We need no hostility towards America to insist on self-respect. We need no romance about Havana to remember the humanity of Cubans. And we need no permission from either capital to think. Andrew, Kamla and every other custodian of Caribbean office should remember the distinction: you represent a people; you do not possess them. Keep the international friendships. Make the diplomatic journeys. Bring home an argument that can stand without the photograph. But leave our right

By Dennis A. Minott, PhD. October 23, 2026 Dr Dennis A. Minott Abstract Small Island Developing States (SIDS)—and the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo) in particular—face an existential dual mandate: eliminating the macroeconomic drag of imported fossil fuels while maintaining grid stability against severe climate shocks. In response, vendors from the Global North heavily market Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), typically rated between 50 MWₑ and 300 MWₑ, as zero-carbon bas

Public sector compensation must remain firmly anchored in proportionality, transparency, and public trust. While securing capable leadership for national reconstruction is necessary, paying the CEO of NaRRA significantly more than the head of U.S. FEMA—in a country where average annual per capita income is a fraction of that in the United States—is indefensible. At a time when ordinary citizens are asked to endure hardship and fiscal constraint, executive compensation of this

By Dennis A. Minott, PhD September 28, 2026 For more than half a century, I have worked in and around renewable energy—hydroelectricity, biomass and solar—asking essentially the same Jamaican question: why should an island lavishly endowed with sunshine, wind, water, vegetation and human ingenuity remain chronically dependent on imported fuel? In Thunderclap 7, “Political Will Needed: The Arithmetic of Jamaica’s Energy Autonomy by 2031”, I argued that the answer is no longer

All week, Western media, and voices elsewhere, have been conducting a lively conversation about artificial intelligence: from employment and education to autonomous agents, from industrial competition to safety, from extraordinary productivity to the uncomfortable question of who should govern the governors of these increasingly capable machines. This week’s coverage has included both the prospects for work and the promises of powerful technology companies to police themselve

“Test all things.” I no longer regard scepticism as discourtesy. When people exercising great power make grand claims, the citizen has not merely a right but a responsibility to ask: Where is the evidence? So when Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the Caribbean Infrastructure Forum in Miami on September 15 that “Jamaica will become the Singapore of the Caribbean”, I reached instinctively for several grains of salt. Singapore? That is an assertion capable of measurement

When a superpower extends its *dewlap*, small countries are expected to retreat. But Jamaicans have lived too long with lizards to be easily impressed by throat fans. The real issue is not whether Marco Rubio can make Jamaica nervous. It is whether Jamaica’s institutions can remain sufficiently independent to scrutinise agreements, question foreign-policy decisions and defend the country’s constitutional sovereignty. From Cuban medical cooperation and Petrojam to the propo

A country that could look at its own ledgers without flinching, and then act with invention rather than evasion, would have done something no empire ever managed. It would have converted the smell of guilt into the fragrance of institutional courage. That is a form of national pride worth cultivating — the pride of a nation that chose honesty over amnesia, and creation over denial. That, to me, would be Sweat 4.0. And it is the one genuine reparative odour that no billione

There is an “F” word being spoken across Jamaica. I shall not print it. A Christian pulpit should not need profanity to tell the truth, and a national argument should not require obscenity to make itself heard. But there is another reason for my restraint: the unprinted word is less important than the material breakdown that has produced it. The word is being generated by frustration. By fear. By favouritism. By failure... Read More Online

Why, despite decades of policy recognition, legislation, licensing and official declarations, does the ordinary Jamaican still experience beach access as a contested privilege rather than an unquestioned component of citizenship? That question cannot be answered by blaming one hotel. Nor should it be reduced to a crude argument against tourism or private investment. Jamaica needs tourism. But JM does not need a tourism model in which the profitable natural asset is progre

Who supplied the energy and intelligence that made the extraordinary accumulation of wealth from chattel slavery possible?

Britain compensated slave-owners £20 million at emancipation. The formerly enslaved got nothing. That compensation became public debt—only finally repaid in 2015. This is not inherited guilt. It is unfinished justice.... Read Online

For Caribbean families planning medicine, the question is bigger than “How do we make our child a doctor?” It is: How do we prepare that future doctor to choose where — and how — she wishes to serve?

Guyana’s grief reverberates across every bay, gulf, and inlet of our shared world. It touches the shores of Suriname, reaches across the sea to Jamaica, whispers through the hills of Haiti, and rests gently on the quiet beaches of Nevis. Wherever people live by the mercy of the waters, wherever men and women step onto a deck with trust in their hearts, this pain belongs to us all. We grieve for the souls who never saw the wooden planks of the landing stelling again, nor felt

State capture rarely arrives with a grand proclamation. It advances through normalisation: one exceptional arrangement, one opaque contract, one bypassed safeguard, one exhausted watchdog, and one collective shrug at a time. The charge, therefore, is not that Jamaica is proven to be captured. It is something far more urgent: Jamaica is displaying enough classical warning signs that failing to investigate the hypothesis would itself be an act of civic negligence.

By Dennis A. Minott, PhD. August 6, 2026 This is not an entirely hypothetical Jamaican problem. Readers of the country’s online newspaper discussions will recognise recurring identities such as V/X Truth, Insight4Sight, Xamyca, Cldray or Clirey, Micchael, Really, Mark Chue and Peter Wright—who has been presented as an electrical engineer. Some appear repeatedly beneath articles concerning government, energy, political accountability and criticism of public policy. Insight4Sig

Six times I have wept for Jamaica: for the Federation we abandoned, practical solutions we overlooked, expertise we undervalued, scientific breakthroughs we failed to finance, and brilliant nation-builders such as Dr Cynthia E. Lewis, whose work showed what Jamaica could become. Yet my six times of tears carried hope. My daughter herself, understood that history’s broken Caribbean pieces may still remember the larger shape they were meant to form. The seventh time, God will

"During application season, there were late-night texts, early-morning messages, conversations during holidays, and countless rounds of feedback on essays and supplemental responses. Every draft became stronger because Dr Minott and Dr Thomas were willing to invest so much time and care in us. What stood out most was how personal the guidance felt. Dr Minott encouraged us to prepare a personal inventory—a detailed reflection on our achievements, experiences, interests and id

Tomorrow, however, is the busiest liar on Anansi’s Island. It is always approaching, never arriving. It promises high-value employment that degenerates into temporary subcontracts; national ownership that dissolves into long-term concessions; open market competition that hardens into private monopoly; and national development that somehow requires ordinary insects to remain permanently outside the great milker's gates. The pre-dawn milking invariably begins with public

It is not necessarily caused by recklessness. The people experiencing it are often disciplined workers who rise early, travel far, perform necessary jobs and return home exhausted. They have calculated the supermarket bill, postponed the dentist, reduced the electricity usage, stretched the cooking gas and told the children that the requested school item will have to wait. Still, the money finishes first. The trouble is that too many Jamaicans are paid too little to partici