mon­ey to the Israeli gov­ern­ment to do the things that the report is about,’” Harper, McCollum’s chief of staff, said. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

The U.S. cur­rent­ly gives Israel $3.8 bil­lion a year in mil­i­tary aid. Since World War II, it has received more U.S. for­eign assis­tance than any oth­er coun­try, accord­ing to the Congressional Research Service. Most coun­tries that receive U.S. assis­tance are sub­ject to exten­sive restric­tions on how the aid is used. But for Israel, much of the mon­ey goes direct­ly into its Ministry of Defense, with lit­tle American over­sight, Harper said.

In 2017, McCollum intro­duced a bill to block U.S. aid to Israel from being used to “sup­port the mil­i­tary deten­tion, inter­ro­ga­tion, abuse, or ill-treat­ment of Palestinian chil­dren in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law.” She rein­tro­duced the bill in April, this time with lan­guage that would amend the so-called Leahy law, which pro­hibits the U.S. from pro­vid­ing mil­i­tary assis­tance to for­eign gov­ern­ments that com­mit “a gross vio­la­tion of human rights.” The cur­rent bill would also set aside mon­ey to fund non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al treat­ment for Palestinian chil­dren who have been detained by the Israeli military. 

Last March, the Minnesota del­e­ga­tion of American Muslims for Palestine trav­eled to Washington to meet with McCollum and talk about her bill. At the end of the meet­ing, McCollum tweet­ed out a pic­ture of her pos­ing with the group. The con­gress­woman didn’t think much of it — she tweets pic­tures of groups she meets with all the time. But Palestinian activists are used to being ignored by their elect­ed offi­cials, AMP chap­ter lead Mariam El-Khatib said. When El-Khatib saw the tweet, she thought, “Wow, she doesn’t mind being asso­ci­at­ed with AMP or Palestinians doing this kind of work.” 

The bill has 21 co-spon­sors, all Democrats. Two addi­tion­al Democrats with­drew their names as co-spon­sors. When Rep. Debbie Dingell (D‑Mich.) pulled her name, she tweet­ed that her “heart has always been with the chil­dren of Palestine” and that she was push­ing lead­er­ship “hard” for a vote on a “res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing a two-state solu­tion.” 

McCollum pushed back: “Rep. Dingell removed her name from HR 2407, call­ing it ‘coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to a peace­ful, two-state solu­tion,’” McCollum tweet­ed. “Does ongo­ing U.S. fund­ing for Israeli mil­i­tary deten­tion and abuse of Palestinian chil­dren pro­mote peace or human rights violations?”

McCollum esti­mates that if all of the mem­bers who told her in pri­vate they liked the bill were will­ing to sup­port it pub­licly, she’d have anoth­er 20 co-spon­sors. But she also knows the bill has almost no chance of mak­ing it out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, head­ed by the staunch­ly pro-Israel Rep. Eliot Engel (D‑N.Y.) — much less becom­ing law. Engel and Dingell did not respond to requests for comment. 

“It’s the obvi­ous bill that still won’t get passed,” said Jaylani Hussein, head of the Minnesota chap­ter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. 

Last year, McCollum accept­ed an award from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. During her accep­tance speech, she described Israel’s nation-state law — which reserves the right to self-deter­mi­na­tion in Israel for Jewish peo­ple — as a sys­tem of apartheid. For a sit­ting mem­ber of Congress to use the word “apartheid” in ref­er­ence to Israel is rad­i­cal — almost incon­ceiv­able. But her com­ments attract­ed almost no nation­al attention. 

With the excep­tion of fringe actors, such as Zionist Organization of American President Mort Klein, most of the peo­ple from the pro-Israel com­mu­ni­ty who weighed in on her speech offered mea­sured crit­i­cism. Steve Hunegs, of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, expressed dis­ap­point­ment with her word choice and her deci­sion to attend the event, but he also empha­sized her past sup­port for a two-state solu­tion. He didn’t accuse her of anti-Semitism. 

