Marco brings Dunroe Doctrine into CARICOM Cold War: Business Unusual in Play Whe Politics
Dr Kris Rampersad 
Dunroe Ducktrin Play Whe Marco and CARICOM Identity Crisis Business Unusual
For CARICOM, it is business unusual as US enforces Dunroe Ducktrin. Its fractures are no longer covered with overgrown debris like the grand indigenous petroglyphs beneath St Kitts and Nevis soil, carefully concealing festering historical injustices. It’s all out in the open! now let’s deal with it!
Dr KRIS RAMPERSAD, Dunroe Doctrine meets CARICOM Identity Crisis: Marco in Play Whe Politics Its Business Unusual, in Demokrissy at the GloCal Knowledge Pot
53-year old CARICOM is being asked not just by Washington, but by the world, by history & by the future to put on its big boys’ & girls’ boxers & knickers & decide what it is intends in a world where power has stopped pretending to be polite.
Business Unusual
‘Everything usual, means nothing unusual’ Naipaul’s Nightwatchman chronicled in ‘The Nightwatchman’s Occurrence Book’ one of Naipaul’s most under-read expose of the questionable goings-on at a city hotel, that now serves as headquarters to oil giant bpTT.
But Demokrissy annals would read, ‘its business unusual’ as CARICOM gathers for its 50th Regular Meeting of Heads of Government in St Kitts and Nevis, 53 years since it was born with the 1973 Treaty of Chaguaramas. The dates and numbering tell their own story of decades circling around the same unresolved priorities.
B-USS A Marco
If she was a Whe Whe fan like she Pa Demokrissy would already be at the banker to bb-uss a Marco: 1, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 21, 22, 29, 31, 34, 36: Rat. Centipede. Money. Blind Man. Crapaud. Fowl. Jamette. Parson Wife. Tiger. Mouth. Donkey. Monkey. All yuh eh reach the pay booth, yet?
There may be pomp, ceremony and fireworks at this meet in Basseterre, but these are not be of the ‘usual’ kind.
New Reckoning
This CARICOM meet, is more than ceremonial, that has seen the exits and entrances of new and old players may cause many to be shifting uncomfortably in the cushioned seats that bear their name tags & country flags, as with the inherent misogyny in the talk poetry presented among an otherwise effervescent opening cultural repertoire, including the traditional Clowns of St Kitts & Nevis.
Already the imperative of these times are forcing Heads into a new reckoning, as the international order frays at traditional seams with more awakened, aware and connected populations having heightened expectations of leaders as captured by outcoming CARICOM Chair Andrew Holness in his remarks.
And then Washington walks into the room.
US Strategy
Is it a church, or a chessboard, Saturday’s solidarity or Sunday sermon, Monday morning scramble for moorings or Tuesday’s collective truth, Wednesday’s ‘woe is we, shame and scandal in the famalee’, or Thursday’s trumpeteers of empowered resilience. Or is it just another fish Friday on a sun-kissed archipelagic picture perfect Zone of Peace.
Dr KRIS RAMPERSAD, Dunroe Doctrine meets CARICOM Identity Crisis: Marco in Play Whe Politics Its Business Unusual, in Demokrissy at the GloCal Knowledge Pot
Now, enter Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State first-generation American, born to Cuban parents who left Cuba for Florida in the 1950s amid the Batista era upheavals, before Castro consolidated power. His family story is woven into the long arc of US-Cuba, umm, entanglements, foreign relations, immigrant aspiration, and the politics of exile that have shaped Washington’s hemispheric posturing over time. Strategy? Wink! Wink! Is like Demokrissy write the script and stage the scene too! Wink! Wink!
With Rubio stepping onto CARICOM’s plenary stage, the region is forced to confront something/s far more uncomfortable than the Cuban question that has sat at the tip of CARICOM tongues in recurring rhetoric over its lifetime.
