I accept the rationale made by the United Nations that unwelcome sexual intercourse by the penetration of the mouth and, more so, the anus, by a man's penis, should be given a broader definition to include the rape of men and boys.It is obvious that...
News of the dalliances of pastors and policemen have kept us entertained over the past weeks. It has been the subject of talk shows, TV programmes, bar and back veranda talk. So after weeks of this, how has any of these activities helped us with...
I'm sure everyone's heart sank a little when the police announced that Peter Abrahams' death was now being treated as a murder. It followed hard on the heels of a string of stories, each more brutal than the next.I have removed myself from Facebook...
Two Sundays ago, I got an alarming email: "Having read your article 'Pearly Beach a no fi poor people', I found it imperative to make you aware of a troubling situation existing in downtown Kingston. What obtains on Princess Street, between West...
It's more than half a decade since the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) fashioned the broad contours of an election and political party financing law. It is more than a year since Parliament approved such a bill. Last September, Derrick Smith,...
In 2000, Marion Jones, star American athlete who had been beaten at the IAAF World Junior Championships in 1992, by our own Nikole Mitchell, held off the Merlene Ottey-anchored 4x100m women's relay team and denied her one of the deserved gold medals...
Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States on January 20, 2017. Almost everything he has done on the topic of immigration and immigrants was referenced during the 18-month campaign leading to his Electoral College victory.Trump's...
Earlier this week, Britain's Guardian newspaper headlined an incredible scientific discovery, 'A Huge Mouth and No Anus - This Could Be Our Earliest Known Ancestor'. The newspaper added: "Thought to have lived 540 million years ago, the discovery of...
The deployment of soldiers to boost crime-fighting efforts in western Jamaica has apparently flopped. Killings have continued in several communities. It is clear that traditional, predictive methods being followed by the security forces are not...
I was quite pleased to see in The Sunday Gleaner dated January 22, 2017 that Food For The Poor (FFP) continues to effectively accomplish the biblical mandate of "proclaiming freedom for the prisoners ... and setting at liberty those who are...
Published:Thursday | February 2, 2017 | 12:00 AMDonovan Watkis
Recently, I saw where the accomplished American Hollywood producer Joel Zwick told Jamaican filmmakers that they should only use English in their movies.He said, "If the world can't understand what you are saying and you then have to use subtitles,...
Banks ain't what they used to be. At about age 10, my father took me to open my first bank account at the newly opened Bank of Nova Scotia branch in Liguanea Plaza (across the street from where it is located today) under Roger Clarke's famous guango...
This week, Andrew Holness acknowledged the crisis of corruption that engulfs Jamaica."There is no denying," the prime minister told Parliament, "that whilst we have made significant strides as a politically independent country, we could have...
This Andrew Holness administration is squinting as it looks into the eyes of the Jamaican public because it has failed to curb violent crime.Back in May 2016 when he addressed Parliament in his first turn as prime minister in a Budget Debate,...
For nations across the globe, even those immersed in civil wars and mass human displacement, Donald Trump is both a distraction and annoyance and proof that all that they initially suspected of his inabilities was spot on.Had it been purely the...
Jamaica is squandering billions of dollars every year to reduce poverty, with a plethora of disjointed programmes and initiatives that do not seem to be benefiting those who are desperately in need of assistance.Over 4 per cent of the national...
There appears to be a media bias against the Church, based on the coverage of competing events between Watch Night services and New Year's Eve balls. One New Year's Eve party got coverage of 15 pictures in The Gleaner but not one single picture or...
Andrew Holness deserves credit for being frank. His government, he admitted, was embarrassed into hustling the long-lingering anti-corruption bill through the House because of Jamaica's 14-place downward tumble on Transparency International's (TI)...
Like Mexico, Canada is in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Donald Trump has described as "the worst trade deal ... ever signed in this country". Unlike Mexico, Canada thinks that Trump is not planning to hurt it. But no good deed goes...
He may argue that there was too little time for his Government to do much before Transparency International began work on its latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Nonetheless, Andrew Holness can hardly be happy that he will mark his first year...
In the wake of daily revelations about the sexual abuse of young girls at the hands of much older men with power and status in Jamaica, a young activist began a hashtag titled #saytheirnames. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable endeavour,...
In 1911, shipmakers White Star Line, noses out of joint at competitor Cunard's 1907 successes, Mauritania and Lusitania, rushed to complete construction of its own masterpiece, the unsinkable Titanic.On the Titanic's maiden voyage, its skipper...
In 2006, reggae-dancehall artiste Busy Signal released Too Much Gun, a sonic punch to the gut that bubbled atop Daseca and ZJ Liquid's version of the original Penthouse riddim made infamous by Buju Banton's early hit Man Fi Dead. That song, a blood-...
Deep orations like the one so eruditely crafted and so brilliantly delivered by the Rev Dr Burchell Taylor at this year's National Leadership Prayer Breakfast do not get the necessary types of 'forwards' unless they contain at least one sound bite...
