OCTOBER 1989, and the Jamaica College football team is in the middle of a barnstorming run in the Manning Cup competition. Heavily fancied to win it all, no ‘College Man’ would dare miss a match as we beat opponent after opponent. One Saturday...
IN THE mid-1970s, after Argentina’s military junta overthrew the government of Isabel Perón, people began to disappear. At first, it was Perónist agitators, then communist guerillas and left-wing socialists. Soon, the disappearances spread to...
The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is not an overnight or unexpected military victory for the Taliban or defeat for the United States. This disastrous outcome has been in the making for quite some time and accelerated exponentially with the...
The United States spent more than US$2.6 trillion on its two-decade war in Afghanistan. Out of this, US$83 billion went to training and equipping the Afghan armed forces, who were intended to defend a Western-style democracy. Around 2,300 American...
I’m a strong man, a proud man, and I’m free … I will live and die a banana man. – (Song of the Banana Man by Evan Jones) I recently listened to a reading of Evan Jones’ poem ‘Song of the Banana Man’ by George Alexander Scott. This poem was...
Political leaders embrace a mindset akin to Jack Nicholson’s in 1992’s A Few Good Men so believe that we can’t handle truth. Often when caught in misdirection, deflection, obfuscation, or prevarication, it’s not because they intend to lie. Their...
Vaccine hesitancy is a significant barrier to people being vaccinated against COVID-19. There are many questions, concerns, fears, and doubts, and these, combined with distrust of the authorities and a feeling that vaccines are being forced on the...
Although last weekend’s earthquake in Haiti was not nearly as catastrophic as the one 11 years ago, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), including Jamaica, must be no less generous in its humanitarian relief and support than it was back then. Indeed...
My father, of blessed memory, was a very strong believer and proponent of corporal punishment. He always said that his mother (whom he ‘worshipped’) believed in it and therefore, so did he. He thought that it made him the man that he became. He...
Following the great Norman Manley, I believe that we Jamaicans are really a God-blessed people, capable of crafting a way of life for ALL to match the unparalleled exquisiteness of the Eden in which we live. This is not conceit, and it need not...
Richard Currie, the colonel, or leader, of the Accompong Maroons, a village in the hilly western regions of Jamaica, may be so ensconced in the myths he has woven of himself that he now conflates them with reality. Or, Mr Currie is playing a...
To delve into the history of the Maroons is a path that inevitably leads to divisiveness. To some they are the paragons of Black resistance. The sons and daughters of Africans exported as slaves to the new world, who fought and kept their freedom...
The Outbreak Life as we know it before COVID-19 hit has been greatly impacted. In the short run, the prospects for improvement remain dependent on how the virus is managed by the Government of Jamaica, the Jamaican society as a whole, and...
Albert Einstein is often credited with this famous saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” As it turns out, the world-famous physicist wasn’t the one who conceived that witty sentence. The...
In the old days when many antibiotics and other medication were administered in the gluteus maximus, it was clumsy at least to have to express in Jamaican Patwa that one got a ‘juck’ in one’s rear end. Indeed, in primary school, it was almost a...
Prime Minister Andrew Holness has all but conceded that his government has no power to mandate that Jamaicans, even those working in forward-facing state-paid jobs, be vaccinated against COVID-19. So his administration hopes to persuade people to...
A frail old man being carried onto a chartered flight at Heathrow Airport to be deported is not the kind of image that a humane society might want the world to see. Yet, this is what happened Thursday when seven Jamaicans were deported to their...
The question has to be asked. Are some people in Caribbean countries becoming the architects of their own and the region’s destruction? There is clearly an organised anti-vaccination campaign throughout the region. Who is behind the campaign is...
My friend Jamesy called me from St Kitts on WhatsApp. “Tony!” he said loudly with what seemed to be not just satisfaction, but pleasure so extreme that I could hear him jumping up and down with the phone in his hands. In other words, his delight...
K.D. Knight is right – or mostly so. Politicians, by themselves, are unlikely to have much success convincing hesitant Jamaicans to take COVID-19 vaccines. Of course, most Jamaicans, including this newspaper, did not really require Mr Knight to...
The two churches I shepherd are in communities which have been in different zones of special operations (ZOSOs) in the inner city for well over a year. One of my Greenwich Town members was traumatised earlier this year when her brother was shot...
Want an all-expense paid vacation trip to Paris? Get vaxxed! Need a new car? An extra $50,000? Get vaxxed! Need help paying your school fees? Go ahead, get vaxxed! Feeling thirsty and want a free drink? Get vaxxed! Ladies and gentlemen, you name it...
IN RETIGHTENING COVID-19 measures on Monday, Prime Minister Andrew Holness reiterated that part of his motivation was to create an environment in which students can return to classroom learning when the new school year begins in three weeks. We,...
I HAVE a love-hate relationship with social media. It started years ago when a friend introduced me to Facebook as the greatest thing to happen to dating since women. The relationship quickly soured when I witnessed his attempts to privately woo a...
Please permit me to respond to the editorial titled ‘Why shouldn’t lawyers put their names in neon?’ published in The Sunday Gleaner on August 1. I will refrain from addressing issues involving any particular attorney given that, as mentioned in...
