Category: Tactical

International Women’s Day – Protecting Rural Women – ENCORE

Posted on March 8, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Planning, Social, Tactical

Can’t we all just get along?

The answer is “No”! Don’t be naïve!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean sought to reform and transform the societal engines of the 30 member-states that caucus as the political Caribbean. This region is in dire straits, with some countries flirting with Failed-State status. But all the problems here are not just economic. No, there are security deficiencies as well. Therefore the book declares (Page 23):

… “bad actors” will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent.

This movement behind the Go Lean book has therefore monitored security dynamics for the Caribbean homeland. The hope is to apply lessons-learn from other regions and ensure that we mitigate all threats and risks.

One such lesson is the security needs for our female population: Caribbean women and girls. There are many threats for women and girls that we need to be “on guard” for. Not all of our populations live in cities; no, many reside in rural areas or remote islands here in the tropics. According to the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women, there is the need to draw attention to the dilemma and challenges of rural women, who make up over a quarter of the world population, and are being left behind in every measure of development.

Today – March 8, 2018 – is International Women’s Day; the theme this year is “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”. The UN says:

This year, International Women’s Day comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality and justice. This has taken the form of global marches and campaigns, including #MeToo and #TimesUp in the United States of America and their counterparts in other countries, on issues ranging from sexual harassment and femicide to equal pay and women’s political representation.
…
Join us to transform the momentum into action, to empower women in all settings, rural and urban, and to celebrate the activists who are working relentlessly to claim women’s rights and realize their full potential.

The #TimeisNow.

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VIDEO – Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women’s Lives – https://youtu.be/XgwlEWzXUrE

In her message for International Women’s Day on March 8 [2018], UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka draws attention to the work of rural and urban activists who have fought for women’s rights and gender equality. Read the full message here.

Our Caribbean women require protections and public safety measures ideally suited for their exact needs. They need the fulfillment of the Social Contract on their behalf. This Social Contract is defined as:

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

Poor Nigeria; or better stated: poor rural Nigerian girls.

4 years ago, we reported on an abduction of 270 girls by terrorist group Boko Haram from a government school in the Nigerian State (Province) of Chibok; see the ENCORE of that blog-commentary below. Now we learn that it has happened again, 110 schoolgirls have been abducted in northern city of Dapchi (in the same province as Chibok). See news link here:

The recent Boko Haram abduction of 110 schoolgirls in Dapchi, Nigeria, drew immediate comparisons to the 2014 abduction of more than 270 girls from a school in Chibok. Beyond the media spotlight, what do we know about Boko Haram’s efforts to abduct — and recruit — women and girls?

The full Washington Post story-analysis can be found here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/03/08/boko-haram-has-kidnapped-more-girls-heres-what-we-know/?utm_term=.a9801d06cec0

Where are the military-security forces, police, world enforcement agencies in this repeated drama?

Where is the outrage? Where is the New World Order? Where is the #MeToo movement and #TimesUp movement?

Is their absence tied to the fact that this is Africa – a Shit-hole country? Or the fact that these girls are all Black girls and Less Than – do Black Lives Matter?

The Caribbean societal elevation effort – Go Lean roadmap – is for the Caribbean only. Can we ensure that we have the necessary protections in place for our women and girls? Not just for those in the urban areas, but the rural communities as well. This seems to be the defect in Nigeria.

This is also the theme of this UN Special Commemoration, the International Women’s Day and the need to better protect, secure and empower women and girls in rural communities.

The truth is: We cannot all “just get along”. There must be the protections in Caribbean society to ensure that the Strong Do Not Abuse the Weak. This is the vision for a new Caribbean stewardship. See this point about abducted Nigerian girls developed in the previous blog-commentary below here:

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Go Lean Commentary – Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls

Nigerian Girls

Abducting little girls from a boarding school in the middle of the night is just criminal! There is nothing religious or political about this action.

This is not just terrorism – in the classic sense – this is simply felonious behavior. This is evidenced further by the fact that the perpetrators have promised to sell the girls into slavery. The word “sell” has the connotation of obtaining money for this action. This is criminal and should therefore be condemned by every civilized society in the world.

Failure to marshal against these crimes is just failure – indicative of a Failed-State. Nigeria has a bad image of deceitful practices. So it is only appropriate to ask: is this truly a case of abduction, or could it all be one big Nigerian scam? Despite the obvious “cry wolf” reference, we must side with the innocent victims here. But, as is cited to in the foregoing news article, there are many people who feel that Nigeria hasn’t done enough for these girls. Only now that other countries have stepped up to assist/oversee has the government become more accountable.

Another group of victims in this drama are the peace-loving Islamic adherents. The actions of Boko Haram are casting dispersions on the whole religion. This terrorist group is not practicing the true teachings of Islam; in fact these actions are condemned as criminal even in the Muslim world.

AP*; Photo by: Manuel Balce Ceneta

The abduction three weeks ago of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria by the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram is now generating worldwide attention and condemnation. Muslim leaders in various countries have criticized Boko Haram’s leader for using Islamic teachings as his justification for threatening to sell the girls into slavery. Others have focused on what they view as a slow response by Nigeria’s government to the crisis. The British and French governments announced Wednesday that they would send teams of experts to complement the U.S. team heading to Nigeria to help with the search for the girls, and Nigeria’s president said China has also offered assistance.

Some of the reactions to the crisis:

— EGYPT: Muslim religious officials strongly condemned Boko Haram. Religious Endowments Minister Mohammed Mohktar Gomaa said “the actions by Boko Haram are pure terrorism, with no relation to Islam, especially the kidnapping of the girls. These are criminal, terrorist acts.” According to the state news agency MENA, he said “these disasters come from cloaking political issues in the robes of religion and from peddling religion for secular interests, something we warn incessantly against.”

The sheik of the Cairo-based Al-Azhar, one of Sunni Islam’s most prestigious institutions, demanded the group release the girls, saying it “bears responsibility for any harm suffered by these girls.” The group’s actions “completely contradict Islam and its principles of tolerance,” Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb said.

— PAKISTAN: Dawn, an English language newspaper in Pakistan, published an opinion piece that takes Nigeria to task for not moving against Boko Haram. “The popular upsurge in Nigeria in the wake of the latest unspeakable atrocity provides some scope for hoping that the state will finally act decisively to obliterate the growing menace,” wrote columnist Mahir Ali. “Naturally, the lives and welfare of the abducted girls must be an absolute priority. Looking back a few years hence, it would also provide a degree of satisfaction to be able to pinpoint the moment when Boko Haram sealed its own fate by going much too far.”

— INDONESIA: In the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, the Jakarta Post published an editorial Wednesday condemning the Boko Haram leader for “wrongly” citing Islamic teaching as his excuse for selling the abducted girls into slavery. Recalling the Taliban’s shooting of 15-year-old Pakistani girl Malala Yousafzai in 2012 because of her outspokenness in defense of girls’ right to an education, the editorial said: “Malala’s message needs to be conveyed to all people who use their power to block children’s access to education. It is saddening that religion is misused to terrorize people and to kill the future leaders of the world.”

The newspaper also criticized Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, noting that “only after international condemnation and street demonstrations poured in did President Jonathan tell his nation that he would take all necessary actions to return the young women to their parents and schools, while also acknowledging that the whereabouts of the abductees remained unknown.”

— SWEDEN: In an editorial posted on the left-wing news website politism.se, blogger Nikita Feiz criticized the international community for its slow response and asked why the situation hadn’t triggered as loud a reaction as when Malala was shot in Pakistan. “Looking at the situation in Nigeria, Malala appears like a false promise from the West that it would stand up for girls’ rights to attend school without fear of being subjected to sexual exploitation and abuse,” she said. “It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the West’s assurance to act for girls’ rights suddenly isn’t as natural when it comes to girls’ rights in a country in Africa.”

A Swedish women’s network called StreetGaris is planning a demonstration outside the Foreign Ministry on Friday to demand more action from the international community. Participants are encouraged to wear a head wrap or red clothes in solidarity with the girls and their relatives.

— UNITED STATES: The U.S. government is sending to Nigeria a team of technical experts, including American military and law enforcement personnel skilled in intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiating, information sharing and victim assistance, as well as officials with expertise in other areas — but not U.S. armed forces.

“In the short term our goal is obviously is to help the international community, and the Nigerian government, as a team to do everything we can to recover these young ladies,” President Barack Obama told NBC on Tuesday. “But we’re also going to have to deal with the broader problem of organizations like this that … can cause such havoc in people’s day-to-day lives.”

In an editorial, The New York Times faulted the Nigerian government for not aggressively responding to the abductions. “Mr. Jonathan, who leads a corrupt government that has little credibility, initially played down the group’s threat and claimed security forces were in control,” the newspaper said. “It wasn’t until Sunday, more than two weeks after the kidnappings, that he called a meeting of government officials, including the leader of the girls’ school, to discuss the incident.”

— BRITAIN: Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said Britain will send a small team of experts to complement the U.S. team being sent by Obama. The announcement was made Wednesday after Cameron spoke to the Nigerian president. The team will be sent as soon as possible and will include specialists from several departments. Experts have said special forces may be sent to the region. The issue has heated up in recent days with protests over the weekend outside the Nigerian Embassy in London and an increasing number of newspaper editorials calling for action to rescue the girls.

