Death and the Laughing Face Emoji

It wasn’t minutes after the incorrect online report that a Venezuelan baby was killed, following an “exchange of gunfire” between the Coast Guard and a boatful of “illegal immigrants”, that the laughing face emoji of social media appeared.

The “exchange of gunfire” bit has since disappeared from official reporting, but there is noteworthy, continued insistence on describing people as being as “illegal” as the process employed to take them from one country to another.

Ritually deployed as gratuitous mockery of human distress and suffering, the little yellow grinning, squinting face was initially intended to signify empathic joy or laughter. This is still largely the case, but it has metamorphosed on some platforms.

In 2015, its equally popular variant, the face with tears of joy, became Oxford Dictionary’s first-ever pictograph ‘Word of the Year’.

These two emojis, in particular, have now ironically grown to be the pandemic favourites of COVID-deniers-turned-anti-vaxxers and are currently deployed to signify callous indifference each time official statistics are announced.

Look it up next time you’re on social media. Then click on the culprits and follow a trail virtually guaranteed to find faux religiosity, racism, xenophobia, conspiracies, and pseudo-science.

Meanwhile, in the other world, gloating on human suffering and mocking associated emotions is typically on display through declarations such as “bursting out in laughter” at the tearful announcement of a spike in the number of pandemic deaths by public health officials.

It’s there in the narrative disingenuously distinguishing the anti-mandate campaign from anti-vax advocacy, even on the part of those who are vaccinated “just in case” - in the way agnostics sometimes pray.

So it was that some folks were sniggering and laughing, via emoji, at the death of Ya Elvis Santoyo last Sunday, even as news of a mass return was being absorbed. “They looked for it” would essentially summarise one collective sentiment. “Who tell them come here?”

By the way, it is now confirmed that there was no shootout – contrary to the hair-trigger police template of preliminary press responses.

The Coast Guard media dispatch confirms this, even as it raises technical questions regarding SOPs under such conditions. Hopefully an investigation does not take months or years.

Much of this comes as the focus has turned from the combined impacts of enlightened policy, recognition of international conventions, and rigorous policing of applicable laws, to dogged, exclusive reliance on the latter obligation.

To its credit, the current administration in 2019 introduced the stopgap measure of temporary registration for Venezuelan migrants who had arrived “whether legally or not.” For the most part, this has become one of those permanently temporary interventions born of political paralysis.

The “close the borders” crowd had stood by to jeer and mock and curse prospective beneficiaries when they assembled. It was June 2019. I cannot forget it. I noted who remained silent. Who fanned the flames.

Here was the laughing face emoji on full human display as frightened men, women and children lined up in light rain at night while, on the other side of the road stood the “close the borders” bunch - now more frequently seen at anti-mandate/anti-vax demonstrations mocking the threatened and the dead. Today, they drag empty black coffins past those filled with corpses and draped with real tears.

What the hell have we come to?

And, yes, human emotion is capable of limitless accommodation. We can grieve for Christian Liverpool and Keithisha Cudjoe at the same time as we mourn Ya Elvis. It is possible to lament a lack of water and dangerous pot-holed roads while bemoaning the lack of official diligence on immigration policy and action.

So, a baby is shot by adults with big guns and the laughing face emoji appears. Who remains to say: “Don’t do it!” Whose press conference, full of self-righteous indignation and outrage will address this? Who is there thinking that compassion can buy me votes?

Not those who confer unequal status on “de small islanders and dem”, “de chinee”, “de wonpasent”, “de venes”, “de Ns and the Cs”, “Laventille” and “Caroni” and other racist code worthy of emoji deployment.

Little Ya Elvis was shot and killed. The laughing faces appeared. There are times when civilisations sink beneath the sea and disappear.

The CCJ’s long, hard road

It seems that almost every time the subject of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) comes up, the people responsible for sharing details on its history, design and functioning have to retrace steps executed a million times before.

This would have been much less painful had our legal communities, and those in associated disciplines including journalism, paid greater attention to the vast compendia of data and information disseminated on a consistent basis since the first signing of the CCJ agreement almost 21 years ago.

