Statistics and damn lies

By Raffique Shah
October 22, 2006

Two years ago a report from some UN agency stated that 300,000 people in Trinidad and Tobago lived “on less than US$1 a day”. Today, with oil dollars gushing through the country, we have managed to lower this number to, I think, 170,000 paupers. When I read statistics like these I vigorously shake my head, trying to figure out if I am living in T&T or on some other planet. Although I cannot claim to know every district in the country, I try to figure out how these highly paid experts come up with their numbers when I don’t see evidence of such indigence.
Continue reading Statistics and damn lies

President Richards’ Laments About Foreign Values

Now there’s concern?

By Corey Gilkes
October 18, 2006

On October 6th, during an inter-faith service, President George Maxwell Richards gave a speech lamented the creeping influx of foreign values and cultures into our country. According to the Express newspaper, President Richards, “spoke of mass media images of ‘glitter and glamour’ and ‘easy living’ from foreign metropolitan areas’, which young people are bombarded with…” and that “many young people, faced with these images, were willing to give up their heritage.”
Continue reading President Richards’ Laments About Foreign Values

Male Arrogance, Abuse and Intimate Relationships

by Ras Tyehimba
October 17, 2006

Recently, I read in the media of the incident involving Anita Lutchmepersad, who was forced to leave her home because of the threatening abuses of a ‘close male relative’. After she left, he burnt down the house and drank detergent in an apparent suicide bid. According to one newspaper report, the male relative had seen a text message from one of Anita’s co-workers and misinterpreted it, getting in to a fit of rage. Another newspaper report told of Devica Mahabir who survived being poisoned, beaten and burned but was left horribly disfigured by her husband who killed himself after murdering her lover. What are the factors at play in such scenarios? How do so many relationships which SEEM to start off so good and which are supposedly based on ‘love’ be filled with so much mistrust, pain and abuse?
Continue reading Male Arrogance, Abuse and Intimate Relationships

The Rapid Rail To Gridlock

By Stephen Kangal

Rapid RailThe proposed Rapid Rail System (RRS) OR BOMBARDIER STYLE TRAMLINK would appear to be a done deal that has been concluded in the privacy of Cabinet without the requisite proper feasibility study (recommended by APETT) being conducted to determine whether it can really alleviate the escalating traffic gridlock that has enveloped most areas of Trinidad. This RRS is being bandied about even before the receipt of the Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) Comprehensive National Transportation System (CNTS).
Continue reading The Rapid Rail To Gridlock

Hypocrisy in Middle East

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 09, 2006

Within recent times, it has been suggested that the international community is angered that the Islamic Republic of Iran has “enriched uranium” that may lead to Iran eventually possessing a nuclear bomb.

The notion has also been bandied about that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated that, “Israel should be wiped off the map.”
Continue reading Hypocrisy in Middle East

Why No Sex Offenders Registry?

ViolenceThey did not kidnap and rape anyone important.

Comment by Linda E. Edwards

There is a shady gray area where the minds of many men seem to “lurk”. It is the area of “rough sex”, “stealing a piece(tiefing)”, “she asking for trouble”, and “she like it so”. This gray area of fantasy sends men to watch movies that women, sensible women, would not be caught dead watching. It sends them to “gentlemen’s clubs” – titty bars and “cat houses” to see acts of sex, real and simulated, that their wives would not perform for fear that their husbands beat the daylights out of them. “Wey she learn that from? I ent teach she dat”. Men still make clear distinctions about women and sex.
Continue reading Why No Sex Offenders Registry?

Stop gambling? Manning must be crazy

By Raffique Shah
October 08, 2006

It is instructive that in a National Budget of $38 billion during fiscal 2006-07, the two proposals that have generated the fiercest controversies are the Finance Minister’s bid to clamp down on gambling and increased taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Retirees and pensioners have zeroed in on the less-than-caring manner in which they continue to be treated. The unemployed and under-employed have stayed silent, if only because they are not taxed on their meagre earnings or alms. And many of the concerns over the negative impact inflation has on people’s purchasing power seem to have simmered down.
Continue reading Stop gambling? Manning must be crazy