Its Trinidad and Tobago Time Now
Posted: Thursday, August 29, 2002
Dear Editor,
When the General Elections were called and the Prime Minister advised the President to dissolve the Parliament. I thought of only one thing, which is that, Trinidad and Tobago should win the upcoming Elections.
It is now clear for every one to see where the two main contenders stand, and what they would and could have done and what they would do, and the country's people should be now in the process of making their plans to critically intervene on behalf of Trinidad and Tobago.
The only tips I have to offer is none is better than the other, but one is definitely worse. Play one for T&T people.
Cindy Williams
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Fruits, flowers, honey for Oshun
Posted: Wednesday, August 28, 2002
From TT Express, August 27, 2002
HUNDREDS of Olorisa (followers of Orisa) from different communities around the country journeyed to Salybia last Sunday to celebrate the seventh Oshun Festival.
The Olorisa covered the beach in a dazzling array of colours. Pink which is the goddess Oshun’s colour and white were the most predominant among the riot of colours at the festive occasion.
They arrived in cars and maxis beating drums, shaking maracs and chanting songs in praise of the goddess.
From ten in the morning vehicles started to line up on along the 100-metre roadway from Toco Main Road to the Salybia beach.
Paying obeisance to the river as a deity, that’s the purpose the Oshun Festival, said well-known singer and Olorisa Ella Andall, who attended the celebrations. The Hindus pay a similar homage to the Ganga Mai in their annual festival of Ganga Dhaaraa, she pointed out.
Oshun is the mother (deity) of fertility in the Orisa faith. She is the mirror that assists people reflecting on life itself. She also assists in affairs of the heart and prosperity. In Haiti she is known as Mistress Erzulie.
The Oshun Festival originated in Oshogobro near the Oshun River in Nigeria many centuries ago. It was celebrated at this time of the year in accordance with the Orisa calendar and continues to be celebrated at this time.
At noon the large gathering, many of whom who were relaxing under tall shady trees, walked back to the main road and then returned in procession once again to the beach to perform rituals.
“Ye ye O, Oshun Oshun O,
Aare me Oshun waa se kumare’’. This chant, Ella Andall explained, was an invitation to Oshun to come.
The Olorisa chanted as they walked slowly along the roadway on the Salybia River banks to the beach. One elder at the helm swung a coal pot emitting smoke from incense while another poured olive oil on the coals. Drummers and marac men were plentiful. They kept up a lively tempo throughout the evening. A conch shell-blower was among the musicians and he blew until he felt tired and took a rest.
In one instance an Orisa elder made a percussion instrument out of a garden hoe. He played it like the iron man in a steelband.
On the beachfront they gathered in a circle and chanted in unison.
The sun was hot but the cool sea breeze blowing constantly across the landscape made the celebrants a bit comfortable.
The ceremony was conducted by Babalorisa Clarence Forde, who attended the Oshun Festival in Nigeria last year and knows alot about the rituals of the festival.
Offerings of fruits, flowers and honey were placed at the confluence of the Salybia river and the sea.
The morning tide was high but by noon it subsided and seas bathers were having a great time. Five youths brought their surfboards down and surfed all evening, sometimes falling off the boards and climbing back to face the waves. Curious spectators came and looked at the proceedings, then turned away and headed back to the sea or river.
At a nearby fishing facility on Salybia beach, fishermen relaxed in hammocks. In fact, their building served as a welcome shade for Olorisa who were looking for cool spot.
Ella Andall, recently returned from a cultural tour of England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Ghana stood out among the celebrants with her beautiful traditional garb. She played marac and chanted along with the singers and drummers. In a quiet moment she offered honey to the waters and whispered a silent prayer, she said. Other faithful were offering prayers quietly and washing away the negative thoughts from their minds, she pointed out.
Before the start of the festival, however, there was a clean-up campaign of the beachfront. A party had taken place there on Saturday and the beach was littered with bottles and cups.
Even before the Olorisa arrived, a group of Baptists brought two young boys and a girl and baptised them in the sea waters.
By evening, the Olorisa having completed their ritual of the Seventh Oshun Festival, gathered in groups for their return trip home.
