Power Politics & Pursuit of Press Freedom: Requiem To News of the Day
Dr Kris Rampersad 
Requiem to News of the Day
It is fitting that I have the last words on the news of the day, having had the first, isn’t it?
Truth be told, when Demokrissy heard news of death of News of the Day … she hold she belly and bawl dong the place, like any mother, seeing the life snuck out of the child she birthed with so much promise, to watch her gunned down as collateral damage by the gangster company she keep.
Dr KriS Rampersad: Power Politics & Presss Freedom Requiem to News of the DaY, in Demokrissy At The GloCal Knowledge Pot www.krisrampersad.com
Past is Prologue
Demokrissy pull sheself away from creating the EPIC future-ready knowledge intelligence incubator-accelerator built for our increasingly complex, interconnected global realities.
She had to face the bad news! The chile she birthed, who had gone she own way with the gangster lifestyle she pick-up and remained estranged over many years, ‘dead and gone’ the neib, who call, say:
‘It happen right day, on the steps of the Hall of Justice, opposite the Parliament! She take out a hachet and slash she own throat, to boot!’
Demokrissy didn’t want to hear more of the gossip ’bout she chile, because she know she was a good chile when all is said and done. She switch-off she phone and social media that buzzing – with this one saying this, and that one saying that, how she was a good, or bad chile; how she was a disgrace to she upbringing, how she serve she gangs well, depending who talking, on which channel competing with which for the best click-bait.
Like the 12 blind men of Hindustan groping an elephant, none ah dem have the full picture. She shut she doors and windows so de neighbours with ears cock-up to know she business wouldn’t hear she bawling like if is she own life coming out, though later she go tell dem she only shed ‘a tear or two!’
Demokrissy wipe she eyes and blow she nose hard, then ban she belly ’cause she know she must do she duty for she daughter, and release the damaged soul, even if the family that hijack she wanted a burial, not a cremation that wouldda confine all she misprints to the sacred bonfires of purification!
But they opt for burial instead ’cause the Liquidator think she could bring in a lil more from some gullible sentimental who want to keep token remembrances, and Demokrissy not chupidy, she know better than to wait for the call even from the penny pinching liquidator trying to monetise dead assets. Not even as a parent would she be one of the selected in the line-up to memoralise the lost chile because nobody could predict what go fall out she mouth! And especially since she grieving!
She grit she teeth:
Time to face the elephant in the room and bury the suicidal hatchet of the errant Doña News of the Day!
… I realized it’s much more profound than that; that it could get offensive. We’re trying to do something light, just a little pantomime, a little satire, a little picong. But if you take this thing seriously, we might commit Art, which is a kind of crime in this society … I mean, there’d be a lot of things there that people … well, it would make them think too much, and well, we don’t want that … we just want a little … entertainment. – Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Pantomime
Fishy Wrappings
Is true, whatever praise she had was already drained from she tongue a little over a year ago, when she memorialized the soldier who pulled her from firings into the fires of hope to forge it in the fires of hope in a new national dawn for journalism.
She rummage through the pages from she evolving autobiography LIFE! HoleHeartedly, she fish-out from a fish on the edge of the La Basse where it had washed up.
The birth and death of News of the Day closely wrap-up like fish in newspaper with One Bloom she own true CEIBA-EDUtaining lifestory that tests the boundaries of imagination. Read on!
Press for Truths
Demokrissy dry and press the pages, remembering how she had secreted them in the annals of the Memory of the World at the time when the Strange Things seeping from the dark underside was entirely engulfed the body politic and all its watchdog institutions.
Dark Times
‘This was dark time, my loves’, she made mental note to quote Martin Carter in she eulogy, to show that is the same history repeating itself on different people whether is by the slave massas or by the neo-colonial massas, across all the Caribbean nations, though she know is that very narrative of equivalent quivering experiences they dey detest.
This is the dark time, my love,
It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.
It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.
Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious. Martin Carter, Guyanese Poet
She reminisced how even them place that call themselves higher-lorning, but is really lorning-for-hire in the free and independent post-colonial State get overtaken, too, by the greasy tentacles of the Petro-Curse ooze. They throw she LiTTributes and books – and others whose thoughts they didn’t like – down the black greasy hole, because they tell the whole story of all the people struggling to find an equal place through history in the newsworld, in Parliament and other places and about all kindda women who trying to smash-up the Glass Ceiling. That wasn’t the narrative they conditioned to push ’cause it tells of shared realities of different peoples wanting the same Peace, and it might cause them to band together, eh, like they did so we could get Independence that the neo-massas who replaced the massas make sure we never get.
After failing to get hearings for Defenses of Peace, by the Parliament, the courts or on the streets of civic justice, Demokrissy climbed to the highest of the twin towers built from the greasy goo that clogged every artery of the once-promising nation.
Free, voluntary, unpaid work for civic justice is at your own risk, you see. Ask Walter Rodney or Makandal Daaga how the neo colonial massas could find all kindda colonial sedition laws still on the books to suppress Demokrissy.
Knowing if human justice fails, natural justice would not, from a ledge on the Twin Towers overlooking the vast expanse of the Gulf of War, Demokrissy slowly released her lifeblood to flow freely through new tech-veins the Surgeon implanted for her rebirth for exactly this moment. The blood inked the trail of history down the sides of the high twin towers, soaking into the memories in the earth, flowing to be lapped-up by the Sea that collecting all the nation’s bloody heritage to be evaporated and stored in the clouds, all of it since the colonial and other criminal massacres through time from Arenales to Muharram to 1990 till these dark times.
That might have been the end, but was just another beginning.
It so happen that just the other day, when she was foraging for food in the oil-rich nation, rummaging in the La Basse on the edge of the City with the other city rejects, she was reunited with parts of the manuscript ingested by a fish.
Coincidentally, she had seen the fish struggling to escape from the beak of Corbeau. With a swift hand flick from she naturally nature-protective instincts, the Corbeau open he beak and drop the fish. Before the Corbeau who like to think he entitled to all the Nation’s wasted assets, could grab it back, she quickly scoop-up the fish and hide it in she pocket (with the 25 cents Ma sew in there to help her Bloom).
