{"id":56419,"date":"2025-09-21T08:46:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T12:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56419"},"modified":"2025-09-21T08:46:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T12:46:36","slug":"ttt-goebbels-and-geriatrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56419","title":{"rendered":"TTT, Goebbels, and geriatrics"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Raffique Shah
\nSeptember 13, 2025<\/em> <\/p>\n

Raffique Shah<\/a>As I move along slowly towards what will be, if I make it, my 80th year on this here earth, mostly I feel as if I am not relevant to what\u2019s happening around me. There was a time when I would easily sit behind my laptop and write up very sound, must-read columns that my many fans would call in to cuss or kiss me over, depending not so much on what was written but how it was written.
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\nMostly, my readership consisted of people my age, plus or minus ten; they would be interested in politics, management of the economy, keeping abreast of the national and international affairs, and I was told many times that people just liked my prose.<\/p>\n

While I am not one who ever relied on a fan club to keep me writing, it did not hurt to get compliments from people I hardly knew and many people I did not know.<\/p>\n

Oh, many readers would have their weekly diet of comic relief and others who were targets, especially politicians, would sometimes call to cuss me, but invariably most of us had a good laugh off what I wrote.<\/p>\n

I learnt a lot about the private lives of public officials and prominent citizens. When my column bruised some people\u2019s skin, and I felt I was wrong in so doing, I would sometimes call such persons on the phone and apologise to them. I knew well that the near-invisible line between libel and factual reports was one we seldom broke.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, in my winter years, I still get many laughs, more than enough cuss, and wishes of the worst kind: why he eh go and dead? Quite humorous for me and my extended family, I assure you. Because wishing me death and it actually happening would be the blessing I\u2019ve been awaiting.<\/p>\n

My many detractors eat and beat up themselves, and here I am at home shaking my butt off, literally, with just enough energy to write again the next week to ruffle their feathers once more.<\/p>\n

So here I was last week, a quiet one with hardly a caller waiting to pounce on me: I had taken a dig at PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar. I received a call from a friend-cum-fan midweek, asking if I had seen a response to my column of last Sunday on TTT, of all places. I do not confine myself to TV6 News because we belong to the same media house. I am very liberal and I seek entertainment for news wherever I get it, once I think it\u2019s a credible media house.<\/p>\n

Sheldon first asked if my Parkinson\u2019s was stable. It wasn\u2019t. I then shared the call with Leila so that Sheldon could give us more details. Turns out, it seems, that TTT, the State-owned media house, toes whatever party line the governing party may have by serving as a vehicle for propaganda. I have no problem with TTT\u2019s staff. I view the station nightly for its news programme, and especially for sports and culture when they go local.<\/p>\n

When I was able to view the recording, it was an interview featuring TTT\u2019s Seigonie Mohammed and retired \u201cRare\u201d Admiral Richard Kelshall, former commander of the best pirogue fleet in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

It seems that Richard—and he correctly assumed that I didn\u2019t know he was still alive, and who has no relevance—was asked to dissect my last Sunday\u2019s column; no doubt a directive from the Government\u2019s new \u201cJoseph Goebbels\u201d, the Nazis super-propagandist in World War II.<\/p>\n

The interview read like the anchor was given the questions to ask, with little to no background knowledge of the 1970 uprising. It should be noted that I do not expect many younger people to know details of 1970, because though the movement was a very relevant part of our history and of where we are today, it is not taught in our schools.<\/p>\n

I shall not dwell on Kelshall\u2019s flights of fancy, his heroics when heroes were in short supply, some of them crumbling in tears on the deck of the Coast Guard vessel.<\/p>\n

No, but I will say, the Government is free to use washed-up sources like Richard to spread their propaganda to people too ignorant to do the research themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cRex Lassalle, Raffique Shah and Mike Bazie were not madmen, nor were they bad officers; in fact, they were some of the most brilliant officer material the regiment had seen, then or since.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unfortunate thing is that they were better soldiers than their superiors.\u201d —Candyce M Kelshall: The Trinidad and Tobago Regiment and the 1970 Crisis: Mutiny or Revolution? I\u2019d like to reiterate the title of my court martial address here: \u201cThe people have absolved me.\u201d Thanks, Candyce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Raffique Shah September 13, 2025 As I move along slowly towards what will be, if I make it, my 80th year on this here earth, mostly I feel as if I am not relevant to what\u2019s happening around me. There was a time when I would easily sit behind my laptop and write up … Continue reading TTT, Goebbels, and geriatrics<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169],"class_list":["post-56419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","tag-raffique-shah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56420,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56419\/revisions\/56420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}