Complaints, Environment, Food, General T&T, People's Partnership

From Cabbage Patch to Concrete Jungle

By Stephen Kangal
February 06, 2013

Stephen KangalWhile the Minister of Planning and Sustainable Development Dr the Honourable Bhoe Tiwari is romanticizing in the spills, drills and thrills of the imagination at the expense of not giving his ministerial attention to the issues at the ground level relating to the protection and conservation of our fertile arable soils to support a thriving and sustainable food farming industry geared to foster and promote the agenda for achieving food sovereignty and security, we are now witnessing before our very eyes a cruel and ruthless desecration of the lands of the traditional food basket of Aranguez by an incipient and expanding concrete and steel jungle.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Health, Media, People's Partnership, Politics, Schools, Sex, Sex Crimes

ARREST THOSE MEN

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By Andre Bagoo
February 05, 2014 – newsday.co.tt

ARREST THOSE MENTHERE ARE an estimated 2,500 teenage pregnancies per year, including several cases at the primary school level, Minister of Education Dr Tim Gopeesingh said yesterday as he called for the enforcement of laws against statutory rape in order to address what he said was a “huge”, “frightening” and worsening problem.

The minister linked the problem to social conditions, saying half the population now live in single-parent homes.
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Crime in T&T, Drug Trade, General T&T, International, Law, Money Laundering, Police, Politics, Security, USA

De ‘bust’ buss

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By Raffique Shah
February 02, 2014

Raffique ShahWithin days of the announcement by US authorities that they had intercepted 700-odd pounds of cocaine shipped from Trinidad to Norfolk, Virginia, and the well-publicised arrival here of a number of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, I sensed that something had gone awfully wrong.
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General T&T, Politics, Religion

Let us pray

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Newsday Editorial
January 29, 2014 – newsday.co.tt

BibleWe fully support the current National Week of Prayer, as a potential tool against crime and other social ills, launched last Sunday by the Inter Religious Organisation (IRO) and Ministry of National Diversity and Social Integration.

We respect this nation’s diversity of beliefs including the right of a citizen to disbelieve, but we think the country at this socially-fragile time has more to gain than to lose through collective religious practices such as this Week of Prayer.
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General T&T, Law, Media, Police, Politics, Security

Three eminent jurists

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By Raffique Shah
January 25, 2014

Raffique ShahIn my column last week, in recounting the legal encounters between the late Karl Hudson-Phillips and the progressive forces during the events of 1970, I made a serious omission that I now seek to rectify.

I mentioned the condonation pleas that set the mutinous soldiers free—their genesis and the attorneys who successfully pursued them. Readers need note that the court martial over which Nigeria’s Col Theophilus Danjuma presided, rejected the pleas (in bar of trial), which were made by Rex Lassalle, Maurice Noray and myself. The trial proceeded, and most of the soldiers were found guilty of mutiny and other offences, and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment.
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General T&T, Labour, Law, USA

How is applying for an A2 Visa Breaking US Law?

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By Stephen Kangal
January 24, 2014

Stephen KangalForeign Minister, the Honourable Winston Dookeran posits that were the T&T Consulate in New York to continue to apply to the State Department for the granting of an A2 US Visa on behalf of a member of its locally recruited staff (LRS), that would “breaking US law…” Well the Consulate under different regimes in POS has been applying and the State Department has been granting these A2 visas or variations of stays to it and many other foreign consulate accredited to the State of New York.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Murder, Passed on, Violence

Mom, 15, shot dead

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By Alexander Bruzual
January 23, 2014 – newsday.co.tt

15-year-old Aleah CainA mother of a six-week-old girl. An aspiring interior designer. An avid lover of steelpan.

All these things, and so much more, described 15-year-old Aleah Cain who was brutally gunned down on Tuesday night along Belmont Circular Road, Belmont mere moments after she left her home at Farrell Lane to get something to eat, despite protests from her mother.

“Aleah was sitting with me at home helping me comb my hair, when she suddenly tell me she was hungry, and she wanted food. I tell her we had bread and butter, and small stuff at home, but she said no, she wanted something different, so she going to the shop. I tell her, ‘Aleah, look at the time, it’s after 10!’ But she said she didn’t want the food at home, and she would go out and get something,” Aleah’s mother Lauren recalled yesterday.
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Africa, Books, Business, General T&T, Rwanda, USA, Violence

Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa

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“An Eye-Opener and Essential Reading…”

By Edward S. Herman
January 21, 2014 – Global Research

Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial FictionRobin Philpot’s important new book Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa is an eye-opener and essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the recent history of Rwanda, ongoing U.S. and Western policy in Africa, and how efficiently the Western propaganda system works.

As in the case of the wars dismantling Yugoslavia, there is a “standard model” of what happened in Rwanda both in 1994 and in the preceding and later years, a model that puts the victorious Tutsi expatriate and Ugandan official Paul Kagame, his Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), and his Western supporters in a favorable light and the government of Rwanda, led by the Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana, in a negative light. Philpot challenges this model in all of its aspects and shows convincingly that, in a virtual miracle of systematic distortion, this version of history stands the truth on its head.
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General T&T, Media, Police, Politics, Protest, Security

I come not to praise Karl

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By Raffique Shah
January 19, 2014

Raffique ShahFriends, Trinis, countrymen, I come not to praise Karl, nor indeed, to bury him. I come instead to tell some truths about Mr Hudson-Phillips, some complimentary, others unsavory, but which, wherever he may be, he would applaud me for having the courage to enunciate, honourable man that he was.
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corruption, Crime in T&T, Drug Trade, General T&T, International, Money Laundering, USA

$640M COCAINE IN JUICE TINS

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By Nalinee Seelal
January 18 2014 – newsday.co.tt

$640M COCAINE IN JUICE TINSTHE biggest ever drug bust in the history of the Norfolk Port in Virginia, United States was made on December 20 when US Customs Border Protection officers seized 332 kilos of cocaine which originated from Trinidad and Tobago and which carries an estimated street value of US$100M or TT$640M.

The cocaine was stored inside tins of Trinidad Juice Company juices which were part of a consignment of goods that arrived at the Norfolk Port after being shipped from Trinidad. The cocaine, believed to have originated from South America, was hidden inside 700 juice tins bearing the markings of the Cooperative Citrus Growers Association (CCGA) which is located off the Eastern Main Road in Laventille.
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