Social – Page 40 – Go Lean…Caribbean

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Buggery in Jamaica – ‘Say It Ain’t So’!

Posted on July 2, 2015 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

This commentary has asserted that the Caribbean region can be a better society than the United States of America. Yes, we can!

But to even start the discussion, we must first:

Live and let live!

The topic of intolerance has been acute in the news as of late. We have the extreme example of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) beheading non-Muslims because… well, just because. And the example of the US legalizing Gay Marriage may be considered too tolerant for some people’s good taste.

Where does the Caribbean fit in this discussion?

If ISIS is one end of a scale and Gay Marriage in America is another end, then one Caribbean member-state, Jamaica, would be closer to …

ISIS!

Yes, it is that bad. Say it ain’t so.

See Appendix-VIDEO’s below …

While this commentary directly targets Jamaica, the majority of the countries and overseas territories of the former British Empire, still criminalize sexual acts between consenting adults of the same sex and other forms of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. This has been described as being the result of “the major historical influence” or legacy of the British Empire. In most cases, it was former colonial administrators that established anti-gay legislation or sodomy acts during the 19^th century; see Appendix below. The majority of countries then retained these laws following independence.^[1][2].

There is an effort now to transform society in Jamaica (and other countries) in this regards. There are Gay Pride Activities being planned for this Summer of 2015. See the relevant news article here:

Title: J-FLAG Is Planning Gay Pride Activities, But No Parade For August – Exec
Source: Jamaica Gleaner Daily Newspaper Online Site; posted June 30, 2015; retrieved from: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20150630/j-flag-planning-gay-pride-activities-no-parade-august-exec

Local gay lobby, J-FLAG, is refuting reports that it will host a road parade in August when the group plans to have a series of gay pride activities.

Social media has been abuzz since yesterday following a report that the group would host a parade, similar to what is done in the United States and other countries.

However, executive director of J-FLAG, Dane Lewis, says the report is wrong, adding that Jamaica is not ready for such an event.

Meanwhile, he says the group is planning a week-long series of activities starting on Emancipation Day, August 1, to mark growing tolerance for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Some years ago, an attempt to host a gay parade was thwarted after anti-gay supporters reportedly planned attacks against marchers.

Jamaica is accused of being one of the most homophobic places on earth.

Last week, the US government released a report noting that anti-gay laws and the dancehall culture are responsible for perpetuating homophobia in Jamaica.
Additional reference sources: http://jflag.org/

———–

VIDEO: Executive Director of JFLAG, Dane Lewis: “We Are Jamaicans” – https://youtu.be/sJ-17R5DCoI

Published on Jan 17, 2013 – “We Are Jamaicans” is funded with the kind support of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC) through its Global Fund Vulnerablised Project.

Building a diverse society is not easy. The book Go Lean … Caribbean describes the challenge as heavy-lifting. Though the US had failed at this challenge, it proudly boasts that it got better with every generation. The Caribbean on the other hand, leaves much to be desired in terms of the willingness to change and keep pace with progressive societies. (Now the US, Canada, Ireland and other countries have legalized Gay Marriage).

In a previous blog-commentaries, this defect – Homosexual Intolerance – was listed among the blatant human rights abuses in the region.

This is an important consideration for the planners of Caribbean empowerment. The Caribbean, a region where unfortunately, we have NOT … tried to be as tolerant as may be required, expected and just plain moral.

We must do better!

The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that Caribbean society’s prosperity has been hindered with a high abandonment rate – reported at 70% for educated classes region-wide, but an even higher 85% in Jamaica. The primary mission of the Go Lean book is to “battle” against the “push-and-pull” factors that draw so many of our Caribbean citizens away from their homelands to go to more progressive countries.

The Go Lean book campaigns to lower the “push” factors!

The purpose of the Go Lean book is to fix the Caribbean; to be better. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to pursue the quest to elevate the Caribbean region through empowerments in economics, security and governance. It is the assertion that Caribbean citizens can stay home and effect change in their homelands more effectively than going to some foreign countries to find opportunities for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The book therefore asserts that the region can turn-around from failing assessments by applying best-practices, and forging new societal institutions to impact the Greater Good for all the Caribbean. This point was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 – 14) with these acknowledgements and statements:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities like … Egypt. On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/ communities like New York City, … Canada, … and tenants of the US Constitution.

The CU/Go Lean vision to elevate Caribbean society must also consider the issue of image. There is the need for a sentinel role for Caribbean image, as there are a lot of times that Caribbean life and people are denigrated in the media: news, film, TV, books, magazines. It’s unfortunate when we are guilty of scathing allegations. The Go Lean roadmap calls for the CU to assume a role of protecting and projecting positive Caribbean images. The plan is to use cutting edge delivery of best practices; the applicable CU agencies will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact the Go Lean prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate challenges/threats to public safety for all citizens… LGBT or straight.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Jamaica has a failing economy.

Jamaica’s primary economic driver is tourism. So …

Is the Caribbean ready for this economic activity? A bridge too far, too soon?

Jamaica has a long way to go; the country has been described by some Human Rights groups as the most homophobic place on Earth because of the high level of violent crime directed at LGBT people; (Padgett, Tim: “The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?”. Time Magazine posted 12 April 2006). The United States Department of State said that in 2012, “homophobia was [unacceptably] widespread in the country” (2012 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Jamaica, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State, pages 20-22). As depicted in the VIDEO below, even President Obama indicted the island on a recent official State Visit.

Why is this country’s homophobia so acute compared to other countries? For one, they have held on emphatically to the British Laws on Buggery – see Appendix below – from their colonial days; even though the host country of England has already abandoned the laws (in 1967).

Jamaica is partying like it’s 1899!

This is therefore a matter of community ethos. The Go Lean book defines community ethos as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; the dominant assumptions of a people or period. This tropical paradise of Jamaica, as defined in the foregoing news article and VIDEO continues to spur bad attitudes, bad ideas, bad speech and bad actions towards the LGBT community. This is unbecoming of a progressive society in 2015.

Alas, this is a crisis…for victims and their loved ones. The Go Lean book posits that this crisis can be averted, that the crisis is a “terrible thing to waste”. The Go Lean roadmap seeks to optimize the eco-systems for Jamaica and the entire Caribbean. The book stresses new community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to transform and turn-around the eco-systems of the regional society. These points are detailed in the book as follows:

Who We Are – SFE Foundation – Comprised of Caribbean Diaspora	Page 8
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states into a Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Repatriate the Diaspora, even Minorities like those of the LGBT community	Page 46
Tactical – Ways to Foster a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Growing the Economy to $800 Billion GDP	Page 68
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Government versus Member-State Governance	Page 71
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact	Page 122
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Homeland Security Pact	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Minority and Human Rights	Page 134
Planning – Lessons Learned from US Constitution – Equal Protection for all Minorities	Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – For All Citizens	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract – Security against “Bad Actors”	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Internal Affairs Reporting Line	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime – Hate Crime Qualifiers	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Consider Bullying as Junior Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth – Collaborating with Foundations	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Jamaica	Page 239
Advocacy – Ways to Impact British Territories	Page 245

Looking at the disposition of the island nation of Jamaica’s, we see that its societal engines are failing.

Could the investment in the diversity of its people be at the root of the problem?

The failing indices and metrics of Jamaica have been considered in previous blog/commentaries; see sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4840	Jamaican Poll: ‘Bring back the British!’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3694	Looking for a job in Jamaica, go to Canada
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2830	Jamaica’s Public Pension Under-funded
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392	Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=313	What’s Holding Back Jamaica’s Reforms

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to empower and elevate Caribbean societal engines to make Jamaica, and the rest of the Caribbean, better places to live, work and play … for all citizens, including the LGBT communities.

Most of the Jamaican Diaspora that has abandoned the island now lives in the US, Canada or the UK. Their new home-communities are more tolerant societies of their LGBT neighbors.

Perhaps, there is some correlation.

This commentary is not urging the abandonment of the Judeo-Christian moral code; Jesus Christ instructed to “let them be” at Luke 22:51 (The Message Translation). Rather this commentary urges tolerance and moderation: Live and let live!

Fight the hate!

Yes, we can … do this. Yes, we must do this. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
———–

Appendix VIDEO: US President Obama’s LGBT comments at Youth Leaders Town Hall – https://youtu.be/636mgw1THpc?t=5m1s

Published on Apr 9, 2015 – President Obama delivers remarks and answers questions at a town hall with Young Leaders of the Americas at University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. April 9, 2015.
———–

Appendix VIDEO: Gay rights in Jamaica – https://youtu.be/_nSgMGoBAmU

———–

Appendix – Encyclopedic Reference: Buggery in English Common Law

The British English term buggery is very close in meaning to the term sodomy, often used interchangeably in law and popular speech. It may also be a specific common law offenceencompassing both sodomy and bestiality.

In English law “buggery” was first used in the Buggery Act 1533, while Section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, entitled “Sodomy and Bestiality”, defined punishments for “the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal”. The definition of “buggery” was not specified in these or any statute, but rather established by judicial precedent.^[1] Over the years the courts have defined buggery as including either [of these]:

anal intercourse or oral intercourse by a man with a man or woman^[2] or
vaginal intercourse by either a man or a woman with an animal,^[3]

But [no other] form of “unnatural intercourse”^[4] [was defined], the implication being that anal sex with an animal would not constitute buggery. Such a case has not, to date, come before the courts of a common law jurisdiction in any reported decision. However, it seems highly improbable that a person would be exculpated of a crime associated with sex with animals only by reason of the fact that penetration involved the anus rather than the vagina. In the 1817 case of Rex v. Jacobs, the Crown Court ruled that oral intercourse, even with an underage and/or non-consenting person, did not constitute buggery or sodomy.^[4]

At common law consent was not a defence^[5] nor was the fact that the parties were married.^[6] In the UK, the punishment for buggery was reduced from hanging to life imprisonment by the Offences against the Person Act 1861. As with the crime of rape, buggery required that penetration must have occurred, but ejaculation is not necessary.^[7]

Most common law jurisdictions have now modified the law to permit anal sex between consenting adults.^[8] Hong Kong did so retroactively in 1990, barring prosecution for “crimes against nature” committed before the Crimes (Amendment) Ordinance 1990 entered into force except those that would still have constituted a crime if they had been done thereafter. In England and Wales, homosexual buggery was decriminalised in 1967 with an age of consent at 21 years, whereas all heterosexual intercourse had an age of consent at 16 years. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 did not fully remove buggery as a concept in United Kingdom law, as the previous law is retained for complainants (consensual or “pseudo-consensual”) under the age of 16, or 18 with regards to an adult perceived to be in a “position of trust”. As the law stands, buggery is still charged, exclusively regarding “pseudo-consensual” anal intercourse with those under 16/18, because children cannot legally consent to buggery although they may appear to do so. Rape is charged when the penetration is clearly not consensual. Buggery with an animal is still unlawful under Section 69 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

In the Republic of Ireland, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 abolished the offence of “buggery between persons”.^[9] For some years prior to 1993, criminal prosecution had not been made for buggery between consenting adults. The 1993 Act created an offence of “buggery with a person under the age of 17 years”,^[10] penalised similar to statutory rape, which also had 17 years as the age of consent. The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2006 replaced this offence with “defilement of a child”, encompassing both “sexual intercourse” and “buggery”.^[11] Buggery with an animal is still unlawful under Section 69 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. In 2012 a man was convicted of this offence for supplying a dog in 2008 to a woman who had intercourse with it and died.^[12]

Etymology – The word bugger and buggery are still commonly used in modern English as a mild exclamation. “Buggery” is also synonymous with anal sex.

The word “bugger” was derived, via the French bougre, from Bulgar, that is, “Bulgarian”, meaning the medieval Bulgarian heretical sect of the Bogomils, which spread into Western Europe and was claimed by the established church to be devoted to the practice of sodomy.^[13] “Buggery” first appears in English in 1330, though “bugger” in a sexual sense is not recorded until 1555.^[14]

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buggery)

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Pressed by Debt Crisis, Doctors Leave Greece in Droves

Posted on July 1, 2015 in Economics, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Poor economic conditions are forcing a brain drain among a country’s professionals. Yes, we understand all too well.

This is the crisis for Greece! This is the crisis for the Caribbean, as well!

This is a consistent theme in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book posits that the events in Greece are relevant for the Caribbean, North America and the world economy as a whole. What’s worse is that many Caribbean member-states are in the same situation.

Greece is the weak link in the Eurozone; it is inching closer to defaulting on its debt. The country has been in a long standoff with its European creditors on the terms of a multibillion-dollar bailout. If the country goes bankrupt or decides to leave the 19-nation Eurozone, the Greek debt crisis could create instability in the region and reverberate around the globe. (Since this debt crisis began in 2010, most international banks and foreign investors have sold their Greek bonds and other holdings; they are not as vulnerable to what happens in Greece now).

