Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro during his recent visit to T&T
By Sasha Harrinanan
March 16, 2015 – newsday.co.tt
The citizens and Government of Trinidad and Tobago are being urged to reject the recently announced United States sanctions against Venezuelan government officials accused of violating protestors’ rights during demonstrations earlier this year.
Continue reading Reject US sanctions
By Julien Neaves
February 22, 2015 – newsday.co.tt
WITH Caribbean neighbour Jamaica making moves to decriminalise marijuana University of the West Indies (UWI) Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand is renewing his calls for marijuana to be decriminalised in Trinidad and Tobago for medicinal purposes.
In January this year the Jamaican Government tabled the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015 in that country’s Senate to decriminalise marijuana for medicinal, religious and personal use.
Continue reading Decriminalise it
By Corey Gilkes
February 13, 2015
In the article “Things I Don’t Understand About Feminism” by Shastri Sookdeo, one of the articles he referenced was an interesting one written by one Bill Flax in the prestigious Forbes Magazine. “Interesting” because if these are the kinds of views held by many often considered elite academics – and let’s face it, that IS often the case – then it is important that those who advance counter-narratives be more openly direct in showing these kinds of writings and journals for what they really are: racist, chauvinist, pseudo-intellectual, hubris. This is especially important in my opinion because to a huge extent, many in the Caribbean still see the North Atlantic as the fountainhead for all wisdom and understanding. Reading through some of the newspaper columns and listening to certain talk-shows such as the Power Breakfast Show on Power 102fm or those on i95.5fm, Forbes is clearly one of those highly regarded sources of information.
Continue reading Article on Feminism Owing Capitalism: My Ramblings on It
By Shamus Cooke
January 15, 2015 – counterpunch.org
A core tenet of journalism is answering the question “why.” It’s the media’s duty to explain “why” an event happened so that readers will actually understand what they’re reading. Leave out the “why” and then assumptions and stereotypes fill in the blank, always readily supplied by politicians whose ridiculous answers are left unquestioned by the corporate media.
Continue reading The “Why”: The Spectacular Media Failure on Charlie Hebdo
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 13, 2015
Continue reading Je ne suis pas Charlie
By Raffique Shah
December 20, 2014
I confess I was surprised when, last Wednesday, announcements from Washington and Havana confirmed that the United States and Cuba had agreed to restore diplomatic relations and work towards the normalisation of other relations, especially trade and travel between the two countries.
I did not think that President Barack Obama had the fortitude to dismantle a 50-plus-year anachronism that lingered as the last vestige of the Cold War that all but ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Continue reading Cuba and the USA: the long thaw begins
Remarks to Academic Council,
Wellesley College
Faculty Assembly Room
December 10, 2014
As one of the few black men on this faculty, I could not let this opportunity pass without offering a few remarks.
On Wednesday, April 19, 1989, a white middle class woman, a promising young investment banker at Salomon Brothers with a degree from Wellesley College and Yale University was raped as she was jogging through Central Park, New York. The suspects were five black and Latino young men, some with dubious school records from Harlem. The police coined a new term for what they were doing: they called it wilding, to describe the beating up of random victims. On May 29, about five weeks later, the New York Times wrote: “A 28-year investment banker, jogging through Central Park, was attacked by a group of teenagers. They kicked and beat her in the head with a pipe and raped her. The teenagers, who were from East Harlem, were quickly arrested.”
Continue reading Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe’s Remarks to the Wellesley Council
By Raffique Shah
November 30, 2014
In the current oil prices turmoil that has sparked much speculation, rumours of doom and gloom, and seeming indifference on the part of Government, the few in the country who know and understand what’s happening at the global level owe it to the nation to let their voices be heard.
We cannot believe the politicians. Over the past few months, as the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped from US$105 a barrel in June to below US$70 a barrel last week, Finance Minister Larry Howai and Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine were singing, “Don’t worry, be happy!”
Continue reading Politics and oil—a deadly cocktail
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
November 27, 2014
Updated: December 05, 2014
The 24 November 2014 “no indictment for officer Wilson” verdict arrived at by the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, in regard to the shooting and killing of the unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown and the subsequent 3rd December “no indictment” verdict by a grand jury in Staten Island, New York City, in favor of a white police officer in the New York Police Department (NYPD), Daniel Pantaleo, for the “chokehold death” of another unarmed, forty-six year-old African-American man, Eric Garner, speak massive volumes as to the omnipresence of racial tensions/distrust between the Black community and white police officers across the United States.
Continue reading Decoding racial tensions in United States
By Stephen Kangal
November 26, 2014
An underlying worrisome diplomatic situation exists today in five of T&T’s Overseas Missions. Diplomatic relations are conducted in accordance with the principle and practices of reciprocity and the comity of Nations. In India, UK, Costa Rica, Canada at the UN T&T representation has been scaled down to the level of junior but also inexperienced young and up-coming diplomats. This resulted from the withdrawal of both career and political appointed Ambassadors.
Continue reading Decline of Our Diplomatic Relations