By Dawn Ritch, Columnist
www.jamaica-gleaner.com
March 25, 2007
Any reader will know that I think the country’s domestic financial sector was handed to Trinidad and Barbados on aplatter. By any measure this is a strategic industry.
Also by any measure there is nothing more bombastic than a Trinidadian. The Barbadians are still conscious of the fact that they occupy a little atoll, even if its real estate prices now beat those of the Bahamas, which were high to begin with. Their sea-front villas are being snapped up by rich people from the industrialised world. As a direct consequence, the Barbadian prime minister has had to defend himself against charges of selling out the country to rich foreigners. In effect, he’s replied that he doesn’t regret it.
Continue reading Jamaica Gleaner: Bombastic Trinidadians
LAST week the world’s conscience drifted back in time, some 400 years, to the barbaric transatlantic slave trade, and to the bicentennial of its formal abolition in 1807. What I read and heard of apologies sans reparations, of manufacturing heroes and liberators while ignoring those who really fought to free themselves, I found nauseating. I noted, too, that the hypocrisy of the descendants of the slavers was matched by the hypocrisy-or ignorance-of those whose forebears were victims of slavery. It’s all a charade designed to distort history, to extort money from those who have no obligation to pay for the sins of others, and to play the blame game.
Slavery started in the United States in 1619 when twenty Afrikans arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. According to the 1850 census figures, there were 3.5 million Afrikan slaves in the United States.
“As far as I know, 83 percent of the prison population come from specific communities which predicates the need for a strong and distinct national development plan accepted by the entire society for these specific 16 communities and you know what communities they are. Such a plan must include the churches. A change in abortion laws, strong family planning service with cash incentives for voluntary sterilisation re-education.” 
Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s conviction and sentence have been squashed. The Court of Appeal this afternoon ordered a new trial at the Magistrate’s Court before a different Magistrate. Mr. Panday was sentenced to two years in jail and fined by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls after being found guilty of not declaring a Million Dollar London bank account to the Integrity Commission.
The Copyright Music Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT) was thrown into mourning yesterday afternoon, as news of the death of calypso composer, the Mighty Terror, swirled through the local music community.