By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 01, 2021
Beloved is an excruciatingly intense novel about the slave experience written by Toni Morrison, an acclaimed African-American writer. She is the only Black woman to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She also won a Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1987. In 2012 President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award that can be bestowed on a civilian.
Continue reading Beloved
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 25, 2021
An article, “Energising conservative voters, one school board election at a time”, appeared in The New York Times last Thursday. It was subtitled “Republicans hope that concerns about critical race theory can help them in the midterm election”.
This issue has torn apart one of Wisconsin’s suburbs. Stephanie Saul, author of that article, sought to demonstrate how “Republicans are using fears of critical race theory to drive school board recalls and energise conservatives, hoping to lay groundwork for the 2022 midterm elections” (October 21).
Continue reading Whiteness and critical race theory
By Dr Kwame Nantambu
September 01, 2021
Within recent times, massive chupidness has overtly erupted in T&T in regard to Trinbagonians taking their jabs. Indeed, the clarion call has been publicly bandied about to the extent that Trinbagonians are “skeptical” and “hesitant” toward agreeing to take their jabs. No problema.
The salient fact of the matter is that it is a well-known and accepted fact that Trinbagonians just have a magnetic love for “foreign.” In other words, this writer is of the totally firm conviction that Trinbagonians are “skeptical” solely because they have noticed albeit totally brainwashed that Americans feel that way also. Totally false and stupid.
Continue reading Real vaccinate chupidness in T&T
How about some accountability for Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen?
By Philip Giraldi
August 24, 2021 – unz.com
If you want to know how the United States wound up with “government by stupid” one need only look no farther than some of the recent propaganda put out by members of Congress, senior military officers and a certain former president. President George W. Bush, who started the whole sequence of events that have culminated in the disaster that is Afghanistan, is not yet in prison, but one can always hope.
Continue reading The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them
By Raffique Shah
August 23, 2021
If there was anything shocking about what happened in Afghanistan last weekend, it was the millions of people who were surprised by the speed at which the Afghan regime collapsed, the military imploded and the Taliban swiftly moved in to declare itself the new government.
BBC journalists referencing Saigon way back on May 1, 1975, when the last Americans who were evacuated from a war that never should have been, reversed on board the aircraft, kicking away desperate Vietnamese who had worked for the US, and who wanted to escape before General Giap’s army took control of the country. “Experts” spoke of the colossal waste of US resources in pursuing yet another ‘mission impossible’ in a country and among a people who will never be tamed, not by Western standards anyway.
Continue reading Surprise us, Mullahs
How the Taliban Overran the Afghan Army, Built by the U.S. Over 20 Years
By Yaroslav Trofimov
August 14, 2021 – wsj.com
KABUL—The Afghan government outpost in Imam Sahib, a district of northern Kunduz province, held out for two months after being surrounded by the Taliban. At first, elite commando units would come once a week on a resupply run. Then, these runs became more scarce, as did the supplies.
“In the last days, there was no food, no water and no weapons,” said trooper Taj Mohammad, 38. Fleeing in one armored personnel carrier and one Ford Ranger, the remaining men finally made a run to the relative safety of the provincial capital, which collapsed weeks later. They left behind another 11 APCs to the Taliban.
Continue reading How the Taliban Overran the Afghan Army
By Major General Smedley D. Butler
FULL AudioBook
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler later became an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences. He also exposed an alleged plan to overthrow the U.S. government.
Continue reading WAR IS A RACKET
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 21, 2021
On Thursday last, US President Joseph Biden signed into law an important bill (the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act) that makes June 19 a national holiday in the United States to commemorate the end of slavery.
In signing this bill President Biden reminded Americans: “The promise of equality is not going to be fulfilled until we become real—it becomes real in our schools and on our main streets and in our neighbourhoods” (NYT, June 18)
Continue reading Facing the Past
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 07, 2021
“Get the niggers,” was their slogan, / “Kill them, burn them, set the pace. / Let them know that we are white men, / Teach them how to keep their place.”
—A. J. Smitherman, “The Tulsa Race Riot and Massacre” (1922)
I had just left Harvard University as an assistant professor and was doing “Time to Talk,” a series of interviews for T&T Television. In 1982 I interviewed Sam Nujomo, the founding father of Namibia, where he had addressed the UN Decolonization Committee about his country’s independence. We talked about Namibia’s struggle for independence and the stain German genocide had left upon the consciousness of his people.
Continue reading White Brutality Against Black and Brown People