— FRANCE: Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told lawmakers on Wednesday that France is ready to send a “specialized team … to help with the search and rescue” of the kidnapped girls. “In the face of such an appalling act, France, like other democratic nations, must react,” Fabius said. “This crime will not go unpunished.” Fabius gave no details of the team, except to say it’s among those already in the region. France has soldiers in Niger, Cameroon and Mali, where it is fighting Islamic insurgents, as well as in Central African Republic.

— CHINA: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, arriving Wednesday in Nigeria for a state visit, did not specifically mention the abductions in a transcript of a joint press conference with Nigeria’s president, instead making only a general reference to the “need to work together to oppose and fight terrorism.” In his remarks, Jonathan said China “promised to assist Nigeria in our fight against terror especially in our commitment and effort to rescue the girls that were taken away from a secondary school.” He did not offer specifics.

— BRAZIL: The foreign ministry issued a statement Tuesday condemning the abductions. “In conveying the feelings of solidarity to the families of the victims and to the people and the Government of Nigeria, the Brazilian Government reiterates its strong condemnation of all acts of terrorism,” the statement said.

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* Associated Press correspondents Lee Keath in Cairo, Michelle Faul in Lagos, Nigeria, Gregory Katz in London, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Masha Macpherson in Paris and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo, Brazil contributed to this report.

Associated Press – Online News – May 7, 2014 http://news.yahoo.com/muslim-officials-condemn-abductions-girls-160020053.html

This book Go Lean … Caribbean is a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), so as to elevate the delivery of economic and security solutions in the Caribbean. One specific mission is to manage against encroachments of the Failed-State index.

At the outset, the roadmap identified an urgent need to mitigate against organized crime & terrorism, and to ensure human rights protection. This is pronounced in this clause in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12)

xxi.   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.

The Go Lean roadmap projects that the CU will facilitate monitoring and accountability of regional law enforcement and homeland security institutions. This type of behavior will not be tolerated in the Caribbean. This CU effort will be coordinated in conjunction with and on behalf of the Caribbean member-states.

On that note, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation, if it was already in existence, would vociferously condemn the abduction of the Nigerian girls. Hence the CU would be added to the long list of condemnations in the foregoing article. But these would not be hollow words, but would be accompanied by the required actions to ensure that such a disposition could not thrive in the CU region. This commitment is detailed as these community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocates:

Community Ethos – Public Protection over Privacy Page 23
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Placate & Pacify International Monitors Page 48
Separation of Powers – Homeland Security Page 75
Separation of Powers – Justice Department Page 77
Implementation –  Security Initiatives at Start-up Page 103
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices Page 134
Advocacy – Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism Page 181
Advocacy –  Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220
Advocacy –  Ways to Empower Women Page 226
Advocacy –  Ways to Impact Youth Page 227

In contrast with the events in Nigeria, local crimes against women, young or old will not be tolerated in the CU. Everyone, regardless of gender, will be guaranteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (and education for that matter). This will be standard, whether the world is watching or not.

However, we want the world to watch. We want to show how we feverishly protect our people, with assurance that the Caribbean is the world’s best address to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

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

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

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Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor – ENCORE

Posted on March 4, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social, Tactical

Here is an interesting fact about “Black men and boys” in the country of the United States:

They amount to 6.5 percent of the total US population.

They amount to 40.2 percent of the prison population.

Surely, there are some special issues associated with this special interest group. In the field of Public Health Management, there is the concept of “Triage”; consider this definition here:

tri·age

noun: (in medical use) the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.

verb: assign degrees of urgency to (wounded or ill patients).

So the concept of “Triage” allows for immediate, expedited attention to those suffering more. The fact that more and more “Black men or boys” are entrusted to the criminal justice system – true in the Caribbean as well – indicates that this population needs more help. More and more, they are the victims and villains of crime. It brings to mind these questions:

  • What can we do to Repair the Breach for “Black men or boys”?
  • How can we reduce crime since this is so prevalent among this special sub-population?

These are legitimate questions. There are answers. We can explore these answers so as to Repair the Breach. This expression is derived from a White Paper by an academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas. He composed a White Paper to address this question of “How to repair this breach?” and identified some viable solutions for the Bahamas and the rest the Caribbean, especially related to the crime problem. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:

White Paper Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – EXCERPT
By: Dr. Donald McCartney

…
As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the same questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised again.

…
The spiraling  murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.

…
The answers to these questions must be found; so that we can free those Black men and boys who have become slaves to violence and crime. We must come to the realization that, that which impacts Black men and boys impacts all Caribbean people and those who reside among us.

…
The primary aim will be to create a long-term structure of sustained intervention for Black men and boys who find themselves in trouble. The emphasis of the [remediating] Thurston Foundation will be on systemic change that will bring together a multiplicity of ideas in an effort to reduce violence and crime, thus making the Caribbean’ social life whole again.

The Thurston Foundation must not shape itself around the issue of violence. Violence, in the Caribbean, has been painted with a broad brush because Black men and boys are looked upon as the face of the violence.  This violence appears to have immobilized law abiding citizens into a state of panic and fear.

…

See the full White Paper here: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392

This commentary continues the 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is 2 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
  2. Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
  3. Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
  4. Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics

While all of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the failing dispositions of the Caribbean among our Black Men and boys, this one in particular addresses the root causes of possible solutions to mitigate and reduce crime.

This is an ENCORE of a previous blog-commentary addressing crime and inter-personal violence. This original submission from February 18, 2016 cataloged the reasons for street crimes as: 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice. Though not re-published here, an additional form of violence was addressed in a different prior blog, though not a street crime: 4. Domestic Violence – the act of wife-battering.

There are certain ethnic groups where domestic violence is more prominent than others. Sadly, our communities in the Caribbean is prominent for this 4th category of crime as well; honor or not, it is still criminal. Many times, men in our society feel that it is their honor to discipline their wives … as they see fit. Remediating and reducing crime among our Black men and boys, means help-seeking for domestic abusers.

See here below, for the ENCORE of the blog-commentary on assessing, mitigating and reducing the crimes based on 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice:

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Go Lean Commentary – A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence – Street Crimes

No justice, no peace!

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, and accompanying blogs, has prioritized public safety and remediating/mitigating crime as paramount for the region. Despite the focus on economics, the book asserts that to elevate Caribbean society there must be a focus on the region’s security and governing engines to provide justice assurances. So in addition to economic empowerments (jobs, investments, education, entrepreneurship, etc.), the book posits that security concerns must also be front-and-center in any roadmap along with these economic efforts.

This is easier said than done.

In the previous blog/commentary in this series, the effort to reduce crime and remediate violence was identified as an “Art” and “Science”. This heavy reliance on artists and scientists have provided a lot of history for us to study and glean best-practices in this cause. What can we learn today from a study in the history of interpersonal violence as related to street violence?

This is commentary 2 of 3 considering this subject of interpersonal violence, and how it relates to the Caribbean homeland in 2016. The historic issues addressed are:

  1. Duels
  2. Street Violence
  3. Domestic Violence

Street violence stems from 3 considerations: 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice.

CU Blog - A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence - Street Crimes - Photo 3The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s economic, security and governing engines. The roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to provide public safety and protect the resultant economic engines from economic crimes.
  • Improve Caribbean governance, with a separation-of-powers between member-state administrations and the CU federal government (Executive facilitations, Legislative oversight and judicial prudence) to support these economic/security engines.

So the CU/Go Lean roadmap addresses the issue of more jobs; this will lower the “need” factor for crime; (there is no expectation that these efforts would fully eliminate violent crime; but this start will mitigate the risks). The book relates that with the emergence of new economic drivers, that “bad actors” will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. The second factor, “greed” is tied to opportunities. The executions of the Go Lean roadmap (Page 23) are specifically designed to minimize opportunities for crime with these security mandates:

  • Adapt the Ethos: Public Protection over Privacy
  • Embrace Electronic Payment Systems – Carry less cash
  • Whistleblower Protection – Consider all allegation, anonymous and overt
  • Witness Security & Protection – Ensure Justice Process
  • Youth Crime Awareness & Prevention; Anti-Bullying and Mitigation – “Nip it in the bud”
  • Intelligence Gathering – Universal Video Surveillance
  • Light Up the Dark Places – Eliminate the figurative and literal “shadows”
  • Prison Industrial Complex – Engage to reduce recidivism

The third contributor, justice, is tied to street riots, civil unrest and other outbursts against perceived injustices. The marching call of many of these movements is “No Justice; No Peace”.

Consider here the historicity of street violence (including sexual violence from strangers) in this AUDIO Podcast (48 minutes) here:

Click on Photo here to Play AUDIO Podcast; Click BACK to Return

CU Blog - A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence - Street Crimes - Photo 2

What’s Behind Trends In U.S. Violent Crime Rates?
Guest Host: Indira Lakshmanan; posted February 9, 2016 – For more than 20 years violent crime rates in the U.S. states have been declining, but data from the first six months of 2015 suggest an unwelcome change: The FBI reports that from January and June 2015 overall violent crime was up nearly 2% and homicides jumped more than 6 percent with spikes in both small towns and big cities. The Justice Department cautioned it’s too soon to know whether the latest data signals an upturn in violence in America. Join us to talk about what drove violent crime down so dramatically over the last two decades in the U.S. and what could be ahead.
Six People Murdered On Chicago's South Side As City's Homicides Rise

Guests

  • Khalil Muhammad director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture  New York Public Library
  • Paul Butler professor, Georgetown Law School
  • Barry Latzer emeritus professor of criminal justice,  John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY  most recent book: “The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America”

The foregoing AUDIO Podcast relates the experience of the Black and Brown populations in the American criminal-justice system. There is no doubt, there is a “divide in America’s execution of their justice mandates”. But, the scope of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to reform and transform the Caribbean, not America. We need to do better here, in our homeland. America’s success and failure does relate to us, as many of our Diaspora lives there, but frankly, the Go Lean book asserts that it is easier to fix the Caribbean, than to fix America. We simply need to keep our people at home. We need to minimize the “push and pull” reasons that drive them away. Curbing crime here – a “push” factor – helps this cause; messaging the real experiences of our Black and Brown Diaspora as they engage the criminal justice system in the US should also help our cause, in lowering the “pull” factors.