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” – states the Go Lean book quoting noted Economist Paul Romer. The opportunity therefore exists to forge change in the economic, security and governing engines of communities, in response to crises.

This story (see VIDEO below) shows that the rest of the world are all paying attention to this crisis in Greece, but few are thinking of the impact on the professional classes. This is of paramount interest to the planners of a new Caribbean, the publishers of the Go Lean book. The purpose of the book is to position the region at the corner of preparation and opportunity, so as to benefit from change. The issue from this article is more pressing for the Caribbean, as we share, as a region, a very high brain drain/emigration rate, estimated at 70%. See article here and VIDEO below:

Title: Pressed by Debt Crisis, Doctors Leave Greece in Droves
By: Erik Olsen, Contributor, New York Times Online Site; posted July 1, 2015; retrieved from: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/world/europe/pressed-by-debt-crisis-doctors-leave-greece-in-droves.html

Greece is in the midst of the worst brain drain in modern history, experts say.

“This is unprecedented in terms of the numbers of educated people that are leaving,” said Lois Labrianidis, a professor of economic geography at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.

The country is hemorrhaging talent, as professionals in medicine, engineering and academics flee for a better economic climate and more stable employment. The pain has been particularly severe in the health care sector of Greece: Many of the country’s doctors have left or are making plans to do so.

“I don’t feel safe and secure for the future of my family here,” said Spyridon Kotsaris, an Athens orthopedic surgeon who has been planning for months to leave Greece with his wife and two daughters, preferably to Germany or Switzerland.

“We want a better life,” he said. “A better life means we are all together and feel more secure.”

In all, nearly 300,000 people have left Greece since 2010, nearly 3 percent of the country’s population before the crisis, according to government statistics. That includes as many as 5,000 doctors, with about 3,500 of them ending up in Germany, where Europe’s financial crisis has had less impact.

“It’s not that big of a concern for me financially, because I work in Germany,” said Alexios Theodorou, a Greek general surgeon working at a hospital in Gummersbach in North Rhine-Westphalia. Mr. Theodorou left Greece five years ago, as the crisis was beginning.

“My paycheck is secured,” he said. “But that doesn’t make my concern about the future any less, as I have much family in Greece. Greece is where I still call home.”

In some ways, the loss of so much young talent may be more devastating to Greece in the long term than abandoning the euro, if that happens. That has left some who sought a better life feeling increasingly bittersweet about the decision to leave.

“I feel sad seeing my country going through this rough time,” Mr. Theodorou said. “We, the people who left, are not to blame for the situation, but we sometimes feel guilty that we are leaving, that we left the people there to handle their problems.”

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a super-national institution with federal powers to forge change in the Caribbean region. One mission is incentivizing the return of the far-flung Caribbean Diaspora. Another mission is to dissuade further human flight/brain drain. The numbers don’t lie: we need population growth not population contraction.

The CU recognizes that the population numbers must work in favor of societal progress. Greece has lost 3% of its population since the start of this crisis in 2010, so this negative trend cannot be understated. There are many social safety nets that depend of the actuarial fact of population expansion, not contraction. Consider unemployment and pensions: for unemployment, workers pay into a fund and the temporarily unemployed file claims against that fund. Likewise with pensions: young workers pay into a fund, and the older-retired workers draw claims against that fund.

Thus, population contractions are definitely among the indices for a Failed-State status (Page 271).

The confederation of the CU is a reversal of the unfortunate trends inflicted on the Caribbean. The vision is to forge a Single Market of 42 million people in the 30 Caribbean member-states. Then the Go Lean roadmap provides the details for the creation of 2.2 million new jobs and GDP growth to accumulate to $800 Billion. This vision is at the root of the Go Lean roadmap, embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13):

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

According to the foregoing New York Times article and the VIDEO below, Greece is in “hot water”. They need a remediation plan. Go Lean is the plan … for the Caribbean, not Greece. But we get to apply lessons learned from the experiences in Greece.

The following details from the book Go Lean … Caribbean are the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies prescribed to manifest the reboot and empowerment efforts for the Caribbean economy, society and life in general:

Who We Are – SFE Foundation and 2008 Role	Page 8
Anecdote: Puerto Rico – The Greece of the Caribbean	Page 18
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Money Multiplier	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 Member-States into a Single Market	Page 47
Strategy – Mission – Repatriating Caribbean Diaspora	Page 46
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade further Brain Drain	Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy – Greek Sovereign Debt Case Study	Page 64
Implementation – Assemble all Member-States	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Planning – Ways to Model the European Union (EU)	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 136
Planning – Lessons Learned from East Germany – Eventuality of Failed-States	Page 139
Planning – Lessons Learned from Detroit – The Need for Turn-around	Page 140
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Entitlements – Austerity Lessons	Page 158
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – Euro-Zone Budget Deficits Model	Page 168
Advocacy – Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Help the Middle Class – Enforce the Social Contract	Page 223
Appendix – Failed-State Indicators and Definitions	Page 271

Broken economies can be fixed!

This is not the first economic crisis to be observed-and-reported on by Go Lean planners. The Go Lean book is a product of 2008 Financial Crisis and Great Recession. From this fallout, this roadmap was composed, by individuals intimate with the details of the crisis … and its causes; (Page 8). Their motivation: love of homeland.

While love of the Caribbean homeland is a strong motivator – as Greek expatriates in the below VIDEO express love of their homeland – the realities of a broken economy will still cause a brain drain. These flight-abandonment realities creates the need for a societal reboot in economics, security and governance. This is the quest of Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap, to reboot the region’s societal engines; employing best-practices and better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives, identified with these statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate challenges/threats to the region’s public safety.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

There are many Go Lean blog/commentaries that have echoed these points of societal abandonment. Here is a sample of related commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5088	Immigrants account for 1 in 11 Blacks in USA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4613	A Lesson in History: – Emigration from Ireland in History
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4185	Caribbean Ghost Towns: It Could Happen…Again
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2809	A Lesson in History: Economics of East Berlin – A Failed-State
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025	Caribbean Jobs – Attitudes & Images of the Diaspora
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596	Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433	Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=841	Having less babies (and people) is bad for the Caribbean economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599	Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes

From the cradle-to-the-grave, the needs of a community – whether it is in the Caribbean, Greece or anywhere – cannot be casually dismissed. A crisis ensues, people respond, they make a choice: fight or flight.

In Greece, despite this great beauty, they are choosing flight:

In the Caribbean too!

We can do better! We must do better. Though success is not guaranteed, it can be forged with the adoption and application of best-practices. This requires the full participation – time, talent and treasuries – of all stakeholders: residents and Diaspora alike. This effort is not easy, but rather strenuous; the Go Lean book calls it “heavy-lifting”.

Strenuous, heavy-lifting – Yes – but the returns are worth the effort: making the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

This is the goal of the Go Lean roadmap. Everyone is urged to lean-in! 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———

Appendix VIDEO – Greece’s Doctor Brain Drain – http://video1.nytimes.com/video/2015/06/30/33813_1_greece-doctors-leaving_wg_240p.mp4

In part of a large brain drain that could affect Greece for decades, thousands of doctors have left the nation for Germany since the financial crisis began five years ago.

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Better than America? Yes, We Can!

Posted on June 30, 2015 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Is America the “Greatest Country in the World”?

Perhaps this was arguable in the past? Today? Hardly … see VIDEO here; (excuse the profanity):

VIDEO: America, the Greatest? –

Published on Oct 21, 2012 – Jeff Daniels, who portrays news anchor Will McAvoy in the HBO Series “The Newsroom”, delivered a stunning, hard-hitting, accurate, and intelligent monologue/response when asked why America is the greatest country in the world. A sobering outlook on the state of the USA. (CAUTION ON THE ADULT LANGUAGE).

Even in the past when the “Greatest” label was arguable, it didn’t apply to everyone! America was the Greatest Country, maybe, if you were:

White, Anglo-Saxon, Rich, Male and Straight

But if you were any of the following, then God help you:

Black
Brown – Hispanic
Native American
Jewish
Catholic
Woman
Gay
Persons with Disabilities (Physical or Mental)
Slavic – Eastern European
Muslim
Communists
Atheist
Poor

Yes, building a multi-cultural society is not easy. The book Go Lean … Caribbean describes the challenge as heavy-lifting. America has failed at this challenge, hands-down. In previous blog- commentaries, many defects of American life were detailed, (including the propensity for Crony-Capitalism). See the list of defects here: Housing, education, job hunting, prisons, drug crime prosecutions, and racial profiling.

But despite this list and the reality of this subject, America tries …

This is an important consideration for the planners of Caribbean empowerment. The Caribbean, a region where unfortunately, we have NOT … tried.

The social science of Anthropology teaches that communities have two choices when confronted with endangering crises: fight or flight. The unfortunate reality is that we have chosen the option of flight; (we have no ethos for fighting for our homeland).

The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that no society can prosper with a high abandonment rate – reported at 70% for educated classes. The primary mission of the Go Lean book is to “battle” against the “push-and-pull” factors that draw so many of our Caribbean citizens away from their homelands to go to the US. While we cannot change/fix America, we can…

Lower the “push” factors!

The purpose of the Go Lean book is to fix the Caribbean, to be better than America. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to pursue the quest to elevate the Caribbean region through empowerments in economics, security and governance. It is the assertion that Caribbean citizens can stay home and effect change in their homelands more effectively than going to America to find the “Greatest Country in the World”. The book therefore asserts that the region can turn-around from failing assessments by applying best-practices, and forging new societal institutions to impact the Greater Good for all the Caribbean. This point was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 – 14) with these acknowledgements and statements:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities like … Detroit, Indian (Native American) Reservations… On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/ communities like New York City, … Canada, the old American West and tenants of the US Constitution.

This is the quest of Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap, to reboot the region’s societal engines; employing best-practices and better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate challenges/threats to the region’s public safety.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean book stresses key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to transform and turn-around the eco-systems of Caribbean society. These points are detailed in the book as follows:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states/ 4 languages into a Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines	Page 45
Tactical – Ways to Foster a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Growing the Economy to $800 Billion GDP	Page 68
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Government versus Member-State Governance	Page 71
Implementation – Assemble All Regionally-focus Organizations of All Caribbean Communities	Page 96
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – American Model: Kennedy’s Quest for the Moon	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Lessons Learned New York City – Managing as a “Frienemy”	Page 137
Planning – Lessons Learned from Detroit – Turn-around from Failure	Page 140
Planning – Lessons Learned from Indian Reservations – Pattern of Ethnic Oppression	Page 141
Planning – Lessons Learned from the American West – How to Win the Peace	Page 142
Planning – Lessons Learned from the US Constitution – America Tries – Each Generation Improves	Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218

The threats of the repressive American past have not always been domestic; there have been times when American dysfunction have reached across borders, including Caribbean countries, and disrupted the peace and progress. This is an important lessons for the Caribbean to learn from considering the history of “American Greatness”; the following previous blog/commentaries apply:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5506	Edward Snowden Case Study: One Person Making a Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4166	A Lesson in History: Panamanian Balboa
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789	A Lesson in History: America’s War on the Caribbean

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to empower and elevate Caribbean societal engines to make us better than the American eco-system. Tall order?

Yes, we can!

According to the foregoing VIDEO (and the Appendix below), other communities have done it. Consider Europe, all grown up now.

We can apply these models and lessons from these societies to obtain success. This vision is conceivable, believable and achievable!

Yes we can … make the Caribbean region a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———

Appendix VIDEO – Comedic Commentary – Bill Maher: America Isn’t #1 – https://youtu.be/T8UqdPKbpWM

Uploaded on Jul 11, 2009 – Bill Maher rants on America letting people know we need to reclaim that title and to quit replying on old adages.

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Role Model Iris Adderley – Disability Advocate: Reasonable Accommodations

Posted on June 28, 2015 in Economics, Government, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary/Interview

Travel away from your children for an extended time period and you would notice something amazing: Change.

It turns out that change is constant; children grow. But you have to take a step back to notice the difference.

This is the experience of Disability Advocate Iris Adderley. She is a proud Bahamian – oldest child with 10 siblings who mostly all still live in the Bahamas – who served her country well; especially during the early days of nation-building (independence status was obtained in 1973). In a job assignment with the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Ms. Adderley spent many years abroad (Coral Gables, FL and Dallas, TX) promoting the Bahamas around the world as a tourist and convention destination. She was continuously called upon to sell a vision of the Bahamas that she discovered later to be out-dated, and irrelevant. The country had changed … and even declined, it seemed, in her absence.

Ms. Adderley returned to the Bahamas in the year 2000, but not to the homeland she had left behind, rather to this newly changed community. The changes were not all good. To complicate matters, she was now returning as a quadriplegic, a permanent disability.

