Newsday Editorial
March 23 2014 – newsday.co.tt
There is something about the acquisition of office in our country that changes people. And this is far more pronounced when such persons are elected by the people than those who earn their ascendancies through hard work or commitment.
Continue reading The arrogance of office
By Raffique Shah
March 16, 2014
I suppose I should not have been surprised at the number of people who telephoned the Central Bank, or turned up at its offices, to claim the “winnings” they had been alerted to via the now ubiquitous cellphone text messages.
Still, I could not believe there were so many gullible people in a country that boasts of a 90-plus per cent literacy rate, of universal free secondary education and easily accessible tertiary education. Maybe I am a fool for equating education with common sense, for believing that the average person can easily spot a scam and not fall victim to the boundless wiles of cartels of conmen who trawl the shrunken world of electronic communications searching for and fleecing fools.
Continue reading Greed and Stupidity
ALIVE FOR 5 HOURS
By Carol Matroo
March 14, 2014 – newsday.co.tt
BABY Simeon lived for five hours after he was delivered from his mother’s womb in a Caesari an section surgery at Mt Hope Women’s Hospital on March 1. However, he bled to death from a cut to his head sustained during his mother, Quelly Ann Cottle’s surgery, a laceration that was deep enough to penetrate the brain tissue.
Sources said the team of doctors, in a panic, failed to perform surgery on the baby to stop the bleeding, despite pleas for them to do so from the specialist obstetrician who made the laceration to the baby’s head when he cut too deep into Cottle’s womb before removing the baby.
Continue reading Baby Simeon Alive for 5 Hours
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 11, 2014
Part 1
Maxie Cuffie is a dear friend. It is unfortunate that he misrepresented and distorted what I said in my article. In his anxiety to defend our party, he simply repeats and repositions what he believes rather than to confront the points I made in”PNM’s Last Chance.” (Express, March 3 & 4, 2014)
Continue reading Cuffie’s Fantasies
By Raffique Shah
March 09, 2014
That Trinidad Carnival is today mostly a feast of the flesh in its most carnal manifestation should surprise no one. We have worked very hard, over decades, to get here. Now that we have reached the pinnacle—a sea of near-naked bodies gyrating and simulating sex acts that put the Kama Sutra to pale—we should rejoice.
Continue reading Feast of the flesh
By Roberto Lovato
March 7th 2014 – Al Jazeera
CARACAS — His face and muscular arms sweating, hands dirtied from the sand-filled sugar bags he dragged toward the makeshift rampart blocking half of his street, Emilio Palacios’ immediate political struggle was with his mother. “No, Mama, no!” he yelled toward his mother, Maria Bravo, a longtime resident of the Chacaito district of Venezuela’s capital. “No!” he repeated, after hearing her tell Al Jazeera that the purpose of the barricade under construction in front of their apartment was “getting rid of this government.”
Continue reading Venezuela’s Opposition Is United Against Maduro, But Internally Divided
By Richardson Dhalai
Thursday, March 06 2014 – newsday.co.tt
ARCHBISHOP of Port-of-Spain Joseph Harris yesterday attacked the lascivious behaviour of some masqueraders in the just concluded Carnival Season, conduct which the leader of the Roman Catholic faithful in this country described as symptomatic of the pervasive lawlessness in society.
In a forthright, sobering Ash Wednesday homily at Our Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, Harris Promenade in San Fernando yesterday, Fr Harris also observed that all aspects of national life, including that of giving to the poor and indigent, must change if the Carnival-type mentality is to be transformed.
Continue reading VULGAR MAS
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 05, 2014
Part 1
A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones—and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.
—Nelson Mandela
I am pretty certain that Keith Rowley will emerge victorious during the PNM’s party election and go on to become the next prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Fortunately, that is the easy part of the political equation. The more difficult part is to govern in such a way that the society emerges in a better place than it is in 2014. That’s the challenge PNM faces when it takes the helm of government. However, if Rowley and the PNM fail to leave Trinidad (and especially our brothers and sisters in our depressed areas) in a better way than they found them in 2014, one can confidently predict that 2020 would mark the beginning of the end of the PNM as a political force in our country.
Continue reading PNM’s Last Chance
By Raffique Shah
March 02, 2014
Among the celebrities who have been invited to this year’s Carnival, one man stands head and shoulders above the lot, quite literally, I need add. I refer to Jamaica’s star sprinter, Usain Bolt, who flew into the country almost unannounced, courtesy one of his corporate sponsors.
Continue reading Bolt from the blue
By Yvonne Baboolal
February 25, 2014 – guardian.co.tt
Homosexuality is not only threatening the arts but is used to indoctrinate gang members, says artist LeRoy Clarke. The T&T Guardian asked Clarke to elaborate on the comment he made last week at his book launch which shocked and outraged some of his fellow artists, members of the gay community and others. In a phone interview yesterday, Clarke related homosexuality to the increase in crime, saying young men are usually indoctrinated into gangs with homosexuality and because of the violation of their manhood use the gun as a symbol of their masculinity.
Continue reading Homosexuality threatens the arts, fuels crime—Clarke