Border Wars on Zona de Paz de Mia: The Fish’s Story
The grateful fish tell she how it had gobbled up some of she bloody writings trickling from the Nation’s financial Twin Towers into the Gulf give him a Lifeline, of War that lapped onto La Zona de Paz de Mia (the zone of peace of mine), seeping out to the Caribbean Sea to smear the greasy ooze all over the Caribbean Zona de Paz de Mia
The hapless fish, with millions of other refugee creatures of land air and sea, was fleeing a power-Mad man, there, but the well-greased fingertips of the region’s info channels happy to pen a different narrative.
The fish said having ingested the volume of Truth & Other Fictions, he was warmed to know that someone else understood and empathized with the undercurrents of La Zona de Paz de Mia that the dominant narratives try to suppress.
He said he didn’t mind if she put him in she legendary heritage fishbowl-without-fish or throw him in hot oil, fry him and ingest him too. She mercifully released him, back to the sea, via an inlet well secluded from the guns blasting innocent fish and fishermen. She had stumbled upon in her Columbus-like Discovers, and Cross Country Raleighs and relays.
Surprisingly, still intact, despite it traumatic meanderings, were the lines she had written about the deceased soldier who guided her as a cub, in whose veins flowed the passionate pursuit for press truths to his dying day, long before the Border Wars, egged-on by the other Mad man ripped through the islands with gale force stronger than the rampaging hurricane Melissa, declaring her guardianship of sovereignty of La Zona de Paz de Mia.
And so it is she began to piece together the piece on the disruption of Peace and the fate that befell the Nation that she would share in wake of the Requiem for News of the Day.
Requiem To News of the Day
Demokrissy’s E-True Trini Story of the Birth & Death of News of the Day
Demokrissy told of the dedicated news soldier had supervised her roaming, through the meandering alleys of news and newsmaking, praising while appraising her exploration of the many beats that made the newsroom the pulsing life-vein of a nation’s democratic heart.
She told of how he applauded the nation’s approbation of her Discovers and other forays brought to its door with all the bright, youthful enthusiasm of a country bookie come to tong, carried across the many registers of journalism on multiple news beats, news, features, commentary, opinion, stories behind the stories. She told of how he cheered the accolades that followed, including when the Media Awards committee selected an entry he and the Chief submitted on her behalf, in a category for which both he and the Chief to entered, as did a TV Mad man.
She recounted how, even while regretting her departure to new ventures, the soldier still applauded – as when she crossed into new terrain to share her Discovers, through television lenses, Cross Country, showing rural folks, and those the light beyond the light of the defunct lighthouse could never reach, that they too could be on TV; that how they look and cook, how they talk and walk could keep good TV prime-time company, that brought new accolades for the new TV company too!
She told of how he kept the newsroom doors open so she could continue working to pay for her studies, burning a special flambeau Ma made that burned on both ends, as she delved into books and thoughts to see what others had discovered about the nation too, returning with a university degree that fed back into the newsroom with new perspectives and insights and perspicacious interviews with the movers and shakers of Nationdom.
The nation’s layered upper echelons, as those in the under-stratas, seem to welcome such new perspectives and insights, singing her praises into many annual board reports of profits and losses that benefited their bottomlines.
Unknown to her, while praise and appraisal rang openly, Stranger Things took shape in the shadows: a fist clenched, a jaw tightened, gnashing at the vacant air, incubating in the dark underside of the newsscapes.
One Mad TV man felt cheated of spotlight he believed was his by right; other creatures would feed off the dark energy, angered by the numbers of people now in the spotlight even though they were left in the shadow of the lighthouse that stop lighting.
Then one day, this happened. It marked the end of her songs of journalistic innocence embedded in her Discovers and Cross Country. And the beginnings of the songs of journalistic experience that set the News of the Day a-sailing, albeint on choppy bullet-blasted waters of La Zona de Paz de Mia.
Bang! Bang! That Awful Sound
Well, first shots were fired at the guards at the gateway of the guardian of democracy. Suddenly. Without warning.
Bang! The Chief gone with she Byline!
Then her soldier. Bang! Bang! Bullets bounce off the pan ’round he neck.
The new-hire was also a firing squad, with targets marked. No questions asked.
Oblivious to the unfolding drama, Demokrissy stroll fresh from graduating from the university with a few more Honours and awards into her creative kiosk to see the photo of her freshly minted Honours and awards marked with a scarlet X, singling her out as a dissident, dissenter and potential disrupter of the status quo.
She didn’t have time to react. In shock at the awfulness, it was pure instinct from being in the crossfire of one too many unanticipated coups that make she duck.
Just in time.
Bang bang! The firing squad find she and bullets fly right past she nose. Must be trying to spite she face!
Just collateral damage for being once too often in the same award categories for the news and the TV shows, or allowing the spotlight to shine on the faces of too many others, beyond the shadow of the defunct lighthouse.
Had she known the source of the grouse she would have gladly handed over the noble trinkets, if they meant so much, but nah, bang bang! She duck and run headlong into the bleeding soldier.
They crawl-down the stairs through the gates onto the streets next door. They reach up and hang a banner to signal hope to the nation amidst the terror and turmoil, killing and carnage: It flapped The Good News to News of the Day!
Journalism Landmines
For the love of liberty, they escaped the exploding landmines, hopping over explosives laid to snuff out the life of any unsuspecting young promising thought-leader in a nation that shunned thinking.
We just want to wine and have a good time and just looking for a lime, oh Lord, Amen!
They had been the first targets of the explosions laid on the once Elysian fields of democracy, making landmines of national journalism. They would not be the last.
The war only just start, marn!
Birth of News of the Day
They made it onto the streets next door to renew hopes and dreams, raising hands with the masses in praise of The Good News!
For the love of country, they would forge from fires that was engulfing the democratic fields such a new day for News of the Day!
The prospectus bared the promise. Faces beaming with optimism.
And now, The Good News! The nation toasted!
Borne out of the still bellowing black smoke of insurrection that had split the nation wide open along all its fractured fault lines seeded by colonial trauma and replanted by the neo-colonial inheritors to stamp out diversity hanging over the body politic, the nation raised hands in praise, as their fingers penned The Good News to raise the vibrations and aspirations for hope.
