Editorial

Government spokesmen were getting their tongues tied in knots last week.

Speaking in Rio de Janeiro earlier this week, Pope Francis warned that the “liberalization of drug use” would not help to curb the “spread and influence of drug addiction” in Latin America.

Jamaica and the rest of the region are still reeling from the shocking disclosures that five Jamaican athletes, starting with the legendary Veronica Campbell-Brown and including their beloved Asafa Powell and 2004 4×100 Olympic gold medallist Sherone Simpson, have tested positive for banned substances.

The assault of a female minibus driver by a male colleague, whose only concern appeared to be bending the rules so that he could earn an extra dollar and do it while putting lives at risk, should raise the ire of every one of us.

As Brazil’s President Dilma Rouseff has been preparing for two significant events this year, the first a visit by Pope Francis of Latin American origins, and the second a visit by the President herself to the White House in October, she has suddenly, and obviously unexpectedly, found herself under political siege at home.

Following the spate of armed robberies that occurred in the city last week the top brass of the Guyana Police Force tried once again to put a brave face on its limitations.

President Ramotar’s use of language such as terrorism and blackmail to describe the defeat of two matters on Thursday in the opposition-controlled legislature pertaining to the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project obscures a very important point. 

There has been no let-up in the spate of armed robberies in the city. 

A striking photograph of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Bomber, appears on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s reference, in her opening remarks at the recent meeting of Caricom Heads in Port of Spain, to the view that “Caricom, as it was originally envisioned, has reached its political, socio-economic and ideological limits,” may have its genesis in the thinking of her foreign minister, Winston Dookeran.

Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying, one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.

It seems worthwhile to return once again, editorially, to the subject of the recent Caricom Heads of Government conference held in Trinidad and Tobago earlier this month.

From whatever angle one views the current political crisis in Egypt, the spectre of an unchanging United States foreign policy returns an unflinching stare.

While the public is acutely aware that law enforcement is severely hobbled in many ways, the problems in the maritime zone of the country are quite different from terra firma and even more serious.

The impact of Mr Vincent Alexander’s letter published in this newspaper on Thursday was the equivalent in the physical universe of being hit by a rock from the asteroid belt.

While it is still too early to say where the political crisis in Egypt will end, the military’s decisive role in any settlement is already clear to most informed observers.

Between the host prime minister’s opening speech and the final communiqué of last week’s Caricom summit, there was, as feared in many quarters, a distinct lack of comfort with regard to concrete action to reinvigorate our faltering regional integration project.

Two of the ten random people interviewed by this newspaper for this week’s ‘What the People Say’ column on the ‘International Building Expo’ which was held over the weekend at the Guyana National Stadium Providence expressed concern that there were too few contractors and not enough building materials on display.

It is now nearly six-and-a-half years since Julian Assange and Wikileaks started releasing official government documents, revealing to the publics of the world information deemed to be classified and forbidden from exhibition, because such release might injure the security of particular states and by extension (in the eyes of their governments) the safety of citizens.

With the Parliament in Zimbabwe having been dissolved last Friday ahead of the July 31 national elections, the country has been left to function with just two branches of the state, the executive and the judiciary.