Category: Locations

Abaco, Bahamas – Losing the Battles on Two Fronts

Posted on September 19, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

At the beginning of World War II, it became obvious, very early, that Germany was going to lose. Why?

Because they had to fight battles … alone … on two fronts:

That was a strategic and tactical disadvantage for Nazi Germany! Time was to catch up with them eventually.

There is a parallel situation today in the Caribbean, in the Northern Bahamas community of Abaco in particular. They have battles on two fronts: A hurricane and a pandemic.

  • Climate Change – infused storms like Hurricane Dorian in September 2019
    At 16:40 UTC on September 1, Dorian made landfall on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, with one-minute sustained winds of 185 mph (298 km/h), wind gusts over 220 mph (355 km/h), and a central barometric pressure of 910 millibars (27 inHg),[26][27] as Dorian reached its peak intensity during landfall.[28] Storm chaser Josh Morgerman observed a pressure of 913.4 mbar (26.97 inHg) in Marsh Harbour.[29] Dorian’s forward speed decreased around this time, slowing to a westward crawl of 5 mph (8.0 km/h).[28] At 02:00 UTC on September 2, Dorian made landfall on Grand Bahama near the same intensity, with the same sustained wind speed.[30] Afterward, Dorian’s forward speed slowed to just 1 knot (1.2 mph; 1.9 km/h), as the Bermuda High that was steering the storm westward weakened. Later that day, the storm began to undergo an eyewall replacement cycle to the north of Grand Bahama; the Bermuda High to the northeast of Dorian also collapsed, causing Dorian to stall just north of Grand Bahama.[31][32] Around the same time, the combination of the eyewall replacement cycle and upwelling of cold water caused Dorian to begin weakening, with Dorian dropping to Category 4 status at 15:00 UTC.[33] Due to the absence of steering currents, Dorian stalled north of Grand Bahama for about a day.[34][35] – Wikipedia

  • Pandemic – Coronavirus COVID-19
    Consider the actuality of life in the Bahamas during this crisis as related in a previous blog-commentary; (this reporting describes the situation on the ground in the Bahamas as miserable):

    • Jobs are affected – most private businesses, including tourist resorts, are closed or curtailed.
    • Retail food prices increase because of higher inventory-carrying costs.
    • Hospitals and public safety institutions are overwhelmed with COVID cases: testing, tracing, therapeutics and terminal patients.
    • Government Shutdown – No administrative processing, at all; no passport processing, no business registrations, etc.

Abaco is failing miserably on both fronts. It is not wise to bet that they will win, overcome, survive or thrive. 🙁

These are not just our thoughts alone; see these 2 articles here depicting the acute crisis on the ground in Abaco:

Title # 1: Everything Is Not Okay in the Bahamas… Not by a Long Shot – Surfline
By: Matt Pruett
For those who don’t regularly deal with natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires or tornadoes, it’s easy to think of these violent events as one-offs, cosmic flukes, and after a year or so passes, old news. When in reality, the devastating effects from these catastrophes can last many, many years after the initial deathblow, and casualties continue to stack.

It’s been a little over a year since the prolonged and record-breaking Category 5 Hurricane Dorian blasted the Bahamas with 185mph maximum sustained winds — effectively become the most intense tropical cyclone to ever strike the islands, the costliest event in Bahamian history with $3.4 billion in damage, and the worst natural disaster in the country’s history — leaving at least 70,000 people homeless and 74 dead (although the exact death toll is unknown, as 245 people were still missing as of April 2020).

But there is compassion, especially from Floridian surfers who’ve been island-hopping this area for generations. And with compassion comes aid, and with aid comes relief, and with relief comes recovery. At least that’s what we hope.

“There are very few moments in life when we as individuals have the opportunity to do something larger than ourselves and help,” explains acclaimed filmmaker Wesley Dunham-Brown, who co-created the surfing documentary films Peel: The Peru Project and Chasing Dora before starting his own production company, Arora Entertainment. “I believe this is what we were ultimately put on this planet to do. When Hurricane Dorian decimated the Bahamas, and more specifically the area of Hope Town, it gave us the opportunity to do just that. Our small group of passionate filmmakers at Arora Entertainment went down to help these people, tell their incredible stories of loss, grief, love and compassion and share their unrelenting faith, will and perseverance to see the Bahamas rebuilt.”

Respected for their storytelling techniques, industry contacts, and ability to spread awareness, Brown and his directorial partner Bobby Pura were hired by Hope Town Rising — a grassroots initiative of the Community Assistance Foundation focused on supporting and rebuilding Elbow Cay — to focus their lenses on this devastated area in the way of a full-length documentary, “This is Hope Town.” The film shadows a close-knit community of Bahamians as they join together to work around-the-clock in terrible conditions to rebuild their lives, while recounting the damage, emotional toll and physical wreckage in heart-wrenching interviews. Brown and Pura immediately tapped longtime Bahamas traveler and professional surfer Cory Lopez to serve as ambassador for the mission.

“I spent a lot of time in the Bahamas over the years,” says Cory. “I started going there when I was a kid, and one year Andy [Irons] and I spent six weeks there. So I have a lot of great memories from the place. Looking at how big that storm was, I expected it to be bad. And of course I heard stories and saw pictures of how bad it ended up being. But once you get down there and actually see the severity of it, a year later… it’s catastrophic, man. It’s been such a slow process of removing debris off the island while getting supplies that are needed — and food — on to the island. And unfortunately with COVID-19, it’s just been a double-whammy for those people. At this rate it’ll take two to three years to rebuild, five years to bring this place back.”

“With disasters like this, it’s like a lot of people will donate right away, but then three months later there’s another disaster somewhere else in the world,” Cory adds. “So hopefully this film will bring another boost of money to the Bahamian people. And they were very grateful that we went down there to give them a voice and bring attention to the problems they’re facing.”

“This is not simply a documentarian journey, it’s a human journey,” Brown continues. “One that demonstrates to the world that we all possess the power to affect change, and a human responsibility to assist those in need wherever they may be. This is our time and opportunity to change things for the people of Hope Town, and to show the world what the people of the Abacos, and those who are doing everything in their power to help them, are truly made of.”

For more information, to watch the movie or to make a donation, visit Hope Town Rising.

Source: Posted September 12, 2020; retrieved September 19, 2020 from: https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/everything-not-okay-bahamas-not-long-shot/95982

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VIDEO – This is Hope Town Trailer – Extended Cut (3:34) – https://youtu.be/CfqqaHzFO_A


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Title # 2: Abaco in “precarious situation” with COVID, ongoing reconstruction — says MP
NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Central and South Abaco MP James Albury said because the construction industry represents a major hotspot for COVID-19, Abaco is in a “precarious situation” as reconstruction forges on.
Infections on the island continue to rise, albeit more slowly in recent weeks.“It’s something that is on everyone’s mind, including my own,” Albury told Eyewitness News.
“We’re in a very precarious situation and trying to handle that as well as handle reconstruction of course, is a double whammy that is really keeping us on the back foot. We’re pushing forward as much as possible, but there is always a danger there in terms of a resurgence.Abaco has the third-highest number of infections in The Bahamas with 104 infections as of yesterday, trailing Grand Bahama (607) and New Providence (2,186).
The island remains in recovery mode more than a year after deadly Hurricane Dorian decimated many of its once-thriving communities.
Amid the height of lockdown and curfew measures nationwide, exemptions were made for reconstruction of the island, a major undertaking, to continue.
The MP said while it is hoped a rapid increase is avoided, “realistically, if it does happen it will require a lot more effort on behalf of the health team”.
He said an increase in cases and exposures also challenges residents, many of whom remain in alternative housing and tents.
“Even quarantining is difficult for lack of available housing, so it is a big concern and it is certainly nothing to take lightly,” Albury said.
“It is certainly nothing that we can afford to sleep on.” Albury said while new infections per appear to have somewhat slowed “things can change tomorrow”.

“We’re at [over] 100 cases spread out through several areas — Moore’s Island, Sandy Point, and some of the cays as well — so we have a bit of a spread of cases, and we’re dealing with a disaster already within a disaster,” he said.“It’s a very challenging position for the health team on the ground, so I do give them kudos.

“I think they have been working very hard to make sure that testing and monitoring is going on.”

Asked about compliance with emergency protocols on the recovering island, Albury said: “There are always going to be people who try and skirt around the law or skirt around the laid out protocols, but it’s something that Abaconians are taking very seriously.

“…Those members of society who are not really complying of course are going to face the end of the law on that.

Of the total cases on Abaco, 25 were recorded in the last two weeks.

In the two weeks prior, 35 cases were recorded.

This means in the last month, Abaco has more than doubled its cases — from 44 on August 20 to 104 yesterday.

During the first wave, which spanned mid-March through the end of June, Abaco recorded zero cases.

Moore’s Island in the Abacos recorded its first few cases on July 23.

Two days later, a case was recorded on Great Guana Cay in the Abacos.

And on July 28, mainland Abaco recorded its first case.

Source: Posted EyeWitness News – September 18, 2020; retrieved September 19, 2020 from: https://ewnews.com/abaco-in-precarious-situation-with-covid-ongoing-reconstruction-says-mp

The Abaco chain of islands are a beautiful part of the Bahamas archipelago – the natural beauty flourishes. The Bahamas has been rocked by the pandemic but the country was in crisis even before COVID-19; this was due to structural deficiencies that were exacerbated by Agents of Change like Climate Change, globalization, technology and an Aging Diaspora. So the cupboards are now bare; this makes relief and refuge from these recent crises (COVID-19 and Dorian) untenable. Crisis within a crisis; failure on top of failure.

This theme – Bahamian Deficiencies – aligns with many previous commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19327 ‘Missing Solar’ – Inadequacies Exposed to the World
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18266 After Dorian, ‘Fool Me Twice’ on Flooding
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18038 Bahamas 2019 Self-Made Energy Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18011 Regulating Plastics in the Bahamas – So Little; So Late
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17992 What Went Wrong? Losing the Best; Nation-building with the Rest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17118 White Paper: A Nation in Chaos
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16645 Economic Dysfunction: Bad Partners – Cruise Lines Interactions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13856 Economic Dysfunction: Baha Mar – Doubling-down on Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12911 Bahamian Diaspora: Not the ‘Panacea’

But we are here to explain, not just complain.

So the problems in Abaco are bigger than just COVID, bigger than just Dorian. The systematic defects are still present and still impacting the viability of this community for the future. There is the need to reboot the Abaco eco-system.

How?

The 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean identified the root causes of Caribbean communities’ dysfunctions and presented viable solutions: strategies, tactics and implementations. But it cautioned that the remediation work is not easy; it takes heavy-lifting. The book decomposed the societal engines to these sub-categories: economics, security and governance. Then it proposed confederating the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region so as to better leverage the solutions across a wider base – 42 million people – as opposed to just the small populations of many of the Small Island Development States. This is true for sparsely populated Abaco – 10,000-ish population; before Dorian; well before some documented defection-abandonment. Abaco is just a skinny string in the fabric of the regional society.

This is the urging right now; we need more than a string; we need to make the “rope” of our society stronger and better. We must … confederate, collaborate, collude, consolidate and convene:

Many strains of strings in a rope make it stronger. – The Bible Ecclesiastes 4:12

The mono-industrial engine of tourism-alone must be retired. This community – Abaco – must diversify, whatever it takes.

So the certainty of Abaco’s failure, does not have to be so certain; it can be averted. Learning the lessons from ill-fated Nazi Germany, Abaco, the Bahamas and the entire Caribbean need a more structure alliance (allied nations) fighting along-side them for victory.

Yes, we can! Confederation – this is how … we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.

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. Since economic crimes … 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.

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.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Pandemic Playbook – Freedom vs Safety

Posted on September 1, 2020 in Government, Industries, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. – lyrics from America’s National Anthem

There is this great Summer Festival in this small town in the US State of South Dakota, the Sturgis Bike Rally. This event is so impressive that the Caribbean has long been urged to look, listen and learn from this event model. In fact, the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – introducing the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – dedicates one Appendix (Page 288) to Sturgis.

If only we can plan and execute events that draw 600,000 people to our small towns. (Sturgis only has less than 10,000 residents).

There is another lesson from Sturgis for us to consider, especially this year – 2020 with the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic – that is the need to balance “Freedom versus Public Safety”. This is a delicate issue with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. (Even the US President would tweet “Liberate X-State” when citizens protested strong lockdowns in their States: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.). The participants-attendees at Sturgis insisted on their freedoms above and beyond all other values. See the Sturgis story here:

VIDEO – Massive Sturgis motorcycle rally taking place amid coronavirus concerns – https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/massive-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-taking-place-amid-coronavirus-concerns-89793093627

Posted August 10, 2020 – Hundreds of thousands of bikers are expected to gather in Sturgis, South Dakota, where masks are encouraged but not required, despite coronavirus concerns. As schools across the country begin to reopen, Georgia’s largest district is dealing with the fallout from an outbreak.

Related:
More than 100 coronavirus cases in 8 states linked to massive Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota
August 26, 2020 – The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota drew hundreds of thousands of bikers to the small town earlier this month — despite coronavirus concerns. Now, about three weeks after the rally kicked off, the repercussions are starting to become clear. More than 100 cases of COVID-19 connected to the rally have been reported in at least eight states, the Associated Press reports.

The movement behind the 2013 Go Lean book just completed – during August 2020 – a 6-part series on Pandemic Playbooks for the Caribbean region. It presented many Best Practices for managing our society during times of crisis. This is an important consideration right now as many Caribbean communities have had to institute lockdowns, which some considers “trampling on civil liberties”, in order to protect the general public. Is that right, just and honorable or is the suppression of civil-human rights just an expression of Tyranny. This commentary is an important supplement to the 6-part August Teaching Series. The other commentaries in the series were cataloged as follows:

  1. Pandemic Playbook: Worldwide Leadership – Plan ==> Actual
  2. Pandemic Playbook: Caribbean Inadequacies – Missing the Bubble Opportunities
  3. Pandemic Playbook: Bahamas Example – ‘Too Little Too Late’
  4. Pandemic Playbook: Only at the Precipice ENCORE
  5. Pandemic Playbook: To Be or Not To Be – COVID Vaccine
  6. Pandemic Playbook: Success – Looks like New Zealand

Let’s look at the jurisprudence of government lockdowns that imperil private citizens’ ability to live (attends births and weddings), work (provide for families), worship (limits on free assembly and at funerals) and play (travel and recreation impeded). The restriction placed on citizens by local governments call into question whether these homelands are truly free.

