All posts by News

General T&T, Sports

Thanks for restoring our pride

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By Raffique Shah
September 20, 2025

Raffique ShahThousands here in Trinidad and Tobago who watched the recent World Athletics Championships do not know how fortunate they are to have live telecasting of the prestigious event. A mere 20 years ago there was limited coverage of such events, and very often television and radio stations paid huge sums of money to earn the right to carry the events; both audiences and owners/managers felt cheated. You don’t have to be a fan of athletics or any sport to appreciate what it means for nationals of any country to see their representatives on these international stages-stadia, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc.
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General T&T

TTT, Goebbels, and geriatrics

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By Raffique Shah
September 13, 2025

Raffique ShahAs I move along slowly towards what will be, if I make it, my 80th year on this here earth, mostly I feel as if I am not relevant to what’s happening around me. There was a time when I would easily sit behind my laptop and write up very sound, must-read columns that my many fans would call in to cuss or kiss me over, depending not so much on what was written but how it was written.
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General T&T, International, USA, Venezuela

Aunty Kams, the bad-Jane

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By Raffique Shah
September 06, 2025

Raffique ShahI have remained fascinated for 50 years and more by how the story (or stories) of my exploits, whenever I’ve had cause to recall details, might help people who were born long after the Mutiny at Teteron Barracks to understand what it looked like.

I had that experience again last week when I was putting together some notes; memoirs to prepare my manuscript for publication. People who listen to the story of how two 24-year-young lieutenants trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst joined with their soldiers, leading the latter as we seized control of the barracks.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, USA, Venezuela

Sleeping with the enemy

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By Raffique Shah
August 30, 2025

Raffique ShahPrime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar can never be as uninformed as she portrays herself to be in matters of foreign affairs, to wit: regional and hemispheric alliances. It took previous governments, starting with the PNM in the 1960s, to cultivate good relations with our Spanish-speaking neighbours in Venezuela.

We often forgot then, as many states now learn, that there is the vast expanse of Portuguese-speaking Brazil a step away from Venezuela.
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General T&T, Law, UNC, USA, Venezuela

US has no right off Venezuelan coast

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By Stephen Kangal, Caroni
August 26, 2025

Stephen KangalTHE right of the United States to deploy its naval vessels in international and territorial waters located across the globe is exercising the freedom of navigation/right of innocent/transit passage in the territorial seas/international straits of other nations.

It is not an aspect/expression/enactment of its sovereignty the exercise of which is limited to, inter alia, its land space, air space above and its territorial sea, Minister Sobers.
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General T&T

The revolutionary disrupter

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 16, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI wish to remind UNC detractors that the term “revolution” denotes the overthrow of an old order and replacing it with a new system of governance. Sometimes a revolution is violent, sometimes it’s peaceful. Whatever form it takes, it involves changing the social and economic order, repudiating how things were done previously, and delineating what it hopes to accomplish in the future.
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Agriculture, General T&T

I Commend PM Kamla

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By Raffique Shah
August 16, 2025

Raffique ShahI hope I am mistaken, that I have purged myself of the spirit of the sugar industry that came with the first colonisers and all but strangled Trinidad and Tobago’s economy for many years. I am not ungrateful, mark you, for what sugar has given us by way of revenues and opportunities and “solid, liquid cash”, according to Mastana Bahar’s hosts. But its contribution to the wealth of the nation may well have been close to zilch when one considers the number of times it lost money, wrecked people’s savings, and left the country in a state of disaster.
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Africa, General T&T

Facts never speak for themselves

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 09, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI was reminded of EH Carr’s What Is History? when I read Kevin Baldeosingh’s letter, “Teach fact-based African history”.

He excoriated the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) for not spending “a single cent from the millions given to them by [the] government to commission such a [history] book” which he wanted them to write from a Euro-centric point of view (Express, August 4).
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General T&T, Israel, Palestine, USA

The New Age Hitler

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By Raffique Shah
August 09, 2025

Raffique ShahBy the time US President Donald Trump is finished with us, and here I mean the world as we know it now, our world will have changed likely to a backward civilisation, if there is anything civil about reversing progress.

I make this pronouncement boldly as a projection, not prediction, since I don’t believe in hocus-pocus. But he is deep into it and so are many of his “Jim Jones-like cultist followers”.
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General T&T, Sports

Ulric ‘Buggy’ Haynes: our black prince

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 02, 2025

PART II

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeUlric “Buggy” Haynes was not only a sports figure but a social activist as well. He led the charge to save the Tacarigua Savannah, the largest green space area in the northeastern part of the island, from becoming a concrete and asphalt jungle. The Green Space Committee raised almost $100,000 to challenge the government’s violation of our community’s well-being.

Buggy led the charge with Dr Carol James and Peter Burke to oppose the government’s action. He gave the first $20,000 to hire lawyers to fight the case, money that he borrowed from one of his sons, Verron Ulric Haynes, the first and only Trinbagonian to win a Super Bowl for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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