McCollum thinks the con­ver­sa­tion about Israel is shift­ing among her col­leagues. The lead­er­ship of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has vowed to annex parts of the West Bank — has Democrats con­cerned that prospects for a two-state solu­tion are disappearing.

Without a two-state solu­tion, “do we have apartheid in Israel?” McCollum asked. “Do we have some­thing sim­i­lar to Jim Crow laws, which we had a strug­gle with in this coun­try and we’re still fac­ing the reper­cus­sions that are with race rela­tions? Do we not say anything?”

The con­ver­sa­tion is slow­ly shift­ing, but it’s not hard to imag­ine what would have hap­pened if Omar, the con­gress­woman who rep­re­sents the dis­trict across the riv­er from McCollum’s, had used the word “apartheid” in ref­er­ence to Israel. Like McCollum, Omar has spo­ken out against the influ­ence of AIPAC and crit­i­cized the right-wing gov­ern­ment in Israel. But, unlike the more senior law­mak­er, Omar’s crit­ics usu­al­ly assume the worst inter­pre­ta­tion of her words.

In the week imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Omar’s “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” tweet — an obser­va­tion that mem­bers of Congress are will­ing to infringe on Americans’ right to crit­i­cize Israel because of mon­ey direct­ed their way by pro-Israel lob­by­ists — Omar was round­ly accused of traf­fick­ing in anti-Semitic tropes about the influ­ence of wealthy Jews. Her name was men­tioned in 21 Fox News shows, 51 CNN shows and five MSNBC shows, The Intercept report­ed. Her name also appeared in near­ly 500 news­pa­per arti­cles, accord­ing to a Lexis Nexis search. 

Omar apol­o­gized after the “Benjamins” tweet and said she was grate­ful for col­leagues and allies who edu­cat­ed her on the “painful his­to­ry of anti-Semitic tropes.” Later that month, she spoke at a pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy town hall about her fear that her legit­i­mate crit­i­cisms of Israel will be mis­con­strued as anti-Semitism because she is Muslim. She asked why she is allowed to crit­i­cize the influ­ence of the National Rifle Association and Big Pharma but not the influ­ence of the pro-Israel lob­by. But peo­ple paid atten­tion to only one line in her remarks: “I want to talk about the polit­i­cal influ­ence in this coun­try that says it is OK for peo­ple to push for alle­giance to a for­eign country.”

Omar was talk­ing about an effec­tive polit­i­cal lob­by­ing oper­a­tion — one that includes plen­ty of evan­gel­i­cal Christians and is opposed by lots of American Jews. But Omar’s crit­ics, includ­ing some lib­er­als, insist­ed she was ques­tion­ing the loy­al­ty of American Jews. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait pro­claimed she no longer deserved “the pre­sump­tion of good faith,” and Engel accused her of “invok­ing a vile anti-Semitic slur.” Within days, the House passed a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing all forms of anti-Semitism, list­ing “accu­sa­tions of dual loy­al­ty” along­side the neo-Nazi ral­ly in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the mas­sacre at a syn­a­gogue in Pittsburgh. 

McCollum’s staff say that the rea­son she doesn’t evoke the same reac­tions as Omar is because she is care­ful with her words and has spent years cul­ti­vat­ing close rela­tion­ships in Congress, includ­ing with lead­er­ship and mem­bers on the oth­er side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. McCollum works “excru­ci­at­ing­ly” hard to make sure that what she says about Israel is “based on evi­dence” and is backed on reports, Harper said. She goes out of her way to make clear that she is not attack­ing Jews or Israelis, but the poli­cies of a gov­ern­ment, Harper continued. 

I asked more than a dozen pol­i­cy advo­cates and Capitol Hill staffers who work on Israeli-Palestinian issues about the dis­parate treat­ment between McCollum and Omar. All of them agreed that McCollum is care­ful and that she ben­e­fits from close rela­tion­ships with her col­leagues. But racism and Islamophobia are also part of the rea­son why Omar faces vit­ri­olic back­lash every time she weighs in on Israel while McCollum has gone rel­a­tive­ly unno­ticed, almost all of the advo­cates and Capitol Hill staffers said. 