Much like current pandemic struggles, the real issue has not been a paucity of hard information but of near wilful ignorance, misinformation, and simply not paying attention.

Deep down, it also appears Caribbean people are yet to cross the colonial Rubicon. It’s there, right now, with the transition to republican status in Barbados. It has also been the challenge of countries such as Jamaica and The Bahamas that have publicly kept their Caricom options open.

There’s also the curse of political hypocrisy excused as rational pragmatism. One prime minister signed the agreement to set up the Court then, having lost office, declared a “lack of confidence” in something that was yet to be properly tested.

Another pointed to an absence of “Indian” judges in 2005, in 2012 described it as indispensable in “furtherance of our national sovereignty”, then eventually reverted to dismissing its equal applicability across civil and criminal jurisdictions.

It is thus conceivable that the host country could persist in refusing to sign up to the Court's Appellate Jurisdiction as a final court of appeal, even as it remains by default a signatory to its Original Jurisdiction to settle CSME issues. 

I added this last bit of information since it is not true to assert, as I heard out of Saint Lucia last week and all the time right here in T&T, that there are Caricom countries that are “not part of the CCJ.” It is the kind of ignorance people, even in legal practice, utter too often without contestation.

It is perhaps for this reason, CCJ President Adrian Saunders took pains to relate some simple facts about the CCJ to a Special Sitting of the Joint Houses of Assembly of Saint Lucia on January 20.

Like every other member of Caricom and participant in the CSME, for instance, T&T is automatically a part of the Original Jurisdiction. In fact, there have been several cases defended by this country at the CCJ. So, stop saying T&T “does not use the CCJ.”

Further, T&T does not “fund the Court and doh use it.” Outside of several routine obligations as host country, the CCJ is funded from the proceeds of a US$100 million trust fund. The “proceeds” of the fund, not the initial capital which someone in Saint Lucia speculated was probably already all spent.

The judges and staff of the Court are selected by a Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission and not by Caricom leaders. The President is selected by the Commission and appointed or rejected by the votes of at least three-quarters of the Heads of Caricom States who are not entitled to propose candidates of their own.

I have spent some time checking the number of cases settled at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - so vigorously defended by millionaire attorneys and politicians in T&T - and found that, in 2021, there were just nine such matters. In 2020 there were another nine and, in 2019, 16, and 11 in 2018.

So, let’s get this straight. All this talk about the ethnic makeup of the CCJ bench, the lack of confidence in the quality of judges, and sundry nonsenses are all about a miniscule share of all matters that pass through this country’s magisterial and judicial channels.

Had the passion of objections to the CCJ been applied to fixing broken lower court systems, life could have been a lot different for us.

There have been failed attempts via referenda in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda for some of the same reasons of domestic politics, money, interest (low turnouts at referenda), and a lack of paying attention.

Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and Guyana have made the move. Today, the SLP in Saint Lucia possesses the required two-thirds majority to make the constitutional changes in order to usher in the CCJ. They will get there soon.

Over here, bipartisan support is required. To cut a long story short, this is going to be one long, hard road for the CCJ, even in its own hometown.

 

Dear Comrades

Comrades, it is absolutely understandable that media performance in the pandemic should come under intense internal and public scrutiny. At times like these, people legitimately consider the media’s role to be pivotal in either empowering societies to come to terms with extremely difficult circumstances, or to play a hand in failure.

Rest assured, this is the same in every other democracy in the world and is characterised by remarkably similar benchmarks – both informed and uninformed.

Everywhere, it seems to me, the discussion centres on a variety of metrics associated with objective professional journalistic standards, industry-focused dynamics - including profits and viability – academic research (the paucity of which is tragic in our case), scepticism and cynicism, and political preference/disfavour.

It is useful for us who have stayed the course to know precisely what we are dealing with in order to ensure we remain focused on delivering news, analysis, entertainment, and information capable of contributing to enlightened decision-making and sound behaviour-change/reinforcement.

Commentary emerging from chronic cynicism and sheer political preference are easily recognisable. Do not ignore them though. Read and listen carefully. They are useless for any serious re-framing of professional approaches and are never wholly beneficial for purposes of serious introspection. But they should not escape your critical attention, however insidiously cloaked as expert commentary of one kind or the other.

