Showing posts with label Peace Rights Freedom Media Lebanon News Social Justice Culture Heritage Eid Muslim Hope Terry Waite Caribbean Tropical Storm Bret Hostage Flood Ransom UN UNESCO Commonwealth Americas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peace Rights Freedom Media Lebanon News Social Justice Culture Heritage Eid Muslim Hope Terry Waite Caribbean Tropical Storm Bret Hostage Flood Ransom UN UNESCO Commonwealth Americas. Show all posts

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Power Failure Media Blackout Brets Muffled Threats and Ransoming Father Terror Hostages of Crime Corruption and cementing of the social unconscionableJournalism’s Last Rites

Keep hope alive! The advice of living legend Terry Waite, the man who had become one of the world’s most renowned hostages of terrorism, ring through, as I scramble for matches and candles when the power failed amidst gusts of Bret, indicative of other power failures and a woeful abdication by institutions charged with keeping hope alive in a time of disaster.
I was assigned as Terry Waite’s ‘guardian’, a designation that never fails to amuse me, given, not only his sheer physical size, but at the thought, too, of how ill-equipped I was in anyway whatsoever if a threat was to arise in keeping safe one who had survived one of the Western world’s most publicized hostage-taking incident when he was kept in solitary confinement for some five years in Beirut, Lebanon.
Waite was the envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury when he was kidnapped while negotiating the release of hostages - one of whom included US journalist John McCarthy. His name has surfaced recently again in discussions of the need for a negotiator with ISIS on the spurt of terrorism attacks around the world.
While I might have been highly amused by my role and designation as Terry Waite’s guardian, he showed not the slightest sign of feeling slighted or being so saddled. In fact, if anything, he seems to have taken my role quite seriously, surprising me by voluntarily checking in regularly as arranged, keeping me informed about all his plans and movements, and consulting with me on his schedule and requests of persons to meet with him, others for interviews and others who just wanted to see him casually for tea or a chat. I will learn that, then, six years after his five-year ordeal in Lebanon, he was drawing on a lesson from having then failed to inform those around him of a slight deviation in his plans which had landed him in the hostage grip of the Hezbollah. He was keeping the channels open to keep hope alive.
He might have been placed in my charge, but Waite did not know he became a much-needed source of strength in the high-tensioned stressful days of coordinating and managing the communications, outreach and media relations of the Commonwealth Foundation during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda a decade ago, rather than a burden added on to the duties that included harnessing, processing, producing and disseminating the positions of the range of global Commonwealth associations and civil society organisations, international and local African media, government officials and guests of the Commonwealth People’s Forum and the aligned Heads of Government Meeting that would include the His Royal Highness, Prince Charles and contingent and the hazards of the profession that come with such territory (another story for another time).

