Tribute Delivered by Stephen Kangal at the Funeral Service held for the Late Horace Hollister Broomes on Tuesday 6th September 2022 at the Seventh Day’s Adventist Church on Stanmore Avenue, POS
Presiding Pastor Clive Dottin, Members of the bereaved Broomes Family, Other Distinguished Speakers, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Continue reading Tribute to Horace Hollister Broomes
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 05, 2022
PART I
“Man is a rational substance consisting of soul and body.”
—St Augustine, “The Trinity”
“The human person… is a being at once corporeal and spiritual.”
—Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church
Two weeks ago I gave a lecture at a Transformative Leadership Bootcamp at QRC organised by Dr Brian Harry, to a mix of younger and older people who asked my opinion of the themed party Stink & Dutty. Implicitly, the questioner included those unscripted events such as Jam Naked and FOC that are occurring across the country. My puritanical instincts and old-fashioned notions of decency almost demanded that I regard these events as expressions/manifestations of moral and social decadence.
Continue reading Look-me! A reclamation of self
By Raffique Shah
September 05, 2022
I was scanning the local television channels last Tuesday for any Independence-related special programming they might feature on the eve of the 60th anniversary, when I realised CCN TV6 was about to run live coverage of the formal opening of the Dr Eric Williams Memorial Library and museum in Port of Spain.
As the cameras panned the guests arriving for what was likely to be one of the feature events of the anniversary, I experienced a wave of nostalgia, memories of what seemed to have been many years ago when Erica Williams, daughter of the late prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, first communicated with me about her project.
Continue reading Academic oasis
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
September 03, 2022
In 2008, President Vladimirr Putin of Russia invaded Georgia. In 2014, he repeated military history by invading Crimea. Hence, it need occasion no great surprise that on 24 February 2022, the Russian President Putin repeated military history one more time by his unprovoked, illegal invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has consistantly argued that it was “an act of self-defense” and “a special military operation” aimed at the “demilitarization ” and “denazification” of Ukraine.
Continue reading Analyzing Putin’s military aggression
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 29, 2022
“The horner man crying; Somebody horn de horner man…”
—Anil Roberts on Keith Rowley
“I could take a horn if I get one. I ain’t sending nobody to kill nobody.”
—Dr Keith Rowley’s response to Roberts
These are the sentiments of two of our leaders on the eve of the Diamond jubilee of our Independence. Serious people treated Roberts’ characterisation of Sharon Clark-Rowley, the prime minister’s wife, with the disdain that it deserved. There was no reason to drag her into the gutter, as there was no need to elevate such spurious nonsense to the level of serious national discourse. As we say—if you play with the dog, you get bitten by the fleas.
Continue reading The cries of our people
By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2022
It’s not so much that we have little or nothing to celebrate on the 60th anniversary of our Independence from Britain, as so many who swear they are patriots, but whose patriotism swings with the pendulum of their political party’s fortunes, which almost always are linked to their personal fortunes.
It’s more that our democracy has been carved up into near-equal but uneven parts in such manner, to misquote Irish poet William Yeats in his near-prophetic masterpiece, “The Second Coming”, “…Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction/While the worst/Are full of passionate intensity…”
Continue reading Show me your leader
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 22, 2022
A call to my grandnephew, Devon La Touche, a library assistant at the Beetham Gardens Community Library (BGCL) and the Joint Community Service Centre in Gonzales, on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, led to two instructive days.
Devon attends to the young pupils who visit the library to use the Internet and play games on the Internet. Before they do so, they are required to read for half an hour. Such is their anxiety to get to the computers that they joyously do their reading just to get to the computers. Adults hardly attend the library.
Continue reading Winning hearts and minds
By Raffique Shah
August 22, 2022
A few weeks ago, my cousin Susheela forwarded to me an interesting piece of Internet trivia that was anything but trivial. The author had given that generations in recorded history had lived through the most exciting period, based on facts cited, that people now in their 60s and 70s, having been born in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, had enjoyed some of the most dramatic developments man has ever experienced.
Continue reading Ten thousand-gun salute
By Stephen Kangal
August 22, 2022
I am patently unsettled and indeed very surprised that CCNTV 6 saw it fit to feature and to give The Leader of the Opposition of Guyana Mr Aubrey Norton in its Friday last Morning Edition a window to level false and misleading criticisms against The Administration of Guyanese President Dr Irfan Ali for T&T consumption.
Continue reading Keep Adversarial Domestic Politics at Home
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 15, 2022
As the airplane hovered over the Northern Range, I knew I was home. I was happy but anxious-feeling. It was two and a half years since I left my country in April 2020, just before the borders closed. No one could have known the horrible Covid epidemic would bring so much sorrow to so many people.
A week before my departure from Trinidad I was supposed to fly to India, having been invited by the Indian government through its Academic Visitors’ Programme. I was honoured. The letter described me as a “Distinguished Academician”. I was supposed to deliver two lectures and looked forward to being exposed to India’s technical and intellectual life. More importantly, I wanted to explore India’s rich religious literature and its Hindu epic tales—the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita.
Continue reading The homecoming