So let’s fix the Caribbean!

The quest of the Go Lean movement is to elevate Caribbean society above our dysfunctional past. We can improve upon public safety! The goal of the roadmap is to optimize society through economic empowerment, security & justice optimization, and also governing efficiencies in the region, since these are inextricably linked to this same elevation endeavor.

The cause-and-effect of failing economics leads to increasing criminality, the “need” factor. So the cause-and-effect of improving economics should therefore lead to lesser criminal activities. Improved security facilitation (i.e. intelligence gathering and analysis) should reduce the opportunities for crimes of convenience, thus mitigating the “greed” factor. Funding grants to improve Justice institutions (Police, Courts, Prison Industrial Complex), their transparency and accountability, should lower the outcries for justice. Thus the Go Lean/CU has devised a tactic of publishing rankings-and-ratings (i.e. Best Places in the Caribbean To Live …); this should exacerbate failings and failures more prominently to the monitoring public, at home and abroad.

The motivation of this Go Lean/CU roadmap is the basic principle, described in the book (Page 21), that “Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives”.

This roadmap fully envisions the integration of shepherding – leadership – for the Caribbean region’s economic, security and governing initiatives under the same organization: the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. These points are pronounced early in the Go Lean book (Page 12) with these opening Declaration of Interdependence statements:

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

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 …

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states …  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, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The Caribbean appointing “new guards”, or a security pact to ensure justice and public safety will include many strategies, tactics and implementations deemed “best-practice”, including an advanced Intelligence Gathering and Analysis effort to mitigate and remediate street crime in the region, and also to optimize the “art and science” of crime, including prison reform; (see Page 211 of the Go Lean book for a discussion on criminology and penology). The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize justice institution and provide increased public safety – “top-down” and “bottoms up”  – in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles Page 22
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Tactical – Vision – Forge a Single Market economy Page 45
Tactical – Confederating a non-sovereign union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Justice Department Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol: Marshals &   Investigations Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Witness Protection Page 77
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – Security   Assistance Page 115
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate – Security Optimization Page 118
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Mitigate Organized Crime & Gangs Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Law & Order Lessons Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Lackluster Law & Order affects Economy Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Mitigate Bullying and Gangs early Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering and Analysis Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220

Other  subjects related to crime, justice and security empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7179 SME Declaration: ‘Change Leaders in Crime Fight’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6385 Wi-Fi Hot Spots Run By Hackers Are Targeting Tourists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5307 8th Violent Crime Warning to Bahamas Tourists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5304 Mitigating the Eventual ‘Abuse of Power’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5238 #ManifestJustice – Lessons for the Prison Eco-System
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4863 A Picture is worth a thousand words; video, a million to expose corruption
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4447 Probe of Ferguson-Missouri finds bias from cops, courts
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360 Dreading the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308 911 – Emergency Response: System in Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881 Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2994 Justice Strategy: Special Prosecutors and Commissions of Inquiry
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2684 Role Model for Justice, Anti-Crime & Security: The Pinkertons
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554 Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1143 American White Collar fraud; criminals take $272 billion/year in healthcare
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – #4: Gun Rights/2nd Amendment

The vision of the Go Lean roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. This means measurable reduction (mitigating and remediation) of interpersonal violence in the region. The Go Lean book presents a regional solution – CariPol et al – to remediate and mitigate street crime in the Caribbean, featuring details of strategies, tactics and implementations designed from world class best-practices to reduce street violence in the region.

The premise in the Go Lean book is that “bad actors” will always emerge, from internal and external origins. We must be prepared and on-guard to defend our homeland against all threats, foreign and domestic, including street crime and interpersonal violence. Plus, we must accomplish this goal with maximum transparency, accountability, and commitment to due-process and the rule-of-law. Thusly, there is a place for closed-circuit TV (CCTV), dashboard and body cameras. If there is the community “will”, the CU will ensure the “way”!

An additional mission is to lower the “push” factors (from “push-and-pull” reference) so that our citizens are not led to flee their homeland for foreign (North American and European) shores. Where we have failed in the past, we now want to reform and transform our communities, so that we can re-invite our Diaspora to return; this time, offering security assurances. Among the many reasons people emigrate or refuse to repatriate, is victimization of interpersonal violence or fear of crime.

There is “good, bad and ugly” in every society. We must therefore mitigate the “need, greed and justice” reasons for interpersonal violence in our society.

So all stakeholders in the Caribbean – people and institutions – are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap for the elevation of the Caribbean’s societal engine: economy, security and governance. The roadmap calls for the CU to do the heavy-lifting, so as to impact the Greater Good for justice, peace and security. This is conceivable, believable and achievable.  🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

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Leading with Money Matters – As Goes Housing, Goes the Market

Posted on February 18, 2018 in Economics, Implementation, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

“I put a roof over your head …” – Rebuttal from any typical father.

We have all heard the above.

If you are a father yourself, you have probably said it. It’s a rite of passage. When it comes to Money Matters, satisfying housing is a Big Deal in starting any discussion. This was the case for the motivation for the book Go Lean…Caribbean – a roadmap for the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – in considering how to reboot Caribbean economics to deviate from the current failing disposition and move the region to a path of success. Page 152 of the book stated:

House Ourselves
In the US, it’s a truism of the National Association of Realtors® that “housing creates jobs”. With the repatriation of the Caribbean Diaspora, local building supplies and new “housing starts” will emerge in the Caribbean. Plus, the CU will facilitate mortgage secondary market and pre-fabulous construction thereby fostering new housing sub-industries.
See the original source of this quotation – from November 2013 – in the Appendix below.

Housing is a basic need. Everyone must have a solution. This premise is not in doubt. An amount of a country Gross Domestic Product will always be spent on housing. So this industry is a bellwether – an indicator or predictor of trends – for the rest of the economy: As goes housing, goes the market.

Consider your own economy!

What percentage of your monthly budget goes to housing? (In many urban areas, housing can account for 60%).

Now multiply that by 42 million people. Welcome to the quest to reform and transform the Caribbean societal engines. Considering the 3 societal engines of a community – economics, security and governance – it is so much easier to lead and get people to comply – to lean-in – if there are empowerments for housing.

Housing relates to economics, security and governance. This is a strong theme in the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it asserts that the best way to get regional buy-in for change is to lead with Money Matters. Consider how these 3 engines are impacted:

  • Economics – mortgages, construction jobs, insurance risk pools, etc. See the reference article from November 2013 in the Appendix below
  • Security – Emergency Management, Fire Rescue, Disaster Recovery, etc.
  • Governance – Property registration, tax assessment, collection, etc.

This commentary is the 4th of a 5-part series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of Money Matters for leading the Caribbean down a different path from their status quo. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Leading with Money Matters: Follow the Jobs
  2. Leading with Money Matters: Competing for New Industries
  3. Leading with Money Matters: Almighty Dollar 
  4. Leading with Money Matters: As Goes Housing, Goes the Market
  5. Leading with Money Matters: Lottery Hopes and Dreams

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can persuade the region stakeholders to follow this empowerment roadmap for empowerment in this region. If we “dangle money in front of our subjects”, they will follow.

Here’s a little known Caribbean fact:

This is our Caribbean reality when it comes to housing. We must go from Zero to Hero. Imagine the institutional revenues from new mortgage opportunities; imagine the tax revenue and collections; imagine the jobs. The Go Lean book relates these and also one additional industrial development that can be pursued for the housing sector:

Pre-Fabricated Housing
One mission of the CU is to enable the region to facilitate its own shelter (plus food & clothing). A successful campaign to repatriate the Diaspora, and attract Retirement/Medical Tourists creates a new demand level for housing. The supply of housing will be met with different solutions, including Prefabricated options. In terms of demand, Pre-Fab homes are becoming popular in the EU and North America as they are cheaper compared to many existing homes on the market. The 2007-2009 Global Financial crisis, however, deflated the cost of regular houses in North America and Europe, so the “cheaper” benefits was not so valued during/after this crisis period. But the CU is a different market than the North America or Europe, resembling the Third World more so than the developed world, so a lot of the current housing is sub-standard and need to be replaced anyway.

——–

See samples in the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – 21 Coolest Affordable Modern Prefab Houses – https://youtu.be/h2cZm4heamI


INSPIRING HOME DECOR IDEAS

Published on Jul 18, 2017 – 21 Coolest Affordable Modern Prefab Houses

The book further relates that this new industrial expression can create 8.000 direct jobs in the design, fabrication and logistics for new pre-fabricated homes. While these are direct jobs, there is also the reality of indirect jobs – unrelated service and attendant functions – that at a 3.75 multiplier rate would add another 30,000 jobs. That’s 38,000 in total!

