Editorial

US President Harry Truman famously had a plaque on his desk that said “The Buck Stops Here” and he meant it.

Last week the Toronto District School Board decided to approve a new school in which the “knowledge and experiences of peoples of African descent [will be] an integral feature of the teaching and learning environment.”

The Caricom-EU Economic Partnership Agree-ment negotiations have come to a de facto end, though not without a certain amount of disputation in the Region about its potential advantages and disadvantages.

While the two-and-a-half-year trial of Mr Omprakash ‘Buddy’ Shivraj plodded on ever so ponderously before magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry at the Providence court, it was surprising to learn that the chief witness, Mr Joseph O’Lall, had been removed from his post as chief executive officer of the Guyana Energy Agency with effect from December 31 2007.

There will come a period soon when the turmoil and outrage over the massacre of the Lusignan 11 (L-11) will no longer be a cacophony, when a shadow of normality will descend on the lives of all of the aggrieved and when the heat on the government and the security forces would have dissipated.

Even as more and more people eschew the radio for the visual immediacy of television and the interactive, multimedia experience of the Internet, Tuesday, February 1, 2011 was quite an interesting day to be listening to the BBC World Service.

Despite all that has happened since February 23, 2002, this is the first time that the residents of the lower East Coast have confronted the administration in anger.

As with everything else in Guyana, the crime situation just had to get totally out of control and people had to protest before there was any obvious sign that efforts were being made to deal with it.

Dominica’s announced decision to sign on to ALBA-the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas-has been the subject of some media comment because of its supposed undermining of Caricom.

None but the most inhuman would be unmoved by the slaughter of innocent villagers at Lusignan on bloody Saturday.

The action by Dominica of signing up to Venezuela’s ALBA initiative, now seems to be a source of concern in the region.

As the founders of two of the world’s largest open-source media platforms – Wikipedia and Connexions – we have both been accused of being dreamers.

Savagery of the sort perpetrated against the villagers of Lusignan on Saturday morning denotes a fundamental societal collapse.

On May 12 last year the Government Informa-tion Agency (GINA) issued a press release on Presi-dent Jagdeo’s address to “hundreds of youths” at the 50th anniversary of Guysuco’s training centre at Port Mourant.

The news in the entertainment world this week that actor Heath Ledger had been found dead in his home at the age of 28, apparently from an accidental overdose of prescription medication was not only sad and shocking, but unexpected.

A statement by President Bharrat Jagdeo to the effect that the Caribbean are the losers in the recently concluded negotiation of the Economic Partner-ship Agreement (EPA) with Europe has been welcomed by a group of prominent Caribbean personalities, including academics, NGO activists and union leaders.

One of the minor pleasures of this year’s US presidential campaigns has been the frequent stumbling of highly-paid and supposedly knowledgeable pundits.

As with elections in other countries of the Region, it is natural that the question should be asked as to whether, with the change of government in Barbados, there will be any change in the attitude of the new Democratic Labour Party administration to the regional integration movement.

Presiding over the security sector’s year-end performance review, Minister of Home Affairs Mr Clement Rohee boasted that it was his understanding that the Guyana Police Force has been doing “much better” than its Caricom counterparts.

Thursday’s lockout of the media from the annual officer’s conference of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) was another in a series of ominous signs for the fourth estate epitomized by the government’s assault on press freedom via the withdrawal of state advertisements from this newspaper.