Ay ay ay, we love we country!
Fight for Survival
The soldier hang he pan round he neck and we chippin’ dong the road to the Mighty Sparrow winning Survival, making musical news and the nation happy like pappy:
…In pursuit of (Press Freedom)
We fight for survival….
Coming through the Dark Ages looked upon as Savages
Hunted by unrighteousness
Time and place and circumstance
And some people’s ignorance
We have to face all kind of Prejudice
Subjected to slavery
Bound by economic chains
Quick to hold but slow to develop
Daunted by redundancy
Plagued by emotional pains
Still for all we wouldn’t stop….
We will fight
For Survival!
– The Mighty Sparrow, Survival
Then, as now.
The Power of One
The Good News of the Day came on the scene when the nation was itself that mother bawling as she watch the blood ah she sons ‘an daughters spilling from pavements, dripping into drains, onto news pages, and back into the market gossip circuits, on fish stalls, use to wrap fresh-fresh fish and poured back into the drains, mixing with wash-water and waste to back up and clog the sewer piping into the city.
Demokrissy with the News of the Day sound the bugle of hope!
‘5000 Lives Saved,’ she proclaimed The Good News, to the nation drowning in murder and mayhem.
‘See here, the passion, energy and optimism of youths manning hotlines without reward or recognition. Hear them coaxing the nation off the ledge of the Petro-Curse that render them hopeless. Many felt suicide their only option because if they want to do something more creative than beg for a few bucks till the next song sell, or grow some food on their agri-plot as they cyar afford the dictum to buy what you want for them who money is no problem.
5000 Lives Saved,’ she hold up the Good News as the nation’s Lifeline, giving them hope.
National Selfie: Lifeline
‘See here, the strengths of NGOs (non-governmental organisation), holding the flaying and frayed seams of the fracturing State together. ‘5000 Lives Saved,’ she labelled the nation’s Lifeline.
‘See the value of invisible women, steering the lifesaving path, though the spotlight never see their faces, nor them any compensation for kindness. ‘5000 Lives Saved,’ she F/Empowered the Good News and the nation’s Lifeline.
‘By Phone,’ she added, holding the phone-up, nation-facing, for a selfie of the nation, to mirror The Good News in them! Reinforcing the Good News, two pretty little girls beamed out on the front page. From different ethnic backgrounds and different sides of the lighthouse, they saw no difference, sharing only the instant spark of friendship on meeting on their first day at school.
Smile! The Nation smiled, too, at the pretty selfies, we took, brimming with hope of survival!
All that, captured in ONE news story. News of the Day first lead front-page story. The Power of One!
Such good news of the day was buoyed by the screams of contractions in the body politic from birth pangs of a nation growing new leaders among the diverse peoples beyond the lighthouse.
Collective Synergies
The other organs of News of the Day, Design, Advertising, Circulation, Production & Distribution step up to deliver, devoting work time, home time, family time, fun time, wine and jam time, through press crashes and multiple teething problems, to take the paper out to every nook and cranny of the country!
We rallied the masses from the sugarcane fields, the oil-fields and the agri-fields, the fisherfolks and the village folks. It was like reawakening the dream of Independence, the dream of the short-lived NAR One-Love that briefly reawakened the pre-Independence unity, all rolled into one.
The possibilities had been forgotten by the national dementia that set in greasy grab for the spoils of Independence.
Now the newborn News of the Day was Finding A Place for: the rural folks demanding an equal place and share of national patrimony; the small country parlours could afford to put an ad for their cricket match and bazaars; the women holding their skirts and their homes together with shoestring budget.
Demokrissy and the writing team brought the stories of the village councils, the church and cricket team, the market vendors, the tailor and seamstress and the likes of Ma Corn Hox who keeping she people safe with Obeah!
It wove together Discover, she first award-winning newspaper column, Cross Country, the first local award-winning television production holding primetime viewing (never since replicated friends and colleagues reminisced at our recent reunion)
Their notes of patriotic innocence, rural simplicity and multi-ethnic vending market amiability, all converge to power the News of the Day.
Nation on Path To Health
The World Health Organisation hailed the signs of a nation returning to health.
Demokrissy get a next award for producing of the healthiest news of the day.
Greasy Petro-Cursed Tentacles Tighten
Changes and successes doh sit good with everybody, even if it is good news. People say they want change, but is either they mean pass some greasy big dollars, not small change, or exchange.
Directors straddling boardrooms of the Petro-Curse, antsy for instant profits, decreed:
If Good News of the Day can’t bring in healthy profits, it would be deducted from journalists’ health.
God knows Demokrissy served up pounds and pounds of healthy flesh, but it was not the kind of windfall they used to getting from activities that didn’t require social conscience.
And with the greasy tentacles reaching from the dark underside of the bloody Petro-Cursed land to bring on a new season of Stranger Things, well, the writing was on the wall.
Just so, just so.
Bang Bang!
The bombshell drop!
No more Good News of the Day!
Bloody Hell!
The nation gone back to admiring its old bloody self-portrait!
Crime reclaimed front pages. Exchange is no robbery, the boardroom said, as the bloody new-hire in the old place was recycled as the new hire in the once new space of the news of the day!
Or Well
Stranger Things: The creatures outside looked from Thing to man, and from man to Thing, and from Thing to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
“The Media Must Be Free To Tell The Whole Story,” the Chief had declared in the story after the first story about 500 Lives Saved.
But perhaps she didn’t mean the media should tell its own story, the story of media in the Land That Petro Cursed?
Interment of News of the Day
I am sure you would now agree HoleHeartedly that, having had the first word, having given the News of the Day its first Lifeline, it is fitting that Demokrissy delivers its last – hook line and sinker!
Demokrissy frankly admits that although not unexpected, news of death of News of the Day was not unemotional – yea, she did shed a tear or two. Nah, scratch that. That was the rehearsed script. Truth be told, she hold she belly and bawl dong the place, like any mother, seeing the life snuck out of the child she birthed with so much promise, to watch her gunned down as collateral damage by the gangster company she keep.
