2 charges of ‘infamous and disgraceful conduct’ for doctor in race-talk probe
By Jada Loutoo
June 21, 2021 –newsday.co.tt
Dr Avinash Sawh faces two charges of “infamous and disgraceful” conduct.
Sawh, who was accused of making racist statements in phone calls with a former employee, has also been told the Medical Board has set up a tribunal.
The board hopes the tribunal can hold its first meeting on July 2.
Continue reading Medical Board: Dr Avinash Sawh faces 2 charges
By Raffique Shah
June 21, 2021
With this country’s history largely unwritten, and in many instances unrecorded, I shan’t be surprised if my column today reads like Greek hieroglyphics to most people.
Many of us have an interest in knowing where we came from, this potpourri of races that confuses us more than foreigners. Our only identification mark, I cite Meer and Fuchs, examining our language from a phonetic perspective, is the sing-song prosody linguists insist we expose when we speak.
Continue reading A Labour Day story
By Shane Superville
June 18, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
Remarks made by the Prime Minister during a media conference last Saturday led to a heated exchange between officials from the Guyanese government and business community and Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Foreign and Caricom Affairs on Friday.
During his presentation, Dr Rowley referred to a table highlighting the number of vaccines received by all 14 Caricom countries and their associates as of Saturday.
Continue reading Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana officials in vaccine-use crosstalk
By Dr Selwyn R, Cudjoe
June 15, 2021
A few days ago the Attorney General asked the Parliament to approve a supplementary vote of $118.9 million for his ministry. Barataria/San Juan MP Saddam Hosein asked (perhaps pleaded is a better word) how much money the lawyers (120 local and nine foreign) were being paid and the matters for which they were retained.
From the AG’s angle of vision, such a question was preposterous. He responded: “I would like to place on record that the request for the supplementation is driven by the fact that we are still in the course of settling $141.3 million in arrears from the period 2010 to 2015, during which $444.4 million was expended and arrears of $141.3 million left.”
Continue reading Digging Out We Eye in Broad Daylight
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
June 14, 2021
Years after the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2011 as “The International Year for People of African Descent”, it must be realized that the European enslavement of African people or the “MAAFA” (“great disaster”) only represents .01 per cent of the history of African people on this planet. Put another way, for the 99.9 per cent of their history, Africans were a free people.
Furthermore, “there were a thousand years of independent state formation and state management in inner West Africa called the western Sudan before the (European) slave trade.”
Continue reading Getting world history right: real African history
By Raffique Shah
June 14, 2021
I shall not dwell on the many options we have to produce some of the foods we consume and to reduce our heavy dependence on foreign foods for our survival. Far too many reports have been compiled by committees on this issue.
The fact that we have done very little to alter the food production equation in favour of local content or substitutes is a damning indictment against us all—from consumers who insist on foreign brands to farmers who cultivate or do not cultivate, depending on subsidies from government; from cooks who will not soil their hands preparing ground provisions for meals for adults who will die if they cannot get hold of foreign “fast foods” that are devoid of nutrition but laden with unhealthy ingredients and harmful additives that are addictive.
Continue reading Small exports add up
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 07, 2021
“Get the niggers,” was their slogan, / “Kill them, burn them, set the pace. / Let them know that we are white men, / Teach them how to keep their place.”
—A. J. Smitherman, “The Tulsa Race Riot and Massacre” (1922)
I had just left Harvard University as an assistant professor and was doing “Time to Talk,” a series of interviews for T&T Television. In 1982 I interviewed Sam Nujomo, the founding father of Namibia, where he had addressed the UN Decolonization Committee about his country’s independence. We talked about Namibia’s struggle for independence and the stain German genocide had left upon the consciousness of his people.
Continue reading White Brutality Against Black and Brown People
By Raffique Shah
June 07, 2021
Warnings of food crises post-Covid-19 are dire. According to one study on global food security by the Centre for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), dated March 15, 2021, one year into the pandemic, ‘…at least four countries are facing…famine, …with 13 close behind…’ The study noted that one year ago, the UN World Food Programme executive director David Beasely, warned the UN Security Council of ‘famines of biblical proportions’ and of possibly 270 million ‘people experiencing crisis levels of hunger’.
Continue reading Foods for your table
Loop News, June 03, 2021
Fake news.
This is how Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith has described claims by Clint Arjoon, president of the Fyzabad Chamber of Industry and Commerce, regarding the alleged entry of Pfizer vaccines into the country.
On Wednesday, Arjoon alleged that the vaccines were brought into the country and were being administered to citizens via a private facility.
Continue reading Businessman’s Pfizer claims ‘fake news’, says Police Commissioner
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 31, 2021
There is much that is silly about the back and forth between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition about who is to be blamed for the rising death rate the savage pandemic has inflicted upon the people of our country. Rowley says that the candlelight vigils “organized and paid for by the UNC is a major contributory factor in the spike of Covid infections,” whereas Persad-Bissessar claims that the 50,000 people who visited Tobago during Easter “on the Prime Minister’s invitation resulted in the outbreak” (Express, May 25).
Continue reading Searching for Our Truths