Peter Deboran

Father, husband, school principal; negotiating culture and politics to enrich our common weal. Co-founder, Caribbean Studies @UofT, Co-Chair @WalkforAndrea

[National Post @nationalpost]

Fraudsters often spike honey with cheaper syrups and pass it off as “pure.” To help separate the real deal from the fake, scientists have developed a new method of authenticating honey without opening the jar.

https://t.co/fx2hpgCAlR

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

@TriniTweets Been going on for 50 years.

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

how about just governing for the benefit of the province as whole?

[The Globe and Mail @globeandmail]

Opinion: Ford government should stop the $200-cheque gimmick and finally cut taxes https://t.co/qbtm7WVaOy

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

But all the legacy (formerly “mainstream”) media said there was no fraud.

They lied.

[Karin Loevy @karinloevy]

Every day that goes by further distances any possible horizon 4 regional agreement & reconciliation, a future where Jewish Israelis can live with security in this place. Achieving these require lengthy processes, the constant massacres & destruction must be stopped immediately!

[Karin Loevy @karinloevy]

We have been horrified by the war crimes committed by Hamas and other organizations on October 7th, and we are horrified by the countless war crimes that Israel is committing.(5)

[Karin Loevy @karinloevy]

We, Israeli citizens residing in Israel & abroad, call on the international community – the UN and its institutions, the United States, the European Union, the League of Arab States, & all states around the world – to intervene immediately & implement every possible sanction (1)

[David Moscrop @David_Moscrop]

Don’t blame immigrants. Blame governments.

Newcomers didn’t botch housing, healthcare, transit, and jobs policies.

Governments did.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Here is the full text of Professor Rudrangshu Mukherjee's extraordinary review of The Golden Road in the Business Standard
@bsindia

The Wonder That Was India would have been the most appropriate name for William Dalrymple’s rich and enriching book had it not been the title of A L Basham’s classic work. All serious students growing up in the 1960s and 1970s and wanting to learn about ancient India read Basham’s book. Dalrymple takes up some of the themes covered by Basham and adds to them greater depth, more themes and new evidence. He complements all this by an analysis of how the cultures of ancient India were transmitted across a wide geographical space that Dalrymple calls the Indosphere. This is a book that should not be missed by anyone interested in the world of ancient Indian cultures.

At one level, Dalrymple’s book is a comprehensive rebuttal of the contempt that colonial administrators and intellectuals displayed towards India’s past. Thomas Babington Macaulay, that great panjandrum of the British Empire, (in)famously wrote: “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. Others of Macaulay’s ilk expressed similar prejudices and ignorance. Dalrymple has put such opinions where they belong – in imperialism’s ever-growing dustbin.

Dalrymple’s project has been made possible by a radical shift in the focus of Indian historical scholarship. Even the nationalist riposte to the Macaulay trope leaned too much towards dynastic and political history. Dalrymple writes briefly about the nationalist response but in the process writes of Kailas Nag. I think this should be Kalidas Nag. Only very recently has the spotlight shifted towards culture, its fashioning and its transmission. To take one example, a historian like Richard Eaton, when he writes of the history of India from roughly the 12th century to the early 18th century, he does so not with reference to the kings who ruled (although they are not altogether omitted) but in terms of the overarching cultural and political discursive space that spanned these centuries. He calls it the Persianate age whose geographical coordinates stretched from West Asia to India. Similarly, Dalrymple is looking at – both through a telescope and a magnifying glass – a geographical space that radiated from India to east Africa to the Arab world (and thence to Europe) to Central Asia to China and down southwards to south-east Asia. India was the centre of this world and its fountainhead of knowledge and culture.