The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic CU, with a charter to elevate Caribbean society by optimizing the delivery of the region’s basic needs. With 144 missions, the dynamics of housing is identified specifically as one of the missions for the Go Lean/CU roadmap; so too the quest for Pre-Fab housing. The book highlights the CU’s prime directives, as described by these statements:

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

The Go Lean roadmap, and the Appendix reference, calls for the region to double-down its efforts to optimize local housing initiatives. Economic growth will be the result. This need was identified early in the Go Lean book, in the opening pronouncement in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14), as follows:

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like prefabricated housing ….

The Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap constitutes a change for the region, a plan to consolidate 30 member-states into a Trade Federation with the tools/techniques to bring immediate change to the region to benefit one and all member-states. The roadmap calls for collaboration of the region’s housing needs at a CU federal agency. Though there is a separation-of-powers mandate between the member-states and federal agencies, the CU can still wield influence. It is only logical to conclude that people will “follow the money” as the CU optimizes the societal engines around housing.

As related in the first commentary in this series, Psychologist Abraham Maslow addressed the subject of basic needs. He established a “Hierarchy of Needs” that depicted the fact that basic needs – food, clothing and shelter – must be the first priority for society. All efforts towards higher-level needs – art, beauty, esteem, etc. – can only be engaged once those basic needs are satisfied. So handling Money Matters like housing will lead to more appreciation for the beauty of Caribbean life.

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of detailed instructions regarding the community ethos needed to effect change and empowerment in the housing arena; plus the executions of the required strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact housing solutions. One particular advocacy relates directly to Housing (Page 161); consider some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from that advocacy in the book:

10 Ways to Improve Housing … in the Caribbean Region

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market
This will allow 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). The CU‘s trade initiatives allows for more efficient exchange of goods & services that directly impact the supply and demand for housing. A basic economic precept is that houses should appreciate in value, doubling every 15 – 20 years. This grows individuals & community’s net worth.The CU will also provide e-Government services, outsourced for local governments, for property information systems for member countries, emulating a County Property Tax Recorder, Assessment and Collection operation for a typical US state/county. For economies-of-scale, the costs of installing and maintaining mainframe computer applications will be shared by many member states. This will allow for better property mapping/zoning, recording, tax assessment, tax rolls and tax collection. Mortgages must have clear title. This will also foster new industries, jobs, financial products, entrepreneurship & private investments. Regulation of building codes & standards come under peer review under the CU.
2 Public Housing Grants and Low-Interest Loans

This allows for greater infrastructure investment for mixed-used facilities, green initiatives, local efforts for urban and rural housing options. The goal will be to avoid the ghetto effect, while still fostering a free market for low-cost housing. Some public housing has to be designated exclusively for elder-care, as this population has different needs.
3 Promote Pre-fab-“ulous” Industry
4 Regulate and Promote Green Energy Deployments
5 Economic Incentives for “Energy Star” Appliances
6 Energy Co-ops and Power Grid Adoption

Communities should be able to organize energy coops, regulated at the CU level, and sell services back to their

constituents. These coops can co-exist with existing utilities and monopolies by buying power from the suppliers and/or

augmenting with alternative energy options like wind farm, tidal turbines, and natural gas. A grid makes this possible.
7 Hurricane Risk Reinsurance Fund

This fund fits the Emergency Management objectives of rebuilding and restoring after disasters. This is similar to

Florida’s Joint Underwriters Association but instead regulated at the CU so as to maximize the premium pool.
8 Mortgage Secondary Financial Markets

Financial institutions get the benefits of mortgage-backed securities to replenish their lending capital. These institutions

should only invest in bonds and other instruments rated AAA for municipal and Central Bank investments.
9 Mortgage Origination, Appraisals and Servicing Standards Enforcement

The CU wants to model the US economy and nation building strategies. But there are bad American examples to avoid

as well. A prime lesson learned from the 2008 US sub-prime crisis is to ensure governance in this industry. The CU will

implement appropriate oversight over mortgages, along the entire vertical line, to ensure compliance and best-practices.
10 Credit Reporting and Ratings for Consumers, Companies and Institutions

The CU will mandate fair credit reporting rules and accountability from industry players. The appropriate oversight will feature the Housing and Urban Authority (within the Interior Department) regulating for consumer credit and the Treasury Department regulating the Securities Rating industry for best practice compliance. (See Appendix GC – Page 276 – for 2008 lessons).

The housing industry refers to more than just the house you live in, it includes the art-and-science of the raw materials and construction equipment, mortgage industry, credit eco-system, property insurance, property taxes, municipal services, power utility and energy efficiency. Rebooting the Caribbean economic engines means covering all of these related areas. This is the heavy-lifting of reforming and transforming the regional homeland.

In summary, the housing industry is a “bellwether” for the actual economy. If we can improve Caribbean housing, we can improve the Caribbean economy. If we can lead with Money Matters, we can reform and transform Caribbean society, make it a better homeland to live, work and play.

Yes, we can.

Everyone in Caribbean – residents, businesses, governments – are hereby urged to lean-in to the Go Lean roadmap for this  empowerment. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

————

Appendix – Jobs Impact of an Existing Home Purchase

The National Association of Realtors® estimates that one job is generated for every two home sales.  Using that ratio, 1,000 home sales generate 500 jobs.

The ratio is derived from the economic impact of an existing home sale. Each home sale contributes about sixty thousand dollars to the economy or Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The component measures of this figure are shown in the table below (full methodology page available).

Impact of Single Existing Home Purchase

Median Price $173,000

Real Estate Industries Related Industries
(Furniture/Gardening)		 Local Economic
Multiplier		 New Housing
Construction
Inducement		 Total
Contribution
$15,570 + $5,235 + $9,987 + $27,738 = $58,529

GDP can be measured in three ways, one of which is the sum of all income1. Using the income concept and comparing GDP2 to the number of payroll workers in the US3, we find that the average income per employee was $113,000 in 2010.

This is an over-estimation of salary income since income can be earned from profits, rents, and other sources, however this gives us a ceiling to earnings per worker. Survey data show that full time US workers earned a median of $42,400 and average of $57, 4004 in 2009.

Putting these figures together reveals that every two home sales generate one job.

Income from two home sales: $117,058 Income from two home sales $117,058
Income per worker (GDP/worker): $113,000 Income per worker
(Average Earnings):		 $57,400
Workers per two home sales: 1.04 Workers per two home sales: 2.04

 

Impact => 2 home sales = 1 job Impact => 2 home sales = 2 jobs

1 GDP can also be measured using what is called the expenditure approach or the value added approach. See
http://www.bea.gov/national/pdf/nipa_primer.pdf(link is external) for details.
2 GDP ranged between $14.4 and $14.9 trillion in 2010 per the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
3 Payroll employment in 2010 ranged between 129 and 130 million per the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
4 BLS/Census Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement 2010

Source: National Association of Realtors. “Jobs Impact of an Existing Home Purchase”. Retrieved November 2013 from:

http://www.realtor.org/topics/home-ownership-matters/jobs-impact-of-an-existing-home-purchase

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Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar

Posted on February 17, 2018 in Economics, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

If you cannot beat them, join them … then beat them – New Twist on Old Adage

The plan to optimize the Caribbean societal engines entails confederating all of the 30 member-states in the region. This includes the American territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The confederation plan also entails consolidating all the currencies into the one Caribbean Dollar (C$).

Wait, what?!

Do we think we can wrestle The Almighty US Dollars from these US Territories and make them use C$?

Who are we kidding?! What are we smoking?! The Almighty Dollar is the World’s reserve currency!

Yes, there is the cultural concept of The Almighty Dollar from which so many artistic developments have emerged; (source: Wikipedia). The concept refers the idiom often used to satirize obsession with material wealth, or with capitalism in general. The phrase implies that money is a kind of deity. The following is a sample of artistic outputs with that exact title:

Are “we” planning to supplant The Almighty Dollar from usage by Caribbean people? The answer is No! There is no plan to deviating from the US$. Rather the plan is for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to join the US dollar, or rather for the US dollar to join us. This plan is eloquently featured in the book Go Lean…Caribbean with this concise quotation (Page 32):

CCB – Mixed Basket – Monetary Strength
An obscure Murphy’s Law states “when people claim that it’s the principle, and not the money, chances are, it’s the money”. There are more important things in life than money, but somehow all these things can be bought/sold … for money. The CU strategy is to consolidate monetary reserves for the region into one currency, the Caribbean Dollar, managed by the technocratic Caribbean Central Bank. The C$ will be based on a mixed-basket of foreign reserves (US dollars, Euros, British pounds & [Japanese] Yens). This strategy allows the CU to negotiate with sufficient economic strengths.

So the Go Lean book depicts more than just a plan, it serves as a roadmap for the establishment of the technocratic CU, and the allied CCB to manage the monetary-currency affairs of this region. The book describes the breath-and-width of the CCB and the Caribbean Dollar as a Single Currency. With the US$ as a subset of the currency basket, we need all the dollars we can get to strengthen the foundation of the C$ currency.

The C$ manifest as an electronic currency, more so than coins or notes.

This manifestation requires further explanation. In a previous blog-commentary, the analogy of casino money was presented. Consider this excerpt:

[Casino] tokens, chips and e-Cards … become a nominal or fiat currency themselves; their value is set by the issuer to be any denomination they want – they may choose to make $100 chips Blue, $1000 chips Green and $10,000 chips Red or any combination. The only thing that matters is the cash-out process: when the gamers wants to receive real world currency value for any chips in hand.
…

Money is not just currency and currency is not just money. Currency relates to a national designation (US dollar, British pounds, Chinese Yuan, etc.) or a regional designation like the Euro or the Eastern Caribbean/EC dollar. Money, on the other hand is a matter of four (4) functions:

  • A Medium …
  • A Measure …
  • A Standard …
  • A Store …

Casino currencies (tokens, chips and e-Cards) perform all these 4 functions; and more …
…
Desisting from economic fallacies, there is a dose of reality in the Go Lean roadmap: the US will not allow its territories to wean off the US dollar as the currency base. But there is no controversy if the Caribbean dollar is an electronic currency for PR and USVI.

