Declaration of Independence – 4 July 1776
Detail of Painting by John Trumbull in the U.S. Capitol
Photo Credit: U.S. Library of Congress
This Fourth of July, I joined the people of America in celebrating 238 years since the nation’s Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. In 1966, when my native land, Guyana, gained its independence from Great Britain, the British Empire was already in decline. The United States was in ascendance.
Growing to adulthood in a young independent nation, I learned that the word independence was a misnomer. We were still tied by our navel string to our former colonial masters. With a struggling economy, we endured power outages, water cutoffs, and food shortages. Help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) brought more austerity. Independence had led to new forms of dependency on international bankers and on other masters.
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Manickchand disrespect and a disappearing Guyanese population – commentary
Manickchand disrespect and a disappearing Guyanese population
By Ralph Seeram
My mother who is in her 90th year has always reminded me that there is “book sense” and “common sense”. I tried to pass this on to my kids. Today, if I needed a perfect example to demonstrate to them, Priya Manickchand would be ideal; she has book sense but no common sense.
I read somewhere, this little story of how a cruise ship developed engine problems and the engineers with all their degrees and computers could not fix the problem. The owners decided to call an old retired ship mechanic to look the problem. He came with a hammer, looked around the engine and gave two taps with the hammer on a particular part of the engine, which immediately hummed to life. Continue reading →
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