Dunroe Ducktrin
Here is hemispheric power politics under a sharpened, unapologetic Dunroe Ducktrin, the two-centuries old Munroe-US declaration of its role in the Americas, rebranded, modernised, operationalised. The language is different, yet familiar, ‘security cooperation,’ ‘illicit trafficking, ‘energy security,’ ‘illegal migration.’
And is it only me, or does it resonate with dramatic flair and poetic justice in the forced grip CARICOM comrades placed on the region when it summoned members to sit across the room with Venezuelan President Maduro to lend him electoral cajones by ‘negotiating’ an ill-advised, ill-fitted Argyle Accord? Strategy! Wink! Wink! Like Demokrissy really stage managing this thing!
Caribbean Occurrence Book
It is Karmic reminder to leaders that the Caribbean sits, not outside, nor on the periphery of history’s ‘occurrences’, but inside a strategic basin, not unlike Naipaul’s nondescript city hotel-turned-corporate oil’s national headquarters.
Rubio’s presence at CARICOM’s Golden Jubilee is not symbolic outreach. It is US leverage at the Caribbean’s highest table.
Officially, Rubio is in Basseterre to ‘advance shared priorities’ named as regional security, counter?trafficking, economic growth, energy and health security. Demokrissy could recognize diplo-speak when she sees it and I would have liked to see them more closely revolving around her defined priorities for equality, equity and diversity! But you cyar have everything!
If she was a Whe Whe fan like she Pa Demokrissy would already be at the banker to buss a Marco: 1, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 21, 22, 29, 31, 34, 36 Rat. Centipede. Money. Blind Man. Crapaud. Fowl. Jamette. Parson Wife. Tiger. Mouth. Donkey. Monkey. All yuh eh reach the pay booth, yet?
Dr KRIS RAMPERSAD, Dunroe Doctrine meets CARICOM Identity Crisis: Marco in Play Whe Politics Its Business Unusual, in Demokrissy at the GloCal Knowledge Pot
The USA’s framing is deliberately, carefully calibrated, unlike Naipaul’s Nightwatchman unseeming chronicling that serves up ironic exposure, though both may be only tuned to the discerning! Wink! Wink! Not old school posturing, Strategic symbolism!!!
Rubio’s entry into CARICOM’s ‘Occurrence Book’ is against the backdrop of tremendous intra-regional fist-shaking, U.S. pressure surrounding Venezuela, tightened migration enforcement, maritime security operations, reinforced in UN President Donald Trumps State of the 2026 Union Address. It accompanies renewed American impatience with the Caribbean which it views as its ‘third border.’
The presence of the US Secretary of State at a meeting such as this is not routine courtesy. It is geopolitical signaling of the highest order. Rubio’s attendance elevates the stakes. What might have been internal policy differences now risk becoming hemispheric alignment tests! Have I awakened those slumbering and snoring at the policy table?
Dunroe Ducktrin Cajones Test
Rubio’s presence forces CARICOM to stay awake, alert and move from delicate pussyfooting posturing. It is a test of cajones, as understood in Caribbean or Cuban-American lingo of our collective colonial heritage. It offers public frontal staging of whether the region’s pre-eminent block collapses or rises to the occasion
Unlike the forced reinterpretation Jamaica’s Andrew Holness seems ready to impose on the CARICOM dilemma, CARICOM’s challenge is integrating its economic purpose to secure a prosperous, globally-competitive Caribbean Community that folds seamlessly into its foundational yearnings enshrined in its rhetorical vision to ‘deepen integration, promote sustainable development, ensure economic and social justice, and hold good governance, human rights, and social cohesion’ as core values. And these are not necessarily embedded in ‘as usual’ business and economic practice, as my petro-curse exposes are showing. One hopes the energetic youthful optimism of the CARICOM Chair, St Kitts PM Terrence Drew could not just move the horse to water, but also make it drink!
What a jubilee it will be when CARICOM decides to know what it is! Whether it tolerates open divergence without collapsing into irrelevance, promotes debate without shuddering at exposure, manage engagement with and on its power without seething impatience that its fragile egos are being tried and tested.