This is the plan!

This commentary is the 3rd of a 5-part series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of Money Matters for leading the Caribbean down a different path from their status quo. This commentary asserts that there is a place for The Almighty US Dollar in the Caribbean plan because the C$ will be transacted mostly as an electronic currency or e-Money. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Leading with Money Matters: Follow the Jobs
  2. Leading with Money Matters: Competing for New Industries
  3. Leading with Money Matters: Almighty Dollar
  4. Leading with Money Matters: As Goes Housing, Goes the Market
  5. Leading with Money Matters: Lottery Hopes and Dreams

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can more easily persuade the region stakeholders to follow this empowerment roadmap. Consolidating the currency qualifies as “low hanging fruit”, new capital will result, just as a by-product of M1 Money Multiplier.  This was explained in a prior Go Lean commentary as follows:

Benefits outside of the payment transaction; the scheme increases M1, which increases available bank capital for community investments. (M1 is the measurement of currency/money in circulation – M0 – plus overnight bank deposits. As M1 values increase, there is a dynamic to create money “from thin-air”, called the money multiplier. The more money in the system, the more liquidity for investment and industrial expansion.)

Low hanging fruit, yes, but it is heavy-lifting to deliver. There is the need to optimize the technology and tactics for e-Money deployment. This is the role-responsibility for the lean, technocratic CCB to feature the agility to keep pace of technology and market changes. With such an efficient and effective delivery, it is only logical to conclude that people will “follow the money”. Then when even more money is created, people will conform, comply and capitulate even further. This is why this Go Lean/CU/CCB roadmap depicts e-Money as a hallmark of technocratic efficiency. The New York City MetroCard is an example of e-Money.

So for the Caribbean region, if we want to reform and transform our economic engines, to be better places to live, work and play, we have to dangle The Almighty Dollar” in front of our regional stakeholders. Surely, then will we get everyone’s attention.

This CU/CCB/Go Lean roadmap therefore urges the Caribbean Dollar as a Single Currency for the full Caribbean region. In effect this make the region a Single Market. These are the 3 prime directives for the Single Market:

  • Optimization of the economic-banking engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

As related in that previous commentary, a Single Currency in the Caribbean – for the Caribbean – is a BIG idea for reforming and transforming the economic engines of the 42 million people among our 30 member-states (including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands); The Go Lean book stresses that our effort must likewise be a regional pursuit, and it must also optimize our currency landscape. 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.

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.

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. There is a lot of consideration in the book for establishing the CCB and a Single Currency in the region. There have also been a lot of previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744 Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13365 Model of the West Africa Single Currency ECOWAS
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513 Transforming Money Countrywide in India
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8381 Case Study on Central Banking for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4166 A Lesson from Panama: The Balboa Currency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858 Lesson from the ECB Model: Unveiling 1 trillion Euro stimulus program
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360 Central Banks Can Create Money from ‘Thin Air’ – Here’s How
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833 Profile of the Euro: One Currency, Diverse Economies

If the planners for a new Caribbean want to reform and transform the region, then we must take the lead with regional currencies. Past currency management in the region has been dysfunctional:

Go Lean book Page 316 Appendix ZB Lessons Learned: 20 years later – Trinidad & Tobago – April 1993

TT Central Bank Floating of the TT dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=467 Barbados Central Bank records $3.7m loss in 2013

So in order to introduce a new economic leadership regime to the region, we must introduce a new currency regime, too.

This is why the Go Lean/CU/CCB effort must …

Lead with Money Matters.

In summary, shepherding the economy is no simple task, the regional economy, even harder still – described as heavy-lifting. But technocratic shepherding of regional currencies is conceivable, believable and achievable.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – government officials, bankers and ordinary citizens – to lean-in for the currency innovations  and empowerments detailed in this Go Lean roadmap. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———–

Appendix VIDEO – For The Love of Money- The O’Jays – https://youtu.be/kjuRhETwbI0

Published on Feb 5, 2010 – Classic from the great O’Jays

 

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Scheduling in the ‘Gig Economy’

Posted on February 8, 2018 in Economics, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

“There’s work at the Post Office Too” – Grandmother character in 1987 Movie Hollywood Shuffle; see Appendix.

That iconic line from this 30-year movie is mindful of the transformation taking place in the modern American economy. Despite all the changes in technologies and habits, there is always “honorable” work available in the service industry. Any reference to the Post Office of 1987 can be replaced today with the Gig Economy.

Gig Economy?

Oh yes, this is all the rage! This is the future! This is now! The Gig Economy refers to …

… an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements. The trend toward a Gig Economy has begun. A study by [financial software company] Intuit predicted that by 2020, 40 percent of American workers would be independent contractors. – Source

This trend now needs to come to the Caribbean as we need jobs …

  • Full-time jobs
  • Part-time jobs
  • Gigs

See the Press Release here of the planning and organization dynamics needed to manage the Gig Economy. This Press Release is from the American company Aspect Software; they are the world’s leading enterprise cloud contact center & workforce optimization solution. See an excerpt here:

Title: Scheduling in the Gig Economy
By: Mike Bourke, Aspect Software SVP & General Manager for Workforce Optimization

In 50 cities across the U.S., Amazon is supplementing their USPS deliveries at times of peak demand using drivers contracting directly with Amazon in a program called Amazon Flex. Tapping for-hire drivers, each batch of deliveries is essentially a “gig” in the quickly growing trend of the Gig Economy. Popularized by Uber and Lyft, the Gig Economy pairs independent, on-demand contractors with organizations for short-term engagements. With Amazon Flex, the company uses a mobile app for drivers to post their personal preferred schedules, which can include very short availability windows. Amazon then displays available “blocks” of time for making deliveries. The driver selects a block, and at the designated time, goes to the local pickup location to start deliveries.

Other industries are quickly catching on for services such as furniture moving, dog walking and at-home makeup styling and the contact center isn’t far behind.

In the contact center, you can think of customer contacts as representing the work to be done (or the packages to be delivered in the case of Amazon). The times when customer contacts arrive and are completed create the opportunities when Gigs are available for contact center employees. Historically, most contact center agents have been employed as regular 40 hour/week full-time employees, even though their schedules might be erratic as call volumes rise and fall throughout the week. However, that history is yielding to pressures from many different directions that point to a very different future for a sizeable percentage of the agent population. Consider the following factors that make the Gig Economy attractive for agents and businesses.

Mutual Benefits of the Gig Economy

  • Businesses Reduce Expenses – Using independent contractors in the contact center or any other type of business, can reduce the cost of employees by 30% because the employer is not required to pay benefits such as payroll taxes, worker’s comp insurance, unemployment insurance, vacation time or health benefits.
  • Employees Can Work-at-Home – The Gig Economy is already in full swing in some segments of the contact center industry. The 25% annual growth of work-at-home (WAH) agents is nothing short of spectacular and is a bellwether for the future of the contact center industry.  Offering both the ability to work remotely and part-time, WAH could be the future of the contact center industry.  With the growing adoption of telecommuting in many businesses, why not for agents?  WAH also creates part-time work for a whole segment of the population with physical disabilities, childcare issues or poor commuting options.  With more part-time workers, contact centers also have a more agile workforce that can ramp up and down quickly, matching contact center staffing to call volumes   WAH has huge momentum, and its growth will help make part-time contact center work commonplace.
  • Businesses Can Access Specialized Skills – In the past few years, technology has finally advanced to the point where it is a good substitute for a human conversation. And since 81% of customers prefer self-service to agent assisted service, the simpler work will eventually go to automated self-service, and only the more complex tasks will go to agents. Studies show that 95% of agents are only willing to drive up to 30 minutes to work.  For more specialized skills, contact centers may need to reach out beyond that current geographic boundary, further stimulating the need for part-time work-at-home agents.
  • Employees Get Flexible Schedules – Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation, and contact centers are rife with them. It’s well known that Millennials dearly value their work-life balance, and that means that they want to easily flex their work schedules around their personal lives.  Many value complete control over their work schedule above a higher income and/or benefits, and that’s the perfect profile of an Uber driver or part-time contact center agent.
  • Businesses Can Manage Volume Spikes – Millennials are also, “always on”. They literally sleep with their cell phones, and their need to be always connected makes them perfectly accessible for notifications about unpredictable contact center “gigs” when volumes spike.  The contact center can reach out to them anytime concerning a few hours of potential work with a good chance that the receiving Millennial got the message on his or her cell phone and read it.

Implications for Workforce Management Software
To empower agents with this flexibility and control while still meeting the needs of the business, the contact center needs to adopt new WFO tools, training, infrastructure, recruiting and management practices.  This new model for labor participation especially requires a new set of contact center workforce management processes and associated technologies optimized for the quality of the service you want to deliver to customers.

