Fever is a symp­tom. It is not a dis­ease. Yet, there are many dis­eases which con­tain the word fever in their name. Some have half a dozen names. Malar­ia, for ex­am­ple, was called swamp, jun­gle, marsh, and in Guyana, black­wa­ter fever be­cause it can turn urine black. This was quite dif­fer­ent to black fever or dum­dum, which has noth­ing to do with MA­GA vot­ers and is bet­ter known as kala azar.

What is now owed to the peo­ple of Cari­com, whose gov­ern­ments have placed them un­der the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) in its orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion, as well as the five coun­tries that have ful­ly em­braced the court's ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion?

Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al or in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry refers to how or­gan­i­sa­tions store, re­tain and reuse da­ta, knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ences over time. This mem­o­ry is cod­i­fied in the rules and reg­u­la­tions, or in the sys­tems and process­es that guide every­day ac­tions. Some­times cir­cum­stances change, re­quir­ing pro­ce­dures to be rewrit­ten to ac­com­mo­date new learn­ing or tech­no­log­i­cal changes. In­tro­duc­ing the changes re­quires con­sul­ta­tion with per­sons af­fect­ed by those changes.

The coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced earth­quakes, floods, land­slides, trop­i­cal storms and oth­er haz­ards over gen­er­a­tions, yet the ab­sence of a re­cent cat­a­stroph­ic nat­ur­al dis­as­ter can cre­ate a dan­ger­ous sense of se­cu­ri­ty. Re­cent events in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela and Colom­bia should serve as a pow­er­ful re­minder that the re­gion re­mains seis­mi­cal­ly ac­tive and that dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes can oc­cur with lit­tle warn­ing.

There is lit­tle doubt that chick­en re­mains this coun­try's favourite form of pro­tein and that the ap­peal of poul­try cuts across the coun­try's class, race, re­li­gious, gen­der and age dif­fer­ences.

Abelar­do de la Es­priel­la, a right-wing politi­cian, took of­fice as Colom­bia’s new pres­i­dent on Au­gust 7. His vic­to­ry has been de­scribed as part of a broad­er, Trump-in­flu­enced right­ward shift in Latin Amer­i­ca.

It is not of­ten that the First Peo­ples of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Amerindi­ans, re­ceive sus­tained na­tion­al at­ten­tion out­side of cer­e­mo­ni­al oc­ca­sions. Even then, such recog­ni­tion is of­ten fleet­ing rather than re­flec­tive of the com­mu­ni­ty's sig­nif­i­cance to the na­tion's his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty.

The vis­it of US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau has pro­duced some­thing Trinidad and To­ba­go bad­ly needs: af­fir­ma­tion that in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors con­tin­ue to see this coun­try as a fer­tile and eco­nom­i­cal­ly at­trac­tive place in which se­ri­ous busi­ness can be done.

By now we should all know that the in­stru­ment is much more than the mu­sic it de­liv­ers. That we fre­quent­ly need to step back and ask our­selves: What in the man­ner in which we have clum­si­ly be­gun to as­sem­ble a na­tion com­plete with in­trigue, eter­nal con­flict, and chron­ic con­fu­sion, have we done to de­serve so hand­some a boun­ty?

To­day, World Steel­pan Day, is an oc­ca­sion that should prompt more than the cus­tom­ary cel­e­bra­tion of an in­ven­tion that has car­ried Trinidad and To­ba­go’s name across the globe.

As in­di­cat­ed in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian by a his­to­ri­an, a so­ci­ol­o­gist and a crim­i­nol­o­gist, racial con­flict is get­ting in the way of Trinidad and To­ba­go's so­cial de­vel­op­ment. They al­so made the point that this con­flict is be­com­ing more in­tense.

While the State has the right to gov­ern and make de­ci­sions in the in­ter­ests of its cit­i­zens, it must do so with­in the con­text of the rule of law. The rule of law is what pro­tects cit­i­zens from po­lit­i­cal ar­bi­trari­ness and from an­ar­chy. The Con­sti­tu­tion pro­tects fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights and free­doms un­der Sec­tions 4 and 5, and they ap­ply to every­one with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, ori­gin, colour, re­li­gion, or sex.