I BELIEVE social analysts who follow international news can do a plausible job of assessing political trends in a country they do not live in. But at the end of the day, it is the home-based analyst that will give you angles and dimensions that you who live outside the territory will not get.

For example, I think I can do an analysis of American society because there is so much stuff on American sociology that it is impossible to digest all of it. But academics that live in the US and study American society will see aspects to the nature of people and places and politics in the US that we who live outside cannot grasp.
Politicians keep close relationship with journalists because it is the commonsensical thing to do. A journalist can break a juicy story of a rising business star, the details of which were given by a competitor who wants to see the guy exposed for his double standards. Home-based analysts get little bits of secrets that make them do more insightful commentaries. One example from me should suffice. I know from the little bits I get directly that there are PNC leaders who think Aubrey Norton should be replaced.
What we have in Guyana is the opposite of commonsense. The newspapers’ letter sections and social media commentaries are filled with foreign based Guyanese who write on Guyana informing Guyanese who live here about things that happen here when they don’t live here.

It should be the other way around. We who live here should present Guyanese who reside outside with interpretations of Guyanese development. Diaspora Guyanese should tell about Sunak in the UK; Trump versus Biden in American politics; how strong is Trudeau in Canada; and what is happening in Europe.
But this is not the reality and the largest caricature in this context is a weekly column in the Stabroek News titled, “In The Diaspora” (ITD) edited by a Canada-based woman, Dr. Alissa Trotz. ITD is the most ironic absurdity in journalism anywhere in the world. Here is what the strap-line of ITD informs us.

I quote: “This is a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora with an interest in issues relating to Guyana.”
Whoever thought of ITD had energy to waste and end up channelling that energy into something without logic. Why would Guyanese diaspora folks write a weekly column on issues relating to Guyana? It is for us, here in Guyana to write commentaries for the diaspora of places, people and events in Guyana that the diaspora needs and wants to know about.
I read ITD and these foreign-based folks know more about the so-called threat to Red Thread than Guyanese do.

The ITD columns tell us what is wrong and negative in Guyana and when you look around, you don’t see what they are talking about. Dr. Nigel Westmaas informs us that social decay characterises Guyanese society.

Dr. Desmond Thomas, another diaspora gentleman, saw it fit to repeat what Westmaas noted. Since Westmaas and Thomas discovered social decay, I have been looking for it and can’t find it. I go Sunday driving with my wife and I am about to conclude this column to go on that routine and I will look once more for the social decay.
ITD columnist, Dr. Percy Hitnzen laments our reliance on fossil fuel industry. He has been living in California for the past 40 years. A German Guyanese, Dr. Andre Brandli (sound like Bruce Lee) gave us an account of the 2020 general election here and he wasn’t a day in Guyana from March 2 to August 2 when the process concluded.

We in Guyana would like to hear from Brandli of why Germany is taking the lead after the US to participate in the Ukraine war rather than seeking a peace deal. Guyanese would like to know about the degenerate capitalism in Silicon Valley in California where Silicon Valley’s superrich is building a surreal city.
Maybe Hintzen can do a piece on that. Trotz lives in Canada. Can she tell us if the minority government of Justin Trudeau may lose the support of the NDP and Canada may have fresh elections?

So why are they not informing us about these things? They are not stupid. They know just as how China and Russia monitor every critical comment and your name goes into a file, the democracies of the West do the same.

There is no good guy versus bad guy when it comes to monitoring citizens. Remember what Edward Snowden revealed. The US was storing billions of private conversations of its citizens without them knowing Big Brother was listening to what they were saying.