The argument for SMRs as a “green economy” solution, when applied to a seismically active, debt-constrained, institutionally thin, tourism-dependent archipelago, becomes not merely optimistic but epistemically negligent. The book by Jorge Morales Pedraza and its successor paper are useful as catalogues of what SMR technology hopes to become. They are dangerous as blueprints for what Jamaica should do.

My old friend Everald “Warmy” Warmington deserves a patient answer. His reported contention that white people did not capture Africans, but merely bought people whom black people had captured, contains both a historically untenable generalisation and a conclusion that does not follow from its premise. Some African rulers, merchants and intermediaries participated knowingly in the slave trade. Their conduct deserves scrutiny and condemnation. But... Read More Online

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

I am writing to express my profound gratitude for... Read More Online

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

We are, in so many ways, an outwardly looking musical nation; for our media to pretend otherwise is an abdication of leadership and imagination.

Accountability must be swift. As with a surgeon lancing a wound, credible allegations- whether nepotism, enrichment, or abuse-must trigger immediate action. Delay breeds suspicion, silence breeds cynicism. Reports from the Auditor General and Integrity Commission must not be ignored. Consequences must follow, or investigative institutions become ceremonial, and public faith withers.