Beasts in Human Form

From the Trinidad Express Thursday June 28
Nurse robbed, beaten: police hunt for 3 men
Richard Charan South Bureau

Police are hunting for three men believed to have robbed and beaten a nurse with the sledgehammer they used to break down a door to get to her and her money.
Latchmin Rampersad, 51, was reported to be conscious and alert at the Mt Hope Hospital yesterday but she was unable to eat or speak because of her injuries.
Rampersad, who is a native of Guyana, has a home in Minnesota, United States, where she lives with her husband, an air traffic controller, and two children.
The couple are building a house at Pierre Road, Charlieville, as a vacation home.
Rampersad was in Trinidad to oversee the construction.
Late Monday night, four men broke down the back door of the house and attacked Rampersad in her bedroom.
The attackers stole her jewelry and $90,000-money she withdrew from the bank to pay for building material.
Her cousin and neighbour Doolarie Durga said yesterday: "They beat her so bad they thought they killed her.
But she threw her body on the ground and pretended to be dead.
About half hour after they left, she got up and ran across to us. Her head and front of her body were covered in blood. We wrapped her head with a towel. Now we don't know if God will take her or if she will come out of it."
Rampersad wore gold rings which the thugs ripped off her fingers, Durga said.
Rampersad, who left Trinidad about 20 years ago, returned earlier this year.
Her husband was expected to return to Trinidad yesterday.

I haven't posted here for a while because I have been suffering from an extended case of writer's block, but this article has gotten me angry enough to want to say something. What kind of monster would actually think it in his mind to beat another human being with a sledgehammer? I mean this is an implement used to destroy concrete. What venom does it take to strain against the weight of a heavy hammer, lift it and bring it crashing down onto the head of a defenceless woman? Did they feel any emotion when they heard the sickening thud of metal meeting flesh and bone cracking? Who are the people that do these things? Do I know them? Do they live on my street? Do they have any feeling in their hearts?

To make it worse, obviously this was organised by someone who knew she had the money. Was it an inside job organised by an acquaintance? Friend? Family? Perhaps the teller at the bank?
Is it right that people work hard for their money and some illiterate fool who decided he didn't want to study and make a life for himself decides to take it?

I think that Trinidad has really gone to the dogs now. Hardly anyone cares about anything or anybody else. It's a free for all. Do what you want. Drive how you want. Steal, kill, destroy. There seems to be a darkness over the country which is getting progressively more intense. What has caused my peaceful party-loving people to become to evil? I wish I knew the answer. One thing is for certain: we need to find the answer fast, before Trinidad and Tobago goes totally to the dogs.

Minister Ra-Hell's Hospital of Horrors

From the Trinidad Guardian Wednesday 13th June, 2007
Man walks with bed to Sando hospital

BY ANIKA GUMBS-SANDIFORD

PICK up thy bed and walk.
The biblical saying has come to pass at the San Fernando General Hospital.
Unable to bear seeing Jimmy Smyke, 55, in pain while lying on a bench on ward 11, his wife Irma, yesterday returned to their home at Clarke Street, Vistabella, and brought a bed to the hospital for her husband to lie on.
The red metal bed was set up inside the ward along a corridor.
For the past four days patients at the SFGH have been forced to lie on the ground due to a bed shortage caused by overcrowding.

Yesterday patients were heard complaining about back pains as they were seen sitting on wheelchairs and wooden benches or lying on stretchers
A hurt Irma said Smyke, a heart patient, was admitted to the ward on Monday night after complaining of severe chest pains.
However, Irma said when they arrived on the ward a nurse told her there were no available beds.
“I stayed the night with my husband and as soon as morning broke and the doctor came on the ward I asked him if I could have brought a bed for my husband. He told me, ‘Absolutely,’ so I called my son and we went home and got the bed.

“This is absolutely ridiculous. If a dog sick do not bring him here!” Another patient Khsio Manickchand, 47, who slept on a mattress on the ground, said he had to share the narrow mattress with another patient.
Manickchand said he was warded at the hospital after suffering a severe virus attack.
Holding up his drips, Manickchand said: “Look at my condition and I have to share a mattress with a stranger...imagine I am sick and I am still uncomfortable.”

