Archive for the 'Caribbean' Category

Cut CAL to the bone

By Raffique Shah
May 18, 2013

Raffique ShahIF ANYONE can produce proof that there was a time when this country’s state-owned national airline, in whatever incarnation, made a real profit over a sustained period, meaning at least one year, I would surrender my sanity and vote in the next election. I feel safely insulated from having to do something so unpalatable because I know that in the post-Independence history of BWIA, now CAL, taxpayers who may have never travelled on an aircraft have paid dearly to keep the airline afloat. In the process, they have funded generations of joy riders who are stricken with a stratospheric strain of “gas brains”, and affliction I call “plane brains”.
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Make poverty history

By Raffique Shah
May 05, 2013

Raffique Shah “MADAM,” a drunken Winston Churchill is said to have whispered to the socialite sitting next to him at a formal dinner, “Would you go to bed with me for five million pounds?” “My goodness, Mr Churchill!…well, I suppose…,” she hesitated. “Would you do it for five pounds?” the rascal politician interjected. “Mr Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?” she uttered, with righteous indignation. “We’ve already established that,” Churchill said calmly. “Now we are haggling over the price.”
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The Life and Legacy of Hugo Chávez

By Gregory Wilpert
March 7th 2013 – The Real News

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, or Comandante Chávez, as he was affectionately known by his supporters and followers, passed away on March 5, at 4:25 p.m. local time, following a 21-month battle against cancer.

When he died, at 58 years of age, he had become one of Venezuela’s and perhaps even the world’s most important contemporary leaders, having launched what he and his movement called the “Bolivarian Revolution,” named after Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century independence hero who had liberated Venezuela and four other countries from Spanish colonial rule. Chávez was a devotee of Simón Bolívar, and his vice president, Nicolás Maduro, recently referred to Chávez as “the new liberator of the 21st century.” Whether this is a fair assessment only history will tell, but what is certain is that Chávez changed the face of Venezuela during his 14 years as president.
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Apology for Slavery and Reparations: Updated

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
February 15, 2013

Dr. Kwame NantambuAt the outset, it must be stated quite equivocally that the order for the global apology for the European enslavement of Afrikans is as follows: The Roman Catholic Pope of Rome, first; second, the governments of Spain and Portugal; in third place are the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands; in fourth place is the government of the United States.
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In Appreciation of Tony Martin

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Submitted: February 06, 2013
Posted: February 13, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTony Martin, an inspiration to his students and many of his colleagues, was a foundation member of the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley College. He believed in the integrity of the discipline and the principle of departmental autonomy. A meticulous scholar, his work on Marcus Garvey, particularly Race First, changed the depiction of Garvey in Caribbean and American historiography. A staunch nationalist and Pan Africanist, he took pride in his race and the principle of self-reliance that were embodied in Africana scholars such as Garvey, Malcolm X, Walter Rodney and C.L.J. James.
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Celebrating the Life of Professor Tony Martin

Prof Tony Martin's Send-Off
Family and Friends at Prof Tony Martin’s Send-Off – January 25, 2013

Trinicenter.com Reporters
January 29, 2013 – trinicenter.com

The Celebration and Thanksgiving Service for the life of Professor Dr. Tony Martin was held on Friday 25th January, 2013, at St. Theresa’s Church Woodbrook. Friends, family, historians and activists gathered to pay their respects to the Trinidad-born scholar best known for his work on Marcus Garvey.
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How the International Community Failed Haiti

Hundreds of Thousands Homeless in Haiti Three Years After the Earthquake Despite Billions in Aid Funneled to NGOs, Contractors and Internationals

By Bill Quigley and Amber Ramanauskas
January 17, 2013 – counterpunch.org

Aid?Despite billions in aid which were supposed to go to the Haitian people, hundreds of thousands are still homeless, living in shanty tent camps as the effects from the earthquake of January 12, 2010 remain.

The earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010 killing, according to Oxfam International, 250,000 people and injuring another 300,000. 360,000 Haitians are still displaced and living hand to mouth in 496 tent camps across the country according to the International Organization of Migration. Most eat only one meal a day.
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Ethnic Stocking

By Winford James
December 13, 2012 – trinidadexpress.com

ParliamentUntil I heard the term from a WinTV reporter, I had never heard “ethnic stocking” before. The reporter called to find out what I thought about the Jamaica Observer’s observation in its editorial of December 11, that ethnic stocking was a very serious issue in Trinidad and Tobago and that, worse, it was a “centripetal” force “tearing the increasingly fragile political coalition that constitutes the Government of Trinidad and Tobago” and “(o)ne of the egregious aspects of corruption”.
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Celebrating Fifty Years of Trinidad and Tobago’s Independence

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Published: October 23, 2012

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeFirst of all I would like to thank Professor Linda Heywood for inviting me to participate in this wonderful program. I am particularly delighted to be on the same panel with Professor Orlando Patterson, Professor Emmauel Akyeampong, and to have the opportunity to view the screening of “Akwantu: The Journey” since strictly speaking the journey for independence in the Caribbean began when these gallant brothers, incidentally led by Captain Cudjoe, began to fight for our liberation from bondage. Ever since then, the citizens of the British Caribbean have struggled to control their internal and external affairs, culminating in national independence for most of these territories in the 1960s. In Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, we gained our national independence in August, 1962.
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Columbus & the Falsification of History: Updated

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 15, 2012

Dr. Kwame NantambuAt the outset, it must be stated quite clearly that we Afrikan people, are the original, majority people with original ideas. Europeans are only an inherited, transmitting, global minority people. Europeans did not invent, create or discover culture or civilization; they just inherited them and in some cases, stole them. Afrikans never lived in caves and in the icebox during the Ice Age for 20,000 years.
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