Raffique Shah
Sunday, April 1st 2007
LAST week the world’s conscience drifted back in time, some 400 years, to the barbaric transatlantic slave trade, and to the bicentennial of its formal abolition in 1807. What I read and heard of apologies sans reparations, of manufacturing heroes and liberators while ignoring those who really fought to free themselves, I found nauseating. I noted, too, that the hypocrisy of the descendants of the slavers was matched by the hypocrisy-or ignorance-of those whose forebears were victims of slavery. It’s all a charade designed to distort history, to extort money from those who have no obligation to pay for the sins of others, and to play the blame game.
Continue reading No man must ride your back
Slavery started in the United States in 1619 when twenty Afrikans arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. According to the 1850 census figures, there were 3.5 million Afrikan slaves in the United States.
“As far as I know, 83 percent of the prison population come from specific communities which predicates the need for a strong and distinct national development plan accepted by the entire society for these specific 16 communities and you know what communities they are. Such a plan must include the churches. A change in abortion laws, strong family planning service with cash incentives for voluntary sterilisation re-education.” 
Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s conviction and sentence have been squashed. The Court of Appeal this afternoon ordered a new trial at the Magistrate’s Court before a different Magistrate. Mr. Panday was sentenced to two years in jail and fined by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls after being found guilty of not declaring a Million Dollar London bank account to the Integrity Commission.
It happened one day, sometime in the mid-1970s, not long after I had emerged from prison for my role in the 1970 mutiny. Because of the political nature of my crime, I knew there were tens of thousands of mainly PNM diehards who were bitter, even hostile towards me. But I refused to be intimidated by them.
The Copyright Music Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT) was thrown into mourning yesterday afternoon, as news of the death of calypso composer, the Mighty Terror, swirled through the local music community.
One cannot help but look on with disbelief at the meanderings in the matter involving the State and Chief Justice Sat Sharma. Last Monday, this messy affair that has staggered like the proverbial drunk, from Sharma’s home to the Magistrates’ Courts, from midnight hearings in a judge’s chambers to the hallowed halls of the Privy Council, finally collapsed in the drain of the magistracy. And the person who helped take it there, however plausible his explanations may be, was Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls.