By Raffique Shah
March 04, 2016
I don’t know if we should be more afraid of banks and bankers or bandits and murderers.
Seriously.
Both strike when we are most vulnerable. They relieve us of our life’s savings, of what we have worked tirelessly to provide for our families, with a callousness that is chilling.
Continue reading Bankers and Bandits
By Raffique Shah
February 24, 2016
The findings of a Commission of Inquiry into the murder of Guyanese intellectual and political activist Dr Walter Rodney, 36 years ago, are an indictment not only against the Forbes Burnham dictatorship that ruled Guyana for 21 horrible years, but also other Caricom governments and countries that never condemned Burnham’s atrocities.
Continue reading Rodney’s ghost haunts Guyana
By Raffique Shah
February 16, 2016
I wonder if the wide spectrum of persons who have used the words “misogyny” and “misogynic” to describe ex-Port of Spain Mayor Raymond Tim Kee following his asinine statements on the murder of pannist Asami Nagakiya either believe what they are saying, or understand the definitions of the words?
According to the Oxford English dictionary, misogyny means “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women”.
Continue reading Of sensuality and vulgarity
By Raffique Shah
February 02, 2016
In this space yesterday, Dr Sherene Kalloo launched a broadside against Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh and his almost jokey war against the Zika virus, pre-empting a column I had already half-written, titled “Man vs Mosquito”.
Dr Kalloo argued that Minister Deyalsingh’s declaration of war against Zika and the Aedes Egypti mosquito by deploying soldiers, as hard-hit Brazil has done, as being a failed strategy.
It has not worked in Brazil and it will not work here.
Continue reading Man, mosquito and money
By Raffique Shah
February 09, 2016
I don’t think Trinidad’s Carnival is dying, as many people say it is.
For the traditionalists, it’s a case of wishful thinking. They want to see the jarring noise that passes for music, songs that have no melody, only hook lines and tempo, consigned to the dustbin of Carnival history.
Continue reading Carnival in transition
By Raffique Shah
January 27, 2016
It occurred to me some hours after I heard the news that gunmen had murdered two Laventille schoolboys that I felt no emotions over the dastardly act.
I was not saddened or consumed with anger. I was not even outraged over the manner in which the youthful victims were grabbed from their ride home, much the way Hitler’s Nazis separated Jews from Gentiles, or how Israelis now separate Palestinians from Jews, marking them for death, executing them right there in public.
Continue reading Deliver us from evil
By Raffique Shah
January 27, 2016
As a nation, we can do nothing about the plunging price of oil except watch with alarm as crude slides below US $30 a barrel.
Even if we ramp up production, which has fallen by approximately 50 per cent over the past decade, it will make little sense. At this point, it might be better to leave the oil in the wells rather than sell it for peanuts.
Continue reading Destiny in our hands
By Raffique Shah
January 11, 2016
“I don’t know who Jit Samaroo was, but listening to others speak, he must have been a great man…my condolences to his family.”
That was a caller from Princes Town to TV6’s Morning Edition’s host Hayden Blades, who devoted much of last Friday’s programme to persons wanting to pay tribute to Jit, who had died the day before.
Continue reading Humility was Jit’s hallmark
By Raffique Shah
January 04, 2016
In a few months, I shall cross another threshold of aging, scoring seventy years of life and officially transitioning into the status of “old geezer”.
The dawning of a new year set me thinking about the past and the future, although I know I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me. In such circumstance, retrospection becomes the preferred option.
Continue reading Aging in this cussed country
By Raffique Shah
December 29, 2015
I am surprised that so many people are surprised by the termination of services-firing, suspension, the euphemistically-couched “sent on administrative leave”-of several senior government officials, the most prominent being Governor of the Central Bank, Jwala Rambarran.
Clearing the politically-constructed State-stables of partisan appointees is a ritual that occurs every time a government changes.
Continue reading ‘do so ent like so’