Ms. Adderley endured a life-threatening car accident in Metropolitan Dallas in 1982, where she lived and worked for her Ministry of Tourism assignment. But she does not consider her injury as a national sacrifice. It was just “time and unforeseen occurrence” befalling her; (see Bible reference of Ecclesiastes 9:11 in the Appendix below). This taught her a very important lesson that everybody is vulnerable to injury and illness and can be rendered disabled. This new reality became her new advocacy, a quest to make sure people with disabilities have equal rights and opportunities to contribute to society. (This quest also applies as a population ages, the prevalence of disabilities increases proportionally; think Diabetes amputations, Hip replacements, etc.).

This conclusion aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, that with just a reasonable accommodation, persons with disabilities can live a full and engaging life … and help to elevate their communities and make “home” better places to live, work and play.

What reasonable accommodations?

For starters, Ms. Adderley expressed that if her injury had occurred in her Caribbean homeland that she would now be dead!

The world is better … that she has survived.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to elevate the region’s economic, security and governing societal engines. This includes healthcare. The CU roadmap calls for improvements to the region’s emergency management apparatus. There is a plan to deploy a network of 6 cutting-edge Trauma Centers throughout the Caribbean. With this mitigation and remediation, the region can more competently respond to trauma emergencies, like life-threatening auto accidents.

It is only reasonable to expect that Caribbean society would have caught up to finally being able this deliver on the social contract at this level, considering that Ms. Adderley trauma transpired 33 years ago.

Unfortunately, the experiences of so many in the Bahamas, specifically and the Caribbean as a whole, is that these countries are structured only for the lowest common denominator (LCD); anyone one with needs above-and-beyond this LCD level is just “out-of-luck”.

This is unacceptable … and unreasonable for Caribbean contributors like Iris Adderley. This is also unacceptable … and unreasonable for the planners of the new Caribbean. We must deliver better on the social contract, the implied covenant where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights. Blatant failures on the delivery of this social contract lead to an undesirable destination: abandonment!

Ms. Adderley lived in the most advanced country in the world, in the US State of Texas. She would have been excused if she wanted to remain there for her sustained existence, considering her health disposition. But she showed a national sacrifice ethos and repatriated back to her Caribbean homeland. This is heroic!

In a structured interview, Iris Adderley made the following contributions to this discussion of the roadmap to elevate her community:

Bold = Author

What are the details of your advocacy?

There should be a stronger manifestation of “Human” and “Woman’s” rights in the Bahamas. It is deplorable that the country is so deficient in these offerings. Earlier in my career, I took the assignment in Dallas so as to leave the Coral Gables Office of the Ministry of Tourism because the spirit of gender discrimination was just so acute. I felt I could make a bigger impact in a more reasonable environment. I was proven correct and did indeed have a greater impact professionally there. Returning to the Bahamas in 2000 I wanted to nurture that same advocacy at home, but this time with a supplemental agenda for persons with disabilities.

What are your responsibilities now?

I serve as a Consultant at the Disability Affairs Division of the Ministry of Social Services and Community Development. I help to guide public policy to benefit those with disabilities in the country, even blending my prior role as a Tourism promoter by trying to create a great environment for persons with disabilities to come visit our shores and enjoy our hospitality.

What would you do if your project had 50% more funding?

Create rehabilitation centers, if not throughout the whole country, then at least in the capital city of Nassau. Persons with disabilities need help and support to get back to the point where they can contribute to society. Increased funding would allow more cultural education to message that persons with disabilities have the same rights in any society, to be more inclusive of the day-to-day affairs.

What do you want to see in The Bahamas in … 5 years?

More fulfilment of Sir Lynden’s Vision; (the first and longest-serving Prime Minister after majority rule, Sir Lynden O. Pindling). The young people need to know who we are as a people, where we came from and that we were a nation of beautiful, strong black people.

I want to see Bahamians own more of the Bahamas. This means diversifying from the main industries of tourism and financial services; all we’re doing there is servicing other people’s assets; we are not really owning or creating anything.

What do you want to see in The Bahamas in … 20 years?

The Bahamas needs a National Strategic Plan. This needs to reflect the values and best-practices that have been honed from experiences from around the world. The Bahamas has a global Diaspora – mostly of an elderly disposition now – their participation should be invited.

What features of North America/Europe would you like to see here?

The social safety nets (health, schools, food for the poor) are to be admired, especially in many European countries. Those communities extend themselves to care for their elderly, poor, sick and disabled citizens.

How would you feel if your children emigrate?

Though I don’t have any children directly, I’m blessed with many nieces, nephews and loving family members. So many of them are bright young all-stars and go-getters, studying abroad in colleges and universities. Unfortunately, far too often, these ones are not setting their sight on a return home to the Bahamas. Some would even rather go to a Latin American country than to come back here to the Bahamas. This is sad, as it does not reflect the great sacrifices that so many in the previous generations made to forge opportunities for this next generation.

Where do you consider to be the best place to live?

At one point, my answer would have been the Bahamas; but I’ve gotten to see the real country as it exists today; this is not what we sold to tourists in promotions and advertisements. The country has changed … downward. Instead of our next generation offering reassurance and hope, I am more troubled at their lack of proper training. We cannot expect greatness from the status quo of most of this generation today..

What areas are you most disappointed in when considering the last 20 years?

The lack of discernment is especially disappointing. Many times the wise course is presented to Bahamians, but they seem to like to ignore wisdom and instead proceed down a destructive path. I guess the proverb is true: “A prophet is not accepted at home”.

Your wisdom is discerned here Ms. Adderley!

The points from this Disability Advocate align with the CU/Go Lean roadmap. Our directive is similar: to elevate Caribbean society, including those persons with physical disabilities. The declarative statements of the prime directive are as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to prepare and protect stakeholders for natural, man-made and incidental emergencies.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book posits that one person, despite their field of endeavor, can make a difference in the Caribbean, and its impact on the world; that there are many opportunities where one champion, one advocate, can elevate society. In this light, the book features 144 different advocacies, one specifically for Persons with Disabilities (Page 228). We need advocates, vanguards and sentinels like Iris Adderley to ensure equal opportunities for all these relevant stakeholders.

The Go Lean roadmap specifically encourages the region, to lean-in to elevate society with these specific community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness – Gerontology/Aging Factors	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 Member-states	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Repatriate the Diaspora, young and old …even those disabled	Page 46
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact	Page 122
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Homeland Security Pact	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Minority and Human Rights	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from US Constitution – Equal Protection for all Minorities	Page 139
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Healthcare – Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities	Page 156
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – For All Citizens	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract – Medical / Heath Endeavors	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Ensure Rights for the Disabled Classes	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime – Hate Crime Qualifiers	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Homeland Security – Emergency Management	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management – Trauma Art & Science	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology – e-Government Interfaces & Services	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities	Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Elder-Care – Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities	Page 225
Advocacy – Ways to Empower Women	Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities – ‘Americans with Disabilities Act’ Model	Page 228
Appendix – Trauma Center Definitions	Page 336

The Caribbean region wants a more optimized society … for all citizens. We want to mitigate human rights and civil rights abuses, and empower all for a better life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Go Lean book posits that economic measures and security measures must be in tandem for any societal empowerment effort. According to the foregoing interview/profile, after 30 years, our region is still behind with regards to servicing the needs of one specific minority group: persons with disabilities. We must do better!

Early in the book, the pressing need to optimize facilitations for this population group was pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13), with these opening statements:

ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans …

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. … the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xviii. Whereas all citizens in the Federation member-states may not have the same physical abilities, reasonable accommodations must be made so that individuals with physical and mental disabilities can still access public and governmental services so as to foster a satisfactory pursuit of life’s liberties and opportunities for happiness.

The Go Lean book explicitly acknowledges that optimizing the needs of persons with disabilities is not easy; this requires strenuous effort, heavy-lifting. These persons with disabilities normally are not able to contribute as much to Caribbean society as they draw on the public resources. This is unfortunate! Other societies have provided great models and amenities for facilitating fuller lives for those with disabilities: motorized wheelchairs, cars equipped with hand controls, Braille and TeleType (TTY and/or TDD) devices. This is the quest of the CU/Go Lean roadmap to engage more people – even those persons with disabilities – into this effort to optimize Caribbean society. More innovations are forthcoming; see VIDEOs in the Appendix. This vision is only reasonable, but prudent, as this population can generate a positive Return on Investment (ROI); as demonstrated by Iris Adderley in the foregoing interview.

Many subjects related to this profile of role model Iris Adderley have been blogged in previous Go Lean…Caribbean commentary; they are sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308	911 – Emergency Response Empowerments for the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4278	Businesses Try to Stave-off Brain Drain as Boomers Age, Retire
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3780	National Sacrifice – The Missing Ingredient
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	American Human Rights Leaders Slams Caribbean Poor Record

The CU/Go Lean roadmap is designed to empower and enhance the economic engines for the full participation and benefit of all Caribbean people. This includes the number of citizens that may have some physical challenges (deaf, blind, lame/mobility, etc.) or mental challenges. The CU’s vision is that this population group represents a critical talent pool that is under-served and underutilized; they are therefore included in the Go Lean roadmap. Tactically there is the call for a Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities (CDA) provision to be embedded in the Caribbean Union confederation treaty; the request is to have the edict of reasonable accommodations legally embedded in statures.

In addition to the economic missions, the CU treaty would also address security needs, with the mission to fortify homeland security and to mitigate societal threats and risks, including a solution for emergency management and medical trauma arts and sciences.

Lastly, the CU treaty addresses remediation for regional governance. The local governments are thusly spurred to adapt and enforce access standards for all public edifices and private structures providing commerce to the general public. This reasonable accommodations mandate is modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) feature in US federal law.

This roadmap is a fully comprehensive plan with consideration to all aspects of Caribbean life. All stakeholders – citizens, businesses, and institutions – are hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap.

Yes, with all “hands on deck”, persons with disabilities as well, the Caribbean can truly become a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendices

1. Additional information on Iris Adderley: http://www.tribune242.com/news/2013/oct/22/iris-adderley-tireless-advocate-people-disabilitie/

2. Bible Reference – Ecclesiastes 9:11:
“I have seen something further under the sun, that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle, nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches, nor do those with knowledge always have success, because time and unexpected events overtake them all.” — New World Translation

3. VIDEO – Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance – https://youtu.be/CDsNZJTWw0w

Published on Mar 28, 2014 – Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.

4. VIDEO – ‘Terminator’ arm is world’s most advanced prosthetic limb – https://youtu.be/_qUPnnROxvY

Published on Nov 5, 2012 – A father who lost his arm in an accident six years ago has been given a new lease of life by a hi-tech bionic hand which is so precise he can type again. Nigel Ackland, 53, has been fitted with the Terminator-like carbon fibre mechanical hand which he can control with movements in his upper arm. The new bebionic3 myoelectric hand, which is also made from aluminium and alloy knuckles, moves like a real human limb by responding to Nigel’s muscle twitches. Incredibly, the robotic arm is so sensitive it means the father-of-one can touch type on a computer keyboard, peel vegetables, and even dress himself for the first time in six years.
More info about this amazing prosthetic can be found here http://bebionic.com

5. VIDEO – Berkeley Bionics: Introducing eLEGS – https://youtu.be/WcM0ruq28dc

Published on October 13, 2011 – Berkeley Bionics has rebranded. The company is now known as Ekso Bionics and eLEGS has become Ekso. To clarify, the device is an exoskeleton and the brand of the exoskeleton is Ekso, by Ekso Bionics.

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Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past

Posted on June 27, 2015 in Ethos, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Christendom has a sullied past!

This is well represented in the historicity of the Spanish Inquisition (see Appendix * below), the campaign by the Roman Catholic Church to weed out the Jews and Muslims in Spain! This bad history of ethnic cleansing was at its worst in the 15th Century. See the tongue-in-cheek comedy VIDEO in the Appendix.

How does a community repent, forgive and reconcile from such a bad legacy?

Easier said than done!

For starters, do not proceed as if the events never happened. This is the lesson now being learned in modern day Spain. See the news article here:

Title: Ancient Spanish Village Is No Longer Named ‘Kill Jews’
(Source: Huffington Post – Online News Site; posted: 06/22/2015; retrieved 06/27/2015 from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/castrillo-matajudios-name-change_n_7636368.html)

MADRID (AP) — The tiny Spanish village of Castrillo Matajudios — which means “Camp Kill Jews” — on Monday officially changed its name back to Castrillo Mota de Judios (“Jews’ Hill Camp”) following a referendum and regional government approval.

The village, with about 50 inhabitants, voted to change the name in 2014 after the mayor argued that the term was offensive and that the village should honor its Jewish origins.

