Mahogany CoConut Blog

One Caribbean Nation All ah we is One Professor Tennyson Joseph  Nation Newspaper Barbados. Thursday 6th. August 2026  ONE WEEK after the dignified burial of Barbadian National Hero and Caribbean cricketing icon Sir Garfield Sobers, and as the lofty speeches and uplifting songs of farewell and gratitude fade away, the Caribbean must now come face to face with its harsh existential present. The heaping of praise upon a fallen hero always boomerangs. It goes out buoyed by how great we once were but returns with the pain of how far we have fallen.  Significantly, while the world is rapidly changing, the Caribbean is at its most vulnerable state since independence. Despite this, there has not been any fundamental self reflective critical analysis aimed at determining what next for the Caribbean. There is little Caribbean awareness of the scale, depth and implications of its existential crisis.   Our news and public discourses continue to be dominated...

One Caribbean Nation. Sir Garfield Sobers There is, or at least was, a picture of Sir Garfield Sobers, in the hall of the Bay Primary School, located in Bayville that most of us will recall was once called Bayland. The striking aspect of the picture is that Sir Garry is standing there with bat in hand, it appeared to us that he is batting slightly outside the leg stump. In other words, all of his stumps were exposed. Many young boys have stared at this picture for years trying to figure out how Sir Garry could “move so fast” to avoid his stumps being uprooted. In those days, we argued whether that stance was genuine or if it was merely done for the cameras! He is perhaps the only sports man, whose exceptional talents have not been surpassed by any in his sport, and who remains unchallenged , as the greatest allround cricketer to have ever played the game.  Sir Garry has walked with Kings and Queens but has never lost the common touch.  The entire Caribbean region, has not pr...

One Caribbean Nation. Diaspora Voices Pofessor Justin Robinson Prof. C. Justin Robinson is a national of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, He obtained his PhD in Finance from the University of Manchester, UK. A Professor of Corporate Finance, he is currently Pro Vice Chancellor and Campus Principal, University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus. Professor Robinson also serves as a Director of the Central Bank of Barbados, Member of the Fiscal Responsibility Mechanism, St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Director Jamaica Money Market Brokers International and Director WIBISCO.  He also serves as Chair of the Ratings Committee of CARICRIS (the Caribbean’s sole credit rating agency), and President of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. The 2026 Fifa World Cup has ignited animated conversations about race and skin color. Consider Vinícius Júnior, Champions League winner, global icon, a talent commanding the attention of millions. Yet match after match, stadium after stadium, ...

One Caribbean Nation. A THORNY ISSUE   by Andi Thornhill     Politics at play in World Cup IT WAS ONLY a matter of time before geopolitics entered the World Cup. Donald Trump, largely a spectator, found it difficult to keep his mouth quiet when the United States had to play in the last 16. By his own admission, he asked that red-carded Folarin Balogun be given a chance to play just because he was too good a player to miss the match. Whether true or not, all he had to do was to give FIFA president Gianni Infantino a call and the issue was settled. The injustice of the move, questioned by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) and others fell on death ears. Trump had spoken and that was that. It didn’t start there. FIFA had also agreed to give Cristiano Ronaldo a free pass before the  World Cup,  lifting a suspension for the first game in this campaign. He was suspended for the first game for an elbow on Irishman Dara O’Shea but Trum...

One Caribbean Nation. Sir Ronald Sanders The vulgarity of asking the enslaved to pay Sir Roland Sanders (The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of this publication.) Suella Braverman is a former Conservative Party British government minister who turned coat and is now a vocal member of the far‐right political party, reform. She is the child of Indian parents from Mauritius and Kenya, yet, like many other ultra‐ambitious British politicians, she has consistently distinguished herself by remarks that are unhelpful to immigrants and to developing countries. Her latest claim is that Britain's former colonies should pay reparations to Britain. It is a claim that is historically illiterate, morally offensive and politically revealing. It takes some nerve, in the year 2026, for a British politician to look at the Caribbean's renewed call for reparations for slavery and conclude that the obligation runs in reve...

Professor Tennyson Joseph One Caribbean Nation. ALL AH WE IS ONE THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2026. DAILY NATION BARBADOS   AS THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF CARICOM moves to the Prime Minister of St Lucia, Philip J. Pierre, it does so in a moment where the most open and direct threats to secede are being made by certain sections of Caribbean leadership. These threats should not be brushed aside as a temporary descent into anti-diplomacy on the part of a loose-tongued generation of Caribbean leadership, but should be understood as part of broader global structural shifts of which the “rethinking” of CARICOM is only a small part. The collapse of the post-World War II order, and the United States’ intent on reshaping its role in the Western Hemisphere even while it strategically withdraws from “global leadership”, are at the centre of these anti-CARICOM noises. Put bluntly, had there been no “Trumpism”, there would have been no Kamla Persaud-Bissessar quarrel with CARICOM. Given the...