By Anna Ramdass
May 19, 2015 – trinidadexpress.com
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar last night declared victory following the Integrity Commission’s termination of its investigation into emailgate.
She added this vindication was proof Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley was unfit to lead Trinidad and Tobago.
Continue reading Integrity Commission ends its emailgate probe
Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro during his recent visit to T&T
By Sasha Harrinanan
March 16, 2015 – newsday.co.tt
The citizens and Government of Trinidad and Tobago are being urged to reject the recently announced United States sanctions against Venezuelan government officials accused of violating protestors’ rights during demonstrations earlier this year.
Continue reading Reject US sanctions
By Julien Neaves
February 22, 2015 – newsday.co.tt
WITH Caribbean neighbour Jamaica making moves to decriminalise marijuana University of the West Indies (UWI) Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand is renewing his calls for marijuana to be decriminalised in Trinidad and Tobago for medicinal purposes.
In January this year the Jamaican Government tabled the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015 in that country’s Senate to decriminalise marijuana for medicinal, religious and personal use.
Continue reading Decriminalise it
By Raffique Shah
December 20, 2014
I confess I was surprised when, last Wednesday, announcements from Washington and Havana confirmed that the United States and Cuba had agreed to restore diplomatic relations and work towards the normalisation of other relations, especially trade and travel between the two countries.
I did not think that President Barack Obama had the fortitude to dismantle a 50-plus-year anachronism that lingered as the last vestige of the Cold War that all but ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Continue reading Cuba and the USA: the long thaw begins
Remarks to Academic Council,
Wellesley College
Faculty Assembly Room
December 10, 2014
As one of the few black men on this faculty, I could not let this opportunity pass without offering a few remarks.
On Wednesday, April 19, 1989, a white middle class woman, a promising young investment banker at Salomon Brothers with a degree from Wellesley College and Yale University was raped as she was jogging through Central Park, New York. The suspects were five black and Latino young men, some with dubious school records from Harlem. The police coined a new term for what they were doing: they called it wilding, to describe the beating up of random victims. On May 29, about five weeks later, the New York Times wrote: “A 28-year investment banker, jogging through Central Park, was attacked by a group of teenagers. They kicked and beat her in the head with a pipe and raped her. The teenagers, who were from East Harlem, were quickly arrested.”
Continue reading Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe’s Remarks to the Wellesley Council
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
November 27, 2014
Updated: December 05, 2014
The 24 November 2014 “no indictment for officer Wilson” verdict arrived at by the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, in regard to the shooting and killing of the unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown and the subsequent 3rd December “no indictment” verdict by a grand jury in Staten Island, New York City, in favor of a white police officer in the New York Police Department (NYPD), Daniel Pantaleo, for the “chokehold death” of another unarmed, forty-six year-old African-American man, Eric Garner, speak massive volumes as to the omnipresence of racial tensions/distrust between the Black community and white police officers across the United States.
Continue reading Decoding racial tensions in United States
By Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe
October 22, 2014
RECENTLY, I had a lively debate with Ralph Maraj on Cuba and its successes on i95 FM Showdown programme. Mr Maraj insisted that nothing good could come out of Cuba because Cuba has failed as a socialist society and there is “no freedom in that country”. I tried to convince him that Cuba has emerged as a leader on the world stage in areas of health care and education and there is little crime to speak of in that country. He insisted that Cuba was worthy only of condemnation.
Continue reading Ralph Maraj’s Myopia
By Reese Erlich
October 03, 2014 – reeseerlich.com
Veteran foreign correspondent Reese Erlich was in northern Iraq at the start of the U.S. bombing campaign against Islamic State. He interviewed Kurdish leaders, peshmerga fighters and U.S. officials. He says the reality on the ground is far different from the propaganda coming out of Washington.
Continue reading 10 Myths About Obama’s Latest War in Iraq and Syria
Sunday, September 28 2014
www.newsday.co.tt
Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley yesterday lambasted Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar for Trinidad and Tobago’s co-sponsorship of a United Nations Security Council resolution on the fight against terrorism saying it was best for TT to have passed up on the occasion.
TT cannot afford to declare war on terrorists “at a time when you can stay away, ” Rowley said.
Continue reading Rowley blasts TT support of UN security resolution