Tag Archives: National Security

It is folly for us to be absorbed with the issue of the sniper rifles and not address the more significant problem of crime. The rifles are not missing. Our appreciation of how much our security forces are struggling with the criminal developments that plague us is our business. The …

“In the way of the world, things happen. As one writer previously wrote, ‘there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face…” Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, Express, 5 July 2024. The preening, self-important Minister Hinds evidently did not recognise that he was quoting Macbeth and …

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Milan Kundera, a Czech and French novelist, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979). The book discusses how people tolerate the torture and suffering over which they have no control. These lessons apply to us as …

Within a few days of dismantling his family home across the street, Bob began rebuilding. First was the painstaking task of cutting down the two prodigious trees that had generously donated their fruit for decades. With ropes and a saw—the power generated by his hands—the branches came down one by …

Murder, murder everywhere but certain elites continued blindly to cling to the status quo and sections of the business community uttered platitudes. Then, as the murder count soared past 500 with a multiplicity of murders, the Government finally “did” something. That something was a whole day meeting with the heads …

“[…] We should seek to establish an advisory committee comprising of eminent jurists and law enforcement officials from some [foreign] jurisdictions (possibly a five-member panel) to undertake a comprehensive review of our existing laws and other measures/practices in our criminal justice system. “[…] Accordingly, all crimes related to the illegal importation …

I am frequently drawn by the direct and uninhibited language of fellow Trinidad Express columnist Joanne Paul. In her commentary last Monday, Dr Paul treated with our massive diabetes problem. Interestingly, from my perspective, she came to the conclusion that it was time to acknowledge the truth.   ‘Things are …

“[…] There is no greater example of our misapplication of the national watchword, tolerance, than the way we treat Yasin Abu Bakr… He hosts press conferences, and participates in national discussions as if he is qualified or worthy. He is not. His very presence at the table is an insult …

At a time when the country needs strong institutions to uphold the principles of our democracy, the deafening silence of the Police Service Commission is untenable and simply inimical to the public interest.  In the midst of what can quite easily escalate into a full-blown national security predicament, the PSC …

Trinidad and Tobago did not buy ‘cat in bag’ when we hired Mr Gary Griffith. We knew full well what to expect.  In October 2015, then Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon reported on his predecessor’s bid to purchase armoured vehicles for the police service:  ‘Unknown to the PS and …

In 2016, our country was the western world’s highest per capita supplier of recruits for the ISIS campaign in the Middle East. We are among the world’s most violent nations, with an average annual murder rate of 32.9 per 100,000 inhabitants(from 2009–2018). Refugees and trafficking complicate our lives. These trends …

Our history records Trinidad and Tobago’s fisherfolk dodging bullets from or being arrested by Venezuela’s Guardia Nacional for supposedly being in Venezuelan waters. Today we continue to metaphorically dodge different kinds of bullets from our Venezuelan neighbours. For years, the back-and-forth confrontational posturing was a trickle—the fisherfolk dispute, or the …