Not unexpected nor unanticipated, yet the pain that gripped her innards was akin to the severing of her heart’s artery by the State and its Santimanitay Chorus.
It was pain like the severed umbilical Lifeline of the many mothers we have seen on covers of the News of the Day and their competitors who followed suit, clutching their hearts and bawling dey heads off as they try to stem the oozing lifeblood of a son or daughter lost to gang warfare.
It was the severed umbilical Lifeline of sons bleeding into drains; daughters caught in gang crossfire; pages flooded with blood spilling over to become social media clickbait for monetizing likes/follows/shares and the competitive edge of shark in shark barrel, competing to be the first on the draw.
Bang Bang! Painting the nation red!
No more Lifelines of hopeful good ole news of optimism.
News of the Day Dead Dead, and buried in the cemetery too booth, although the Liquidator want you to believe otherwise!
Epilogue
For championing the Good News, Demokrissy would be hop, skip and jumping over landmines laid for media for most of her life, even long after the left the crumbling institutions to try build new ones, because so extensive were the fields that they stretched over the fields of civic liberties, culture, creativity and education she traversed.
No more Lifelines.
No accounting for the suicidal cuts inflicted daily on the body politic. Police statistics brimmed over with murders, manslaughters, suicides, less of Lifelines.
The Petro Curse seeped through pipelines and sewer lines, mixing waste and wealth, oozing into and from the La Basse into the city, engulfing new recruits, tightening its hold. One hard look from the greasy-finger purse clutchers and all watchdogs gone complicit.
Stranger Things multiplied, unreported. Diverse voices silenced. Self-censorship, so more pernicious that forced censorship, reigned. Silence prevailed in the land of Shut-Up.
News entities gobbled up with Gollum-delight the preciousss flowing from preferential State Ads and from selling news reports glorifying on crime dons of the day, holding the nation mesmerized like manicou in the light of a hunter, cut off from critical thinking, immobilized, inert and unable to think or feel for itself. Suicidal. As Demokrissy prophesied the Triumph of Gollum In The Land of Shut Up.
Bang Bang! Became a familiar sound, normalized. Just scurry and hope you wouldn’t become collateral damage. And if you did, and like this day, we gather and mourn as we do now, for the News of the Day!
The greasy flow source of the Petro Curse receded, but the seep had already smeared the land and seeped into the region.
Stranger Things continue to explode vacuous bile over the nation and across the Gulf of War, tightening its grip to protect a status quo that sat behind the glare of their lenses conditioned into blindness.
‘Spontaneous combustion,’ the coroner declared, when called upon to do the autopsy.
Bang bang, that awful sound, would follow her everywhere, through district and community spaces and spaces for national, regional and global engagement and even into the noble halls of peace, trying to ensure that good news dead-dead. Finding A Place that told the mediascape, the movements to settlement, adaptation, inclusion, the nuts an bolt and what it take to becoming a nation an the newsmen and newswomen, like the earlier journalists and media uncounted in national and regional research, predecessors and ancestors of the Chokolingos, who originally founded Newsday, well it get banished from the high towers too.
Yet through it all, Demokrissy’s rgrounding in Good News resonate cross country and cross continent, as potently now as then.
Understanding the limits of the things she can change, unable to stop the exploding land mines laid everywhere as she had well detected long ago, Demokrissy climb-up to the highest of the twin towers – the proud monuments of the petro-windfall, similarly twined in other cities in across the Americas – aye aye aye who going Panama? She let her lifeblood drip down, truth leak down to nourish the new life she know bong to spring back up!
It became the Fish’s Tale:
A nation that cuts off the lifeblood of the many tightens the noose with its own hands. A media trafficked in partial truths commits a quiet injustice—starving nation and region of the full anatomy of reality. Institutions that reject other truths seal their fate in denial. A region that refuses self-interrogation does not stand still; it collapses inward. A democracy that silences itself is a pantomime – movement without meaning, performance without voice. Santimanitay!
A Note of Hope, The Last Word, Like the First
Birth of Demokrissy
Demokrissy was born from experience like these, experiences and civic spaces that formal media want to write out. It created its own niche, acting as a conduit, networking the communities whose knowledge it shared to think tanks and others involved in crafting solutions, solutions that remain in gestation, until the time for rebirth is right.
It evolved along carefully crafted modes of engaging diverse groups and stakeholders to consensuse – as was used to bring together and relay messages of diverse groups of civil society across the Commonwealth and InterAmerican systems, as agricultural stakeholders of the Caribbean for the Caribbean Week of Agriculture form where EU partners requested replication on an international scale.
Recognising that the one-off event approach on which the EU, UN and other systems model patronage passed on and fed back as raison d- etre into and out of our systems, I used my years in exile with target groups, developing new models, and modules and materials and keeping abreast of the evolving knowledge spectrum with skills and knowledge upgrades across the multiple fields as technologies continue to split tasks and disciplines into micro-specialities to respond to binary systems that potentially undermine human dignity, for those who have some left.
These are the models that the GloCal Knowledge Pot and the aligned systems under the umbrella of Dr Kris Rampersad – Knowledge Research Information Services and Resources-Leaves of Life – in incubation for decades that are ready to power acceleration for national and regional retrieval and emergence.
It is a vision that factors in journalism and news not just as a website, platform, or channel to serve narrow interests, but as an ecosystem interlinking news and journalism with the entire knowledge spectrum of culture and education, which fare also functions of media (to inform and educate) along with its functions to entertain, and which are now so keenly emerging as essentially intertwined in the age of digital media.
These find expression through new synergised forms and formats as the MultiMedia MicroEpic and CEIBA-EDUtainment and more recently in response to the emergence of AI, AuthenTHINK Intel with AI AnalyEthics to rebalance and recenter our approach to knowing and being through a continuum of traditional to contemporary tech-based knowledge systems.
GKP consolidates earlier digital pilots a Demokrissy blogging and social channels into a single portal with innovative uses of new media, integrate journalism’s traditional functions to inform, educate, and interpret across intergenerational and interdisciplinary functions.
