In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, the island has entered a period of accelerated reconstruction, heightened executive urgency, and concentrated state power. Many welcome decisive leadership during a crisis; societies battered by disaster naturally crave efficiency and visible authority. Yet, history warns that national emergencies are fertile ground for institutional distortion and the quiet normalisation of political centralisation. Within this context, uncomfortable s

I must be getting old. Not only because I remember when a prime minister’s financial declaration was treated as a pro forma exercise in trust, but because I now watch Jamaica drift toward a template of governance that South Africans have already lived—and are still trying to escape. The comparison sounds provocative. Can the leader of a Caribbean island of three million be placed alongside the man who presided over Africa’s most industrialised economy? ...Read More Online

Then-Security Minister Dudley Thompson (PNP) famously opined that "no angels died at Green Bay." He further claimed that the absence of recovered firearms from the deceased was due to the "superior firepower" of the military’s "electric guns," which supposedly shot the gangsters' weapons from their grasp, propelling them into deep waters over 50 metres away. I found this narrative mathematically and mechanically absurd. My consultations with ballistics experts & colleagues a

what becomes of civic engagement when truth itself is strained in the nation’s highest forum? Espeut speaks to a troubling contempt for the Jamaican people. Gyles urges deeper, more meaningful civic participation beyond performative gestures and political patronage. Both are right. But there is a prior condition—one that must underpin both respect and engagement. It is accuracy. It is truth. For only the second time in my longish life, I feel compelled to state that a m

There is a quiet war being waged in Jamaica. It is not fought with guns. It is not debated in Parliament. It does not announce itself in headlines. Yet it is steadily eroding the integrity of our democracy, distorting our markets, and undermining legitimate professionalism. It is the war of the sockpuppet. The term may sound trivial—almost comical. It is not. In the digital age, “sockpuppetting” refers to the deliberate creation of multiple false online identities to manip

How Manufactured Consensus Masks Jamaica’s Energy Future In the lexicon of digital forensics, sockpuppetting is the act of creating multiple online identities to deceive. Unlike a pseudonym used for privacy, a sockpuppet is a tool of coordination. These artificial personas are designed to create the illusion of grassroots support, harass dissenters, and skew the perception of public consensus. When deployed as an "alias army,"....Read More

In the lexicon of digital forensics, sockpuppetting is the act of creating multiple online identities to deceive. Unlike a simple pseudonym used for privacy, a sockpuppet is a tool of manipulation. It is an artificial persona designed to create the illusion of grassroots support, to harass dissenters, or to skew the perception of public consensus. When these digital ghosts are deployed in tandem—an "alias army"...Read More

The Jamaican landscape is often described in the binary of “hardware” and “software”. We excel at the hardware, the construction of highways, the expansion of hotel room counts, hospital building, and the drafting of complex legislative frameworks. Yet, as we survey the current state of Jamaica’s Cabinet, it is increasingly evident that our national progress is being throttled by a glitch in the “software”: the moral and corrective reflexes that should govern public life....R

There are moments in the life of a small state when the earth itself seems to whisper temptation. Jamaica may now be approaching one. Somewhere beneath our marine estate, beyond the reach of casual sight but not of determined exploration, there may lie oil—commercially meaningful oil. Enough, perhaps, to alter our balance sheets, to excite investors, to animate Cabinet briefings, and to awaken that most dangerous of national instincts: the belief that salvation has finally

by Dennis A. Minott, PhD.

The plate looks full in the brochure. But the nourishment on the ground is tragically uneven. This is not accidental. It is structural. It is what I have called, without apology, the age of Jamaican billioneering. Billioneering is not merely about the extraction of wealth. It is about the theatrical display of wealth—its amplification, its projection, and its eventual conversion into political currency. It is the high art of appearing abundantly resourced and "investable"

And a nation that teaches that lesson too well will, in time, discover that it has educated its best people to leave—and its remaining citizens to care less.

A salvaged control board from his late grandfather’s discarded prosthetic device. Basic sensors repurposed. A casing assembled from available materials. Hours of trial, error, and recalibration. The result, still rough but functional, is a portable defibrillator powered through a hybrid system—bioelectric input supplemented by stored charge. It responds to voice prompts. More importantly, it contains a simple but critical safeguard: it analyses cardiac rhythm and will only d

The betrayal is made more poignant by its timing. As global health security becomes increasingly precarious, burning bridges with a regional medical superpower is an act of spectacular short-sightedness. Cuba’s "white coat diplomacy" was never a threat to Jamaican democracy; it was a lifeline for the Jamaican heart. By severing this artery, the Cabinet has prioritised the "theatre of the photo-op" over the reality of the operating theatre....Read more

In the altered theatre of 2026 geopolitics, where Donald Trump’s second act is no longer conjecture but wars of impulse, an ancient question presses itself upon us with renewed urgency: can a leader, swollen with self-attributed glory, descend into a form of madness akin to that of King Nebuchadnezzar—until reason is restored not by counsel, but by consequence? The book of Daniel offers no ambiguity...

In every functioning state, certain responsibilities stand above partisan manoeuvre or diplomatic fashion. Among them, none is more fundamental than the protection of the population’s health. A government may disagree about taxation, infrastructure, or foreign alliances, but the continuity of medical care for its citizens is a sacred obligation. When that continuity is placed at risk by political calculation, the issue ceases to be administrative. It becomes a question

Why was there no trial run of direct deposits, a solution floated during negotiations in July, October, and December 2025? While Cuba reportedly left some of those overtures unanswered, one must ask: where was the legislative tweak or the updated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to bridge the gap? Jamaica has the capacity to make such arrangements work for essential services. Instead, the government chose to wash its hands of the matter, leaving 277 specialists high and dry

Fairness, clarity, and global comparability—principals are urged to adopt A-QuEST’s Concordance to better represent student achievement.

/the former, when students ascended tothe heights of innovation and excellence; the latter when their potential is siphoned..[BPO machinery]