Guest Columns

“They have always known and always feared how powerful sexuality is. Your sexuality represents your understanding and your choice of expression of your most intimate and powerful sexual instincts. “[…] So they tell you how to walk, sit, stand, how to bump, grind and dry hump, how much you should …

Former Calypso Monarch Michael “Sugar Aloes” Osouna—the story goes—once tried to get touch-feely with the then-fresh faced MC at his calypso tent, Rachel Price. The response to the calypso world’s ‘king of bling’ was withering. “I tell you I looking for a man resembling ah Maharaj showcase?” If Aloes was …

Official statistics is not a negotiation game, it affects the reality of people’s everyday lives. The cavalier televised response of MP Suruj Rambachan—“If you say 41%, I say 75%, you could say 60%”—in attempting to justify his claim that 75% of Trinidadians work for less than TT$6,000 per month is …

Trinidadians are amazing people. Glorifying each raid led by Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith, we ignore his 21 November prophecy, in Chaguanas, of 100,000 new criminals in the next five years. “It is really important for us… to look at secondary crime prevention… If we do not deal with this …

So on Wednesday night, I was a guest on the radio programme Indaba. You know the programme that discusses issues relevant to raising African-centred consciousness? No? The one that was once two hours but is now reduced to one because, let’s be honest, it’s not like there’s any issue about …

The Thema Williams judgment sits as one more example of corruption among those entrusted to dispassionately look after our best national interests. Brick by brick we dismantle the foundations of trust, essential to the proper functioning of our society. From 2009, when the first local polls tracked the public confidence …

Gary Griffith’s appointment as Commissioner of Police came with an eerie and uncanny realisation about the opaque and dysfunctional state of our institutions. Despite his political history, people were happy to embrace Griffith. And even though he has been on the job for only four months, are singing his praises. …

“[Canada Supreme Court Judge] Abella went to great lengths to emphasise the importance of press freedom in her concurring reasons. Her words are worth repeating: A strong, independent and responsible press ensures that the public’s opinions about its democratic choices are based on accurate and reliable information. This is not …

The following is the last in a four part series by historian Dr Claudius Fergus on the enduring—and arguably unjustifiable—heroic standing of Christopher Columbus in modern society: Socialist thinker Karl Liebknecht compared European imperialism to a cyclone spinning across the globe, driven and sustained by its militarism that “crushes people …

Have you ever heard a piece of news which you had probably anticipated for months but which still shocked you when it did come? For me, that happened just over a week ago with the announcement that the TNT News Centre—publishers of the popular TnT Mirror and Sunday Punch—was closing …

As I contemplated the best way to express my thoughts for this blog I came to only one conclusion. This will perhaps be the most unpopular piece that I have ever written. If I asked the average employer in Trinidad and Tobago whether they would endorse slavery the answer would …

The following is the third in a four part series by historian Dr Claudius Fergus on the enduring—and arguably unjustifiable—heroic standing of Christopher Columbus in modern society: The attempted ecclesiastical resurrection of Christopher Columbus did not extend beyond the Spanish American Empire or beyond the walls of the church of …