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General T&T

President Richards’ Laments About Foreign Values

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Now there’s concern?

By Corey Gilkes
October 18, 2006

On October 6th, during an inter-faith service, President George Maxwell Richards gave a speech lamented the creeping influx of foreign values and cultures into our country. According to the Express newspaper, President Richards, “spoke of mass media images of ‘glitter and glamour’ and ‘easy living’ from foreign metropolitan areas’, which young people are bombarded with…” and that “many young people, faced with these images, were willing to give up their heritage.”
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Violence

Male Arrogance, Abuse and Intimate Relationships

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by Ras Tyehimba
October 17, 2006

Recently, I read in the media of the incident involving Anita Lutchmepersad, who was forced to leave her home because of the threatening abuses of a ‘close male relative’. After she left, he burnt down the house and drank detergent in an apparent suicide bid. According to one newspaper report, the male relative had seen a text message from one of Anita’s co-workers and misinterpreted it, getting in to a fit of rage. Another newspaper report told of Devica Mahabir who survived being poisoned, beaten and burned but was left horribly disfigured by her husband who killed himself after murdering her lover. What are the factors at play in such scenarios? How do so many relationships which SEEM to start off so good and which are supposedly based on ‘love’ be filled with so much mistrust, pain and abuse?
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General T&T, Politics

The Rapid Rail To Gridlock

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By Stephen Kangal

Rapid RailThe proposed Rapid Rail System (RRS) OR BOMBARDIER STYLE TRAMLINK would appear to be a done deal that has been concluded in the privacy of Cabinet without the requisite proper feasibility study (recommended by APETT) being conducted to determine whether it can really alleviate the escalating traffic gridlock that has enveloped most areas of Trinidad. This RRS is being bandied about even before the receipt of the Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) Comprehensive National Transportation System (CNTS).
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International

Hypocrisy in Middle East

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 09, 2006

Within recent times, it has been suggested that the international community is angered that the Islamic Republic of Iran has “enriched uranium” that may lead to Iran eventually possessing a nuclear bomb.

The notion has also been bandied about that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated that, “Israel should be wiped off the map.”
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Violence

Why No Sex Offenders Registry?

15 Comments

ViolenceThey did not kidnap and rape anyone important.

Comment by Linda E. Edwards

There is a shady gray area where the minds of many men seem to “lurk”. It is the area of “rough sex”, “stealing a piece(tiefing)”, “she asking for trouble”, and “she like it so”. This gray area of fantasy sends men to watch movies that women, sensible women, would not be caught dead watching. It sends them to “gentlemen’s clubs” – titty bars and “cat houses” to see acts of sex, real and simulated, that their wives would not perform for fear that their husbands beat the daylights out of them. “Wey she learn that from? I ent teach she dat”. Men still make clear distinctions about women and sex.
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General T&T

Stop gambling? Manning must be crazy

By Raffique Shah
October 08, 2006

It is instructive that in a National Budget of $38 billion during fiscal 2006-07, the two proposals that have generated the fiercest controversies are the Finance Minister’s bid to clamp down on gambling and increased taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Retirees and pensioners have zeroed in on the less-than-caring manner in which they continue to be treated. The unemployed and under-employed have stayed silent, if only because they are not taxed on their meagre earnings or alms. And many of the concerns over the negative impact inflation has on people’s purchasing power seem to have simmered down.
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Africa, Caribbean, General T&T, Race and Identity

Dealing with Colourism

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A Step Towards the African Revolution

By Leslie, africaspeaks.com
October 05, 2006
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

EmancipationThe session at the last Moonlight Gathering in September was highly profound and without a doubt, edifying and interesting. Usually, after a period of song, poetry, drumming and other chosen activities, the group at the Moonlight Gathering would engage an issue; any issue that we feel worth discussing and for whatever reasons. However, the last gathering was the first time that the discussion was so heated; so much so, that some chose to ‘stay out of the kitchen’.
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International

A very dangerous man

By Raffique Shah
October 01, 2006

I wish members of the Catholic community, many of whom have defended Pope Benedict’s recent statements that insulted Islam, could feel what it’s like for a religion, its leader and its ardent members to be pilloried or mocked by writers, or worse, by leaders of another faith.

Pope Benedict’s choice of a quotation from an ancient emperor, “Show me just what (the Prophet) Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman…,” was not accidental, as many made it out to be. It has to be seen in the context of today’s George Bush and Tony Blair-led “crusade” against what they have dubbed “radical Islam”, but what has turned into a virtual holy war against Muslims in general.
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