Category Archives: Books

Africa, Books, General T&T

An ideologue’s pirouette

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 07, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn his address to the nation on African Emancipation Day, the Leader of our Grief called upon his distraught citizens to focus on Afro-Trinbagonians who have made outstanding contributions at home and abroad.

He urged the universities of the West Indies, of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Southern Caribbean “to research further, then highlight and promote the African heritage in the country’s art, literature, music, religion, drama, fashion, cuisine, technical and empirical skills”. (Express, August 1, 2024.)
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Africa, Books, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Getting world history right: real African history

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By Dr Kwame Nantambu
June 27, 2022

Dr. Kwame NantambuYears 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.
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Books, General T&T, Labour, Trade Unions

Anti-colonial Father of the Nation

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Book review by Dr. Kwame Nantambu
Professor Emeritus, Kent State University, USA
June 24, 2022

Dr. Kwame NantambuThe history of the trade union movement in Trinidad and Tobago would be incomplete and unfinished if the life and times of the man called Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler are not the DNA of such a history. Butler was accredited as being the “Chief Servant of the Lord.” That was indeed the invisible “Buzz” in his revered personality. Butler believed that man’s purpose in life was the fulfillment of God’s purpose and as such, his inherent belief system informed him that he owed no obligation to anybody but to God.
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Africa, Books, General T&T, Racism Watch

The Making of a Scholar…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 16, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn Monday I presented a paper, “Writing the Slave Master of Trinidad,” at an important conference “Slavery and Its Afterlives: Blackness, Representation, Social Justice, Vision,” at the National Maritime Museum in London. The conference aimed “to extend our understanding of diaspora, to connect diaspora and, in the process, to forge new critical directions.”
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Africa, Books, Business, General T&T, Rwanda, USA, Violence

Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa

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“An Eye-Opener and Essential Reading…”

By Edward S. Herman
January 21, 2014 – Global Research

Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial FictionRobin 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.
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Africa, Books, General T&T, International, Media, Passed on, South Africa

The Mandela Barbie

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By Greg Palast
December 13, 2013 – gregpalast.com

Nelson MandelaI 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.
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Books, Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Security

Prisoners of Birth

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By Raffique Shah
November 23, 2013

Raffique ShahAvid readers of fiction, more so Jeffrey Archer fans, will immediately note that I stole this headline from one of the writer’s successful novels, A Prisoner of Birth. I did this deliberately, for several reasons.

For the uninitiated, Lord Archer is a Conservative peer whose best-selling novels have topped 150 million copies. He also served a four-year jail sentence for perjury, so he knows about prisons and imprisonment inside out, in a manner of speaking. In fact, he spent some of his jail time in the high-security Belmarsh Prison located in London.
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Africa, Books, Health, Passed on

Professor Tony Martin Dies at 70

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UPDATE – JANUARY 28, 2013

Prof Tony Martin's Send-Off
Prof Tony Martin’s Send-Off — January 25, 2013
A Celebration and Thanksgiving Service for the life of Professor Anthony Martin
21st February, 1942 – 17th January, 2013.
Service on Friday 25th January, 2013 at 9.00 a.m.
St. Theresa’s R.C. Church, Woodbrook thence to the St. James Crematorium for 11.00 a.m.
More photos here

UPDATE – JANUARY 23, 2013

The funeral of Professor Tony Martin will be held on Friday 25th January, 2013, at 9:00am at St. Theresa’s R.C. Church, 50 De Verteuil Street, Woodbrook.

Trinicenter.com Reporters
January 17, 2013 – www.trinicenter.com

Professor Tony MartinDr. Tony Martin, former Professor Emeritus at Wellesley College, has passed over tonight, January 17th 2013 in Trinidad & Tobago at West Shore Medical Hospital. Trinidadian-born Dr. Martin taught at the University of Michigan-Flint, the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad), and St. Mary’s College (Trinidad). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University, and The Colorado College and also spent a year as an honorary research fellow at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad.
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Africa, Books, Caribbean, Culture, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Columbus & the Falsification of History: Updated

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 15, 2012

Dr. Kwame NantambuAt the outset, it must be stated quite clearly that we Afrikan people, are the original, majority people with original ideas. Europeans are only an inherited, transmitting, global minority people. Europeans did not invent, create or discover culture or civilization; they just inherited them and in some cases, stole them. Afrikans never lived in caves and in the icebox during the Ice Age for 20,000 years.
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Africa, Books, Education, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Africa’s hurt revisited

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By George Alleyne
August 01, 2012 – newsday.co.tt

EmancipationWhat has been suppressed by British and European reactionaries with a vested interest in justifying slavery was that long before the slave trade Africans were well advanced in mining and metal-working, agriculture, food production, cotton weaving and garment manufacture.
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