Dr KRIS RAMPERSAD, Dunroe Doctrine meets CARICOM Identity Crisis: Marco in Play Whe Politics Its Business Unusual, in Demokrissy at the GloCal Knowledge Pot
Beyond Trinidad and Barbados, member states are not monolithic within the CARICOM frame as media-promoted narrow academic perspectives want to force us to believe.
Different Grades
Energy producers calculate differently from tourism economies. States weigh migration, opportunity and partnerships with the US through different lenses of dependency and leverage.
And vulnerability is gendered, too, because small-state negotiation styles, risk tolerance and institutional authority are shaped by long histories of male-dominated political culture now encountering female executive leadership operating within inherited structures that was blatantly evidence even from the opening ceremony.
The engendered agenda is not ‘a woman thing’ of disagreements between women, it is how unevenly scaled democracy inform leadership decisions and exacerbate these under pressure. And the regional culture of exclusion of its own experts because they come from the wrong side of the bridge, the shadowed side of the lighthouse, or may be a danger to the status-quo, well, that under scrutiny too!
The Dunroe Doctrin, Rubio-staged moment compresses time. It demands clarity in a way we have been demanding through civil action for decades and encompassed in the hundreds of resolutions CARICOM has signed but remains unacted upon, exposed by Guyana’s President Dr Irfaan Ali when he took the helm as CARICOM Chair on its 50th Jubilee.
This is not Cold War ideology revived as the ‘usual’ ponitificating pundits want us to believe. It is post-Independence vulnerability meeting renewed hemispheric assertiveness as small-state realism collides with multilateral intention. It is the clock ticking as regional fragility faces its finest test in full public view, directed by prominent Iron Lady leadership in a region still adjusting to engendered executive authority, in the grip of dependent paternalistic patronage.
Whose Turf & Terms
So how much of this 50th meet is about CARICOM engaging the United States on its own turf and terms? And how much will it be about US appropriation of Caribbean space on terms set by big brother Washington?
For CARICOM, it is ‘business unusual’, indeed! From President Trump’s State of the Union Address it is par for the course soundly and solidly within his US frame!
The signals are clear.CARICOM must move beyond ceremonial unity, using our highly evolved cultural forms, against its embryonic political ones that clown our oneness.
CARICOM’s fractures are no longer covered with overgrown debris like the grand indigenous petroglyphs beneath St Kitts and Nevis soil, carefully concealing festering historical injustices. The fault lines are now explicit, exposed in grand style as at last year’s UN General Assembly, in Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar ongoing appeal for equality of treatment at CARICOM’s opening ceremony and other tempestuous public exchanges across the region over recent months in the wake of US extractive actions in Venezuela to take its President Nicholas Maduro to face narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges.
Barbados’ Iron Lady Mia Mottley with noted CARICOM members have rejected US interference altogether. Trinidad and Tobago, under its Iron Lady Kamla Persad?Bissessar, has rejected the comfort language of collective ambiguity – read doublespeak and doublethink.
My literary leanings tempt me to delve into this quintessential realization of Orwellian 1984 prophetic doublespeak/doublethink, or for those less literary and more into the culture jive, Sparrow’s 1994 Lying Excuses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfV76u6pYTo (you can groove to it while you read on). It’s about leaping ahead of truth with lies, reality tampering, knowledge erasure, that is at once diplo-speak in the global sphere, and men trying to manipulate women in the domestic sphere, couched in innuendo, euphemism, vagueness, omission, misdirection to obscure truth and normalise Machiavellian behavior.
53-year old CARICOM is being asked not just by Washington, but by the world, by history & by the future to put on its big boys’ & girls’ boxers & knickers & decide what it is intends in a world where power has stopped pretending to be polite.