Are our freedoms absolute or only allowed when convenient? Is it Tyranny to impede those freedom during emergencies?

These are all good questions. Let’s see this comprehensive legal analysis by a respected lawyer (and law professor) here:

Title: The Peoples’ Constitution: COVID-19 versus Freedom
By: Ben Lenhart
The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening many of our most cherished freedoms. We are told by the government not to travel. We are told we can’t gather for religious services. We are told we must wear masks, but we must not go to restaurants or stores. Our favorite sporting events, school activities and even graduations are cancelled. In some places, we are told we may not gather even for the most important things in life: the birth of a newborn or the passing of a loved one. At rallies protesting the lockdown, participants claim their constitutional rights are being violated and that the “illegal” government orders must be lifted. Who is right: the protestors or the government?Put another way, do the governments’ actions taking away certain rights, even if only temporarily, violate the Constitution? This article seeks to answer that question using a few real-life examples.

COVID-19 Order Blocks Church in Kansas.
As part of a COVID “stay at home” order, Kansas barred more than 10 people from attending religious services. Two churches sued, claiming violation of their religious freedoms. The First Amendment bars the federal government from (A) establishing any official state religion, or (B) restricting Americans from freely exercising their religion of choice. A Kansas trial court realized this was a hard case: yes, the churches’ constitutional rights were being curtailed, but also, yes, the COVID-19 pandemic required urgent measures to protect public health. For guidance, the Kansas court looked to the famous quarantine case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, where a man refused a mandatory smallpox vaccination during a smallpox epidemic. Recognizing the hard balance, the Supreme Court in Jacobson acknowledged both sides of the issue: First “when faced with a society-threatening epidemic, a state may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights so long as the measureshaveatleastsome“realorsubstantialrelation”tothepublichealthcrisis …” But second, a law purporting to protect public health, may nevertheless be invalid if it “has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.” In the end, the court upheld the government order requiring the vaccination.

A COVID-19 order taking away our constitutional rights may be valid if (A) that order directly advances a public health goal (such as controlling the spread of COVID-19), and (B) the same goal can’t be achieved in a narrower way that does not curtail our Constitution rights (or curtails them to a lesser degree). If (A) and (B) are not true, the court may decide to strike down the order as unconstitutional.

Applying these rules, the Kansas court sided with the churches and against the government. Noting that Kansas’ stay-at-home-order singled out places of worship for stricter measures, the court found that, while the public health goals were important, they could be achieved while still allowing the churches to hold services in a safe manner with more than 10 people. The case settled on favorable terms for the churches before it could be appealed, and so the churches largely won this fight.

COVID-19 Order Blocks Abortions in Texas.
In order to preserve medical resources during the coronavirus pandemic, a Texas order banned many non-essential medical procedures, including abortions under most circumstances.Roe v. Wadefirst recognized the constitutional right to abortion more than 45 years ago. Abortion providers sued, claiming the order deprived them of their constitutional rights. Much like the Kansas church case, the Texas court recognized the two competing forces: the need to protect public health during the COVID crisis versus the constitutional right to abortion. On the one hand, the court agreed thatindividual rights secured by the Constitution are not lostevenduring a severe public health crisis. There is no “emergency override” of the Constitution. On the other hand, the Texas court, said that “liberty secured by the Constitution … does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, the court fund that “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members,” even when that means temporarily curtailing certain rights.

In the end, the lower court largely sided with the abortion providers, ordering that they be allowed to continue during the COVID crisis, but an appellate court overruled the lower court, and allowed most of the abortion ban to continue. However, before the courts could come to a final ruling, the case was resolved, and abortions in Texas were largely allowed to continue during the Covid crisis.

COVID-19 Orders Deny the Right To Travel in Many States
To protect public health, many states have ordered that people not travel unless for essential purposes. But the right to travel is one of Americans’ most cherished freedoms. A drive to the mall, or to a friend’s house, or a road trip across America—the freedom to travel “where we want and when we want” helps define America. It is also a core rights long protected by the Constitution (although its precise source is still being debated). COVID travel bans present the same “hard balance” between our safety and constitutional rights. Faced with a severe pandemic where the very movement of people can spread the disease, courts would likely approve a limited travel ban, such as one that lasted a short time and had exceptions for emergencies and essential activities. On the other hand, courts would likely strike down a travel ban that was imposed rigidly for a year or more regardless of changes in the pandemic status, and that failed to allow reasonable exceptions to the ban. Such a ban would be unconstitutional because a more limited travel ban likely could achieve the same goal—protecting public health—without such a severe denial of constitutional liberty.

The Outer Banks Travel Ban
The Outer Banks (OB) is a beloved vacation spot along the North Carolina coast. In March, it banned nonresidents from entering most of the OB but permitted residents to enter. This ban has two potential constitutional problems. First, it denies the right to travel discussed above. Second, by discriminating against non-residents, the ban may violate the so-called Dormant Commerce Clause, which generally prohibits states from favoring their own residents at the expense of out-of-staters. A huge reason why America’s economy has succeeded and grown to the largest in the world is that we have a free market among the 50 states. The constitutional framework allows commerce to flow freely across state lines. By violating this basic rule, the OB may be violating the Constitution unless it can show there is no less restrictive way to protect public health in the OB short of discriminating against non-residents.

Korematsu
The COVID-19 stay-at-home orders impose real hardships, but compare those to the hardships during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese American citizens, most of unquestioned loyalty to the United States, were sent to internment camps far from their homes based on fears that a small number would side with Japanese war effort. This was a massive deprivation of the most basic constitutional rights of American citizens. In 1944 a sharply divided court, with stinging dissents, held that the urgent Japanese threat justified this extreme measure. But history was not kind to Korematsu, and it has become one of the Court’s most heavily criticized cases.

Last year, Chief Justice Roberts said this:“The dissent’s reference toKorematsu, however, affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious:Korematsuwas gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—’has no place in law under the Constitution.’”

Why was Korematsu so wrong? Both because withheld evidence showed less threat from the Japanese Americans, and because there were ways to achieve the government’s goal (such as police investigative work) that did not involve such flagrant denial our Constitution rights, the order at issue in Korematsu was unconstitutional.

Conclusion
The COVID-19 constitutional balance is hard because the things being balanced are both vitally important: stopping the spread of the coronavirus is a matter of life and death; but many lives have also been lost over the past 232 years fighting to protect the rights guaranteed to all Americans in the Constitution. The examples above shed light on whether any particular COVID-19 order is constitutional. If that order takes away constitutional rights—such as the right to travel, the right to assemble, or freedom of religion—then ask if the government can achieve the same COVID-19 health goal in some other way that does not take away those rights or involves materially less interference with those rights. If the answer is no, then the law may well be constitutional, but if the answer is yes, then the balance may tip in favor of protecting our constitutional rights and striking down the order.

—–

Contributor Ben Lenhart is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has taught Constitutional Law at Georgetown Law Center for more than 20 years. He lives with his family and lots of animals on a farm near Hillsboro.

Source: LoudounNow, Loudoun, Virginia Daily Newspaper; retrieved May 7, 2020 from: https://loudounnow.com/2020/05/07/the-peoples-constitution-covid-19-versus-freedom/

Also see the insistence on freedoms portrayed in the Reader’s Commentary Section on this foregoing article:

By David Dickinson – 2020-05-07:
As if we needed any reminders, COVID-19 amply demonstrates that you can’t trust any level of government. It is also a scary demonstration of how out-of-control powerful we have allowed government to become. I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 and its virulence, but 40,000 people a year die in car accidents and we didn’t shut down highways; 80,000 from diabetes and we didn’t outlaw donuts; 50,000 from regular flu and we didn’t lock down anything (except the cold medicine at the pharmacy).

This commentor is passionate; he conveys the thought of Tyranny if he cannot get his way. This commentor could very well have been speaking from Sturgis, about Sturgis and on behalf of Sturgis; (these same passions bubble in the Caribbean).

The references to Sturgis requires more insight of the city/event, its dynamism; see the Go Lean excerpt (Page 191) here:

The Bottom Line on the Sturgis, South Dakota
Sturgis is a city in Meade County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 6,627 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Meade County and is named after General Samuel D. Sturgis. Sturgis is famous for being the location of one of the largest annual motorcycle events in the world, which [started in 1938 and] is held annually on the first full week of August. Motorcycle enthusiasts from around the world flock to this usually sleepy town during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The focus of a motorcycle rally was originally racing and stunts. Then in 1961, the rally was expanded to include the “Hill Climb” and Motocross races.[145] The attendance was tallied in excess of 600,000 visitors in the year 2000. The City of Sturgis has calculated that the Rally brings over $800 million to South Dakota annually. (The City of Sturgis earned almost $270,000 in 2011 from just selling event guides and sponsorships). Rally-goers are a mix of white-collar and blue-collar workers and are generally welcomed as an important source of income for Sturgis and surrounding areas. The rally turns local roads into “parking lots”, and draws local law enforcement away from routine patrols. [The City frequently contracts with law enforcement officers from near-and-far for supplemental support-enforcements during the rally]. (See Appendix J [on Page 288] of Sturgis City Rally Department’s Statistics).

[Sturgis generates a lot of media attention]. Annual television coverage of the festival by the [cable TV network] VH1 Classic includes interviews and performances as well as rock music videos. Also, the Travel Channel repeatedly shows two one-hour documentaries about Sturgis.

Don’t get it twisted, these times of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic constitute an emergency and “critical times calls for critical measures”. Tyranny is not a consideration. This is where we are. Everybody simply wants public safety and Good Governance. In a previous blog-commentary, this point was made about governmental deliveries during times of emergency:

Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
Do you know what SOS stands for?

Of course you know what it infers – “Emergency; Need Help” …

SOS, plus 911 and other emergency outreach numbers, are all calls for help. In modern society, it is expected that someone-somewhere will respond.

That expectation is within the assumption of Good Governance. It is expected that someone-somewhere will step-up in the time of emergencies …

… failing this, we would have a Failed-State, [every man for himself].

…
[This roadmap provides] a glimpse of a new Caribbean that is ready for these New Guards. These are not foreigners. These are fellow Caribbean brothers and sisters, representing the 30 member-states in the region. They have the desire to help; they only need Good Governance …

The CU structure allows for an Emergency Management functionality within the Homeland Security Department. The CU‘s version is modeled after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the US. That agency’s emergency response is based on small, decentralized teams trained in such areas as the National Disaster Medical  System (NDMS), Urban Search and Rescue (USAR), Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), and Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS).

The Go Lean book provides … the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. We need to be better at responding to the SOS [(emergency)] calls in our region.

Good Governance versus Tyranny … “that is the question”.

This discussion on Sturgis 2020 presents that city/event as a good role model for us in the Caribbean, to contemplate both the opportunities and the bounds-limits of a free society. There is a pattern of Good Governance in Sturgis, even amongst all that Freedom – there is never tyranny. We have looked, listened and learned from that city/event before; most importantly, we have looked at Tyranny before. Let’s consider previous discussions (blog-commentaries) on Tyranny:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18648 Better Than ‘Bill of Rights’ – ‘Third & Fourth Amendments’: Justice First

When strong individuals abuse weaker ones in society, we call it bullying. When governmental institutions do it, we call it: Tyranny.

Planners for a new Caribbean governance must consider constitutional provisions to mitigate the threat of tyranny.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18337 Unequal Justice: Bullying Magnified to Disrupt Commerce

Conditions of Unequal Justice can go from “bad to worse” when bullies are not checked. Such “bad actors” can emerge from terrorizing a family, to a neighborhood, to a community, to a nation, to a region, to a hemisphere, to the whole world. Think: Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Spanish Inquisition.

Unchecked, bad actors in the community become tyrants – they can even affect the local economic engine.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321 Unequal Justice: Sheriffs and the need for ‘soft’ Tyrannicide

The reality of southern rural life for African Americans was that justice was impeded by one institution, often one character: the County Sheriff.
People sought refuge and succeeded in their quest for relief and justice by fleeing the jurisdiction of the Sheriff, that State and the whole oppressive racist region of the American South.
The tyrannicide was achieved by removing the racist Sheriffs from office. This was accomplished by defeating them at the ballot box. The people that fled did not defeat the Sheriffs. No, it was only those that stayed; thusly, the reformation took very long.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5506 Role Model: Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference

This whistleblower exposed the blatant tyranny in the electronic surveillance system.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2809 A Lesson in History – Economics of East Berlin
The City of “East” Berlin used tyranny to bully its citizens, even for its economics. They operated the city like a maximum security prison and ransomed the citizens wanting to leave.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338 Welcoming the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’

Big companies can bully and terrorize small communities. But the structure of a Self-Governing Entity would mitigate their threat of tyranny.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 virus has caused emergencies through out the Caribbean – freedoms have had to be culled in order to save lives and to preserve our economic engines for future executions. There is the need for better balance between freedoms and public safety. The reality and actuality of an efficient Pandemic Playbook reflects the urgent need for the Caribbean member-states to appoint “new guards”.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens – to deploy an effective and efficient Pandemic Playbook for our region. Allow the needed emergency powers, but for the shortest times possible. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap; this is how we can make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, worship and play.

There are good, bad and ugly lessons from Sturgis, South Dakota. There are lessons from other communities as well who have instituted emergencies and managed the careful balance between Freedom and Tyranny. Yes, Good Governance is hard-work; Good Governance in times of emergencies is even more heavy-lifting. So our obligation for an efficient and effective Pandemic Playbook is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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. …

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 accidence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of 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.

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 … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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 … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/communities like … [Sturgis, South Dakota].

