People on the East Coast of the United States of America (US) and the Caribbean should consider how best they might lend a helping hand to the people of the islands of Tuvalu and Vanuatu in the Pacific whose lives have been shattered by Cyclone Pam that struck them on the night of March 13, 2015.
'm just back from a rally in front of the Charlottesville Police Department at which I heard a black UVA student say that black friends were going to think twice about trying to attend UVA after what happened tonight.
US President Barack Obama’s Executive Order imposing sanctions on another seven officials of the Venezuelan government for alleged intimidation of political opponents was boilerplate. In other words, the language is the standard government-speak used when measures of this kind are enacted. Once Obama had decided to go the route of imposing sanctions on government officials, he was required by law to declare “a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela”.
In just over a month – on 16th April 2015 – the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) will mark the 10th anniversary of its inauguration. The creation of the CCJ is arguably the single most important event in the history of the English-Speaking Caribbean since the establishment of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) by Treaty in 1973. Read more
One day after I had been investigating fires for about a year, I was standing outside a private residence in Rockland County, northwest of New York City. We’d been sent there by an insurance company to determine the origin and cause of a fire that had pretty much demolished the whole building. Read more
Let’s get one thing straight to begin with. Trade is good. We do it all the time. Trade has been pretty much part of recorded human history and evidence reveals prehistorical trade routes in many parts of the world. It becomes a little bit trickier when we look at large-scale international trade agreements. The question as to whether foreign trade promotes peace and development or destructive conflict has been debated for a long time. One of the most current controversies on free trade agreements evolves around the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The history of free trade agreements, the secrecy around TPP, and the leaked information of the actual agreement suggest tremendous potential for social conflict if implemented.
CHARLESTON — Attorney General Patrick Morrisey warned citizens to use caution when considering products that promise to help them lose weight. Read more
Concern was rightly raised over the failure of the Supervisor of Elections in St Kitts-Nevis, Wingrove George, to declare the results of the February 16 general elections until two days afterwards. Read more
It seems that the news is always full of, well, bad news, such as the long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The seemingly intractable war between these two groups has gone on for decades. Too often, all we see in the news are stories of new rocket attacks, new bombings, new assassinations, and implacable hatred. Read more
As an American writer, I often examine the story of our nation for emergent archetypes of US identity. Several are terribly embarrassing for a citizen of conscience: the Couch Potatoes of Consumer-Capitalist Society, the American Gladiator of War-Rage and Bigotry, the Avaricious and Appalling Wall St. Tycoon. Read more
US President Barack Obama, in the eyes of the Republicans in the US Congress, is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.This is now particularly obvious following his proposal to the US Congress that it authorizes military action against ISIL (also called ISIS) to bring an end to the reign of terror they have unleashed directly in the Middle East and in targeted countries in the West.
On Feb. 5, New Jersey became the latest state to subvert democracy by authorizing the fast-track sale or lease of water utilities without public notice, comment, or approval. The controversial decision highlights the intensifying struggle over who owns, controls, and profits from the most precious - and threatened - resource on Earth.
Within the next ten years the world community should expect China’s Yuan (also called renminbi) to be as widely used as the United States dollar. For almost a decade now the Chinese currency has been popular with neighbouring countries which, along with China, are among the fastest growing economies. Now, the yuan is becoming popular with Western countries too as their trade with China increases and they target the Chinese market for investment and tourism. Read more
Ronald Reagan’s assertion back in 1984 that “a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought” seems to have become accepted across the political spectrum in the U.S. and abroad. The level of destruction that would result would at best make it impossible for medical systems to respond adequately and at worst lead to climate change on a global scale. Reagan continued: “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs--the military sworn to defend democracy and the same military currently bombing the snot out of ISIS thugs who have been rightly vilified for beheadings--now wants his members to honor a Saudi royal whose regime beheaded countless dissidents and allowed flogging women for flirting.
A quarter century after the end of the Cold War and decades after the signing of landmark nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, are the U.S. and Russian governments once more engaged in a potentially disastrous nuclear arms race with one another? It certainly looks like it.
There is no doubt about the passion of Owen Arthur, one of the Caribbean’s foremost economists and thinkers, for the economic integration of the Region.