Partners, sponsors and collaborators wishing to support and help make these available to their own or larger communities of interests, or to understand how they can get involved make a difference to our rapidly changing world can make contact.
Futuring the MediaScape
And now For The Elephant in the Room
Free Expression in a Minefield
Our media reform conversations too often orbit around technology, revenue models, or audience engagement. They rarely confront the central danger: The deliberate and systemic seeding of minefields within institutional frames and operational agendas that work against free and independent thought and expression.
They come in many forms, not just media and politicians publicly fist-shaking at each other. The more insidious forms are shoved underground to fester and manifest as the implosion within CARICOM.
Partisan pressure. Corporate influence. Gatekeeping access. Subtle blacklisting. Quiet strangulation of income streams and the dark underlings and agents ating against Democracy.
For those of us carrying the mandate for transformative agendas, seeking to widen space for ostracised majorities, women, rural communities, and “beyond-the-lighthouse” geopolitical jurisdictions, the mediascape is especially treacherous. Neutrality is not protection. Silence buys survival. Truth demands courage and a long Lifeline.
Demokrissy, my blog, emerged directly from interference with my space for free expression and opinion. It was a refusal to surrender voice. But it soon became clear that individual platforms, however resilient, were insufficient. What is needed was not merely more content. What was needed was infrastructure. And that is the story of Renaissance, the rebirth, the revolution of transformation, that emerges next.
Part of A Trilogy of News of the Day
You have just read Power Politics & Pursuit of Press Freedom RIP News of the Day is Part of a Trilogy AuthenTHINK Intel News Analysis
See next: The Power of One – Can One News Story Do All This: Not Knowing Might Have Caused News of the Day Her Life See AuthenTHINK Intel AnalyEthics Anatomy & Forensic Autopsy of a News Story See Link https://krisrampersad.com/power-of-one-an-authenthink-intel-analyethics-autopsy-of-news-of-the-day/
Prologue & Epilogue: See The Renaissance: Find out how we can emerge into new future for new, news media and creative and critical thinking: Renaissance in Global Conscience: Local Intel Defying Algorithms for Media Futures https://krisrampersad.com/renaissance-in-global-conscience-local-intel-defying-algorithms-for-media-futures/
Author’s Note Get Involved
This is just one AuthenTHINK Intel AnalyEthics of one of the thousands of news and other articles, speeches, papers, presentations that form part of my unstructured, undigitized archives. In there are the seeds for cultivating new pathways for development. Not just in news, culture, education, gender empowerment, environment, cultural economics, and more recently in data science and AI technologies. Wherever I saw gaps and lag, I learnt the core elements of the arena so I can understand what it would take to being healing.
It is from this pad of competence and confidence and optimism in our future that the GloCal Knowledge Pot is now set to launch into full form!
Want to Support, Sponsor, Donate or Find out how you may collaborate for the benefit of your sector or community? Make Contact and Let’s Discuss.
About Dr Kris Rampersad
See Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kS4eWwzNg
From Platform to Knowledge Architecture
The GloCal Knowledge Pot grew from a deeper realisation:
Media is no longer just a messenger. It is now a central pillar of the knowledge ecosystem.
In a world where information shapes policy, markets, culture, and consciousness, journalism must be embedded inside systems that support:
Knowledge creation, Knowledge validation, Knowledge transmission, Knowledge preservation.
It must be aligned with education and culture, not siloed away from them. It is the Raison d’Etre of The GloCal Knowledge Pot and the satellite of offerings under Leaves of Life and my Knowledge Research Information Services and Resources.
This represents a radical departure from colonially entrenched separation-of-powers models that fracture systems at the foundation and render intersectionality, inter-institutionality, and partnership largely performative. (I would say more on this later)
The GloCal Knowledge Pot is under reconstruction and designed to accommodate along with its popular archives and blog:
Knowledge Library & Intelligence Hub
Multimedia Museums
Virtual Themed Showcases,
E-Galleries & Tours;
A Commissioned Policy & Intelligence Unit
An Academy: Incubator/Lab/Hub.
It will bolster existing strands as the GloCal Caribbean Creative & Literary Salon.
These build from its new hybrid forms and frameworks:
CEIBA-EDUtainment
The MultiMedia MicroEpic
Critical Thinking Mechanisms as
AuthenTHINK INTEL
AI AnalyEthics
And an unfolding ecosystem of related content, new endeavours
Journalism becomes one expression within a living, breathing knowledge superstructure.
Stories do not disappear after publication. They become datasets. They feed archives.
They inform curricula. They shape policy intelligence. News shifts from being an endpoint to being a gateway.
The GloCal Knowledge Pot reclaims time as a democratic resource. Time to research. Time to contextualise. Time to revisit, reflect, analyse. Time to connect patterns across decades. This is not nostalgia for a slower age. It is futurism. Because journalism without memory becomes spectacle.
A Triumphant Emergence
The emergence of the GloCal Knowledge Pot is triumphant not because it is perfect, or complete, or immune to struggle. It is triumphant because it exists, against all the odds and the minefields that continue to explode in its chosen path, including starvation from funding.
But the Glocal Knowledge Pot Refutes the lie that small states cannot build big thinking systems; that post-colonial societies cannot author our own futures. It treats journalism not as a dying industry, but as a civilisational necessity.
The GloCal Knowledge Pot is living proof of The Power of One!
This is not a departure from journalism. It is journalism remembering what it was always meant to be, as an architect of public intelligence, guardian of collective memory and catalyst for structural change.
In an oil-cursed, patriarchally blinkered, colonially haunted society, conditioned into amnesia and mindless forgetfulness, that remembering is revolutionary.
And revolution, in this moment, is infrastructure.