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Pandemic Playbook – Success Looks like New Zealand

Posted on August 30, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Keeping up with the Joneses.

It is so hard to be an island, off the coast of a continent.

Or is it?!

The island-nation of New Zealand seems to have gotten “it” right. What is the “it”? The management of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. They have demonstrated how to do “it” right.

… and in doing so have provided us in the Caribbean a role model for how to do “it”. They are the Joneses we need to keep up with.

See how New Zealand’s success is being described in this globally respected Trade Journal, Contagion® – a fully integrated news resource covering all areas of infectious disease; (also see the related VIDEO):

Title: How Did New Zealand Control COVID-19?
By: Kevin Kunzmann Contagion Live
New Zealand, a modern small island nation, has become an emblematic champion of proper prevention and response to the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Leading into this weekend, the country of approximately 5 million has just 2 dozen active COVID-19 cases—a full month after having reported absolutely none, on the backbone of strict initial travel policies, science-based government action, and strategies responsive to testing limitations.

What else went into New Zealand’s pandemic response—and what could serve as guidance for other countries?

A new correspondence published in The New England Journal of Medicine from a team of New Zealand-based investigators at the University of Otago highlighted the public health successes of the country—measures which have brought New Zealand to the post-elimination phase of response approximately 100 days after its first case.

The trio of authors—Michael G. Baker, MB, ChB; Nick Wilson, MB, ChB, MPH; Andrew Anglemyer, PhD, MPH—wrote SARS-CoV-2 introduction to New Zealand was known to be imminent early on, due to a great rate of visiting tourists and students from Europe and China annually.

In fact, their disease models showed estimated wide pandemic spread, with capability to “overwhelm” the healthcare system and disproportionately affect Maori and Pacific persons.

“New Zealand began implementing its pandemic influenza plan in earnest in February, which included preparing hospitals for an influx of patients,” they wrote. “We also began instituting border-control policies to delay the pandemic’s arrival.”

The first New Zealand COVID-19 case was diagnosed February 26, around the same time that global agencies began reporting the SARS-CoV-2 infection was behaving more like a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) than an influenza—giving investigators hope for containment.

Because of lacking testing and contact-tracing capability in mid-March, the country’s leaders made a dramatic and critical switch in strategy: from mitigating the disease, to eliminating it.

A countrywide lockdown—Alert Level 4—was implemented on March 26.

“After 5 weeks, and with the number of new cases declining rapidly, New Zealand moved to Alert Level 3 for an additional 2 weeks, resulting in a total of 7 weeks of what was essentially a national stay-at-home order,” authors wrote.

It was in early May that the last identified COVID-19 case was observed in the community; with the patient placed in isolated, the country had ended its community spread. On June 8, the New Zealand moved to Alert Level 1—in 103 days, they had declared the pandemic over in the country.

At the time of the paper’s publishing, New Zealand had just 1569 cases, 22 deaths, and a coronavirus-related mortality of 4 per 1 million—the lowest reported rate among 37 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“Many parts of the domestic economy are now operating at pre-COVID levels,” authors wrote. “Planning is under way for cautious relaxing of some border-control policies that may permit quarantine-free travel from jurisdictions that have eliminated COVID-19 or that never had cases.”

However, the post-elimination stage of the pandemic is not certain for safety. The authors noted the only cases identified in the country are via international travelers kept in government-managed quarantine or isolation for 2 weeks post-arrival. Failures of border control or continued quarantine/isolation policies could result in new spread.

“New Zealand needs to plan to respond to resurgences with a range of control measures, including mass masking, which hasn’t been part of our response to date,” authors wrote.

But there are takeaways from the early and immediate successes of the New Zealand response. The authors credited the combination of immediate risk assessment driven by science, with the decisive actions of the government.

Additionally, the country’s border-control strategies, as well as both community-based and individual case-based control measures, were overall effective in eliminating the virus’ presence when mitigation was no longer feasible.
Lastly, the authors praised their leader’s message.

“Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern provided empathic leadership and effectively communicated key messages to the public—framing combating the pandemic as the work of a unified “team of 5 million”—which resulted in high public confidence and adherence to a suite of relatively burdensome pandemic-control measures,” they wrote.

Source: Posted August 9, 2020; retrieved August 30, 2020 from: https://www.contagionlive.com/news/how-did-new-zealand-control-covid19

—————

VIDEO 1 – Sharing COVID-19 experiences: The New Zealand response – https://youtu.be/bLT-XdPRUAA

World Health Organization (WHO)
Posted July 7, 2020 – In response to community transmission of COVID-19, New Zealand implemented a range of measures to contain the virus, including extensive testing, contact tracing and clear and consistent communications to the public. On 8 June 2020, the government reported that there was no more active transmission of the virus in the country but stressed that it needed to remain vigilant. This video tells the story of New Zealand’s response. More information: www.who.int/COVID-19.

The member-states of the Caribbean, individually and collectively, need an efficient and effective Playbook to manage the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. The Playbook must include strategies, tactics and implementations to mitigate and abate the underlying influenza conditions. This is exactly what New Zealand did:

  • Control the borders, so as eliminate any new flu arrivals.
  • Test the full population to identify infections
  • Contact Trace and capture movement data on all possible infected candidates
  • Lockdown communities as needed, catch and release promptly
  • Make decisions related to economic engines – cash  crops – based on near-term and long-term benefits
  • Fund subsistence … adequately – 2-week wage subsidy
  • Embrace e-Learning and work from home
  • Embrace e-Government
  • Be an early adopter on scientific solutions
  • Remain vigilant, even in success.

While this commentary addresses the Pandemic Playbook for the Caribbean region and compares it to New Zealand, we are not trying to compete, we are only trying to learn Best Practices. This commentary concludes the 6-part Teaching Series for the month of August 2020 on the subject of Pandemic Playbooks – the need for them and the deficiency there of in the Caribbean status quo. This is the final entry, 6-of-6, from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Pandemic Playbook: Worldwide Leadership – Plan ==> Actual
  2. Pandemic Playbook: Caribbean Inadequacies – Missing the Bubble Opportunities
  3. Pandemic Playbook: Bahamas Example – ‘Too Little Too Late’
  4. Pandemic Playbook: Only at the Precipice ENCORE
  5. Pandemic Playbook: To Be or Not To Be – COVID Vaccine
  6. Pandemic Playbook: Success – Looks like New Zealand

The references to New Zealand apply to their government, yes, but compliance is expected on the part of the people and institutions. Like everywhere, there is dissent, opposition and pushback. But look at the result:

  • Economy resumed.
  • Lives protected
  • Kids are in school … now.
  • Tourism soaring – (visitors must submit to testing).
  • Global respect heightened.

So success in New Zealand has culled any resistance. See the portrayal in the VIDEO here depicting the PM vs Opposition:

VIDEO 2 – Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins go head to head on wage subsidy and Covid testing | nzherald.co.nz – https://youtu.be/I1RDlvL4VUo

nzherald.co.nz
Posted August 25, 2020 – National leader Judith Collins continues to press the Government in Question Time this afternoon over its decision not to extend the wage subsidy scheme and testing in managed isolation.

Full story: http://nzh.tw/12359734
Subscribe: https://goo.gl/LP45jX
Check out our playlists: https://goo.gl/Swd249
Like NZ Herald on Facebook: https://goo.gl/tUC4oq
Follow NZ Herald on Instagram: https://goo.gl/oLicXe
Follow NZ Herald on Twitter: https://goo.gl/Wi6mbv

The Go Lean roadmap calls for the full execution of the strategies, tactics and implementations to plan and respond to  disasters – pandemics have always been considered among the threats – the Clear and Present Dangers. These points had been embedded in the 2013 book and further refined by looking, listening and learning from other communities managing their own epidemic and infectious disease episodes. We previously considered these infectious diseases:

New Zealand provides a good role model for us in the Caribbean, Their pattern of Good Governance is consistent. We have looked, listened and learned from New Zealand before; they had provided other examples of Best Practices, beyond Pandemic Playbooks. See this sample of previous blog-commentaries featuring New Zealand:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17267 Way Forward – For Justice: Special Prosecutors – NZ examples abound
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15075 e-Government example in Zealand
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14811 New Zealand’s openness benefiting from International College Students
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746 New Zealand’s Homeland Security preparedness with ANZUS Alliance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13579 NZ reconciliation of Past Colonialism with Indigenous People
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13155 NZ use of Underwater Pipelines to connect remote islands to power grid
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12447 NZ’s Westminster but with mixed-member proportional representation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11989 NZ’s Great Model as one of the first countries to allow Diaspora Voting

The Coronavirus COVID-19 virus can be mastered; we see success in New Zealand. They have done it, so can we.

As related in the foregoing, New Zealand provides a great role model for the Caribbean in a number of subject areas; here is an additional one:

Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are women, Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins respectively.

Perhaps, one reason for the efficiency and effectiveness of New Zealand’s government is that they draw upon the best people in-country, no matter the person’s gender.  This point about Gender Equality aligns with another previous blog-commentary from November 14, 2015:

So how do we seriously consider reforming government in the Caribbean?

  • Start anew.
  • Start with politics and policy-makers.
  • Start with the people who submit for politics, to be policy-makers
  • Start with people who participate in the process.

Considering the status-quo of the region – in crisis – there is this need to start again. But this time we need more women.

The Caribbean member-states, individually and collectively, need the strategy of a Pandemic Playbook. This is a requirement for Good Governance; it mandates that we submit to Science and then Better Science.

Even our neighbor to the north, United States of America, can benefit from New Zealand’s example. as we related back on May 30, 2020 in this previous Go Lean commentary:

Good Leadership: Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
The current POTUS (President of the United States) – Donald Trump – is not to be credited as the “Leader of the Free World”. He has not provided a good example of Good Leadership. He is not ready, willing nor able. This is not our opinion alone …

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens – to deploy an effective and efficient Pandemic Playbook for our region. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap; this is how we can make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work  and play.

New Zealand did it; we can too. So our vision, this quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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. …

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 accidence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of 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.

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 … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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 … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/communities like … [New Zealand].

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Pandemic Playbook – Caribbean Inadequacies – Bahamas Example: ‘Too Little Too Late’

Posted on August 27, 2020 in Government, Locations, Planning, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

My thimble runneth over! – Derisive Pun based on the Biblical expression “My cup runneth over”.

Considering the reality of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on our economic engines and Public Health deliveries, how do you answer:

Is your cup running over?

“My cup runneth over” is a quotation from the Hebrew Bible (Psalm 23:5) and means “I have more than enough for my needs”, though interpretations and usage vary. In desert cultures one is required by laws of hospitality to provide a drink to strangers. – Source: Wikipedia.

For many the answer can only be: My thimble runneth over!

(Check out this blog-site – http://mythimblerunnethover.blogspot.com/ – of a simple woman in Tennessee who feels that she is blessed just to have the simple things in life).

Consider the actuality of life in the Bahamas during this crisis; (this writer is a descendant of Freeport, Bahamas and observed-reported on the pandemic from Nassau):

  • Jobs are affected – most private businesses, including tourist resorts, are closed or curtailed.
  • Retail food prices increase because of higher inventory-carrying costs
  • Hospitals and public safety institutions are overwhelmed with COVID cases: testing, tracing, therapeutics and terminal patients.
  • Government Shutdown – No administrative processing, at all; no passport processing, no business registrations, etc.

This reporting describes the situation on the ground in the Bahamas as miserable. In fact, a Misery Index (inflation, unemployment and crime rate) would not do justice in depicting the despair in-country. Even Food Security is an issue; the government has had to implement a national feeding program. See a related story here, describing this program and the challenges:

Title: PM: Food assistance costs soar to $1 mil., more than 110k in need
By: Ava Turnquest
NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis yesterday revealed the government is supporting the National Food Distribution Task Force with $1 million per week to assist more than 110,000 people.

Now entering its 11th week, Minnis advised the task force will move to erestructure aid into three categories: most, moderately and least vulnerable; with assistance to be distributed weekly, bi-weekly, and once a month, respectively.

The prime minister said 27,705 households have registered for assistance, to date.

“Access to food is a basic human right,” Minnis said during his national address on Sunday.

“Around the world, and here at home, people who have been self-sufficient their entire lives are now struggling to feed themselves and their families.

“Ensuring that our people in need are being helped is one of our leading priorities. We are investing heavily in food assistance.”

He continued: “I understand the unique situation so many of you find yourselves in, never imagining that you would ever have to seek assistance to have enough to eat.

“It is important, at this point in the program, to emphasize that first and foremost the Task Force is implementing a needs-based program.

“We have set out to help those in our communities who are the most vulnerable.”

Minnis said he asked the task force to reach out to smaller grocery stores so that arrangements can be made for food vouchers to be purchased from stores throughout the country.

“We would like neighborhood “Mom and Pop Shops” to participate in, and benefit from, this exercise with us,” he said.

During his address, Minnis noted the budget allocation of $16 million dollars for food assistance.

“Your government is delivering on this commitment,” he said.

“We are now providing $1 million dollars per week to the National Food Distribution Task Force for food assistance, to ensure those who are truly in need of food are being helped.

“Our Food Task Force is making every effort to preserve safety and dignity.”

Minnis noted an interaction with an individual who registered for assistance but later advised they were no longer in need.

“We are so grateful to people like Mr. Knowles, who I am told registered for food assistance but recently wrote back to the Task Force saying, “I am well and God has provided me with more than enough, so I don’t need any further assistance. Please provide it to those in need”.”

“Mr. Knowles’ noble action enables the Task Force to stretch the budget and help those who really need it most.”

Minnis added: “We thank Mr. Knowles and others like him, who understand that even in these difficult times, there are those who are in deep, deep need while others are not struggling as much.”

Source: Posted August 20, 2020; retrieved August 27, 2020 from: https://ewnews.com/pm-food-assistance-costs-soar-to-1-mil-more-than-110k-in-need

The Bahamas has a population of 340,000 (circa 2010) and yet 110,000 are being fed by the government.

Sad! $1 million per week for 110,000 people means $10 each … per week. Wow, the thimble runneth over!