Dr KRIS RAMPERSAD, Dunroe Doctrine meets CARICOM Identity Crisis: Marco in Play Whe Politics Its Business Unusual, in Demokrissy at the GloCal Knowledge Pot
DoubleThink DoubleSpeak
A more intelligent region and clued in younger generation, some of whom would also be sitting around CARICOM’s diplomatic table also want less vagueness and more progress and for CARICOM to confront its inertia and move on the thousands of resolutions for regional equity and equality to which it has committed over the past 53 years but still sits on its ‘occurrence books’, awaiting decisive action. Raising awareness on this has had Demokrissy veering politically-laid minefields all her life. And as in Orwell,
‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
Our traditions cast in masking painful histories in slavery and indentureship as exhibited in the dance of Traditional Clowns, fiddle music and drumming, may have made it imperative to shift duplicitously into carefully couched, vagueness, ambiguity, to avoid taking clear positions, using language that allow multiple interpretations. But any fan of cartoons would see that children on whom we trust You Tube and social media reels to keep them engaged and quiet from less than three months old are already learning to identify and see through such duplicity, while adopting foreign accents for the first words they utter too!
Double Entendre
While I acknowledge that ambiguity is not always cowardice. Don’t we all love a good double entendre, as we try to overlook the misogyny in the St Kitts and Nevis Talk Poetry as we do with Saproow’s Lying Excuses. Our traditions are built on it!
For the Caribbean, duplicity has often been survival developed under empire, coercion, post?independence fragility and Cold War dichotomy. But what once functioned as tactical discretion is now calcified institutional habit formed into rock-hard inertia and paralysis. What reads as prudence, practical or strategic to Heads, register to the external world as evasion, and among our people as mamaguy.
Avoiding direct answers to prevent offence or commitment, talking around an issue instead of addressing it directly all make CARICOM in the public perception a talk shop.
How true can the relatively young current Chair of St Kitts and Nevis in declaring that this CARICOM Assembly would not be ‘a talk shop’, especially now with US Rubio in the play whe fray, is left to be seen. Indeed! It is ‘business unusual’.
Demokrissy, if she was a Whe Whe fan like she Pa would about now be heading to the banker to buss a mark. The reference is to the traditional whe whe banker, criminalized and wiped out of the colonial infused economic landscape as most grassroots practice are targeted, to deprive commoners of prosperity options which are reserved for the commanders of power. Demokrissy Whe Whe call, in any order: 1, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 21, 22, 29, 31, 34, 36.
Here are some AuthenTHINK Intel combinations:
22-1-14 Rat, (thief), Centipede, (small weapon), Money (symbolize “money thief”)
34-13-26 Blind Man, Crapaud, Fowl (deception)
16-31-8 Jamette, Parson Wife, Tiger
21-36-13 Mouth, Donkey, Crapaud.
10-29-21: Monkey (mischievous/deceitful) Opium Man (drunkard), Mouth (drunkard with a foul/lying mouth)
32-11-24: Shrimps, Corbeau, Queen (scandal)
Plain Speak
In plain speak, here is what the plebs by the whe-whe block are not looking forward to from communiques or press releases and conferences arising from CARICOM’s 50th meet.
“We note concerns and will continue dialogue,” or some other forms of carefully worded ambiguity, strategic vagueness, measured non-commitment, polite avoidance, calculated neutrality, diplomatic hedging. In other words, language designed to avoid taking a clear position.
In Caribbean parlance, we eh want no mamaguy assembled in a dozen paragraphs, interspersed with polite commas, indecisive semicolons and our collective sigh that it ends just where it stated and going nowhere quick-quick with choreographed nods while awkwardly sidestepping decision-making.
High Tables
Because Demokrissy sit at such high tables, you know, and know that ‘we take note’ really means ‘we not touching that!’
What we doh want, at all at all, is unity dressed up in adjectives, with no verbs in between like that well-decorated journalist I once groomed who started off with no knowledge of where to put or how to use a verb in a sentence. (Yes, I do still offer classes on request to all comers from preschool to policymakers on sound decision making with guaranteed results to move the region forward.)
Prove Demokrissy wrong nah, for the mentally prepared entry for her ‘Occurrence Book’,
“Summit folds as legs buckle, crumbles when called to stand-up!”