- Marco brings Dunroe Doctrine into CARICOM Cold War: Business Unusual in Play Whe Politics
When Marco Rubio Enter CARICOM with Dunroe Ducktrin, it is not a ceremonial meet but strategic policy to force the region to confront festering issues – inside Play Whe marks and regional clown traditionst his is serious Business Unusual to shape US–Caribbean policy futures. Dr Kris RampersadBuss The Mark … read on - Iron Ladies Behind CARICOM’s Iron Curtain Cold War of Peace in PiecesDynamite or demureness … hard glances at CARICOM’s Iron Ladies to tuck in their skirts, fold their legs, cross their ankles, keep fisted knuckles on their laps and pack up their pokneys in the finest exhibition of Caribbean broughtupsy Behind the Cold Iron Curtain of Caribbean geopolitics, two women command the global discourse Up Close on disagreements power, survival and sovereignty in the Zone of Peace
- Renaissance in Global Conscience: Local Intel Defying Algorithms for Media FuturesBlazing hillsides light the way into a year of reaching new heights from one that reached into new frontiers towards the Rennaissance in Media Futures with the GloCal Knowledge Pot, the autopsy and requiem for the dying old order complete this trilogy…
- Power Politics & Pursuit of Press Freedom: Requiem To News of the DayExorcism or Autopsy! Bawling like a mother losing a child to crime, I Demokrissy asks What killed the News of the Day? From first words to last, an up close and personal look at the innards News Media Power & Politics in this AuthenTHINK Intel Forensic AnalyEthic post-mortem of power, where truth reads like fiction
- Power of One! An AuthenTHINK Intel AnalyEthics Autopsy of News of the DayPost Mortem of News Media Can one news story do all this? an AuthenTHINK Intel Forensic AnalyEthics Not knowing this might have cost News of the Day her life! From First Words To Last An Autopsy
- This is no coonoomoonoou village Data banking world memory
This aint no coonoomoonoou Village Dr Kris Rampersad Christmas Message restores confidence to this village in a world where algorithms decide who is seen and who remains invisible, more www.krisrampersad.com and @krisrampersad on youtube - Recoding New Global Order AuthenTHINK Times People of the Year
Does AI merit Time’s Person of the Year title? AuthenTHINK Times with Demokrissy explores how to Flip the Media Script to rebalance the equation on awards and recognitions reprogramming the colonised humans by those of us trekking through time, Hop on Board this journey of rediscovery Explore with me …. - To New Tech Emperors How To Reverse Macaulay Minute One Min12 Emperors of Tech, one globe-trotting truth-seeker with a coveted roadmap & one tech minute to Reverse the Macaulay Minute & change the course of the New Age War for Peace more at www.krisrampersad.com
- Epic Great War Oils New World Battle in Diaspora High Seas
Did someone say War? What is a War without an EPIC or an EPIC without War, complete with Hero, Heroine Villains & a sage guru describing unfolding War action on oiled frontier battlefield of Demokrissy. Journey with me in the face of our New World Wars…new Epic with modern twists - EPIC Treks New Diasporas Cross Routes Roots of Ancient WorldOn the path of ancient scribes, I journey through the Ancient Silk Routes to find the startling primeval prehistoric heritage and other interconnections between East and West …
- Resource Bridging for EPIC Treks through New World HeritageWhat is it that last longer than a magnificently constructed bridge; bridges the greatest physical and metaphysical divides and and spans time and space in an eternal continuum – Inspired by the opening the new bridge in Petro-Enriched Guyana, Dr Kris Rampersad looks into the enduring interconnections in Bridges of the Future …
- Monumental Missing Links of Island to World HeritageThis year of planetary alignments shed light on the some of the missing links between Small States and World Heritage, illuminating a lifetime of research treks and explorations . Here’s How…
- Golden Bridge Oils New Silk Route To East in WestAs Guyana’s Demerara Bridge unfurls across the river in a gleaming arc of steel and spirit, it connects far more than two shores. Dr. Kris Rampersad journeys through its symbolism — from the poetry of nation-building to the ancient crossings of civilization that continue to shape the region’s place in the world.
- In the News Retuning the Republic New Civic EducationWouldyou believe that changing the form and channel of this adds whole new dimensions to how we perceive, receive and understand our world. Happy REpublic Day. Building a Nation with novel solutions ….
- Sale of Creative Assets miss the Forex boat fuel Exodus
How leading National Energy agency missed the boat on the knowledge economy and it is not only about that sale of audio visual archives T&T Loss, Barbados Gain…. Symptoms of Black Gold Epidemic and warning to region’s emerging oil economic - Sovereignty Sale Buy Out Culture Gaslight Feuds Fuel Crime
Sovereignty For Sale How Dutch Disease evolved to the Trinidad and Tobago Black Gold Epidemic to create not just in a State of Emergency against Crime. but also a State of Emergency in Education, Media, Culture, Tourism, Agriculture and strife in intercultural relations and negative development spiral. Reflecting on the State of Development in a month of conteplation on the State of the State at Indepdence and the sale of intellectual assets Dr Kris Rampersad Sovereignty Trilogy - PM Mottley More Sweetness To The Culture Market BasketCurious about what really went down at CARIFESTA XV – maturing into a regional stage of opportunities to trade culture and creativity…. here’s an insider glance at the slide show – Caribbean Picong and Satire at its premium best!