Documents show the villages’ original name was “Jews’ Hill Camp” and that the “Kill Jews” name dates from 1627, after a 1492 Spanish edict ordering Jews to become Catholics or flee the country. Those who remained faced the Spanish inquisition, with many burned at the stake.

The name change was approved by the regional government of Castilla y Leon and published in the region’s official gazette.

Although Jews were killed in the area, researchers believe the village got its recent name from Jewish residents who converted to Catholicism and wanted to reinforce their repudiation of Judaism to convince Spanish authorities of their loyalty.

Others suspect the change may have come from a slip of the pen.

Although no Jews live in the village today, many residents have ancient Jewish roots and the town’s official shield includes the Star of David.

Spain’s lower house of parliament this month approved a law setting a citizenship path for the descendants of Jews who were forced to flee the country centuries ago.

Spain also has an ancient southeastern town called Valle de Matamoros, which translate as “Kill Muslims Valley.” The town has said it has no plans to change its name. Matamoros is also a surname in Spain.

There is a need to reconcile a lot of bad episodes in Caribbean history. Think:

Haiti
Cuba
Guyana’s border with Venezuela
Belize’s border with Guatemala

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that any attempt at unification of the Caribbean 30 member-states region must consider the ancient and modern conflicts some member-states have with others. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). A mission of the roadmap is to reverse the societal abandonment and invite the repatriation of the Diaspora by flashing the “Welcome Home” signs. But “old parties” returning can also open “old wounds”. Therefore an additional mission is to facilitate formal reconciliations, much like the model in South Africa with their Truth & Reconciliation Commissions (TRC). This mission will assuage these Failed-State indicators and threats (Page 272):

“Revenge seeking” groups
Group Grievances

The foregoing article depicts a bad episode in history and the best-practices to repent, forgive and reconcile.

The approach is simple, correct the bad “community ethos” from the past. The Go Lean book defines “Community Ethos” as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; the dominant assumptions of a people or period. The Spanish town in the foregoing article continued to laud the bad actions of “killing Jews” by the continued use of that name. Though none of the villains or victims are alive today, it is just a bad spirit to imbrue from one generation to another. This town name “Camp Kill Jews” is such a bad image to uphold.

The CU/Go Lean vision to elevate Caribbean society must consider the issue of image. There is the need for a sentinel role for Caribbean image, as there are a lot of times that Caribbean life and people are denigrated in works of media arts: film, TV, books, magazines. The Go Lean roadmap calls for the CU to assume that role. Using cutting edge delivery of best practices, the CU will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean book speaks of the Caribbean as in crisis and posits that this crisis can be averted, that it is a “terrible thing to waste”. The Go Lean roadmap seeks to optimize the entire Caribbean economic/security/governance eco-system. This vision is defined early in the book (Page 12) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states (for example: Haiti and Cuba) will require a concerted effort to integrate the exile community’s repatriation, the Federation must arrange for Reconciliation Commissions to satiate a demand for justice.

The Go Lean book details a lot more, a series of assessments, community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize the image of the Caribbean region:

Community Assessment – Dutch Caribbean – Integration & Secessions	Page 16
Community Assessment – French Caribbean – Organization & Discord	Page 17
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union of 30 Member-states	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home; Repatriate Diaspora	Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – State Department – Economic & Diplomatic Relations	Page 80
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Judiciary – Truth & Reconciliation Courts	Page 90
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up – Relationships with South & Central American Neighbors	Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Anatomy of Advocacies	Page 122
Planning – Ways to Improve Image	Page 133
Planning – Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Truth & Reconciliation Commissions	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood – Controlling Image	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Reconciliations	Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Cuba – Reconciliations	Page 236
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti – Reconciliations	Page 238
Advocacy – Ways to Impact The Guianas – Venezuelan Foreign Policy Synchronizations	Page 241
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Belize – Guatemala Grand Bargain	Page 242
Appendix – Failed State Indicators & Definitions	Page 271
Appendix – Dominican Republic’s Trujillo Regime – Ethnic Cleansing	Page 306

The foregoing news article conveys that many Spanish/European communities had not come to grips with their discriminatory past. So there is the need for outreach. This relates to anti-Semitism and the historic abuses cast on the Jewish people. For the African Diaspora, the majority population of 29 of the Caribbean member-states, the experience is even more egregious. (French territory St. Barthélemy is the sole demographic exception).

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. There is reason to believe that these empowerment efforts can be successful. The Go Lean roadmap conveys how single causes/advocacies have successfully been forged throughout the world (Page 122 – Anatomy of Advocacies). We can succeed here as well.

(This movement does not campaign for reparations from slavery nor colonization).

The CU will address past, present and future challenges of human rights abuses and defamation to the Caribbean image.

The Caribbean can succeed in the advocacy to improve the Caribbean image in the region and around the world. There are previous blog commentaries that delve into aspects of Caribbean image:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971	A Lesson in History – Royal Charter: Truth & Consequence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4058	Bad Image: New York Times Maledictions on The Bahamas
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547	Image: Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025	Caribbean Jobs – Attitudes & Images of the Diaspora
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1847	Good Image – Declared “Among the best in the world”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1568	Bad Image/Bad Tweet: Dutch airline angers Mexico soccer fans
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=857	Caribbean Image: Dreadlocks

The foregoing consideration helps us to appreciate that reconciliation is possible only when the persons doing the wrong accept the forgiveness being offered and repents for what they have done. We applaud the tiny Spanish village of Castrillo Matajudios for showing the world their “Mea Culpa”; this is the best-practice for reconciliation.

This is now a new ethos for the Caribbean, to reconcile conflicts from the past; to repent, forgive and hopefully forget the long history of human rights abuses from the past. All of this effort, heavy-lifting, will make the region a better place to live, work and play. We urge all to lean-in to this roadmap.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————–

Appendix * – Spanish Inquisition

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Christian Inquisition along with the Roman Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.

The Inquisition was originally intended in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. This regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1501 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain.

Various motives have been proposed for the monarchs’ decision to found the Inquisition such as increasing political authority, weakening opposition, suppressing conversos, profiting from confiscation of the property of convicted heretics, reducing social tensions, and protecting the kingdom from the danger of a fifth column (clandestine activities involving acts of sabotage, disinformation, or espionage executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers of an external force).

The body was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the previous century.

The Spanish Inquisition is often cited in literature and history as an example of Catholic intolerance and repression. Modern historians have tended to question earlier and possibly exaggerated accounts concerning the severity of the Inquisition. Although records are incomplete, estimates of the number of persons charged with crimes by the Inquisition range up to 150,000, with 2,000 to 5,000 people executed.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition)

————–

Appendix VIDEO – Movie: History of the World Part 1 Inquisition Scene – https://youtu.be/5ZegQYgygdw

Published on Dec 8, 2012 – From Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part 1”. This is a comedic parody, with song-and-dance!
Category: Entertainment; License: Standard YouTube License

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Civil Rights, Cuba, Diaspora, Haiti, History, Image, Model, Power, Transform

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Taylor Swift withholds Album from Apple Music

Posted on June 23, 2015 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The music business is first and foremost a business – Unknown Author

Caribbean people love music. The promoters of the roadmap for a new Caribbean, based on the book Go Lean…Caribbean, love music. The book identifies 169 genres of music pervasive in the Caribbean region, think Reggae, Merengue, Soca, Compas (Haiti). But the book and the news article/VIDEO below relate that the challenge in the music business is the business functionalities itself. Consider these additional quotations from musical greats about this current and historic dilemma:

Music is spiritual. The music business is not. – Van Morrison

Music and the music business are two different things. – Erykah Badu

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend. – Elvis Presley

The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business. – Billy Corgan

At the end of the day, there’s only a few major stars in the music business, and then there’s all these people that are aspiring to be that. – John Legend

One of the stars of contemporary music, Taylor Swift (see Appendix below), has now reached-out and reached-in to impact this industry, the music business. She has used her financial wherewithal, immerse popularity, huge influence and massive following to force change in this industry. Despite the historical abuse, this one person is making a difference … here and now!

This aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean which posits that one person can advocate in a community and transform it for change. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU seeks to empower the economic engines of the region, including the music and performing arts industry. The book vividly depicts how Caribbean music is great, but the Caribbean music industry is in shambles. It is difficult for artists and stakeholders to make a living in this industry in this region. This assessment is not due to any lack of music consumption or music appreciation, but rather due to the lack of a music retailing eco-system.

As depicted in the following VIDEO, most music consumption now take place via the electronic media (internet downloads, streaming, mobile devices, etc.). This is a trend that has been undermining the music industry for 2 decades now, and yet the industry stakeholders have been slow to adapt to this transforming world. This is a parallel reality for Caribbean life in general: Agents of Change (Technology, Globalization) have “rocked” the societal engines, and yet the region has still not adapted adequately. The same as one person, Taylor Swift, is hereby making an impact; this commentary asserts that a similar transformation can occur here at home, in many different arenas in society. See this source news article and VIDEO here:

Title: Taylor Swift Withholds Album From Apple Music
By Blogger: Barbara Chai
Source: Wall Street Journal Online Blogs; posted June 21, 2015; retrieved from: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/06/21/taylor-swift-writes-open-letter-to-apple-we-dont-ask-you-for-free-iphones/

Update 12:00 a.m. Monday: A tweet posted late Sunday on the account belonging to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president who oversees Internet services and software, said: “#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period.” An Apple spokesman confirmed that the company has changed course.

Taylor Swift announced she won’t allow her latest album, “1989,” to be included in the new streaming service, Apple Music, because she says Apple won’t pay artists during the initial three-month trial period.

In an open letter to Apple posted on Tumblr, Swift wrote:

I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.

Last fall, Swift pulled her entire catalog from Spotify after a dispute over “1989.” She later joined musicians such as Jack White and Madonna in allowing her music — except for the latest album — to be played on Jay Z’s streaming service Tidal.

In an article in The Wall Street Journal last year, Swift wrote that she remained optimistic about the music industry, saying “In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace.”

In Sunday’s message to Apple, the pop-culture superstar said she is speaking for “every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much.” She wrote:

I realize that Apple is working towards a goal of paid streaming. I think that is beautiful progress. We know how astronomically successful Apple has been and we know that this incredible company has the money to pay artists, writers and producers for the 3 month trial period… even if it is free for the fans trying it out.

Swift, who has been photographed in the past while listening to her music on an Apple device, closed with: “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”

Swift’s label, Big Machine Records, confirmed she wrote the letter and that she is withholding the album from Apple Music.

Read the full letter here.

VIDEO – http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/apple/apple-pay-artists-after-taylor-swift-shames-company-letter-n379476

The issue of Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) and its effects on community commerce has been exhaustingly considered by the Go Lean movement (book and blog/commentaries). The old business models simply do not work anymore. There is the need to employ leading edge technologies to facilitate a better model for this new world of electronic commerce. This point has been of sharp debate in public forums. Consider a sample of the comments here from many on this Wall Street Journal article; across the board, they are both pro-and-con:

11:40 am June 21, 2015 – Dan wrote:
These “artists” are paid entirely too much already. Produce a product once, and get paid every time it’s used.

11:42 am June 21, 2015 – Kevin wrote:
Taylor got paid more than every CEO except 3 last year. Where’s the outrage from the left demanding she charges less for her albums to reduce inequity?

11:48 am June 21, 2015 – Fair is fair! wrote:
Apple is marketing their sight. No reason the artists should pay Apples marketing.
Good for you Taylor to stand up for your fellow artists!

11:54 am June 21, 2015 – Steve wrote:
I love Apple in many ways, but believe they should pay the artists during the free trial period. It doesn’t matter if the artist is already the highest paid or not. It is the principal, this progressive company which revolutionized the way we listen to music a decade ago, should adhere to. It should be a win / win situation for all involved.

12:24 pm June 21, 2015 – Michael Ball wrote:
Apple is sitting on one of the biggest war chests on the planet. There is no reason that any artist should be forced into underwriting Apple’s R&D.

This is just bad behavior. Good on Taylor for calling them out. Takes a big voice to take down a big bully.

And to “Dan” above: that’s also the economic model of the software business… Do you take issue with that, as well?

12:35 pm June 21, 2015 – Johnny Nevo wrote:
GREAT!!! I always loved her, but THIS is the best.. Screw Apple. Apple is attempting to CONTROL the music business… like in the old days of Payola. Without even hearing it I will buy this CD. I remember a great anecdote from a Bob Dylan . Club owner says to Bob, “you got a great sound, but you have to play here for FREE, to get some experience.”

The music industry, in the US and here at home, needs reform and to transform. The first step is to recognize that intellectual property is property. Far too often, people think that unless they can touch-and-feel, that the value appreciation is not the same. This is how our society values chattel goods. It is what it is!

