This week's hot topic is Government's 'apology' read by Andrew Holness in Parliament regarding the May 2010 'Tivoli incursion'.The Rev Ronald Thwaites, halo firmly affixed and voice at least an octave above usual, bemoaned the inadequacy of the '...
"Firemen strike ... up to the police dem too ... wooooiii ... oh oh ... ." The year was 1968 and the Ethiopians released the song Everything Crash. It was unthinkable that members of the constabulary should withdraw their labour and thus breach...
It is a great time to rerun the essence of '72 hours to a safer Jamaica', a column I first published on October 11, 2015, and from which I have subsequently drawn points in other crime columns in grim recurring commentary. You have to keep telling...
Christmas was much simpler when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.In the evenings, sometimes we would drive around to observe the Christmas trees in the homes. Of course, not every household could afford a Christmas tree, but whoever could...
Published:Thursday | December 7, 2017 | 12:00 AMArnold Bertram
In 1934, Osmond Theodore Fairclough (1904-1970) returned to Jamaica, only to find that 100 years after The Emancipation Act, the racist society created by plantation slavery was alive and well. Fairclough, a black man, after graduating from Calabar...
Published:Friday | December 8, 2017 | 12:00 AMPaul Golding
"Jah-Jah city, Jah-Jah town, dem waan fi turn it in a cowbwoy town now ... (You look, you will know). Jah-Jah city, Jah-Jah town, dem waan fi turn it in a dead man town, y'all." (Capleton et al) This has not been a good year for the...
By and large, cliches are lazy, mindless, foolish generalisations created as a refuge for the thoughtless.However, some cliches have worth. At the top of my very shortlist is 'a leopard never changes his spots'. If only we'd understand and accept...
First of all, thanks to Professor Carolyn Cooper for her close attention to, and care for, the sugar industry here in Jamaica with an article addressing myself and our deputy CEO titled 'Dear George Hong Guo and Liu Chauyo' in The Sunday Gleaner...
Just over a week ago, the Redemption Song monument in Emancipation Park was painted with marine paint. This was set in motion by an attempt to resolve the issues of calcium build-up on the fingers of the bronze sculptures and on the walls of the...
Dave Myrie was the picture of sartorial elegance as he stood at the entrance to the principal's office at Kingston College (KC), one of Jamaica's most renowned and successful high schools doing what high schools ought to do: transform children/...
Published:Thursday | December 7, 2017 | 12:00 AMHenry J. Lewis
Recently, I was on an almost 17-hour flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Atlanta en route to Jamaica. I decided to pass the time reading No Longer Whispering to Power, a book I had bought just a day earlier, authored by veteran South African...
So President Trump thinks that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel and of Israel alone, and some Christians here are seeing biblical portents in this, including the unbiblical view that before our Lord's return, a third Jewish temple must be...
"All of us are saying: 'Hey, United States, we don't think this is a very good idea'," said Jordan's King Abdullah II in 2002, when it became clear that President George W. Bush was going to invade Iraq. But Bush didn't listen, and it turned out to...
It's IMF fault. For decades, that has been the swansong of many Jamaicans. That is understandable because the society is an excuse-driven one, and its problems are the fault of someone else and never of its own making.Take the case of people being...
Like most Jamaicans of my vintage, I grew up in the Church. Going to 'Sunday school was as compulsory for me and my brothers and sisters as going to regular school.One of my mother's eternal wishes was that her years of sending me to church as a...
The breaking news of slave auctions in Libya really should not be shocking us so much. Slavery, bondage and servitude are alive and well around the world, and in some places more surprising than in the failed state of what was Libya.The territory of...
Not surprisingly, the botched process of procuring used cars for the police is the subject of considerable debate. The public, as it should be, is incensed that 11 months after the contract was awarded, the supplier has so far delivered a mere 30 of...
On October 22, I penned an article titled 'The iceberg below the gun find'. It was a chilling discussion, and not just because it was in two freezers that the contraband was found. At the Kingston Container Terminal, 19 guns, including six rifles,...
By 1774, it was estimated by historian Edward Long that a third of Jamaica's white population was Scottish and of whom there were more in Westmoreland than any other parish. Some came as attorneys to represent absentee plantation owners, some as...
Living in a democracy with the freest press in the Anglophone world is a big deal, and I don't take lightly the fact that I have a Constitution that guarantees me the right to criticise and make political utterance. It is the Constitution that...
It's been decades of the same merry-go-round of governments promising - but hardly delivering - to our teachers, nurses, police, and others in the public sector. As time rolls by, the ability of these groups to fight back for better wages and...
Everything conceivable is posted and shared on social media. It may be correct to say that this generation finds sensational content extremely attractive. The same may also be said of purely salacious content. The Happy Monday and Peaceful Tuesday...
This is a lightly edited address made by Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips to the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica on November 28.In 2015, we were all of the view that the worst was behind us and that the programme of economic reform was...
The Ministry of National Security awards a contract to O'Brien's International Car Sales & Rentals Ltd on January 17, 2017. By the middle of the year, the company writes back to the ministry, seeking a three-month extension on the delivery of the vehicles...
It seems that the Jamaican Bar Association (JAMBAR) has suddenly discovered a yearning for transparency.So JAMBAR wrote to the PM asking for transparency in the appointment of the next chief justice. Yawn! If it wasn't so irritating, JAMBAR's letter...
