It doesn’t really matter whether he is from the rarefied air of an uptown 10-bedroom house mostly cloaked in morning fog or he lives in the afternoon stink of an urban gully bank. It is the same. He walks around being sure in the knowledge that...
Over the past few months, the world has watched as Namibia and Germany grapple with finding a resolution to the over five-year negotiation process, started in 2015, which aims to achieve reparatory and restorative justice for the Nama and Ovaherero...
The most fundamental principle of the New Covenant is religious liberty or freedom of conscience. Under the Old Covenant, God's Moral Law as contained in the Ten Commandments, along with the Statutes and Judgements that amplified and clarified...
Climate change is a “hoax” and yet, this “hoax” has become a dangerous threat to the development and advancement of life on Earth. As populations increase, consumption and production surge to meet the up-trend in demand. This is often done with...
Attempts to reverse the ongoing degradation of ecosystems in the Caribbean, largely due to human activity, have been consistently coming up short. In establishing a 10-year action plan, ministers for the environment in the region have committed...
As we look around the globe at the impact of the pandemic, one thing is clear: we are all in the same storm even if we aren’t all in the same boat. While more affluent nations are now rolling out second vaccine doses, health workers across the...
Behind me on a wall in the small bar is a sign prominently displaying, ‘We do not sell illegal cigarettes. It is an offence.’ I happen to know that about 90 per cent of cigarettes sold there and in other bars and shops are illegal. Which just about...
Climate change has become a phrase that has been trending over the last five-10 years, but the problem has existed for far too long. It is for good reasons that climate change should be taken seriously, and we should try our best to mitigate the...
Today, epidemic levels of crime have positioned Jamaica as the most murderous country in our hemisphere in 2020 in a context where violence and abusive behaviours seem to have become acceptable norms. This epidemic has also contributed to the...
Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Africa shows how France has continued a politique de grandeur in which a country in perpetual decline pretends to be a Great Power. As former French president, François Mitterrand, had noted in 1957: “Without...
When I decided to run for president of the People’s National Party, I did so knowing that the job of uniting and energising our movement would not be easy. I understood then that mending fences and building bridges would mean real work for every...
In this edition of Reparation Conversations, Honorary President of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), Patrick Robinson (PR), talks to Verene Shepherd (VS) about a virtual symposium he convened on May 20-21, 2021. VS: Honourary...
Wednesday June 2, 2021, was an important day for all of us Jamaicans concerned with the decline in trust and confidence in our democratic institutions and desirous of strengthening Jamaica’s democracy. On that day, the Office of the Political...
Just before a devastating 1692 earthquake made two-thirds of Port Royal disappear beneath the sea, the town was said to the wickedest place in the world, which probably meant that law and order was either absent or complicit with the most...
Today, many people are talking about ‘smart cities’ in the world. In fact, pilot projects are going on in some places while in advanced regions concrete projects are being implemented. As Japan has tackled smart-city development for more than 10...
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a profound shock to the Jamaican society and economy. There is no question that while health workers have been on the front lines responding to the pandemic, families are managing the repercussions on the home front...
African-American, Tony-winning director George C. Wolfe’s US$20 million adaptation of the black playwright, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, won Chadwick Boseman a posthumous Golden Globe, but failed to win either him nor the equally...
Our recent silence on the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming a loud, booming sound resonating within many of us. Quiet but palpable! Unpalatable and frustrating, but seemingly unbreachable. It is a deep pain that resonates with many who belong to the...
Mental Health has been a heavily discussed topic in Jamaica these past few months. Even our own Miss Universe Jamaica 2021, Miqueal-Symone Williams, has based her advocacy on mental health and its effects on children and teenagers. We have seen...
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) has mental health as a primary focus area for research and implementing programmes. Contrary to popular belief, Caribbean nationals were battling several issues...
If you are entirely honest with yourself you would know that the modern male of the human species is not that far removed from his primal self. To the extent that his earliest part of him expressing his manhood was him physically encroaching...
The United Nations Global Road Safety Week, which started on May 17, has as its theme #Streets for Life, and in their open letter, the UN states that “Low speed, liveable streets are essential and urgent”. Their message is that “Streets for Life”...
My colleague and friend, Prof. Rosalea Hamilton, wrote an excellent article published in The Gleaner on May 20: ‘(W)right time to rethink representation’. Rosalea pointed out that “the people’s voice has been expressed on the infamous, brutal...
In 1993, a gardener killed the lady who employed him, Jennifer Cox, a senior executive at a large insurance firm in Jamaica. He also hacked to death two ancillary workers employed to the household. About 20 years before that there was also another...
The Gleaner’s May 14 editorial addressed sympathetically ‘Restrictive Covenants’, yet I raise as somewhat unfortunate the Financial Gleaner of May 7 headlined “Lagoons loses first round in beachfront stand-off”. Is this case a financial matter? Is...