Terry Waite’s very aura - the humility, the expansive humanism, absolute absence of ego, effervescent energy, and the effortless lack of want for attention, remain unmatched in the many, many, many individuals who have crossed my path to date. He has remained a constant source of inspiration in the face of various encounters in situations of various degrees of terror since. Keep hope alive!
Now, viewing a landscape in which hostage-taking and hostage-making seems something of a norm with the woeful abdication of responsibility by key gate keepers that leave many vulnerable to usurpation of the legitimate rights and freedoms, it is on Waite’s experience and knowledge and the calm and confidence that he exudes in the most testing of times, that I now turn for inspiration. ‘Keep hope alive. I had to keep hope alive.’
Conjuring up, not the frenzied days in the wake of a high profile international leaders’ summit in Uganda, nor the ordeal of his confinement, but his burly booming joviality at being tagged a ‘living legend’ even as he makes light of and looks not in the least scarred by what to all accounts was some of the most grueling years in captivity and solitary confinement in an alien land I take breaths deeper than Bret to pen this, anticipating the potential backlash of those whose ire it arouses, but hoping that instead if may stir some salient residual still existing albeit dormant elements of social conscience and the human instinct to keep hope alive.
Yet, surrounded by personal feeds of images of marooned friends and families, hostages in their homes in large parts of south and central Trinidad in the aftermath of Bret, it is not really Terry Waite I am seeing, but the face of another, our Father, pleading with bandits holding him to ransom at gunpoint one early morning, during his oblations in a church, threatening abduction while contemplating his price tag – ‘would the Archbishop pay 50K for you?’ They might have arrived at the value having considered his considerable social capital, rank, a once-contender for the title of Archbishop of Port of Spain himself – which he lost to the current office holder, was just named Bishop to Grenada, and is a popular servant, among those who wear the scarlet brand as the most degenerate, unconscionable scourge from the ghettos of our society.
The national situation seems indeed something of a hostage situation of a country in desperate survival mode. The going ransom rate for a father of the cloth is 50K - 50 thousand devalued Trinidad and Tobago Dollars. Yet, this is no ordinary father and perhaps he might have been somewhat better-smelling than the citizen left writhing in pain in his soiled and fouled pants to grasp his last breaths on the grounds of a public health facility where a life may be worth somewhere between zero and the ground on which he laid.
For about the same price as a priest’s life, one can roam the Caribbean for, at most, four days. One can get a luxury vacation for eight persons in grand style in Tobago at public expense for a similar number of days, but about twice the price of a priest’s ransom.
For about the same price as the cited ransom demand for said Father of the cloth, one can buy out the newspaper front and back pages and scoop up all the distasteful news of crime, corruption, and chaos of the day and cement the fate of a country that has had its conscience cast in concrete from the first oil boom – what power advertising possesses on the social conscience! It cemented the deal - three for the price of two like some of the offerings on Fathers’ Day sales with which we were being bombarded, bought out the front and back pages of all three dailies to purchase the headlined news of the day. The most powerful on bent knees to the commercial weight of the almighty dollar, not unlike a priest, praying in his church in the early morning to be interrupted by gun pointing bandits, not unlike Terry Waite and companions at the mercy of the Hezbollah.
Held hostages by power mongers, citizens left bewildered at the blacked out television sets that have become the conduit and connection in times of crises between those in the crisis situation and support and rescue services. The most powerful elements of the media ransoming fathers and mothers to save a few power pennies in desperate times. A society in survival mode. How far are we from the kind of unconscionable survivalism of ISIS or the Hezbollah?
While most of the most powerful media entities tuck themselves into their beds and bury their heads between soft sheets, Bret howls at our portals, unleashing a deluge of chaos: false reports, fake news, politicking with people’s health and well-being; a few dedicated media workers desperate for a channel for their news, turning to their personal social media handles in chest-thumping heroism, if one is willing to overlook the pathos therein (see ten ways the media failed in Bret this page).
The powers failed as the power failed. A country switches to survivor mode. Dollars and cents replace the sense of social empathy and we blame bad Bret, who in fact exhibited more empathy and restraint on his power than those who claim to be in charge and among the most powerful.
If conventional media is trying to find its reason to be, it has instead been killing its goose that lays its golden egg. It certainly lost a golden opportunity to reassert its relevance to its community in the coverage of Bret and its aftermath.
The lights go out on social conscience.
The lights go out on media conscience.
Bret and his followers garners strength to a society choking on its waste and wastefulness.
Power Media Blackouts
Even before the most powerful switched off the anticipated live transmission, we were already setting the stage of blackout news.
Coverall advertising wrap-around front and back pages of newspapers have been gaining currency in recent times. Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say. The advertisers who have always hovered at the media’s door, trying at every turn to convince media managers to sellout their front covers to an advertiser, justify it in light of the declining sales of printed newspapers. Now with declining newspaper sales, they swoop down. The irrationality of the rationale would haunt if it wasn’t so farcical – so what are the advertisers paying for if no one is going to read the newspapers – the passing glimpse of its headline from a maxi taxi? People go to newspapers for news. That’s why advertisers sell ads, because of the news value that newspapers advertise. Would people buy wine in a beer bottle? Why then assume that people would buy news wrapped in ads?
I tried to raise it in a social media post but was stopped in my tracks by an advertiser justifying that media needs advertising to survive. It’s an old argument, we pay you, we own you – as old as the oldest profession in the world, and has the same effect of stripping and undermining the dignity of the profession, which the advertising world, with colour-tinted glasses of dollars and cents could not understand how its acts of holding the news and newsmakers hostage to its front page coverups and declarations of who’s in charge undermine and strip those who labour through its ideals of self worth. While I took  in the debate in silence, painfully replaying numerous similar debates over countless media boardroom tables, other media colleagues tried to patiently explain, eventually giving up in desperation – ‘they wouldn’t understand.’
Keep hope alive! I hear Terry Waite again.
So here I am again trying, to explain, to illustrate, to stir any dormant, latent iota of social conscience, and awaken some miniscule bit of awareness of how and why we are a society in survivor mode, grasping at straws in a deluge of concretised and hardened indifference and how key social pillars are failing.
The situation brings to mind the words of journalist US John McCarthy, who was one of the journalists who was held hostage in Beirut which had prompted Terry Waite’s intervention and subsequent abduction in 1987. On his release along with Waite, in 1991, McCarthy had said, "There are vast areas of Iraq and Syria for people to live side by side, there is no lack of space, even Israel and Palestine there is enough room for everyone. You hope that one day they will all learn to rub along and learn to trust each other, but you have always got these groups that want to be dominant and that are so steadfast in their views.” One hers echoes of that here too.
Steadfast and concrete views that have held the development of journalism hostage, gain strength, like Bret and his followers, bearing down, to its now point of crisis. Our discussion on the social media posting may seem far removed from the situation in Iraq, or Syria, or Palestine or Lebanon any of the great and heated questions of international import that are occupying the global psyche on extremism or terrorism, or is it that far removed? Are we at terror’s door, hostages in our homes, hostages not just to crime, corruption but also the cementing of the social unconscionable with concretised commercialised conscience.
Like the Trinidad public, piloting cheap jokes in the wake of Bret’s bearing down, to deflect consideration of what fate my come and how woefully unprepared response agencies were – including the blacked out electronic media, one can take refuge in its parody – for it is about as parodic a situation as Waite likes to make of his albeit excruciating ordeal as a prisoner of terrorism, captured in his biographical Taken on Trust, and parodied in his comedic retake The Voyage of the Golden Handshake, his comic novel set on a cruise ship that also draws on his some 20 years of experiences as a speaker on a cruise ship before becoming envoy to the Archbishop, and the Hezbollah’s famed hostage.
Global - Local in the Global
Even as we pour concrete over journalistic integrity, the British public was embroiled in a debate over the pervasive newspaper coverpage coverup ads that saw the front and back pages of some of its local newspaper editions pasted with political ads urging support for the incumbent government on the day Britain went to vote over Brexit. But not a Bret from us.
Without even consideration of the results which saw the subject of the Brexit ads losing rather than gaining significant ground that might be testimony to the illusions of glory with which the pollsters can fill the hungry ego, or the overrating of the power of advertising to swing votes; it is the defacto ransoming of media independence and holding free speech hostage that strikes the discerning.
The advertisers’ proclamation of victory over news legitimizes with dollars and cents rationale, the era of fake news. The unsuspecting public is held to ransom to digest paid advertising as legitimate news, while the real news of the day is relegated to secondary status inside the covers. Journalism’s death knell.