Copyright Trinidad Express
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Gap in incomes in TT boggles the mind
Posted: Friday, August 23, 2002
THE EDITOR: It was with a heavy heart that I read the report of Vishnu Ramlogan's tremendous salary. I am always left to wonder at the reasons or criteria used to justify such incredible salary figures. Is it that these persons academic qualifications and work experience, which are supernatural and unique only to this group and no other? And even if that is the case, must they be paid such incredible salaries in an economic situation where so many cannot access the basic requirements for survival?
I have a good friend who is a social worker in the public sector.
He tells me that the monthly public assistance grant given to male heads of households who are ill and cannot work to support their families is about $600, while the monthly grant for an individual is $171.15. There are many families in our country who are dependent on this public assistance grant for their socio-economic welfare. With this sum it is expected that they should be able to pay their utility bills, rent, groceries and medication expenses.
On just $600. Hmmm, makes me think of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Now on one hand we have a situation of one person earning a salary or $100,000 and another person in very dire circumstance being given $600.
Now you may say that Mr Ramlogan earned his salary while Mr Poor Joe was simply given a small piece of the national pie, which he did not really earn. But shouldn't society look after its most vulnerable and should not the safety net be strong enough to support those who fall into dire circumstances, which they may not have been able to avoid? The present welfare system punishes you for being sick and poor. The amount given is totally inadequate to meet the basic needs of its recipients.
Now individuals like Mr Ramlogan and others who receive such incredibly huge salaries have more than enough to meet their basic needs. Heck they don't even have to ponder where their next meal is coming from or if they will be able to buy those tablets they so sorely need to treat their medical complaint.
Such individuals, it may be argued, have no need to venture into the Port-of-Spain General Hospital where they must wait patiently on other highly paid individuals to do their job. The gap between incomes in this small island state truly boggles the mind. There needs to be greater equity and a much better redistribution of our country's financial resources. There needs to be a recognition on the party of our leaders that each job has an intrinsic worth and that salaries must be paid which enable individuals to adequately support themselves and their families.
Doctors and technocrats have an important role to play but so do nurses, clerical workers, security guards, domestic servants and garbage men. To place one function so highly above another and compensate it accordingly ranks of elitism and contributes greatly to the anger felt in society among those who are the least fortunate and the least paid.
Already we are paying the price since sociologists will tell you that part of the reason for crime in any society is a lack of social equity and social justice. The body has many functions. To perform as a cohesive whole the parts have to rely on one another. A society is a similar entity.
PETER HOSPEDALES
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When will we have politicians of real substance?
Posted: Thursday, August 22, 2002
THE EDITOR: Tears almost sprang to my eyes when I heard Ramesh Maharaj on the radio, emulating Marc Anthony in his" Friends, Romans, Country-men ..." exhortation to the masses to defy the triumvirate, in which he propounds that "Cockroach ent 'fraid fowl again" and bravely stands up for the rights of the people, personified by the poor and helpless from Guaracara and Williamsville, against the powerful political hierarchy.
Such bravery! Such defiance! Our David pitting himself against Goliath, and all for us!
Where was the persona of the people's champion, however, when his erstwhile Cabinet colleagues were making mas' with the URP, acting illegally (as he, as AG proclaimed at the time) when granting the Piarco contract and, generally, doing their own thing with the people's money and also the people's rights of fair and equal treatment under a transparent and accountable democracy?
What was he doing in those days — keeping quiet and jockeying for position to assume ultimate power?
Why the brave display now — he lost out?
The big question remains: When will we have politicians of real substance, real guts, real honesty who can do the right thing for all the people and stand up for what they believe in, not merely what is convenient?
Mr Maharaj, you are not alone in being one of yesterday's men.
You had your chance to show your qualities and people with any acumen have seen, heard, considered and reached their conclusions.
Sparrow said it: "When a man is finished it is foolish to play licorish".
We look for a new, younger, morally strong contingent to step forward and send the present lot into permanent retirement!
Vox Populi, not the courts Mr Maharaj!