The forecasting portion of WFM remains essentially the same in the Gig Economy.  We still need to accurately predict the level of demand for staff for each type of work.  But scheduling of individuals for the work predicted is quite different.  We need new work rules such as:

  • What is the minimum length of a work session? It takes a few minutes to connect to contact control and CRM and other necessary systems, and some amount of time to successfully resolve a customer’s contact as well as do any wrap up work. For example, if your average contact handling time is 14 minutes, you won’t want to allow employees to end up with a work session that is only 10 minutes long.
  • How much time-off must be allowed between work sessions? There is a cost to disconnecting from systems and connecting again and mentally getting up to speed to successfully work with customers.
  • What is the maximum allowable time that can be worked per day and week? In the Gig Economy, we must manage this issue as well based on regional employment limitations.

These rules then determine the inventory of blocks of time (or gigs) that can be offered to each agent.

In the traditional world of agent scheduling, agents have wanted predictable schedules with fixed shifts.  Schedules would remain the same every day for a known period of time.  Usually, customer volumes would change faster than the ability of these inflexible blocks to adapt, so contact centers would often need to overstaff to preserve SLAs.  In the Gig Economy world, the workforce management system makes available shorter schedule blocks with a wider range of start times from which agents can choose.  An agent can likely find some blocks that work well for his or her desired flexible schedule.  On the flip side, if an agent wants a full 40 hour week, he or she will likely have to pick schedules from some unpopular times.  Likewise, if the business allows agents to work shifts that are irregular and unconventional, there are likely to be gaps in coverage that will need to be filled by requiring inconvenient shifts to be worked by some agents.  Of course, these unpopular times could be more highly compensated if labor laws allow, or they can be gamified, awarding tokens that can be traded in for vacation days or other awards.  Also, peak times may be a target for incentives, and some companies may even require some selection of peak times before selecting other more flexible gig times.

See the remainder of the article here:

http://blogs.aspect.com/scheduling-in-the-gig-economy/ posted January 12, 2018; retrieved February 7, 2018.
——–
About the Author
Mike Bourke is Aspect’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of Workforce Optimization. Mike is responsible for charting the strategic direction, and continuing the momentum of Aspect’s global workforce optimization suite and continuing the solution’s availability in the Aspect Cloud.

This Press Release identified Amazon … again. They are one of the “early adopters”, movers-and-shakers of the art-and-science of the Gig Economy. Amazon is also a mover-and-shaker in many other areas of job creation. As related in a previous Go Lean commentary, the Amazon model should really be studied by the economic stewards for a new Caribbean. That blog related:

Amazon is not just a giant on the internet, in the areas of electronic commerce. No they are emerging as a giant in the real world as well. The company has over 380,000 employees worldwide and 40,000+ at their Seattle, Washington USA headquarters. That is a BIG corporate presence. In fact, economic analysts had tabulated the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contribution to Seattle at $US 38 Billion. Wow!

There is always work at the Post Office (USPS) and now Amazon is supplementing their USPS deliveries at times of peak demand by using drivers who contract directly with their Amazon Flex program.

We now have a “clear path” of what we need to do to optimize the Caribbean economic and job-creation engines. “Clear paths” are important ingredients for roadmaps. The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and also the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU), which is modeled after Amazon.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed to elevate the Caribbean’s societal engines starting first with economics (jobs, industrial development and entrepreneurial opportunities). In fact, the following 3 statements are identified as the prime directives of the CU:

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

As related in the foregoing Press Release, to embrace the Gig Economy there is the need to keep an eye on Technology. In the Go Lean book, this dynamic is identified as an “Agent of Change“ in modern society. The Go Lean roadmap also seeks to introduce the tactical use of incubators. This is explained in the book (Page 28) as the process and engagement of programs to support the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services. We need more expressions of the Gig Economy in our Caribbean region.

Amazon is embracing the Gig Economy. The Caribbean needs to embrace the Gig Economy. The Caribbean needs to follow Amazon’s model and incubate these arts-and-sciences. While Amazon’s modus operandi is not to be an incubator, they have invested heavily in many other tech-related companies and technical concepts, including the Workforce Management products from Aspect Software (highlighted in the foregoing Press Release). While Aspect is not the only provider, following their lead means assimilating advanced concepts, strategies, tactics and implementations. This assimilation means adopting a new “community ethos”. This is what is defined in the Go Lean book as “community ethos”:

  1. The fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.
  2. The character or disposition of a community, group, person, etc.

We need this community ethos – and the accompanying technocratic stewardship – in the Caribbean so that we can incubate more and more jobs, especially in the Gig Economy! In total, we can create 2.2 million new jobs.

The 370-pages of the Go Lean book stresses some specific community ethos that the region needs to adopt, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society. The required technocratic stewardship for the region’s economic engines was presented early in the book with these opening pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 and 14):

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.

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

The points of effective, technocratic stewardship were further elaborated upon in previous blog-commentaries. Consider this sample of submissions that stressed the eco-systems of job-creation, gigs and incubation:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13916 Model of ‘Gig Economy’ – Mother’s Love in Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13420 A Lesson in History – Community Incubation for Whaling
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8262 UberEverything in Africa – Model of ‘Gigs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991 Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857 Model of ‘Gig Economy’ – Entrepreneurism in Junk
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2571 AirBnB ‘Gig Economy’ Options Materializing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528 Facebook’s advances for e-Commerce payments

In addition, previous blog-commentaries also elaborated on the business model of Amazon. See these samples as follows:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13627 Amazon: Then and Now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13091 Amazon Opens Search for HQ2
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12291 Big Tech’s Amazon – The Retailers’ Enemy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11358 Retail Apocalypse – Preparing for the Inevitable
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7297 Death of the ‘Department Store’: Exaggerated or Eventual
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7023 Thanksgiving & American Commerce – Past, Present and Amazon
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416 Model of an E-Commerce Fulfillment Company: Amazon

For the Caribbean, let’s pay attention to Amazon, and the development of the Gig Economy. Let’s do the Gig Economy. Let’s incubate!

Let’s lean-in and learn how incubator programs are structured by community stewards to create jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities. We need them … here at home! We need them now!

The lessons we learned will help us elevate from our past dysfunctions and build a better future. We must learn, if we want to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. This is our quest! 🙂

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

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

———-

Appendix VIDEO – Movie: Hollywood Shuffle (1987) Clip – https://youtu.be/XXaZQ5tlY40

Published July 24, 2015 – About the movie

An actor limited to stereotypical roles because of his ethnicity, dreams of making it big as a highly respected performer. As he makes his rounds, the film takes a satiric look at African American actors in Hollywood. Written, produced, directed and starring Robert Townsend, – Source: IMDB.com

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Future Focused – Policing the Police

Posted on November 14, 2017 in Government, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

It’s the economy, Stupid!
Quotation from Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton’s 1992 response to a question on voters’ primary issue.

Actually, there are other issues too, when considering why people flee from their Caribbean homeland and pursue life as a foreigner in the Diaspora – for some countries, according to a World Bank report, the vast majority of the college-educated population (60 to 81 percent) have fled. As was related in the Clinton quote, the primary reason is economic, but there are security concerns as well.

This commentary is about optimizing the police and security apparatus in the Caribbean region. If the region is to transform from its dysfunctional past to a brighter future, we must address regional security as strenuously as we address regional economics.

This discussion aligns with a motivation of the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – to dissuade Caribbean citizens from abandoning their homelands and invite the Diaspora to return, to repatriate. The movement describes the “Push” and “Pull” reasons why people leave in the first place, 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 Crime Victims, Domestic-abuse, LGBT, Disability, Medically-challenged– for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. For these people, it is like “they are on fire” and need to stop-drop-and-roll.
  • “Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; this is mostly economic in nature as people are emigrating on the false perception that they can have a better “home” abroad.

Yes, while deficient economics – the primary reason – may affect the wallet, security deficiencies may affect life-and-death. Deficiencies – not enough – are not the only problem with Caribbean security measures; sometimes the problem is too much, as in “abuses”. All in all, there is the need to Police the Police – see the definitions of the noun and the verb in Appendix B – to give help and support, yes, but accountability too. Why the checks-and-balances? “No justice, no peace”. (See the depiction of unrestrained police abuse in the Appendix VIDEO below).

The Go Lean book therefore focuses on the future and how we can assuage both economics and security inequities. At the outset, this Future Focused book states (Page 3) that the economy of the Caribbean is inextricably linked to the security of the region. Therefore any economic action plan must also include a security pact to implement the mechanisms to ensure greater homeland protections. These efforts must monitor and mitigate against power abuses, economic crimes, systemic threats and also facilitate natural disaster planning and response agencies.

Every Caribbean member-state has a police/security entity, and yet there are so many security inadequacies. The future must therefore include better solutions and better deliveries. The Go Lean book provides a 370-page turn-by-turn guide for forging a new future; it details “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies so as to formulate change, to deviate from the current path and foster a brighter-better-safer future. This would mean reforming and transforming the police and security apparatus. This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the societal engines, including the optimization of the regional security apparatus and justice institutions.

There is currently a regional security apparatus, but it is very deficient! Consider the news article in Appendix A below, depicting the IMPACS investigation of Police excessive force/extra judicial killings (12) in St. Lucia. IMPACS is the formal name for the CARICOM agency with the anti-crime scope. IMPACS = Implementation Agency for Crime and Security.

Improving or elevating the regional security apparatus, is a mandate of this Future Focused roadmap; the plan is to Police the Police.