The required change calls for a new “community ethos”:

“that fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period” – Go Lean … Caribbean Page 20.

Early in the book, the contribution that intellectual property (music, film, electronic games, art exhibition, literature, etc.) can make to a society is pronounced as an ethos for the entire region to embrace. This is featured in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 15) with these statements:

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

Like Taylor Swift, the Caribbean has also featured transformative musical artist; (think Bob Marley, he impacted the music, culture and economics of the region). It would be sad if such intellectual property was not properly compensated in the world of commerce. This must be fixed, for the success of future generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists – musical geniuses – to follow. But it is only justice that past artists get due compensation for their talents and hard work as well. The music business dictates income, jobs and economic opportunities for its stakeholders. The opening Declaration of Interdependence addressed these concerns explicitly, (Page 13):

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap asserts that change has come to the Caribbean. The people, institutions and governance of the region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. We know there are musical talents in the Caribbean, a “new” Taylor Swift or a “new” Bob Marley; these ones are waiting to be fostered. But these ones need the eco-system of a music industry that is effective and efficient! Not the Crony-Capitalism of the past; (or according to the foregoing article, the crony practices that were proposed by Apple)!

One woman, in this case … made a difference! Her advocacy reminds us of the famous quotation:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke.

“Kudos” to Taylor Swift!

The prime directive of the book Go Lean…Caribbean is to elevate the regional society, but instead of impacting America, the roadmap focus is the Caribbean first. In fact, the declarative statements are as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs, many in the arts and encompassing intellectual property.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant societal engines against economic crimes, like digital piracy.
Improvement of Caribbean governance – with appropriate checks-and-balances – to support these engines.

The roadmap specifically encourages the region, to lean-in to open advocacy with these specific community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness – Appreciation of the Arts	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good – Needs of the many outweigh the few	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Single Market of 30 Member-States with optimized economic engines	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Foster Currency System to allow for Electronic Payments	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Security Apparatus Against Economic Crimes & Threats	Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Department of Commerce – Communications & Media Authority	Page 79
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Department of Commerce – Performance Rights Organization	Page 81
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact	Page 122
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Cyber Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership – Individual Contributions	Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime – Federal Jurisdiction for Economic Crimes	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis – Policing the Internet	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations – e-Purse and Internet Commerce	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood – And the Media Industries	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts – Respect for Intellectual Property	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music – Payment Eco-System	Page 231
Appendix – Trade S.H.I.EL.D. – For Interdictions in Digital Piracy	Page 264
Appendix – Caribbean Musical Genres – 169 in the 30 Member-States	Page 347
Appendix – Copyright Infringement – Catching a Thief in Music	Page 351

The Caribbean region wants a more optimized economic and security apparatus, to protect citizens, their property and institutions; including the owners of intellectual property. This includes, among others, software developers, artists and musicians.

The music industry has often been victimized by Crony-Capitalism and the eventual “abuse of power”. We must do more now; we must do better. This Go Lean book posits that “bad actors” – even music company executives – will emerge to exploit inefficient economic, security and governing models.

The Go Lean book explicitly acknowledges that optimizing the needs for artists and their art is not an easy feat; this requires strenuous effort; heavy-lifting. This is the quest of the CU/Go Lean roadmap: an optimized technocracy with better oversight for the regional industrial footprint, including the music/art-related industries.

Other subjects related to art, music and intellectual property for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here: commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5423	Extracurricular Music Programs Boost Students As Artists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5251	Bahamas Attempts to Transform Society with Inaugural Carnival
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3641	Building a City on ‘Rock and Roll’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3568	Forging Change: Music Moves People
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2415	How ‘The Lion King’ Music/Play roared into history
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2291	Forging Change: The Fun Theory
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1909	Music Role Model Berry Gordy: Transformed America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Music Role Model Bob Marley: Legend Transformed the World
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We Do Not Want From the US – #9: Cultural Neutralizations

Caribbean music is great! Caribbean music business…not so much!

This is not just a Caribbean issue. Yet, we can show the world a better model. But our goal is not to change the world; only change the Caribbean; to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix – Taylor Swift

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989; age 25) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the independent label “Big Machine Records” and became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift’s self-titled debut album in 2006 established her as a country music star. Her third single, “Our Song,” made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the “Hot Country Songs” chart. She received a Best New Artist nomination at the 2008 Grammy Awards. In 2015, Taylor Swift has become the youngest woman ever to be included on Forbes most powerful women list. She made number 65 on the Forbes annual list of the most powerful women in the world.

Swift’s second album, Fearless, was released in 2008. Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles “Love Story” and “You Belong with Me,” Fearless became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album won four Grammy Awards, making Swift the youngest ever Album of the Year winner. Swift’s third and fourth albums, 2010’s Speak Now and 2012’s Red, both sold more than one million copies within the first week of their U.S release. Speak Now’s song “Mean” won two Grammy Awards, while Red’s singles “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” were worldwide hits. Swift’s fifth album, the pop-focused 1989, was released in 2014. It sold more copies in its opening week than any album in the previous 12 years, and made Swift the first and only act to have three albums sell more than one million copies in the opening release week. The singles “Shake It Off”, “Blank Space”, and “Bad Blood” have all reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Swift is known for narrative songs about her personal experiences. As a songwriter, she has been honored by the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Swift’s other achievements include seven Grammy Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards, and one Brit Award. She is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums—including 27.1 million in the U.S.—and 100 million single downloads. Swift has also had supporting roles in feature films including Valentine’s Day (2010) and The Giver (2014).

As of March 2011, it was reported that Swift had 5.7 million followers. That figure is now posted at 59,300,000. See here:

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Crony-Capitalism, ICT, Model, Music, Play, Trade, Transform

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Economic Principle: Wage-Seeking – Market Forces -vs- Collective Bargaining

Posted on June 18, 2015 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The field of Economics is unique! We all practice it every day, no matter the level of skill or competence. There is even the subject area in basic education branded Home Economics, teaching the students the fundamentals of maintaining, supporting and optimizing a home environment. Most assuredly, economics is an art and a science, albeit a social science.

In a previous blog/commentary, Scotman’s Adam Smith was identified as the father of modern macro-economics. Though he lived from 1723 to 1790, his writings defined advanced economic concepts even in this 21^st Century. His landmark book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations qualified the divisions of income into these following categories: profit, wage, and rent.^[4] We have previously explored profit-seeking (a positive ethos that needs to be fostered in the Caribbean region) and rent-seeking (a negative effort that proliferates in the Caribbean but needs to be mitigated), so now the focus of this commentary is on the activity of wage-seeking, and the concepts of governance and public choice theory to allow for maximum employment.

This is hard! Change has come to the world of wage-seekers – the middle classes are under attack; the labor-pool of most industrialized nations have endured decline, not in the numbers, but rather in prosperity. While wage-earners have not kept pace with inflation, top-earners (bonuses, commissions and business profits) have soared; (see Photo).

As a direct result, every Caribbean member-state struggles with employment issues in their homeland. In fact, this was an initial motivation for the book Go Lean…Caribbean, stemming from the fall-out of the 2008 Great Recession, this publication was presented as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean region to create 2.2 million new jobs, despite global challenges.

Needless to say, the global challenge is far more complex than Home Economics. The Go Lean book describes the effort as heavy-lifting; then proceeds to detail the turn-by-turn directions of a roadmap to remediate and mitigate wage-seeking.

The roadmap channels the Economic Principles and best-practices of technocrats like Adam Smith and 11 other named economists, many of them Nobel Laureates. A review of the work of these great men and woman constitute “Lessons in Economic Principles”. Why would these lessons matter in the oversight of Caribbean administration? Cause-and-effect!

The root of the current challenge for wage-seekers is income equality; and this is bigger than just the Caribbean. It is tied to the global adoption of globalization and technology/ automation – a product of global Market Forces as opposed to previous Collective Bargaining factors. This relates back to the fundamental Economic Principle of “supply-and-demand”; but now the “supply” is global. This photo/”process flow” here depicts the ingredients of Market Forces. When there is the need for labor, the principle of comparative analysis is employed, and most times the conclusion is to “off-shore” the labor efforts, and then import the finished products. This is reversed of the colonialism that was advocated by Adam Smith; instead of the developed country providing factory labor for Third World consumption, the developed nation (i.e. United States) is now in the consumer-only role, with less and less production activities, for products fabricated in the Third World. This reality is not sustainable for providing prosperity to the middle classes, to the wage-seekers.

As a community, we may not like the laws of Economics, but we cannot ignore them. The Go Lean book explains the roles and significance of Economic Principles … with this excerpt (Page 21):

While money is not the most important factor in society, the lack of money and the struggle to acquire money creates challenges that cannot be ignored. The primary reason why the Caribbean has suffered so much human flight in the recent decades is the performance of the Caribbean economy. Though this book is not a study in economics, it recommends, applies and embraces these 6 core Economic Principles as sound and relevant to this roadmap:

People Choose: We always want more than we can get and productive resources (human, natural, capital) are always limited. Therefore, because of this major economic problem of scarcity, we usually choose the alternative that provides the most benefits with the least cost.

All Choices Involve Costs: The opportunity cost is the next best alternative you give up when you make a choice. When we choose one thing, we refuse something else at the same time.

People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways: Incentives are actions, awards, or rewards that determine the choices people make. Incentives can be positive or negative. When incentives change, people change their behaviors in predictable ways.

Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives: People cooperate and govern their actions through both written and unwritten rules that determine methods of allocating scarce resources. These rules determine what is produced, how it is produced, and for whom it is produced. As the rules change, so do individual choices, incentives, and behavior.

Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth: People specialize in the production of certain goods and services because they expect to gain from it. People trade what they produce with other people when they think they can gain something from the exchange. Some benefits of voluntary trade include higher standards of living and broader choices of goods and services.

The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future: Economists believe that the cost and benefits of decision making appear in the future, since it is only the future that we can influence. Sometimes our choices can lead to unintended consequences.

Source: Handy Dandy Guide (HDC) by the National Council on Economic Education (2000)

The Go Lean book describes the end result of the application of best-practices in this field of economics over the course of a 5-year roadmap: the CU … as a hallmark of technocracy. But the purpose is not the edification of the region’s economists, rather to make the Caribbean homeland “better places to live, work and play” for its citizens. This branding therefore puts emphasis on the verb “work”; the nouns “jobs” and “wages” must thusly be a constant focus of the roadmap.

This Go Lean book declares that the Caribbean eco-system for job-creation is in crisis … due to the same global dilemma. The roadmap describes the crisis as losing a war, the battle of globalization and technology. The consequence of the defeat is 2 undesirable conditions: income inequality and societal abandonment, citizens driven away to a life in the Diaspora. This assessment currently applies in all 30 Caribbean member-states, as every community has lost human capital to emigration. Some communities, like Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have suffered with an abandonment rate of more than 50% and others have watched more than 70% of college-educated citizens flee their community for foreign shores. Even education is presented as failed investments as those educated in the region and leave to find work do not even return remittances in proportion to their costs of development. (See Table 4.1 in the Photo)

The Go Lean book therefore posits that there is a need to re-focus, re-boot, and optimize the labor/wage-seeking engines so as to create more jobs with livable wages. Alas, this is not just a Caribbean issue, but a global (i.e. American) one as well. See the following encyclopedic references for wage-seeking and Collective Bargaining to fully understand the complexities of these global issues:

Encyclopedia Reference #1: Wage-Seeking
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage)

A wage is monetary compensation paid by an employer to an employee in exchange for work done. Payment may be calculated as a fixed amount for each task completed (a task wage or piece rate), or at an hourly or daily rate, or based on an easily measured quantity of work done.

Wages are an example of expenses that are involved in running a business.

Payment by wage contrasts with salaried work, in which the employer pays an arranged amount at steady intervals (such as a week or month) regardless of hours worked, with commission which conditions pay on individual performance, and with compensation based on the performance of the company as a whole. Waged employees may also receive tips or gratuity paid directly by clients and employee benefits which are non-monetary forms of compensation. Since wage labour is the predominant form of work, the term “wage” sometimes refers to all forms (or all monetary forms) of employee compensation.

Determinants of wage rates
Depending on the structure and traditions of different economies around the world, wage rates will be influenced by market forces (supply and demand), legislation, and tradition. Market forces are perhaps more dominant in the United States, while tradition, social structure and seniority, perhaps play a greater role in Japan.^[6]

Wage Differences
Even in countries where market forces primarily set wage rates, studies show that there are still differences in remuneration for work based on sex and race. For example, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2007 women of all races made approximately 80% of the median wage of their male counterparts. This is likely due to the supply and demand for women in the market because of family obligations. ^[7] Similarly, white men made about 84% the wage of Asian men, and black men 64%.^[8] These are overall averages and are not adjusted for the type, amount, and quality of work done.

