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Jamaica Gleaner

In Focus

Orville Taylor: Zikaware ... she’ll soon be here

Published:Friday | January 22, 2016 | 12:00 AMDr Orville Taylor, Contributor

It's another nasty four-letter word associated with females who have no concern for anything but sucking their fill of your blood. ZIKV, the Zika virus, is one of those generally mild microorganisms that knock you down for a few days and, more often...

Orville Taylor: Pryceless: but no MasterCard

Published:Thursday | January 14, 2016 | 12:00 AM

In 2011, leading up to the general election, Comrade Leader Portia Simpson Miller, president of the People's National Party (PNP), made implicit and explicit promises that she would increase the status of women in her party. Apart from that, she...

Gwynne Dyer: Bleaching, blackness and beauty

Published:Thursday | January 14, 2016 | 12:00 AM

Last week, a Thai cosmetics company called Seoul Secret launched a new beauty product, Snowz, and got locally famous Thai actress Cris Horwang to appear in the promotional video. She starts out white, and explains: "In my world, there is tough...

Ian Boyne: Christians unfit to be guidance counsellors?

Published:Friday | January 15, 2016 | 12:00 AM

When it comes to issues involving homosexuality, you can depend on The Gleaner to be incendiary, ruthlessly strident, rhetorically reckless and fiercely opposed to conservative Christianity, which it dismisses scornfully with the conversation-...

Martin Henry: Orlando Patterson and the Musgrave Gold Medal

Published:Thursday | January 14, 2016 | 12:00 AM

Almost everybody else seems to have had their introduction to Orlando Patterson either through his first novel, The Children of Sisyphus, or his first scholarly book, The Sociology of Slavery. I first read Die the Long Day, another of his three...

Egerton Chang: Einstein, faith, God; and $20 oil?

Published:Thursday | January 14, 2016 | 12:00 AM

Professor: You are a Christian, aren't you, son?Student: Yes, sir.Professor: So, you believe in GOD?Student: Absolutely, sir.Professor: Is GOD good?Student: Sure.Professor: Is GOD all powerful?Student: Yes.Professor: My brother died of cancer, even...

Bruce Golding: Don’t scrap junior stock market

Published:Thursday | January 14, 2016 | 12:00 AM

The junior stock market was established in 2009 to encourage and facilitate the development and growth of smaller companies, especially new enterprises, by enabling them to raise equity that would not otherwise be easily available to them and to do...

Gordon Robinson: Jamaica's lost chance

Published:Thursday | January 14, 2016 | 12:00 AM

In 2011, the PNP successfully countered the JLP's campaign focus on Andrew Holness with a slew of youthful candidates.Several under-40s were successful, including Lisa Hanna....

Orville Taylor: Chris Gayle caught in the slips

Published:Sunday | January 10, 2016 | 12:00 AMDr Orville Taylor, Contributor

I like Chris Gayle. Hold on! Let me qualify, lest one think I am a media worker who is making advances towards him. What I mean is that he is a good athlete. Nonetheless, while I think he’s a good batsman, he is not a great, because every so...

Gordon Robinson: Why I thank God for Chris Gayle

Published:Thursday | January 7, 2016 | 12:00 AMGordon Robinson, Contributor

Chris Gayle is a prime example of what I call 'the Totalisator (Tote) Rule'.In his recent public interaction with Australian sports reporter, Melanie McLaughlin, Chris' behaviour was crass, misogynistic, entitled and stupid, which is an incredible...

Martin Henry: Justice needs more than sweet-talk

Published:Thursday | January 7, 2016 | 12:00 AMMartin Henry, Contributor

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller made some powerful utterances for justice at last Monday's swearing-in ceremony for Justice Dennis Morrison as president of the Court of Appeal.Others spoke, including the governor general, the leader of the...

Egerton Chang: Britain’s black queen & China’s yuan vs US$

Published:Thursday | January 7, 2016 | 12:00 AMEgerton Chang, Contributor

Queen Charlotte, wife of the English King George III (1738-1820), was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a black branch of the Portuguese Royal House. So says Frontline (in a piece researched and written by Mario de Valdes y Cocom...