This commentary continues this series on the Caribbean Future; this is Part 4 of 5 on this subject. The full series is catalogued as follows:

  1. Future Focused – Personal Development and the Internet
  2. Future Focused – College, Caribbean Style
  3. Future Focused – Radio is Dead
  4. Future Focused – Policing the Police
  5. Future Focused – e-Government Portal 101

We accept that all is not well in the Caribbean – in fact the region is in crisis – but it can get better … in the future. We have challenges and opportunities. The Future Focus allows us to work to assuage the challenges. This is what the Go Lean book presents, a workable roadmap to effect change in all societal engines. In fact, the roadmap features these 3 Future Focused 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 features this excerpt-summary (Page 23) of Security Principles:

This roadmap for Caribbean integration declares that peace, security and public safety is tantamount to economic prosperity. This is why an advocacy for the Greater Good must be championed as a community ethos. A prime precept is that it is “better to know than to not know” – this implies that privacy is secondary to security. A secondary precept is that bad things will happen to good people and so the community needs to be prepared to contend with the risks that can imperil the homeland.

  1. Privacy versus Public Protection 
  2. Whistleblower Protection 
  3. Witness Security & Protection 
  4. Anti-Bullying and Mitigation 
  5. Intelligence Gathering 
  6. Light Up the Dark Places 
  7. “Crap” Happens

Rampant crime and security inadequacies can drive good people away from their beloved homelands … to settle in as refugees in foreign lands, where their prospects for life is only one of marginalization, until the next generation. We must do a better job of protecting our people here at home; and we must protect the protectors; and protect the people from the protectors. These are the challenges – heavy-lifting – of shepherding society in a pluralistic democracy.

This point had been further detailed in previous blog-commentaries, depicting the Future Focus of the CU/Go Lean roadmap:

  • Mitigating the Eventual ‘Abuse of Power’
    Since “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, there is the need to monitor, mitigate and manage the risks of bad behavior among law enforcement and security personnel. The CU/Go Lean roadmap is designed with the needed protections in mind to ensure a safer community.
  • Ten Puerto Rico Police Accused of Criminal Network
    A news article reports on corruption by 10 police officials that have undermined Puerto Rico’s justice institutions. This is not so surprising, as the Go Lean book relates that “bad actors” will always emerge to exploit the community. Despite the American territorial status, this threat is still ever-present in Puerto Rico. They need the full protection of a technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
  • Support sought for kids left behind by UN troops in Haiti
    The United Nations Security/Peacekeeping Forces in Haiti did some good … and some bad. Their personnel needed to be held to account for their impropriety. There is a greater need for a local/regional security solution, for the protections and accountability – there is a Military Justice eco-system embedded in the CU/Go Lean roadmap.
  • Grenada Diaspora Bails-out National Police with Protective Gear
    Who do national Police Forces call now when they have a problem bigger than they can handle with their resources? The answers are limited. This demonstrates the need for a better regional security apparatus – this is the CU/Go Lean roadmap – to support the local police institutions – to step in, step up and help out.
  • Securing the Homeland – On the Ground
    The CU/Go Lean roadmap calls for the acquisition and deployment of advanced security systems (hardware and software). Many of the cutting-edge solutions allow the security forces to do more with less.
  • Waging a Successful War on ‘Terrorism’
    The threat of terrorism is just too big for community policing. The solutions require a bigger effort than what any one Caribbean member-state can muster alone. The CU/Go Lean roadmap provides a technocratic regional option.
  • Prisoners for Profit – Abuses in the Prison Industrial Complex
    The human rights of prisoners are easily abused and their labors exploited without the proper stewardship in the security apparatus. The CU/Go Lean security roadmap considers lessons learned from the ugly US history.
  • Justice Strategy: Special Prosecutors / Commissions of Inquiries … et al
    Security engines are complicated to implement in society; they require a political process, consensus-building and compromise. But abuses abound! So there must be checks-and-balances and escalation for conflict resolutions. The CU/Go Lean roadmap calls for optimized justice institutions based on best practices from other societies.

The effort, as detailed in this commentary: to better secure the homeland and optimize justice institutions, is designed to lower the “push-pull” factors that lead to the current atrocious Caribbean brain-drain rate.

In addition, “power” is often associated with abuse, so there is the plan to “check” those with power, and the security institutions.

Can we improve community policing in the Caribbean homeland? Can we better protect those protecting society? Can we provide checks-and-balances on those who wield the power?

Yes, we can!

Though this is not easy – heavy-lifting – it is conceivable, believable and achievable.

This is the kind of Future Focused efforts that are needed to reform and transform Caribbean society – we must Police the Police – to make our homelands better- safer places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix A – National Security Minister cautions against identifying officers in IMPACS investigation

The National Security Minister [of St. Lucia] has advised journalists against exposing the identity of the police officers currently being questioned as part of the IMPACS investigation. [(CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security)].

Hermangild Francis says the officers have not been charged and could become targets in their communities.

“To go around showing persons pictures who have not even been charged or anything like that is unfair and a very dangerous precedent that is being set. So I want to make an appeal to the press that they refrain from showing the photographs of anybody that the DPP [(Director of Public Prosecutions)] will speak to,” Francis said.

Three officers have been brought in for questioning as the Officer of the Director of Public Prosecutions seeks to bring an end to the IMPACS case amid mounting pressure from the United States and the European Union.

Former Prime Minister Dr Kenny Anthony had in 2013 commissioned an investigation by the Caribbean Community IMPACS agency into alleged extra judicial killings by members of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force (RSLPF).

The killings occurred under a special police operation dubbed “operation Restore Confidence” instituted during a period of heightened criminal activity.

In an address to the nation on March 8, 2015 on certain aspects contained in the report, Anthony said, among other things, that the police staged fake encounters and planted evidence in the 12 fatal shootings that took place.

In August 2013, the United States suspended all forms of assistance to the RSLPF, citing allegations of serious human rights violations.

Francis is concerned that publishing images of the officers being questioned in the matter could place their lives in jeopardy.

“A lot of persons are going to be brought in for questioning; some persons who were involved and some people who were not involved. And by showing the photographs of everybody who goes to the DPP is jeopardizing the lives and the safety of the majority of these officers,” he added.
Source: Posted September 22, 2017; retrieved November 13, 2017 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2017/09/22/national-security-minister-cautions-identifying-officers-impacs-investigation

————

Appendix B – Definitions: Police

Noun

  1. Also called police force. an organized civil force for maintaining order, preventing and detecting crime, and enforcing the laws.
  2. (used with a plural verb) members of such a force:
    Several police are patrolling the neighborhood.
  3. the regulation and control of a community, especially for the maintenance of public order, safety, health, morals, etc.
  4. the department of the government concerned with this, especially with the maintenance of order.
  5. any body of people officially maintained or employed to keep order, enforce regulations, etc.
  6. people who seek to regulate a specified activity, practice, etc.:
    the language police.
  7. a.  the cleaning and keeping clean of a camp, post, station, etc.
    b.  the condition of a camp, post, station, etc., with reference to cleanliness.

Verb (used with object), policed, policing.

  1. to regulate, control, or keep in order by or as if by means of police.
  2. to clean and keep clean (a camp, post, etc.)

Source: Retrieved November 14, 2017 from: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/police?s=t

————

Appendix VIDEO – KAMAU – PohLease [Official video] – https://youtu.be/nhMxQXTX2ak

BrotherKAMAU

Published on Aug 31, 2016 – “Who Police the Police … when they get out of line”.

“PohLease” – off of our debut EP “A Gorgeous Fortune”

The Socials: https://www.facebook.com/KAMAUothm; https://twitter.com/brotherKAMAU; https://www.instagram.com/brotherkamau/; https://soundcloud.com/brotherKAMAU

Available Now: http://smarturl.it/AGorgeousFortune ; Stream – http://smarturl.it/StreamAGF

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Future Focused – Radio is Dead … Almost

Posted on November 12, 2017 in Industries, Strategy, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

‘Focusing on the Future’ means letting go of the past!

This is easier said than done, but when it comes to investing time, talents and treasuries we should always focus our energies on going forward and not going backwards, on where the market is going and not where the market has been.

Alert: Radio, as a communications medium, is dead and dying. This applies in the advanced democracy of the US and in the Caribbean.

Doubtful about this actuality in the Caribbean? See the article in Appendix A below describing the closure of the state-run national radio station in St. Lucia.

Other media for communications – think newspapers, magazines and books – are also dead or dying. These are also identified as Old Media. In a previous blog-commentary, the following observance was made:

Print is not dead… yet? I almost didn’t notice!

If print is not dead yet, does that mean it is going to put up a fight? Will it make a comeback? I say “No”. It is just a matter of time. Print might experience only a slow death, but die … it will.

This has been the conclusion of the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. The point is that societies have been transformed; old strategies, old tactics. old implementations simply do not work anymore. Ignore this reality at your own peril.

Doubtful about this actuality in the US? See the article in Appendix B below describing the regulatory transformation to allow Old Media companies to consolidate to survive in the US. (Some media firms have a winning model; see Appendix VIDEO).

This fact – transformations in society – was an early motivation for the Go Lean book. It identified that the Caribbean region had been beset by these macro transformations, identified as Agents of Change in society:

  • Technology
  • Globalization
  • Aging Diaspora
  • Climate Change

The Caribbean region had not keep pace and suffered the peril … alluded to above. Our region is now in crisis.

