The announcement by the World Trade Organization that global trade last year was the worst since World War II must represent bad news for the Caribbean region. Apart from the well known struggles of the old agricultural commodities, sugar and bananas, in recent times we have heard reports that the bauxite mining and alumina processing [...]
Old enough to remember the Mighty Sparrow’s 1983 “Capitalism Gone Mad”? What the heck went wrong with it these past few years? Capitalism, that is; not Sparrow’s song. It may be that capitalism is like a gun or a religion. It just fell into the hands of the wrong people. In the Caribbean, Jamaica had [...]
The first significant general election in the English-speaking Caribbean in the post Obama campaign era is showing that it has learnt a lesson from the great North. If the campaign of the incumbent United Progressive Party (UPP) coalition with its tenuous first taste of political power is anything to go by, it has learnt the [...]
This article contains graphic content which may be offensive to some. Sex sells. It sells cars, it sells movies and in combination with music, it sells itself. Whether sex and its selling qualities are good things are under the microscopes of the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica, which has banned music with explicit sexual language and [...]
When Barack Obama came to Canada last Thursday on a day trip, his first mistake was to confuse the capital city Ottawa with Iowa – a Freudian slip which may be forgiven considering what must be now a politically umbilical tie to the state which propelled him on the way to the US presidency. After [...]
The Bible story says Jesus turned water into wine when the spirits ran low at the wedding in Cana. Malcolm Wood, in Bridgetown, Barbados, is working on the miracle of creating a Caribbean fruit wine business in an industry that snubs the notion of terming as wine anything but fermentation derived from grapes. Since the [...]
The ironies never cease. There it was, Barack Obama’s We Are One: Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, Sunday January 18, and Bob Marley’s “One Love” – the song coopted as Jamaica’s anthem to lure tourists to the island – is “Hot on the box” on the same stage graced by Stevie Wonder jamming [...]
UNICEF is highlighting the urgent needs of civilians, especially children, in Gaza. There is no safe space in the Gaza Strip, no bomb shelters, and the borders are closed making this one of the rare conflicts where civilians have no place to flee. Over 800,000 children have been exposed to violence and insecurity since the [...]
West Indies cricket is moving up. The team moved from eighth to seventh in test cricket in the world in January 2009. And cricket caught my eye at Christmas, a really hard thing to do at the time of sorrel and black cake. There was the team on TV playing in New Zealand. Also, as [...]
Kensington Oval, on the western outskirts of Bridgetown, Barbados began life in 1882 as the home of the snooty Pickwick Club. It has witnessed many historic matches including being the first West Indian ground to host an England touring team, in 1895. Kensington hosted the first combined West Indies side (against MCC in 1910-11) and [...]