Culture, Features, General T&T, Race and Identity, Religion

The Pope and the Pan: Challenging Caribbean Inferiority and Cultural Prostitution

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By Ras Tyehimba
August 07, 2013

SteelpanThere was a picture recently of Pope Francis playing the Steelpan next to T&T president Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona who presented it to him as a gift. This picture was published by the media, several Steelpan websites and has made its way around various social media platforms. One website exclaimed: “Truly a great day for our nation and our national instrument! The pope is a Trini now!” Another Steelpan website expressed, “Steelpan is the sweetest!! Just ask the Pope.”
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General T&T, Politics, Race and Identity

The Blackness of Black or, How Black is Really Black?

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 06, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn responding to my article of her representation as to who was the first black legislator in Trinidad (see the Trinidad Express, July 26), Professor Bridget Brereton, one of our most distinguished historians, raised more questions than she answered even as she sought refuge in the philosophical theory called solipsism. Professor Brereton is unwilling to concede that St. Luce Philip possessed any blackness (or did he possess just a little bit?) because, as she says, he was of mixed race; light-complexioned; married a white wife and would not have considered himself black, nor would he have been so considered by Trinidad society in the 1830s.
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General T&T, ILP, India, Opposition Party, People's Partnership, PNM, Politics, THA, UNC

Jack’s shelf life

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By Raffique Shah
August 04, 2013

Raffique ShahThere is no tectonic shift in voting patterns coming out of the Chaguanas West by-election last Monday, as some politicians and political analysts posit.

What happened was simply this: the constituents, who are predominantly Indians and supporters of the UNC, used the ballot to tell the party’s leadership that it could not foist any “crapaud” on them. They wanted Jack Warner to represent them, and they were prepared to defy the party’s directives to make their point.
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General T&T, ILP, India, Media, Opposition Party, People's Partnership, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, UNC

JACK WINS

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By Andre Bagoo
Tuesday, July 30 2013 – newsday.co.tt

GordonJACK WARNER, 70, has been re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Chaguanas West, after provisional results from the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) last night projected him as the winner of the bye-election. It was a crushing victory.

Up until press time, Warner provisionally received 12,631 votes while the United National Congress’s (UNC) Khadijah Ameen, 32 – his nearest rival – received less than half that amount or 5,126 votes.
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General T&T, Guyana, India, People's Partnership, PNM, Politics, UNC

Buffoonery reigns

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By Raffique Shah
July 28, 2013

Raffique ShahThe tragedy of tomorrow’s by-election in Chaguanas West is that all of us—politicians, commentators, journalists, publicists and people—treated the exercise, more so the campaign, as a big joke, a comedy festival of sorts. In other words, we have all helped to perpetuate the unholy mess that passes for politics in a country where buffoonery triumphs over rationale, in a land where crapaud is king – or queen.
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Features, General T&T, Politics

Dr. St. Luce Philip: The First Black Legislator of Trinidad and Tobago

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 25, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn July 17, Professor Bridget Brereton wrote in the Trinidad Express that Cyrus Prudhomme David was the first black legislator to sit in the Trinidad and Tobago Legislative Council. This is not true. It is the repetition of a position that Brinsley Samaroo articulated in his pamphlet, “Cyrus Prudhomme David: A Case Study on the Emergence of the Black Man” (1970). It needs to be laid to rest for the fiction it is.
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General T&T, Law, Racism Watch, USA

Law versus the race question in America

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
July 25, 2013

Dr. Kwame NantambuThe “not guilty” verdict in the George Zimmerman case brings to the fore the twin-headed problem that confronts America today, namely, law versus the race question.

At the outset, it must be stated quite equivocally that the race question was intrinsically rooted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and it also played a pivotal role in the passage of the Voting Rights Act signed by then President Lyndon Baines Johnson on 21 March 1965.
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corruption, General T&T, People's Partnership, Politics

By-election a blessing

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By Raffique Shah
July 21, 2013

Raffique Shah“When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own,” says a centuries-old proverb. I think though, that when friends fall out, dubious men and women tumble into disrepute in unimaginable ways and pillars of political society are reduced to pillars of salt.
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General T&T, International, Racism Watch, USA

Zimmerman Verdict — Where Do We Go From Here?

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By Frances Cudjoe Waters
July 18, 2013 – huffingtonpost.com

“A black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.” — Sup. Ct. C.J. Roger Taney, Dred Scott Decision, 1857

Trayvon MartinOn March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney and the United States Supreme Court put into words what America had been putting into practice for centuries. He stated that Americans of African descent should not ever presume to have the audacity to expect that the legal system in this country would ever treat them as equal citizens worthy of the same protection and respect enjoyed by others.
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General T&T, Opposition Party, People's Partnership, Politics, UNC

It’s time to pay the Devil

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By Raffique Shah
July 13, 2013

Raffique ShahIN THE euphoria of the People’s Partnership resounding elections victory on the night of May 24, 2010, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, in her acceptance speech, identified only one member of the UNC executive for praise: Jack Warner. Before mentioning Warner by name, she had thanked only God and the people who voted the Partnership.

Let me quote the PM (from the written text): “Tonight I want to thank the chairman of the UNC Jack Warner…Jack Warner, thank you!”
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