“Undoubtedly, Rep. McCollum is one of the lead­ing human rights cham­pi­ons on Palestinian human rights on the Hill, con­sis­tent­ly for years, with­out fail,” said Beth Miller, the gov­ern­ment affairs man­ag­er at Jewish Voice for Peace. “The fact that she has nev­er been attacked in the way that Reps. Tlaib and Omar have been speaks to the racism and Islamophobia that is very present in this conversation.”

Even if Omar used the same lan­guage that McCollum has in crit­i­ciz­ing Israel, she would still be maligned as an anti-Semite, Munayyer argued. “You can try to be as care­ful as you want with your lan­guage, obvi­ous­ly it’s impor­tant that every­one should be care­ful with their lan­guage on this issue,” he said, “but when no mat­ter what you say, you’re being attacked because of who you are. It’s not about what you’re say­ing, it’s about you hav­ing a voice on this issue.”

From the out­side, McCollum and Omar seem like the per­fect duo to bring real change to the U.S. con­ver­sa­tion around Israel: a vet­er­an law­mak­er who has good­will among her col­leagues and a fiery new­com­er who isn’t afraid of rais­ing hell. 

“People like Reps. Omar and Tlaib — and, to a cer­tain degree, Bernie Sanders — are bring­ing much-need­ed atten­tion to the occu­pa­tion in ways that we’ve nev­er seen before in Congress. But you also need work­hors­es like Rep. McCollum to qui­et­ly build con­sen­sus around leg­is­la­tion,” a senior Democratic Hill staffer said. “As in any move­ment, the two roles are com­ple­men­tary. You can’t make real change with­out both an inside and an out­side strategy.”

Omar, who, through a spokesper­son, declined an inter­view, is a co-spon­sor of McCollum’s bill — but most of the time, the two mem­bers do their own thing. 

“Ilhan is on the oth­er side of the Mississippi River, and we talk some­times in the break room in between votes,” McCollum said, adding that the same was true with Omar’s pre­de­ces­sors. But, at times, McCollum has seemed vis­i­bly annoyed with Omar and the con­tro­ver­sies that sur­round her. 

In March, McCollum put out a rare state­ment on her Minnesota col­league: “Rep. Omar has the right to speak freely, and she also must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the effect her words have on her col­leagues, her con­stituents, and the poli­cies Democrats seek to advance,” McCollum said. “Democrats have an impor­tant agen­da to advance and for any Member of Congress to be suc­cess­ful it takes the sup­port of at least 217 col­leagues to pass a bill. No one does this job alone.”

McCollum’s chief of staff put it more blunt­ly, “My own take on it is that she real­ly derailed a lot of our work,” Harper said. 

But as any­one who has tried to talk, write or argue about Israel and the Palestinians knows, there’s no way to do it that will please everyone. 

“Given how detached the D.C. debate on Israel-Palestine is from the actu­al real­i­ty of what goes on there, there may be no way we move this debate clos­er to real­i­ty in a way that avoids ten­sion entire­ly,” said Matt Duss, a for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.). “We just have to do our best to be as hon­est and sen­si­tive and con­struc­tive as we can, but it’s a debate we need to have.”

One of the things which kept the Jamaica Labor Party out of elec­tive office after Edward Seaga lost to Michael Manley in 1988 for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years, many Jamaicans will tell you, is arro­gance.
Arrogance on the part of the elites inside the par­ty who get their tail feath­ers up their own ass­es as soon as they taste polit­i­cal pow­er.
A sense of enti­tle­ment that ulti­mate­ly alien­ates the aver­age strug­gling Jamaican from a par­ty they see as anti­thet­i­cal to their own inter­est.
The PNP a far less effec­tive par­ty at good gov­er­nance, nev­er­the­less has been far more effec­tive at find­ing com­mon cause with the man on the street.
The irony of ironies is that the par­ty of (Bustamante, the tra­di­tion­al work­ing guy), could effec­tive­ly be pro­pa­gan­dized and viewed as the par­ty of uptown elites.