Open Challenge
Persad-Bissessar’s government has openly challenged CARICOM to decide, embracing security?first bilateralism, unapologetically arguing that sovereignty means choosing survival over symbolism: CARICOM is ‘not a reliable partner’ as it unites at times to obstruct decisive action against guns, drugs, and criminal networks, insists on consensus that ignores real threats. That is not a negotiating posture; it is a declaration.
Barbados, led by Mia Mottley, stands almost at the other pole. Mottley’s position is system?protective. She insists that small states survive only within an international rules?based order, and that normalising unilateral regime change, however justified by Washington, creates precedents that small states cannot afford.
These are not personality nor stylistic differences. I reassert that this is not about women disagreeing with women, as ‘a woman thing.’ And it is not to be brushed aside lightly as States are entitled to take unilateral positions, as Holness may want it to be.
Survival Strategies
They are diametric alter-egos on regional survival strategies. It is about female executive authority operating inside institutional architectures designed by and for male political bargaining cultures, that have become hollow consensus rituals, closed?door brokering, ego?managed silence. They jar because it collides with leadership and governance expected to be conducted in full public glare, electorates demanding clarity, not choreography as the awkward misogynistic talk performance set inside the meet of the CARICOM 50th Opening ceremony that paints the islands as women target of grooming, groping and appropriation!
(See elaborated variations between CARICOM’s two Iron Ladies in this link; https://krisrampersad.com/iron-ladies-behind-caricoms-iron-curtain-cold-war-of-peace-in-pieces/
Harsh Relief
Rubio’s presence, and the shadow of US President Dunald Trumps Dunroe Ducktrin throw this divergence into harsh relief. The United States does not need CARICOM unanimity to act but it does need partners, corridors, compliance, and cooperation and it is increasingly comfortable clubbing – ahem – working, negotiating – with willing states individually rather than waiting for regional consensus. Trinidad and Tobago understands this instinctively and is positioning itself accordingly. Others are resisting out of fear that bilateral accommodation today, becomes strategic subordination tomorrow.
This is why this CARICOM meet is business unusual. This is no longer ceremonial business. It was predicted in the culture-centred gender-sensitive development Demokrissy has been championing for decades, elaborated here to the long lonely road to engendering regional unity link; https://krisrampersad.com/iron-ladies-behind-caricoms-iron-curtain-cold-war-of-peace-in-pieces/.
Because you know the scene, after the men leave the quarrel and head to the bar, women must face the music to make ends meet, send the chirren to school, pay the bills in the domestic sphere. It is the age-old spaces defined for our grandmamas!
CARICOM’s Golden Jubilee theme, “Beyond Words: Action Today for a Thriving, Sustainable CARICOM” is provocation of the type Demokrissy likes, but only if it is prepared to move beyond the rhetoric to action!
This action is aligned to what and with whom and under whose security structure, control and command, would the CARICOM pray tell?
Swirling Controversies
The controversies swirling around this 2026 meet as Cuba, migration, Venezuela, maritime enforcement, energy corridors are not side issues. They are central, and so too are the Demokrissy-defined urgings to frame these within the contexts of swirling multicultural and diversity challenges and growing demand for acknowledgement of women’s right to equal space and consideration and to not treat culture as the side show performance peace all powdered up and costumed while ignoring core inequalities of diverse populations nor the need to diversify its structures, systems and operations.
If the region cannot reconcile its internal calculations of survival, it risks returning to a familiar pattern: external powers shaping Caribbean outcomes while internal fractures remain politely unaddressed. And that is why it seems suicidal for every time it has placed our work towards real unity closer to resolution on a chopping block.
It is business unusual as it places on the front burner deeper elements CARICOM has avoided for decades, and we still asking,
Is CARICOM mainly about shared values, or shared survival? Is it built around principles, ideals and common beliefs in democracy, solidarity, climate justice, regional identity, collective voice or strategically is it built around practical interests and national advantage as trade deals, security concerns, energy interests, migration control, political leverage?
And really, are these diametric opposites demanding that we choose, or can they be amalgamated (Engage AuthenTHINK and I will show you how it could be done, beyond the colonially-imposed mentality that perpetuates action to cut down the other, for your own survival!)