Frozen
I experience something of what the protesting British public might have felt last week, a rare moment of venturing out of convalescing. Reaching for the daily newspapers at a newspaper stand, I freeze. Literally. I am wondering why there is only one newspaper in three piles and thought that one of the dailies must be having a bad sales day and all their papers were still on the stands.  Then as my eyes scan the piles, it slowly dawns that all three dailies are bearing the same cover. Only their mastheads at the top proclaim and claim it as their product; the cover is advertisement of a product.
What I describe next is no exaggeration. Confusion and fear grip me with the intensity I have experienced only twice before – during some excruciating experiences during the 2015 attacks in Paris, and at the onset of the 1990 coup-attempt, switching the local channels to see on each the same broadcast of the insurrectionists flanked by gun-toting youths declaring that they had seized the Parliament, the Police Headquarters and the news channels.
Looking at the offerings on the newsstands, it seems a black out of news of the day, associated with militarism. The nature of the product being advertised is of little import, though it provides an apt metaphor for the cementing of the casket of journalism as we know it. Today cement, tomorrow the political ad, the next the legitimate paid advertising of some insurrectionist or militarist group, why not? The legitimizing of fake news. The age of alternative facts.
Yet there was not a squeak nor squawk from the local public. Perhaps indeed no one buys printed newspapers anymore and had not seen it – which might be true, but which also makes moot the advertisers’ effort at trying to grab headlines if nobody’s looking.
Not unlike Bret, it swooped down on the news and scooped all else that may have considered itself of national and international import of the day, cementing a deal that sounds something like some of the offerings on Fathers’ Day sales with which we are being bombarded this current season - three for the price of two, or buy two get one free or one for all and all for one.
I am frozen for a few seconds, fixated at the three front pages facing me on the news stand, stunned and confused as each bear the same image and text, with only their respective Mastheads signifying that they are indeed three distinct products.
I had not felt that way since experiences in Paris during the attacks of November 2015, and before that, some 27 years earlier during an attempted coup in Trinidad, then staring at the television with insurrectionist shadowed by gun toting youths at their backs – like a hostage.
I am surprised at the impact on me. I have been out of the formal newsroom for almost fifteen years. The last years as an editor negotiating space, negotiating the public right to information, negotiating resources that would allow for operations in producing the new - like a hostage negotiator. Understanding dawn why Terry Waite comes to mind. Much of that time was spent in what seemed to be senseless squabbling over what approach would provide the most gains to the company – to those who believe profits were the bottom line; against us who saw the social value as an equal part of the balancing scales even in recognizing that advertising was part of its support system. The wrap around,  then usually reserved for unusual, startling and considerable high impact stories of the day – like the impact of a Bret, for instance, is now given to the highest bidder. A society in survival mode.
I am not averse to appreciation of the need that it takes money and advertising to run a media organization, but we continue to pay the social price for misfocussed, misdirected decision and unbalanced focus on profit making, because there is also a social profit and loss balance sheet; and the now diminishing value of vast investments on concrete buildings plant and machinery in the new and borderless and building less world of new media is the price being paid for such bad Brets of decision-making, yet the ultimate price will be paid by the hundreds of workers who are marked for retrenchment as media continue to cut corners, and indeed, if one is reading the climate right, the reality that at least one of  the three dailies may be shutting its doors soon, just as one electronic media is wounding up, because of the media’s inability to understand how it can reinvent itself and find creative ways required to survive challenging times.  
I shudder to think of where the news of the abduction of Father Harvey, or Bret’s deluge would have appeared if an advertiser or two had decided to buy up the front pages, or all the pages of the news of that day – the irrationality provides easy fodder for parody.