Marcia Forbes: Culture shock will be media merger's greatest challenge

Published:Friday | January 8, 2016 | 12:00 AM

The anticipation of the vote count felt somewhat like national general elections in Jamaica. Would media entities RJR and Gleaner win out in their thrust to merge by securing the 75 per cent shareholder support needed? Or, would the naysayers,...

Ian Boyne: Gayle’s joke was not cricket

Published:Friday | January 8, 2016 | 12:00 AMIan Boyne, Contributor

Chris Gayle’s appalling display of unprofessionalism and impropriety has provoked outlandish statements on opposite sides of the raging debate. In his machismo defence of Gayle, sportscaster and comedian Oral Tracey said on All Angles,...

Fixing up National Heroes Park and writing parish histories

Published:Thursday | December 31, 2015 | 12:00 AM

Let me start the New Year with some good-news commentary. A government has finally found the courage, and with a general election looming, to commit J$2.5 billion to the phased development of National Heroes Park. The development will include the...

New Year challenges

Published:Thursday | December 31, 2015 | 12:00 AMIan Boyne, Contributor

Opposition Leader Andrew Holness has put his fingers squarely on the overarching economic challenge which faces Jamaica this year."The challenge for any Jamaican government this year is to maintain the fiscal programme and stimulate growth at the...

War on Christmas and Christians

Published:Thursday | December 31, 2015 | 12:00 AMDenton Rhone

Ian Boyne, in his column, 'No Ceasefire From Christmas War' published, December 27, 2015, was right, there is a war against Christmas and Christianity by secularist.This war is being fought one-sided, at the moment in the North American media, and...

The transformation must begin now

Published:Friday | January 1, 2016 | 12:00 AMMogens Lykketoft

Ask anyone for their abiding memory of 2015 and they will most likely recall a negative one.Some will recall the horrifying stories of death and destruction caused by conflicts around the world, most notably in Syria where more than 250,000 people...

Christmas Rebellion pushed Emancipation

Published:Tuesday | December 22, 2015 | 12:00 AMMartin Henry, Contributor

We are just a day away from the 184th anniversary of the start of the Sam Sharpe slave protest and uprising in western Jamaica on December 28, 1831, which accelerated freedom for slaves in the British Empire. That freedom came just two and a half...

No ceasefire from Christmas war

Published:Wednesday | December 23, 2015 | 12:00 AMIan Boyne, Contributor

EVEN COMBATANTS at war have traditionally called a ceasefire during Christmas. So powerful and passionate has been the hold of Christmas on people. But militant secularists and atheists inAmerica have no such scruples and have announced no ease-up...

Lucien Chen rode his luck

Published:Tuesday | December 22, 2015 | 12:00 AMGordon Robinson, Contributor

I'm having random end-of-year reflections.It's 'official'. No surprises. My sources say Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL) will be named preferred bidder for CTL. Apparently, the other bidder failed the funding test, or, better put, Goliath was always...

Getting the Guns - priority for 2016

Published:Tuesday | December 22, 2015 | 12:00 AMDr Orville Taylor, Contributor

There is a difference between being paid attention and getting 'Noticed'. Last Monday, former Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) politician Dr Raymoth Notice was attacked at his home and robbed of his firearm in an attempt on his life. Thankfully, he...

Preparing for Jamaica's ISIS crisis

Published:Tuesday | December 22, 2015 | 12:00 AMAnthony Gambrill, Contributor

Given the realisation that the whole world is now a target for ISIS terrorism, the Government of Jamaica is taking steps to prepare for its consequences. At an alleged press conference, de facto Minister of Information Sandrea Falconer recently...

Spare the rod because …

Published:Tuesday | December 22, 2015 | 12:00 AMDionne Jackson Miller, Contributor

Put aside discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of corporal punishment for a moment. I'm positing, instead, that by continuing to allow corporal punishment, Jamaica is in breach of its obligations under the international treaties we...

Three Christmas crackers

Published:Thursday | December 17, 2015 | 12:00 AMGordon Robinson, Contributor

Since we're determined to embrace British rule forever, I purchased a box of three Christmas crackers.The Christmas cracker is a tube-shaped box wrapped in pretty paper. It contains a gift to be 'won' by the one (of two persons pulling it apart...

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