- Kashi City of Infinity connects Caribbean to EPIC World HeritageIn this time of ancestral ancestral rememberances, a sneakpeak India EPIC Landscape & Mindscapes of Heritage & History This Is Kashi I come to Kashi, from the world to detach Instead to Kashi’s other-worldly anchors I become attached…
- EPIC Landscapes and Mindscapes of World Heritage and History New!Introducing Innovative EPIC Landscapes & Mindscapes of World Heritage & History where heritage is more than monument, history more than date and decree.. find hidden and lost interconnections of our global heritage from the Caribbean to the world with startling insights and ask about creative partnerships …
- Caribbean Oil Capital Guyana President New Mandate against Dutch DiseaseGuyana President Dr Irfaan Ali took office five years ago, relatively unknown to World Leadership, now five years later his country polls its verdict …. Multilateral Policy Influencer Dr Kris Rampersad reflects on the Caribbean’s new oil capital and the changing tones of the leadership and governance in the region and the Global South
- Ahoy Matey! Navigating World’s Wickedest UNESCO Heritage CitySwashbuckling through tumultuos seas, vessels manned by corrupt pirates, massive bureaucratic blocks and resource limitation Caribbean Queen of Culture Dr Kris Rampersad lands on World’s Wickedest Heritage City to unearth treasure chest for economic diversification identity retrieval and social cohesion and transformation
- LAC Awesome foursome enter UNESCO World Heritage Listour New UNESCO World Heritage Sites for the regio… Maurading the High Seas of Heritage, clutching the lost map retrieved from the depths of the World’s Wickedest Heritage City, the swashbuckling Queen of Caribbean Culture & Heritage, Dr Kris Rampersad, is hot on the trail to unlocking the code to the treasure troves for economic diversification, identity retrieval & social transformation…like & follow for more F krisrampersad.com krisrampersad: youtube, instagram, linkedin
- My World Heritage footprints on UNESCO sites
Swashbuckling Queen of Caribbean Heritage Dr Kris Rampersad navigates the treacherous global waters of World Heritage to leave a trail of footprints to a treasure trove for economic diversification, identity retrieval and social transformation … follow this trail to our interconnected global heritage - SOS! 2025 Security Emergency reopens forgotten Diary of 1990 Coup-bidA State of Emergency, a government confronting criminality & corruption, weaknesses in justice systems and law enforcement agencies with weary and blood-thirsty citizens demanding guns and arms. Dr Kris Rampersad deep dives into the roots of social violence, experiences of the 1990 coup attempt & legacies States of Emergencies
- In the News: Life-Altering Journey Through India
Spread the loveIn the News: Heritage educator Dr Kris Rampersad on mapping India’s development 180 years after ancestors - Inside Pulse of A Civilisation – Tracing Ancestors’ Footsteps in World’s Largest DiasporaWith a blank creative canvas to turn audio visual light on India’s development thrust while retriacing ancestral footsteps, I hurled into the vortex that is India – beyond its racial, religious and geospatial walls
- Knowledge Exchange on Daughters of World Largest Diaspora – A visit with the India AmbassadorHe might be busy getting in placethe nuts and bolts of the visit of Indian Primce Minister Narendra Modi to Trinidad and Tobago but India High Commissioner to TT, Shri Pradeep Rajpurohit took the time to welcome me back to TT from India and to do this ..
- Sopari Mai Reboot! PM Kamla’s 2nd historic election victory to shatter Glass CeilingSopari Ki Mai, Kamla Persad-Bisessar victory at the post is the stuff of legends that resonates from this twin islnd republic across the region to our interconneted diaspora. What’s next on the road to development as a Woman Prime Minister, for the Caribbean as she joins Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and for the diaspora and the Global South? Dr KRis Rampersad’s AuthenThink Intel Analyses pinpoints key benchmarks…
- In The News: Reshaping Inclusive Development at World’s Largest Diaspora Gathering
Spread the love As we face explosion of crime and as the world explodes in conflict and wars, - Cultures Converge in Historic MahaKumbh Mela Pravasi in PrayagrajSpread the love The locals believe that those who show up for the Maha Kumbh Mela that takes
- My Date with Narendra Modi – revisiting India in the West reshaping a New World OrderPrelude to a closer look at the India-Caricom Summit, coming on the heels of the Brazil-hosted G20 Summit, and some new AuthenThink Intel AI AnalyEthics and insights into what this should mean for the region, the Americas, the Global South and the emerging New World Order!
- Toxic Politics Petticoat Obsession US Election Knickers A-Twist in Race To The Polls A Woman’s Place When America Sneezes
In the cut and thrust of a toxic political culture with a petticoat obsession that leaves many-a-knickers-in-a-twist, how is the USA treating with skews, biases and prejudices that persist in the political playpen and reflecting in its polling analyses, media outputs, advertising and campaign prospects? Dr Kris Rampersad, AuthenThink AI AnalyEthics Development Strategist punches at the appearances in the USA Election Campaign. - High Stakes in US Elections Leadership Matters to Emerging New World Order – When America Sneezes
No matter how vehemently the USA sneezes, virally spreading its cold, flu and pandemic ailments across borders, it is not the whole shebang of the Americas that is our Hemisphere, struggling to assert and affirm myriad identities in a panoramic cultural mosaic - Future AI SciTech Learnings Passport To A Brave New ImaginedNation
Spread the love ‘Oh brave new AI world that there’s so much data in’t!’ Missed me since the - What Is A Woman Power Shift in Musical Boardroom Sydnie Transcends Sinatra’s My Way the Hi-WaySpread the love Sydnie pitches Sinatra’s famed cocky melody onto a new path as the potential female anthem
- The Lights that Spark Us! Between Birthdays & Death’s day Shine On! For Denise In TributeOn Birthdays & Death’s Day: We have is this one instant to spark, to negate the ever-present darkness, to shine our pinpricks of light in the endless stream of sparks that connect our floodlight to the satellite of Cosmic Stars. more at www.krisrampersad.com
- Bloody Hell! Toxic Power in King Charles’ Portrait of Planet … Confronting the Colonial Mindset
If Machiavelli and Lady Macbeth had a baby he would look something like the Portrait of King Charles III – a karmic depiction of human ugly, toxic power at its most macabre, noxious and nihilistic, the apocalyptic legacy of Empire inherited and claimed as he morphs into the role of Monarch on whose shoulder sits planetary doom, hands and faced stroked with blood. Art defies artistic intent, sitter’s expectations to define its own truths Dr Kris Rampersad explores art artist sitter and society.., - Pieces of Ma MotherContinent village inspires a global village Happy Mothers’ Day
You do not need millions of followers to Impact the World. How our mothers did it Message to Girls gripped by social media syndrome Happy Mothers Day! - What Really Happened On the Road to Guyana? Wanted! A New Journalism for A New Development Agenda – With BBC Gone#3
Spread the love So if I have resisted jumping on the bandwagon of media shares and commendations, it - Mayday! Mayday! Mutated Tech-Savvy Sharks Invade Roadways new Tonton Macoutes Open Letter To Minister of Transport et alNew Tech Savvy Mutant Shark Species Take over Roadways share kinship lineage withe Haiti’s Tonton Macoutes Open Letter to Minister of Transport & Commissioner Roots & Routes of Anarchy Satire & Allegory
- Confronting The Colonial Mindset & Systemised Bias With BBC Gone Who Goin Tek Over Town II Happy Girls In ICT Day!With escalating evidence of the persistent colonial mindset inhibiting the development agenda introducing a new Demokrissy Series to confront the Colonial Mindset, media bias and bias in tech Happy International Girls In ICT Day
- Cover Story Dr Kris Changing The World With Ideas Impact the Future IWD ReflectionsReflecting the Journey to Impact the Future called Wonder Woman Reflections on International Women’s Day Cover Story Changing the World With Ideas
- Creating From Chaos Arresting the Tears for Us and the Haitian EarthCreating from Chaos insights into the Haitian democratic dilemma rooted in an atrocious Colonial past and what artistry may be needed healing and recovery Eye … Haiti …Cries…Everywhere
- Dirty Lyrics CARICOM@50 Guyana President jams on opaque data culture-Impact the Future Women Techmakers Happy IWD!This startling disclosure by Chair of CARICOM, Guyana President Dr Irfaan Ali has repercussions for culture of governance, Data Driven Development, cultural actions for change and gender empowerment Happy International Women’s Day from this Woman Techmakers’ Ambassador
- In the News Digital Dilemma in Caribbean Education Culture New Directions Needed for ICT PlanningHow internet and the technological advancements are causing us to loosen our grip on cultural traditions and heritage, critical to our national and cultural identities and what we can do about it!
