Augustus: Let's move on

Anna Ramdass aramdass@trinidadexpress.com
Saturday, November 17th 2007

Congress of the People (COP) chairman Roy Augustus and United National Congress Alliance (UNC-A) co-leader Jack Warner have both said that the recent verbal fight between them is something they want to forget.

However, even as both men disclosed to the Express that the entire controversy was something they want to put behind them, they added it does not mean all is well. In fact, they say it only means they will go their separate ways, bringing an end to over 25 years of friendship and four years of working together professionally.

"It is a phase of my life that I have put behind me," Augustus said in a brief telephone interview with the Express yesterday.

Pressed for further comment on the spat which led to his dismissal from his post as deputy CEO at Concacaf, Augustus said, "I have nothing to say now or ever on this matter."

Asked what he would do next in life, Augustus said that was his personal business and he did not wish to divulge any information with regard to his future.

Warner, who is also the president of Concacaf and a FIFA vice-president, meanwhile said he wanted to forget Augustus and the entire verbal spat.

"It is a phase I have put behind me... I have no intention of reliving that," Warner said.
On Thursday, Warner said he had sacked Augustus because he was verbally abusive to him and was putting his political interest before his job and lied to him.

Yesterday, Warner said Augustus was no longer a concern of his, and that he was now more focused on helping the people of this country as a Member of Parliament for Chaguanas West.

He added that he had over 400 employees and Augustus was just another one who "got fired".

When asked if he had already started looking for a new employee to fill Augustus's former position, Warner said, "Don't you not know that when one door closes, another one opens?"



It fockin good. Why the fock yuh take so long Jack.

The man bring all yuh business on the platform. He working for yuh and taking ah setta time off to campaign for dat fockin 3/4 dead COrPse. And want to turn around and cuss yuh.

Ah tell yuh, these fockin COP cyats real boldface eh know.

Right, is time to lick up Baldy and Ken Emrith now. Doh fockin wait.

COP drops dual-citizenship case

By SEAN DOUGLAS
Saturday, November 17 2007

ATTORNEY Anand Ramlogan who unsuccessfully competed for the Tabaquite seat in the November 5 General Election on a Congress of the People (COP) ticket, said the Congress has given up on taking legal action against UNC A St Augustine MP Vasant Bharath and Oropouche West MP Mickela Panday, over the issue of alleged dual-citizenship.

Mickela was born in Trinidad and has denied ever acquiring a UK passport, while Bharath holds dual citizenship through having been born in the UK.

Ramlogan had argued the Representation of the People Act’s ban on dual-citizenship should include not only acquired foreign-nationality, but also any TT national who was born abroad and later swears allegiance to that foreign country by applying for a passport.

However the COP has ditched its efforts to test the Act. Ramlogan called for Bharath to nevertheless renounce his UK citizenship. When contacted by Newsday, Bharath retorted, “There is no need for me to do so at this time. If the law changes, then I will do so.”

He reiterated that he was a Trinidadian first and foremost who had just happened to be born in the UK when his father had been doing post graduate studies. Bharath queried the residency/nationality status of several named top-members of the COP and PNM.

He said a top PNM politician was known to have been born outside of TT, while a top COP official should clarify his residency status regarding Canada.

Look at these chupid conts eh...

For a big time lawyer Anand eh play he move like ah real caksy hole nah.

The fockin ass froth up he mouth all over the place for the last election. The cont an dem take out ah setta fockin whole page ads to tell people doh vote for dem. Spend ah setta money like cont then to drop the whole matter.

It just shows that COP was workin for the PNM.

Dem mudders cont should really cry fockin shame.

Girl, 3, watches as mom murdered
A SCREAMING Tineka Constantine, aged three, watched in horror as her mother was being chopped to death by a close male relative on Thursday in front of her Paramin Village, Maraval, home.

Policeman beaten up
A POLICEMAN who was returning to station after conducting enquiries was badly beaten when he intervened in a fight where two men were beating up a woman at the side of a road in Buen Intento, Princes Town on Tuesday morning.

Man rapes relative
SOUTHERN DIVISION police are searching for a 26-year-old man who allegedly raped a 23- year-old female relative during a family lime at the victim’s home.