One cannot wait until it rains to get an umbrella.

There should have been some disaster planning for this pandemic in advance – this is called a Pandemic Playbook. The Bahamas, and the whole Caribbean region, was alerted 5 years ago to be prepared for such a possibility; see here:

Lesson Learned – Mitigating SARS in Hong  Kong – March 24, 2015
The people, institutions and governance of the Caribbean need to pay more than the usual attention to the lessons of SARS in Hong Kong [(2003], not just from the medical perspective, but also from an economic viewpoint.

During the “heyday” of the SARS crisis, travel and transport to Hong Kong virtually came to a grinding halt! Hong Kong had previously enjoyed up to 14 million visitors annually; they were a gateway to the world. The SARS epidemic became a pandemic because of this status. Within weeks of the outbreak, SARS had spread from Hong Kong to infect individuals in 37 countries in early 2003.[3]

Can we afford this disposition in any Caribbean community?

This commentary continues the Teaching Series for the month of August 2020 on the subject of Pandemic Playbooks – the need for them and the current deficiency there of in the Caribbean. This is entry 3-of-6 from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Pandemic Playbook: Worldwide Leadership – Plan ==> Actual
  2. Pandemic Playbook: Caribbean Inadequacies – Missing the Bubble Opportunities
  3. Pandemic Playbook: Bahamas Example – ‘Too Little; Too Late’
  4. Pandemic Playbook: Only at the Precipice – ENCORE
  5. Pandemic Playbook: To Be or Not To Be – COVID Vaccine
  6. Pandemic Playbook: Success – Looks like New Zealand

Are we assigning blame to the Government of the Bahamas for being ill-prepared for the eventuality of this COVID-19 crisis?

Yes – Too Little; Too Late.

In fact, we assigned the same blame to all the member-states of the entire Caribbean. This is because governments have a certain expectation, responsibility and job description. This is referred in the Go Lean book – and in standard Good Governance – as the implied Social Contract; defined as follows:

“citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights”.

No Food Security on an island or within a chain of islands?

Wait! Why not just Go Fish?

Nope! The government’s playbook forbids standard fishing solutions among the archipelago of island. See this source here:

THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE BAHAMAS
GENERAL PROTOCOLS FOR
BOATS, YACHTS, PRIVATE CRAFT, RECREATIONAL CRAFT, CRUISING IN, PLYING THE WATERS OF, OR SHELTERING IN THE BAHAMAS OR SEEKING TO DO SO
DURING THE COVID-19 SHUT-DOWN
14 April, 2020

  • …
  • All foreign boats shall remain in place. There shall be no boating, cruising, fishing, day trips or other movement of any kind.
  • Boats belonging to Bahamians or Bahamian residents whose boats have a regular berth or place in The Bahamas shall comply with the following restrictions:
    • …
    • On no account shall Bahamian boats travel from one island of The Bahamas to another …
    • …
    • In order to minimize interpersonal contact and to respect the lockdown and curfew requirements, Bahamian boats shall not engage in boating, cruising, day trips or other movement. However, Bahamian boats may engage in subsistence fishing and local fishing for sustenance only (no sports fishing) at allowable times only and with all possible precautions (including Pars. (10) to (13) hereof), and only with the boat departing from and returning to the same location.

So unless you own your own boat – rare in the community  – no subsistence fishing (for personal consumption) is allowed.

How about the land? Can Bahamians feed themselves “of the land”, as in subsistence farming?

Nope! Despite our foregoing assertion that “one cannot wait until it rains to get an umbrella”, the Bahamas Ministry of Agriculture is doubling-down in its desire to encourage Backyard Farming and Community Gardens; only now. See the full story here:

Title: Michael Pintard – Agriculture Minister – Relaunches Backyard Farming Programme
By: DENISE MAYCOCK, Tribune Freeport Reporter
AGRICULTURE and Marine Resources Minister Michael Pintard relaunched the Backyard Farming Programme on Friday, distributing 1,500 backyard kits here on Grand Bahama.

This comes a day after the announcement of an extension of the lockdown for another two weeks to August 19, to control the spread of the coronavirus infections on Grand Bahama.

Additionally, Mr Pintard revealed plans to launch community gardens throughout the island, in partnership with the five GB MPs. Land will be identified and cleared in each of the five constituencies to grow community gardens.

Mr Pintard said these programme initiatives are part of the food security programme, which is important, especially due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

“Again, we are in a difficult period and we believe that the potential for disruption in the food supply is real, given COVID-19,…” he said.

According to Minister Pintard, of the 1,500 kits assembled at the Department of Agriculture in Freeport, 100 will be distributed to each of the five MPs, and the remainder to churches, NGOs, and others.

He believes that “the revitalized” backyard farming programme will not only help the country in terms of its expenditure on food imports, but will also benefit residents.

“We believe it will enhance our ability to save money on our food bill, but also assist a number of persons in growing their farming operation as well. This is going to be accompanied by two other programmes: the distribution of a variety of seeds also on the island as a separate part of our backyard and community farming programmes. We have many more seeds that supply a minimum of 1,000 households,” Mr Pintard said.

The minister was pleased that all five MPs have agreed to support and participate, including Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness Iram Lewis, MP for Central Grand Bahama, Pakesia Parker-Edgecombe of West Grand Bahama and Bimini, Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest of East Grand Bahama, and Frederick McAlpine, MP for Pineridge.

“We don’t believe that MPs are the only conduits by which kits should be distributed, and we want to make sure we have 1,000 kits, plus 1,000 additional seed packages distributed, through partnership with churches, NGOs, and others,” he said.

In terms of the community gardens, Mr Pintard noted that they will be clearing properties for community gardening in every constituency, and will also be partnering with local government on that initiative.

MP Pakesia Parker Edgecombe said she is very appreciative for the kits, which will be distributed in her constituency. “It is important for us to promote food sustainability. I know with the crisis we are going through many are asking about food security. What Mr Pintard and his ministry have been able to do with this initiative and this programme, is to (encourage people) to grow your own food and not spend so much at the supermarket,” she said.

MP Iram Lewis said he has been a strong advocate for backyard farming. “I was happy when the Minister decided to partner with us to take backyard farming to the next level where we form cooperatives in the community by having community gardens. All MPs have identified an area in their constituencies for these community gardens.”

Mr Lewis said a major anchor garden has been identified on South Mall Drive where there will be a seedling nursery and a production area, and weekly Farmers’ Market.

“We really appreciate this gesture,” he said. We are happy it is officially launched and will go a long way, with respect to food security and putting healthy produce that we grow ourselves on our table,” he said.

Tutorial videos and workshop for persons interested in backyard and community gardening is available on the Ministry’s website. Anthony Hutcheson will also provide lectures and tips on how to plant and care for the garden.

Source: Posted Friday August 7, 2020; retrieved August 27, 2020 from: http://www.tribune242.com/news/2020/aug/07/michael-pintard-relaunches-backyard-farming-progra/

Yes, indeed! The assessment is conclusive: Too little; Too late!

In contrast, the full strategies, tactics and implementations for Food Security and Disaster Preparation had already been embedded in a roadmap for reforming and transforming the Caribbean; this is the purpose of the Go Lean book. This is a vision of a Pandemic Playbook. Rather than “waiting for it to rain and then go looking for an umbrella”, the Go Lean roadmap presents a plan for New Guards for Homeland Security and Public Safety on Day One / Step One of the ascension of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

See the vision for Caribbean Food Security plus Disaster Preparation (and Response) as presented in previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

Food Security

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19725 Keep the Change: Being ‘Basic’ about Basic Needs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18836 Food Security – Big Chicken 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18834 Food Security – A Lesson in History: Free Trade Agreements & Food
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18831 Food Security – Planning and Opportunities for the Cruise Line industry
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18828 Food Security – A Plan for Temperate Foods in the Tropics
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18817 Food Security – Bread Basket 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13184 Industrial Reboot – Frozen Foods 101

Disaster Preparation and Response

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20052 Natural Disasters: The Price of Paradise
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19568 Big Hairy Audacious Goal – Need ‘Big Brother’ for Pandemics
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18243 The Need after Disasters? Regionalism – ‘How you like me now?’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18182 Disaster Relief: Helping, Not Hurting
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17500 Continuity of Business: Lessons on Recovery from System Failures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15996 Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15886 Industrial Reboot – Planning for Disasters with Reinsurance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8943 Zika’s Drug Breakthrough – End-Game of an Playbook
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449 ‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4720 Lesson Learned – Mitigating SARS in Hong  Kong
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308 911 – Emergency Response: System in Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2397 Lesson Learned – Monitoring and Mitigating Ebola
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1003 Painful and rapid spread of new virus – Chikungunya – in Caribbean

Here’s the major problem: the whole Caribbean – not just the Bahamas – is in competition with the rest of the world, whether we want to be or not. In fact, the original motivation of the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean was to execute a Regional Battle Plan to dissuade emigration – to lower the Push-Pull factors that lead to the Brain Drain.

We are losing that Battle.

Some countries – that we compete against – are stepping up and filling the “cups of sustenance” for their citizens and residents, while here in the Caribbean, we are falling short. This is evident in the Bahamas, as related in the foregoing, as they are only able to provide some basic food support for some citizens, as a rate of $10 per person per week. Yes, the competition is doing so much more; see here:

  • Canada is providing families $950 every 2 weeks for the duration of the pandemic, plus freezing rents & mortgages.
    Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/24/fact-check-canadas-pandemic-relief-isnt-broad-claimed/5493166002/
  • The US provided a one-time $1,200 Stimulus Check to all their tax-payers – plus $500 per child.
  • The UK government’s emergency fiscal measures – including paying 80% of the salaries of furloughed workers, higher welfare spending, tax cuts and grants for small companies – will cost around 104 billion pounds. The government has also announced 330 billion pounds in state-guaranteed loans.
  • As of May 2020, the Euro Zone’s (which includes the Caribbean stakeholders of France and The Netherlands) total fiscal response to the epidemic is tallied at 3.2 trillion Euros. Of that total some 2.7 trillion Euros comes from national fiscal stimulus and government guarantees for companies to keep them in business. On top of that, 100 billion Euros of money jointly borrowed by the EU is to go to a scheme to subsidize wages so firms can cut working hours, not jobs.
    Source: https://www.fm-magazine.com/news/2020/may/global-coronavirus-pandemic-relief-efforts-infographic.html

For us in the Caribbean in general, and in the Bahamas in particular, can you see the “Too Little; Too Late” dilemma? Do you see the “Push”? Do you see the “Pull”?

Brain Drain – Where the Brains Are – February 25, 2020
For us in the Caribbean, it is important for us to understand the full width-and-breadth of Brain Drains. Every month, the movement behind the Go Lean book present a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this February 2020, our focus is on the machinations that lead to Brain Drain. This is entry 1 of 5 for this series, which details that every community everywhere has people with brains – or those with genius qualifiers – it is just the opportunities that is missing in many communities. So there is the need to analyze the “Push and Pull“ factors that causes our genius-qualified-people to abandon this homeland and then identify the strategies, tactics and implementations that we must consider in order to abate this bad trend.

Firstly, the “Push and Pull” reasons are identified in the Go Lean book as follows:

  • “Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged– for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. 
  • “Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating based on a mirage of “greener pastures”; but many times, the “better prospect” is elusive for the first generation.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is a real threat and crisis for our Caribbean region; we have no choice but to contend with it. Our competition, with the rest of the world is also real; we have to contend with that as well.

We need a better Pandemic Playbook; we need Good Governance. We need to do more! Individually, our member-states are crippled – we cannot fill a cup; only drip into a thimble. We must leverage the full region; we need a Single Market for the Caribbean now more than ever. See how the EU Single Market – our role model – is micro-managing the economic-fiscal fall-out in the Appendix VIDEO below.

This crisis would be a terrible thing to waste …

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments, citizens, institutions, trading partners and Diaspora – to come together, to convene, collaborate and confederate to forge a better response to this global pandemic crisis.  This is how we can make the homeland a better place to live, work and play. Our people have choices and options; they can, and have abandoned us and fled to more prosperous (resilient) lands abroad. Let’s wake up, fight back and compete for our people.

Despite the challenges, if we unify, we can compete – Yes, we can – it is conceivable, believable and achievable.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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. …

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.

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 … 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.

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 … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/communities like … .

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

APPENDIX VIDEO – COVID-19: EU’s plan to save the economy – https://youtu.be/KyRKU2DePO0



EURACTIV
Posted April 20, 2020 – The European Commission estimates the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak could be greater than the financial crisis in 2008.

In order to keep the economy running, the EU executive introduced flexibility for funds and national expenditure, member states approved a safety net of liquidity for countries, workers and companies involving the ESM, EIB, and Commission SURE, and EU leaders agreed on the need to work out a recovery plan for the block in the coming months.

EURACTIV looked into the details of the EU’s economic response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

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Happy Juneteenth

Posted on June 19, 2020 in Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Happy Juneteenth!

It’s an American thing, yet you in the Caribbean will still understand, resonate and empathize with this sentiment. This is true, based on the historicity that “Happy Juneteenth” is actually Happy Emancipation Day.

Despite the different legal history, all of the New World have the same social demographic history: same previous reality of an enslaved population of African people.

