By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 13, 2017
When President Donald Trump promised to make America great again, no one believed he wanted the United States to relive its dark history. To be sure there was a desire to return to a time when things appeared to be less complicated—a kind of white-skinned Utopia—but no one believed the president would hark back to a period when racial bigotry, religious scapegoating and ignorance prevailed.
Continue reading Making America Racist Again
By Stephen Kangal
March 02, 2017
The Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley in his usual unrehearsed statement made in the House on Friday 23 February during the debate of the final FATCA sitting raises a number of policy decisions the chief amongst which is whether his Government proposes to liquidate and close our foreign missions accredited to Washington and replace them with highly paid lobbyists to tell the real truths as he put it.
Continue reading Will Lobbyists Now Replace TT Diplomats in the USA?
By Raffique Shah
February 24, 2017
(WARNING: The contents of this column are meant to inform readers, more so citizens of the USA, of their constitutional rights vis-à-vis those who govern them. They are not intended to incite anyone, anywhere, to take drastic action to remove any leader, even if he (or she) has become a despot. I further warn my Trinbagonian brethren who live in the USA, and who may be visiting T&T for the Carnival, to resist the temptation to take a printed copy of this column when you return States-side. Mere possession of it could be grounds for denying you entry, or worse, for declaring you a terrorist!)
Continue reading Americans’ right to revolt
By Stephen Kangal
January 29, 2017
There was a quite visible and audible dearth in the House possessive of the requisite international relations expertise to analyze and dissect the internationally illegal imposition of US- domestic FATCA on T&T from a foreign policy/international law perspective.
That important dimension after T&T has been an active international relations participant for 55 years of statehood/UN multilateral diplomacy/foreign policy-making is a blemish on our international image, national pride and reputation.
Continue reading Can FATCA Pass the International Jurisprudence Test?
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 22, 2017
Last Friday Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. As in so many other offensive things he has tweeted since November, Trump began this year by trying to besmirch (unfortunately one dictionary defines the meaning of this word as “to blacken”) the reputation of John Lewis and his courageous actions in turning the USA away from its segregationist past and setting it on a path to achieve its founders’ dreams.
Here is a man, with no sense of history, dismissing an icon of America’s attempt to redeem its past, with a silly phrase “All talk, talk, talk-no action or results.” Such disparagement led David Remnick of the New Yorker to ask: “Who would have the impoverished language to dismiss the whole of John Lewis as “sad”? To which he answers: “As it happens, the President-elect of the US.”
Continue reading President Trump and the Black Blowback
By Stephen Kangal
January 20, 2017
As a dedicated viewer of the Parliamentary Channel I am disappointed and indeed saddened to witness the proceedings of the honourable and hallowed House under the Rowley Administration being reduced and relegated retrogressively to that of a circus full of clowns, lacking in seriousness, displaying wanton disrespect and being adjourned prematurely, frequently and in a hurry in spite of the outstanding matters listed on the Order Paper.
It appears as if they, that is the Government side are either going through a period of forced detention in Parliament, having other more important matters to conduct outside of the House or adjourning early for an after- work Friday lime on Ariapita Avenue. This is how the people’s business is being subordinated by those pretenders who sold themselves as being red and ready but after sixteen months in office have showed no credible signs of real performance even after two retreats and no war on the criminals.
Continue reading Reducing the Parliament to a Circus
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 08, 2017
It would be hilarious if the issue were not so deadly serious. President Barack Obama accuses the Russians of undermining the US presidential election and the Senate Armed Services Committee holds intelligence hearings to discover why President Vladimir Putin tried to sabotage the will of the American people. Such treachery, President Obama suggests, throws us back into a past from which American citizens have turned their gazes.
Continue reading Do so eh like so
By Stephen Kangal
December 30, 2016
It would appear inevitable that T&T will, in the face of a doomsday scenario, be forced to become FATCA-compliant in the shortest possible time according to the shifting deadlines unilaterally issued by the IRS/Treasury Department. But in quantifying the current and future costs of FATCA compliance one must go beyond the costs to be incurred by individuals, companies, local banks and other financial institutions and the potential loss of their billion-dollar profit margins.
Continue reading Factoring the Costs of FATCA Compliance into the Debate
By Stephen Kangal
December 23, 2016
There was a quite visible and audible dearth in the House lacking the requisite international relations expertise to analyze and dissect the internationally illegal imposition of US-domestic FATCA on T&T from a foreign policy/international law perspective.
That important missing dimension, after T&T has been an active international relations participant for 55 years of statehood/UN multilateral diplomacy/foreign policy-making, has tarnished our international image, national pride and reputation.
Continue reading How FATCA Infringes and Trammels Our Statehood
By Stephen Kangal
December 16, 2016
This simple headline encapsulates in its entirety all the infringements of international law, diplomacy, human rights and acceptable standards of inter-state relations that are impregnated in the modus operandi of the internationalization of the 2010 FACTA Law passed by the US Congress.
It was a tax-collection domestic legislation of the USA. It is now being imposed against several tenets of international relations with the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of unsuspecting T&T via US Treasury/IRS- issued deadlines and threats with the Minister of Finance, Hon. Colm Imbert on bended knees dodging bullets from US aggression.
Continue reading Pass the FACTA or Face the US FATWA