One tip would be to note the minute you witness monolithic reference to “the (amorphous) media.” It does not matter the purported credentials of the messenger, including tangential and even past (typically unremarkable) engagements in the profession. I have heard, for instance, of deals between “the media” and “the government.” What deals? To save lives?

Be aware, though, that at the same time ours is not a perfect professional discipline. Do not be touchy and defensive. There are indeed some from among us who cannot contain our enthusiasm for people and interests, others whose malpractice is indefensible, and those who enter the industry with eyes exclusively set on a variety of other goals.

Yet, most of us start our day every day with only the thought of diligently and competently doing our jobs. For example, poll any newsroom for views on the role people see for themselves in the financial fortunes of their newspaper or broadcast station, and the vast majority would tell you that’s not what’s constantly on their minds on assignment or at their workstations.

The thing is, we are in the middle of a crisis in which the foundations of our professional practice are being tested at every level, even as there is an undeniable reliance on mainstream “legacy” media to validate the outputs of Wild West social media frontiers.

Sadly, some deem it a losing battle in the face not only of contentious virtual content, but of wilful vandalism. Lift the lid and you will find a teeming nest of vapid, busy under-achievers – many of whom have transacted the woefully low entry requirements of the social media space, but even some of whom employ this other territory we call our own.

However, this is an old set of circumstances on a new field of play. The practice of politics and the agendas of preference/disfavour have always challenged the value of facts. Media submission is also a longstanding passion of both the powerful and their unwitting subordinates.

The media industry here, and almost everywhere else, has tried to play a leading role in promoting awareness of pandemic realities. Our industry bodies – the TTPBA and MATT – have engaged in addressing the destructive impacts of COVID denial and the incomprehensible designs of increasingly active anti-vaxxers.

Media houses have routinely interrogated the integrity of pandemic management measures and now openly, and correctly, support the programme of national vaccination.

It has been said that the presumed “power” of the media has two razor-sharp blades on either side. The truth (or the pursuit of truth) can indeed undermine and defeat as much as it can satisfy the public interest. But urgency is not panic, and caution is not fear.

Dear comrades, there are many things we can do better, but there are numerous positives to claim. Good journalism may yet save the day again.

Are we there yet?

Today was meant to be that day when, on this page, we were all to embark on a long maxi taxi ride to an undetermined destination. It was going to be one of those bigger minibuses packed to capacity with a rowdy bunch all wishing to choose radio stations or take turns at the wheel – including those without driving permits or knowledge of how stick shift works.

There are some who, upon recognising they are probably on the wrong bus, and with a bell that does not work, end up shouting at the top of their voice: “Bus stop, Drive!!!”

The first time, about half mile away from the desired destination, the instruction is followed by a hiss and a cranking and a screeching before the bus stops, the back door opens “clatacks” and two or three passengers disembark in the middle of nowhere.

The second time it happens, a now more keyed-in driver hits the brakes hard and those at the back are transferred like missiles to the front of the bus, and two front seat passengers suffer chipped teeth and busted lips on the windscreen.

One guy, in khaki shorts, sandals and socks, threatens to sue. The lady with the broad straw hat and North American accent is on her phone: “Come and get me now! And, no, I don’t know ‘exactly’ where I am!”

“And, by the way, where am I???!!!”

The guy who wants to sue, eventually pulls the driver away from the wheel and takes control. There is loud applause. But the hard right the new driver takes leads to inappropriate contact involving a fat guy and a young lady in short shorts across the aisle with eyes fixed for hours on her phone. “Sorry. Sorry,” the man lies. The fight does not last long.

On more than one occasion, when we stop, we have to reverse as some poor soul has merely come off to pee before rejoining the cacophonous rhythm section at the back of the bus. Then, when he returns, the arguments resume about who needs the windows open and who prefers them closed with air conditioning.

About two hours into the trip, while the maxi is at full pelt, a child sticks her head outside and a bug flies in her eye. One guy (who everybody knew got on without paying) encourages the mother to bend the child’s head backward, keep the eyelid open between index finger and thumb … and blow hard. Then comes a loud yelp, followed by the screams of a child with a bug stuck, away from non-surgical human access, beneath her eyelid. “Pour water! Pour water!” comes smug front seat advice.

