Mark Twain is credited with the saying: “We have the best government that money can buy.” Locally, we have not been shy about accepting money from unaccountable sources. Our non-existent rules about political campaign rules enable greedy political investors to corrupt our nation and destroy trust. As Chinua Achebe observed …
Read More »Noble: Shameless people, a broken nation—and that’s not Reggie Armour’s fault
The ultimate sin today is criticising a group, especially on moral grounds. We live in a nihilistic post-shame era. There are no permanent standards, just the shifting judgment of the crowd. We have a culture of oversensitivity, overreaction and frequent moral panics, during which everybody feels compelled to go along. …
Read More »Noble: Tobago’s evolving role in T&T’s politics, and why I’m as ‘Trinbagonian’ as Chambi Sey
I thank Wired868 for providing a forum for sensible discussion. I appreciate the engagement and contribution of its reader, Chambi Sey, to my column. Thankfully, he understood my point that we needed to view the whole ‘name’ fiasco through a political lens. Therefore, in this context, I would comment on …
Read More »Noble: Brer Anansi stories; Dr Rowley’s Guyanese minefield
All Caribbean children (from Jamaica to Guyana) learned about Brer Anansi. Brer Anansi is one of the most significant characters in Caribbean folklore. ‘He is admirably clever as he is greedy, selfish and reckless. In a place where there are no standards and anything goes, Anansi holds a cherished place …
Read More »Noble: ‘The black masses win elections, but the oligarchy wins the govt’—the elites and T&T society
Gabriel Faria, the past CEO of the leading local business chamber, had an insightful interview in this week’s Business Express. He discussed the formation of a new business advocacy group. He quoted a Dr Terrence Farrell 2011 article on the need for responsible elites in our society while admitting that …
Read More »Best: Picking sense out of MoH nonsense; Dr Fuad Khan’s broadside at Piarco Covid system
“This makes no sense,” Dr Fuad Khan thunders at one point in his latest online sermon. “Whoever did this system is a dunce! Is time to get rid ah dese fools in the Ministry of Health.” It’s not easy to decide which set of fools is more wearisome, harder to …
Read More »NJAC: Dr Rowley should apologise for insulting public over Sandals protest
That’s insulting! The National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) is of the view that Dr Keith Rowley deserves to have the words of the first of his three non-PNM predecessors, Basdeo Panday, thrown at him. And they are calling on the current prime minister to ‘do the honourable thing’ and apologise …
Read More »“Is the legacy media still ‘independent and fearless’?” Noble looks at politicians and the media
“Every politician who has tasted power, and many who counted for little, has gone to war with the media. If they didn’t, that would signal that journalists were not doing their jobs, that they were too busy prostrating to power to do their duty to country.” Raffique Shah, 30 March …
Read More »Raffique Shah: ‘Black power’ and Indians; when flowering racial unity sparked a revolution
The following column was written by Raffique Shah on 9 June 2000: IN 1970, I was the only Indian officer in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment. I was also the youngest officer, having graduated from Sandhurst in July 1966, some four months after I had turned 20. When I returned …
Read More »Trinidad and Tobago’s populist moment: we need structural change; not a superman
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. …
Read More »Dear Editor: Ex-PNM general secretary knocks Justice Saunders for criticising T&T govt over CCJ
“One would have expected that as a Judge, Mr. Saunders would have checked his facts before making a pronouncement on the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, because if he did, he would have found that the failure of this country to be part of the CCJ lies with the opposition …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: Black Identity (Pt 3): Diaspora Indians and the negotiation of Black/Creole ethnicity
I ended my “Comments” of 21 February with anthropologist Kumar Mahabir’s opinion that a re-scripting of the “Black Power” label might have seen more Indo-Trinbagonians eagerly embracing the movement. This will remain an open question. But if his reactions to other aspects of Afro-Trinidadian cultural engineering without the “black” label …
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