The American Elite

By William Blum
January 6th, 2010 – killinghope.org

1900 Campaign poster for the Republican PartyLincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".
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UNC Blanks 16,000 Members

Basdeo Panday, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj
Basdeo Panday, Kamla Persad-Bissessar & Ramesh Maharaj

By Invera Arjoon
January 07, 2010 – newsday.co.tt

THE applications of 16,000 persons for membership to the United National Congress (UNC) will not be approved in time for the January 24 internal elections of the party, chairman of the party’s Membership Committee Kelvin Ramnath said yesterday.
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Annisette and Seetahal Have No Credibility

By Stephen Kangal
January 03, 2010
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

Senators Dana Seetahal and Michael AnnisetteWhen will MP’s and Senators begin to factor into their parliamentary stewardship and daily conduct that T&T is looking on and listening to them via Channels 4 and the Parliament Channel late in the night? Their late arrivals and at times their early premature departures from parliamentary sittings are telegraphing the wrong negative and disappointing signals to their respective constituencies.
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Firestorm is a-coming

By Raffique Shah
January 03, 2010
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

ProtestShould political turmoil erupt in 2010, it wouldn’t be because of the Property Tax or government’s now toned-down spending spree. The opposition, united or divided, cannot trigger mass action, the kind we experienced in 1970. If anything, it’s the extreme insensitivity of uncaring ministers-Peter Taylor’s ‘living off the fat of the land’, Gaynor Dick-Forde’s ‘only 12 people against the tax’, Neil Parsanlal’s Goebbels-like, weekly media-bashing-that would send angry masses streaming onto the streets.
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Police Station Theft

newsday.co.tt/editorial
January 02, 2010

PoliceThe reported disappearance of US$94,000 seized from an alleged drug dealer and which had been lodged in the property room at the Couva Police Station should be thoroughly investigated.

The property keeper is reported to have discovered the money missing, about 5 pm on December 29, when he found the property room unlocked and an envelope in which the money was contained, missing.
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Tyranny of the minority in T&T

Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

HouseTHE EDITOR: The public, unscientific and unfounded notion/assertion by Finance Minister Karen Nunez Tesheira that “the majority of Trinbagonians support the Property Tax Bill’ flies in the face of the slightest scintilla of common sense and intellectual rationality.
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UDeCOTT Improper

By Andre Bagoo
December 29, 2009 – newsday.co.tt

PM Patrick Manning and Calder HartCHAIRMAN of the Commission of Inquiry into Udecott Professor John Uff QC has hit back at the State-owned enterprise for making what he described as “improper” allegations against him in a High Court lawsuit the Calder Hart-chaired company has brought to challenge the proceedings.
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Christmas and Santa Clause: A Historical Review

By Adib Rashad
November 19, 2000

Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

American and European history informs us that the celebration of Christmas was once banned in Britain and the North American colonies. This occurred in the early 17th century. The so-called Puritans in England considered the entire Christmas celebration as repulsively non-Christian. The Puritan Party under Oliver Cromwell in 1642 rendered all Christmas celebrations, religious and secular an anathema, and forbidden by Parliament.
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Year we learned discretion but ignored destitution

By Raffique Shah
December 27, 2009
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

Trini People‘TWAS a year that brought mankind’s madness crashing into the stark realities of the punitive sins of excesses, the deleterious effects of unbridled greed, and maybe, just maybe, it also slammed some heads-in-the-clouds freaks to ground level.
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Imbert’s Nonsensical Fire and Brimstone

By Stephen Kangal
December 27, 2009
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

Colm ImbertHere was Minister Colm Imbert at his arrogant worse spewing loud and rapid dragon-fire and non-supportable and baseless brimstone in the House as he wallowed in half-lies, untruths and innuendoes in his PT speech on Monday. As I sat in the public gallery and was inflicted with this spectacle, I agonized loudly: How could Mr. Speaker allow his House to be brought into such disdainful odium and total disrepute in the eyes of citizenry by sanctioning Imbert’s loud shouting, his comic antics, his peacock arrogance and his demeaning undiplomatic remarks directed at the Opposition members? His behaviour was nothing short of “waganry” at its sordid and obscene worst.
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