- A Carnival Memoire Jus call me Cooligan! Bois and Bacchanal in meh blood One Fine J’Ouvert MornA Carnival expose of the hidden gems of the multicultural mosaic of the Caribbean as we enter the bacchanalia of the season
- Pokney From the Pyre PM Panday Patni/Wife Progeny Poke PatriarchyPresence of Panday’s Patni/wife and Progeny at Hindu pyre cremation implications for cultural practice, discrimination and violence against women and boys’ education
- Prime Minister Panday’s Last Parlance – Final Fiery Journey Comes Full Circle to Reconnect with AncestorsFormer Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s final journey to cremation pyre recalls other journeys to root and anticipated welcome on the other side – Dr Kris Rampersad reflects on his journeys
- People’s Prime Minister Panday’s Parting Punch in prep for Tell-All Memoire – mutating orator into author In RemembranceBehind the scenes confessions on honing the authorial skills of the Silver Fox the orator Prime Minister Basdeo Panday
- Silver Fox Who Dared Lions – former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday – Passes OnSilver Fox who dared Lions Prime Minister Basdeo Panday passes on News Year’s Day farewell
- When Your World View is the World’s View! Happy New Year!
Spread the love When You World View is the World’s View! Happy New Year! As we say goodbye - Peace Talks to Change LAC Agenda – Region Poised For New Era of Development?
Promise of change of course for development in Latin America and Caribbean as feuding leaders Guyana’s President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro meet for peace talks around border controversy more details on Boredr Wars www.krisrampersad.com - A New Agenda for Guyana-Venezuela Talks – Open Letter to Comrade Gonsalves & Peace Brokers from Limboing to Parranda-ing & Junkanooing on the Borderline
An open letter to Peace Broker Dr Gonsalves et al addressing talks between Venezuela and Guyana Border Wars III with a revised agenda and a unique perspective on the ongoing conflict and actionable steps to foster peace and understanding. More at www.KrisRampersad.com - Prompt Action Needed as UN Security Council, CARICOM hold Emergency Meet on Venezuela; Maduro’s Land Grab threat to Guyana may escalate 8m refugee crisis in LAC – the Border Wars II
Prompt Action needed from Region as Repercussions set in from threats by Venezuelan President Maduro to Guyana, defiance of the ICJ provisional order and growing repercussions for Venezuela Refugee and displacement crises, regional insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean. - ICJ to pronounce on provisional request by Guyana Dec 1 2023International Court of Justice
- Brokering the Border Wars – LAC limbo on barbed lines of demarcation as Venezuela-Guyana dispute heightens
Political stability and peace in Latin America and the Caribbean sits on a fine filigree of loosely-knotted territorial disputes. What are the implications to the wider region of the Venezuela-Guyana Dispute Dr Kris Rampersad takes a broader and deeper view of fermenting feuds…www.krisrampersad.com - When Kerry Met Kris – Negotiating Caribbean Development with US Secretary of State
he USA rejoining UNESCO and its significance for bilateral and multilateral arrangements with Caribbean countries. - UNESCO actions and funding under scrutiny, says Trinidad representativeSpread the love Providing focus to centering the agenda needs and agendas of the developing world, Global South
- SIDS education culture agenda before UNESCO Executive BoardUnderstanding the mechanisms of global governance and how to use the instruments to effect change is one of the challenges facing the region and ways to redress with Dr Kris Rampersad
- T&T Offers Multicultural Experience To UNESCO’s New Humanism Thrust – In the NewsSpread the love Positioning small islands, the developing world and the Global South on the international agenda requires
- Critical Creative Triggers to social and economic developmentWhy we are failing the next generations and sending them into trigger-hapy youth and street gangs
- Exclusives with Miss World! Behind the Glamour Glitter & Glow! Beauty in Gender Empowermentehind the Scenes on the world of glamour, glitter and glow of representing Trinidad and Tobago. Anecdotes with the First Miss World from Trinidad and Tobago, Giselle La Ronde, the first woman of colour to win the Miss Universe Competition, Janelle-Penny and the second Miss Universe from Trinidad and Tobago, Wendy Fitzwilliam. more at www.krisrampersad.com .
- World Heritage Calendar Girl!Spread the love Yes! There is such a thing. Working in Heritage you could find yourself featured as
- Thumb’s-up from the Duke of Sussex. Prince Harry reaches outWhy is Prince Harry Duke of Sussex, reaching out ? Behind the secret chuckles and squirmis of the satirical, lyrical and blunt truth-to-power,to holders of high office .. more at www.krisrampersd,com
- Nobel musings – Guyanese who should have, Caribbean woman who may bring in Nobel for LiteratureNobel musings – Would a woman bring in the Caribbean’s third Nobel Laureate for Literature and this Guyanese writer who should have won Nobel
Discover more from GLoCaL Knowledge Pot
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