Real Wage
The term real wages refers to wages that have been adjusted for inflation, or, equivalently, wages in terms of the amount of goods and services that can be bought. This term is used in contrast to nominal wages or unadjusted wages. Because it has been adjusted to account for changes in the prices of goods and services, real wages provide a clearer representation of an individual’s wages in terms of what they can afford to buy with those wages – specifically, in terms of the amount of goods and services that can be bought.

See Table of European Model in the Appendix below. (The European Union is the model for the Caribbean Union).

———-

Encyclopedia Reference #2: Collective Bargaining
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_bargaining)

Collective Bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at reaching agreements to regulate working conditions. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.^[1]

The union may negotiate with a single employer (who is typically representing a company’s shareholders) or may negotiate with a group of businesses, depending on the country, to reach an industry wide agreement. A collective agreement functions as a labor contract between an employer and one or more unions.

The industrial revolution brought a swell of labor-organizing in [to many industrialized countries, like] the US. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was formed in 1886, providing unprecedented bargaining powers for a variety of workers.^[11] The Railway Labor Act (1926) required employers to bargain collectively with unions. While globally, International Labour Organization Conventions (ILO) were ratified in parallel to the United Nations efforts (i.e. Declaration of Human Rights, etc.). There were a total of eight ILO fundamental conventions ^[3] all ascending between 1930 and 1973, i.e. the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (1949).

The Go Lean book presents a roadmap on how to benefit from the above Economic Principles – and how to empower communities anew – in the midst of tumultuous global challenges. This roadmap addresses more than economics, as there are other areas of societal concern. This is expressed in the CU charter; as defined by these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Early in the Go Lean book, the responsibility to create jobs was identified as an important function for the CU with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 14):

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores.…

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

According to an article from the Economic Policy Institute, entitled The Decline of Collective Bargaining and the Erosion of Middle-class Incomes in Michigan by Lawrence Mishel (September 25, 2012), the challenges to middle class income are indisputable, and the previous solution – Collective Bargaining – is no longer as effective as in the past. (The industrial landscape of Michigan had previously been identified as a model for the Caribbean to consider). See a summary of the article here (italics added) and VIDEO in the Appendix:

In Michigan between 1979 and 2007, the last year before the Great Recession, the state’s economy experienced substantial growth and incomes rose for high-income households. But middle-class incomes did not grow. The Michigan experience is slightly worse than but parallels that of the United States as a whole, where middle-class income gains were modest but still far less than the income gains at the top. What the experience of Michiganders and other Americans makes clear is that income inequality is rising, and it has prevented middle-class incomes from growing adequately in either Michigan or the nation.

The key dynamic driving this income disparity has been the divergence between the growth of productivity—the improvement in the output of goods and services produced per hour worked—and the growth of wages and benefits (compensation) for the typical worker. It has been amply documented that productivity and hourly compensation grew in tandem between the late 1940s and the late 1970s, but split apart radically after 1979. Nationwide, productivity grew by 69.1 percent between 1979 and 2011, but the hourly compensation of the median worker (who makes more than half the workforce but less than the other half) grew by just 9.6 percent (Mishel and Gee 2012; Mishel et al. 2012). In other words, since 1979 the typical worker has hardly benefited from improvements in the economy’s ability to raise living standards and, consequently, middle-class families’ living standards have barely budged since then. This phenomenon has occurred across the nation, including in Michigan.

This divergence between pay and productivity and the corresponding failure of middle-class incomes to grow is strongly related to the erosion of collective bargaining. And collective bargaining has eroded more in Michigan than in the rest of the nation, helping to explain Michigan’s more disappointing outcomes.

Research three decades ago by economist Richard Freeman (1980) showed that collective bargaining reduces wage inequality, and all the research since then (see Freeman 2005) has confirmed his finding. Collective bargaining reduces wage inequality for three reasons. The first is that wage setting in collective bargaining focuses on establishing “standard rates” for comparable work across business establishments and for particular occupations within establishments. The outcome is less differentiation of wages among workers and, correspondingly, less discrimination against women and minorities. A second reason is that wage gaps between occupations tend to be lower where there is collective bargaining, and so the wages in occupations that are typically low-paid tend to be higher under collective bargaining. A third reason is that collective bargaining has been most prevalent among middle-class workers, so it reduces the wage gaps between middle-class workers and high earners (who have tended not to benefit from collective bargaining).

Collective bargaining also reduces wage inequality in a less-direct way. Wage and benefit standards set by collective bargaining are often followed in workplaces not covered by collective bargaining, at least where there is extensive coverage by collective bargaining in particular occupations and industries. This spillover effect means that the impact of collective bargaining on the wages and benefits of middle-class workers extends far beyond those workers directly covered by an agreement.
…
Source: http://www.epi.org/publication/bp347-collective-bargaining/

The siren call went out 20 years ago, of the emergence of an “Apartheid” economy, a distinct separation between the classes: labor and management. Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (1993 – 1997 during the Clinton Administration’s First Term) identified vividly, in this 1996 Harvard Business Review paper, that something was wrong with the U.S. economy then; (it is worst now):

That something is not the country’s productivity, technological leadership, or rate of economic growth, though there is room for improvement in all those areas. That something is an issue normally on the back burner in U.S. public discourse: the distribution of the fruits of economic progress. For many, the rise in AT&T’s stock after it announced plans [on January 3, 1996] to lay off 40,000 employees crystallized the picture of an economy gone haywire, with shareholders gaining and employees losing as a result of innovation and advances in productivity.

Has the distribution of the benefits of economic growth in the United States in fact gone awry? Is the nation heading toward an apartheid economy—one in which the wealthy and powerful prosper while the less well-off struggle? What are the facts? What do they mean? Are there real problems—and can they be solved?
…

Deploying solutions for the problem of income equality in the Caribbean is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The book identified Agents of Change (Page 57) that is confronting the region, (America as well); they include: Globalization and Technology. A lot of the jobs that paid a “living wage” are now being shipped overseas to countries with lower wage levels, or neutralized by the advancement of technology. Yes, computers are reshaping the global job market, so even Collective Bargaining may fail to counter any eventual obsolescence of wage-earners, their valuation and appreciation; (see Encyclopedic Article # 2). The Go Lean book, and previous blog/commentaries, therefore detailed the campaign to not just consume technology, but to also innovate, produce and distribute the computer-enabled end-products. Therefore industries relating to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics/Medicine) are critical in the roadmap. Not only do these careers yield good-paying direct jobs, but also factor in the indirect job market, and the job-multiplier rate (3.0 to 4.1) for down-the-line employment (Page 260) opportunities.

The Go Lean… Caribbean book details the creation of 2.2 million new jobs for the Caribbean region, many embracing ICT/STEM skill-sets. This is easier said than done, so how does Go Lean purpose to deliver on this quest? By the adoption of certain community ethos, plus the executions of key strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies. The following is a sample from the book:

Assessment – Puerto Rico – Extreme Unemployment – The Greece of the Caribbean	Page 18
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property – Key to ICT Careers	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research and Development – Germaine for STEM jobs	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide – Vital for fostering ICT careers	Page 31
Strategy – Mission – Education Without Further Brain Drain	Page 46
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – East Asian Tigers Model	Page 69
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – High Multiplier Industries	Page 70
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – Trade and Globalization	Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Commerce Department – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities – As Job-creating Engines	Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization – Technology: The Great Equalizer	Page 119
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade	Page 128
Planning – Ways to Model the EU	Page 130
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 – Income Equality Now More Pronounced	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education – e-Learning Options	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Labor Markets and Unions – Collective Bargaining Best-Practices	Page 164
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration – STEM Resources	Page 174
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology – Credits, Incentives and Investments	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce – Optimize Remittance Methods	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Help the Middle Class – Exploit Globalization	Page 223
Appendix – Growing 2.2 Million Jobs in 5 Years	Page 257
Appendix – Job Multipliers – Direct & Indirect Job Correlations	Page 259
Appendix – Emigration Bad Example – Puerto Rican Population in the US Mainland	Page 304

The CU will foster job-creating developments, incentivizing many high-tech start-ups and incubating viable companies. The primary ingredient for CU success will be Caribbean people, so we must foster and incite participation of many young people into fields currently sharing higher job demands, like ICT and STEM, so as to better impact their communities. A second ingredient will be the support of the community – the Go Lean movement recognizes the limitation that not everyone in the community can embrace the opportunity to lead in these endeavors. An apathetic disposition is fine-and-well; we simply must not allow that to be a hindrance to those wanting to progress – there are both direct jobs and indirect jobs connected with the embrace of ICT/STEM disciplines. The community ethos or national spirit, must encourage and spur “achievers” into roles where “they can be all they can be”. Go Lean asserts that one person can make a difference … to a community (Page 122).

Other subjects related to job empowerments for wage-seekers in the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4240	Immigration Policy Exacerbates Worker Productivity Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3694	Jamaica-Canada employment programme pumps millions into local economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3473	Haiti to Receive $70 Million Grant to Expand Caracol Industrial Park to Create Jobs and Benefit from Globalization
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3446	Forecast for higher unemployment in Caribbean in 2015
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3164	Michigan Unemployment Model – Then and Now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857	Where the Jobs Are – Entrepreneurism in Junk
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2800	The Geography of Joblessness
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750	Disney World’s example of Self Governing Entities and Economic Impacts of 70,000 jobs; 847,000+ Puerto Ricans now live in the vicinity.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126	Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025	Where the Jobs Are – Attitudes & Images of the Caribbean Diaspora in US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003	Where the Jobs Are – Ship-breaking under the SGE Structure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698	Where the Jobs Are – STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683	Where the Jobs Were – British public sector now strike over ‘poverty pay’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214	Where the Jobs Are – Fairgrounds as SGE & Landlords for Sports Leagues
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We *Don’t* Want from the US – Job Discrimination of Immigrations

The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet, but “man cannot live on beauty alone”, there is the need for a livelihood as well. This is the challenge, considering the reality of unemployment in the region; the jobless rate among the youth is even higher.

The crisis of income inequality for the US is a direct result of free trade agreements, like NAFTA, and China’s Preferential Trading Status. Despite this status, we can benefit from the realities of globalization; jobs are being moved to conducive locations with lower labor costs. We should invite these investors to look for cheaper labor options, here in the Caribbean region (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, etc.). This is the same reality as in Europe with different wage levels for the different countries (see Appendix below); the Caribbean also has these wage differences.

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to foster higher-paying job options: Call Centers, Offshore Software Development Centers, R&D Medical campuses, light-manufacturing and assembly plants for “basic needs” products (food, clothing shelter, energy, and transportation) for Caribbean consumption. This is the successful model of Japan, China and the “East Asia Tigers” economies; these are manifestations of effective Economic Principles.

The Go Lean book therefore digs deeper, providing turn-by-turn directions to get to the desired Caribbean results: a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————-

Appendix – List of European countries by average wage (USA & Japan added for comparison)

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage)

2014 Annual values (in national currency) for a family with two children with one average salary, including tax credits and allowances.^[1] Net amount is computed after Taxes, Social Security and Family Allowances; the result is provided in both the National Currency and the Euro, if different. The table, sorted from highest Net amount to the lowest, is presented as follows:

State	Gross	Net (Natl. Curr)	*Net (Euro)*
Switzerland	90,521.98	86,731.20	71,407.21
Luxembourg	54,560.39	52,041.36	52,041.36
Norway	542,385.96	415,557.87	49.,741.20
Denmark	397,483.78	289,292.48	38,806.20
Iceland	6,856,099.69	5,872.114.66	37,865.07
*UNITED STATES*	56,067	45,582	37,671
Sweden	407,974.45	335,501.45	36,874.37
Netherlands	48,855.70	36,648.71	36,648.71
United Kingdom	35,632.64	28,960.38	35,925.65
Belgium	46,464.41	35,810.55	35,810.55
Italy	41,462.67	24,539.93	35,539.93
Germany	45,952.05	36,269.23	35,269.23
France	38,427.35	30,776.75	34,776.75
Ireland	34,465.85	34,382.63	34,382.63
Austria	42,573.25	33,666.04	33,666.04
Finland	42,909.72	32,386.59	32,386.59
*JAPAN*	4,881,994.24	4,132.432.02	29,452.16
Spain	26,161.81	22,129.78	22,129.78
Greece	24,201.50	17,250.24	17,250.24
Slovenia	17,851.28	15,882.53	15,882.53
Portugal	17,435.71	15,140.25	15,140.25
Estonia	12,435.95	11,176.87	11,176.87
Czech Republic	312,083.83	306,153.76	11,118.31
Slovakia	10,342.10	9,778.16	9,778.16
Poland	42,360.01	34,638.77	8,278.27
Hungary	3,009,283.93	2,530.280.97	8,196.30
Turkey	28,370.00	21,072.12	7,250.00

————-

Appendix Video – Collective Bargaining and Shared Prosperity: Michigan, 1979 – 2009 http://youtu.be/PcT4jK89JmE

Published on September 27, 2012 – This VIDEO depicts the positive effects of Collective Bargaining on the quest for income equality in the US State of Michigan; and the sad consequence of the widening income inequality when Collective Bargaining is less pervasive.
This reflect the “Observe and Report” functionality of the Go Lean…Caribbean promoters in the Greater Detroit-Michigan area.

