Protecting…the home 

If you thought – like Ralph Gonsalves over in St Vincent who was soon booted out of office!! – that PM Kamla over in T&T was taking a hard line on defending her country by heartily supporting Pres Trump’s decision to summarily blow narco-boats out of the water, then you gotta look at what she just did domestically!! She signed into law “The Home Invasion (Self-Defence and Defence of Property) Bill, 2025”. This basically gives homeowners the right to quote – and follow – Dirty Harry’s “make my day” maxim: blow away anyone who enters your property to harm you!! Squinting isn’t mandatory while pulling the trigger – like Dirty Harry – but couldn’t hurt, eh??!!
More mundanely – as legal drafters are prone to be! – the stated rationale states it’s “An Act to establish the offence of home invasion and, in that context, to provide that a person has no duty to retreat when acting in self-defence or defence of his property; to provide that a person may use defensive force, including deadly force, to protect himself, his property or another person in his dwelling house; and to provide for related matters.”
Now, Dear Reader, you might be scratching your noggin and muttering, “Wasn’t my home my castle and I always had the right to defend it and whoever and whatever is in it – by any means necessary??” Well, in the Common Law that all of us in the British Empire inherited, things might’ve started out as such. But in the years since, that position was gradually whittled away as all sorts of caveats were added. Basically to give rights to the home invader stemming from “the right to life” inherent to everybody!!
So, believe it or not, there arose three elements to justify deadly force in self-defence of a home. First, was the principle of “proportionality”!!  The homeowner gotta be confronted with deadly force before using deadly force. Imagine that!! So the question was how’d you decide whether that piece of wood the burglar was holding in his hand could actually kill you??!!
And this gave rise to the requirement of “necessity: –  “To use deadly force to defend against deadly force, must be necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury.” The danger must be imminent or immediate!! So, you had to wait to the moment before the blow was fired?? And then came the third and most ludicrous – the need for “reasonable belief”!! Homeowner “must reasonably believe deadly force is necessary to prevent the use of deadly force on himself”!! Clearly this component includes both a subjective and objective requirement – and the “reasonable man” test!!
Now all of that is gone in T&T!! Shouldn’t we also enact a plain and simple “stand your ground act”??

…the US NSS
Against the background of some of our local Guyana bashers taking the Government to task for questioning the EU worthies who tasked it for “incumbency advantage” in the last elections comes Pres Trump taking on the ENTIRE EU for their wishy-washiness in his just-announced National Security Strategy (NSS)!! It  declares that Europe is not just in economic decline, but faced with the prospect of “civilisational erasure, the EU and other transnational bodies” are undermining “political liberty and sovereignty”!!
Europe is riddled with “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition.” It is led by “unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.” Most fundamentally, Europe is being turned into a zone of “strife” by migration policies, so that it will be “unrecognisable” in two decades. Certain NATO members will become “majority non-European” and no longer reliable allies.
But not to worry…America is willing to help them get back on track. They must just follow its lead and not talk back!!

…handout culture
Imagine even after Prezzie confirmed he’d still be issuing a cash grant to all Guyanese before Christmas – the Opposition yet went ahead with their protest to demand “their entitlement”!!
It’s like kids demanding Christmas presents BEFORE Christmas!!