View Point

“MATT sees the Act as potentially criminalising journalists, media houses, public interest activists, trade unionists, artists, bloggers and assorted social media commentators. “[…] We view current activation of certain provisions of the Sedition Act as, disturbingly, another effort by the State to constrain fundamental rights of free speech and press freedom…” The …

David Muhammad: “It is globally embarrassing, socially backward, and developmentally counter-productive, for any society that promotes ideals of free speech in the 21st Century to conjure up ghosts of the intellectually dark ages of as far back as the 17th Century [such as the Sedition Act]…” Police Commissioner Gary Griffith: …

“It is disturbing that the police have not made a comprehensive statement on the issue which clarifies the nature of the so-called investigation. Information in the public sphere seems to suggest that Mr [Watson] Duke is being investigated for statements made months ago and which are said to be seditious. …

The past few weeks have left me stunned by the antics of our leadership. Penny, Marlene, Burkee, Simonette, Espinet, Quamina … I can go on and on, but there is one common theme: they were headlined in the media because of some act of incompetence by the leadership of our …

Shoshana Zuboff (2019) points to ‘the oldest political questions: Home or exile? Lord or subject? Master or slave? … eternal themes of knowledge, authority and power’. This week, with the firing of Wil Espinet, we are confronted with the same issues. Saddened by the crime situation and having had to …

On behalf of all the angry people that clamoured for this to be exposed, let me lay it out at the outset: The Ministry of Culture needs properly to account for the distribution of tickets for the main stage events of Carifesta, which was ill-considered, unfair and discriminatory. That each …

When Christopher Columbus arrived on our shores, the Caribs and Arawaks did not know what was about to befall them. Nothing in their past prepared them to understand and deal with the invasion and they were decimated by guns and germs. Reading two recent local contributions about the phenomenon of …

How do you transform from slinging crack cocaine to slinging billionaire lyrics to slinging ‘house nigger’ semantics within two decades—while simultaneously kicking to the curb the most prominent black face in the fight for social justice for the last generation in one fell swoop? Easy, you’re US hip hop star …

While the nation is wrapped up with the debacle of discredited former PNM Minister Marlene McDonald and her co-accused, allow me to turn our attention, if only briefly, to a topic that has been dwarfed by the incessant dilemmas that take place daily in Trinbago: school bus transportation. The July/August …

Jinks. India’s Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane’s all-formats skipper, has often called him by that nickname in post-match interviews. But since he has made a splash or two in the Indian Premier League and occasionally been a stand-out performer for the Indians over the last few years, Kohli’s handful of familiar …

The ‘Marlene Affair’ raises important issues about the fate of our women. Progress, as measured by the number of women in leadership, does not tell the whole story. Last week, three women—Marlene McDonald, Christine ‘Twiggy’ Livia and Joan Yuille-Williams—were in the courthouse precincts, a place where many mothers frequent because …

Events that rock us into further consternation about the state of our country and whether ‘we gone through’ are occurring with increasing frequency. Sadly, the responses of our rulers are superficial. The event that dominated the news cycle last week was the arrest of Marlene McDonald on significant fraud charges …