Waite’s wait
In Kampala, Uganda, between tasks, Waite recounted his wait for news as the outside world was waiting on news of Waite in captivity (see video this page) when he was sent to negotiate the release of McCarthy and others kidnapped by the Huzbollah in incidents surrounding what became known in US politics as Irangate - the Iran-Contra Scandal and the US clandestine sale of weapons to Iran despite the international weapons embargo as part of a deal to get hostages freed. The scandal would plague the US President Ronald Reagan’s regime and haunt his political legacy as the 40th President of the US to this day. It broke just as Waite went to Lebanon to begin negotiation and Waite paid the price of the political machinations, when his name surfaced in testimonies of Oliver North at the height of Irangate investigations as the person best suited to send in to negotiate the freedom of US hostages that aroused the hostage keepers suspicion of him, Waite. North, the former deputy-director of the US National Security Council, was implicated in the Iran-Contra affair and forced to resign. What a tangled web! Waite was abducted on suspicion that he might have been a US spy.
Waite now uses his experience and his story to inspire people in oppressive circumstances. In Kampala, he was part of our campaign by the Commonwealth Foundation and its associated organisations to free Zimbabwe. I will return to that in a follow up posting.
Power Failure Media Blackout
None of this is not to discount the efforts of those who did go the extra mile to keep the public informed or to keep the emergency response services going, but to call to account the power failure of those who consider themselves the most powerful.
Others have voiced that there is something exceedingly disconcerting that has left an unfathomable unease about the decision by most of those billed as the major media houses to not provide what has become the accustomed and anticipated live companionship during and in the aftermath of a natural disaster on the night of and thereafter Bret puffed through.
Even before or the power failure that took electricity out that took away access to some channels of information, most of the major electronic media seems to have already imposed a blackout, treating the oncoming threat as any other day, with little if any deviation in normal programming following the nightly prime time news hour. As communities, community based organisations, friends and neighbours banded together to lend assistance to those in distress in their neighbourhood, in the deluge left by wafts of Tropical Storm Bret, the baffled public was for the most parts left in the dark, with those so equipped, scourging social media channels for news and updates, some of which were fake, false, recycled images from previous occasions, all feeding an atmosphere of unease when there was need for those who see themselves as the most powerful to take charge and provide leadership.
It was a golden opportunity for conventional media to prove that it is still relevant despite the challenges it is facing, and it fell flat on its face, a powerful failure, if any, to keep hope alive.
Without the formal channel to do so, some committed workers tried and continued to provide what coverage they can through their social media handles, going beyond the call of duty with no thought to overtime and the bottomline. In my understanding of the media industry, one is hardly compensated for those or any additional hours one gives to covering a natural disaster or otherwise. Similar commitment was demonstrated by other committed workers of institutions and agencies even in the absence of concerted coordination, did what their experience and conscience inspired them to, against the odds, putting others before family and self, not with thoughts of overtime and denting the bottom line.
Though it may be flaying in pathetic power puffs from dying power institutions, empathy is still very much alive in some hearts. Yet, even in the heroic chest thumping of those who have so sacrificed, one cannot but be conscious of the pathos in the demonstrable institutional failure when so much more could have been achieved with concerted action. One shudders to think what would have ensued if Bret, or another, were to wrought visit with more damaging consequences.