The transmission of culture and commodities was over vast and hazardous land routes and over the seas. The sea lanes form Dalrymple’s golden road. The Asian monsoon winds had a recursive pattern, which placed India at the centre of navigable sea roads and maritime sea trade routes and enabled sailors to move to their destinations and return. Indian traders looking westwards used the trade winds in early summer to travel to the east coast of Africa and to the rich kingdoms of Ethiopia. Some of them moved northwards and via the Persian Gulf reached Iran and Mesopotamia, the doab of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Some others went further south via Aden to the Red Sea and Egypt. With the summer monsoon, these traders could bring their ships back home to the Indian ports. Other sailors crossed, as Sunil Amrith has shown — and Dalrymple uses his work — the Bay of Bengal to reach the new emerging urban centres in Myanmar and south-east Asia. These sailors and traders used the eastward monsoon. By the fifth century, they were pushing along the Straits of Malacca towards China. India was thus, in the ancient and early medieval period, an “economic fulcrum”.

https://t.co/9o9u6jEAF8

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

Why after all those deaths were these private owners not charged? Or censured for their negligence and cavalier attitude to the lives they supposedly cared for? Where are those who applied to law school saying how much they care for “the little guy?” @LegalClinicYR @OBAlawyers

[Toronto Star @TorontoStar]

Workers at one of the largest city-owned long-term-care homes in Toronto are calling on officials to address “chronic” staffing shortages and “mismanagement” they say are putting the quality of residents’ care at risk. https://t.co/qbTMkf18m4

[Parwana Ibrahimkhail Nijrabi @parwananijrabi]

The Taliban consider it illegal and haram for young women’s voices to be heard by other young women. This reflects the height of oppression against women and stands as a crime against humanity. It is time for the international community to break its

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

A true leader would want to know the truth so that the most informed decisions can be made. By willfully being ignorant, he is being disrespectful to the Office of a leader and to our Canadian populace. Why, must so many be so selfish? @CdnPressNews @CJFE @crestview_strat

[Kamal Khera 🇨🇦 @HonKamalKhera]

Who is he trying to protect?

What is he hiding?

Canadians deserve answers.

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

Which side would the President and staff of the West Wing have chosen?

[Bradley Whitford @bradleywhitford]

👇

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

We need to worry about what is going on in this country, rather than focusing in what we have no say in. @CP24 @globalnewsto @iHeartRadio

[CityNews Toronto @CityNewsTO]

If Canadians could vote in the U.S. election, a majority would choose to send Kamala Harris to the White House, a new poll indicates. https://t.co/9FM7Hva51z

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

I’m pretty sure that’s what was happening. for decades. That’s why everyone knows stories about cab drivers who are engineers or doctors. @TorontoStreets @Torontosun2 @Ethnic_Media

[Brian Lilley @brianlilley]

Medical schools in Ontario will now have to give priority to Ontario students over international students after a change announced by Doug Ford today.
He says it’s about ensuring we have more doctors practicing in Ontario.
What do you think?
Read & RP
https://t.co/CWbn5ZpoTU

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

Must be scared of something. Like virtue. Like Unity of mind, body, spirit. @officialHinduCF @indocarib

[The Cutlass Magazine®️ @cutlassmagazine]

It is sad to see a Seventh Day Adventist church in Port of Spain not only support the bigoted statements of Gabriel Gore but make their own social media attacks on Hindus and Hinduism in Trinidad. It would be nice if pastors and priests could come together and denounce this.

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

I love this one, I really do. “A culture of non-ambition.” Hah! Thanks to the reporters willing to tell it like it is. And the paper for the courage to print it. ⁦@cbcradio⁩ ⁦@CBCNews⁩ ⁦@globeandmail⁩ ⁦@therealrussellp⁩ ⁦@TorontoStar⁩

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

October is AmerIndian Month in Trinidad and Tobago. Thanks to TT50+ Club in Toronto, here is a translation of an Amerindian prayer:
@cutlassmagazine @CaribLiteraryH

[Peter Deboran @peterdeboran]

@cultmtl Cdn media has also been doing it. Journalists need to be willing to understand policy, it’s potential effects and then be willing to to share it in a clear
and understandable way. Without bias. That should be the job! @AP @iHeartRadio @CP24 @zoomerradio