Beyond Mamaguy
Beyond mamaguy (mamagism, isms and schisms) is CARICOM about what we believe or about what helps us survive? Is it a church or a chessboard, values-driven community or a survival-driven coalition, guided by conviction, or by strategic calculation?
In there are recipe and formula for providing the region with the missing dimensions of respect, fostered by peddlars of morality and psuedo-realists because we should not have to choose between values or survival. The dishonesty hinges on the pretense that hanging on to values automatically deliver survival, or survival do not require principles. What CARICOM lacks is the frame that solidifies these into actions and outcomes that can hold them together without lying or diminishing either. (So you ready to engage one on one in some AuthenTHINK sessions?) Make contact nah!
With seven new/returning Heads of States within the last year (See Walcott’s allusion to Seven PMs below) CARICOM is long due for self-introspection on what it wants to be and what it needs to be to serve the interests of Caribbean people and not perpetuate the cynicism that has plagued it since its inception in failure and collapse of the West Indian Federation that sparked lament as Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott sailing through the Star Apple Kingdom of islands (anybody read that guy or the host of other nationalist or regionalist thought leaders yes I provide leadership guidance on these too!
the last ultimatum,
The Star Apple Kingdom, 1979, Derek Walcott
the first and last referendum.
One morning the Caribbean was cut up
by seven prime ministers who bought the sea in bolts
…who sold it at a markup to the conglomerates,
…who had rented the water spouts
for ninety-nine years in exchange for fifty ships,
who retailed it in turn to the ministers
with only one bank account, who then resold it
in ads for the Caribbean Economic Community,
till everyone owned a little piece of the sea,
from which some made saris, some made bandannas;
the rest was offered on trays to white cruise ships
… then the dogfights
began in the cabinets as to who had first sold
the archipelago for this chain store of islands.
It may see itself grounded in economic need, but it is the humanistic cultural impulses of its diverse peoples that shape its future.
At its core, CARICOM must decide whether it is a principled union built on shared norms, or a strategic alliance held together by converging national interests.
Is it a church, or a chessboard, Saturday’s solidarity or Sunday sermon, Monday morning scramble for national advantage or Tuesday’s collective truth, Wednesday’s ‘woe is we’, or Thursday’s trumpeteers of empowered resilience. Or is jit ust another Fish Friday on a sun-kissed archipelagic picture-perfect Zone of Peace?
CARICOM needs to convince we the people of where it stands!
It goes into this meet with the actions Demokrissy has been advocating for it to be prepared to confront and meet the current challenges still on the drawing board, and Demokrissy still holds out the olive branch for strategic sessions to do so).
CARICOM is yet to define its identity, which Demokrissy can categorically state, it has not, because how it faces and interacts with the world is not something to be treated piece meal.
When pressure mounts, as it will, does it and will it lead by principle or passport protection? Pressures exist and more will come, whether from major powers, security demands, migration flows or economic leverage that will expose difference between idealism and interests.
Now the drums of the Dunroe Ducktrin moment forces it to look into itself and seek clarity on what is its shape, form of regional and how does that fit its framing as a Caribbean Economic Community when its core challenges transcend and run deeper than economics?
So let’s get beyond the rhetoric and move words to action. The Dunroe Ducktrin might be the real test. But the questions on the test paper is whether CARICOM knows who and what it is. And the response to that depends on how well it has covered the curriculum, which, if Demokrissy-designed, includes a couple loved and hated Caribbean literary laureates and some other literarati, calypso and chutney picong and pokney, a game or Whe Whe and hopscotch with some touring and exploring our diverse EPIC Landscapes and Mindscapes too!
CARICOM IRON CURTAIN
The CARICOM’s Iron Curtain is not imposed from outside. It is self-drawn as macocious peep through shaded demerara and other windows whenever the nature of its unity comes into question.
What a jubilee it will be when CARICOM decides to know what it is!
