Crime in T&T, General T&T

Fight…or die like cowards

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Raffique Shah
July 18, 2022

Raffique ShahFor many readers, my recollections of “Shanty Town” and the “La Basse” in the 1950s-’60s stirred memories of another day, an era from which the society ought to have long evolved.

Others thought I exaggerated wildly in my description of corbeaux and half-naked boys wrestling over discarded meat. I wonder if I had added to creatures I saw foraging for food the biggest hogs I had lain eyes on among the “gladiators” in that putrid “gayelle” that was the “La Basse”, what they might have thought of me: a writer whose imagination had gone wild?
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General T&T, PNM, Politics

The politics of redemption

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 11, 2022

PART III

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIt was a hot July day in the late 1990s when I received a call from a young man, full of enthusiasm, who wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people. He wanted me to address the members of an organisation he led. His name was Foster Cummings. I have never forgotten the devotion he applied to what he was doing.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Police, Politics, Protest

Beetham: man vs corbeaux

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By Raffique Shah
July 11, 2022

Raffique ShahMany moons ago, when I was young, idealistic and very much a utopian dreamer, I had a vision for a new Beetham community. It will have formed in the early 1960s when I first travelled to Port of Spain frequently.

The route the taxis used from Chaguanas was the relatively new Princess Margaret Highway (commissioned in 1954, I think), turning west onto the Churchill-Roosevelt (built by the US armed forces in 1941 to service the largest air force base in this part of the world, Fort Read in Wallerfield, and used exclusively by military vehicles until it was handed over to the local authorities in 1949). The CRH ended at Barataria. From that point, before the Beetham Highway was opened in ’56, all traffic to PoS had to return to the Eastern Main Road to access PoS.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Schools

The politics of redemption

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2022

We must never forget that there is something within human nature that can respond to goodness, that man is not totally depraved; to put it in theological terms, the image of God is never totally gone.

—Martin Luther King, Jr, A Testament of Hope

PART II

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI had hoped to write about another aspect of the Foster Cummings debate, but other questions arose since last week which means I have to clear a lot of ground before I continue these observations.

Reading (or the explication of texts) is not so easy as many people believe it to be. A theologian goes to theology school to learn how to interpret theological texts (we call it exegesis). The lawyer goes to law school to learn how to read legal texts (whether the original intention or from a contemporary setting). Literary scholars go to graduate school to learn the most fortuitous way to examine literary texts.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Violence

Power of the gun

By Raffique Shah
July 04, 2022

Raffique ShahWe are not the most crime-ridden country in the world, notwithstanding claims to that effect by organisations and individuals that manipulate raw data from dubious sources so that they can support whatever theory or argument their authors wish to pursue.

For example, there are academics and criminologists who rely on official police numbers that could be quite misleading. To support my argument, I ask: can the police or other government agency in many densely-populated, slum-infested countries and cities (think India, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines…) accurately account for every living or dead soul in such human-jungles? Hell, in the comparatively minuscule Beetham Estate or Sea Lots in Trinidad and Tobago, people live and die and never appear on records, so wheel and come back if you expect me to buy “official” data as being accurate.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Schools

SEA Results Must be Published

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By Stephen Kangal
July 03, 2022

Stephen KangalPrimary students write an annual competitive SEA Examination that determines, inter alia, where the students are to receive their best secondary schooling of choice to foster their academic development and their career paths.

These results have been published since its inception.

First the PNM interfered with the CAPE scholarships criteria by cutting down the number and even tinkering with the allocation based on subjectivity.
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Africa, Books, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Getting world history right: real African history

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By Dr Kwame Nantambu
June 27, 2022

Dr. Kwame NantambuYears after the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2011 as “The International Year for People of African Descent”, it must be realized that the European enslavement of African people or the “MAAFA” (“great disaster”) only represents .01 per cent of the history of African people on this planet. Put another way, for the 99.9 per cent of their history, Africans were a free people.
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General T&T, Politics, Schools

The politics of redemption

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2022

Old pirates, yes, they rob I / Sold I to the merchant ships/ Minutes after they took I / From the bottomless pit / But my hand was made strong /By the hand of the Almighty / We forward in this generation / Triumphantly.

—Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”

PART I

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn the 1970s I had the privilege of teaching the late Fr Henry Charles at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was one of the most brilliant students I have ever taught. In fact, he was more brilliant than I in certain respects. I taught a course on West Indian literature, and he seemed to know everything about the writers we were discussing. I deferred to him on many occasions when difficult questions came up in class.
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Books, General T&T, Labour, Trade Unions

Anti-colonial Father of the Nation

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Book review by Dr. Kwame Nantambu
Professor Emeritus, Kent State University, USA
June 24, 2022

Dr. Kwame NantambuThe history of the trade union movement in Trinidad and Tobago would be incomplete and unfinished if the life and times of the man called Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler are not the DNA of such a history. Butler was accredited as being the “Chief Servant of the Lord.” That was indeed the invisible “Buzz” in his revered personality. Butler believed that man’s purpose in life was the fulfillment of God’s purpose and as such, his inherent belief system informed him that he owed no obligation to anybody but to God.
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General T&T, Politics, Racism Watch

What’s in a slave name?

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 20, 2022

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThe controversy started when Camille Robinson-Regis called Kamla Persad-Bissessar out of her name. Kamla responded by casting aspersions on Camille’s “slave name”, which played right into a deep cultural fissure that exists within our fragile social structure. Whatever the merits of either argument, as my mother would have said, “Is de answer does bring the row.” Hopefully, in this case, the answers should allow us to see our cultural blindness.
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