Media, going once, twice, here just take it ...
A few other pieces of international news inspired these musings on how those are the flip side to the same coin, snapshots that pain a poignant picture of our times though they may be described in reports on news of the day as ‘unrelated incidents’.
A media is selling itself for $175.00. No, it is not a spelling error missing some zeroes. That’s the price of the proprietor is asking for his newspaper in a US town which population is more than the Caribbean.  After no offers to buy, he is running an essay competition in which the registration fee is $175. The winner of the competition will take the newspaper, lock stock and barrel as its prize. In another US city, a proprietor is selling his newspaper as his wife wants a flushing toilet in the space being occupied by the entity. Sign of the Times. Desperate Economic Times.   

Value, valuable, invaluable and valueless
Actuarians have devised formulas for calculating the value of a life and property, which may be one and the same thing. In their calculations, the value of a life may be somewhat higher than the going market or the life of a father for ransom or lower than the proscribed rate of property tax - property here being a number of variable tangible and intangible assets, including variables as life, various limbs and organs, as well as human intelligence all of which we now know could be placed on the open market for sale.
Then too, life is of negligible importance as it is counted among property and capital assets.
That kind of intelligence is said to drive what has earned the title of the knowledge economy which when valued vis-à-vis other economies and the assumed dollar value of their returns to the national economy, can come up exceedingly short, not unlike the dollar value of a priest. Vis-à-vis the commanding heights of the economies of the codependent twin industries of crime-security, corruption-concrete, cement, gas, oil and the like, knowledge and intelligence may be considered dispensable capital, not unlike a priest’s life.