GEOFF HUDSON
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A Call for Professionalism
Posted: Sunday, August 18, 2002
karibkween, Trinidad & Tobago Message Board
I admire Mr. Rennie's call for professionalism in the development of our infrastructure. One of the reasons we suffer and will continue to suffer from that cursed brain-drain is that the UNC was not the first government to practise such blatant nepotism and cronyism. There is no reason why our nurses should be leaving the country for jobs elsewhere. Think of how far along our country would be in terms of our evolution, if all our elected leaders had integrity and had placed the national good over their own pettiness. But this practise is destroying, at every level, every institution in our society.
How many more of our educators, health-care professionals, engineers, political leaders, etc, etc, are we going to sacrifice? Survival is instinctive and the host of nationals living and working abroad in the U.S., Canada, England, or any of the developed nations would have been contributing to our national growth if they believed they had a chance of competing fairly for any number of positions which are now filled by someone's unqualified mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunty, nephew, niece, son, daughter and the village idiot.
I have some knowledge of the strict codes and practices employed in the science of construction, after working for many years in the corporate sector of the U.S.'s Construction Management industry. I encountered on many occasion architectural, engineering and other technical professionals who had left T&T to further their education and stayed because the opportunity to grow and advance, even if it's only to middle management for those of East-Indian and African descent, was better in their host country than it was in their homeland. That's not including the 1st and 2nd generations of T&T expatriates who possess just fleeting memories of childhood visits to relatives. If anyone wonders why the developed nations remain superior, have a look at the lines outside their various embassies, then take a survey of the level of education each person in that line has attained. In the case of T&T that education is received free of charge, so in essence T&T is contributing to the wealth of these first world nations.
When the majority of our state owned enterprises prefer to dole out bonuses to their already fat and over-paid cronies, rather than spending money on R&D or the recruitment of new talent, it's easy to understand why our roads only hold up for less than a decade and our telecommunications and energy industries fail to keep up with demands the new technology is making on its outdated 19th century infrastructure.
A close friend of mine, after many years, returned to Trinidad for carnival, on his return to the U.S. I asked him what he thought since he was barely a man when he left T&T. He said he didn't remember it being quite so third world. My friend couldn't tell if that was because he had lived so many years in a first world nation or because Trinidad had regressed. I believe it is the latter, we have regressed.
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Media bias on the Zimbabwe Crisis
Posted: Sunday, August 18, 2002
by Ayinde, Trinicenter Staff
The BBC, Guardian UK, Independent UK, Daily Telegraph UK and most news feeds are all misinforming the public about the Zimbabwe land affair. They choose to feature or highlight articles that sympathize with the White farmers that are crammed with lies.
They all claim that the shortage of food in Zimbabwe is due to the farm seizures, however this is not the entire story. Many regions in Africa are presently experiencing a drought and that is responsible for low food production. Most of the White farmers in Zimbabwe grew tobacco while peasant farmers grow about 70% of the maize used in Zimbabwe. ( Famine in southern Africa Guardian UK )
The shortage of food is directly related to the drought and trade restrictions imposed by Britain and the U.S.
It should be noted that these farms are being seized and turned over in time to get the new farmers ready for the next crop season.
Another fact usually left out is that most of the farm workers were from Malawi or Mozambique and they received an average of about US$25 a month, furthermore living conditions on the farms were awfully poor.
These Malawian and Mozambican laborers were heavily dependent on their White employers, relying on them for 'free' or heavily subsidized housing and 'health care', as well as 'education' for their children. This is the modern day slavery that these White farmers wickedly benefited from.
Most of the food problems in Africa are directly related to the colonial policy of seizing the most fertile lands in Africa to produce food for Europe. Africans were to supply cheap labour. In many cases indigenous Africans who usually grew their own food were forced unto the worst lands and as such they became dependant of food imports.
Whether we like Mugabe or not has nothing to do with the fact that the frontline media reports fail to give the readers the true picture.
Here are three other articles that give a better picture of the situation:
Zimbabwe Under Siege - by Gregory Elich
For a case study on the politics and economics behind 'sustainability,' one needs look no further than Zimbabwe. Gregory Elich presents an excellent and comprehensive review of the history of Zimbabwe and its ongoing land reform struggles in the face of drought, starvation and economic disaster perpetuated by Western intervention and demands.