Gunman shot, another held
A MAN has been hospitalised while another is in police custody and a third person is on the run following an early morning shootout between police and suspects at Sisters Road in Hardbargain, South Trinidad yesterday.

Bandits attack brothers
POLICE ARE searching for two bandits, one of whom shot and robbed a salesman while he and his brother were conducting sales in the Barrackpore area on Thursday.

Laventille man murdered
A 25-YEAR-OLD man of Trou Macaque Road, Laventille was shot dead while walking along Village Council Street in Laventille on Thursday night.

Watchman found dead
POLICE ARE investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a watchman found slumped over the steering wheel of his car yesterday morning. The man has been identified as Mannieram Khadan, 49, of Dubarrie Trace, Barrackpore.

Girl,14, begs court for prison
A-14-YEAR-OLD girl yesterday asked a magistrate to send her to the Women’s Prison at Golden Grove so she could benefit from counselling, rather than back to her siblings.

The St Clair police are aware that our students are attacked all the time—cellphones and money are taken away.
IN what school principal Lennard Hinkson calls an “on-going problem,” some Queen’s Royal College (QRC) students were attacked and almost robbed opposite the United States Embassy, Port-of-Spain, in an incident that began near the school compound just before 2 pm yesterday...

Sixteen murders since election
A 20-YEAR-OLD Paramin mother became the country’s sixteenth murder victim since the 2007 general election 11 days ago...

Just a quick glance at today's newspapers.

Things real fockin sweet in Trinidad eh !

Pizza Boys Glencoe

First hand account of where we reach.

Charissa & I decide to order pizza from Pizza Boys Glencoe on the way home from errands after church.

Arrive at Pizza Boys at 10:45am on a Sunday morning, we enter The Food Mall at Highland Plaza and about 10 - 12 youths (18 - 25yrs) making noise with some of the staff. One time comments start to pass about my wife.

Ah man call me , 'Red Man, come leh meh talk to yuh'

So I just told him I just came to pick up and went in the line with Cherry in front of me.

So the guys continue making noise with the staff and a few of them fixated on Charissa. By now I realise they refer to Themselves as 'City of Gods' and some of them actually have it printed on their shirts.

As I step to the cashier I notice out the corner of my eye one of them try to touch Cherry ass.

So I grab his hand and step between them. I said to him , 'Bro, doh be on that'.

One time he watch me and start threatening me up in my face ............ asking me if I feel I bullet proof because I white, and telling me he could kill me right there and have Cherry if he want. So I just held his gaze and clenched my fists. Trust me if he touched her this email might not have come this morning.

He step away still talking and this time now 3 or 4 of them watching me waiting for a reaction.

So I tell Cherry we will leave soon as I think it safe. (this time I studying inside the place have cameras and I doh want them following us outside so we cyah leave just yet). The man start balling how he will 'F*** Charissa in her ass and buss her Shit Box after he shoot me'......... ......... ... hmmmm.

Anyway, after a few minutes of tension, a separate and unrelated altercation broke out between another gang member and a pizza boys staff member so once their attention was diverted I grabbed Charissa and we buss out briskly.

By the time we reach home I was quiet. Both of us were upset but it had not sunk in. I started to mount up a TV stand we have to make myself feel useful...... ...... hell of a helpless feeling to shake off.

But by this time my wife is crying inside. At least we had company coming over so no time to dwell on it.

But Charissa is really shaken up and scared. Trust me, there are fates worse than death if you're a woman.

Cyah explain to alyuh how this makes me feel. Just figured I would write because it is driving me insane and I guess some of us still in denial about the state of our beloved country.

When do you react? When is it worth it? In this day and age , who gonna jump in to help?

Alyuh ever see that movie , 'A Time to Kill' with Matthew MacConoughy & Sam Jackson ?????(ironically the night before we watched 'The Brave One')

Anyway, needed to get it off my chest.

Keep Cherry in your prayers because it may not be obvious but she is traumatized and it was two streets away from home so it is a little difficult to brush off!

Feet on ground...Heart in hand...Facing forward...Be Yourself...



The fact is Trinidad continues to live a lie and everyone refuses to call the fockin spade ah fockin spade while the PNM Government continues to protect "poor little nigga boys" aka community leaders.



The problem is that the African male underclass (niggas) is the problem.