And in that is whether it tolerates open divergence without collapsing into irrelevance, promotes debate without shuddering at exposure, and managing engagement with and on its power without seething impatience that its fragile egos are being tried and tested.
Can it act collectively when member states face radically different threats?
The danger is not open disagreement. The danger is institutional dishonesty and duplicity, maintaining fictions of unity, rerouting and detouring to serve particular member or clique interests of little boys and girls clubs.
Centred Cajones
Rubio’s visit accelerates CARICOM’s moment of reckoning. The USA is less interested in persuasion and rhetoric and more in outcomes. The Dunroe Ducktrin, is not announcing itself with ultimatums. It has centred negotiation as its central albeit heavy handed tool to advance through alignment, incentives, selective partnership, and strategic impatience.
The onus on CARICOM to show its cajones, not just in chest-thumping robber talk, clowning and theatrical defiance but courage to acknowledge divergence without panic, formalise disagreement without shivering at the thought of internal collapse, and abandon the fiction of unanimity as a substitute for strategy. Cajones is courage to tell the truth about who can move together, who cannot, and why.
For the mirage of the minions below resolution and redemption for the Star Apple Kingdom will come when they can look back and it is only a distant memory of when:
the Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basin
The Star Apple Kingdom, 1979, Derek Walcott
in the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolved
of a history which they did not commit;
the slave pardoned his whip, and the dispossessed
said the rosary of islands for three hundred years,
a hymn that resounded like the hum of the sea
inside a sea-cave, as their knees turned to stone,
while the bodies of patriots were melting down walls
still crusted with mute outcries of La Revolución!
‘San Salvador, pray for us, St. Thomas, San Domingo,
ora pro nobis, intercede for us, Sancta Lucia
of no eyes,’ and when the circular chaplet
reached the last black bead of Sancta Trinidad
they began again, their knees drilled into stone,
where Colón had begun, with San Salvador’s bead,
beads of black colonies round the necks of Indians.
And while they prayed for an economic miracle,
ulcers formed on the municipal portraits,
the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels,
and the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas,
until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard,
climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door
of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole:
‘Let me in, I’m finished with praying, I’m the Revolution.
I am the darker, the older America.’
Unfinished Business
So what is in store from the St Kitts and Nevis Summit?
Dramatic walkouts? Explosive communiqués? Heated Confrontation? Nah, we in the Caribbean know how to grin with both sides are we popcorn filled mouth.
The 53-year old CARICOM at its 50th meet is no longer infant. It is being asked not just by Washington, but by history and by the future to put on its big boys’ and girls’ boxers and knickers and decide what it is, in a world where power has stopped pretending to be polite.
CARICOM can no longer pretend to be unified, as it can no longer pretend it’s a Zone of Peace which is not to the millions of us who are turned into refugees every minute for just trying to hang onto independent thought as institutional trolls are let loose on us. Organising and institutionalising its truths, it must, or truths would be imposed on it by others, as I have seen played out in multi-level arenas. (You just have to support development of the case-stories and case-studies so we can examine the faults and find resolution for them and not fear what they expose)!
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About Dr Kris Rampersad
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- Of Geeze and Gladiators: Defensive Induction into Distinguished Salzburg Global NetworkArriving at the idyllic palace immortalised by The Sound of Music for induction into the distinguished Salzburg Global network turns into a confrontation of civilisations, empire and archipelago caught between geese and gladiators, culture, memory, knowledge sovereignty, migration, identity inside unfinished conversations shaping our world. Sneak peek Prologue to the Salzburg Showdown of EPIC Landscapes and Mindscapes of World Heritage and History. Happy Arrival Day! Beneath the postcard beauty of Austrians iconic Schloss Leopoldskron, deeper currents stir.
