President Barack Obama’s commitment to what he called the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, given during the Fifth Summit of the Americas in April this year in Trinidad and Tobago, comes at an interesting time.
During an interview in August with Stabroek News, the Chairman of the Private Sector Commis-sion, Mr Gerry Gouveia called for tighter restrictions on the wildlife trade given what was described as its “rampant rape” for commercial purposes.
Recording
The week before last a recording was released purporting to implicate a public official in impropriety, namely, the solicitation of a minor.
News that trials of an HIV vaccine have produced encouraging results offer a small glimmer of hope that the AIDS epidemic may eventually be brought under control.
There is usually a fine line dividing overwhelming folly from extreme courage.
UNICEF estimates that some 300 million children around the world are subjected to violence, exploitation and abuse; all forms of abuse.
In a previous editorial we have commented on some aspects of the controversy on West Indies cricket and, in particular on characterizations of the functioning of the West Indies Cricket Board.
Feverish meetings over the past two months have reinforced UNASUR’s importance to the security of the South American continent.
Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing last month occasioned introspection and reflection on the role that he and other influential American legislators played in the staging of free and fair elections here in 1992.
So finally the President has shown the ruling party’s hand. The citizens of Georgetown have to endure the piles of refuse and the serious health hazard that these represent, because the denizens of Freedom House or the Office of the President or both want an excuse to impose an Interim Management Committee on the capital.
When the US Federal Reserve decided, a year ago, not to save Lehman Brothers, it did so mainly on the principle that governments should never interfere with the financial markets.
President Barack Obama has maintained the US trade embargo on Cuba by extending the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act for another year.
Towards the end of next month, Korea will play host to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Third World Forum, which among other things will seek to find ways to measure economic development and social progress in OECD member countries and the world at large.
Last week an incident took place far from us in the Caribbean, which would have been of deep interest to some Caribbean states, though of minimal concern to others.
A more serendipitous encounter than the one that occurred last month in the middle of Guyana in Mahdia, the administrative centre of the Potaro-Siparuni Region, is unlikely to have happened anywhere else in the western hemisphere.
While declaring it was extremely pleased at the media coverage of its Gala Dinner on August 28th which was addressed by President Jagdeo, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) nonetheless in a statement on September 7th criticized the media for what it said was its failure to capture “the fact of the very frank and open exchange of views between the President and his audience on matters of concern to the private sector, at which the President emphasized that nothing should be considered taboo”.
One has to ask the question, is this really a capital city or is it a dumpsite?
Three days ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spoke publicly of “war crimes or crimes against humanity [that have become] part of a self-perpetuating pattern of brutality” in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
As the de facto regime in Honduras battens down the hatches in the face of international opprobrium, refusing to yield in its opposition to the return of President Manuel Zelaya, and presses ahead with the presidential elections scheduled for November 29, it appears that the rest of the hemisphere is gathering itself for another effort aimed at the restoration of constitutional order in that country.
At least twice a year for the past four years or so the forever broke capital city Georgetown finds itself in crisis.