They bave been brought up and programmed by the PNM to believe that we all owe them something. The reality is that laziness is the root of all evil.

In a country flowing with money and jobs these "poor little nigga boys" dont want to work but they want money and they want bling and the brand name shoes too.

By December its Christmas and its time to rob some fockin Coolies and kidnap and rape their daughters.

Then its Carnival and they need money again and so the cycle goes.

Trinidad is finished.

FOCKIN DUMB ASS NIGGAS

Vanessa Vick for The New York Times
Afonso García, 6, was exiled from his relatives’ household after being accused of being a witch.

By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: November 15, 2007
UIGE, Angola — Domingos Pedro was only 12 years old when his father died. The passing was sudden; the cause was a mystery to doctors. But not to Domingos’s relatives.
They gathered that afternoon in Domingos’s mud-clay house, he said, seized him and bound his legs with rope. They tossed the rope over the house’s 10-foot-high rafters and hoisted him up until he was suspended headfirst over the hard dirt floor. Then they told him they would cut the rope if he did not confess to murdering his father.
“They were yelling, ‘Witch! Witch!’” Domingos recalled, tears rolling down his face. “There were so many people all shouting at me at the same time.”
Terrified, Domingos told them what they wanted to hear, but his relatives were not appeased. Ferraz Bulio, the neighborhood’ s traditional leader, said seven or eight captors were dragging Domingos down a dirt path to the river, apparently to drown him, when he intervened.
“They were slapping him and punching him,” Mr. Bulio recalled. “This is the way people react toward someone accused of witchcraft. There are lots of such cases.”
Mr. Bulio is right. In parts of Angola, Congo and the Congo Republic, a surprising number of children are identified as witches and beaten, abused or abandoned. Child advocates estimate that thousands of street children in Kinshasa, Congo’s rubble-strewn capital, have been accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families — often as a rationale for not having to feed or care for them.
The authorities in one northern Angolan town identified 432 street children who had been abandoned or abused as suspected witches. A report last year by the government’s National Institute for the Child and the United Nations Children’s Fund described the number of children deemed to be witches as “massive.”
The notion of child witches is not new here. It is a common belief in Angola’s dominant Bantu culture that witches can communicate with the world of the dead and usurp or “eat” the life force of others, bringing their victims misfortune, illness and death. Adult witches are said to bewitch children by giving them food, then forcing them to reciprocate by sacrificing a family member.
But officials attribute the surge in persecutions of children to war — 27 years in Angola, ending in 2002, and near constant strife in Congo. The conflicts orphaned many children, while leaving other families intact but too destitute to feed themselves.
“The witches situation started when fathers became unable to care for the children,” said Ana Silva, who is in charge of child protection for the children’s institute. “So they started seeking any justification to expel them from the family.”
Since then, Ms. Silva said, the phenomenon has followed poor migrants from the northern Angolan provinces of Uige and Zaire to the slums of the fast-growing capital, Luanda.
Two recent cases horrified officials there. In June, Ms. Silva said, a Luanda mother blinded her 14-year-old daughter with chlorine bleach to try to rid her of evil visions. In August, a father injected battery acid into his 12-year-old son’s stomach because the man feared the boy was a witch, she said.
Angola’s government has campaigned since 2000 to dispel notions about child witches, Ms. Silva said, but progress comes slowly. “We cannot change the belief that witches exist,” she said. “Even the professional workers believe that witches exist.”
Instead, her institute is trying to teach everyone, from police officers to teachers to religious leaders, that violence against children is never justified.
The Angolan city of Mbanza Congo, just 50 miles from Angola’s border with Congo, has blazed a trail. After a child accused of witchcraft was stabbed to death in 2000, provincial officials and Save the Children, the global charitable organization, rounded up 432 street children and reunited 380 of them with relatives, the witchcraft report stated.
Eleven fundamentalist churches were shut down because of reports of child exploitation and abuse. Eight Congolese pastors were deported. Villages formed committees to monitor children’s rights. The authorities say the number of children who are abused or living on the streets dropped drastically.