Most of these New World countries and territories endured abolition of their slavery institutions and have some form of an Emancipation Day to commemorate the “Sea Change”. These dates were identified in a previous commentary  from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. See this excerpt here:

Chronology of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean Basin

First abolition Final abolition of slavery Date of independence
Haiti 1793 1804
Dominican Republic  1801 1822 1844
Costa Rica 1824 1821
El Salvador 1824 1821
Guatemala 1824 1821
Honduras 1824 1821
Mexico 1829 1810
British West Indies
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Cayman Islands
Dominica
Grenada
Guyana
Virgin Islands
Jamaica
Montserrat
Turks and Caicos Islands
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
St. Vincent and Grenadines
Trinidad and Tobago		 1833-1838
1833-1834
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1834
1833-1838		 1981
1973
1966
1978
1974
1962
1979
1979
1962
Nicaragua 1838 1821
Danish Virgin Islands
Saint John
Saint Thomas
Saint Croix		 1846-1848
1846-1848
1846-1848
Swedish Antilles
Saint Barthelemy		 1847
French Antilles
Guaealoupe
Guiana
Martinique
Saint Martín (French zone)		 1794 1848
1848
1848
1848
Colombia 1814 1851 1810
Panama 1851 1903
Venezuela 1816 1854 1811
Netherlands Antilles
Aruba
Curacao
Bonaire
Saba
Saint Eustatius
Suriname
St. Martin (Netherlands zone)		 1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863		 1975
United States 1863-1865 1776
Puerto Rico 1873
Cuba 1880-1886 1898

Source: Retrieved August 28, 2019 from: http://atlas-caraibe.certic.unicaen.fr/en/page-117.html

———–

Let’s dive deeper in the American experience. So what date actually signified the abolition of slavery in the US? In a different previous commentary, these key dates were presented:

The cruel, inhumane institution of slavery finally ended in the United States … on which date?

This was not meant to be a multiple choice! But rather, these answers demonstrate the continuous flow of racist oppression that had befallen the African-American experience, despite these identifiable dates ending the practices and legacy of America’s Original Sin.

Doubling-down on the Juneteenth details, let’s consider this encyclopedic reference:

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth;[2] also known as Freedom Day,[3] Jubilee Day,[4] and Liberation Day[5]) is an unofficial American holiday and an official Texas state holiday, celebrated annually on the 19th of June in the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free.[6] Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two and a half years earlier and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.[6]

A common misconception is that this day marks the end of slavery in the United States. Although this day marks the emancipation of all slaves in the Confederacy, the institution of slavery was still legal and existed in the Union border states after June 19, 1865.[7][8] Slavery in the United States did not officially end until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States on December 6, 1865, which abolished slavery entirely in all of the U.S. states and territories.[9]

Celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. It spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, it was eclipsed by the struggle for postwar civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African American freedom and arts.[10] By the 21st century, Juneteenth was celebrated in most major cities across the United States. Activists are campaigning for the United States Congress to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday. Juneteenth is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in 49 of the 50 U.S. states.

Modern observance is primarily in local celebrations. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing“, and reading of works by noted African-American writers such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou. Celebrations include rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, and Miss Juneteenth contests. The Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles, of Coahuila, Mexico, also celebrate Juneteenth. – Wikipedia, retrieved June 19, 2020.

There is the need to reflect and remember the bad history of slavery and its abolition in the Americas.  There is also the need for a few other action verbs, all starting with  the letter “R”. Consider:

  • Reconcile
  • Repent

There is a lot of work to be done, in the US, throughout the Caribbean Basin, the New World and the whole world for that matter. Racial disharmony has been the world’s most troubling condition since the end of the Middle Ages. This was the consideration in many previous Encore productions. See these excerpts here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18421 Title: Refuse to Lose – Introducing Formal Reconciliations

The practice of U.S. cities eschewing Columbus Day – because of the bad history associated with the Spanish Explorer’s atrocities – to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day began in 1992”. [This is a form of] an informal reconciliation; it is time to pursue a formal reconciliation. (We have Indigenous People and oppressed people in the Caribbean too).
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18096 Title: 400 Years of Slavery – Emancipation Day: Hardly ‘Free At Last’

America was forged on the blatant hypocrisy of a legal premise that “All men are created equal”, and yet the African-American population was never treated equally, fairly or justly. In fact, by some analysis, America is still not equal-fair-just for African-Americans. In fact, just naming a street after Martin Luther King creates friction in American communities even today, 56 years after that iconic speech.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18093 Title: 400 Years of Slavery – International Day of Rememberance

There is the need to reconcile the UGLY history of Slavery and the Slave Trade.

Reconciliation and remembrance are the motives of this series of blog-commentaries …. With a documented start date in America of August 23, 1619, today [(August 23, 2019)] marks 400 years exactly. [So] this August 2019 series focuses on this 400 Year History of Slavery – past, present and future.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6022 Title: Music Role Model ‘Ya Tafari’ – Happy Emancipation Day

All of these [Bristish Commenwealth] countries memorialize the abolition of slavery in the British Empire on August 1, 1834 with a National Holiday on the First Monday of August. (This holiday is commonly referred to as August Monday). The focus of this commemoration is not slavery, but rather a celebration of Caribbean culture – accentuating the positive.

For those in the Caribbean Diaspora (US, Canada and the United Kingdom), the holiday does not go un-recognized … nor uncelebrated.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695 Title: Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
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 …There is a need to reconcile a lot of bad episodes in Caribbean history.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971 Title: A Lesson in History – Royal Charters: Truth & Consequence

An earlier Papal Bull that sealed the fate and would prejudice the African Diaspora for 500 years. The African Slave Trade and institution of “Slavery” was legally predicated on a Papal Bull from Pope Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cybo) in 1491; just months before Christopher Columbus’s historic first voyage.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2222 Title: Sports Role Model – Playing For Pride … And More

The calendar of Black America includes several specific holidays. Juneteenth, celebrated every June 19, honors the day the Union Army liberated slaves in Texas following the end of the Civil War. Kwanzaa, beginning on Dec. 26, is a seven-day festival of African heritage. On Dec. 31, which is called watch night, churches hold worship services to commemorate the way their forebears had stayed up all night awaiting the issuance of the ­Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

We need the New World territories to do a better job of reconciling their bad racial history. This is the issue for America, yes, and for the Caribbean homeland too.

Should America make Juneteenth a National Holiday? See VIDEO here.

VIDEO – Juneteenth recognized by more states, companies as a holiday – https://abcn.ws/2YgZrXO

Posted June 19, 2020 – In the wake of the nationwide outcry over the killing of George Floyd, bipartisan calls have amplified to name Juneteenth — June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery — a federal holiday.

A group of Senate Democrats announced Friday that they would introduce the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, legislation to designate the day, and if passed, would make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Day was recognized in 1983.

While this is an American issue and outside our scope of the advocacy for Caribbean reformation, we do recommend such a focus for America to finally become a more just and equal society.

Will a Juneteenth commemoration accomplish that? Maybe not, but it’s a good move in the right direction. This country have had to contend with many atrocities to Black-and-Brown people. Just recently there have been a proliferation of protests and civil unrests due to an exhaustion of recent blatant incidences.

If advocates and activists are able to succeed with efforts for formal Juneteenth commemorations, then we recommend that they make festivities about more than just slavery. Rather it should be a celebration of African-American culture – as we attempt to do with our Caribbean Emancipation Celebrations, as related here-in.

But no doubt, all people need to remember, reflect, reconcile and repent for the bad racial history. And while our Caribbean activists may not be able to facilitate these action-verbs in the US, we can-must facilitate them here in the Caribbean.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap and to this advocacy to celebrate Juneteenth. This is how we can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

———–

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

———

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

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.

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 … 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.

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.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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‘Missing Solar’ – Inadequacies Exposed to the World – Encore

Posted on March 2, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Locations, Tactical

The Bahamas has inadequate infrastructure to contend with the realities of modern life. This is all too familiar to the people in the Bahamas.

This is also familiar to the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. On August 15, 2019, this commentary scolded the stakeholders in the Bahamas for their inexcusable inefficiency and ineffectiveness with their infrastructure and Public Works. Now last night, the US-based media-television-network company CBS exposed these inadequacies for all the world to see in their titular news magazine show 60 Minutes.

Eat Crow Bahamas!

What’s more, the actuality of Hurricane Dorian came along and made the bad Bahamas energy delivery even worse. See the VIDEO here of the 60 Minutes report:

VIDEO – Bahamas installing solar power after storms – https://www.cbsnews.com/video/bahamas-hurricanes-power-grid-solar-60-minutes-2020-03-01/

60 Minutes
Posted March 1, 2020 – A tiny country in “Hurricane Alley” is trying to be an example to the world after Category 5 storms demolished parts of its electrical grid. Bill Whitaker reports on the Bahamas’ adoption of solar energy.
Click on PLAY Button to watch; expect commercial advertising before and during.

That report revealed that:

The Bahamian Government pays $400 million dollars on diesel fuel to keep its power plants operating and pass that cost on to the consumers.
“They pay 3 to 4 times the rate that people pay in the mainland US”.

In addition, in another Go Lean commentary, it was reported that the World Bank revealed that 61 percent of college-educated citizens of the Bahamas have fled this homeland for foreign destinations. Is there any surprise? This failure to deliver basic services in an efficient and effective manner is a contributing Push factor why people leave.

There is no mystery! Now the Bahamas is trying to “play catch-up” and deploy Solar Micro-Grids. Yippee!!

This is an appropriate time to Encore that previous blog-commentary from August 15, 2019 – during the ‘Dog Days of Summer‘; (remember this was 2 weeks before Category 5 Hurricane Dorian made landfall). Now that this is March 2020, there is the opportunity to look back with 20/20 Perfect Hindsight Vision at the issues raised by the 60 Minutes story – there are many. This entry is 1-of-3 in that “Look Back“. The other entries are cataloged as follows:

  1. 60 Minutes Story – Bahamas Self-Made Energy Crisis
  2. 60 Minutes Story – Go Green … finally
  3. 60 Minutes Story – Moral Authority to “Name, Blame & Shame” the Big Polluters

See the first Encore here-now:

———————

Go Lean Commentary – Nassau’s 2019 Self-Made Energy Crisis

It is seriously Hot-Hot-Hot out there …

So there is no intent here to be “cold and callous” … (callous = ‘feeling no emotion’).

But the Bahamas’s capital city – Nassau – is having an energy crisis right now:

The local power generation utility (Bahamas Power & Light or BPL) is not producing enough electricity to meet the needs of the community, so they have to load-share and force black-outs/brown-outs around the island to try and facilitate some delivery some time to all their customer base. They do not want to show favoritism to one group over another, so they are leveraging the load-sharing tactic on everybody. So now instead of some people being happy and some being angry, they have obtained universality …

… everybody is angry!

———-

VIDEO – B.P.L. Load Shedding Update – https://youtu.be/fW8JGGnlvzQ

ZNSNetwork
Published on May 15, 2019

Additionally, see this portrayal in this news article here (and the Appendix VIDEO below):

Title: BPL causing ‘chaos’
By: Jasper Ward, The Nassau Guardian Staff Reporter

Super Value food stores are taking a significant hit as a result of protracted power cuts, according to its owner Rupert Roberts.

Roberts said about six Super Value locations are impacted by outages daily and the company has spent around $100,000 recently on replacing equipment damaged by the outages.

He described the outages as “a nuisance” and said they create “chaos”.

“This BEC (Bahamas Electricity Corporation) crisis is more than a crisis, it’s chaos,” Roberts said at the Nassau Street store.

“It’s costing us $250,000 a year from burning up our equipment.”

He said, “I suppose our biggest concern is burning up equipment.

“…[We] burn up a $10,000 or $20,000 air conditioning [unit and] we’re always burning up compressors. We’re using up spares so fast and we’re doing emergency imports.

“Fortunately, we’re able to get them in within three or four days without flying them in. But I noticed on Saturday we had a diary case down because we’re waiting on the compressor that burned out. That’s the biggest problem.”

Roberts said it will cost about $10,000 to replace a compressor in the dairy case at the Nassau Street location. He said it is unlikely that case will be operational before Saturday.

Roberts said dairy sales were up 14 percent before the case was damaged.

Since it was damaged, sales have gone down 17 percent, he said.

Roberts said the company has twice the amount of equipment needed “because of the serious problem” of the outages.

Although the food store chain is facing challenges with the outages, Roberts said the company is “managing quite well”.

“We’ve been in this business over 50 years and we’ve had power problems for the last 50 years,” he said.

“So, we learned how to cope. We don’t run out of fuel. Years ago, when I first started in the industry, we had generators because of hurricanes but for the past 25 years we’ve had to have generators because of power outages.”

For nearly two months, communities on New Providence have experienced hours-long blackouts as part of Bahamas Power and Light’s (BPL) load shedding exercise.

Over the last few weeks, BPL has conducted nearly four-hour-long load shedding.

On Sunday, BPL Chief Executive Officer Whitney Heastie said he could not guarantee an end to load shedding exercises in the immediate future, describing BPL as being “on a cliff”.

Heastie said BPL needs 250 megawatts of generation in order to meet the summer demand.

However, it is currently running on 210 megawatts, including 105 megawatts of rental generation.

Heastie said the 40-megawatt shortfall has led to load shedding across New Providence.

Source: Posted by The Nassau Guardian daily newspaper on August 13, 2019; retrieved August 14, 2019 from: https://thenassauguardian.com/2019/08/13/bpl-causing-chaos/

The need to explain that our statement is not “cold and callous” is due to the fact that the appearance is that “we” are ‘kicking the people when they are down’ when we make this assertion:

This energy crisis for Nassau is Self-Made!!

Wait, what?!

This is a matter of infrastructure and Nassau has had an inadequate infrastructure for a while. In fact, since the 1970’s residents on this island of New Providence (NP) have been encouraged to buy bottled-water and not consume the ‘tap’ water.

All of this is evident of the lacking municipal infrastructure. In fact, this is reminiscent of the US City of Flint, Michigan. Their infrastructure has become defective and the people there has to resort to bottled water. In Flint, that problem has now persisted for 4 years. In Nassau, it has been 40 years. (See an excerpt of our 2016 blog-commentary on the Flint crisis in the Appendix below).

Yep, self-made!

This is a BIGGER issue than water or electricity; this is an issue of the Social Contract.

The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean (Page 170) defines the Social Contract as the informal arrangement 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. This is why the State, in this case, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is allowed to operate monopolies for the water and power utilities. But any failures in these Social Contract deliveries causes repercussions and consequences. For example people leave and abandon their homeland. This relevance was detailed in a previous Go Lean commentary from July 28, 2015:

The issue of Caribbean citizens abandoning their homelands is one of the more dire threats to societal life in the region. Why do they do it?

“Push and Pull” reasons!

