THE GIANT IS AWAKENED

Social Media — Yours, Mine, and Ours — the Battalion of World Change for Better

Thanksgiving arrived with a welcome softness — a quiet space that let me step back from the noise, breathe, and exist briefly outside the churn of geopolitics, rumors, maritime surveillance, and diplomatic doublespeak. But a pause doesn't disconnect you from reality; it sharpens your clarity. And when I looked again at the world, the patterns I had written about for months stood out in sharper relief.

Because while I rested, the world kept moving — and the truths began surfacing faster than the official narratives could manage.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, we were told assertively that no U.S. Marines were on our shores. Yet within a day, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar publicly confirmed that U.S. Marines were in Tobago, helping with the airport runway and radar.¹ International wires echoed the shift, with the Associated Press and others reporting that Marines were working on radar, runway and surveillance upgrades at the ANR Robinson International Airport.²

A Tobago MP admitted he was not properly briefed before the first U.S. aircraft landed, prompting headlines like “Farley, Tobagonians call for clarity as US military begins work on radar” and video explainers where another MP tried to fill in the gaps after the fact.³ At the same time, posts on CNC3 and other outlets confirmed that this was not just a fly-by visit but part of a broader radar and infrastructure plan in Tobago.⁴

Meanwhile, former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton assured the region there would be “no military intervention in Venezuela” and that soldiers were “enjoying the Caribbean and going for walks”, even as U.S. troop numbers and naval deployments in the Caribbean climbed into the tens of thousands.⁵ Reports on Operation Southern Spear detail the carrier groups, destroyers and special operations assets now stationed in our waters under the banner of fighting narcotrafficking.⁶

Then came the moment that exposed everything: a letter from Trinidad and Tobago’s Homeland Security Minister, Roger Alexander, to the U.S. Embassy, asking that visas of citizens abroad who criticize the government online be revoked. Outlets such as the St. Vincent Times summarised it bluntly: “Minister urges US to revoke visas of Trinis spreading fear online”.⁷ Newsday, in a sharply worded editorial titled “If you can’t govern them, silence them”, laid bare the implications of asking a foreign power to punish local critics.⁸

Social media got there first. Screenshots of the letter, reels and commentary threads ricocheted through the Trinidad & Tobago and diaspora ecosystems. Very quickly, the U.S. side responded. Public posts and media summaries noted that the U.S. Embassy had clarified that visa decisions are solely an American matter, rejecting the idea that Trinidad and Tobago’s government could dictate who keeps or loses a U.S. visa.⁹ One widely shared post put it plainly: “Visa decisions are solely American”.

And Trinidad and Tobago, we get bouff. The U.S. made no hesitation in calling out the overreach of a sitting minister, and they did it in public.

The truth came out because the people amplified it before anyone could bury it.

Into that atmosphere of contradiction and exposure, one voice stepped forward without waiting for permission: Gary Aboud. The corporate secretary of Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) confirmed that his U.S. visa had been revoked, speaking to multiple outlets including Newsday, the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian, Caribbean National Weekly and regional news sites.¹⁰ He linked the revocation directly to his criticism of U.S. missile and boat strikes in the Caribbean and asked whether foreign powers and his own government were conspiring to intimidate civil society.¹¹

Aboud could have kept quiet. He could have hidden behind his name, his business, his history. Instead, he told the country — and the world — what happened. That one act smashed the silence. Since then, analysis, commentary and even Reddit threads have debated what his case means for every other Trinidadian speaking out online.¹²

Parallel to that, darker truths emerged about the U.S. military campaign itself. Initial reporting on “2025 United States military strikes on alleged drug traffickers” documented air- and sea-strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing more than 80 people in total, under legal justifications that remain disputed.¹³ The Washington Post then reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly issued an order to “kill them all” during the first strike, resulting in a second attack that killed survivors who had been clinging to wreckage.¹⁴ ABC News followed with a piece in which Hegseth “responds” to the allegation, while still declining to provide clear operational details.¹⁵

Legal experts quoted in outlets like the Latin Times and the Mississippi Free Press warned that, if confirmed, ordering a second strike on defenseless survivors could amount to a war crime — an unlawful “order to show no quarter” in violation of the laws of war.¹⁶ Congressional figures such as Senator Roger Wicker have already announced inquiries into Hegseth’s reported orders and promised “vigorous oversight” of the strikes.¹⁷

All of this is happening within the wider framework of a massive U.S. naval buildup in the Caribbean, including carrier groups and Tomahawk-capable ships, officially described as part of a counternarcotics mission but widely seen as leverage over Venezuela.⁶

