Consider the case of British historian Orlando Figes, who admitted using aliases to praise his own work as ‘fascinating’ while rubbishing that of his rivals. A senior editor at The New Republic used a sockpuppet to offer extravagant praise to himself on his own blog. These were not harmless deceptions; they were calculated attempts to distort professional judgement and public perception. ECONOMIC DIMENSION Now, consider the implications for financial markets. In an era where

There is a fundamental difference between systemic corruption and state capture. Corruption ordinarily involves an individual bending or breaking a rule for private advantage. State capture is far more consequential: it occurs when powerful private interests, commercial cartels, or political networks become sufficiently influential that they can shape the rules, institutions, appointments, and public narrative by which everyone else must live. Corruption distorts the game;

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

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

In Anansi’s Island, the road to riches is seldom straight. The old spider of folklore survived by wit because he was small & vulnerable. His modern descendants have improved the method. They use influence, opacity & public money, then call the outcome development. A way to become rich is to discover a nat'l crisis before everyone else does.

The prevailing economic model in Jamaica is not development; it is a meticulously structured extraction. It is a system of “billioneering” off Jamaica by money-men, rather than investing in Jamaica. To understand the mechanics of this modern economic bypass, one must examine the structural pipelines of our two most critical national domains: tourism and energy.

What began as a small mentoring tradition eventually became an international educational movement. More than 7K young people have now passed through A-Q and its related initiatives, and the number continues to grow, though more slowly today through online engagement. Its alumni include Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Belizeans, Americans, Bahamians, Antiguans, Brazilians, Haitians, Saint Lucians, Grenadians, Guyanese, Nigerians, Japanese, Koreans, Burmese, Caymanians, Pakistanis, I

There is a curious phenomenon that periodically appears in Jamaican public policy. A difficult national problem emerges. The hard work of institutional reform, technical competence, disciplined maintenance, and long-term planning remains unfinished. Yet instead of addressing those fundamentals, influential voices become captivated by a grand technological solution promising to leapfrog reality. The latest manifestation is the renewed enthusiasm for Small Modular Reactor

Fukushima taught the world an important lesson. Complex systems fail not merely because of a single event, but because multiple events can overwhelm assumptions embedded within a design. Even if a Jamaican SMR survived a major hurricane intact, the transmission and distribution infrastructure connecting it to consumers might not. A generating plant, however sophisticated, serves little purpose if the lines carrying its electricity are down. The Jun 5 blackout was a signal,

The future of Jamaica may depend upon recovering precisely this discipline. Not more information. Not more commentary. Not more amplification. Better discernment of signals. The question is whether we possess the wisdom, courage, and discipline to recognise them. And having recognised them, whether we possess the character to act.

On what basis are public institutions continuing to devote noisy attention, taxpayers’ good money, and institutional credibility to a technology --Small Modular Reactors-- whose commercial viability remains unproven and whose most prominent North American deployment effort failed despite years of promotion, regulatory support, and escalating investment?

Jamaica, meanwhile, continues to behave as though literacy is solely the responsibility of classroom teachers. The evidence suggests otherwise. The irony is that the country already possesses a potentially transformative workforce. It is called the Jamaica Library Service...Read More

In simple language, Titchfield repeatedly did more with less. Its success was not explained by elite intake. It was explained by educational effectiveness. The school transformed students. That kind of reality should have profoundly influenced educational policy discussions. Instead, another trend was quietly gathering momentum. Across Portland and beyond, a growing proportion of students began identifying themselves not as science students but as “business students.

Schools’ Challenge Quiz may continue to entertain, inspire and emotionally unite Jamaicans for many years to come. But unless the country develops the courage to distinguish educational spectacle from educational substance, SCQ will remain what it has quietly become: An elaborate national performance of academic prestige by pretence.

Why is it that whenever high office is implicated, the machinery of justice slows to a cautious, glacial crawl? Why does constitutional scrutiny lose its existential urgency precisely where public trust most desperately requires it? The pattern has become predictably formulaic....Read More

We continue tolerating what can only be described as rag-tag educational reporting cultures. In some schools, grades appear inflated without meaningful standardisation. In others, records remain partially paper-based and vulnerable to deterioration, disappearance, manipulation, or prolonged delay. Elsewhere, transcript preparation depends excessively upon the diligence or competence of a single administrator. That is unacceptable in 2026. Worse still, the absence of integra

'The Holness administration has delivered significant infrastructure projects, navigated the pandemic, and maintained macroeconomic stability under an IMF programme. These are not small things. But the question posed by the composite animal thesis is not whether the government has accomplished anything. It is whether the manner of governing—the centralization of discretion, the impatience with oversight, the erosion of institutional courage—is creating a political architectu

In the urgent public debate over educational accountability across Jamaica and the wider Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a vital public service has been performed by commentator Christopher McCurdy. By insisting that institutional responsibility cannot remain an optional luxury within our school system, his public interventions point directly at a gaping wound in our national development strategy. He is entirely correct. Yet, if we are to move beyond mere diagnosis and enginee

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