Elich's work is particularly timely as Great Britain and the U.S. are considering making the sanctions against Zimbabwe more severe and will be working very hard at the Earth Summit to force African states to also impose sanctions. MORE...
Farm workers caught in the middle -BBC
(Not featured on BBC's front pages)
Zimbabwe: War on the Peasantry by George Monbiot
Race and History Zimbabwe Watch
Race and History Message Board
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They tried to hide Marcus Garvey
Posted: Saturday, August 17, 2002
by Ras Forever, Rastafari Speaks
Saturday August 17th is the birthday, of one of the Caribbean and African peoples greatest contributors, a man whose legacy some attempted to destroy, and a man who some people would like to be forgotten. An effort, which has totally failed as Garvey, remains even more popular in death, than he was in his life. This is his story.
Who is this man called Marcus Garvey and what did he do?
It has been 62 years since Marcus Garvey died on June 10th 1940 and people still keep asking the question, who is Marcus Garvey? Some called him a madman, a loser, a lunatic, a thief, a con artist and many other derogatory names. No different from what they said about Jesus the Christ or Nelson Mandela. But as we shall see truth crushed to earth as the saying goes, always rises again.
It must be said however to the disappointment of those who tried, that they have all failed to obliterate his memory, and he remains even more famous in death, than he was in life, today Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on August 17th 1887 in late 19th century Jamaica. The year of his birth was almost half a century after the Emancipation Proclamation in the British West Indies, today's Caribbean. The region remained in a purely colonial mode, with high unemployment, low wage, hunger, malnutrition, poor and virtually no education, not to mention colonial oppression of the native population especially the African.
The social structure at the time of Garvey's birth was a pyramid in structure with 3 layers. The first layer was the European authorities, settlers and their families. The second layer was the Mulatto or mixed people, and at the bottom, the huge mass of African descended people and others.
By the time Marcus Garvey was 16 years old, he had moved from the place of his birth in St Anns to the Jamaican capital Kingston. It is there he developed his sense of social consciousness, having had the added benefit of working as a printer, with access to written material. Youthful Marcus was so enthused with the world and his growing awareness of black consciousness that he began to travel through Central America on a similar path that many Jamaican migrants had taken before him, eventually ending up in England where he his sister lived.
All along the way on his travels Garvey noticed the plight of the Blackman in relation to the conditions he lived under and his general disposition of despair and hopelessness, which had him at the bottom of those post slavery, plantation economies that he had visited. He also gained much information from the left wing of the politics in England and about the struggles of other people.
It was aboard a ship on his return to Jamaica one cold and lonely night that Marcus Garvey began to think and think deep, about his fate, the Blackman's fate and his relation to the whole situation and what he could have done about it. Then it came to him there and then, like a bolt of lightning to formulate a plan. He asked of himself, Where is the Blackman's government? Where are his men of importance and great affairs? Where is his navy? Where are his warships? Where are all these things that all other nations of the earth possessed?
He was a fan of Booker T Washington and knew of his attempts to help the Blackman in America and he had spoken to Africans who lived in Africa on his journeys, so he knew that their conditions was the same as those of the West Indies, North, South and Central America, and Europe.
It was aboard that ship that night, that Garvey decided, that he was not going to complain and blame others for the situation, but he was going to take charge and hold personal responsibility for the situation. He would seek to do what everybody else had done and simply do for self, so he set his life mission in thought and in deed, until his death to seek redemption for Africa and African people wherever they might be. He worked hard to provide answers to the questions he had asked himself and found no satisfactory answers. It is that resolve, that determination, that night, on that ship, that is responsible for our speaking about Marcus Mosiah Garvey on this auspicious occasion of the 115th anniversary of his birth and life's work today.
Garvey knew fully well that in order to deal with his dream of changing the situation of the Blackman, he had to create an organization, and this he did calling it the Universal Negro Improvement Association, [the word negro being acceptable at that point] which later grew to a membership of approximately 6 million. The U.N.I.A Garvey said was to be the vehicle or instrument of rebuilding the house of the Blackman that had collapsed, because of his unpreparedness for disaster and Garvey set about his mission relentlessly to reconstruct that house from the foundation, which he knew could have only been in Africa, but there was much work to be done, so he started his job.
