rootsandculture

by clairmont chung “Carlos Brathwaite! Carlos Brathwaite! Carlos Brathwaite!” screamed a hoarse Ian Bishop, as Brathwaite’s fourth successive and winning six landed somewhere. Bishop urged we recognize Brathwaite as a star of the future. Co-commentator, David Lloyd philosophized that ‘the future is right here, right now!” Bishop, emotional like never before, suggested history had been created. I half expected Lloyd to counter, “history is right here, right now".   And history is. Darren Sammy (C) Getty Images Those were the final moments of the 2016 World Twenty/20 Cup Final on April 3, 2016: four consecutive sixes to win a world tournament. Victory for the West Indies over England meant joy all over the cricket world, maybe not as much in England, everyone’s old rival. No cricket fan had witnessed anything like that before. No West Indies fan had felt like that for a long time. Earlier that day WI Women defeated Australia for their first world title. Both games had a...

by clairmont chung Many thought the Cold War over: dead and buried in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. The winners claimed their medals and the superiority of their ideas. These formed an alliance centered on notions of individual freedoms and a free market. Seemingly, slowly, the rest of the world fell into smug step. But, now, as the whole planet grapples with the same old but growing income inequalities and all kinds of fundamentalism, environmental degradation, mass health emergencies, racism and xenophobia, huge cracks have opened in once sacred alliances. Smaller countries like Guyana and others in the region struggle to fill their cracks while being knocked around by huge waves that originate elsewhere, in a struggle to stay afloat and a lifeline with room for only a few. For Guyana, more than most, it seems a lot like that old Cold War.   The offered lifeline is the exploitation of resources but that has brought little benefit to its caretakers; only its ta...

by clairmont chung Our penal system came out from the enslavement system. Until we recognize that, bigger better prisons would lead nowhere. They too will be filled with the hordes of the dehumanized; and the population desensitized. (C)INewsGuyana Survivors of the prison massacre taken for medical attention The 17 men incinerated at the Georgetown Prison on Thursday, March 3, 2016, are a warning of things to come. It has reached a point where we do not recognize our own contributions to the condition; our fuel to the fire. Fire has been a traditional political weapon to terrorize poor people, and the bomb its most recent incarnation. At no point was this truer than now: a time of the Walter Rodney COI, its delayed report and the Georgetown Prison massacre. In one week Guyana’s political leadership felt compelled to denounce testimony from one Commission of Inquiry, WRCOI, solely because it came from a convict and then convene another ‘Commission of Inqui...