Why would a man known to have had inappropriate sexual exchanges with a minor in the United States be given free rein to watch films, eat ice cream and have all kinds of creative fun with girls looking to transition out of Jamaican state care? And...
Fayval Williams acted with appropriate dispatch in sending the children’s advocate report on the Carl Robanske scandal to the police, and in calling on Rosalee Gage-Grey, CEO of the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), to quit her...
Happy New Year, Jamaica. Though by all indications, 2023 may not be any happier than last year or the year before, given this country’s obsession with breaking its murder rate record year-on-year. Last year, Jamaica recorded 1,498 murders. That’s...
Today’s young people will become leaders of a world still challenged by hunger and poverty. Experts say the world will not achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 – zero hunger – by 2030, which will affect 660 million in the next eight years,...
Preparations are well ahead for the staging of the 2023 version of the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast in Kingston next week. It is an American creation which has been tweaked and copied around the world by countries that feel the need to seek...
Jamaica is locked in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) ‘debt trap’ and has now reached, and long passed, what can be called a ‘debt saturation point’. This means that no matter how much money is borrowed from the IMF ad nauseum, it will never...
This newspaper cannot claim credit for Antigua and Barbuda’s recent advances on the mobility of labour in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). We nonetheless welcome the accelerated pace with which things have developed on that front, including last...
I found the recent reporting on the waiving of work permit fees for nationals of CARICOM countries and the Dominican Republic in Antigua and Barbuda quite interesting. A general election will be held in Antigua and Barbuda on January 18. The...
If we are frank, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), despite its self-congratulatory declaration of being, as its secretary general, Carla Barnett, puts it, “the longest existing economic integration movement among developing countries”, cannot...
Across the galaxies, in our favourite Fantasyland, Apocrypha, Oma D’unn was reunited with his old friend R.U. Shaw. Regular readers remember Oma D’unn, a PhD in logic but, like a moon, bright only in the dark. His skill was to solve political...
There is commonality with most if not all people, of a wish for this country and its people to manifest our blessing of being Jamaican. I think few would doubt the overt hindrance to this manifestation that violence has in our society, which,...
Joseph Shoucair and his board deserve respect and support for resisting the apparent attempt at politicising the management of the Transport Authority (TA). The TA might have dodged the bullet, and the transport minister, Audley Shaw, will exit...
In her epic description of repressive laws in the 18th-century slave society of the West Indies, the late Professor Elsa Goveia laid bare the underlying conviction of the ruling class. Black people were subhuman property and that the only...
This recent Christmas season invoked my curiosity about who or what people worship. Although ‘worship’ often refers to the reverence and adoration of a deity, it also connotes being obsessed and overly dedicated to something or someone....
It is difficult to understand why neither Prime Minister Andrew Holness nor Mark Golding, the opposition leader, has formally announced their assent to the leaders’ code of conduct proposed by the Integrity Commission (IC) or explain their delay or...
One of the most fundamental responsibilities of any government is to provide for its citizenry a sense of safety, peace, order and certainty within their communities. In other words, it is providing citizens with a feeling of security and freedom...
Seven days after they made their speeches; some say one is ‘week.’ Starting the new year, both Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding spoke to the nation, regarding the challenges of 2022 and the way forward. Most...
The ‘Physician Misinformation Bill’, AB-2098, has come into effect as law in California. It was designed to sanction or revoke the licences of physicians who spread misinformation or disinformation about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, designating these...
“The negro race has at present gone but a short way on the path of civilisation. The individuals are still as children, childlike in belief and faith ....They too often lack pride in their work .… Gratitude is, it is to be feared, not a strong...
Scores of people are still talking about the traffic chaos they experienced on Sunday in St Ann, in the vicinity of the venue where the Buju/Beres concert pulled in thousands of patrons. It was a good night for fans. From all accounts, they were...
The pretender, Juan Guaidó, is now finally gone. The myth that he was the President of Venezuela, and had the capacity to act and speak for the country, has now evaporated. The myth of Guaidó’s presidency and authority was possible only because...
I start work on my newspaper columns early in the week, thinking about and finalising what I would write about, and then every Wednesday morning sitting down in my study and putting the pieces together to ensure I have a hard core of truth in the...
“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires” – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In his homily in St Peter’s Square before the...
“Weh yah seh badman?” “Deh yah enuh, bad chargie.” … And so begins a conversation between a ‘badman’ and a ‘bad chargie’ who will, the very next minute, join the chorus that crime is out of control and the Government must act now. There is a...
Cynics will probably cast the proposal by Antigua and Barbuda’s main opposition, the United People’s Party (UPP), to eliminate work permit fees for Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Dominican Republic nationals as a tactic to wrangle votes in this...
