Last Saturday, three men were shot dead in their neighbourhood at about 2.30pm. Six hours after, the newspapers went to press not knowing the identity of two of the men while the other one was more likely to be named as ‘Warlord’. They were nobodies. On social media, some rejoiced …
Read More »MSJ: Was ‘cockroach’ jibe a ‘license’ to kill? Arrest and suspend ALL lawmen involved in M’vt slaying
“[…] It seems as though members of the police force have taken the commissioner’s use of force policy and his incendiary remarks about ‘cockroaches’ as a license to kill. This is not the first time that this has happened under the watch of Gary Griffith, as we had a similar …
Read More »Jacobs, Clinton, Diamond, the TTPS, Chee Mooke and the REAL Morvant victims
Morvant residents faced a swift reprisal for alleged misdeeds yesterday. But on this occasion, the judge, jury and executioner was not the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS). It was Chee Mooke Bakery Limited, which revealed that it will no longer serve that community after its driver was robbed—in the midst …
Read More »McIntyre: ‘Decolonisation’ means revisiting objective facts—like Columbus; what did renaming Trinity Cross cost us?
We cannot change the objective facts of history but we can re-examine those facts to better guide our perspectives. Decolonisation is the process of revisiting the objective facts and applying revised perspectives to improve policies. Up until the 1980s, it was not uncommon to find in texts words such as …
Read More »Noble: Quo Vadis, Trinidad? A wide view of exchange between Faria, Hinds and Dr Rowley
As adopters of social media and smart phones, we reveal a lot about ourselves each day. We tell the world about our likes and dislikes, habits and families via Facebook and Twitter. We even disclose our travel plans to persons we do not know via Waze and Google. We expose …
Read More »Gilkes: Rubbish Subran; Columbus and the colonials ‘whitewashed’ history—we’re fixing it!
It ends when there is a decolonised education system so that there is no chance of a person being miseducated by a David Subran, that’s when. His 19 June letter to the editor criticising the calls for the removal of Christopher Columbus’ statue was a shameless genuflecting to the west’s …
Read More »Demming: The Faria Brouhaha; data, discussion and deception
There are always unintended consequences of our actions. The big picture lessons of the brouhaha around Gabriel Faria’s WhatsApp message are that the private views of public officials are seen as expressions of the organisation, and that business survival post-Covid-19 requires aggressive strategies by the government. Gabriel Faria spoke his …
Read More »Claude’s comments: To Javier Carbajosa, Ambassador of Spain—the mother of white supremacism
Are we truly a banana republic? Or have we gotten too accustomed to the imperial arrogance of US ambassadors? Is the government beholden to Spain to such a degree that we have to servilely kowtow to the absurdities thrown at us by Spanish Ambassador Señor Javier Carbajosa Sanchez? As other …
Read More »Noble: Who will deliver our wretched nation from the politics of race?
The letter ‘When would real equality come?’ by Anand Beharrylal, QC—carried in the Express Monday 15 June edition—reminds me of an Aaron Levenstein quote: “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” His comments were suggestive but do not provide a full picture …
Read More »Claude’s comments: The origins of white supremacy and role of Columbus, Victoria and an ‘Italianised’ Jesus
“Racism has been Europe’s greatest gift to the world.” So said Dr Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of T&T (Selwyn Cudjoe, Eric Williams Speaks). Of course, Williams was being sarcastic. If racism was a gift to the world, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the greatest gift …
Read More »Noble: Is ‘all ah we’ one family? The uncomfortable race conversations T&T needs
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF head, in a conversation with the Washington Post last week described the economic situation brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic as a ‘crisis like no other’. For her, the impending crisis was a ‘great reversal’ that was wrought with much uncertainty. She foresaw significant job losses …
Read More »Daly Bread: The Thing that does not go away; tackling race in T&T
There is a thing that it seems will not go away. It is described in Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’, in which she told the extremely painful story of the desire of Pecola to have the bluest eyes and blond hair. Pecola’s self esteem is destroyed by the arrival of …
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