Then, during one rare moment of relative silence: “Mister, Mister,” a tiny child across the aisle turns tearily to me, “are we there yet?”

There is no truthful answer to the question. The maxi taxi, now on driver number six, is hurtling, brakeless, through a crowded market street. “Bus stop, Drive! Oh Lord! Bus stop!!!”

Yes, today, was the day to write about that fateful maxi taxi trip to nowhere in particular. Perhaps it was the occasion when we finally answer the little boy’s question, or at least have our bearings right and know where, on the journey, we have reached.

I wrestled sleeplessly with the metaphors. The storyline. How would it all end? Whose turn was it at the steering wheel. All of that.

But then, on Sunday, came the news that Desmond Tutu had died. For sure, on the imagined maxi taxi, I had more than once flicked to the “Library” folder on my Kindle to find The Book of Joy – author Douglas Abrams’ reflections on a weeklong joint conversation with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. It’s not my regular kind of reading, but there it is between Baldwin and Neruda.

“He is much more cerebral,” Abrams remembers Tutu saying of the Dalai Lama. “I am more instinctual.”

“I guess,” Abrams surmises, “even great spiritual leaders get nervous when they are journeying into the unknown.”

Hmm. “Journeying into the unknown.” There’s our maxi taxi!

In the book, the Dalai Lama speaks of the “destination(s) of life.” Tutu notes: “Nothing beautiful in the end comes without a measure of some pain, some frustration, some suffering. This is the nature of things. This is how our universe has been made up.”

In a sense, lesser mortals on the maxi taxi reflect the same tensions. Are we there yet? Maybe that’s not the question. Maybe the real question has to do with destination. Not here, in the middle of nowhere.

Boofs and licks like peas

There used to be a photograph making the rounds on social media of a woman in full-fledged delivery of a non-verbal boof/bouf/bouffe to a child in the midst of a church service.

It reminded me of my mother because my mother was a boss at this. She would tilt her head downward then look up and sideways at you with her eyes open wide … unblinking. Her lips stuck to each other, the sides curved upward and wrinkled as with a fake smile.

It was the kind of lip position that catered for a through-the-lip steups if required. If she shook her head just once, fully expect prompt delivery of charge, verdict, and punishment back home.

There were occasions, not in public, she would reach for her slippers and learn the sprint of children. Sometimes it would be a quick open palmed slap across the shoulder.

As an 11 or 12-year-old child of people who had children young, you also realise sooner rather than later that your father – who played competitive sport and claimed to have hit the QRC tower with a six, five years before he got married - can still outrun you. I remember that one time the chase involved a leather belt.

The preferred punishment was Mom’s boofs or an assignment from Dad to count cars as they passed along the Eastern Main Road in St Augustine. If the sentence involved more than one child, the car tally had to be individually ratified or you were sent back to the gallery. Sometimes, a traitorous sister would refuse to cooperate, and the numbers would not square.

The point here is that the boof was what counted most in the Gibbings household. Now, if the sub-editor touches my use of “boof” I will not be happy. Even the experts agree that a final form remains unfinished business.

Lise Winer’s ‘Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago’, for example, offers four versions – buff, boof, bouf and bouffe. Its etymology is vast. I however prefer the use of “boof” which carries greatest onomatopoeic value and evades the threat of linguistic gentrification.

Use “bouf” or “bouffe” and the pronunciation would tend to be more reminiscent of the “Côte de Boeuf” at a fancy restaurant than the “boof” delivered by Aunt Harriet at the party.

In relatively well-adjusted families, boofs come before the licks, (if licks are at all to be administered). In some households, there are prompt, stinging, open-palm, fingertip slaps on the arm or shoulder or a “tap” at the back of the head.

There are others who prefer different chronologies. There would be the initial verbal admonition or guidance (“do NOT touch that”), the beg (“don’t do that nuh”), a boof (“what I tell you”), a withdrawal of benefits, an offer of reward, more boofs, and then licks like peas … in that order. Mind you, my son (who at 26 is a model citizen and ethical to a fault) was never subjected to corporal punishment at home.