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Detroit, Jobs, Model, Trade, Transform

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American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?

Posted on June 9, 2015 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

In November 2008, a Black Man – Barack Obama – was elected to the Presidency of the United States of America.

Yes, we can! – Campaign slogan for Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign.

Surely that is an indication that “racism is over” in America?

Far from it!

While the blatant racist attitudes and actions may now be considered politically incorrect, the foundations of institutional racism have become even more entrenched. Welcome to America 2015! This commentary today is one of two considerations on the folly of local citizens – the Black and Brown populations – leaving the Caribbean for American shores.

Consider this VIDEO here of a frank and earnest confession of a White American acknowledging the racial divide:

Appendix VIDEO: Is Racism Over Yet – https://youtu.be/h_hx30zOi9I

These issues: housing, education, job hunting, prisons, drug crime prosecutions, racial profiling and others are addressed here in this foregoing VIDEO. They are also important considerations for the planners of Caribbean empowerment. America is a “frienemy” for us! We are trading partners; we are aligned; we are allies; many of us live in America; studied in America; but we have to compete to dissuade our young people from setting their sights on American shores as a refuge and destination of their hopes and dreams. Yet the book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that no society can prosper with a high abandonment rate – reported at 70% for educated classes. Therefore we must “battle” against the “push-and-pull” factors that draw many Caribbean citizens away to the US.

The Go Lean book pursues the quest to elevate the Caribbean region through empowerments in economics, security and governance. Since 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states (“St. Barths” is the only exception) have majority Black population, the book pushes further on this subject of racism, positing that it is easier for Caribbean citizens to stay home and effect change in their homelands than to go to America and try to remediate that society. The book therefore asserts that the region can turn-around from failing assessments by applying best-practices, and forging new societal institutions to impact the Greater Good for all the Caribbean.

This consideration of the Go Lean book is one of technocratic stewardship of the regional Caribbean societal engines: economy, security and governance. This point of the current disposition of racism and this quest to improve was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 – 14) with these acknowledgements and statements:

Preamble: As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of [other] communities.

This is the quest of Go Lean…Caribbean. The book and accompanying blog/commentaries advocate learning lessons from many events and concepts from history and the present; from as far back as the patriarchal Bible times, to best-practices today employed by communities around the world that have successfully turned-around their societies. (Think: post-World War II in Germany and Japan; plus post-Apartheid in South Africa). The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap seeks to reboot the region’s economic, security and governing engines; employing better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate challenges/threats to regional Justice Institutions.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations – South Africa’s Model	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states/ 4 languages into a Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines	Page 45
Tactical – Ways to Foster a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Growing the Economy – Post WW II European Marshall Plan Model	Page 68
Tactical – Growing the Economy – Post WW II Japan’s Turn-around Model	Page 68
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Government versus Member-State Governance	Page 71
Implementation – Assemble All Regionally-focus Organizations of All Caribbean Communities	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Better Manage Debt	Page 114
Anatomy of Advocacies – One Person can make a difference!	Page 122
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Single Market / Currency Union	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Model the new European Union	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Minority and Human Rights	Page 134
Planning – Lessons Learned from the previous West Indies Federation	Page 135
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 – Optimizing Economic-Financial-Monetary Engines	Page 136
Planning – Lessons Learned New York City – Managing as a “Frienemy”	Page 137
Planning – Lessons Learned from Omaha – Human Flight Mitigations	Page 138
Planning – Lessons Learned from East Germany – Bad Examples for Trade & Security	Page 139
Planning – Lessons Learned from Detroit – Turn-around from Failure	Page 140
Planning – Lessons Learned from Indian Reservations – Pattern of Ethnic Oppression	Page 141
Planning – Lessons Learned from the American West – How to Win the Peace	Page 142
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Appendix – Failed-State Index for Uneven Economic Development	Page 272

There are other lessons for the Caribbean to learn from considering the history of race/ethnic relations; the following previous blog/commentaries apply:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5333	A Lesson in History: Legacies – Cause and Effect
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4935	A Lesson in History: the ‘Grand Old Party’ of American Politics
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4166	A Lesson in History: Panamanian Balboa
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2809	A Lesson in History: Economics of East Berlin
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2480	A Lesson in History: Community Ethos of WW II
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297	A Lesson in History: Booker T versus Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531	A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago Today – World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789	A Lesson in History: America’s War on the Caribbean

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to empower and elevate Caribbean societal engines. It is out-of-scope to impact America; our focus is only here in our homeland.

Other communities have done this … to success. Consider Europe; they have come a long way with race/ethnic relations. Even now they are desperately battling to weed-out the last vestiges of racism and ethnic supremacy in their society.

We can apply these lessons … from history and from the present day, for great impact in our Caribbean homelands.

Yes we can … make the Caribbean region a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Role Model: Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference

Posted on June 8, 2015 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Edward Snowden: Friend or Foe?

This will be a subject of debate for the weeks, months, years and decades to come.

What is not debatable is the fact that he has been impactful. Yes, one man has made a difference.

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean recognize the contributions that Edward Snowden has made to the discussions of democratic principles: privacy versus security. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU seeks to empower a security apparatus for the Caribbean region. The issues of data monitoring and eavesdropping will be a big consideration here as well. We thank Mr. Snowden for bringing many of these issues to the fore; as the Go Lean roadmap also seeks to employ leading edge technologies to interdict domestic and foreign threats that may imperil Caribbean societal engines – without an “abuse of power”. We therefore want to study the dramatic events of this episode so as to apply best-practices in the formation of our own administration.

See the following news article (and VIDEO in the Appendix below) that summarizes the Snowden drama into 8 lessons:

Title: The Snowden Effect: 8 Things That Happened Only Because Of The NSA Leaks
One year ago Thursday, one of the most consequential leaks of classified U.S. government documents in history exploded onto the world scene: The first story based on documents from former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden was published. Americans finally knew the spy agency was sucking up virtually all of the data about who they called and when.

What followed was a torrent of articles based on the Snowden documents, as well as political and diplomatic reaction. Public debate was transformed by a new level of knowledge about the NSA — which Snowden himself said was mission accomplished. And in some modest ways Congress, companies and other countries also took concrete action. Here are the most consequential reactions to Snowden’s leaks.

1. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had to admit he lied to Congress.
Three months before the Snowden leaks began, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the nation’s top intelligence official if the NSA collected data on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans.

“No, sir,” Clapper replied. “Not wittingly.”

By that point, of course, the NSA had quite wittingly been running a massive bulk telephone metadata collection program for years. The government had repeatedly asked a secret surveillance court for permission to do so, and it deemed every American’s phone record “relevant” to terrorism in the process.

Wyden fumed in secret about Clapper’s lie — but felt he could not reveal it because the metadata collection program was classified. That all changed after the publication of the first story on June 5, 2013, based off a Snowden leak.

Days later, Clapper gave the most halfhearted, or perhaps least forthcoming, admission that he had lied: “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.”

2. The House passed a bill (ostensibly) meant to stop bulk collection of phone metadata.
Americans were furious about the NSA’s sweeping phone metadata collection program. Even the man who wrote the original Patriot Act, Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner, said the program went too far.

So last month the House passed a bill that its sponsors said would end bulk collection. Whether it actually does is a matter of dispute, since the White House and the spy agencies appear to have stripped out many of its toughest provisions. But its passage is nonetheless a clear signal that nobody in Congress wants to look like they’re doing nothing about the NSA.

3. A federal judge said the NSA phone surveillance program is unconstitutional.
In December, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon issued a ruling in a lawsuit against the NSA program that said its technology was “almost-Orwellian” and that James Madison “would be aghast.”

Because other judges in other districts have found differently — one in Manhattan dismissed an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit citing the threat of terrorists’ “bold jujitsu” — the program still stands. And it had previously been approved, though behind closed doors, by the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But with Leon’s ruling on the books, the program could eventually wind up before the Supreme Court.

4. Tech companies finally got serious about privacy.
Big tech players had been paying lip service for years to the idea that they protect their customers’ privacy. But after the Snowden revelation that the NSA was accessing company servers via its PRISM program, privacy suddenly became a very tangible good. Cloud providers stand to lose $35 billion over the next three years in business with foreign customers afraid of storing their data with U.S. companies.

So the companies are responding by adding encryption measures such as Transport Layer Security. Google even announced on Tuesday that it is testing a new extension for the Chrome browser that could make encrypting email easier.

5. Britain held its first-ever open intelligence hearing.
If you thought intelligence oversight was weak in the United States, you won’t believe how it works with our closest ally. The powerful British spy agencies MI5 and GCHQ had never faced a public hearing in front of Parliament until Snowden’s stories dropped.

The November hearing was hardly confrontational. But it was a step forward for a country that has generally reacted to the Snowden leaks with little more than a shrug. And that step matters for Americans as well: In April, The Intercept revealed that the GCHQ had secretly asked for “unsupervised access” to the NSA’s data pools.

6. Germany opened an investigation into the tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.
The revelation that the NSA was monitoring the German chancellor’s cell phone came as a surprise to her — and to Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Merkel was so outraged that she reportedly compared the surveillance to that of the Stasi, the former East German spy agency. (And she would know, having grown up in East Germany.)

On Wednesday, GermanFederalProsecutorHaraldRangeannounced that he is opening an investigation into the monitoring of Merkel’s phone calls. The investigation is proof positive that the Snowden leaks have frayed some U.S. diplomatic relations, but also that people the world over are starting to take surveillance seriously.

7. Brazil scotched a $4 billion defense contract with Boeing.
In another example of soured relations abroad, Brazil gave a massive fighter jet contract to Saab instead of the American company Boeing. Opinions varied as to how much that had to do with Snowden’s leaks, with one government source telling Reuters that he “ruined it for the Americans.” One analyst believed, however, that the Boeing jet simply cost too much.

The jet aside, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was clearly steamed, taking to the podium at the U.N. General Assembly to denounce the surveillance on her. Snowden’s leaks also helped propel the passage of an Internet bill of rights meant to protect privacy in the South American nation.

8. President Barack Obama admitted there would be no surveillance debate without Snowden.
In a major speech in January, Obama said he was “not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations.” But he essentially acknowledged that the roiling, yearlong debate over surveillance would not have happened without him.

“We have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world, while upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals — and our Constitution — require,” Obama said.

The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also nodded toward the “considerable public interest and debate” that Snowden’s leaks created. And even Clapper acknowledged, “It’s clear that some of the conversations this has generated, some of the debate, actually needed to happen.”

The surveillance court finally started publicly posting some filings from its major cases. And in further acknowledgement of the need for a debate, the NSA and other agencies have posted declassified files to a new intelligence Tumblr — revealing for the first time aside from Snowden’s leaks documentary evidence of the inner workings of mass surveillance.
Source: Huffington Post Online News Source; posted June 5, 2015; retrieved June 7, 2015 from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/edward-snowden-nsa-effect_n_5447431.html

An important consideration related to Mr. Snowden is the priority on human/civil rights. The motive for mass surveillance from the US Patriot Act was national security, but in its execution, it became abusive to human and civil rights. That is the formula for tyranny! Yet the authorities refused to “stop, drop and roll”; there was no remediation.

The Patriot Act went into effect in 2001 (effective for 4 years), then re-authorized in 2005 and 2011 (for 4 years only) with little debate. But thanks to one man, Edward Snowden, the 2015 renewal was stalled, debated, re-visited, re-considered and eventually defeated. People asked questions, challenged disclosures, protested and resolved … to do better.

One man … made a difference!

This one man impacted his country … and the whole world.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke; 1729 – 1797; an Irish statesman, member of the British Parliament and supporter of the American Revolution.

Edmund Burke! Edward Snowden! These two men – one from history and another of contemporary times – have more in common than what may have been obvious. Another expression Edmund Burke is credited for, is perhaps more apropos:

“People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous”.

There is now a new security monitoring legislative provision! Credit or not, this is a direct impact of the actions of Edward Snowden! This law allows for security monitoring, without the privacy violations. (The USA Freedom Act was passed on June 2, 2015 with a new expiration of 2019;^[5] however, Section 215 of the law was amended to stop the NSA from continuing its mass phone data collection program.^[6]). This end-product is better all around. In fact, “a White House investigation found that the prior NSA program may have never stopped a single terrorist attack”. This new provision is an elevation for society.

