THE RETURNING MEMBERS OF ISLAMIC STATE

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Turkey is holding 2,280 Islamic State members from 30 nations and that all of them will be deported. It's a good bet that there will be more than one or two Trinis in that group (as well as elsewhere) which means that they will be here sooner or later.


But here's the problem: regardless of what these people will say, what are the odds that they have been de-radicalized? Put another way, it is a fair bet that many of these Islamic State members (women as well as men) have received training in terrorist activities and (perhaps more importantly) how to conduct warfare ... especially guerilla warfare.


So? What's the problem, you ask? Well, we know that we have a great many guns ... a lot of real guns, such as AK 47's and semi automatic rifles coming into the country. And a lot means A LOT!!  We also know that we have a very serious gang problem with God knows how many gang members floating around with access to this heavy weaponry. So, if these ISIS members come back home to good old T&T with the specialized training that they have received what do you think the chances are that they will gravitate towards one or the other of these gangs and start to train them in the art of warfare? Such training is not exactly available right now to these gangs ... or at least, I don't think that it is. And when they (the gangs) receive such training what do you think will happen with our already out of control crime situation? And when the ISIS people  come back home how many do you think will or are going to fit right back into society as if they had never left and will get jobs and settle down quietly forever and ever, amen? (I agree with you: not a lot!)


What can be done? Well, the simplest answer is to strip anybody who has joined any terrorist organization of his/her TT citizenship and prevent him/her from ever returning home. But this approach has a large number of rather obvious legal as well as ethical problems and I'm not certain that this would be the right solution. Another approach might be to detain everybody and anybody who went away to join Islamic State and to subject them to what can be euphemistically referred to as "re-education." Again, this is not exactly a good solution and it raises some rather obvious legal and ethical problems.


It is a truism that there is always a solution to every problem. The trouble is that very often the solutions are worse than the problems themselves. Frankly, I really don't know what would be best for our society as regards these ISIS people and how we should handle them. But I do know that their return represents a real threat to our society and that one way or the other we are going to have to deal with it. It is better that  we start to discuss this problem now rather than wait until it is upon us.


For me, this is more important right now than a lot of the platform rhetoric that we are getting about 'who t'ief what' or 'who is de bigger t'ief'. Not that those questions aren't important, but the threat to the safety and security of our little republic is very real and is not something that most of us are bothering to think about.

THE BENEFIT TO T&T OF BEING FRIENDLY WITH MADURO

The internet news site MSN is today reporting that the Government of the United States is accusing President Nicholas Maduro of enriching himself by working with criminal gangs, organized crime and terror groups. The commander of the US Southern Command based in Miami, Admiral Craig Faller is reported as saying "We're seeing an increase in drug trafficking placed out of Venezuela that is aided and abetted by the illegitimate Maduro regime.In fact, the Maduro regime has a negative impact on every single security aspect in this hemisphere. All the challenges are made worse by the Venezuelan crisis." He went on to say that the Maduro Government is getting rich through drug trafficking! "There's over a 50 percent increase of narcotrafficking in and through Venezuela, and Maduro and his cronies are lining their pockets, in cahoots with the illicit narcotrafficking," Faller said.


Okay. This is hardly news to many who believe that this has been going on for some time. But a serious charge, such as this, ought to make those currently in charge of Trinidad & Tobago's own security sit up and take notice ... especially when it comes from such a high ranking source. You see, the Rowley regime has not only continued to recognize the Maburro regime ... I'm sorry, I mean the Maduro regime ... but continues to do business with it. And in the meantime our own crime rate in T&T seems to be soaring through the roof. Everybody (and I mean everybody) knows someone who has either personally been a victim of a crime or who has had a family member, robbed, raped or murdered! That is an alarming fact! And we all know that a lot of "small" crimes simply aren't being reported because the police simply do not do anything about them. Sad, eh?


I have a client who runs a marina in Chagaramus. He tells me that assault rifles and very high powered weaponry is coming across the Gulf of Paria from Venezuela in small boats almost every day! And, he says, they are coming across in crates!! Crates!!