For bet­ter or for worse, the peo­ple vot­ed out the JLP and gave Bruce Golding a very slim major­i­ty in September of 2007. Before he could fin­ish the first term, Bruce Golding was forced to step aside as he was embroiled in the imbroglio of the Mannat Phelps and Phillips affair in which he alleged it was the par­ty, not he which paid the afore­named American law firm to lob­by the American Government not to demand the extra­di­tion of transna­tion­al, now con­vict­ed and incar­cer­at­ed crim­i­nal Christopher (Duddus)Coke.
Golding made way for Andrew Holness, a young man whom many saw as a new direc­tion for the par­ty, but the dam­age was done. Holness sought his own man­date, but he was round­ly reject­ed at the polls, set­ting up anoth­er PNP admin­is­tra­tion, this time under the lead­er­ship of the hap­less Portia Simpson Miller.
Jamaica was not nec­es­sar­i­ly a PNP coun­try, as the com­rades would like to believe or have you believe, but the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple were not hap­py with the deci­sions the JLP was mak­ing. Neither were they enam­ored with the elit­ist atti­tude of the par­ty’s top-tiered functionaries.

But Holness was giv­en a new man­date, after he demon­strat­ed to the Jamaican peo­ple that he could hum­ble him­self and show that he cared about their needs.
On inau­gu­ra­tion day Thursday, March 3^rd. 2016 Andrew Holness was sworn in at Kings House for a sec­ond time as Prime Minister. In his inau­gur­al address on the sub­ject of cor­rup­tion Holness said the fol­low­ing;

With this man­date: There is no major­i­ty for arro­gance. There is no space for self­ish­ness. There is no place for pet­ti­ness. There is no room for com­pla­cen­cy and, There is no mar­gin for error. I am under no illu­sion as to the mean­ing of this man­date. We have not won a prize. Instead, peo­ple are giv­ing us a test.

But it seems that despite the many suc­cess­es of the new Administration, there are some with­in the par­ty whose fin­gers con­tin­ue to have crazy glue attached.
And to the hyper-par­ti­sans, I don’t give a damn about your sud­den feal­ty to the idea of [inno­cent until proven guilty]. Save it.
The lat­est arrests of Ruel Reid and oth­ers may not end in con­vic­tions, after all, Jamaica’s upper Saint Andrew elites do not go to prison, worse yet if they have polit­i­cal con­nec­tions.
And so the bar­rage of unfor­tu­nate crit­i­cisms have start­ed to pour out of the JLP and its min­ions. Delroy Chuck, whose daugh­ter is rep­re­sent­ing Reid we are reli­ably informed, blast­ed the secu­ri­ty forces for doing what?
Doing their jobs!
The shame­less Chuck is one of the old crus­taceans of Jamaican pol­i­tics. One who still leech­es off the Jamaican tax­pay­ers. In a shock­ing dis­play of what may amount to tam­per­ing, Delroy Chuck used his posi­tion as Minister of Justice to demean and berate the secu­ri­ty forces for arrest­ing his cronies, even though he admit­ted he did not know what evi­dence the secu­ri­ty forces had.
Even if we were to set that aside, what right does a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment have berat­ing the secu­ri­ty forces for doing their job?
Worse yet, his daughter,(an attor­ney) is rep­re­sent­ing one of the arrest­ed per­sons. While Delroy Chuck is rep­re­sent­ing the very same gov­ern­ment under whose lead­er­ship the secu­ri­ty forces fall.
I was stunned at the broad­side and we made it known in a not too intel­lec­tu­al arti­cle, after which Chuck backed away from his state­ments, but did not apol­o­gize.
But Chuck did not back away because he saw any­thing wrong with his under­min­ing the inves­ti­ga­tions with his com­ments, he backed away because there was pushback.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​i​r​t​y​-​d​e​l​r​o​y​-​c​h​u​c​k​-​w​a​n​t​s​-​s​p​e​c​i​a​l​-​p​r​i​v​i​l​e​g​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​c​r​o​n​i​es/

