By Iniko Ujaama
April 24, 2014 – africaspeaks.com/reasoning
I watched the video of the Trinidadian parent who recently posted the video of herself beating her daughter over posting some ‘sexy’ pics on facebook and the subsequent video of her two daughters(an elder sister and the one beaten) explaining away and justifying the mother’s actions.
Continue reading Corporal Punishment: Shame, Fear and Unreasoning
By Yvonne Baboolal
February 25, 2014 – guardian.co.tt
Homosexuality is not only threatening the arts but is used to indoctrinate gang members, says artist LeRoy Clarke. The T&T Guardian asked Clarke to elaborate on the comment he made last week at his book launch which shocked and outraged some of his fellow artists, members of the gay community and others. In a phone interview yesterday, Clarke related homosexuality to the increase in crime, saying young men are usually indoctrinated into gangs with homosexuality and because of the violation of their manhood use the gun as a symbol of their masculinity.
Continue reading Homosexuality threatens the arts, fuels crime—Clarke
By Raffique Shah
February 08, 2014
I know there are many people in the country who think that Keith Rowley is too black to be Prime Minister. I didn’t need Fitzgerald Hinds to tell me that, although his charge that such sentiment emanates from the bowels of the PNM, from important persons in the party, did surprise me somewhat.
I don’t know why we bury our heads in the sand when the issue of colour prejudice, which is often linked to race prejudice, rears its ugly head in the society. It has always been there, and, I imagine, it always will be. Most people of lighter or whiter complexion, whatever their ethnicity, believe they are superior to others who are dark-skinned, or worse, black.
Continue reading Judge not by colour
“An Eye-Opener and Essential Reading…”
By Edward S. Herman
January 21, 2014 – Global Research
Robin Philpot’s important new book Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa is an eye-opener and essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the recent history of Rwanda, ongoing U.S. and Western policy in Africa, and how efficiently the Western propaganda system works.
As in the case of the wars dismantling Yugoslavia, there is a “standard model” of what happened in Rwanda both in 1994 and in the preceding and later years, a model that puts the victorious Tutsi expatriate and Ugandan official Paul Kagame, his Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), and his Western supporters in a favorable light and the government of Rwanda, led by the Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana, in a negative light. Philpot challenges this model in all of its aspects and shows convincingly that, in a virtual miracle of systematic distortion, this version of history stands the truth on its head.
Continue reading Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
December 22, 2013
As Trinbagonians gear up to celebrate the Christian religious event of Christmas, it is apropos to disseminate the historical, Afri-centric , real truth about the birth of Jesus.
Indeed, if one looks at the first three hundred years of Christianity, it is in many aspects, a derived African religion. As Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan points out in his seminal magnum opus African Origins of the major “Western Religions” (1970):”within the three most accepted religions in Europe and the Americas- Judaism, Christianity and Islam, often called ‘Western Religions’, Africans have been the founders of said religions and their teachings ( had been known) in some cases thousands of years before they were known to the peoples of Europe.”
Continue reading Jesus’ Birth: Afri-centric Analysis
By Corey Gikes
December 15, 2013
Today we bid final farewell to Madiba Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, a man whose whole life has been one of sacrifice. So much has been said, so much has written about this moral, political and physical giant of a man who struggled to bring about a society that is equal to all walks of life. His is a life that should serve as a model to those of us who wish to make similar differences in our own spaces.
Continue reading Remember Madiba…All of Him
By Greg Palast
December 13, 2013 – gregpalast.com
I can’t take it anymore. All week, I’ve watched Nelson Mandela reduced to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly outfit they choose.
Continue reading The Mandela Barbie
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
December 10, 2013
Now that 95-year old Nelson Mandela has died, it is indeed a glorious sine qua non to trace/recount/relive his remarkable/heroic journey from prisoner/revolutionary to President of South Africa.
At the outset, it must be emphasized that the year 1994 was a pivotal, watershed turning-point as the white minority-ruled South Africa joined the civilized nations as a de jure actor on the international stage of democracy.
Continue reading Mandela: From Prisoner to President
By Rick Lyman
December 08, 2013 – nytimes.com
JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela was deeply respected in his homeland, and almost worshiped by many for his definitive role in ending white rule and installing multiracial democracy.
But he was never above reproach, political observers say.
When Andile Mngxitama, a black-consciousness advocate and frequent critic of Mr. Mandela, fired yet another broadside at the former leader before he died — comparing him unfavorably to neighboring Zimbabwe’s authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe — it certainly caught the attention of South Africa’s political class.
Continue reading For Mandela, Reverence, but Criticism, Too
By Raffique Shah
December 07, 2013
Last Thursday night, for moments ranging from seconds to hours, the world stood still. People paused or stopped doing whatever they were engaged in, diverting attention to their radio or television sets that, in hundreds of languages, broke the news that Nelson Mandela had died.
By Friday, every newspaper that had gone to print after his passing will have featured banner headlines screaming news of his passing. Network news leaders such as the BBC and CNN continued almost non-stop coverage of the life and times and death of this man. Tributes poured in: no one had anything negative to say about him.
Continue reading Night the world stood still