During the period just after World War 1 up to the beginning of World War 11, was a very difficult period of international politics, and it is during that time that Garvey worked and became an international figure, feared and maligned by his detractors, which included governments, organizations and individuals, some even within his very organization, and by the time of his passing in 1940, he had been shot at, stabbed, persecuted, maligned, imprisoned, arrested, deported from the United States all in an attempt to stop the power of his ideas, taking root among the Black peoples of the world. And blazed a path across the universe of space and time he did.
Before his physical death, Garvey was to achieve many successes, with the most significant being the rehabilitation of the African sense of pride and self, for all time. He said in London England in 1928 that he was the forerunner of an awakened Africa that shall never go back to sleep, and even in his death, he would return to help finish the work, he had started.
Garvey established his organization which still exists today in every black community of the world, he gave the Black people of the world a voice at a time when the trauma of chattel slavery and rape of Africa, made Africans voiceless, he planted firmly the ideas of repatriation and the importance of Africa to the Black peoples of the world, he set in train the labor movement in the Caribbean, he began the regions political independence movements, many political organizations developed from the breaking up of his organization after his deportation, especially in the U.S.A and which are still strong today, including the Nation of Islam and several key others, he established prototypes of Black businesses in shipping, factories, newspapers, civic organizations etc, setting up of Liberty Halls as meeting places for Blacks around the world, he held massive important international conventions of African peoples of the world in Madison Square Garden in New York with over 25 thousand people at such occasions, he had direct influences on the 20th century anti-colonial movement leaders who went on to take power in their countries including Ho Chi Min of Vietnam, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Nzamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria etc, and many much more profound and important contributions that space does not permit.
In closing Garvey did not preach hatred to anyone, but rather love, pride, self-respect and independence for Africans whose independence civilization and homeland was seriously retarded by the events of the 400 years prior to his birth. Halting and reversing that tide was his life's mission statement and that of his organization. Thus he did so much, with so little, at the worst of times, and today he has the eternal gratitude of all those on whose behalf, he fought so valiantly for, and his name and pictures are household in many communities of the world.
Garvey is specially revered by the Rastafari movement, as the man who gave the signal to look forward to the Coronation of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellassie on November 2nd 1930, when he said in 1927, Kingston Jamaica "Look to Africa where a king would be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near." It was interpreted by the early Rastafari, like Howell, Dunkley and Hibbert, as the coming of the Lord to save and bring about change in the world, to make the weak strong, to make the right wrong and bring universal, peace, justice and equality to the African and all mankind.
Garvey had this to say in 1922
"Lift up yourselves, men, take yourselves out of the mire and hitch your hopes to the very stars themselves. Let no man pull you down, let no man destroy your ambition, because man is but your companion, your equal; man is your brother; he is not your Lord, he is not your sovereign master."
Marcus Garvey August 17th 1887 - June 10th 1940.
Thanks Marcus. We Love You.
PS. Saturday August 17th is also the birthday of several local personalities among them present Prime Minister Patrick Manning, Nation of Islam head and radio personality David Muhammad, Local promoter and head of Penal Electricity Commission office, Selcrest Husbands.
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Strange comparisons
Posted: Saturday, August 17, 2002
THE EDITOR: I was a little astonished to read about Mr Vishnu Ramlogan’s salary whilst President of Tidco. For comparison’s sake, here are some Canadian public service salaries.
The positions are in the City of Toronto which is one of the largest governments in Canada, providing a multitude of services to over 2.5 million people speaking in excess of 100 languages.
The range of responsibilities and complexity of these senior positions exceeds anything at Tidco or FCB. The current salary ranges (converted at a rate of Can$1 to TT$4) are:
Chief Administrative Officer TT$80,111 to $89,123 per month; Chief Financial Officer TT$55,982 to $64,379 per month; and the newly created position, Executive Director of Tourism TT$38,975 to $48,329 per month.
So where did Tidco’s compensation comparisons come from?
Mark Hopkins
Diego Martin
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We are emancipated in word not in spirit
Posted: Friday, August 16, 2002
Emancipation Day, my favourite time of the year, has come and passed with the same fanfare and celebration; not to take anything away from us: wanting to have two Carnivals in one year but let's ask ourselves: What are we truly celebrating? Our naivety or folly?
