"For too many years past, barbaric criminal acts have been perpetrated by brutish citizen against despairing citizen. The offenders are mainly rampaging, shiftless young black males, poorly educated, at best semi-literate, steeped in unreason and...
Ttwo stories about the assault on Fuerte Paramacay military barracks in Carabobo state on Sunday. The Venezuelan government says that half the 20 attackers were killed or captured, and the rest are being hunted down. Sgt Giomar Flores, who defected...
Jamaica consistently ranks highly in global press freedom rankings, yet seems to exploit that freedom too little. There's a burning need for hard-hitting, in-depth journalism exposing and stemming the rampant white-collar crime and corruption we...
After his unprovoked assault on school administrators and the resultant mauling by logic he suffered from St Andrew High, Ruel Reid should by now not only have sued for peace, but initiate a genuine dialogue on the economics of education in Jamaica...
August 6 marked a milestone for Jamaica. No, not Usain Bolt's retirement run. That was Saturday. And, no, not Elaine Thompson's fifth-place run in the 100m. That was upsetting.It marked 55 years of Independence. If Jamaica were a working citizen...
Judging from the grovelling supplication in which Karl Samuda is seemingly engaged, we can only conclude that the Holness administration has formulated neither policy nor strategy for Jamaica's limping sugar industry. The danger from this, and about...
Last week, the video for the song ‘Despacito’ by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee became the most watched video ever on YouTube, and the first video to exceed three billion views. It is also the video with the most likes, more than 17.5...
The cry of many farmers at Denbigh over the weekend was the difficulty we all experience: to secure credit for agricultural production.In recent years, Jamaica has spent close to US$1 billion a year to buy animal feed and foodstuff, much of which we...
I had already penned this piece when I saw Prime Minister Andrew Holness' Emancipation Day message. I totally agree with all that he said.The 1833 law to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire came into effect on August 1, 1834. The...
When the Government yesterday released the names of this year's recipients of national honours and awards, not unexpectedly, the list did not include any person designated national hero. The consideration of such an award wouldn't have been done...
Seventeen months after the February 2016 general election, very few people are talking about the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) tax give-back package that most believe won them the election. Now it is mostly about guns and murders.Many of us have...
If you've ever taken the time to read the 1833 act to abolish slavery in the British colonies, you will understand what I mean. The schemers who conceived it were well and truly wicked. The full title of the document is An Act for the Abolition of...
To understand the extent of Minister Ruel Reid's incompetence, you have to first understand the very simple math that he keeps toying with.At a reasonable level, it costs somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 a year to give each student a decent...
Jamaican society has evolved from the time of the passing of the Firearms Act in the 1947 Colonial Legislature, when the privilege to legally own and carry a firearm in our country was dependent largely on a citizen's socio-economic class and colour...
A wit might be inclined to claim that Ruel Reid entertains strange culinary tastes, given his penchant for putting his foot in his mouth. We are more likely to believe that the education minister is in need of being saved from himself.So, on...
Two respected clergy colleagues have gone public in support of decriminalising buggery. These are my former UTCWI lecturer in psychology, Dr Howard Gregory, Anglican Lord Bishop of Jamaica, and my JTS...
Whoever came up with the expression "The game is not worth the candle" could have been describing my attempts to illuminate the birthday cake of my daughter Jasmine (affectionately known as 'Jas') on her 11th birthday, nine years ago, using manual...
A report in Forbes magazine naming Jamaica as one of the most dangerous destinations for female tourists will no doubt take a public-relations toll on brand Jamaica. The writer revealed that a dozen or more sexual assault cases against American...
It's uncanny how many Jamaicans are supposedly offended or concerned about the local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community's decision to celebrate Pride during the Emancipation and Independence...
This week is sandwiched between two celebrations of freedom: freedom of individual Jamaicans from chattel slavery (August 1) and freedom of the Jamaican State from colonial domination (August 6). If we want to take an optimistic view, we can say...
For the last few weeks, the quest to decide who will replace Captain Horace Burrell as the president of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) has caused more discussion than any other local sports story. That is understandable.Burrell was like a...
The ill-fated matters currently dominating the media attention surrounding the nation's Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA), provides a textbook case of an organisation in desperate need of a structured fraud risk assessment (FRA) exercise tailored to...
It wouldn't be in this newspaper's contemplation that it flushed the Police High Command into a public declaration that it actually initiated the recommended internal review of the constabulary's performance during the West Kingston operation and is...
As we observe two major milestone dates in our history, Emancipation Day and Independence Day, I believe it is an opportune time to reflect on what emancipation and independence mean in the true sense, and to examine whether or not we are truly...