Push
Conditions at home drive Caribbean citizens to take flight and find refuge elsewhere. Many times these conditions are economic (jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities), security and governance related, but there are other reasons too; consider discriminations due to ethnic diversity or other lifestyle choices.

Lastly, there is the new threat of Climate Change. While this is a threat for the whole world, the Caribbean is on the frontline. Though there is some debate as to the causes of climate change, there is no question as to its outcome: temperatures are rising, droughts prevail, and most devastating, hurricanes are now more threatening. A Caribbean elevation plan must address the causes of climate change and most assuredly its consequences. …

Now, the anecdotal experience is that there is a need to mitigate excessive heat in the region for an even longer season. How do we mitigate excessive heat?

Air conditioning!

But this cure may at times be worse than the disease.

Air conditioning requires even greater energy consumption, (the Caribbean has among the highest energy costs in the Western Hemisphere); the Go Lean book posits that the average costs of energy can be decreased from an average of US$0.35/kWh to US$0.088/kWh in the course of the 5-year term of this roadmap; (Page 100).

In addition, the release of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) in the air-conditioning process is a contributor of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The status quo needs remediation!

The Bahamas should have remediated these infrastructural problems years ago – the price is too high to allow it to linger. In addition to the societal abandonment threat; there are life-and-death issues associated with convalescing citizens needing continuous power supply – see photo here:

That’s the problem, now what is the solution?

In addition to the voluminous number of blog-commentaries on infrastructure – see this recent submission from July 26, 2019 – the Go Lean book presented strategies, tactics and implementations that must be pursued, not just for the Bahamas, but for the whole Caribbean region – all 30 member-states. In fact, the book presents one advocacy (Page 176) specifically focused on Public Works, entitled: “10 Ways to Impact Public Works“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

The CU is chartered to unify the Caribbean region into one Single Market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby re-engineering the economic engines in and on behalf of the region, including a currency & monetary union. This new eco-system allows for the design, funding and construction of Public Works and Infrastructural projects. The federal agency within the CU’s Department of the Interior has the scope for the Caribbean much like the Corps of Engineers has for the US. (Plus the CU will collaborate with the US Corps for projects related to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are a number of inter-state projects that must be coordinated on the federal level. There will also be projects that are “Too Big for One State” that will be facilitated by the CU. In addition, all CU efforts must comply with the Art in Public Places mandate, so sculptures and statutes will be embedded in projects or the project itself can be a work of art (bridges, water towers, building architecture). For existing projects that fail due to financial shortfalls, the CU will accommodate dissolution or reorganization in the federal courts, bringing balance to the process to all stakeholders.
2 Union Atlantic Turnpike
3 Pipelines and PCP (Pneumatic Capsule Pipeline)
4 Regional Power Grid

The CU will facilitate the installation of a regional power grid, and power sharing between member-states, with underwater and above-ground high-intensity wiring to alternate energy plants: wind/tidal turbines, solar panel & natural gas.
5 Self-Governing Entities (SGE)
6 Enterprise Zones
7 Empowerment Zones
8 Monopolies

The UN grants the CU the monopoly rights for an Exclusive Economic Zone, so the focus must be on quality delivery.

The CU plan is to liberalize management of monopolies, with tools like ratings/rankings against best practices. Plus

technological accommodations for ICT allows for cross-competition from different modes (satellite, cable, phone).
9 Cooperatives

The CU will task utility cooperatives with the delivery of some public utilities such as Air Chillers; Refrigerated Warehouses to its members. This strategy shares the cost of the “Works” installation across the full co-op membership.
10 Capital Markets

A single market and currency union will allow for the emergence of viable capital markets for stocks and bonds (public and private), thereby creating the economic engine to fuel growth and development. This forges financial products for “pre” disaster project funding (drainage, levies, dykes, sea walls) and post disaster recovery (reinsurance sidecars).

The Go Lean book doubles-down on the concept of leveraging across a larger population base so that BIGGER infrastructure projects can be facilitated in the region – on land or in the waters – see Photo here. Imagine large arrays of solar panels, wind turbines, tidal generators, geo-thermal energy captured at the volcanic hot zones, and even Natural Gas as a cleaner-cheaper fossil fuel. These energy options are realistic and should be available to us now in the Caribbean, so they should be explored and deployed. This, a regional power grid, is the energy prime directive for this Go Lean movement.

This theme – exploiting alternative options for the economic, security and governing empowerments in the region – aligns with many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17925 ‘We’ have repeatedly failed the lessons from ‘Infrastructure 101’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17280 Way Forward – For Energy: ‘Trade’ Winds
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13985 EU Assists Barbados in Renewable Energy Self-Sufficiency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12994 The Science of ‘Power Restoration’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12466 12 Caribbean Member-states have ‘Volcanic Energy’ to Exploit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10367 The Science of Sustenance – Green Batteries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5155 Green Energy Solution: Tesla unveils super-battery to power homes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4897 US Backs LNG Distribution for Caribbean Energy Solutions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=915 Go ‘Green’ … Caribbean

Make no mistake, energy is a basic need!

The failure for a community to have continuous supply of energy is an energy crisis. (This means you Bahamas).

Enough already!

Now is the time for all Caribbean stakeholders to prepare for the empowerments of Green-Energy solutions. It is past-time for a regional power grid:

  • generation – Green options (solar, wind turbines, tidal, geo-thermal and natural gas)
  • distribution – Underwater cables to connect individual islands
  • consumption – efficient battery back-ups for home deployments.

These changes are coming … one way or another.

For you government revenue institutions who may be overly dependent of fuel taxes and surcharges – you are hereby put on notice:

Changes are afoot. We will succeed; we will make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.

🙂

About the Book

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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. Since economic crimes … 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.

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.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

——————–

Appendix VIDEO – Another B.P.L. Blackout – https://youtu.be/fOT0gfvSchM

ZNSNetwork
Published on Jul 2, 2019

——————–

Appendix – Excerpts from previous Commentary: Flint, Michigan – A Cautionary Tale – January 19, 2016

[The City of] Flint serves as a “cautionary tale” for other communities near “Failed City/Failed State” status. From this perspective, this community may be a valuable asset to the rest of the world and especially to the Caribbean.

CU Blog - Flint, Michigan - A cautionary tale - Photo 3The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean are here in Detroit to “observe and report” the turn-around and rebirth of the once-great-but-now-distressed City of Detroit and its metropolitan areas, including Flint. (Previous commentaries featured the positive role model of the City of Ann Arbor).

What happened here?

According to the Timeline in the Appendix, Flint, MI suffered this fate as a chain reaction to its Failed-State status. Outside stakeholders – Emergency Managers – came into the equation to execute a recovery plan with focus only on the Bottom-Line. The consideration for people – the Greater Good – came second, if at all. They switched water sources, unwisely!

The assertion of the Go Lean book is that the Caribbean region can benefit from lessons learned from Good, Bad and Ugly governance. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book and related commentaries call on citizens of the Caribbean member-states to lean-in to the empowerments described in the roadmap for elevation. This will require a constant vigil to ensure the Greater Good as opposed to personal gains.

…

See VIDEO here of the story in the national media …

VIDEO – Citizens’ Anger Continues Over Toxic Water in Flint, Michigan – http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/citizens-anger-continues-toxic-water-flint-michigan-36348795 –

…

This tragic story – cautionary tale of Flint – is an analysis of failure in the societal engines of economics, security and governance. These 3 facets are presented in the book Go Lean … Caribbean as the three-fold cord for societal harmony; for any society anywhere. The Caribbean wants societal harmony; we must therefore work to optimize all these three engines. As exhibited by Flint, this is easier said than done. This heavy-lifting is described in the book as both an art and a science.

The focus in this commentary is a continuation in the study of the societal engine of governance; previously, there was a series on economics and one on security. This commentary though, focuses on the bad eventually of Social Contract failures. The Social Contract refers to the unspoken expectations between citizens and the State. In many cases, State laws limit ownership of all mineral rights to the State; so citizens will be dependent on State systems to supply water. In the case of Flint, the City’s Water and Sewage Department has a monopoly; this supply is the only option for residents!

The Go Lean book describes “bad actors” wreaking havoc on the peace and security of the community. The book relates though that “bad actors” are not always human; they include bad events like natural disasters and industrial spills. Plus, actual “bad actors” may have started out with altruistic motives, good intentions. This is why the book and accompanying blogs design the organization structures for the new Caribbean with checks-and-balances, mandating a collaborative process, because sometimes even a well-intentioned individual may not have all the insight, hindsight and foresight necessary to pursue the Greater Good. This the defect of the Michigan Emergency Manager structure; it assigns too much power to just one person, bypassing the benefits of a collaborative process. This is one reason why this review is important: power corrupts…everyone … everywhere.

…

We must do better, than Flint! (Flint must do better; too many lives are involved).

We know that “bad actors and bad incidences” will always occur, even in government institutions, so we must be “on guard” against abusive influences and encroachments to Failed-State status. The Go Lean roadmap calls for engagement and participation from everyone, the people (citizens), institutions and government officials alike. We encouraged all with benevolent motives to lean-in to this roadmap, to get involved to effect a turnaround for the Caribbean Failed-States.

Our Caribbean stakeholders deserve the best … from their leaders.  🙂

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Brain Drain – Brain Gain: Yes we can!

Posted on February 26, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Locations, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Wait, what?!
Rather than the subtraction of a “drain”, there is a way to get the addition of a “gain”?
Then bring it on!

This is the change that is being promoted, projected and proposed for Caribbean people and Caribbean communities:

Yes, we can have a Brain Gain.

This simply means we have to do the heavy-lifting to retain our people and invite others to come join us. What a challenge?!

Challenge accepted!

This was the quest of the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, it presented a roadmap for elevating the economic, security and governing engines of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region. It focuses on the 42 million people in the homeland and the 20 million (plus or minus) in the Diaspora. Perhaps some of that Brain Gain will be those of the Diaspora repatriating, or just simply some empowering immigrants from foreign abodes.

“Make happy those who are near and those who are far will come” – Ancient Chinese proverb.

This is the continuation, entry 2-of-5, of this February Teaching Series from the movement behind the Go Lean book. The topic this month is on Brain Drains; we present the full width-and-breadth of the subject. Other Brain Drain considerations are presented in this series; see the full catalog here:

  1. Brain Drain – Where the Brains Are
  2. Brain Drain – Brain Gain: Yes we can!
  3. Brain Drain – Geeks and Freaks: Ultimate Revenge
  4. Brain Drain – ‘Tiger Moms’ – Is that so bad?
  5. Brain Drain – Live and Let Live – Introducing ‘Localism’

As related in the first entry in this series, even advanced democracy countries, like the United States, have challenges with Brain Drains. As related in the AUDIO-PODCAST below, 60 percent of the US population live in urban-suburban areas, as more and more people abandon the rural areas and seek refuge near cities.

Why do they leave? For the same reasons the Caribbean suffers from such an atrocious Brain Drain rate:

“Push” – people leave, to seek refuge elsewhere. Social defects result in narrow-mindedness of attitudes and values towards anyone that looks, talks, thinks or loves differently that those in the community. This includes those identified as LGBT, Disabled, Domestic-abused, Medically-challenged.

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life elsewhere; many times people are leaving based on a mirage of “greener pastures”, though the “better prospect” may be elusive … especially for the first generation.

While there are more jobs in the Big Cities, the American pastoral lands – fly-over country – have always featured great agricultural opportunities – a popular expression of entrepreneurship. But this is not just an issue of economics. Those who live in the rural areas and small town have always had the privilege of ignoring the locks on their doors – so there is less of a security threat (crime and organized gangs).

So what’s the Push dynamics that threaten the viability of rural citizens, especially young ones:

The cultural differences between Urban Progressives and Rural Conservatives is stark and must be reconciled.

This fact was related in the aforementioned AUDIO-PODCAST; let’s consider that now and see how some rural areas have found success in attracting empowering New Comers:

AUDIO-VIDEO – Reversing the ‘Brain Drain’ in Rural America? – https://the1a.org/segments/2019-10-09-migrating-to-the-midwest/



Posted October 9, 2019 – Rural America has never been only one place, one type of person or one type of job. And new data points to the growing complexity and diversity of those parts of the country. Author and podcast host Sarah Smarsh wrote in The New York Times recently about so-called “brain gain” instead of “brain drain.”

The Christian Science Monitor recently reported a prairie trend of young people, drawn by family ties and affordable entrepreneurship, returning to rural and small-town homes around college graduation. They’re opening restaurants or starting small, unconventional farming operations. One college senior founded a direct-to-consumer beef company in Otoe County, Neb., and sold $52,000 worth of meat in the past nine months.

This return — or refusal to leave — is good news for Americans who will happily remain in cities. The future of rural is intertwined with suburban and urban outcomes by way of food production, natural resources, the economy, political movements and beyond.

What makes for success in some spots? And what’s driving people away from others?

We expand on our previous conversation about how to report on rural America with Smarsh, data journalist Dante Chinni of the American Communities Project at George Washington University and Monica Potts, who moved back home to Clinton, Arkansas, to write about low-income women in her hometown.

Produced by Stacia Brown.

Guests:

  • Dante Chinni – Director of the American Communities Project at the George Washington University; data journalist for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal; author of “Our Patchwork Nation”.
  • Sarah Smarsh – Journalist; host, “The Homecomers” podcast.
  • Monica Potts – Journalist based in rural Arkansas.

One strategy that is emerging from the mitigation of Brain Drains , and for enabling Brain Gain, is that of localism.

Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity. – Source: Wikipedia

This localism is clearly gleaned from the foregoing PODCAST; it provides a model for other rural communities to emulate and for the Caribbean as well. The featured local communities began to realize that they had to be tolerant of visitors, strangers and foreigners. So localism in this case brought a certain amount of pragmatism:

The town must survive – “we must put aside our differences and work together”.

