Category Archives: Religion

RACE and Society — How secrets affect families

04/17/2023 – 8:52 pm

Walter seated surrounded by family (Credit: Alexandria Gamlin)

By Cagney Roberts and Alexandria Gamlin17th April 2023
Many families have a hidden past that is often never spoken about – Cagney Roberts explores what impact these can have after his friend Alexandra Gamlin revealed her own family’s secret.
Last year, my friend Alex came to visit me in London from the US. We met over 10 years ago in New York City: I am a Black British Londoner, and Alex is originally from Michigan. During her visit, we talked about our careers, our families – and family secrets.                        Continue reading →
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Guyana: 53 years as a Republic – By The GHK Lall Column

02/24/2023 – 12:01 am

GHK Lall

By GHK Lall –  Feb 23, 2023

Kaieteur News – After 53 years of existence as a Republic, Guyana should have so much more to show for that time, so much to be proud about, even boast about, considering our fabulous endowments.  In people.  In the fruits of the earth, and now of the sea.  In the reality of potential and possibilities actually in our hands, in how well we are now positioned.  Though I am loathe to acknowledge, after 53 years, we have fallen short of our grand promise, been a huge disappointment.  So much given, so little to show for it.

Half of our citizens, however counted, have foreign addresses as their home.  The most telling demographic is our youth, the vigorous bloodstream of a polity and people, only for them to live and relive the ancient prejudices and bigotries of their forebears.  It is what punishes our social environment, what tampers with our minds, yokes our thinking.  We can have all the riches in the world (and we do), but if we do not have the skills and smarts and strengths to make the most expansive (inclusive) use of them, then we are all the poorer for what we have failed to contemplate, prioritize, achieve.  We have failed to do so, haven’t we?        Continue reading →

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USA: Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

02/01/2023 – 12:08 am

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year – probably accelerated by Covid

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USA– For Abortion Rights, Against Trump, Against Fascism: Why American Jews Won’t Stop Fighting – Opinion

05/16/2022 – 12:03 am

For the great majority of Jewish Americans, any embrace of Trump is impossible, the potential overturning of Roe is abhorrent, the MAGA culture wars are madness and the moral collapse of the Supreme Court is a tragedy

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie | Haaretz  

This past weeks were terrible for America.

The apparent decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade was one more blow, and a devastating one, to America’s system of democratic governance.  

Do you remember, not so long ago, when American democracy was a beacon in a world clouded by tyranny? But that time has passed.        Continue reading →

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U.S.A — Anti-democratic forces deploying Black Codes against autocracy opponents – By Mohamed Hamaludin

05/11/2022 – 12:03 am

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

Chris Wallace, formerly of Fox News, was visibly surprised when, in a CNN+ interview, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones reminded him that the United States was not established as a democracy. The creator of the 1619 Project informed Wallace that, at its birth, the nation still enslaved millions of Africans. She could have added genocide against Indigenous peoples and that, anyhow, only land-owners could vote.

The matter of a universal franchise did not surface until after the Civil War ended in 1865 and the right to vote, fundamental to democracy, has been on a tortuous journey which is now being traveled backwards more than 150 years later. President Andrew Johnson scuttled Reconstruction and empowered the defeated states to set up their governments and, between 1865 and 1866; they promptly enacted laws — the Black Codes –denying citizenship to African Americans.              Continue reading →

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WORLD — ‘Cultural genocide’ against children getting belated attention – By Mohamed Hamaludin

04/08/2022 – 12:06 am

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

“I feel shame and pain. I ask forgiveness of God,” Pope Francis said on Friday as he apologized for the “deplorable” abuses of Canada’s First Nations children.

