The 2018 Calypso Monarch Finals promise to be the best in about 20 years. This is so although the judges only got about 70% of the selections correct. The mix will be excellent, not simply in terms of musical variety and lyrical content and style and pace but also in …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: Out of Africa; Darwin, creationism and the truth about where we all came from
This week’s column is prompted by two reports last week that made global news. Although reproduced in local media, they would hardly have been expected to create waves within non-academic communities. One of these reports welcomed a new frontier of knowledge of human evolution: the CNN headline, “Modern fossil find …
Read More »Afryea’s Advice: Parents and guardians, caution! Carnival church camp can corrupt your child
Carnival, the Greatest Show on Earth, was one of my favourite times of the year. Apart from the extra holidays we all received, it was a time when the church would go out to camp somewhere in the countryside to get away from the noise and the confusion and the …
Read More »Not Condemning: Media lesson for Stuart Young; a little broughtupsy never hurt nobody
What would make Minister Stuart Young think that he could call in on a radio programme last Friday—or any day for that matter!—and deliver his treatise without interruption? What would make such a thought even enter his brain? Ignorance? Arrogance? Or is it, to follow the lead of the PNM …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: Was Daaga a slave trader? The UWI Milner Hall debate twist
As The UWI settles into its second semester for the current academic year, the public may be anxious to hear from the St Augustine Campus administration what name it has chosen for the university’s oldest hall of residence, having already repudiated Viscount Milner after whom that hall has been identified …
Read More »No Holders Barred: Commandment to unwed girls: Thou shalt not open thy legs!
My heart is breaking for that young woman. You don’t know how it breaks my heart to know that the Ph.D student whose car was stolen some days ago recovered the vehicle but without her marine samples and research. It truly hurts. Although I don’t have a doctorate—yet!— I can …
Read More »The art of ‘tiefing a wine’: Hassanali on bumpers, bumpees, bad behaviour and wine tiefers
It takes a lot of balls to wade into this issue all willy-nilly. But I miss Carnival and I feel for a challenge. Hopefully I won’t offend and the feminists won’t skin me alive. But if I do unintentionally lapse into ‘mansplaining’ when offering my perspective, I apologize in advance. …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: The truth about Africa, Africans, their diaspora and their depiction in western media
The description of “African countries” and their diaspora in Haiti as “shitholes” goes way beyond the racist vulgarity of a decadent American President. It is merely a kind of sordid culmination of centuries of disparagement of Africans and Africa in the interest of western capitalism and white supremacy. But how …
Read More »Not Condemning: The tragedy of Laventille, Desperadoes, crime and bandits
Trinidad and Tobago has always been dreadful at organising anything but Carnival. Nowadays, we can’t even organise that properly. And it is killing us, in some ways, literally. The example of Desperadoes and the Laventille Hill is instructive. Laventille has been problematic but it has produced some of the most …
Read More »Dear Editor: Respect noise pollution laws! The EMA must turn deaf ear to Red Ants’ rubbish
“The law is not there to support a noisy culture; in fact, culture isn’t just out there, it’s man-made, in constant flux. The law is designed to help to shape the culture in ways that ensure harmony between legality and morality. And when that relationship is perverted what you have …
Read More »AV ROOM: Last year’s Beetham events and our new year’s crime-fighting resolution
It is a new year but what does that mean? Well, my resolution for the new year is 1366 x 768, for which I would like to thank Nigel, the IT tech who has repaired my laptop. In trying to answer the meaning of the new year question in a …
Read More »Not condemning: Can our country contrive to convert cannabis cultivation into hard cash?
“Police burned millions of dollars worth of marijuana plants,” announced a newspaper headline last week, not for the first time. Not for the first time, we dismissed the story simply as the drug rings at it again and went on with our business and our lives. But what if we …
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