In T&T, it is pos­si­ble for the guilt of an ac­cused per­son to be in­ferred from their con­duct af­ter the al­leged crime. That con­duct in law is known as “post-of­fence con­duct”.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, as I con­tem­plat­ed what I should dis­cuss about women in light of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD) this Sun­day, March 8, and how I could stay on the path of help­ing peo­ple in the way they help oth­ers, I re­alised that most of the neg­a­tive voic­es in my head be­long to women.

Sev­er­al years ago, pyra­mid schemes took our coun­try by storm. Many peo­ple were tricked, robbed of their hard-earned monies and de­spite grow­ing con­cerns of fraud, peo­ple con­tin­ued in­vest­ing.

As the East­er sea­son ap­proach­es, many fol­low­ers of Catholi­cism and oth­er Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions are in a pe­ri­od of fast­ing and re­flec­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the most im­por­tant event on the church cal­en­dar, Good Fri­day and East­er Sun­day.

What is the op­po­site of two? A lone­ly me, a lone­ly you. - Richard Wilbur, po­et and trans­la­tor (Mar 1, 1921-2017)

Lead­er­ship on the re­gion­al stage car­ries weight. Words spo­ken be­fore the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) are not ca­su­al re­marks; they shape diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ships, re­gion­al trust and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of our na­tion.

All man-made prod­ucts have a fi­nite or ex­pect­ed use­ful life. The same is true of busi­ness mod­els. Tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments af­fect busi­ness­es at all lev­els, strate­gic, op­er­a­tional, fi­nan­cial and com­pet­i­tive. Its im­pact, there­fore, is dis­rup­tive at the lev­el of the in­di­vid­ual firm as well as whole in­dus­tries. The cur­rent fo­cus on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and its busi­ness ap­pli­ca­tion is a case in point.

Of even greater sig­nif­i­cance than it has been in the past, co­he­sion with­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) as the re­gion­al mem­ber states tan­gle with the Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump and his agen­da, the fo­cus must be on se­cur­ing an in­tra-re­gion­al re­la­tion­ship based not on pa­tron­age, but one of mu­tu­al in­ter­ests and ben­e­fits.

On Tues­day, March 3rd, we will ob­serve World Wildlife Day. The UN Theme this year: Med­i­c­i­nal and Aro­mat­ic Plants: Con­serv­ing Health, Her­itage and Liveli­hoods, “high­lights the vi­tal role of these plants in sus­tain­ing hu­man health, cul­tur­al her­itage, and lo­cal liveli­hoods, and show­cas­es the grow­ing pres­sures they face from habi­tat loss, over­har­vest­ing, and cli­mate change.”

And I love it. I love the bass you feel in your ribcage be­fore you lo­cate the truck. I love how the Sa­van­nah turns in­to a glit­ter­ing re­pub­lic where sleep is op­tion­al and hy­dra­tion is a rum-based the­o­ry. I love how oth­er­wise sen­si­ble adults col­lec­tive­ly de­cide that to­mor­row is a prob­lem for Wednes­day.

It is mea­sur­able. Hor­mon­al. In­flam­ma­to­ry. Meta­bol­ic. It ac­cu­mu­lates qui­et­ly in­side peo­ple who still show up to work every morn­ing.

I did not plan to write a fol­low-up to last week’s ar­ti­cle, but the pub­lic re­sponse made it nec­es­sary. The re­ac­tion was mas­sive, and while some peo­ple en­gaged in thought­ful dis­cus­sion, much of what I saw in the com­ments and mes­sages on­ly re­in­forced my ar­gu­ment that racism is a dis­ease per­vad­ing our beau­ti­ful coun­try. In­stead of hon­est re­flec­tion, there was de­fen­sive­ness, dis­tor­tion, racial fram­ing, se­lec­tive his­to­ry, and in some cas­es out­right de­nial.