And then, just as the radar stories, visa fights and maritime killings were unfolding, the airspace became the next pressure point. Over the past week, multiple outlets reported that U.S. President Donald Trump told airlines to treat Venezuelan airspace as effectively closed. Fox Business covered his warning to “all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers…” about flying over or around Venezuela,¹⁸ while Reuters wrote that Trump declared “the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered closed in its entirety”.¹⁹ The Independent and other outlets noted the legal ambiguity: the U.S. cannot literally close another country’s airspace, but such a message can strongly deter airlines from operating there.²⁰

Latin Times and others have also reported on alleged conversations between Trump and Nicolás Maduro, framed as tense contacts in which Trump’s team warned that military escalation could intensify if Maduro does not leave power.²¹ At the same time, Reuters documented how Venezuela responded by revoking flight rights for several airlines amid escalating tensions,²² while international carriers began suspending flights after the FAA warned of “worsening security and military activity” over and around Venezuela.⁶

Now layer on the events in Washington, D.C. Two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot near the White House in what authorities are investigating as a terrorism-style ambush. Reuters reported on the death of one soldier and the political firestorm that followed,²³ while AP, CBS, Al Jazeera and others identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who had been resettled in the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome and later granted asylum.²⁴ Follow-up pieces in the Washington Post, TIME and other outlets confirmed that Lakanwal had previously served with a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” in Afghanistan and had been vetted multiple times by U.S. agencies before entry.²⁵

Social media, once again, did not wait for the official story. Users tracked down his background, pieced together the migration and vetting timeline, and contrasted it with the political narratives being spun in real time. Some officials rushed to blame “failed asylum vetting” under prior administrations; others used the tragedy to argue for halting migration from “Third World countries.” But as detailed coverage from AP, Reuters and the Washington Post shows, the reality of Lakanwal’s vetting and service history is more complex than the slogans suggest.^24,25,26

This — all of this — revealed something unmistakable: we are living in a world where real-time truth travels faster than institutional spin.

And if it sounds as though I’m saying “I told you so,” then I grant myself that Grace.

Not out of arrogance, but out of recognition.

For months, I’ve written that something deeper was unfolding in U.S.–T&T relations. I saw the patterns when radars appeared without proper explanation; when denials quietly turned into confirmations; when “routine training” looked like forward staging; when a sitting minister tried to conscript the U.S. Embassy into punishing Trinidadian critics abroad.

And now, as the facts line up with the intuition so many of us shared, I won’t pretend I didn’t see it coming.

Because this entire unfolding — the Marines in Tobago, the radar debate, the visa letters, the maritime killings, the airspace warnings, the D.C. ambush — is not fundamentally about presidents and prime ministers. It is about us.

It is about the bloggers, the influencers, the researchers, the diaspora watchers, the aunties on WhatsApp, the meme-makers, the academics, the eyewitnesses, the keyboard warriors, the digital archivists. The people who refuse to let silence settle. The people who screenshot, record, repost, question, verify, correct.

Without us — without the noise, the commentary, the analysis, the relentless circulation of receipts — this region might have been pushed closer to conflict without anyone outside the halls of power fully noticing. Social media, messy and imperfect as it is, became the brake pedal. The safeguard. The parallel intelligence network.

We — collectively — prevented silence from becoming complicity.

We demanded clarity where governments preferred shadows. We forced transparency where diplomacy preferred quiet. We insisted that the world look again — and this time, see clearly.

We are imperfect. We are loud. We are flawed. But we are awake.

We are the Giant.
And the Giant refuses to sleep.

This is the battalion of world change — not armies with weapons, but citizens with voices. We hold power not through force, but through truth. Through disruption of silence. Through the insistence that every radar, every letter, every strike, every ambush is recorded somewhere by someone who will not simply scroll past and forget.

So we stay vigilant.
We stay vocal.
We stay present.

We keep making Good Trouble — not for spectacle, but for preservation. For accountability. For our future.

Because the minute we go quiet, the machinery moves again.

But not today.
Not now.

Because the Giant is awake.
And we are the Giant.

Search This Blog

Grace Notes in Context

THE GIANT IS AWAKENED

Social Media — Yours, Mine, and Ours — the Battalion of World Change for Better

Endnotes & Sources

Comments

Post a Comment

The 3-Minute Miracle — A Grace Notes Reflection on Social Media Scams

Trinidad & Tobago Carnival — Tsunami of Culture, Energy, and Mas

Victories Won, Defeats Surrendered — Resilience Triumphs, Optimism Prevails

The Foreclosure That Was Home to a Village — Our Family

Cuba Before the Crowds: A Journey Through Time and Hospitality