“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 09, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” —Psalm 8:4

Last Monday Lisa Morris-Julian, Minister in the Ministry of Education, and two of her children (Xianne, 25 and Jesiah, 6) died in a fire that destroyed their Arima home. The cause of the fire remains sketchy but the response of the T&T Fire Service left much to be desired.
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Amid your revelry, stay safe

By Raffique Shah
December 21, 2024

Raffique ShahOver the past two to three years, I have destroyed two cooking pots, having forgotten them on the stove and not having adhered to the safety rules we had agreed to enforce. It was not deliberate, of course. I can easily explain how it happened and why, as we grow older, we should be very careful when dealing with doing things we did ten to 20 years ago. Hell, I have been multitasking all my life and very efficiently, too.
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Rejecting illusions

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 09, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn this version of democracy, the Cabinet rules supreme, to hell with those people who elected them.

Eric Williams began his address to the Second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists Conference in Rome in 1959 by quoting African intellectual Alioune Diop, who said: “There can be no people without a culture. But what we often lose sight of is the natural link between the political and the cultural…It’s the State that guarantees a culture’s memory of its traditions and the nature of its personality.”
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Colonial roots of hyperinflation

By Raffique Shah
December 09, 2024

Raffique ShahThis global imbalance of trade can explain why so many countries that have productive land can never break into the markets.

Trinidad is what it was 50 years ago, a society fashioned in the image and likeness of the giant to our north, where more democracy can be found in the big toe of a communist than it can be anywhere in the United States of America. This is a country that tells the rest of the world how they must behave to survive. It preaches democracy but practices autocracy. It rules the world with an iron fist, imposing punishing sanctions on others, and it will do everything to wreck countries that dare to defy its rule.
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Wos’ Than Slavery

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 04, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeA week ago I received the following note from Joyce Thomas, a retired VP of a government girl’s college. She has been involved in sports at the Eddie Hart Ground (EHG) as a sprinter and coach over the past 63 years. Joyce is “a level 5 World Athletics Throws coach and has at least 12 athletes on Trinidad Carifta teams. This year Peyton Winter won silver medals in the Carifta Games and gold medals in the NACAC competition last year.”
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No need for wars

By Raffique Shah
December 04, 2024

Raffique ShahI expect a bruising political year ahead of us as general election 2025 looms large. The Opposition United National Congress (UNC) has never really stopped campaigning since their loss in 2015. The margins of victory—the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) polled in 2015 and 2020—were close enough to keep the PNM uneasy, but the UNC probably blew it by turning to the courts in constituencies where they were behind by relatively small numbers of votes, causing them to lose goodwill among the electorate.
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