By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 02, 2012
The news flooded the airways and inundated the newspapers: “Vidwatie Newton, the sister of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, traveled first class when she accompanied the PM on her recent trip to India…The total cost of Newton’s travel to India was $233,600” (Express, April 27).
Continue reading Stealing from the Public Purse
By Stephen Kangal
May 01, 2012
Let me categorically state that the printed media especially since 2004 when the TT/Barbados boundary dispute first erupted and counting, has never gotten it right in reporting about our very specialized maritime boundaries matter. They have done a great disservice to T&T. I cannot identify any single journalist past or present who has taken the time to research and/or to consult responsibly on this matter that the freedom of the press demands of media houses.
Continue reading Get it Right Before You Write on TT’s Maritime Boundaries
The Issue of Colorism: Dark-Skinned Girls, Light-Skinned Girls
By Akilah Holder, BA, MA
April 24, 2012 – trinidadexpress.com
For the most part of my life, I have had to deal with the drama of being stereotyped from the moment I step into a room because of my light-brown complexion. The animosity directed my way is usually intensified by the length of my hair and my mannerisms. And most of this animosity comes from my own sex, the darker-skinned of my own sex. This animosity seems to be indicative of and to be a result of colorism, defined as a conscious or unconscious state of prejudice that may be experienced by both blacks and whites so that they label as less attractive and intelligent individuals of a darker complexion… Continue…
Continue reading The Issue of Colorism
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 25, 2012
Dr. Karl Case, a dear friend and one of the most eminent economists in the United States, has always pointed out to me that part of the greatness of the United States lies in innovative scientific research that takes place at its MITs (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and its California Techs; in its Silicone Valleys and Route 128 in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Case should know. He is one of the founders of the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the leading indicator for the US housing market; a member of the Standards and Poors Index Advisory Committee and the Academic Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Board of Boston; the co-author of Principles of Economics that is used in over 300 colleges and universities in the United States. Not only is he knowledgeable but he has proved his mettle in the hard, cold world of United States capitalist market.
Continue reading The New Barbarians
By Stephen Kangal
April 24, 2012
During the recent visit made to her ancestral homeland, Bihari village of Bhelupur PM Persad-Bissessar issued a most profound, conclusive, unnoticed and defining statement on her nature and nurturing en route to becoming Prime Minister. She confessed quite categorically to the Bhelupuris gathered that “…whatever I am today is because Bihar is in my DNA and whatever my ancestors taught me…”.
Continue reading Nature and Nurturing of a Prime Minister
By Raffique Shah
April 22, 2012
THE imbroglio in the People’s Partnership Government prompted me to examine more closely how and why the People’s National Movement (PNM) has been central to the electoral politics of this country for more than 50 years. This may sound like flawed logic. But I noted that several of the principal players in the People’s Partnership impasse have said that whatever their differences or their failure to settle them, the parties that form the current government must stay together to prevent the PNM from regaining power.
Continue reading The more things change…
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 18, 2012
I never thought that Patrick Manning was such a genius and soothsayer, especially when he told us that one could turn ordinary CEPEP managers into captains of national and international industries; that, in fact, they could run corporations worth billions of dollars without flinching; and all that one needed to be a servant of the people was commonsense and a level head. In this formulation education attainment, business acumen, management skills, experience and maturity do not matter. To hear the PP tell it, these are just overrated and unnecessary appendages that have no place in a modern economy.
Continue reading Manning, The Genius
By Raffique Shah
April 14, 2012
FIFTY years after Trinidad and Tobago was granted independence, the tragedy of our politics is that it still revolves around the PNM, the party that took the country from colonialism through self-government and into independence. Indeed, the fact that the PNM remained in office for 36 of those 50 years is itself an indictment against the electorate. Worse than that, though, the three other concoctions that broke the PNM’s stranglehold—the NAR, the UNC, and now the UNC-dominated People’s Partnership—all had as their common bond, their raison d’etre, one mantra: we are against the PNM.
Continue reading Marking time 50 years later
Trayvon Martin latest Black victim in Florida
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
April 12, 2012
The 26 February 2012 killing of the unarmed 17-year old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida speaks volumes as to the omnipresence of white xenophobia (“fear of other races”) in America. And it must be pointed out that this putative fear, real or imagined, only targets the African-American (Black) male.
Continue reading White xenophobia in America
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 11, 2012
It’s either the PP and its ministers have gone mad or they want to take us back into a past we repudiated a long time ago. It was not such a long time ago that Verna St. Rose Greaves was seen ringing a bell, walking barefooted in front of Salvatori’s building on Fredrick Street and engaging in what she called a one-woman protest against a perceived injustice. Now, she is a minister; a relatively enfeebled attempt at dissent by Cheryl Miller, a worker in her ministry, is enough to have St. Rose Greaves declare Miller unstable and tossed into an insane asylum for two weeks against her will.
Continue reading Madness All Around