Ditto for the Caribbean region and 30 member-states. This is why the movement behind the Go Lean book has always championed the need to reform and transform community values. See how this has been addressed in many previous Go Lean commentaries – consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18410 Refuse to Lose – Remediating ‘Columbus Day’ & Reforming History
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321 Unequal Justice: Reforming Sheriffs with ‘soft’ Tyrannicide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17820 Reforming LGBT Policies – “Can’t we all just get along”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16408 Reforming Bad Ethos on Home Violence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15998 Reforming Our Governance: The Kind of Society We Want
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15996 Reforming Our Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15886 Reforming Reinsurance to Reform Disaster Response
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9766 Rwanda’s Catholics Apologize for Genocide and Seeks to Reform
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=313 What’s Holding Back Jamaica’s Reforms

The opening theme in this commentary related the need to do the “heavy-lifting to retain our people and invite others to come join us”. This means being more willing to embrace empowering immigrants. Wow! This means overcoming the natural tendency to be xenophobic and expressing some disdain for strangers. But “the world is flat”, so to compete in this world will mean overcoming any dogma and orthodoxy. So rather than strangers, the advocacy is to think of outsiders as potential trading partners and new friends.

Can we consider this? Can we consider this … in regards to immigration and our view of new immigrants?

Yes, we can must … if we want to survive. Immigration policy has been a “lightning rod” issue in many communities. The American example is duplicitous: their President wants to “build a wall” to keep immigrants out, while the country’s economists tabulate the positive effects of immigration on their economy. Consider the lessons-learned in the Appendix VIDEO below.

Also consider how the Go Lean movement addressed the need to invite Empowering Immigrants in a previous commentary. This Case Study is presented regarding the once rural town of Huntsville, Alabama. They got over their reticence and disdain towards Germans – after World War II – and invited the Rocket Scientist Wernher von Braun, and his team of other German engineers, scientists and technologists. The end result was the fostering of an advanced Scientific Climate for building rockets for NASA for the space expeditions in the 1960’s … and continuing until today. See a summary of that Case Study and related references here:

Much of America’s leadership in the Space Race during the Cold War years of 1950 to 1991 was due to the contributions of one empowering immigrant: Rocket Scientist Wernher von Braun; see … more details …below.

…

Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German and later American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States and is considered one of the “Fathers of Rocket Science”. He was also a member of the Nazi party and the Schutzstaffel (SS), and was suspected of perpetrating war crimes during World War II.

In his twenties and early thirties, Braun was already the central figure in the Nazis’ rocket development program, responsible for the design and realization of the V-2 rocket during World War II. After the war, he and selected members of his rocket team were taken to the United States as part of the secret Operation Paperclip. Braun worked on the United States Army’s intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) program before his group was assimilated by NASA. Under NASA, he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the super-booster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.[1] According to one NASA source, he is “without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history”.[2] In 1975 he received the National Medal of Science.
…
In 1950, at the start of the Korean War, von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, his home for the next 20 years. Between 1952 and 1956,[63] von Braun led the Army’s rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests conducted by the United States. He personally witnessed this historic launch and detonation.[64] Work on the Redstone led to development of the first high-precision inertial guidance system on the Redstone rocket.[65]
…
NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack I. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA.

Source: Retrieved February 26, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Huntsville, Alabama
The city is nicknamed “The Rocket City” for its close association with U.S. space missions.[41] On January 31, 1958, ABMA placed America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit using a Jupiter-C launch vehicle, a descendant of the Redstone. This brought national attention to Redstone Arsenal and Huntsville, with widespread recognition of this being a major center for high technology.

On July 1, 1960, 4,670 civilian employees, associated buildings and equipment, and 1,840 acres (7.4 km2) of land, transferred from ABMA to form NASA‘s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Wernher von Braun was MSFC’s initial director. On September 8, President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicated the MSFC.[42]

During the 1960s, the major mission of MSFC was in developing the Saturn boosters used by NASA in the Apollo Lunar Landing Program. For this, MSFC greatly increased its employees, and many new companies joined the Huntsville industrial community. The Cummings Research Park was developed just north of Redstone Arsenal to partially accommodate this industrial growth, and has now became the second-largest research park of this type in America.

Huntsville’s economy was nearly crippled and growth almost came to a standstill in the 1970s following the closure of the Apollo program. However, the emergence of the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, and a wide variety of advanced research in space sciences led to a resurgence in NASA-related activities that has continued into the 21st century. In addition, new Army organizations have emerged at Redstone Arsenal, particularly in the ever-expanding field of missile defense.[43]

Now in the 2000s, Huntsville has the second-largest technology and research park in the nation,[44] and ranks among the top 25 most educated cities in the nation.[45][46][47] It is considered in the top of the nation’s high-tech hotspots,[48][49] and one of the best Southern cities for defense jobs,[50] It is the number one United States location for engineers most satisfied with the recognition they receive,[51] with high average salary and low median gross rent.[52]

Source: Wikipedia retrieved February 26, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsville,_Alabama#Missile_development

Go to Huntsville! Go visit! Tour and Engage!

This is the 5 L’s at work: Look, Listen, Learn, Lend-a-hand, then Lead!

This goal is among the missions and motivations of the Go Lean book, as related on Page 46:

Invite empowering immigrants to help us move our society and our economy to destinations where we have never been before.

We must reboot the 3 vital societal engines (economics, security, governance) by employing best practices in labor strategies. The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of details on how to spur such a reboot. First, it identified that new community ethos (attitudes and values) have to be adopted; then we must execute new strategies, tactics and implementations to elevate the societal engines. In fact, there is an actual advocacy for this purpose in the book; see here for some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from Page 174, entitled:

10 Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. The Single Market structure allows for the controlled movement of labor from state to state, and the opportunity to correct actuarial imbalances. The CU is a re-boot of the economic engines, the same way indentured servitude rebooted the labor pool in 19th century Guyana. The skills needed for today’s global economy may not be plentiful in the Caribbean and thus the need to invite empowering immigrants. In general, this group of immigrants should give more than they take; they should not be looking for jobs, rather they should create jobs.
2 DFI Time, Talent, Treasuries

The CU will incentivize/promote direct foreign investments (DFI). The CU protections minimize the risk of failure, while extending greater reward because of the dynamics of this market. Members of the One Percent look for enterprising opportunities. The CU will therefore invite this Special Interest Group to immigrate to the region, along with their assets.
3 SGE Labor Rules
4 STEM Immigrants

The same as there is now priority for educational ventures for Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics, there is also the need for professionals (practitioners and teachers) in these fields. The CU will incentivize these immigrants.
5 Retirees and Tax Refugee – Long Term Tourists
6 Artistic Immigrants
7 Carnies – Event Staff
8 Refugees
9 Movie Making
10 Virtual Employees

Brain Gain, instead of Brain Drain – Yes, we can …

That opening quotation, originally published in a previous blog-commentary, is so apropos that it should be encored here:

“Make happy those who are near and those who are far will come”.

That previous blog-commentary identified tourists-visitors and repatriates (Re-patriots) as the target audience to “come from afar”. Now we are also applying this mantra to Empowering Immigrants.

Let’s get started and convert our atrocious Brain Drain to a Brain Gain. This is how we make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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. Since economic crimes … 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.

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. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

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.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————

Appendix VIDEO – How does immigration impact the economy? | CNBC Explains – https://youtu.b e/f0dVfDiSrFo

CNBC International
Posted Dec 21, 2018 – It’s an incredibly complicated topic, with political disagreement about how immigration affects a nation’s economy. CNBC’s Uptin Saiidi explains the data behind the debate.
—–
Subscribe to us on YouTube: http://cnb.cx/2wuoARM Subscribe to CNBC Life on YouTube: http://cnb.cx/2wAkfMv Like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cnbcinternat… Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cnbcinterna… Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CNBCi

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An Ode to JPMorganChase – This is how ‘Change’ happens

Posted on November 19, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

Plan. Do. Review.

We told you change was imminent … for Detroit.

We, the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), published a detailed blog-commentary on May 22, 2014 – 5 plus years ago – on the plans for this one bank, JPMorganChase, who was advocating for a turn-around for the distressed City of Detroit in Michigan (USA). This is an excerpt from that previous submission:

The same as there is profit involved in destruction and construction, there is profit to be made in community redevelopment, within a city or even for a region. …

The City of Detroit is in crisis. In July 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to seek bankruptcy protection. It is currently $19 billion in debt and has an unemployment rate of about 14% – more than double the national average. This is why the study of Detroit is such an ideal model for the Caribbean. We have many communities within the Caribbean’s 30 member-states with similar unemployment, urban blight, brain drain, and acute hopelessness.



… the rebirth of Detroit will be financed, in part, with $100 million of community investment dollars from JPMorganChase. The Go Lean roadmap presents a plan to generate funding to Pay for Change (Page 101). Both the JPMorganChase / Detroit plan and the CU/Go Lean plan extend over a 5 year period. The Detroit plan is branded the “Motor City Makeover”; this branding and messaging is important for soliciting support and participation from the community in general. This parallels to the CU/Go Lean effort to foster the attitudes and motivations to forge change from Caribbean stakeholders. This is defined in the book as a community ethos. One such ethos is turn-around: a collective vision, succeeded by appropriate steps and actions, to reject the status quo and demand change.

How has the “Motor City Makeover” been received in the 5 years since? Has the community responded? Have they supported this advocacy? Has there been return on the investment?

Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes.

See here, this review of the JPMorganChase effort from the news magazine 60 Minutes, as broadcasted on November 10, 2019. See this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – A mega-bank’s data-driven investment in Detroit – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jamie-dimon-jp-morgan-chase-ceo-makes-data-focused-investment-in-detroit-60-minutes-2019-11-10/


Published on November 10, 2019 – JPMorganChase is using data to invest more efficiently, helping entrepreneurs open businesses in parts of the city that most need their services.
Used for entertainment [and educational] purposes only. The property and rights for this video/audio go to ©CBS.

In summary, JPMorganChase invested in Detroit and now has returns on that investment. This is how ‘Change’ happens.

The Go Lean movement also invested (time) in Detroit …

… we too have returns, rewards and reflections from our time of observing-and-reporting from there – which started 5 years ago. Consider the many lessons-learned about turn-around and re-development from these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14825 May Day! May Day! We Need Help With Jobs!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11453 Location Matters, Even in a Virtual World
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11386 Building Better Cities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10140 Lessons Learned: Detroit demolishes thousands of abandoned structures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669 Detroit makes Community College free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7789 An Ode to Detroit – Good Luck on Trade!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7601 Beware of Vulture Capitalists – Lesson from Detroit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7268 Detroit giving schools their ‘Worst Shot’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7235 Flint, Michigan – A Cautionary Tale on Infrastructure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6965 Secrecy, corruption and ‘conflicts of interest’ pervade state governments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6609 Before and After Photos Showing Detroit’s Riverfront Transformation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6269 Education & Economics: Welcome to Detroit, Mr. President
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6022 Caribbean Diaspora in Detroit … Celebrating Heritage
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5055 A Lesson from an Empowering Family in Detroit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4913 Ann Arbor: Model for ‘Start-up’ Cities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4476 De-icing Detroit’s Winter Roads: Impetuous & Short Term
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3713 NEXUS: Facilitating Detroit-Windsor Cross-Border Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3326 M-1 Rail: Alternative Motion in the Motor City
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3311 Detroit to exit historic bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3164 Michigan Unemployment – Then and Now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3152 Making a Great Place to Work® – A Detroit Example
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2480 A Lesson in History: Community Ethos of WW II
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1656 Blue is the New Green – Managing Michigan’s Water Resources

These past 5 years have been busy for the Go Lean movement. In addition to observing-and-reporting on Detroit, we have also observed-and-reported on JPMorganChase – from the inside; (this writer worked for JPMorganChase and Jaime Dimon on 2 separate occasions). See the lessons-learned from this financial institution from these previous Go Lean commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16836 Crypto-currency: Here comes ‘Trouble’; Here comes “JPM Coin”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002 Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance; JPMC Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184 JPMorganChase spent $10 billion on ‘Fintech’ for 1 year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=970 JP Morgan Chase $100 million Detroit investment not just for Press

This tenure with JPMorganChase now comes to an end; as we repatriate back to our Caribbean homeland. And so we say:

Ode to JPMorganChase; thanks for  the lessons-learned.

These lessons-learned may be more than just pedestrian; they may actual change our Caribbean world. Like Detroit, we need to redevelop, turn-around and reboot. The JPMorganChase example above may just be an example of the Corporate Vigilantism that we need to forge change in society.

Corporate Vigilantism?

This has been exhaustingly defined in a previous Go Lean commentary; consider this excerpt:

Corporate Vigilantism – can be effective for forging change. Imagine the pressure: no credit line, mortgage, installment loan, credit card processing, nor check-cashing for the business. This can affect a company’s ability to meet payroll or operate as an ongoing concern. This is called controlling the purse strings.

And what is the bank asking for their continuation of business-as-usual?

Common sense … regulations …

We have been paying more than the usual attention to this banking industry, company (JPMorganChase), City of Detroit and turn-around advocacy. It is past time now to manifest the needed change in our Caribbean society.

This corresponds to the 5-L’s approach that we have previously defined:

  • Look
  • Listen
  • Learn
  • Lend-a-hand
  • Lead

Let’s get busy …

The JPMorganChase tenure … is now over! (The same as the Detroit tenure is over; goodbye and good luck to them).

The Go Lean book doubles-down on lessons-learned from the other communities, past and present. The book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. Many of these strategies-tactics-implementations were conceived based on lessons-learned from the other observed stakeholders.

We have looked, listened, learned, lend-a-hand in Detroit and at JPMorganChase; now we are ready to go back to the Caribbean … and lead. This is the approach for us to make our own homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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.

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.

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 … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/
communities like … .

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Refuse to Lose – Canada’s Model of Ascent

Posted on October 21, 2019 in Ethos, Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

10 Lessons from Canada’s History – #6 – Neighbor: Frienemy
What is a frienemy?
“Frenemy” (also spelled “frienemy”) is an oxymoron and a portmanteau of “friend” and “enemy” that refers to “a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry” or “a person who combines the characteristics of a friend and an enemy”. – Wikipedia.

