Tag Archives: Kevin Baldeosingh

I have a bit of advice for Mr Kamal Persad, coordinator of the research centre of The Indian Review: if you truly wish to defend the reputation of “the Indian-Trinidadian intelligentsia” (your description), as you claim in your latest “letter to the editor” in the Trinidad Express of 6 February, …

“In a market economy, prices indicate demand which, in turn, affects supply—falling prices indicate lower demand, higher prices reveal shortages and, generally, supply adjusts to meet demand. “[…] The trouble was that State subsidies distorted the market for calypso. So government funding, especially over the past 25 years, concealed preferences—or, …

“Haiti is the only member of CARICOM whose citizens require a visa to travel to any other CARICOM nation. In other words, although CARICOM leaders pay lip service to Haiti, they also know that Haitians might leave their failed state—which is the diplomatic way of calling a country a ‘shithole’—and settle …

“The fact is that almost all the calypsoes that are deemed sexist are calypsoes which, in one way or another, express the power of women over men. Growling Tiger’s “Money is King” (1935) says: ‘If you have money and things going nice/Any woman will call you honey and spice/If you …

“[Kevin] Baldeosingh […] uncritically regurgitates the defunct racist hypothesis that ‘darker-skinned people’ are judged less intelligent and ‘more primitive’ than ‘fairer-skinned people’. “[…] During the first century of this era, Ethiopians were the majority in the town of Barygasa (now Baruch) in western India. By the time of the Mughal …

“In an article published on Wired868 on 15 December, Dr Claudius Fergus responded to Dool Hanomansingh, rightly accusing him of ‘gross historical distortions’ and asserting that ‘He is obviously not a historian. If not for the danger that his fiction might be taken as historical fact, I would not even dignify …

Picturing a society free from bigotry and persecution, on the eve of Independence on 31 August 1962, Eric Eustace Williams—the Father of the Nation—gave us the watchwords “Discipline, Tolerance and Production.” Starting the very next day, we began to sing our National Anthem, which says in part, “Here every creed …

More or less 20%. That is the share of the newspaper market that the Guardian has enjoyed (if that is the right verb) for several years now.  It is also the figure that, according to a former Guardian editor of fairly recent vintage, is more than adequate provided that that …

“Is Abdullah suggesting, however irrational that may appear, that anyone who raises questions about the advisability or wisdom of wearing the hijab is encouraging Muslim women to tend towards prostitution? “Clearly, Muslim women, hijabis or not, can think for themselves. Evidently, Aisha Sabur didn’t feel she wanted to remove her …

The Guardian’s recent firing of controversial columnist Kelvin Baldeosingh after the publication of a column under his by-line which the Guardian has not, it seems, removed from its online site raises an issue that I think needs urgent ventilation. Some say that it’s really very straightforward; four other columnists have …

In the year of our Lord 2017, when we routinely hand money to indiscernible faces behind tinted windows—at places ranging from the gas station to a government office—spend thousands in online transactions with no personal interaction whatsoever or troubleshoot complex issues over the phone with people we will never meet; …

“The entire column makes the point that, rather than being a symbol of repression, Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab do so for cogent and rational reasons. It appears that Mr Umar Abdullah either does not understand this, or is pretending to not understand it.” The following is …