Editorial

If there was a single area in which Caricom could have partially shielded itself from the global onslaught of collapsing financial markets, depressed commodity prices, harsher terms of trade, spiralling budgetary deficits  and the ever diminishing pools of cheaper financing it was the diminution of its annual food import bill.

In a letter in our edition of July 7, captioned ‘UG should emphasize teaching, not research,’ Mr Sherwood Lowe said that nowadays universities tended to be either research oriented, or teaching focused.

Participants in the Major Economies Forum (MEF) on Energy and Climate at this year’s G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy are already congratulating  themselves on an historic agreement on global climate change, one that would, should everything go according to plan, “substantially” reduce global emissions within a generation.

Sir John Sawers has been ‘outed’ by his wife on Facebook, the social networking website, as a normal man, who appears to enjoy the company of his friends and family, including the occasional game of beach Frisbee.

Despite persistent calls by the United Nations over the past year, gains made in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have begun to slip backwards and downwards in a spiral that could spell even worse hunger and poverty in the world than what obtained prior to the targets being set.

After a virtual diplomatic interregnum, born of increasing suspicion and a hardening of perceptions of evolving Russian domestic and international relations by the George Bush administration, the change of administration in the United States has brought a resumption of talks with President Obama’s visit to Moscow.

The Guyana Police Force felt obliged to issue a long press statement on June 30 to respond to allegations against it of “willful negligence” in enforcing the law, especially with regard to the offences of domestic violence and creating a noise nuisance.

There is no gainsaying the wisdom of the house lots programme instituted by the 1992 government of Dr Cheddi Jagan.

The PNC seems bent on oblivion. One would have thought that given its history of rigging elections between 1968 and 1985, and given that similar allegations were made at its last party Congress, it would have viewed the matter of cleaning up its image as one of high priority.

A few days ago Bernard Madoff, a 71 year-old securities-fund manager and former chairman of the Nasdaq, was sentenced to 150 years in prison for investment fraud estimated at more than US$60 billion.

In our most recent editorial on Caricom, ‘Structures of unity,’ we lamented the failure of heads to establish a commission to further the integration process, as recommended by the West Indian Commission (WIC) in 1992.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in,” American poet Robert Frost writes in his poem The Death of the Hired Man.

The response of the countries of the hemisphere has been swift, and decisively negative, to the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales by the military, in conjunction with the leadership of the Honduras Congress and the Honduras Supreme Court.

President Bharrat Jagdeo marked last Friday, June 26 − which was observed as ‘International Day against Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking’ − by declaring, “I think we are doing the best we could in terms of combatting the trade.

With each passing day, the questions about whether this administration is committed to transparency and accountability grow more sonorous and with good reason.

As the Caricom heads gather in Georgetown for their annual ritual, they do so in circumstances where three of them have committed themselves to integration with a regional organization of an altogether different cast.

When Michael Jackson’s death was confirmed on Thursday afternoon, MTV gave over its scheduled programming to a marathon retrospective of the music videos which had made him so famous.

Before Caricom, there was the Caribbean Free Trade Area (Carifta); before Carifta there was the West Indies Federation; before the Federation, there was the University College of the West Indies (UCWI), the precursor to the University of the West Indies (UWI); and before them all there was West Indies cricket.

The Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) recently became the latest government agency to sign a ‘smoke-free policy declaration,’ which means that no smoking will be allowed on any of company’s premises, in the compounds, and “for at least a nine metres radius surrounding any entrance or exit,” with the company’s Human Resources Manager pledging that it would live up to the declaration.

The fascination which politics in Iran has held for the Western powers for  over fifty years since the overthrow of the nationalist leader Mossadeq in the 1950s, will have been increased by the events surrounding the recent elections in that country.