Proposed speedier transitions usually come from those who consider themselves to be out of the line of fire (such as a big brother or sister) and who believe “bouffs/bouffes” are a soft sell before an audience of lesser mortals. “Lash dey (not my) tail!”

“I (whap) told (whap) you (whap) to (whaddap) take (whoop) the (whap) vaccine!!!”

If you think about it, this is the authoritarian SOE approach. This is despite early counsel that “an SOE cannot get you to wash your hands” – an admonition dismissed by “PR” hustlers and people clueless about some basic elements of behaviour change.

In fact, there has since been much boofing about the boofing. “You (boof) are (boof) NOT (boof) to boof!”

It is in the manner of paternalistic authoritarian cultures to skip the queue of moral suasion, and non-verbal and verbal “boofing” to head straight for the guava tree. (“Dey too harden. Cut dey tail”).

This is not to suggest that, eventually, licks are always an implausible option, but that a good example, appeals to reason, and boofs properly come first. Between the SOE (“you not getting to go to the party”) and the mandate (“messy room = no party”) there is likely to be much more begging and many boofs to come.

Stuck at 46% (my initial uneducated guess was 40%), the gap between suasion, begging, boofing, and outright licks is narrowing.

Some say the time has come. They might be right. The room is messy alright while, and yes, some feel we need to party.

Taking care of our things

One of my childhood friends was known for supreme diligence when attending to his belongings. It provided a basis for our bullying and teasing. He became something of a loner in later life. After all, which child puts away his toys after play? Who puts sweetie wrappers in the bin?

As a teen, he wore only crisp, clean clothing and was mercilessly jeered when one day he was witnessed ironing his underwear. By contrast, the rest of us wore unwashed jeans for months and months, until they stank and could basically stand on their own.

“Take care of your things, like David (not his real name),” my mother would tell the five of us.

For some strange reason, this childhood memory returned to me while I was being driven around the perimeter of the UWI Campus in St Augustine two weekends ago.

These days, I would typically be zooming past the area bemasked, dodging potholes, pedestrians, and distracted drivers. But on this day, en route to Macoya Market (where an ugly patch job at the entrance is not good enough), I was being driven by my wife. So, I had time to look around. It broke my heart to witness the condition of the campus buildings.

There were rusty, old galvanise sheets on one of the older buildings and moss and grime on the walls of the newer ones. Yes, the fields were mown, and the internal roadways seemed to be in relatively good shape. But the buildings appeared to have been neglected in their pandemic emptiness.

It occurred to me, during this outing, that the wider human condition in this COVID-19 era presents the requirement of taking better care of our things. My wife used the engineering term “built environment” when I stumbled with the distinction between all the “things” that needed care at this time.

If the pandemic has established one important life lesson, it is that the compartments we usually construct for human, natural and ‘built’ environments are a misguided illusion. Environmental scientists, for example, look critically at the dynamics at play when built infrastructure interacts with nature, and generate consequential impacts on the wellbeing of human populations. This is in fact the climate change story.

There is a concern, for instance, about the impact of built spaces on biological diversity and its implications for human wellness, both physical and mental. Leave a pothole long enough in the middle of the road and witness its impact on the quality of driving and other citizen behaviour.

In Aranguez, the taxi drivers are buying cement and fixing the potholes themselves. This brings more value to community life than the preservation of shocks and suspension systems. But it does not take the ministry of works off the hook. Its atrocious lethargy and neglect, in tandem with local government inaction and the recklessness of WASA, are among the more significant slurs on our humanity.

It should also bother us greatly that some communities are burning tyres on the road. This is not easily dismissible as mere partisan activism. Nobody really earns any points.

The wider metaphor of negligence is also encapsulated in the pandemic response. That political gain could have been envisaged in the promotion of COVID-denial, subversion of pandemic measures and now, vaccine hesitancy signals a willingness to engage in acts of reckless vandalism in the absence of a duty of care.

The reality is that we generally do not have the best record when it comes to taking care of our things. It’s expressed in our attitude toward “maintenance” of the built environment, but also in our predisposition when it comes to nature and to people.