In the last submission in this series, it was established that “Yes, we can” succeed in competition with the US despite the dominance of the American hegemony.

Canada does! 

They are the greatest example of a Frienemy, in their association with the US. They cooperate and they compete. The have beaten America in the past and continue to do so even today. Just look, at their recent victories here in the sporting world:

VIDEO – Canada beats USA in soccer for the first time in 34 years! – https://www.bttoronto.ca/videos/canada-beats-usa-in-soccer-for-the-first-time-in-34-years/

Canada wins 2-0 against USA in soccer and Kyle Lowry officially signs his contract extension with the Raptors.

In truth, all neighboring countries are in competition with the US, if only to retain their citizens from “taking their talents to South Beach“. So many of the Caribbean Diaspora have taken their talents to “South Beach, South Toronto or South London”. The economic impact of their absence has been duly noted in research and analysis and the conclusion is bad:

Caribbean loses over 70% of tertiary educated citizens to the brain drain

What more can we learn from Canada, from their turn-around of losing and ascent to a competitive super-power on their own?

Consider the history highlights here, (and the depictions in the Appendix VIDEO below):

While the United States of America got its start in 1776 – by declaring and fighting for freedom from Great Britain – Canada was not formed as a nation until 1867, almost 100 years later. During those “Bad Old Days”, they could only stand idly by and watch the US take … parts of Maine, Northwest Territory, Oregon Territory, etc.. The purpose of their 1867 Confederation was the uniform quest to: Stand its Ground against America.

They – Canada – got sick and tired of being “sick and tired” and finally developed the attitude to:

Refuse to lose – a commitment by a group or society to the values of quality, success and winning.

If we model Canada’s example and adopt this attitude then we too will believe that we can compete with the US and even be better. This is a theme in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean; it serves as a roadmap for the Caribbean to be a better homeland to live, work and play. This commentary continues the series on the Refuse to Lose ethos; this is Part 5-of-6. The full series is cataloged as follows:

  1. Refuse to Lose: Lesson from Sports
  2. Refuse to Lose: Remediating ‘Columbus Day’
  3. Refuse to Lose: Introducing Formal Reconciliations
  4. Refuse to Lose: Despite American Expansionism
  5. Refuse to Lose: Canada’s Model of Ascent
  6. Refuse to Lose: Direct Foreign Investors Wind-Downs

It is the assertion of this series of commentaries that the Caribbean can win, despite American dominance. How can we win or “Refuse to Lose“? Among the many strategies, tactics and implementations embedded in the Go Lean roadmap is the goal to learn the lessons from Canada’s history.

Among the 370-pages of the Go Lean book are the turn-by-turn instructions on “how” … to adopt new community ethos. The book presents the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to lose less often and win more. The book presented one advocacy on Lessons from Canada – their 150-Plus-years of history – entitled: 10 Lessons from Canada’s History; (Page 146). Consider some specific plans, excerpts and headlines from that advocacy in the book, here:

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market
This treaty calls for the confederation of the Caribbean region into a single market of 30 member-states and 42 million people, similar to the original 1867 confederation for Canada. The history of Canada synchronizes with the aspirations of the CU Trade Federation. In this Canadian context, confederation generally describes the political process that united the colonies in the 1860s and related events, and the subsequent incorporation of other colonies and territories. Today, Canada is a “G8” advanced economy, made up of 10 provinces and 3 territories, ranking among the largest in the world, due its abundant natural resources and well-developed trade networks, including one with the US, a long and complex relationship. Canada has been a Northern Star, as a guide and refuge to Caribbean hopes and dreams.
2 Confederation for Defense – Strength in Numbers
The American Civil War caused security threats for Canada. The Union (US North) encouraged Irish immigration and sourced their Army (a million-man strong) with many Irish fighters. Since many Irish immigrants maintained animosity towards the British, there were documented cases of terroristic attacks against Canadian targets, i.e. the Fenian (an Irish Brotherhood) raids. This corresponded with the Little Englander philosophy, whereby Britain no longer wanted to maintain troops in its colonies.Confederation was therefore necessary to promote security for the related colonies of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia – amounting to a population of slightly over 2 million people
3 Multiple Cultural Legacies and Languages
4 Better than a Republic – (Civil War Lesson for a Technocracy)
5 Assuage Human Flight – Provide Alternative
6 Neighbor: Frienemy
Despite the cooperation needed for the St. Lawrence Waterway – (see Appendix UA) – the stated US desire, doctrine of Manifest Destiny, was to govern the entire North American continent. The US had fought wars against English-Canada interests and many believed that the US would annex the other colonies governed directly by England, as the US acquired the Oregon Territory. These reasons provided the motivation for the initial Canadian Confederation to expand from coast-to-coast, and serve as a role-model for the CU to target the entire region of the Caribbean Sea geography.
7 Aboriginal Relations Need Local Governance
8 Mastering Natural Resources
9 Federal / Provincial Outsourcing
10 Population Concerns – Not enough Natural Growth
Canada could not contend with the aging population (more retirees with fewer workers); they adapted a liberal immigration policy in the past decades and now their 2011 census counted 33,476,688, up over 6% in 5 years, and 20% over 20 years. The CU has the same challenge and needs its confederation to assuage the negative actuary equations.

Canada has ascended – now a “G8” advanced economy country – despite being in the shadows of the US. We, in the Caribbean can ascend too.

The subject of the Canada’s role model have been addressed in many previous commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15662 Manifesting High-Tech Neighborhoods in Toronto, Canada
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14954 Overseas Workers – even to Canada – not an ideal solution
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14541 Viola Desmond – One Canadian Woman Made a Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14174 Canada: “Follow Me” for Model on ‘Climate Change’ Action
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13321 ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Canada’s Model of a Multilingual Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12369 Canada @ 150 Years Old – Happy Canada Day 2017
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12322 Canadian Model for Ferries: Economics, Security and Governance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9480 10 Things We Want from Canada and 10 Things We Do Not Want
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6937 Women in Politics – Canada’s Model of Political Equality
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3694 Jamaica-Canada employment program generate millions for economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3582 For Canadian Banks that Invest Regionally: Caribbean is a ‘Bad Bet’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=510 Florida’s Chilly Welcome for Canadian Snowbirds – Bad Model

In many ways, Canada has presented the ethos of Refuse to Lose to their American neighbors and have benefited as a result. They may not always win, but they Refuse to Lose and this makes them a better homeland in their pursuits of “life, liberty and happiness” and their overall goal to be a more harmonious society – a more perfect union.

We need that same Refuse to Lose ethos for the Caribbean Way Forward so that we can start winning. We have lose too much already. We hereby urge every Caribbean stakeholder to Refuse to Lose; this is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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. Since economic crimes … 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.

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.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
————-

Appendix VIDEO – How the USA grew from 13 Colonies to 50 States – www.westgateschool.org/apps/video/watch.jsp?v=162718

Posted October 26, 2017 – Featuring archival footage and lively graphics, this informative, live-action program traces the expansion of the United States from 13 colonies to 50 states. Explores the stories behind the acquisitions of the different territories as well as the figures involved in each acquisition. The program covers the Louisiana Purchase, the Texas Annexation, the Gadsen Purchase and more, while helping to develop map-reading skills and an understanding of U.S. geography.

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An Ode to Miami – Not A Temporary Stop for ‘Us’

Posted on August 21, 2019 in Ethos, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Survivor: Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. 

This expression is more than just the tagline advertising for the television show ‘Survivor’; it is also the historic summary of Caribbean people in the metropolitan areas of Miami, Florida.

Over the years, decades and centuries, this city has been the home to a lot of different groups of people – think Miccosukee & Seminole Indians, Spanish Explorers, Slave Traders, Blockade Evaders, Railroad Barons, Rum-runners, Treasure seekers, Snowbirds, Latin American political refugees, Colombian Drug Smugglers and those seeking refuge from them. All of these people have come and gone – Miami was a temporary stop-over for them! But another group to have come over the years have been Caribbean immigrants …

… they have never left. Consider:

After 4 years of observing-and-reporting, by the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, it is time now for us to move on from our temporary stop-over in Miami, while we return to our Caribbean homeland. So we say:

Ode or “goodbye” to the City of Miami and the surrounding metropolitan areas.

While “we” leave to return to the Caribbean, we recognize that all the other Caribbean exiles living there are NOT leaving; it is not temporary for them; it is now Home. These ones are entrenched and embedded in Miami society. In fact, Miami society is now based on this demographic and Miami’s success is due to their success. See the Census figures here:

Miami-Dade Country Demographics – 2010 U.S. Census Ethnic/Race Demographics:[34][35]

In 2010, the largest ancestry groups were:[34]

Source: Retrieved August 21, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami-Dade_County,_Florida#Demographics

This is sad but true! The Caribbean Diaspora in Miami is NOT going anywhere. Despite the many others that have come and gone, these ones have outwitted, outplayed and outlasted everyone else. They are the winning Survivors! (See Appendix VIDEO sample below of the highlights from one Season of the TV Show Survivor).

This reality is in contrast to the goals and ideals of the Go Lean movement. Our quest is to:

We accept now: Miami is NOT just a temporary stop for many Caribbean people. So we have to make the best of this reality. This is what we have done. The publishers of the Go Lean book have “observed and reported” on Miami’s eco-system and published many lessons-learned from previous blog-commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17848 Forging Change from Miami – ‘That’s What Friends Are For’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14732 ‘Red Letter Day’ for Cubans in Miami – Raul Castro Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14556 Observing Change in Miami … with Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13720 Miami’s Caribbean Marketplace Revisited
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13677 Economics of ‘South Beach’ (Miami Beach)
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13105 Fixing Haiti – Can the Diaspora be the Answer?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13040 Jamaican Diaspora – Not the ‘Panacea’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12834 Hurricane Andrew – 25 Years of History from Miami’s Worst Hurricane
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11006 Funding and Learning from the Russell Family Memorial – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10910 Jazz in Miami Gardens – Lessons Learned
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9897 Art Walk Miami – Its a ‘Real Thing’ in Wynwood
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6760 Miami’s Lesson in ‘Garbage’ for the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5921 Learning from Miami’s ‘Bad’ Impact Analysis of a Community Investment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3662 Caribbean Migrant flow into US spikes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3292 Art Basel Miami – A Testament to the Spread of Culture
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547 Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=798 Lessons Learned from Miami and the American Airlines merger

So if the Caribbean Diaspora cannot be expected to leave Miami, what is our hope for this population in their future interactions with the Caribbean:

While this is not the ideal, it is what it is, but we must still make the most of this situation. This assessment was begrudgingly accepted in the Go Lean book. An advocacy is presented there with the title 10 Ways to Impact the Diaspora (Page 217). These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 countries, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (according to 2010 figures). In addition to expanding the economic activity within the region, the CU mission is also to empower the Caribbean Diaspora, believed to amount to be an additional 6 million people in 1996 (and 8 – 10 million today); residing in North America and Europe (Appendix EA on Page 267), to facilitate their development and investment back to their “home” territory. The CU’s mission is to incentivize repatriation of the Diaspora, their time (impacting family reunification), talents (reversing brain drain) and treasuries (optimizing remittances by facilitating cheaper transfers – see Appendix ED on Page 270).
2 Remittances

Remittances, in this case, refer to transfers of money by foreign workers to their home Caribbean country. Money sent home by migrants, using Western Union and competitors, constitutes the second largest financial inflow, (after the country’s primary exports) for many developing countries. CU remittances, $9 Billion in 2010, contribute to economic growth and in several Caribbean countries, they account for near or more than 10% of GDP. (See Appendix EB on Page 268).
3 Brain Drain
4 Education

With the incontrovertible evidence, no doubt, the study abroad model has failed the Caribbean, as many students never returned to the region. The CU therefore advocates e-Learning solutions for in-country tertiary education. The CU will impact this industry by facilitating libraries throughout the region with internet (desktop, tablet/e-Reader) access, and the proliferation of Wi-Fi in urban and suburban areas.
5 Diasporic Exports
6 Media Consumption
7 Health Risk – See Mitigation Model in Appendix R on Page 300
8 Security Risks
9 Retirement/Entitlement

The CU will administer foreign policies of negotiating with host countries of the Diaspora to allow them [(Diaspora members)] to repatriate and still receive their Entitlement benefits (Pension, Health, Veterans). The key is to elevate the facilities to a first rate level.
10 Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT)

Inviting the Diaspora back to the Caribbean region does not mean returning to their original houses. The CU will foster advanced products for evolving housing development and funding needs with REITs, Co-ops and Mixed-use structures. REITs, trade-able on stock exchanges are excellent investment vehicles as the underlying asset is sound, real estate.

The Go Lean book doubles-down on the concept that Diaspora members are stakeholders for the Caribbean future. We may have missed out on their full contribution to our society, but we can still “exploit” them with supply-and-demands dynamics.

(Yet, there is caution not to build too much expectation that the Diaspora would be some savior for Caribbean society – they did leave after all; many not considering their former homelands at all. See this warning to Barbados, Jamaica, Dominica, Bahamas, St. Lucia and Grenada)

So, farewell Miami! You have been the epitome of an immigrant community – everyone from somewhere else, especially from the Caribbean. You have proven that while pluralistic democracies are heavy-lifting, they can have success … after some endurance, patience and adoption of universal respect.

Miami learned  this lesson the hard way! (Their immigrant communities all separately went through long trains of abuse: rejection, anger, protest, bargaining, toleration and eventual acceptance; only after the appeal to their better nature, did the experience turn to one of celebration).

In our 4 years here, we’ve seen our people outwit, outplay and outlast. We’ve learned the lessons easily, by observing and reporting on the full Miami eco-system. We have looked, listened, learned, lend-a-hand here; now we are ready to go back to the Caribbean … and lead. We can now lead the efforts to make our own homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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. Since economic crimes … 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.

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. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

xx. Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.

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.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————–

Appendix VIDEO – SURVIVOR Borneo – Moments In History – https://youtu.be/55qPFFvN2dY



Outwit Outplay Outlast
Published on Jan 11, 2016

SURVIVOR Borneo, Season 1

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