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Arrival of H.E General Raul Modesto Castro Ruz, the President of the Councils of State and Council of Minister of the Republic of Cuba for state visit ahead of the Fourth Cuba-Caricom Summit.
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US Bans Hilton Hotel from Hosting Castro
US BIG STICK FOR RAUL
Hilton blocked from hosting Caricom conference attended by Cuban president
By Julien Neaves
December 07, 2011 – trinidadexpress.com
US-BASED hotel chain Hilton Worldwide has been denied a special licence from the US Government to allow for the IV Caricom/Cuba Summit to be held at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre with visiting Cuban President Raul Castro.
The two-day summit, which starts today, will instead be held at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) in Port of Spain.
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The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 06, 2011
We didn’t have to wait until the Prime Minister declared an official end to the state of emergency to realize that it was ill-advised, ill-timed and disingenuous. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear have come to the realization that what began as a farce ended up as a comedy of errors with rotten eggs splattered on the Government’s face and even greater opprobrium cast upon their name. Ah mean, they couldn’t even carry off this jokey maneuver with a modicum of humor.
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Detaining ‘big fish, small fish’
By Derren Joseph
December 05, 2011
Britain’s Channel 4 aired a documentary called Trinidad: Guns, Drugs and Secrets. On the night in question, I deliberately avoided watching it. The following day, as I signed onto Facebook, I saw links to it on so many profiles that I ended up watching the whole thing—twice. The two interviews that I found most interesting were the one with the resident from Laventille and the one with the Security Adviser to the Prime Minister. For me, these two represented the opposing sides of this ongoing debate over the state of emergency (SoE) and the current Government’s approach to crime.
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Originality vs Nationality: Afri-centic Analysis
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
December 05, 2011
As the UN-sponsored “International Year for People of African Descent” (2011) gradually comes to an end, historiography suggests that African people must deal with these fundamental questions: “Who am I here and now?; Am I all I can be?”, Am I really who i am? (and) Why am I here?”
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30 Years and Counting
By Raffique Shah
December 04, 2011
IT occurred to me recently that I have been writing newspaper columns for 30 years. When I started writing opinion pieces back in 1981, I did not think of it as a career. I was 35 years young, already an ex-soldier who had become notorious during the mutiny of 1970. I was also an ex-MP who had fought fiercely against both Dr Eric Williams and Basdeo Panday, and paid the ultimate political price for having the nerve to cross two crosses that were too heavy to bear.
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Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive
By Glen Ford
December 02, 2011 – blackagendareport.com
“The United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to ‘take’ much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments.”
The United States and its allies are engaged in an Asian and African offensive, a multi-pronged assault thinly camouflaged as humanitarian intervention that, in some regions, looks like a blitzkrieg. This frenzied aggression, still in its first year, saw NATO transformed into an expeditionary force to crush the unoffending Gaddafi regime in Libya and is now poised to topple the secular order in Syria. Although drawing on longstanding schemes for overt and covert regime change in selected countries, and fully consistent with global capital’s historic imperative to bludgeon the planet into one malleable market subordinate to Washington, London and Paris, the current offensive had a particular genesis in time: the nightmare vision of an Arab awakening.
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Let the Jackasses Bray
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 29, 2011
There is blindness among the leaders of the UNC government that will lead to its demise. Overconfident by the results of May 2010, it refuses to see that its victory was not so much an affirmation of their prospective policies (which were ill-thought out at best) but a refusal of citizens to accept what Mr. Manning and his team were doing. In rejecting PNM the electorate stated categorically that they were against Manning’s increasingly tendencies of one-manism, his refusal to listen to others; and his knee-jerk support of Calder Hart whose practices left many persons uncomfortable.
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Failed Meeting With La Seiva Residents
…Following Floods and Landslides
By Leslie Paul
November 29, 2011

Residents of upper and lower La Seiva, Maraval at a meeting with
members of the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure
On Monday 28th November, 2011, residents of upper and lower La Seiva, Maraval, attended a meeting which purported to address their concerns following the landslides and floods which occurred last week. The Minister of Works and Infrastructure, Jack Warner, was supposed to head talks with the residents but was unable to attend. Members of the Ministry as well as the Chairman, Mr. Anthony Sammy and other representatives from the Diego Martin Regional Corporation were present to carry on with the meeting.
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PM’s Credibility at Stake
By Raffique Shah
November 27, 2011
PRIME Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s credibility is on the line with allegations of a plot to assassinate her and three of her ministers. This latest drama, coming at the tail end of a contentious State of Emergency, has drawn scepticism from many quarters. The PM and her security chiefs must now deliver the heads of the would-be assassins on the proverbial platter, or face loss of face and much more debilitating political fallout.
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