After 164 years, since the abolition of slavery; this day should be treated as a memorial and not as a day for celebration. Just to quote President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa: "the story of the African people, is the story of the loss of our ancient freedom. It is the story of our reduction to the state of objects who could be owned, used and discarded by others." (There is nothing, in such a legacy, worth celebrating.)
Emancipation means: set free from slavery or servitude or restraint or restriction. Are we absolutely free from the master's whip, or relieved from servitude and restraint?
As we speak, Africans who have never left Africa, the-mother-country and their descendants from the "Middle Passage" are still not yet truly emancipated in the true sense of the word: in word only, not in spirit. In South Africa, the wealthiest region in Africa, with a government controlled by "Black Africans", the dismantling of apartheid has not made a great impact on the sufferings poverty and subjugation of the "Black Africans."
In America the wealthiest country in the world and the Caribbean, a region with enviable potentials-tourist wise-and inexhaustible natural resources, the same parallel could be drawn. We the descendants of Africans, domiciled in the West, share the same fate as our African brothers\sisters in Africa; we are yet to be freed from the yoke of slavery; for us Emancipation will continuously be deferred.
The reality escapes us but like the persistent "weatherman," hopefully, one day we will-"call it right." As of now, instead of celebrating Emancipation Day we should all on August 1st 2003, pay homage to our ancestors who made it through the "Middle Passage," facing insurmountable hardships and degradation by transforming Emancipation Day to Memorial Day. It is about time, that we desist from desecrating their ultimate sacrifice; enhancing it with some degree of gratitude and respect.
Ulric Guy,
Point Fortin, Trinidad and Tobago
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One Good Man is worth 14 MP's
Posted: Thursday, August 15, 2002
THE EDITOR: I think that Trinidad, has a severe drought of politicians with logic, reason or just pure good old common sense. How can a bunch of politicians [other people also] argue that raising the salaries of elected Members of Parliament by a couple thousand dollars per month is to much, and at the same time turn around, approve, justify and see nothing wrong with an employee of the State, [the said politicians] receiving a salary equivalent of roughly 14 members of a 36 seat Parliament, per month.
If this was not such a tragedy to the people who would pay for all this, it would have been an excellent comedy.
PS. The lucky employee then gets a further performance bonus that he knows nothing about for a loss making company. He must be connected or related to the big man in the sky. I think I would claim copyrights.
KURT GARCIA
Mucurapo Rd
St James.
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Carlos John's Arrogance
Posted: Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Unveiling Private Sector Arrogance
I rued the pathetic picture of the MP for St. Joseph, Mr Carlos John, Mr Nice Guy, bedecked in sartorial, bearded elegance displaying his inimitable brand of private sector arrogance to the Press. He unconvincingly tried to rationalise and promised an encore of his flagrante delicto of the collective wisdom of the past represented by the checks and balances instituted by Parliament to control the disbursement of the public purse. This is clearly symptomatic of the laisser faire modus operandi that underpinned the machinations of the previous regime.
Each day the media "busses" another mark that unveils sordid details of the amazing, dramatic reckless epic katha of what passed for "performance beating ole talk" at astronomical prices but which was nothing less or more than a well lubricated and financed PR machinery that invaded the coffers of national patrimony like a cancer and ravished the body public.
Here was the former high priest of the "prayerful" conglomerate (a la Maharaj) who was recruited from the secrecy - prone ambience of the private sector where public scrutiny is non-existent. He was laser beamed as the brightest comet illuminating the UNC firmament and strode UNC stages like an instantaneous mighty colossus. But sadly his arrogance precluded him from making the requisite private- to- public sector adjustment or did he copycat his penchant for the abuse of the public purse from the "Build the Damn School" in Biche syndrome?
Yet Mr John boasts of being more gifted that any PNM Cabinet member even though he intentionally approved illegal allowances to public servants when he possessed no such competence. He also usurped the role of his PS.
Mr. John has helped the public to disabuse their minds of the orchestrated myth that private sector gurus are superior to over-worked, under-paid public sector managers even though he emancipated himself from being indebted to banks while in the private sector to an overnight public sector status possessive of enormous liquidity.