Uige, about 100 miles to the south of Mbanza Congo, is another story. Surrounded by lush green hills, it is a cluster of mud-clay settlements around crumbling shops pockmarked by bullet holes. In this region, said Bishop Emilio Sumbelelo of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, persecution of children is rising.
“It is very, very, very common in the villages,” he said. “We know that some children have been killed.”
His church runs the town’s only sanctuary for children victimized as witches, a shelter barely bigger than a three-car garage. Thirty-two boys, including Domingos, occupy bunk beds stacked a foot apart, their few clothes stashed in cardboard boxes underneath. No shelter exists for girls.
Since July, all newcomers have been turned away. “Children come here to ask for protection, but we have no space,” the bishop said. “To date, we have not found any special way to fight against this phenomenon.” Many of the shelter’s boys describe pasts of abuse, rejection and fear. Saldanha David Gomes, 18, who lived with his aunt until he was 12, said she turned on him after her 3-year-old daughter fell ill and died.
After, he said, his aunt refused to feed him and bound his hands and feet each evening, fearing that he would take another victim.
A neighbor finally warned him to flee. “I am not a witch, and I was not a witch,” Saldanha said. “But I had to run away because they were threatening to kill me.”
Afonso García, 6, took the shelter’s last empty cot in July. “I came here on my own because my father doesn’t like me and I was not eating every day,” he said matter-of-factly.
After Afonso’s mother died three years ago, he moved in with his father. His stepmother, Antoinette Eduardo, said she began to suspect that he was a witch after neighborhood children reported that he had eaten a razor. Besides that, she said, “he was getting thinner and thinner, even though he was eating well.”
Under questioning, she said, Afonso admitted that a male relative had visited him in his dreams, demanding that he kill a family member. Afonso denies ever confessing to witchcraft.
What unfolded next is typical of many cases here. Afonso’s relatives turned to a traditional healer for a cure.
The 30-year-old healer, João Ginga, wears a fur-collared leather jacket and works out of what he calls a hospital — a cramped mud-walled room. “If someone has a bad spirit, I can tell,” he said one recent morning as clients waited on a wooden bench. “We treat more than a thousand cases a year.”
With such a busy trade, Mr. Ginga said, he could not remember Afonso’s case. Afonso’s aunt, Isabella Armando, said her family gave Mr. Ginga $270 in cash, candles, perfume and baby powder to treat Alfonso.
Mr. Ginga performed some rituals, put a substance in Afonso’s eyes that made him sob in pain and pronounced him cured, she said. But Afonso’s father and stepmother, the only relatives who could afford to care for him, did not agree, and exiled him from their household.
“I pitied him, and I still pity him because he was living in the streets,” the stepmother explained. “But we were afraid”
Mr. Ginga is hardly the only healer here who claims to cure child witches. Sivi Munzemba said she exorcised possessed children by inserting a poultice of plants into their anuses, shaving their heads and sequestering them for two weeks in her house.
Moises Samuel, the director of the provincial office of the children’s institute, said he was concerned not only about traditional healers but also about a bevy of churches with soothsayers who claimed to exorcise evil spirits and drew crowds even on weekdays.
Once a soothsayer or healer brands a child a witch, child welfare specialists say, even the police often back away.
Officers kept Domingos, the boy who was suspended from a rafter, for one night at the station house, then sent him home, said Mr. Bulio, the settlement’s traditional leader. They never investigated Domingos’s uncle, who Mr. Bulio said led the attack.
“Of course it was a crime,” Mr. Bulio said. “But because it is witchcraft, the police do not take any responsibility.”
Domingos, now 15, insisted that he said he was a witch only to save his life. But even his 32-year-old mother, Maria Pedro, disbelieves him.
Ms. Pedro is obviously fond of Domingos, her oldest child. She beams over his academic progress and worries about further attacks by his relatives, should he leave the shelter.
Still, she said, she suspects that he was bewitched into murder. “It must be true because he himself confessed,” she said, eyeing Domingos carefully across a table in her two-bedroom house.
At that, Domingos stood up and walked swiftly from the house. Ten minutes later, he reappeared in the doorway, his face red and splotchy. “Mother, from this day on, I am no longer your son,” he declared fiercely.
Ms. Pedro wordlessly watched him go. “I just don’t know why Domingos got so angry,” she said later.

