“Foodstuffs have a shortage daily, business places burning in the city/ Before they watch these things seriously, the whole meeting is a comedy/ “Ridicule —- fatigue giving, and all of the members laughing/While they having a good time, we catching we royal behind.” Explainer, Kicksin in Parliament (1979). It was …
Read More »Noble: Why T&T will remain in violent loop without fairer distribution of energy revenue
What do the 1937 riots, the 1970 Black Power revolution, the 1990 attempted coup, and the current crime wave have in common? They are all eruptions of dissatisfaction over the distribution of the national income earned from our energy sector. We will continue to have these episodes until we reset …
Read More »Noble: Reality vs 2025 Budget—and our lack of “genuine discussions”
Finance Minister Colm Imbert delivered his version of Black Stalin’s Wait Dorothy Wait. His budget was the reverse of Stalin’s lyrics: That oil money come, and oil money go, and poor people remain on the pavement and ghetto, aah when Mr Divider start to divide the bread equally, I go …
Read More »Noble: Our Energy future, risks and gratitude—thank you, Mark Loquan
In 1976, Elton John penned these words: “What’ve I gotta do to make you love me?/ What’ve I gotta do to make you care?/ It’s sad, so sad/ It’s a sad, sad situation/ And it’s getting’ more and more absurd/ It’s sad, so sad/ Why can’t we talk it over?/ …
Read More »Noble: Pausing our madness—we’re forgetting to celebrate what binds us together
“Maybe our forefathers and foremothers all came to this great land in different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now…” A Philip Randolph, organiser of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. We do not have the political leaders we need. At a time of overlapping …
Read More »Noble: T&T is caught between two extremes with treatment of entrepreneurs
“I would never have had a business in this country were it not for Lawrence Duprey and his […] CLICO Investment Bank. “As I sought investment funding to finance radio stations i95.5 FM and later, Red 96.7 FM, and still later, W107.1 FM the Word, despite very sound business plans, …
Read More »Noble: What is man? The chequered legacy of Lawrence Duprey
“We didn’t want anyone to be in doubt of what we were offering policyholders because dishonest agents, men who lied, could have destroyed the company.” Ray Dieffenthaller, a friend of Cyril Duprey. (Express, 28 August 2024.) The recent passing of Lawrence Duprey, a business titan, should cause us all to …
Read More »Noble: God, Glory and Gold—the relationship between the Church and the Downtrodden
The transatlantic trade in Africans was founded on a misguided interpretation of Christianity. Prince Henry of Portugal, “the Navigator” (1394-1460), put Europe’s aggressive and ruthless expeditions to Africa in motion. It was during this period that the feudal European states began to unite. Henry taught men to sail down the …
Read More »Noble: The iron entered our souls—the unthinkable cost of the slave trade
Iron shackles bound the African enslaved people together as they journeyed across the Atlantic. They were bound tightly. These shackles created physical scars, but the emotional ones begun long before. The Africans were taken from their homes on various pretexts, never sure when and if they would return. Their pain …
Read More »Noble: Slavery, Finance and Us—the immoral legacy of the slave trade
“[…] What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving, honourable men of murder. “They acted out of necessity and in the most appropriate manner for the cause. …
Read More »Noble: Truth, HCU and Karen Nunez-Tesheira—the lady doth protest too much
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate at Jesus’ trial (Luke 18:36). The Greek word for truth is aletheia, which literally means unconcealed and implies sincerity and factuality couched in reality. Mrs Karen Nunez-Tesheira submitted that my column on campaign financing was based on innuendo. Nunez-Tesheira indicated I painted “Johnny O’Halloran, presumably …
Read More »Noble: African slavery and us—how maximum greed transforms poor into mere tools
“Questions of silence always raise questions of memory. Who and what has been forgotten? Which peoples and events are downplayed? “[…] Memory is a site of conflict, ‘in which many contrary forces converge and in which the interactions between memory and forgetting are contingent as much as they are systematic…” …
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