Commentary
Delcy Rodriguez knew her brooch was provocative. That she wore it wasn’t merely a diplomatic faux pas. What is surprising was neither Grenada’s prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, and especially nor Barbados’ Mia Mottley, did not, during Ms Rodriguez’...
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“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people”. - Alan Moore, in V for Vendetta (1989). For democracy to work well, governments should be afraid of the electorate. The people put them in power to...
After some years of muddy communication and mixed signals coming out of parliament on the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by our police, it is finally becoming clear. Apparently, the issue was never over whether or not the JCF should implement the...
Delcy Rodríguez’s charm offensive in the Caribbean, and her promotion of a Venezuela-Barbados partnership on renewable energy, highlight the need for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to fashion a coherent framework for its relations with Caracas,...
A recent school incident unsettled the country, not only because a boy was physically assaulted on camera, but because of what the explanation seemed to permit. In the school’s public statement, the assaulted student was said to have admitted...
Jamaica is facing a crisis that can no longer be softened with polite language or buried beneath statistics. Violence has moved from the streets into our classrooms, and, in some cases, our schools now mirror the very communities they were meant to...
It is urgent that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) engineer a sensible solution to the impasse over the extension of the mandate of its secretary general, Carla Barnett. At this point, that solution increasingly appears to be Dr Barnett’s...
Last week, this column looked at the oil crisis triggered by the US/Israel war with Iran, which started on February 28. This has led to the blockading of the Strait of Hormuz by both the USA and Iran. Even with a ceasefire of some sorts, there is...
Dr Eric Williams, in From Columbus to Castro, warned that the Caribbean suffers from a crippling psychological dependence that shapes every aspect of life – economic, cultural, and political. Centuries of colonial subjugation, he argued, left the...
Those persons who were born before Independence and probably a decade after 1962 will readily understand the acronym PWD which, of course, is the Public Works Department. I thought about the PWD the moment I heard about the National Reconstruction...
In Jamaica, we may have heard the phrase “land a nuh escallion and thyme”. This saying has been handed down through generations as a reminder that land is precious, limited, and should never be taken for granted. Unlike crops that can be replanted...
There are some people who, intuitively, possess extraordinary insights, emotional intelligence, organisational skills and a capacity to absorb and process information, that make them, despite lack of formal training, excellent managers. Such a...
Pundits worldwide are speculating on who’s winning the war between USA/Israel and Iran/Lebanon. Donald Dumdum keeps saying he obliterated Iran’s military assets and already won the war. Yet, long after his first of many predictions of war’s end, he...
…Hurricanes exposed it. The numbers confirm it. The system still hasn’t fixed it. Jamaica does not have a housing problem in the way it is commonly described. It has a risk problem, and that risk is unevenly distributed, structurally embedded,...
There is a quiet discipline that often goes unnoticed at the start of a work week. It is not found in meetings or reports or strategic plans, but in something far more routine. It is found in how one chooses to dress. While many treat clothing as...
In September 2020, French police arrested a man named Dominique Pelicot for secretly taking photographs beneath women’s clothing (upskirting) in a supermarket. Unfortunately, that was just the tip of his enormous iceberg of depravity....
