By Cecily Asson
February 28, 2011 – newsday.co.tt
Saying that he will never be part of the crowd that gathers each year in Skinner Park, San Fernando for the National Calypso Monarch semi-final, Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner yesterday hailed the bravery of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar who on Saturday received loud boos from patrons when asked by master of ceremonies to acknowledge her presence.
Continue reading Jack: Not me and Skinner Park
By Raffique Shah
February 27, 2011
AMIDST the continuous cacophony in the political gayelle, blood-curdling cries from the killing fields of Trinbago, and two million tonnes of “tatah” spewed in the Chutney Monarch wasteland, last Sunday’s Panorama semi-finals came like a refreshing, calming breeze that soothed a badly wounded nation.
Continue reading Thanks for the Panorama music
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 23, 2011
Jack Warner is the last person I thought would play the race card but then as my mother says, “You never know.” Here is Kamla and the PP getting their licks because they don’t know their ears from their navels but all Jack could say when workers use the democratic tools to protect their interests is they are targeting Kamla because she is an “East Indian woman.” It is strange that Kamla’s East Indianness never came up when she was running for the election nor, for that matter, was her gender seen in a negative light. In fact her being a Hindu woman seemed an asset given the place that women hold in the hierarchical structure of Hinduism.
Continue reading Playing the Race Card
By Cecily Asson and Stacy Moore
February 22 2011 – newsday.co.tt
An emotional Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday described the killer of eight-year-old Daniel Guerra as a “monster” and called for swift justice.
She also announced that the tragic death of Daniel had strengthened her resolve “that we need to use more drastic measures in the fight against the criminals.”
Continue reading Kamla Weeps for Daniel
By Stephen Kangal
February 21, 2011
After 49 years of an ethno-nationalism-based and driven Independence and four distinct nationalist-leaning regimes what is the prevailing status quo on cross- cultural relations/diversity management that now impels us in T&T to want to chart a new culturally-sensitive and responsive way forward (multiculturalism) instead of continuing along the unjust and hitherto ethno-nationalism-paved track?
Continue reading Ravages of Ethno-Nationalism
By Raffique Shah
February 19, 2011
I AM so blasted vex as I write this column (Friday morning), I am seething with anger. The newspapers featured a story complete with photographs showing a group of thugs attacking some farmers and other residents of a farming community in Lopinot. The violent, brazen attack occurred in full view of journalists who had gone to cover the story. In fact, the thugs threatened and attacked media workers who escaped blows only because one of their colleagues knew one of the attackers.
Continue reading The law-abiding will strike back some day
By Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 16, 2011
Some of us, including yours truly, have been speaking about a national cultural policy long before Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar announced her preference for a multicultural approach to the issue. In 1962 Dr. Eric Williams set the ball rolling with his “Mother Trinidad and Tobago Speech” which could be interpreted as a response to Lord Harris’s 1848 declaration that “a race has been freed, but a society has not been formed.”
Continue reading The Limitations of Multiculturalism – Part II
By Stephen Kangal
February 15, 2011
Professor Selwyn Cudjoe in his article wrote:
“In his ‘Mother Trinidad and Tobago Speech’ Dr. Williams intimated that we owe our primary allegiance to T&T rather than the various countries from which our ancestors came. In 2010, angered by the seemingly preferential treatment that Africans enjoyed under the People’s National Movement, the People’s Partnership (PP) decided to emphasize our difference rather than our commonalities thereby tearing away at the common cultural bond that holds us together as a nation”. (Selwyn Cudjoe in “Mother Trinidad and Tobago” Article – trinicenter.com – 16 January 2011).
Continue reading Cudjoe and His Careless Thinking
By Raffique Shah
February 13, 2011
HE sits on what appears to be a rock hewn from the long-abandoned Laventille quarry (so it seems, anyway, memories of that piece of the Hill’s history now distant), floating somewhere in the sky, shock on his face as he recognises my features. Without query over what I was doing “there” (wherever “there” may be) or greeting me (as was his wont), he booms: Raffique, yuh read where a reporter from my paper—yes, my paper!—wrote that my remains were to be “interred” at the Crematorium? What a thing! What dey interred…mih ashes? Heh heh. By the way, what you doing here? Don’t tell me….
Continue reading Conversation with Keith
By Newsday Staff
February 12, 2011 – newsday.co.tt
Villagers of Old Clarke Road in Penal reacted with full force when they heard the screams of a woman and children who were being brutally attacked at their home on Thursday afternoon.
The villagers’ action led to one man eventually dying of chop wounds and his partner in crime seriously injured and in critical condition under police guard at the San Fernando Hospital.
Continue reading DEADLY JUSTICE