He is neither the first nor the last to make a quantum leap from the private into the public sector and prove to be an unmitigated disaster. Compare the level of expensive non-performance that former Ambassador Michael Arneaud of the T&T Chamber of Commerce visited on our Embassy in Washington and then faded into the sunset.
One has to be at the receiving end, as I have been since 1986, to appreciate the harrowing experiences that private sector arrogance, based on- know -it- all, has inflicted in the regulated public, scrutinized domain.
Stephen Kangal
CARONI
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Panday at his 'best', again
Posted: Monday, August 12, 2002
Mr Panday seems to be at his snapping best once again.
In response to queries from the Auditor General as to the manner in which contracts were awarded in the UNC's controversial $1 billion package of road works, Mr Panday justified his government's flouting of every tender procedure, claiming that he had to pave the people's roads.
Forget proper procedures; forget the rule of law; forget that we operate under a Constitution - just get the job done.
That seems to be the former Prime Minister's modus operandi.
It is the same type of instruction given to construct the Biche High School. Mr Panday again seemed to be more interested in finding out who leaked the report than with the contents of the report.
Jerry
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‘Trinity’ didn’t start with Christians
Posted: Tuesday, August 6, 2002
THE EDITOR: I would like to register my objection to any move to change the name of the Trinity Cross, instigated by those who might be unaware of the universality of the nomenclature.
Permit me to put forward some clarification that emanates from the custodians of the ancient wisdom.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not to be found formally stated in the New Testament. It was devised by church councils formulating a creed whose terms are not biblical.
Once formulated, however, it could be justified by reference to the New Testament.
The fact is that the triune deity is found at the head of all theogonies and cosmogonies, and philosophical systems usually begin with something equivalent. In the very beginning of the Bible it is represented as the Spirit of God, brooding over the waters of space or chaos, and bringing forth the universe.
This is the great creative trinity which stands at the head of cosmogonies: a universal spirit, father of all; then comes the chaos, which is often called the great mother.
From these two proceed the son, which is the universe. This philosophical trinity was adopted by the church, which put them into harmony with all the other religions and philosophies and with various Eastern systems current in Asia Minor.
Thereafter, the persons of this trinity could then be readily found in the New Testament where Jesus often spoke of the Father and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit which he will send. The idea of the trinity, therefore, did not originate with Christianity, nor is it an exclusively Christian phenomenon.
With respect to the cross, this is a universal and philosophical symbol, found in places as remote as Palenque in Mexico, India, and Tibet. It is well known in Egyptian symbolism, as it is in Hinduism. It is an emblem used in the sacred mysteries of ancient Greece.
Dr Lundy in his book Monumental Christianity speaks of a Hindu sculpture of ancient date, a human figure upon a cross, with the nail marks on hands and feet, a pre-Christian crucifix in fact
The teachings of the ancient wisdom were preserved in a universal symbol-language, which conveyed the leading tenets.
The sun, moon and cross form a trinity of symbols, denoting respectively father, mother son; cosmic spirit, cosmic matter, and the universe produced by their interaction.
The two lines of the cross stand for spirit and matter and their crossing denotes the union or interaction of these two elements to form the manifested universe.
In the case of man, who is a miniature copy of the universe, the cross denotes the Word made flesh, the Son, the Christ.
This Christ pre-dates Jesus and has been in every person since the beginning of time and is the divine part of his nature. The divine spirit in man is said to be crucified, made into a cross, caused to dwell in a residence of flesh; and this crucifixion is destined to be succeeded by a resurrection.
The crucifixion of the Christ is the symbolic name for this cardinal tenet of the ancient wisdom, later materialised into the story of an actual crucifixion of Jesus by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.
Far from being a Christian thing, therefore, the Trinity Cross represents an essential ancient truth: that man is a divine spirit incarnate in an animal body and that his salvation consists of subduing his lower nature by means of his higher, and that the true law of human conduct is that which is expressed in the Golden Rule.
This truth lies at the base of all religions, and Christianity, far from having originated it, or even improved it, has merely inherited it.
Eden A Shand
Cascade
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