As if small states, with limited financial and human resources to safeguard their societies, do not confront enough grave challenges, along comes the phenomenon of ‘autonomous weapons’ – probably the most frightening technological development that...
Well, June is here, and the minister of legal and constitutional affairs has not carried out her threat to table in the House of Parliament “Her Bill” to amend the Jamaican constitution which would lead to Jamaica becoming a republic. At a media...
Nine days have passed but there is still more to be said on the matter of the inflated salaries being awarded to the political directorate and other public sector senior-level staff. Some of the justifications that have been given regarding the...
Floyd Green is hitting the right notes at the start of his ministerial oversight to the mining sector. He has promised to engage the industry’s “stakeholders”, including environmental campaigners who are concerned about the effects of mining, to...
Farmers will welcome Floyd Green’s promise that combating praedial larceny is among his priorities as agriculture minister. Mr Green is, however, advised to avoid the error of too many policymakers in believing that increasing penalties is of...
THE HEADLINE in the June 8, 2022 edition of this newspaper, ‘Election-year deadline for ditching the Queen’, announced the Government’s intention to remove the British monarch as head of state. The plan encompasses general constitutional reforms as...
AT 93 MILLION miles away from us, the sun is the closest star to Earth. And while your mind boggles just trying to imagine just how near or how far 93 million miles is, the heat that we’ve been feeling for the last couple of weeks is enough to make...
“The Armageddon is gathering now: The sign is on every oppressed man’s brow: The whites who think they are ever so smart Do not know other men can play their part!” Marcus Garvey The Tragedy of White Injustice Black families in...
The likelihood of a moderate hurricane season this year is welcome news for the Caribbean. But as the experts have warned, that possibility is no reason for the region to let its guard down. The very phenomenon – El Niño conditions – that might...
This month of May is unusually hot with little rain, resulting in yet another bout of water restrictions in Kingston. According to Minister Matthew Samuda, Jamaica is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record. This is most likely due to...
Derrick Deslandes, the president of the College of Agriculture, Science and Education (CASE), recently made two significant, if obvious, observations about negative trends in food consumption and difficulties in Jamaica’s agriculture. Using his...
If anyone still needs proof any adversity can be overcome the unanswerable evidence was named Anna Mae Bullock. But you know her as Tina Turner. She was born, November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee. Readers have an inkling (those closest to...
Think about it. Not everyone has had to deal with the police. Only some of us have been taken care of by nurses. But everyone has had repeated, often prolonged contact with teachers, from preschool to primary to secondary level. Teachers are one...
I would like to clarify my position regarding nuclear power generation facilities, called SMRs, versus specifically those larger facilities with a capacity of about 2000MW which can afford to be equipped with necessary containment measures, well-...
“MP (member of parliament), you don’t have no ambition!” That was the conclusion of the big woman – the type who frequents political gathering places. “Dat a your car?” She pointed to the ‘deportee’ I was driving. “She a your wife?” That came after...
In appointing an eminent persons group on Haiti, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has, on the face of it, done what this newspaper recently urged on Prime Minister Andrew Holness, that he name his own special envoy to Jamaica’s neighbour to the...
The level of industrialisation is an important indicator of a country’s stage of development. An evaluation of Jamaica’s industrial development and the attempt to industrialise is critical to the present discussion on Jamaica’s development agenda....
Having acknowledged the near impossibility of meeting its May timetable for tabling the bills to make Jamaica a republic, the Holness administration should pivot to how it should have started in the first place: withdrawing from the Privy Council...
Jamaicans were flabbergasted when massive salary increases for our “political directorate” (the people responsible for managing our country) were announced. The citizenry saw nothing wrong with increasing their salaries, but the sudden and steep...
Delayed apologies to the leader of Opposition. However, my commentary from last week was already in press by the time he had announced that he would have forgone 80 per cent of the increase which, controversially it seems as if Cabinet, via the...
ChatSHT is not artificial intelligence. It is genuine stupidity. The ChatSHT chatbot is definitely a duncebot. Unlike ChatGPT, ChatSHT does not have the capacity to sift through data and produce a sensible account of what it has researched. It...
No offence to the actual patty shops in Jamaica. But I’ve made this point on the odd occasions that I chime in on discussions on governance. I have asked, “When considering someone for a prime minister or any other politician, in the same breath,...
The horrific dormitory fire which killed 18 students and a five-year-old boy early Monday morning plunged Guyana into three days of mourning, and has stirred many conversations about fire and emergency preparedness. As the authorities in Guyana...
Using virtual versions of themselves known as avatars, people enter virtual worlds to work, play and do business. They enter a super marketplace where they can buy and sell anything from medical equipment and services to educational offerings,...
Checking my Yahoo Mail and seeing “Dogs don’t know their names” in an article on ‘What it’s like to be a dog’, I thought about the dog named ‘Willy’. I don’t know how the dog would respond, but if my Catholic teacher, Brother Jerome, had asked me...