- Killer Performance Illusion: KPI Kulture Jam pon the Rules Based OrderLime Stage Hijacks, Copy Righting the National Pasttime Liming, Deflation of the Dollar Wine left without sense nor five cents, in the Licencing Traffic Jam, this is not light festival reading, but brutal political post morten. It doing what I set out to do, to shine the spotlight on Rules-Based Order in practice under the merciless sunkissed sky, resuscitate academia through a pop-culture creative roasting and join Machel in turning mas into masterpiece in my MultiMedia MicroEpic. In this segment, Demokrissy dives headlong into the KPI Kulture Performance Illusion that transforms knowledge production industry into a high-speed marketplace spectacle for show: circling around visibility, velocity, virility and virality. Through Ministerial high pulpits, morphing metrics, AI subjugation, archival horror storms, and digital afterlives, to the pounding dholak dhamaroo and roasting dhamadhol still tuning she rose rosary jamettry into Cosmic Rotational Reordering the Rules Based Order And what roasting for the rest of us? Read on
- Leading from the Front EPIC Encore: Chaos Climax in Fempowered Rules Based DisorderIn this ongoing EPIC saga, Demokrissy rises from cultural chasm to FEMpower the cultural economy where chaos, policy, and masquerade collide in a biting epic of power and illusionHigh towers of learning-for-hire jump into the mas to clubber the High Priesting Gords and unleash chain-linked rose-rosary chaotic jamette sketelles of petro-tabanca onto pulsing pulpits of clickbait news hounds in this ongoing satirical EPIC on the underside of the Rules Based Order. The critics cyar get over how this ‘rare’ brand of EPIC creativity ‘operates simultaneously as digital blog post, epic bachannal, policy critique and edutaining desert.’ Find out for yourself and enter what they describe as ‘a savage cataloguing of institutional mediocrity and the triumph of dullness over culture of naming and shaming institutions and actors this time from the drain where the ravaged jamettes let it all hang out.
- Jamettry Encore Gender Violence Disorder in the Rules-Based Order II
In this Zone of Peace violence against women is much higher, almost twice more, than the global average. This baffles development ‘experts’ … In this sensational multipart AuthenTHINK Intel Epic investigative odyssey & roving global showcase on Jamettry and Gender Violence Dr Kris Rampersad waves the voluminous ignored evidence of embedded norms of violence & discrimination against women in plain sight. Delivered in satiric cosmic EPIC style, you get drawn in to understand the hidden patterns that wrap the Caribbean and players in complicit silence and widespread inertia in acting to reduce the startling discrepancies… Dr Rampersad connects the bloodtrail embedded within leadership practice, educational replication and social silence that institutionalise, systemize and normalize acceptance of violence and disrespect towards women from the small island to the halls of global decision-making, based on the theme of Woman Techmakers’ Ambassadors Break the Pattern. Delivered in highly acclaimed blended epic style, political-economic analyses, policy and cultural critique to inform leadership and decision making on the Americas and the Global South. Hold on to your seats. Enter at your own risk. Truths herein maybe hard to swallow but the price of ignorance is already too high… - Total Disorder in the Rules-Based Order New Epic Culture Bacchanal Season BeginsDear Gentle Reader, step behind the Crimson Curtain and into a season of Disorder in the Rules- Based Order, where we cyar behave as diplomacy is mas at the summit of bacchanal, and regional ritual cycle vibrate into global power Play Whe. Keep pace with the starts, stops, spins and spirals, twirls and turns and the whispered asides and encores, before during and after the music, when the aftertaste of the scandals of the night before lingers on the crumpled buzz sheets of social media. It is a rare moment to be grouped with the literary canon as Walcott, Naipaul, Wilson Harris, Brathwaite, Milton, Homer even as AI classified this as X-Rated Why Pray Tell?… In this begins the EPIC Here is Preface to the Cosmic Vibrations season of Demokrissy, dragging the long chain of historical memory nothing proceeds in a straight line. Expect encore, confusion, spectacle, satire, ritual, policy theatre, and the eternal Caribbean choreography where decorum turns disorder and history loops in Encore again and again and again. Enter at your own risk. The dance card fulling fast-fast. And stay tuned to the unfolding EPIC series ….
- Marco brings Dunroe Doctrine into CARICOM Cold War: Business Unusual in Play Whe PoliticsWhen 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 CrimeSovereignty 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
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