Pistol and ammo missing from Police Headquarters

BY GEISHA KOWLESSAR
The homes of at least four senior police officers were being searched up to late yesterday afternoon, after a Smith and Wesson pistol went missing from the property box of the Police Administration building in Port-of-Spain over the weekend.

And senior members of the police executive have admitted to being “baffled” as to how the firearm, along with 25 rounds of live ammunition, “mysteriously disappeared” from a heavily-guarded area.

The missing gun comes in wake of another similar incident in which a police constable was nabbed red-handed trying to break into the property room of the abandoned St Joseph Police Station on Saturday evening.

But despite a full-scale probe by cops, the items which went missing from the Police Administration building are yet to be found and arrests made.

According to a senior officer, the items were discovered missing almost immediately after the afternoon shift reported for duty on Saturday.

“The morning shift worked from 8 am to 6 pm. But when the afternoon shift took over from 6 pm, officers who checked the property box discovered the firearm and ammunition missing,” the officer added.

According to the officer, immediately after the firearm was discovered missing they made repeated sweeps of the premises.

But some two hours later, nothing was found.

Another officer said lawmen assigned to Saturday’s morning shift were interviewed “at length,” but they all denied knowledge of the missing firearm and ammunition.

“It seems strange that an area where there is always a constant and heavy police presence a firearm and ammunition could go missing like that.

“What is even more strange is the fact that no officer saw anything amiss that day,” another officer said yesterday.

Investigations ongoing

During the weekly press briefing yesterday afternoon, Police Commissioner Trevor Paul said his officers were working to bring closure to the matter.

“Search warrants have been executed and officers are steadfastly working to bring closure to the matter as soon as possible.”


Yes Papa!

The fockin onslaught continues. Ages ago everybody saying the fockin police involved in crime in this country. Dey find ah senior fockin nigga police wid ransom money in he office and home...nutten done. He get paid vacation wid driver and big office in New York.

Dey find ah next fockin nigga police and he son depositing money in ah fockin bank and again....nutten done.

Dey now begininng to prime up for all dem fockin stupid knife and fork coolies dat vote for COP. Dey comin soon for all yuh mudder cont.

Yuh see dey done start teefin gun and ammo to rent out to dey pardners

Hold all yuh fockin head and bawl in shame in front all yuh fockin mirror.

Duncee head fockin coolies.

CRIME

Las Lomas women in hiding
By RHONDOR DOWLAT
Tuesday, November 13 2007
OVER 7,000 Las Lomas residents are said to be running scared since the upsurge of bandit attacks in the area. The women are also said to be in hiding as they are attacked by the bandits who are described as “No respecter of colour, creed, race and age.”

Girl, 12, critical after rape
Tuesday, November 13 2007
A 12-YEAR-old schoolgirl is fighting for her life at the San Fernando General Hospital after she was allegedly tied up and sexually assaulted by two masked men at her Rio Claro home yesterday morning. Police report the men also stuffed a melongene into her body and left her for dead.

Woman stabbed to death
Tuesday, November 13 2007
A 25-YEAR-OLD woman of Chinapoo Village in Morvant died at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital yesterday shortly after being stabbed by a male relative.

Scalping suspect surrenders
By Andre Bagoo
Tuesday, November 13 2007
A man who allegedly chopped and scalped the boyfriend of his former common law wife surrendered to the police at the St Clair office of attorney Jagdeo Singh last night.

Crime rises as Manzanilla police post closed
Carolyn Kissoon South Bureau
Tuesday, November 13th 2007
An increase in break-ins, illegal drug sales and the lack of a permanent police presence in their community have caused residents of Manzanilla to lock their doors early. Residents have been running scared since a mobile police post which was stationed in their community was removed nearly three months ago.

Relatives worry as killers still at large 85-year-old San Juan woman found dead
Peter Christopher pchristopher@trinidadexpress.com
Tuesday, November 13th 2007
IT has been two weeks since 85-year-old Leonora Burnette was found dead at her home in San Juan. Since then, the family's home at Jogie Road has remained vacant, as police continue to investigate the incident. However, no one has yet been officially charged with the killing.

This is only from today's newspaper!

We on ah fockin roll.

As Panday said, "to those of you that voted for the PNM and the COP, you should look yourself in the fockin mirror and cry shame.

This is what you voted for!