Editorial

If the allegations that Patrick Sumner, Victor Jones and David Leander were tortured can be proven, some members of the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force are likely to be in big trouble.

This newspaper carried a report last week about a mother in St Lucia, who was jailed for one year for failing to do anything when she was told that her daughter was being sexually abused by her grandfather.

The convictions secured against two of the accused in the cocaine in fish glue case constitute a small but important victory in the struggle against the drug trade.

In our Wednesday edition we reported that last Sunday, a minister of government entered a bar in Montrose, East Coast Demerara, at about 1 am.

On Thursday most Guyanese in America – or Guyanese Americans, as they should probably be more correctly called – whether ignorant of or ignoring the minor fuss in our letters column about cultural erosion or cross-fertilization and copycat behaviour, would have tucked into their Thanksgiving turkey, with or without cranberry sauce, but certainly with great relish.

Nothing quite characterises the contradictions in the current ‘Operation Safeway’ as the success in arresting hundreds of petty offenders on the one hand, and the comparative failure to arrest the spiralling toll of road fatalities, on the other.

The 13th Conference of the Parties, COP, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCC, and the 3rd Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, will be hosted by Indonesia on the island of Bali from December 3 to 14, 2007.

There is a sad sameness to several recent rape-murders. In two of the most savage, the victims were innocent schoolgirls in small rural villages.

When UNICEF celebrates the 18th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child today, it will appoint Ishmael Beah as an Ambassador.

Now that new leadership is in place in the Guyana Defence Force the environment has been created for a fresh approach in the way the army interfaces with the public on matters of national interest.

On Thursday, Venezuela made incursions into Guyana’s territory – again. On this occasion two dredges were destroyed in the Wenamu/Cuyuni, and helicopters intruded into our air-space.

Pakistan’s dramatic shift towards democracy may unseat President Pervez Musharraf, but he need not worry about the judgement of history – his manipulation of America’s hectoring post 9/11 foreign policy is a lesson for the ages.

Last week’s 17th Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, attended by the Heads of State and Government of twenty-two countries from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, was supposed to have been all about social cohesion.

We are living – according to some – on the brink of a nanotechnology revolution, where matter is engineered at a scale thousands of times smaller than the eye can see, and familiar materials behave in unexpected ways.

After months of official denial and failing memories, the Guyana Police Force unwittingly cast fresh light on the darkest period of criminal violence in this country’s post-independence history.

Most citizens of this country want to live in safety and they rely on the state and its law enforcement agencies to protect their lives and property.

In his address to the annual awards ceremony of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), two Saturdays ago President Jagdeo challenged the widely held belief that a significant part of the economy is being buttressed by laundered money.

Never mind peace and goodwill, this is the season of noise nuisance and danger.

Nordic countries may not have the best (warmest) weather in the world, but this week, once again, they were recognized as leaders in eliminating gender discrimination.

We are accustomed almost every day now to reading about or seeing on television news of murder and mayhem somewhere in the world.