By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 19, 2017
Last weekend I traveled to Fort Lauderdale to see Mislet Harry, the senior member of the Cudjoe clan. It didn’t hurt that Miami was celebrating its annual carnival celebrations. The daughter of Aunt Elaine, Mislet has lived in the Miami area for the past thirty years or so. She started the Boston carnival in the 1960s and began to participate in Miami carnival once she got there.
Continue reading Ancestors
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 14, 2017
Last week I argued that there was something disingenuous about the suggestions put forward by Sat Maraj, Stephen Kangal and the UNC about sending money to Dominicans but making sure they did not enter our country. The UNC declaimed that none of its members said anything negative about the Prime Minister’s plan to bring Dominicans to T&T, but none of them had said anything positive about the plan, not even Rodney Charles or Wade Mark.
Continue reading Does UNC See Itself as Part of the Nation?
By Raffique Shah
October 11, 2017
As I digested details of Government’s 2017-2018 Budget and monitored the furore that followed its presentation, I kept hearing “in mih head”, somewhat like calypsonian Shadow and his “Bassman from hell”, the lyrics of a song that was popular about ten years ago, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die (to get there).”
Continue reading Every Trini wants to go to heaven
By Raffique Shah
October 04, 2017
When you have lived as long as I have, and for most of your adult life you have had an interest in politics and affairs of state to the extent that you actually pay attention the annual Budget presentation by the Minister of Finance, you will have learnt that you waste valuable time listening to a mostly boring speech that contains little or nothing that is dramatic or surprising, and you’d be better off doing something more interesting (reading a good book, in my case), and await the summary of its salient points as captured by journalists who are paid to do such scavenging, or, if you have the stamina, listen to analysts who more or less say the same things year after year.
Continue reading A happy wonderer
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 2, 2017
Like the Prime Minister, I want to tell the naysayers against his proposal to house our Dominican brothers and sisters to shut up but for different reasons. I couldn’t see how decent men could speak of our neighbors as though they were aliens (“refugees”) who have no place in our land.
Dominicans ain’t no now come. They have participated in the making of this society. In 1814 there were 25,717 enslaved Africans in the island. Between 1813 and 1821 Trinidad received 3,800 enslaved Africans “of whom nearly 1,100 came from Dominica and nearly 1,200 from Grenada” (Eric Williams, History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago).
Continue reading Do They Ever See Us as a Nation?
By Dr. Stephen Kangal
October 2, 2017
The time has come when the bifurcated national community must now say that they have had enough of indiscretions and mediocrity. Is this what we have to show after 55 years of statehood and political independence?
We must abandon our traditional tribal loyalties/ political moorings and arrest the frequency with which The Honourable Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley has been bringing T&T’s democracy and governance into odium and disrepute in the eyes of all of us and those watching us from the outside.
Continue reading Impugning The Integrity of the Parliament
By Raffique Shah
September 27, 2017
I continue to focus on issues pertinent to the economy, to chastise the Keith Rowley-led administration for using the slump in the energy sector, hence plummeting government revenues, to moan and complain and blame for their inactivity, rather than being bold and innovative, grabbing opportunities that require little by way of capital investments, but which might yield rich returns.
Continue reading Public transportation a priority
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 24, 2017
The Oxford French Dictionary defines “mentalities,” as “the attitudes of a group of people toward the world and their conception of their place within it; the modes of thought, beliefs, morals, etc.” My colleague Barry Lygate of Wellesley College’s French Department reminds me “first and foremost, this plural is a sociological term in French.” There is “no single English equivalent to ‘mentalities.'”
Continue reading Rogues & Lumpens
By Clint Chan Tack
September 23, 2017 – newsday.co.tt
Prime Minister Keith Rowley yesterday said the vast majority of people understand why TT must do what it can to help Dominica in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Rowley was confident that most of this country’s citizens are caring people.
However, he expressed disappointment at the uncaring attitude of some over Government’s proposal to waive immigration regulations to allow Dominicans to stay in TT for six months, as their country rebuilds.
Continue reading PM disappointed by TT response to refugee invitation
T&T Guardian
September 23, 2017
Following Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s proposal for T&T to open its doors to citizens of Dominica in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, there was a lot of racist, political and xenophobic remarks on social media from citizens who disagreed with the idea.
Some of the comments included:
Continue reading Social media rages with xenophobia