Knowledge Economy or Economy of Knowledge
One industry within the knowledge economy, is the media. Knowledge was once thought to be its prime commodity, its stock in trade, and its asset value. As news became a commodity to be bought and sold and traded on the stock exchange, value came to be ascribed to the land and building and machinery that produced the news. Given that they are on the payroll, they are the property of the commercial establishment producing the news, the journalists and humans required to operate the machinery also were ascribed value akin to other property assets, albeit of considerable lesser value than the going market value of assets of concrete highrises, plant and machinery/press, and the like.
Those have been themselves further diminishing in value with increased automation of the industry and the growing popularity in a green economy of reusing, reproduction, replication and recycling of ye olde news, to the point in which the profession believed to be as old as the oldest profession in the world, and equally commodified, now seems to be grasping its last dying breaths at ground zero of social capital assets.
One can safely predict that within the next year or two, at least one of the three dailies would have closed its doors or been absorbed into another entity.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures.
As with any industry, there are base formulas used by the industry to value, justify and ascertain its command over the news product. In ancient, traditional societies of yore, the news product was the information, education, knowledge, it generated and circulated to both represent and influence thoughts and actions of the day.
The value of news has evolved, over the years, as has the value of life or the value of a priest from being invaluable, to valueless where it is now closer to zero-value, if only because the supply in the outpourings on social media is far exceeding demand, and of course, because power of media is now in the hands of the masses with new finger tip technologies. As a result the plant and machinery that received its value from the producers of the news – the journalists – have also been diminishing in value. News used to be considered invaluable, is now valueless. (I had to explain the differences of value, valueless an invaluable to my eight year old  nephew recently who cheekily returned them in a sentence on my worth to him – guess what he said!)
I have always been fascinated by the advertising industry. Its incredible breath of creativity and imagination. It can have a talking cow sell milk, a gecko take upper hand over insurance agents; a dog  convince one of the ideal size and weight, defines beauty, status, power, convinces us that orange is black and our self-worth is in a bottle of liquor or perfume; that smoking can kill but it is an incredible sex magnet and still the most euphoric feeling in the world, and then throws up its hands in frustration that it can’t change human behavior and the nature or direction of a society.
Powerful Failings of Empathy
A Cambridge University study featured by the BBC this week, found what it believes to be concrete evidence that power does go to one’s head; that those in positions of power often become more self-absorbed and lose the empathy and connection with those considered subordinates. This, according to the study, is manifested physiologically and pathologically, in signs of brain damage and symptoms akin to trauma.
It leads one to contemplate whether the decline in empathy among the so-called power centres - I hesitate to use the word leader because it’s a term I reserve for a different caliber of individual or function – is not contributing to the state and condition and explosion of extremism and terror and terrorism in which we find ourselves. When those who consider themselves among our society’s most powerful - interpreting power in dollars and cents or whatever material form that has replaced empathy in this brains - manipulate the legitimate democratic institutions and individuals, what climate is engendered for undemocratic impulses to flourish and mushroom!
Then there is the considerable national uproar even before it is aired over possible exposure of the crime culture of Trinidad in Bourdain’s until then much anticipated feature on Trinidad and Tobago which disclosed some even more pernicious underbelly and social currents and the international media’s own prostitution of the truth to twists of alternative news and realities which surfaced in its airing – not on the blanked out cable network, but the broad fluid streams of social media.  
And further, a portrayal by an international cartoonist in circulation, captures the parody and the pathos. It depicts pallbearers, heads all glued to cellphones, bearing stacks of newspapers to final resting place – a macabre specter of the state of the newspaper industry, and the media itself, not only nationally, globally. It is an ominous reality for many colleagues in the industry, as are the huffs and puffs from the power centres – the follow-on from Bret’s power failure in CyberBrets.
 “It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”
Why Moliere’s words float up in conjunction with Waite’s keep hope alive, in these mutterings on the prostitution of the second oldest profession in the world will be explained in the second part of this …. To be continued with CyberBrets…
Eid Mubarak to my friends and relatives and the multicultural faiths, the faithful and hopeful peoples everywhere....

Why Media Matters in Disaster Risk Management
It offers a lifeline to citizens in distress.
It reduces the sense of isolation of those cut off by floods,
It connects citizens to emergency responders
It inspires/motivates emergency operators to do heroism.
It improves emergency response to distress calls.
It lifts the pitch of national discourse promoting empathy.
It neutralises cheap politicking & divisive racial & ethnic slurring emerging in calls for and efforts at disaster relief.
It gives rural communities & those affected a sense of being connected to power centres, and not marginalized.
It restores sense of purpose to media/workers otherwise demotivated, under-remunerated, uncompensated
It provides public service information needed in such times of such heightened distress
It establishes itself as a power among the most powerful
It is the media’s core function, to keep hope alive!
Dr Kris Rampersad, Sustainable Development MultiMedia, MultiCultural Educator
@krisramp Linkedin/Instagram/GPlus KrisRampersad Blog: Demokrissy email: lolleaves@gmail.com

Related Links:
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Things-that-make-me-go-steups-stars http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2016/12/things-that-make-me-go-steups-stars.html
Focus-resources on real crime
The-ghost-of journalism past
Ask About LiTTscapes,

Murder She Wrote: Death Written in Stone in Dana Seetahal Assassination
Creating Centres of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago
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Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Others: Demokrissy: Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 ...
Apr 07, 2013
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013
Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2. 
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's New ...
Oct 20, 2013
Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Carnivalising the Constitution People Power ...
Feb 26, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Envisioning outside-the-island-box ... - Demokrissy - Blogger
Feb 10, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Futuring the Post-2015 UNESCO Agenda
Apr 22, 2014
It is placing increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity, gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New Tools ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Cutting edge journalism
Jun 15, 2010
The Emperor's New Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email. About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/



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