But while our crime rate spirals out of control our Government continues to do business with the Venezuelan Donkey who is nothing if not a thug and a terrible crook! Why?  There is an old saying about 'show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are'. So I say to Messrs. Rowley, Moses, Young et al, exactly who are YOUR friends? And why are we still doing business with Maburro? (And don't tell me because he is the legitimate leader of Venezuela when we all know that he is not. He is an illegal dictator.) Is he your friend? What benefit exactly are we getting from being friendly with this crook? There are many more questions, but if at least we could get an answer to what is listed here we might be better able to understand why it is in our interests to support this thug!


P.S. And to the Donkey, I challenge you to sue me for defamation in the Trinidad Courts of law for calling you a crook, etc. . May I remind you that if you do, you will have to submit yourself to cross-examination and that the truth is an absolute defence!  So come, if your name is man!!

DARYL SMITH 101

Okay. I get it. A lot of people are totally confused about what can euphemistically be referred to as "the Daryl Smith affair". I don't blame them. there have been so many charges and counter charges and claims of cover-up that it is practically impossible to understand what exactly is going on. One can be forgiven for thinking that the Government's playbook in this matter is being taken from the old line "if you can't baffle them with your brilliance, then bamboozle them with B.S." (and by the way, my old history teacher in high school once told me ... and teachers never lie ... that 'B.S.' stands for 'Baloney for Sure'! NOT what you are thinking!!). So perhaps it is time that we go back to the beginning and look at the so-called "facts" that are in the public domain:


Fact 1: A fairly good looking young woman called Carrie Ann Moreau was hired by the then Minister of Sport in some sort of capacity that required her to be in constant and close contact with the Minister. The Minister was Daryl Smith. Exactly what her duties were supposed to be at the Ministry of Sport is not clear. I think that she was to be some sort of assistant to the Minister, but I'm not sure of this nor of exactly what her duties were supposed to be.


Fact 2: Shortly after she joined the Minister's team there was some sort of inter action between the two. The allegation that is in the public domain is that the Minister made some sort of sexual advance to the young lady which made her very uncomfortable and was in fact rejected by her.


Fact 3: Following such rejection she found it impossible to continue with her employment and took her substantive employer, who was the Ministry of Sport, to the Industrial Court and was asking for $225,000 in damages  for wrongful dismissal.


Fact 4: The Ministry of Sport engaged the services of the Prime Minister's personal attorney, Mr. Michael Quamina, to defend the matter.


Fact 5:  Mr. Quamina advised that the case would be lost and advised a settlement.


Fact 6: A settlement figure of $150,000 was arrived at and a settlement agreement was signed between the parties (i.e., Ms. Moreau and the Ministry of Sport) and the money was paid to the young lady. We don't know whether this sum included her legal bill but it probably did.  We don't know of any other monies paid to or for her. Certainly, we don't know what the legal bill was for the Ministry of Sport in this matter. In other words, the cost to the taxpayers could easily be more than the $150,000 ... but how much more, we simply don't know.




Fact 7: The settlement agreement contained a nondisclosure clause forbidding/preventing Ms. Moreau from discussing any aspect of the case. In other words, the existence of this clause effectively prevents the general public from knowing why $150,000 of the public's money was used to settle this case or even why it had to be paid. Put another way, we simply have no facts to go on to find out why the taxpayers had to foot a $150,000 bill that may or may not have been caused in the first place by the misbehavior of the Minister.


Fact 8: All the monies paid to Ms. Moreau (i.e., the $150,000) were public monies. None came out of the Minister's pocket.


Fact 9: The Prime Minister commissioned a report on the whole matter but says that he can't disclose the findings of the report because certain legal formalities were not observed. The claim is that the committee appointed to investigate did not interview the Minister or give him a chance to be heard. The Attorney General has backed up the Prime Minister on this.


Fact 10: Meanwhile the lawyer for Daryl Smith has jumped in and called for the destruction of the report. She also says that reconvening the committee would be a waste of time because the committee is clearly biased against her client having made adverse findings against him. (How she knows that the findings are adverse is not exactly clear.)


Fact 11: Nobody has considered this matter to be important enough to deal with this matter definitively by simply appointing another committee with a remit to investigate the matter and come up with a proper report within a limited period of time ... say, two weeks. Instead, the confusion is allowed to continue and the central issue of what exactly happened and why was it in the Government's interest to have a non-disclosure agreement for the payment of public funds?


So? Where are we? Exactly where we were at the very beginning before all of the above came to light: bamboozled by the B.S. (Baloney for Sure). And we must like it so because there is no public outcry. But then, I guess that's why God is a Trini!