To say my recommendation that disarming the citizenry should be a vital tool in any successful crime-fighting initiative has gone over like a lead balloon would be an understatement. Readers, especially male readers, bombarded me with stories of how their guns "saved" them from criminal attack....
The middle class has an item in its hand to chew over and wonder why those others at the bottom of society are not worrying about the same things that they are troubled by."So, what yu tink bout dis Justice Sykes ting?" said Aurora to Sandrea her...
Edward Seaga, like his great political opponent Michael Manley, has always been a polarising political figure.No sooner had his protege, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, announced that Mr Seaga was to get further special honours for his contributions...
Published:Friday | February 23, 2018 | 12:00 AMMartin Henry
We should let Bianca Gardener tell us why peace treaties among warring gangsters are wicked and worthless. Ms Gardener is an eight-year-old honour-roll student at August Town Primary School. She granted The Gleaner an articulate interview...
For all of 2017, we lived with the reality of murders piled atop of murders. But if we thought that was bad, in 2018, we are already 17 per cent above where we were the same time in 2017.Is the nation yet at that critical-mass number where enough of...
Prominent political illusionist Fitz Jackson's suddenly renewed, Opposition-inspired fervour regarding the cruel imposition of exorbitant bank fees on Jamaica's most vulnerable has led to a raging Twitter war with economics lecturer Damien King.This...
The more enlightened among the supporters of Andrew Holness have a difficulty in understanding why it is taking him so long to admit his error in not appointing the chief justice permanently in the clear vacancy that exists.The judicial fraternity...
As a developing nation, Jamaica is compelled to operate in a world dominated by the larger and more developed economies. One such consequence, fair or foul, is that standards and best practices developed by these mature economies are foisted on us...
Surfing cable television channels on a recent Saturday morning looking for a non-existent football game, I came across a documentary on Warren Buffett, the legendary founder of the exceedingly successful company, Berkshire Hathaway. Talking to a...
This is an edited address delivered on February 22 at St Vincent and the Grenadines' Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Kingstown.Although several aspects of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas in respect of the single market have been put in...
This is an extract from a presentation to the Gardner's View Baptist Church, Bull Bay, as part of the NCR's Black History Month celebrations.Let me first of all try and make out the case for reparation and the search for reparatory justice before I...
Public comments on the appointment of Justice Bryan Sykes to act as chief justice and the subsequent historic summit of judges in Kingston on Monday, February 12, have hung on statements made by the prime minister at the swearing-in ceremony. The...
We were once again, last Thursday, regaled with another Throne Speech.But what did Her Majesty's representative say again last year? Who remembers anything about that?The Throne Speech, if it is to go beyond platitudinous ceremony, should be...
Psychs! This is when Jamaicans are attempting to pull a fast one. It comes from the behavioural science, psychology, which I am marginally familiar with, and very similar to when Americans prank you. Often it is where a joke is made of a very...
Jamaica, constitutionally constructed as a political fiefdom with a justice system moving slower and less surely than a sloth with arthritis, must rely on free and independent media for protection.Press freedom isn't yet enshrined in our...
Believe it or not, those are words emanating either from street corners or grilled verandas in the suburbs where doom and despair have invaded the collective consciousness of ordinary citizens.How does one explain the extremes in the growing cry for...
They came in 2010 and they took him away. When Christopher Coke, aka Dudus, was taken by the Americans in 2010, he was the absolute boss in Jamaica.Big politicians took his calls even if it had to mean that they had to bolt out of important meetings...
Bristol, in the county of Somerset in Britain, has a long heritage of maritime enterprise. It was from here that a Venetian, John Cabot, started his voyage of exploration to the New World, becoming the first European to reach the North America...
Written constitutions are driven by three fundamental philosophies, namely constitutional supremacy, separation of powers, and the protection of citizens' fundamental rights and freedoms.Written constitutions exist for the purpose of circumscribing...
In the October 2017 by-elections in South St Andrew and South West St Andrew, the People's National Party (PNP) came out big in both instances, but in the huge wins, all they did was remind us how repugnant the reality of garrison politics has been...
Published:Friday | February 9, 2018 | 12:00 AMDamion Gordon
The current crisis of public insecurity that afflicts the country has caused many to revisit the perennial debate about Jamaica being a failed state. Of course, even before the recent upsurge in violent crimes, many Jamaicans had already diagnosed...
When I accepted the role of chairman of the National Food Industry Task Force (NFITF), I expected robust discussion based on scientific facts, energetic negotiations from rock-hard positions, and even agreement to disagree when necessary. What I did...
Jamaica seemed destined to join the rest of the world in the advent of blockchain technologies, which have created quite a stir and generated ongoing debate among researchers, academicians, professional journals, industry practitioners, media...
The resilient tourism sector continues to be the leading catalyst of economic development in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean Basin, bringing valuable investments to our shores, generating one in every four jobs and forging many critical sectorial...
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Our culture of vindictiveness and revenge has fuelled the homicide rate in this country, because homicidal violence is an endemic pathogen, which, like cancer cells and malignant microbes, is...