For example, last week’s assault on pets and wild animals, the ill, and the elderly painted a worst-case scenario. It’s now a huge farce to hear of “zero tolerance” on the unlawful and reckless use of fireworks and “scratch-bombs.”

Here I have been decrying the defence of “tradition” and calling for a wholesale ban on everything from bamboo-busting to the use of “scratch-bombs” to the deployment of unregulated fireworks. All of these things – from care for our built environment to respect for other humans – are interrelated.

Today, we are faced with a pandemic which requires we proceed with care and caution. I am not seeing us, as a collective, doing very well on this score. True, the climate change conversation finds the world short on thoughtfulness. But we, in T&T, are simply not taking care of our things, including ourselves.

 

The climate survival game

If both the climate crisis and the pandemic have taught us one thing it is that we are mistaken if we believe, as Barbados PM Mia Mottley put it, that “national solutions can solve global problems.”

In other words, the best advice is to avoid self-delusion, after having conceded that there indeed exists an existential threat to our survival as a sovereign small island state. We cannot do this alone. A long view of history would speak of the decimation, through a variety of different circumstances, of grand empires occupying infinitely larger geographical spaces than ours.

Unfortunately, there are those who walk among us who don’t share such a belief. They emerge from the swamp of ignorance from time to time. This pandemic period is one example. But climate change scepticism is of more durable vintage and at the core is a lack of belief in science.

I have seen, for instance, social media challenges to the value of a T&T presence in Glasgow alongside key AOSIS and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) allies on the grounds of some kind of retreat from domestic reality.

Such doubt also exists in the pregnant silence of opinion-leaders fresh from campaigns of COVID denial, resistance to pandemic measures and tacit promotion of vaccine hesitancy. To them, climate change scepticism is not that remote a concept.

We would also do well to recognise unequal international status, whatever our grandiose self-assessment. The fact is, at the root of much of the discussions and negotiations in Glasgow today, are the disproportionate levels of victimisation involving the wealthy and powerful, as opposed to the small and the under-resourced.

These important differentials lie at the heart of some important but highly problematic instruments designed by the global community to mitigate further damage and deterioration in areas such as the Caribbean.

For example, access to climate financing is now linked, since the Paris Agreement of 2015, to nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to fighting climate change. Following a programme of serious work, an indicative version of this has been prepared by T&T and others for the current conference.

The G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rome ahead of Monday’s COP26 inaugural session however side-stepped key issues including a clear deadline for net zero carbon emissions, and basically agreed (having previously failed to do so) to raise US$100 billion to help fund mitigation efforts in countries such as ours. PM Mottley thinks this is far less than what is required or even possible.

The problem is continued delays in prompt action belie the fact that the processes of nature set in train, now undeniably through human activity, are already considered to be irreversible. The urgent goal of capping the rise in global temperatures to no more than 1.5% over current levels in order to “stay alive” is an increasingly unreachable target.

The existence of an Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) however indicates acceptance of the fact that we cannot do this on our own, and that there are fellow travellers in whom there exist key commonalities.

As co-author of a Caribbean journalism handbook on “the climate crisis”, I have also been warned of the “alarmist” impact of employment of the word “crisis.” Well, dear friends, if climate change does not constitute an unfolding crisis for countries that are small, surrounded by the ocean, and still engaged in finding feet of their own in the development process, then what is?

T&T/Jamaica scientist Dr Rebekah Shirley has offered a menu of subjects for consideration by the AOSIS community. On the front burner, she proposes, ought to be political efforts to prioritise negotiations on adaptation, loss, and damage; commitments for blended forms of adaptation finance; and consensus on a carbon market mechanism.

Countries such as ours also have a vested interest in moving the developed world from elaborately expressed commitment to action. However, there were mixed reviews out of Rome regarding the prospects for realisation of such goals. This made the working sessions in Glasgow far more worthy of attention than the impressive speeches.

My friend and ACM science advisor, Steve Maximay, often advises against deployment of the “we go dead” approach. But the science may well conclude that as small island states faltering in our aspirations for true sovereignty, extinction is actually not a figuratively remote scenario.