“Racism has been Europe’s greatest gift to the world.” So said Dr Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of T&T (Selwyn Cudjoe, Eric Williams Speaks). Of course, Williams was being sarcastic. If racism was a gift to the world, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the greatest gift …
Read More »A national icon! Remembering Carib Queen, Jennifer Cassar; and what her role means for First Peoples
“The Carib Queen has never had any legal status under law… However, it is a title of tremendous significance within an indigenous culture in which women took care of their families and worked alongside their men—unlike other cultures where women were not treated equally. “[…] European colonisation saw the indigenous …
Read More »The battle for souls: How White American Evangelicalism helped Neocolonialism separate us from ourselves
I was raised in a Christian sect that was founded in the late 19th Century in the USA. It managed to find its way to the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1920’s. Though I was raised in what the great humanitarian, Bishop Desmond Tutu, enthusiastically called a “Rainbow …
Read More »Daly Bread: More predictions of storm; will National Security finally include culture in crime plan?
I have to return to the prevailing conditions of instability which are obvious to me but now as a post-script to my tribute to Roland Quesnel, my revered teacher, a contemporary of mine, Randolph Peters, wrote that, like me, the person who most impacted his intellectual development was Quesnel. He …
Read More »My revered teacher: Daly’s tribute to the late Father Roland Quesnel
There are co-incidences in life that it is sometimes difficult to treat merely as co-incidences. My revered teacher died on Wednesday last, aged 90. Some years ago, he sent me a document entitled My Last Will with a request that I keep it for him “as an official document.” This …
Read More »Fryea’s Advice: Will the PNM even countenance the discord dumping the Concordat will cause?
A release from the Communications Department advertises the Ministry of Education’s National Consultation on Education. The release, dated 15 February, 2016, identifies the amendment of the Concordat as one of the items on the agenda. What!?!? Amend the Concordat? Absurd! Preposterous!! Why? Because concordats, once signed, cannot be amended without …
Read More »Warner watch: Media still chasing own tail, Archbishop bats for Jack
The Trinidad Guardian newspaper, in another Jack Warner-related non-exclusive, suggested today that the Chaguanas West MP may have rented a house in Santa Margarita, St Augustine in 2010, which, a neighbour thinks, was occupied by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s sister. And that can only mean… Wait. What the hell does that …
Read More »