Category Archives: Security

1990 20/20 Vision

By Suzanne Mills
February 06 2011 – newsday.co.tt

1990 Attempted CoupHindsight they say is 20/20 and so I wonder if the police who disobeyed the order of the TT government to attack the Muslimeen with full force later felt any regret.

They may not have been pained by guilt pangs over their cowardice and treachery, but with time, surely they had to see how incredibly, colossally stupid and shortsighted they had been. With the passage of years, revenge for a reduced salary must have tasted less sweet when they realised they’d forfeited the population’s respect that July. The army was seen as saving the day.
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Kamla’s Casual Carelessness

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 27, 2011

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOne year ago Kamla Persad-Bissessar was elevated to the leadership of her party. In May of last year she was elected prime minister of the country. Since then she has shown herself to be incompetent; of questionable intellectual maturity, and deficient in judgment. As we enter 2011, I wonder how many persons feel she is steering the ship of state in a positive direction.
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Magistrate: Minister to set bar hours

By Anna-Lisa Paul
December 17, 2010 – newsday.co.tt

BarDespite assertions by Port-of-Spain Mayor Louis Lee Sing that bars in his mayoral district will stop selling liquor at midnight, a senior magistrate yesterday said the court’s hands were tied as it pertains to the law governing the granting of liquor licences.

Chairman of the Licensing Committee for the St George and environs district, Senior Magistrate Lucina Cardenas-Ragoonanan said only the respective minister can give effect to restrict hours for the sale of alcohol. The Ministry of Legal Affairs is the ministry under whose purview the granting of bar and liquor licences fall.
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Big Sister is watching you

By Raffique Shah
December 05, 2010

“Virtually all countries of the world…have secret CIA tracking stations.”
—Intelligence expert and author Alexander Kolpakidi (Daily Mail, November 15, 2010).

Raffique ShahTHE scandal—allegations that US agents spied in (and on) sovereign states, allies like Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Iceland—broke around the same time the SIA mess hit the fan here in Trinidad and Tobago. American agents conducted surveillance activities against “suspected terrorists” on foreign soil. They did not inform the host countries of what they were doing, which included monitoring, photographing and filming people around their embassies and others taking part in protest rallies.
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I spy, with my electronic eye…

By Raffique Shah
November 20, 2010

Raffique ShahAs I write this column, Government is before Parliament presenting the Interception of Communications bill, which it expects to pass in a marathon sitting. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she hoped to get support from the opposition PNM, which I feel certain she will.
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Manning comes out fighting

SpyingSandy Hits ‘Manic Man’
MINISTER of National Security Brigadier John Sandy yesterday tore into former prime minister Patrick Manning as a “manic man” with “a sick mind” for the wiretapping of persons in public life by a secret spy unit that reported to Manning.

Manning comes out fighting (link fixed)
…says ‘spy’ bill will undermine national security
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On Mr Manning’s Secret Service

Express Editorial
November 13, 2010 – trinidadexpress.com

SpyingAs the country watched in fascination, former prime minister Patrick Manning showed signs of having been stung into replying to his successor’s revelations about the telecommunications intercepts perpetrated for five years under his rule . Until Friday, Mr Manning, now just another MP, had been mostly silent in the House. It was unseemly of the 39-year parliamentary veteran to insist on an unentitled opportunity to reply, thereby earning the rebukes and an eventual ejection threat from the Speaker.
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Govt to get OPV $B refund

Scarborough CG 51 vessel at BAE Systems' shipyard on the Clyde River in Glasgow, Scotland
Scarborough CG 51 vessel at BAE Systems' shipyard
on the Clyde River in Glasgow, Scotland
By Nalinee Seelal
September 30, 2010 – newsday.co.tt

PRIME MINISTER Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday confirmed Government has cancelled a deal with a Scotland-based shipbuilding company BAE Systems for the acquisition of three off-shore patrol vessels, ordered by the then PNM government at a cost of TT$1.5 billion.
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