From January 4-12, 2015, Witness Against Torture (WAT) activists assembled in Washington D.C. for an annual time of fasting and public witness to end the United States' use of torture and indefinite detention and to demand the closure, with immediate freedom for those long cleared for release, of the illegal U.S. prison at Guantanamo.
Hackers target 19,000 French websites after extremists rampage leaving 17 dead. Two people are killed as police thwart a terror attack in Belgium. Former Detroit Rotary Club president gets life sentence for arranging the murder of his wife. Twenty Mexican state officials are being investigated for covering up threats and torture of witnesses to alleged extrajudicial killings. These are all stories in my local newspaper today.
There are many victims of terrorism carried out in the name of Allah and the prophet Muhammad, but none more so than people of the Muslim faith or people with Muslim names.
On December 29, 2014, the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor was shut down for good, cancelled 18 years before its license expired. The shutdown comes after thousands of protest actions; widespread uncontrolled leaks of radioactive tritium; the shocking collapse of a cooling tower, operator mismanagement, lying and cover-ups, and the state legislature’s 2010 passage of a “shut-down by 2012” law¾a statute later voided by a federal court. Entergy Corp.’s surrender announcement mentioned only “economic concerns.”
It’s 2015. People everywhere are making resolutions…lose weight, read more, quit smoking, etc. To resolve is the act of finding an answer or solution to a problem. Yet most of our resolutions are never achieved. According to Marti Hope Gonzales, Associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, just six weeks after making a resolution, 80 percent of people either have broken them or cannot even recall what they resolved. And of course, we feel like losers when we don’t achieve these goals.
If ever there was a time and an issue for the countries of the Caribbean to speak with one voice and at a high level, both the time and the issue have arrived.
At the beginning of each new year people around the world express their hopes and desires for seemingly elusive peace on earth. In the past year there have been many strides toward that goal. The greatest threat to peace and our survival, nuclear weapons, are at long last on the road to abolition. The people have spoken and leaders have heard. This new year we must recommit to the steps necessary to make this a reality.
It's now more than 40 years since I first worked in international sport and I have seen tremendous turbulence and significant change in the market ever since. But, quite frankly, I am not sure whether there has ever been another year like 2014 when it comes to off-field events hogging the headlines.
With the best intentions on the part of the Cuban government, the new relationship between the United States and Cuba -– welcome as it undoubtedly is -- will pose serious challenges for the 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
Unlike the progressive rehabbing of downtown buildings in Huntington, many cities suffer from population shifts that left sprawling amounts of real estate in their downtown empty and deteriorating.
Detroit has been recognized as a photographic paradise for those seeking abandoned structures, specifically large ones like hotels, department stores, and theaters. Ironically, as walk to work has become popular, over mall'ed larger cities have vacancies there too. (Video courtesy of You Tube.) Read more
On Christmas Eve 1914, German and British soldiers crept out of their trenches, played soccer together, exchanged gifts of food, and joined in singing carols. Alarmed, commanders on both sides warned of the crime of “fraternizing with the enemy” and the war ground on for an additional four years, not only killing millions but setting the stage for the next world war two decades later.
Hopefully, our country is emerging from years of economic disasters, beginning with the horrific events of and the horrendous betrayal of the U.S. economy by Wall Street’s “masters of the universe,” whose credo seems to be “as long as we get ours," as evidenced by the quick recovery of their salaries while much of the economy is still in intensive care as we enter 2015.
Those in our lives whom we consider to be most objective, who in many ways are paid to be objective, have repeatedly been shown to be anything but objective. Rather, they make decisions that are consistently influenced by unconscious (implicit) bias. White NBA referees call more fouls against black players than against white; MLB umpires are more likely to erroneously call a ball a strike if an all-star pitcher is on the mound; Israeli judges are more likely to grant parole at the beginning of the day than before lunch; doctors are less likely to provide adequate pain medication to patients of color and, because of bias, are prone to predictable errors in diagnostic reasoning.
On the evening of December 24th a century ago, peace broke out in the most unlikely of places. In the blasted, putrid trenches of Belgium and France, soldiers fighting on the Western Front put aside their arms in what became known as the Christmas Truce. Although World War I was then only a few months old, there had already been a million combat deaths. Many soldiers were weary of the futility and horrific costs of the war, and thousands of them spontaneously stopped trying to kill each other.