They are not quit­ting, they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that politi­cians and their cronies are above the nation’s laws. Young Jamaica; the youth arm of the JLP said the raids appeared staged…No one should pay atten­tion to polit­i­cal par­ty sur­ro­gates, and farm teams in my esti­ma­tion, so I won’t be set­ting prece­dent here.
However, Hugh Wildman; Attorney rep­re­sent­ing Fritz Pinnock blast­ed the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces; Siad Wildman “The Gestapo-like oper­a­tion yes­ter­day was sole­ly for embar­rass­ing per­sons and boost­ing the wan­ing polit­i­cal for­tunes of some.
No dude, your clients embar­rassed them­selves when they allowed them­selves to be caught up in these alle­ga­tions. Now if ever I was arrest­ed for some­thing I would want my lawyer to go to the mat for me, so I’m going to be lenient with Wildman, despite his unfor­tu­nate use of words.
“The Gestapo-like oper­a­tion yes­ter­day was sole­ly for embar­rass­ing per­sons and boost­ing the wan­ing polit­i­cal for­tunes of some.”
Wildman seemed to bounce from defense lawyer to polit­i­cal oper­a­tive, need­less to say, he needs to acquaint him­self with exact­ly what Hitler’s Gestapo was. He may be more judi­cious with the use of that term after he does so.
The con­tin­ued JLP talk­ing point that the accused men and one woman could have been asked to come in to be charged miss­es the fact that there is deter­rence in the perp-walk. Police have no oblig­a­tion to call any­one to come in, arrest­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects is the law.
What the JLP and its mouth­pieces are ask­ing for is spe­cial treat­ment for Reid, Pinnock, and the Parish Councillor.

The idea that any mem­ber of the Jamaican Legislative House, much less a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment, or the legal pro­fes­sion would demean the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces by using terms like Gestapo to attack them for doing their duties, demon­strates a woe­ful mis­un­der­stand­ing of what the Gestapo was and a crass attempt to over­dra­ma­tize at the expense of the hard-work­ing mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces.
These igno­rant state­ments should be direct­ed at the thieves and fraud­sters who were placed in hand­cuffs because of their alleged sticky fin­gers.
(I hope they were placed in hand­cuffs)
The fact that any mem­ber of the JLP would lam­bast the secu­ri­ty forces for doing their sworn duties instead of chastis­ing their cohorts for engag­ing in crim­i­nal­i­ty, demon­strates to the nation the lev­el of cor­rup­tion and immoral­i­ty which per­vades this admin­is­tra­tion.
Jamaicans always believed that this par­ty hat­ed the police, these dumb morons are mak­ing it crys­tal clear.
I have no fear of being labeled a com­rade. The com­rades label me Laborite when I step on their corn, Oh well.….

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE. WE MUST ROOT OUT CORRUPTION FROM THE PUBLIC SERVICE

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.

Dirty Delroy Chuck has once again opened his mouth and fur­ther embar­rassed the par­ty and gov­ern­ment of which he is a part, by stick­ing his nose where it does not belong.
Again, Chuck who is part of the yel­low-skinned uptown bour­geoise has con­vinced him­self that there ought to be two sets of rules, one for his kind and anoth­er for every­one else.
In his own words, and clear­ly in an inci­dent that no min­is­ter of Government ought to be crit­i­ciz­ing law-enforce­ment, Chuck decid­ed to inject him­self into the Ruel Reid arrest, on the sole basis that he believes peo­ple like him­self, Ried and Fritz Pinnock, should get spe­cial privileges.

Chuck; The DPP seems to have had no addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al or evi­dence, and what seems so unfor­tu­nate is that the arrests took place (in a man­ner that) looks like Nicodemus in the night.”

