In ten days this month, BP has consolidated three major gas deals in Trinidad and Tobago, covering some 15 trillion cubic feet. Every one depends on OFAC in Washington continuing to permit it, and that permission has been withdrawn once already. The deals are real. The dependency is also fragile.
The Government has signed MOUs for up to 800MW of AI data centres with two US firms. The environmental critique is correct. It is also not the whole picture. The bigger question is what kind of economy the country is choosing to build, and whether it looks a lot like the one we already have.
The 39th Tobago Heritage Festival opened on Thursday. Fifteen days, eighteen villages, a wedding from 1798, a riot from 1876, cocoa dancing to a tambrin band. Small islands still tell their own stories, and it is worth celebrating that.
On Tuesday, Justice Frank Seepersad dismissed the Hadeeds' habeas corpus application. He also said, in the same ruling, that a State of Emergency cannot eclipse the rule of law. Both sentences now belong to the country, and both deserve careful reading.
On Thursday, the Law Association finally spoke. The same week, the country's most prominent businessman was arrested with no charges, no information, no transparency. The pattern this blog has been documenting now has both an institutional witness and a fresh example of it in motion.
On Thursday, the Government formally legislated the path back to a working Petrotrin refinery. The bill passed with no opposing votes. Whatever else is happening this month, this is a manifesto pledge becoming law. What the country needs to know now is what comes after the legislation.
The SoE was extended at 12.27am on Thursday. The Mid-year Review will hand out the salary money tomorrow. Between the two, the AG said the alternative to extending was Haiti, and the Public Utilities Minister called the nurses racist. This is not conversation. It is rhetoric in place of one.
A Trinidadian writer's prize-winning short story has been flagged by AI detectors as machine-written. He denies it. The detection science is contested. The Foundation backs him. The truth in this case may be unknowable – but the bigger question is not, and Caribbean writers must talk about it.
The State of Emergency lapses at midnight on June 17. In the meantime: a protest order, a DPP warning, thirteen unions threatening a constitutional challenge, and a Prime Minister who will not back down. Nine days to decide what we want this country to be.
Fifteen no-protest zones, signed by the Police Commissioner the same day riot police arrested a grieving best friend at a vigil. We have been asking for weeks what the State of Emergency was actually for. This week we got the answer in writing.
An opposition MP in Jamaica opened her speech on culture in the language most Jamaicans actually speak. The Speaker shut her down within seconds. It happened in Kingston, but every Trini who has ever code-switched at an immigration desk knows exactly what it felt like.
The AG told Parliament a gang member triggered enhanced protection for MPs. The Police Commissioner backed him up. Parliamentary security, government senators and the Opposition say they never heard about it. For a claim that will be used to justify policy, the country needs more than "trust us."