Between the 1880s and the 1990s, the government ran a system of compulsory boarding schools which a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recently dubbed ‘cultural genocide’,” The New York Times reported. The Catholic Church operated about 70 percent of those schools, where about 150,000 children were placed and “where abuse, both physical and sexual, was widespread, along with neglect and disease,” The Times said. A former judge, Murray Sinclair, who headed the commission, estimated that at least 6,000 children went missing.          Continue reading →

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GUYANA: History: Summarising the 1856 ‘Angel Gabriel’ Guyana Riots – By Nigel Westmaas

03/21/2022 – 7:50 pm
Artist’s impression of John Sayers Orr by Guyanese Errol Ross Brewster, 2022
Artist’s impression of John Sayers Orr by Guyanese Errol Ross Brewster, 2022
By  y Nigel Westmaas

The so called ‘Angel Gabriel’ riots in British Guiana (Guyana) in 1856 has generally been passed over as another of many local riots in the colony. This in spite of the immensity of its size as a riot, its reception at a global level, its layered origins, and of course the international footprint and character of the riot’s main protagonist, John Sayers Orr, whose nom de guerre ‘angel Gabriel’ stuck as an attractive descriptive. But the radical footprint of Orr is no exaggeration. If he had lived in the present, Orr might have be deemed an intercontinental ‘ballistic’ missile.

There are only two known published articles on the 1856 riots in Guyana, namely VO Chan’s “The Riots of 1856 in British Guiana,”(1970)  and Mark Doyle’s  more updated, “The Angel Gabriel in the Tropics: British Guiana 1856” (2016). These and other assessments have focused both on Orr, his apparent aberrant interventions and hold on the masses, and the wider context and undercurrents and conditions prevailing in Guyana that allowed Orr to almost seamlessly intervene.            Continue reading →

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U.S.A. — Florida’s U.S. senators do little for state in the culture war – By Mohamed Hamaludin

03/08/2022 – 12:06 am

Florida’s 2 U.S. senators do little for state as they embrace the culture war

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

Florida’s two U.S. senators, both Republicans, are not known for doing anything in Washington to advance the interests of the state but a lot to push their careers. That became even more evident after last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando.

Marco Rubio invoked the specter of Cuba and Marxism and the attendant “tyranny” which he claimed hangs over the nation courtesy of the Democratic Party. He said that Fidel Castro did not broadcast the fact that he was a Marxist in his early rise to power, adding, according to The Miami Herald, “That’s why the people I live among in the neighborhood I’ve lived in my entire life, you see the fury and desperation in their voice, because imagine you once lived in a country you had to flee because schools were telling your kids God didn’t exist, turn your parents in if they say something against the revolution … and some of the same things seem to be happening again.”      Continue reading →

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USA: Black History Month – Black Churches in America – By: Dhanpaul Narine

02/20/2022 – 12:06 am

  – By: Dhanpaul Narine

150+ yr Old Black Church

It is 1758 and a slave reports on the condition of Blacks. He says, ‘the white folks would come in when the colored people would have prayer meetings, and whip every one of them. Most of them thought that when colored people were praying it was against them.’ In 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina a weapon, deadlier than the whip was used, and it brought tragic results.

Black churches were a cause of concern to the White establishment, during and after slavery. A Black congregation was seen as a threat to White supremacy. The congregation was an example of faith, togetherness, and the ownership of property, and this did not sit well with Whites. When Whites in the South wanted excitement they would set fire to Black churches. The flames provided relief from boredom and sent a message to Blacks to mind their message and manners.            Continue reading →

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CANADA: Vancouver BC: Guyana-born the Reverend Areeta Bridgemohan appointed vicar

01/22/2022 – 12:03 am

A New Vicar for Christ Church Cathedral – Vancouver

Slideshow image

Rev. Areeta Bridgemohan

The Very Reverend Chris Pappas  –1410 Nanton Avenue – On the Ancestral Lands of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Nations .Vancouver, BC – V6H 2E2   Canada

It is my privilege to share with you that the search for a new vicar has come to a successful conclusion. Bishop John Stephens is appointing the Reverend Areeta Bridgemohan as the cathedral’s next vicar beginning on May 1, 2022. 

I am very excited about welcoming Areeta to the cathedral. A true citizen of the world, her experience – both personal and professional – will enrich our community in many ways. I also feel that she meets many of the longings expressed during the listening sessions for our next vicar.      Continue reading →

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