Look where we reach in this country. The prime minister taking taxpayers money to fix up his house nice, nice while them very same taxpayers can't get a bed to sleep on in the hospital. He talking stadium, rapid rail, interchange, smelter, jobs for all, houses for most, Caroni land for some! In the meantime, sick people sleeping on the floor, and it so bad, somebody had to bring a bed from home. In a country with oil and gas coming out our arse and money to burn, a man had to bring his bed from home so he could get somewhere to sleep in the hospital.

Mr John Rahael, you should be ashamed of yourself. As Minister of Health, your job is to make sure that people get quality health care at public institutions, both in terms of technology and customer service. Your job is not to smile and pose for the camera when the Government buys some piece of equipment and then talk about the state-of-the-art health care available in T&T. State-of-the-fart is more like it. Pictures don't lie Johnny Boy. You failing bad. With all the billions of dollars floating around in the economy, we dont even have a proper health care system.

What would it take to build a proper hospital for the people? Is our damn money you know. Not yours! We just put you there to manage it, but you not managing sh*t. Those same people who are lying in the corridors and on the floors of the nation's hospitals are the ones that are putting bread and butter.. excuse me.. caviar and champagne on your table. They are the taxpayers. But you take their money and literally kick them to the ground. You bite the hand that feeds you. One day, that hand is going to not appreciate getting bitten all the time, and you might get an unlucky blow that could land you in the hospital.

Who the hat fits

I was reading one of my IT magazines yesterday and came upon an article about Paul Young. Young is the co-founder of Red Hat, one of the most well-known distributions of the Linux operating system. The article said that in the early days of Red Hat, someone asked Young how a business that gave away it's software could compete with a company like Microsoft. His answer was one of the most profound things I've ever read or heard. He said: "It's not my goal to make my company as big as Microsoft. It's my goal to make Microsoft as big as my company."
Now if you really understand that concept, you can conquer the world. It certainly inspired me.

JFK Terror plot in Trinidad

I turned on my TV today and I was in shock. Finally the whole world knows about Trinidad and Tobago, but not for anything good. Four extremists decided that it would be a good idea to blow up JFK airport by setting off explosives in the main fuel line. These guys decided that Trinidad would be a good place to hide out while they hatched the plot. One was even a Trinidadian.
So it was all over the news that the terror suspects who tried to blow up JFK were held in Trinidad. Now on top of the crime that plaguing us every day, we have to contend with the fact that the rest of the world now thinks we're a hotbed of terrorist activity, and a "potential source of terrorist funding". My country may not be the best, but it sure ain't no hotbed of terrorist activity.

I think this whole thing was just an example of the US using the fear of its citizens to distract them from what's happening in Iraq. The plot was never in any danger of actually being executed, and the authorities knew about it from the get-go. The plotters didn't even have the equipment they needed to carry out the attacks.

On paper this would have been a potential disaster, since the fuel line runs under neighbourhoods in Queens. From working in industrial safety for years, though, and knowing something about pipelines, I think that the effects of an explosion would not have spread so far, since safety systems would shut down the entire system in seconds.

While I am not minimising the seriousness of the potential threat this attack could have been, I also think the extended media coverage was an attempt to quell the voices of discontent against the Iraq war. It's classic politics. When the natives grow restless, give them a reason to realise that they depend on you. Draw attention away from the real issue: the war on Iraq is hurting America more than it is helping it.

And as for those extremists... I am not a lover of the US or US policy. In fact, I hate US policy with a passion. But I know that the American people don't make US policy. US policy is made by men in black suits in a White House. Do these extremists really believe that if they attack the American people, it will affect the men in the black suits personally? They and their families are always safe. All you hurt are innocent people who probably don't agree with US policy either. But you don't care do you? Bloody selfish bastards. You don't care about people. You just care about your misguided mission.

In the meantime, my country is getting a worse international reputation than it already has. Nobody will care that we were the ones that invented the steel drums. Nobody will care that Dwight Yorke and Brian Lara are citizens of this country. Nobody will care that we produced two Miss Universe winners and one Miss World Winner. No one will care that we produced Olympic gold medal finalists in the 100m, 200m and also had silver medals in swimming. Who will know that we had a world boxing champ? Does anyone know that Heather Headley was born here? No, they just love her music. Nobody will know that Trinidad's Carnival is the greatest show on earth, so much that all the biggest celebrities come here to enjoy it.
That's sad, because though T&T isn't perfect, for me it's paradise.