Like Edward Snowden’s advocacy, the prime directive of the book Go Lean…Caribbean is to elevate society, but instead of impacting America, the roadmap focus is the Caribbean. In fact, the declarative statements are as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant societal engines again foreign and domestic threats.
Improvement Caribbean governance – with appropriate checks-and-balances – to support these engines.

Edward Snowden is hereby recognized as a role model that the Caribbean can emulate. (He disclosed that telephone data for one Caribbean member-state, the Bahamas, was also being collected and analyzed by the NSA). He has provided a successful track record of forging change, resisting the “abuse of power”, managing crises to successful conclusions and paying forward the benefits for a tyranny-free society to all peoples; see his letter in the Appendix. The Go Lean book relates that Caribbean member-states do have a tyrannical past, considering examples of Cuba (236), Haiti (238), and the Dominican Republic (306).

The book posits that one person, despite their field of endeavor, can make a difference in the Caribbean, and its impact on the world; that there are many opportunities where one champion, one advocate, can elevate society. In this light, the book features 144 different advocacies, so there is inspiration for the “next” Edward Snowden or Edmund Burke to emerge and excel right here at home in the Caribbean. We need vanguards and sentinels against the dreaded “abuse of power”.

The roadmap specifically encourages the region, to lean-in to open advocacy with these specific community ethos, strategies, tactics, and implementations:

Community Ethos – Security Principles – Privacy vs Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 Member-states	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Security Apparatus Against Threats	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect Homeland with Anti-crime Measures	Page 45
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact	Page 122
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Defense / Homeland Security Pact	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from East Germany – Bad Checks-and-Balances	Page 139
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership	Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights	Page 220

The Caribbean region wants a more optimized security apparatus.

The region wants to mitigate human rights and civil rights abuses; in general all “abuse of power”.

This book posits that “bad actors” – even tyrants – will emerge to exploit inefficient economic, security and governing models. Early in the book, the pressing need to streamline protections – for citizens and institutions – was pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), with these opening statements:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including … forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The Go Lean book explicitly acknowledges that optimizing the needs for security, justice and privacy are not easy; they require strenuous effort; heavy-lifting. There needs to be a better balance of public protection versus privacy concerns. Balance? That is the quest of the CU/Go Lean roadmap: an optimized society with better checks-and-balances.

Other subjects related to civil/human rights checks-and-balances for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5304	Mitigating the Eventual ‘Abuse of Power’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4809	Using Surveillance to Interdict Americans Who Aided ISIS
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4447	Abuse of Power Example: Ferguson-Missouri biased cops & courts
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360	Dreading the American ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554	Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=960	NSA records all phone calls in Bahamas, according to Snowden
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535	Remembering and learning from Boston
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	American Human Rights Leaders Slams Caribbean Poor Record

With a heightened focus on balanced justice institutions and the participation of many advocates on many different paths for progress, the Caribbean can truly become a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———-

Appendix – Edward Snowden Letter – June 5, 2015 – “This is the power of an informed public”

Dear XXXXXXX,

Simple truths can change the world.

Two years ago today, in a Hong Kong hotel room, three journalists and I waited nervously to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been collecting records of nearly every phone call in the United States.

Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy remains under attack. Join me in standing up for our rights: Tell President Obama to log off.

Last month, the NSA’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts, and it was disowned by Congress. And, after a White House investigation found that the program never stopped a single terrorist attack, even President Obama ordered it terminated.

This is because of you. This is the power of an informed public.

Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.

We need to push back and challenge the lawmakers who defend these programs. We need to make it clear that a vote in favor of mass surveillance is a vote in favor of illegal and ineffective violations of the right to privacy for all Americans. Take action to ban mass surveillance today.

As I said at an Amnesty event in London this week, arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

We can’t take the right to privacy for granted, just like we can’t take the right to free speech for granted. We can’t let these invasions of our rights stand.

While we worked away in that hotel room in Hong Kong, there were moments when we worried we might have put our lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with apathy to the publication of evidence that revealed that democratic governments had been collecting and storing billions of intimate records of innocent people.

Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.

In solidarity,

Edward Snowden, for Amnesty International

———-

APPENDIX VIDEO – HuffingtonPost Analysis Video – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/edward-snowden-nsa-effect_n_5447431.html

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China Internet Policing – Model for Caribbean

Posted on June 3, 2015 in Government, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Is anyone watching the store in the Caribbean? The e-Store that is! Are there open sales for illegal narcotics, weapons and paraphernalia on Caribbean-area web domains? How about stolen credit cards, or movies, or music?

Just because these commercial transactions are on the internet, and may be electronically advanced, these facts do not make them benevolent. Rather, there is a lot of malevolence on the world-wide-web (WWW). Sometimes the moniker WWW is derisively dubbed the Wild-Wild-West; thusly referring to the olden days of the American West – in the 19^th century – when law-and-order was many times absent from society; outlaws, duels and revenge-seeking were prevalent. The theme of the marketplace then was: “Let the buyer beware”.

The thinking is that we have now advanced a long way from those bad old days.

But yet, have you ever gotten an email from some Nigerian Tribal Chief … or Nigerian widow (or a Nigerian job; see Appendix VIDEO), who needs you to facilitate some financial transaction, using your money in the process but boasting how you will profit big in the end? Have you gotten one of these…lately? No; just check your Spam e-Mail folder; there are probably a few there now.

There is a Murphy’s Law on Technology that is apropos to this discussion:

A computer can make as many mistakes in 2 seconds as 20 men in 20 years.

A need therefore exists to regulate man and machine when it comes to technology-driven commerce:

o There is the need for someone to watch the e-Store.

o There is also the other extreme: freedom of speech …
… it should not be curtailed by web censors.

But can the freedoms go too far; and conversely, can censorship go too far?

Can companies protect their reputation online from defamation? Or how about cyber-bullying by irate customers or some competitive agent? These are all real concerns and real threats. This following news article conveys that China recognizes the need for some policing in the internet marketplace:

Title: China’s ‘Internet police’ open a window on Web censorship

BEIJING (Reuters) – The branch of China’s police in charge of censoring “illegal and harmful” online information will make its efforts more visible to the public from Monday with the launch of their own social media accounts, the Ministry of Public Security said.

The Chinese government aggressively censors the Internet, blocking many sites it deems could challenge the rule of the Communist Party or threaten stability, including popular Western sites like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, as well as Google Inc.’s main search engine and Gmail service.

Police in some 50 areas, from metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai to more obscure cities like Xuzhou in Jiangsu province, will open accounts on sites including Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, the ministry said late on Sunday.

The move is a response to public concern about problems like online gambling and pornography and is aimed at increasing the visibility of the police presence online to “create a harmonious, cultured, clear and bright Internet”, it said.

“The Internet police are coming out to the front stage from behind the curtains, beginning regular open inspection and law enforcement efforts, raising the visibility of the police online, working hard to increase a joint feeling of public safety for the online community and satisfy the public,” the ministry said.

The cyber police are working to root out “illegal and harmful information on the Internet, deter and prevent cyber-crimes and improper words and deeds online, publish case reports and handle public tip-offs”, it said.

Problems such as fraud, defamation, gambling, the sale of drugs and guns, and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a charge often used to lock up dissidents – have angered people and created a serious challenge to an orderly Internet, it said.

The police would issue warnings to those involved in minor offences and go after more serious cases.

“Just like in the real world, law violations in cyberspace will not go unaccounted for,” it said.

The government has already deleted some 758,000 pieces of “illegal and criminal information” from the Internet and investigated more than 70,000 cyber-crime cases since the start of this year, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait)
Reuters News Wire – Published May 31, 2015; retrieved June 2, 2015 from:
http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-internet-police-open-window-censorship-023422128–finance.html

Where do we stand in the Caribbean?

For starters, there is no call for censorship. But there is a need for responsible internet messaging.

Electronic Commerce is now all the rage in North America, Europe and certain key Asian markets (i.e. China, Japan, Indonesia, etc.). While the Caribbean has not fully embraced the world of e-Commerce, the internet via broadband, Wi-Fi and mobile has been fully assimilated – most adults have a mobile phone. So planners for Caribbean economic empowerments have contemplated the infrastructural deficiencies and proposed the remediation to better govern e-Commerce in this region. This is the assertion in the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it is the contemplation, proposal and remediation plan to reboot Caribbean economics, security and governance. This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to facilitate the growth, promotion and regulatory oversight of electronic commerce in a regional Single Market.

The book posits that some issues are too big for any one Caribbean member-state to manage alone, that there are times when there must be a cross-border, multilateral coordination. The strategy is to confederate all 30 Caribbean member-states and appoint the CU as a deputized agency to oversee this important activity. In addition, attendant functions are included in the roadmap to facilitate e-Commerce: Central Bank adoption of Electronic Payment schemes and Postal Integration/Optimization. Without these functionalities, internet commerce would remain stagnant!

On the other hand, with the expected surge in this sphere of activity, many other challenges will come. In previous blogs, the following issues were detailed:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5353	US Presidential Politics and the Internet
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4793	Online reviews – like Yelp and Angie’s List – can wield great power for services marketed, solicited and contracted online.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4381	Net Neutrality – The need for Caribbean Administration of the Issue.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4337	Crony-Capitalism Among the Online Real Estate Markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	European and North American Intelligence Agencies to Ramp-up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin e-Payments needs regulatory framework to manage ‘risky’ image
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=308	Caribbean Communications Infrastructure Program (CARCIP) and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) urges greater innovation and protection.

These commentaries demonstrate that there is the need for a governing body to better oversee and police Caribbean society to mitigate cyber-crimes and illicit activities initiated and/or continued in the online world. Policing the internet is too big for any one Caribbean member-state to manage alone. Too much is at stake.

Providing regional oversight for the Caribbean Single Market – a lean technocracy – for cross-border electronic media, governance of the Information Technology Arts and Sciences and Grievance Officiating are among the missions of Go Lean roadmap. The CU’s prime directives are identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the people and processes (economic engines) of the region from threats and attacks (physical and electronic) that may originate from foreign or domestic sources.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

These prime directives will elevate Caribbean society. With this success comes the emergence of bad actors – foreign and domestic. The goal of preparing the appropriate security apparatus was envision in the Go Lean roadmap from the beginning; this was defined early in the book (Page 12 & 14) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The subjects of cyber-crimes and electronic commerce integrity feature economic, security and governing concerns. These fields will escalate in importance with the Go Lean roadmap as there is the call for deployment of a Social Media / Electronic Commerce offering for all Caribbean member-states, branded www.myCaribbean.gov. This Caribbean Cloud initiative is projected in the Go Lean book as a subset of the integrated postal operations, the Caribbean Postal Union.

China is an emerging economy. Their economic growth has been impressive in the last 30 years. Despite their official Communism adherence, they model technocratic governmental administrations. There is much for the Caribbean region to learn from their model.

Of course the Caribbean will not boast the 1.3 Billion-population that China holds, but the same as we’re able to model the American example, there is much to consider from our Asian (Chinese) trading partners. The wisdom the Go Lean book gleans from these models is presented as a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies; as highlighted in the following sample:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Choose	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Integrate a Single Market of entire region	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Caribbean Postal Union (CPU)	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Communications and Media Authority	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Anecdote – Implementation Plan – Mail Services – US Dilemma	Page 99
Implementation – Improve Mail Services – Electronic Supplements	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media – Weibo Volumes	Page 111
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Interstate Commerce	Page 129
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy –Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Wifi & Mobile Apps	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living	Page 234

This commentary is not intended to make disparaging remarks about Nigeria. Also, this commentary is not intended to make disparaging remarks about Communist China. Rather, the Go Lean book asserts (Page 23) that there is good and bad in every country; no matter the time or place, bad actors will always emerge to exploit economic successes.

That place is now extended to cyber-space.

We, the Caribbean collectively and individually, must police cyber-space as well.

To keep pace with the latest and greatest cyber-criminals will require an advanced level of interdiction and technical competence. It is the assertion here that this is heavy-lifting and too much for any one Caribbean member-state alone. No, the Caribbean needs the effectiveness and efficiencies proposed in Go Lean…Caribbean. The Caribbean needs this technocracy!

This is a lesson we can learn … and apply from China, in our application and pursuit of the Greater Good.

🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————–

Appendix – VIDEO: Nigerian Scammers Impersonate FBI Agent in Work-from-Home Scam – https://youtu.be/D82MzqwyK8A

Published on Mar 13, 2012 – The FBI’s Special Agent Tom Simon is warning about a new scam targeting Hawaii residents, which offers them a work-from-home position, but the company they reportedly will work for, and the financial transactions they are asked to perform, are fake.

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