Editorial

Amid the continuing carnage on the roads, the barefaced `shakedowns’ and pockets of shocking lawlessness that obtain in the administration of road traffic by members of the Guyana Police Force are the worst kept ‘secrets’ of the country’s wider law enforcement regime.

On August 11th, Stabroek News reported that the Australia-headquartered mining company, Troy Resources Guyana Inc was closing its gold mining operations in Guyana as it does not find the market feasible anymore.

Ensconced in Company Path, Georgetown is the monument to the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement – Nasser of Egypt, Nkrumah of Ghana, Nehru of India and Tito of Yugoslavia.

The No 1 song on America’s Billboard Hot 100 this week is not some slick production by Taylor Swift.

In circumstances where members of the public do not feel safe in their homes or on the streets, it might have been thought that the Police Service Commission and the President within the ambit of their respective spheres of authority, would give careful consideration to senior appointments in the GPF.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) believes that Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) will ultimately be beneficial to the global labour market rather than detrimental as it has the capacity to augment and complement jobs rather than replace them.

The English Premier League (EPL), the world’s top football competition, kicked off its 2023/2024 season two Fridays ago, with the defending champions Manchester City defeating Burnley 3-0.

Given all of the various issues that have been preoccupying the Caribbean, climate change and food security being just two of them,   cricket, even as ‘our boys’ continue to ‘rack up’ one humiliating defeat after another, has descended close to the bottom of our scale of hurtful woes.

In recent days, talk of the establishment of an oil refinery here has heated up as if the multiplying risks from the offshore oil platforms and the climate peril aren’t enough to deal with.

At the end of last month President Irfaan Ali made an eight-day visit to China in the company of various officials and members of the private sector. 

At his press conference on July 12, President Ali made some grand claims about the progress his government has made in the area of healthcare, backing these up with a series of statistics on life expectancy and child and maternal mortality rates. 

Today marks the two hundredth anniversary of one of the Caribbean’s great uprisings. 

“… Man Piaba, Woman Piaba Tantan Fall-Back and Lemongrass “Minnie Root, Gully Root Granny Back-Bone “Bitter Tally, Lime leaf, and Toro…” – “West Indian Weed Woman” (1929) Augustus ‘Bill Rogers’ Hinds – Shanto King Usually, when the term traditional medicine is used, the mind conjures up herbal remedies much like the ones described in the song excerpted above.

“Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude,” extract from ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ‘ by Edward Gibbon.

If it appears that we have become a ‘stuck record’ on the issue of the region being provided with a reliable update on the status of the promised Regional Food Security Terminal then that is exactly  what we are…a stuck record.

Though not unprecedented, what transpired in two city communities over the last few days underlines the insidious loss of respect for the rule of law, the grave dangers posed to citizens and ineffective policing.

In complete contrast to his predecessor the current President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has founded his international reputation on the preservation of the rainforest and the biodiversity connected with it.

Like a rock thrown into a pond, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has created waves across the world, reshaping alliances and creating new ones that may well endure.

The laws of Guyana in so far as they are intended to protect the rights of the Indigenous people are clearly defective, but even allowing for this the courts too have played an unnecessarily unhelpful role.

An incident in Montgomery, Alabama in the US last weekend has been trending on social media and has given rise to memes and commentary, some of which only serve to fuel the narrative of hate that appears to be inexorably seeping into society, despite much effort to the contrary, like the parasite it is.