We are all acquainted with the expression 24/7 meaning continuous shifts or round-the-clock service. Sadly, our country is now a country of murder 24/7. Underlining that fact, we actually managed to have 24 murders within a seven day period, causing Guardian media to assert in a page one editorial on …
Read More »Brutal breaching—Pt 2: X marks the 1990 spot but the enduring political question is why
Yasin Abu Bakr loves the soap-box. The witness box or the dock? Not quite so much. So at the post-27-July-1990-coup trial, there was no grand “History will absolve me” peroration. None was needed. Not in Clebert Brooks’ court. With no legal training, you would say that an amnesty signed because …
Read More »Dear Editor: Inaction from Lyons and HDC is allowing crime to spiral at Oropune Gardens!
“The blame for the spiralling crime in the community rests with the HDC. They are fully aware that they are not enforcing the rules that will allow the community to remain safe. “[…] Illegal occupancy, use of unoccupied / vandalised units, poor street lighting, poor lighting in car parks and …
Read More »Daly Bread: Blinkered view of crime; why Young’s ‘big fish’ talk fails to convince
Last week, in the course of the latest Parliamentary debate on crime, talk of ‘big fish’ came up again in the speech of the Minister of National Security, Stuart Young. First, let’s set out the context. The terms of the Opposition motion for debate asked the Senate: “to take note …
Read More »Dear Editor: Don’t tell us how many ‘shottas’ are out there, Mr CoP; just arrest them!
Like many—dare I say most—citizens of this rock, I, too, am fed up. Fed up of the illiteracy which poses and passes for governance; fed up of the sorry excuses with which citizens are provided; fed up of excuses parroted as reasons for their massive and collective incompetence. I am …
Read More »Daly Bread: Mirror on the West Indies wall; stop mamaguying the people on our failings
The Evil Queen in the story of Snow White repeatedly asks the magic mirror: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all.” The mirror would invariably give the mamaguy answer ‘you are, my Queen’. In Shrek when the magic mirror is brought to Lord Farquaad, he …
Read More »Murder she wrote: Mills and Crime; why blame for media coverage should be spread around
The insightful story by Suzanne Mills about her mother’s struggles is useful to highlight how the media wrestles with framing the large issues of life. It raises the issue of how we define who is a good editor. Is the metric the profitability of the media house, or is it …
Read More »Suzanne Mills: Has Newsday’s ghastly crime coverage—pioneered by my mom—helped or hindered fight against crime?
“At around 2 or 3pm, the commencement of crunch time, some editor, perhaps even I, would stick our heads out of our offices and ask, ‘No murders yet?’ […] As the murder toll rose, I asked Therese [Mills], ‘What’s the point of these crime front pages? We’re not making a sliver …
Read More »Daly Bread: How did we become this murderous society?
I was finishing last week’s column about the unrelenting grip in which murderous crime holds our country when I read our Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley’s plaintive cry: “What have we become?” Dr Rowley was mourning the reportedly gruesome murders of a life long Tobagonian friend and his wife of …
Read More »Demming: Dr Rowley’s Carenage interview suggests gun violence trauma at epidemic level
An interview with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his constituents seemed to aggravate a deep wound in that area. What I saw and heard was a man from within the constituency reliving the pain of the shooting death of his mother WPC Bernadette James and asking for some assurance …
Read More »Daly Bread: Nine months after appointment of Griffith and Young; what has changed?
I had intended this week to return immediately to the failure of all of our governments to properly assist the voluntary organisation sector in our society and to their bad practice of making funding decisions based on ‘contact’ and perceived partisan political kinship. There is however some expectation of a …
Read More »Noble: The Sad Story of slain Akil Phillip, victim of T&T’s crime factory
That Akil Phillip was shot ostensibly for his cell phone is sad. But the greater sadness is missed in the midst of the outcry by elements of the wider population against the ‘deafening’ silence of the Laventille community. They seek to chastise the residents for not ‘making noise’ comparing the …
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