Editorial

The action by Dominica of signing up to Venezuela’s ALBA initiative, now seems to be a source of concern in the region.

As the founders of two of the world’s largest open-source media platforms – Wikipedia and Connexions – we have both been accused of being dreamers.

Savagery of the sort perpetrated against the villagers of Lusignan on Saturday morning denotes a fundamental societal collapse.

On May 12 last year the Government Informa-tion Agency (GINA) issued a press release on Presi-dent Jagdeo’s address to “hundreds of youths” at the 50th anniversary of Guysuco’s training centre at Port Mourant.

The news in the entertainment world this week that actor Heath Ledger had been found dead in his home at the age of 28, apparently from an accidental overdose of prescription medication was not only sad and shocking, but unexpected.

A statement by President Bharrat Jagdeo to the effect that the Caribbean are the losers in the recently concluded negotiation of the Economic Partner-ship Agreement (EPA) with Europe has been welcomed by a group of prominent Caribbean personalities, including academics, NGO activists and union leaders.

One of the minor pleasures of this year’s US presidential campaigns has been the frequent stumbling of highly-paid and supposedly knowledgeable pundits.

As with elections in other countries of the Region, it is natural that the question should be asked as to whether, with the change of government in Barbados, there will be any change in the attitude of the new Democratic Labour Party administration to the regional integration movement.

Presiding over the security sector’s year-end performance review, Minister of Home Affairs Mr Clement Rohee boasted that it was his understanding that the Guyana Police Force has been doing “much better” than its Caricom counterparts.

Thursday’s lockout of the media from the annual officer’s conference of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) was another in a series of ominous signs for the fourth estate epitomized by the government’s assault on press freedom via the withdrawal of state advertisements from this newspaper.

On Tuesday we reported that Dominica had joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, generally referred to by its Spanish acronym of ALBA.

Mind-boggling atrocities, many committed against children, are being attested to as the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor proceeds in The Hague.

Next Monday Americans will celebrate Martin Luther King Day. It is a national holiday for a national hero, the only black man to be so honoured in the United States.

If campaign rhetoric is anything to go by, the next American president – regardless of which party eventually prevails – will be a deeply religious person.

Is the killing of a fisherman by a posse of pirates or the killing of a businessman by a gang of bandits, so different from the killing of a suspect by a squad of policemen?

As with its state of unreadiness at the onset of the catastrophic flood of 2005, the Civil Defence Commission’s capacity to cope with an aviation calamity in this country is practically non-existent.

Friday’s commissioning of an $86.6M mobile drainage pump at Hope, East Coast Demerara must have lifted the spirits of residents in the area.

Reporting last week on the performance of the education sector in 2007 Minister of Education Shaik Baksh acknowledged that the literacy level is declining across the country.

The so-called Westminster model of democracy has been an unmitigated disaster wherever it has been practiced in ethnically, or racially or religiously mixed societies.

Four years ago, the election returns from Iowa ended the presidential hopes of Senator John Kerry.