Why would a Minister of Government pub­licly crit­i­cize the DPP in a sit­u­a­tion where he admit­ted that he does not have the facts?

Chuck; speak­ing to the arrests of his cohorts; “I don’t get the impres­sion that these per­sons are actu­al­ly run­ning away. They have made them­selves avail­able on all occa­sions, so in fact, if an arrest should have been made, they could eas­i­ly have been asked to come in so that they could be charged.”

Chuck; On bail; If charges were to be laid against the per­son now arrest­ed as a result of the probe: “I sus­pect they could eas­i­ly have been grant­ed their own bail, or they could be asked to sur­ren­der their trav­el doc­u­ments, as the case may be.”

Chuck is demand­ing spe­cial treat­ments for his cohorts whom he clear­ly believes should not be sub­ject to the embar­rass­ment of arrest as reg­u­lar folks.

Chuck; On the offi­cers involved in the raid; “ the cops are sala­cious, in that you put so many peo­ple at these per­sons’ gates”.
“based on the lit­tle I’ve heard, it’s a fur­ther search for more mate­r­i­al, so it seems like the author­i­ties are still not sure what they are look­ing for?”

What Delroy Chuck is say­ing, is that regard­less of the fact that Ruel Reid, and Fritz Pinnock may have com­mit­ted crimes against the Jamaican peo­ple, they should be spared the humil­i­a­tion of a pub­lic arrest.
That is exact­ly what that fuck­ing retard is say­ing. The fact is that pub­lic sham­ing is exact­ly the right thing to do, it is a part of the deter­rent effect which ought to work at pre­vent­ing poten­tial offenders.

Chuck; Come to a con­clu­sion. If you don’t have the mate­r­i­al, report that there’s not enough mate­r­i­al to charge. But if you go and you charge, be care­ful that you (don’t) charge on very lim­it­ed evi­dence, with the end result that the cas­es might not go very far, and that would under­mine the sort of con­fi­dence that you would have in the insti­tu­tion if you pro­ceed to charge on very lim­it­ed evi­dence and the cas­es turn out to be weak or dis­missed by the court.”

Even though he has no idea what the evi­dence is, Delroy chuck the Minister of Justice, is work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to work the ref­er­ees, (judges) in a case in which he does not know the evi­dence.
This is an unscrupu­lous and under­hand­ed method of under­min­ing the case against his friends.

Chuck; admit­ted that he does not know of the evi­dence that is involved in the probe, but stressed that at the end of the day, “we must be very pro­fes­sion­al in what we do”. He expressed the hope that the man­ner in which the law enforce­ment agen­cies car­ry out their oper­a­tions can be accept­ed as being professional.

So even though he has zero facts on the case, and even though there has been zero alle­ga­tion of impro­pri­ety or unpro­fes­sion­al behav­ior on the part of law-enforce­ment, this filthy Minister was pre­pared to begin the work of under­min­ing the case which has not even gone to court.
The Prime Minister has an oppor­tu­ni­ty, in the inter­est of the par­ty and coun­try, to ask Delroy Chuck to step aside.
It is enti­tled, uptown mulat­toes like Delroy Chuck who are left­overs from our colo­nial past that we must eschew.
If Delroy Chuck expects his friends to avoid arrest and embar­rass­ment he should encour­age them to obey the laws.
Not once has he as a par­a­site on the pub­lic pay­roll, spo­ken to the crimes alleged against his cronies. That is all we need to know about this asshole.

Since this arti­cle was first pub­lished we have been reli­ably informed that Delroy Chuck has with­drawn his com­ments.
But that is not enough, he should hand his reg­is­tra­tion to the prime min­is­ter. He is a dis­grace.
Furthermore, we are now learn­ing that Chuck’s daugh­ter who is a lawyer, is one of the attor­neys who will be rep­re­sent­ing Ruel Reid.
This makes Chuck’s state­ments even more insid­i­ous and trans­par­ent.
Delroy Chuck should resign now !!!!

This arti­cle has been updated.

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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.
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