It is with deep sadness that I learned of the passing of my dear friend and brother, the esteemed author and social commentator George Lamming. His extensive body of work reflects a deep and personal understanding of the complex historical,...
The Bible contains a lot of strange stories, but one of the weirdest is the story of Lot, with subplots that are as cringeworthy as they are bizarre. Lot was the nephew of Abraham (previously named Abram), the common patriarch of the Abrahamic...
George Lamming’s death last week, days shy of his 95th birthday, was another pointer to the end of the era of that first generation of West Indian writers, artists, and intellectuals who, despite the turmoil of their colonial experiences, discerned...
Alexander Williams, the chairman of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO), has rightly apologised for the agency’s drug-testing blunder that cost Jamaica the world record for the under-20 girls’ 4x100 metres relay. But Mr Williams must know...
A crash-test dummy, or simply ‘crash dummy’, is a full-scale anthropomorphic test device (ATD) that simulates the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body during a traffic collision. Vehicle manufacturers must use crash-...
Last week, we lamented the low trust levels between persons and institutions as recorded by the Inter-American Development Bank. Nobody in power or influence has so far expressed any anxiety over the cancerous revelations of this study. Dem ketch ‘...
Prime Minister Andrew Holness, while delivering his Labour Day message on May 23 this year, said, not once, but thrice, that Jamaica is heading in the right direction. By these words it is clear that the prime minister would wish for us to be...
We are happy that the Government appears, finally, to be really acting on the Patterson Commission’s recommendations for reforming Jamaica’s education system. We are nonetheless concerned that the approach signalled last week by the education...
My column last week, ‘Intellectual capital for Caribbean development’, focused largely on the 46th annual conference of the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA). It provoked this response on The Gleaner’s website from Carlton Reynolds: “Where is...
For those of you born when you had to use an ICAS code to call foreign, Trap music is a genre of hip hop music from the southern United States with a particular style of beat and of a general theme surrounding drug use. The name Trap refers to trap...
My heart was broken when 1968 track and field Olympian Michael Fray died apparently by suicide in 2019. Over the years, another Olympian, javelinist and multi-event thrower, Olivia McKoy, has popped up with stories of her mental and financial well-...
In the South Pacific Ocean, 1,500 miles (2,800 kilometres) northeast of New Zealand, is Niue, one of the world’s largest coral islands of around 260 square kilometres and home to 1,600 people. Last month, Niue made a big decision. It announced...
Next week’s Summit of the Americas, being hosted by the government of the United States, has been plagued by controversy over which heads of government are invited to attend. Not invited by the US government are the presidents of Cuba, Nicaragua...
The Palace of Westminster in London, home of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, is known as the ‘mother of all Parliaments’. Reading about what has happened in it over the years and even now, I know that if it were my mother, she...
By now it must be obvious to the Jamaica Labour Party (PNP) and the People’s National Party (PNP) that they are not trusted by the majority of the Jamaican people. Surely, the fact that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won the last general election...
So many domestic abuse cases are accompanied by an accusation of infidelity of some sort. Within the Jamaican context, a male abuser is likely to make the even more pointed accusation that his girlfriend or lover committed the cardinal sin of ‘...
Unless the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ) can offer compelling reasons for its inaction, this newspaper shares Education Minister Fayval Williams’ disappointment at the association’s failure to offer comments on the bill...
IT IS instructive that the discussion of race in Jamaica oftentimes generates more heat than light. Persons, especially successful, dark-skinned (so-called black, used interchangeably) people and the light-skinned (so-called white, used...
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report explains plainly that the window is rapidly closing for governments to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. To reach this goal, we must all work together and drastically reduce...
The National Housing Trust (NHT) owes its subscribers, and Jamaicans in general, a full and honest explanation of what went wrong with its Ruthven Road development, over which the Trust is seemingly being forced into contortions to make the...
Pearnel Charles Jr, the agriculture minister, last week highlighted a problem of which too few Jamaicans are aware, but is in need of urgent attention in the face of the growing global scarcity and rising prices for food. According to the minister...
The New Zealand, Barbados and now Australia general elections have shocked the world. These three elections have brought social democratic labour parties to power who campaigned on progressive political platforms. The Barbados election is unique in...
“What is this supposed to be, the Summit of the Americas or the Summit of Friends of America?” Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico. “The failure of the Summit is not consequence-free. China will sense a grand opportunity, and our...
Gene Autry’s domino house rules: “First game double-six poses. Thereafter, the holder of double-six poses.” Playing against Dessie, the Domino Genius, and The Dunce, Gene and I were leading 3-0. We took time out for a ritual celebration. “Half-...
“What is Facebook?” I asked over a decade ago when my wife had signed up and encouraged me to join. She explained that it was a great place to network and find people with whom I had lost touch and would like to reconnect with. Today, many years...