Alas, the book asserts (Page 8) that this “crisis is a terrible thing to waste” and has provided new strategies, new tactics and new implementations so as to elevate Caribbean society. According to the book (Page 186), stewards of the Caribbean must embrace New Media – Internet and Communications Technologies – in order to communicate and engage Caribbean people in society. The book presents this Case Study:

The Bottom Line on Old Media versus New Media

The internet and mobile communications has changed the modern world; many industries that once flourished (music retailers, travel agencies, book sales, line telephone companies), now flounder. Media distribution via the internet or mobile devices are referred to as “new media”, while old distribution channels like newspapers, magazines, TV and radio are referred to as “old media”. The mainstream (“old”) media is pivotal for “freedom of the press” as they are effective at standing up to big institutions like governments and corporations. The art of “good” journalism requires the deeper pockets that mainstream media bring to the market, but old media is dying financially.

New media, on the other hand, is an aggregation of mainstream media. With the ubiquity of new media devices, people have freer, easier access and more options to news and information. On the plus side, there is now a greater diversity of ideas and viewpoints, on the minus side, with too many options, people tend to isolate their news consumption to only the views they want to hear. As new media matures, it is expected that it will take over the social responsibilities of old media, adopt the best practices of journalism, like fact checking (with the ease of information retrieval online), and finally return the industry to financial viability.

Old Media – radio, print (newspapers & magazines), etc. – is the past; New Media is the future.

This commentary continues this series on the Caribbean Future; this is Part 3 of 5 on this subject. The full series flows as:

  1. Future Focused – Personal Development and the Internet
  2. Future Focused – College, Caribbean Style
  3. Future Focused – Radio is Dead
  4. Future Focused – Policing the Police
  5. Future Focused – e-Government Portal 101 – Available November 15

As initiated in the first blog-commentary in this series, a focus on the future mandates that we focus on reaching young people. Hint: they are not consuming Old Media.

So the stewards of a new Caribbean must engage New Media.

The Go Lean book provides a 370-page turn-by-turn guide for forging a new future; it details “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to engage Internet and Communications Technologies (ICT) and forge change in the region to foster a new future. This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This is a Future Focused roadmap.

The Go Lean book also details that there must be a super-national management of the region’s airwave spectrum. Remember, some Caribbean member-states are only a few miles apart; two islands are actually shared by 2 different countries with a border within – Hispaniola with Haiti and the Dominican Republic; plus the Dutch and French sharing of Sint Maarten / Saint Martin. The book therefore states (Page 79) this excerpt:

D6 – Communications and Media Authority
The radio spectrum must be regulated on a regional level, beyond that of just one member-state. So as not to forge conflict with one radio/TV station from one member-state overriding the signal of another station in another state, the CU will be the overseer of all radio spectrum. This oversight will also extend to satellite regulations and broadband governance.

Though the current coordination among member-states is facilitated by national treaties, the accedence of the CU treaty will supersede all previous legal maneuvers. The scope and jurisdiction of this Agency will be exclusive to the region.

Auctions of radio spectrum can be a big source for garnering initial capital to launch the Trade Federation – this is how the CU can pay for change. But to monetize the management of radio spectrum will require one prerequisite step: convert all TV broadcasts to digital (from analog signals). This exercise is complex as it requires re-tooling all TV receptors for digital conversion – newer sets are already digital compliant. Countries like the US and the EU facilitated this conversion by granting decoding devices for the general public. This effort is too big for any one Caribbean member-state; it will require the coordination of a super-national agency, this Communications Authority.

This agency will also regulate other aspects of the media industry, promoting broadband acceptance and proliferations; plus serve as industry regulator for content issues. This agency will also liaison with an independent CU Agency for Public Broadcasting to facilitate/coordinate endeavors in the arena of public television and public radio. This includes providing funding.

Other than this Public Broadcasting functionality, this agency is modeled after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US.

Way Forward
Is there a Way Forward? Can the medium of radio be saved or maintained as a communication source to influence Caribbean minds?

Yes, but only for a little while; and perhaps only with the older generations. The Caribbean youth will require New Media.

There is a Way Forward; consider mobile (smart phones) and internet (browsers social media, search engines, etc.). But there is still some effective conscientizing taking place … on the radio. (See a previous conscientizing event here).

Consider this interview here with a “Radio Personality” in the Bahamas:

Title: Interview with a Radio Personality – Louby Georges
Radio is dying, yet many still depend on this medium for their livelihood, and as a means to engage the public. The promoters of the Go Lean movement conducted a structured interview with a “Radio Personality” in the Bahamas, Louby Georges, the Host of the show The Flipside on ZSR Sports Radio 103.5 in Nassau. He is on the frontlines of the battle of conscientizing the Caribbean market on the need to reform and transform our societal engines – he advocates for the Bahamas to better manage civil rights and human rights with the Haitian-Bahamian community; his quest is for the Bahamas to be a pluralistic democracy. (Louby is identified in this interview as LG; while the Author‘s questions are formatted in Bold). Consider his responses here as related to this endeavor to engage Caribbean people through the medium of “Radio”:

Tell me your story:

LG: I am a minority in a homogeneous society. I was born in the Bahamas after 1973, to parents that were not Bahamian citizens, (they were Haitian heritage). Therefore, I was Stateless for the first 19 years of my life. It was only at that age, that I was able to apply for my Bahamian citizenship. The award was not automatic, I had to jump through a lot of hoops, but in the end, my Bahamian citizenship was recognized. I am recognized as a “up and coming” young leader by International monitors.(I just attended  the World Festival of Youth and Students 2017 in Sochi, Russia this past October). Yet, in my own country, people would rather I “sit down and shut up”.

Tell me about your journey in radio:

LG: I started in television, as part of a entrepreneurial endeavor with some partners. It was a weekly 30 minute show on the local Cable TV channel; I provided insights of the Haitian-Bahamian community. I was subsequently offered to do “The Flipside” on the radio for every weekday. I have been doing this for 4 years now.

Though your advocacy is for the Bahamas to accept their eventuality of a pluralistic democracy, why  do you remain when it is so obvious that your presence as a pro-Haiti advocate is not welcomed?

LG: The Bahamas is the only home I know – though I speak Creole and have visited Haiti, the Bahamas is still my homeland – and I love this homeland and these people. If something is wrong in my home, then it is up to me – and other citizens –  to do the housekeeping. I have a passion for this home and a disdain for being a stranger in a foreign land.

Considering all your travels, where in the world would you consider the best place to live?

LG: I have truly travelled – though I have not lived anywhere else – before the World Youth Festival this year, I was also invited to Youth Leadership conferences in Latin America and in the US. I have seen the good, bad and ugly of the world, but for me the best place to live is here at home in the Bahamas. Is it perfect? No, but it could be “better in the Bahamas”; despite the cliché, I truly believe that.

As a businessman, how do you feel about the Bahamas economy?

LG: It is not good, some may even say the economy is dying. Many of the problems stem from the single source of economic activity, tourism. If only we can diversify then there would be so much more potential.

How do you feel about Caribbean security?

LG: This is sad. On a scale of 1 to 10, our homeland security can be rated as a 3. We must do better, be safer.

Accepting that the Caribbean in general and the Bahamas in particular is your homeland, what would you want to see there in … 5 years?

LG: More opportunities and more capital for local business minded people. Which comes first, the capital or the opportunities? Let’s work hard to solving that in the next 5 years.

What would you want to see in the Bahamas in … 10 years?

LG: We need population growth. We need a bigger market so that our economy and society can grow. It is that simple, if we want to make progress, we must grow.

But so many Caribbean people have fled their homelands; this problem persists. Your parents emigrated from Haiti; large number of Caribbean people emigrate everyday. How would you feel if your lovely daughter here, decides that she wants to live in the US, Canada or some European country?

LG: I wouldn’t feel bad, but I would hope that she would have the same love for our homeland as I do. But I would understand. My country seems to “push” people away more than they are being “pulled” by other countries. This is why some of us must fight to reform and transform our country. Count me in for the fight.

What would you want to see in the Bahamas in … … 20 years?

LG: Our country is more than just Nassau. I would like to see more Family Island development. Those islands would be perfect to try different economic diversification models.
——-
Thank you for your responses Louby and your commitment to the Bahamas, Haiti and the Caribbean. We see you; we hear you and we feel your passion. We entreat you to look here, going forward, for more solutions on making our homeland better places to live, work and play.

As related in the foregoing article, Louby Georges believes that radio can still be used to conscientize with the Bahamian population. But he cautious that this business model is failing more and more each day. See this article here depicting dissension within the media company / radio station (ZSR 103.5 FM) where he works:

Takeover of ZSR 103.5 ‘defective’, but URCA approves Sebas’s radio deal

In 2017, a focus on the future for interstate communications must also consider broadband, streaming and/or the Internet. This consideration is embedded in the Go Lean roadmap. In fact, the book presents the good stewardship – a new regime – so that ICT can be a great equalizing element for leveling the playing field in competition with the rest of the world.

This CU/Go Lean roadmap details many aspects of the societal reboot for the Caribbean, not just ICT alone. In fact, the roadmap features these 3 prime directives to reform and transform society – all Future Focused:

  • 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 stresses that transforming Caribbean communications-media “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.

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. …

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

The Go Lean book presents a detail plan for elevating existing tertiary education options and adding new ones. This federal government – CU Trade Federation – will NOT be academicians, but it will facilitate new and better education options. The motivation of this charter is the recognition that college education has failed the Caribbean region. We need to double-down on the intra-Caribbean strategy – promoting the many universities among the 30 member-states – and e-Learning options.

This Caribbean-style is Future Focused.

See the many considerations of this strategy in these previous blog-commentaries from the Go Lean movement:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13321 Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Multilingual Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10750 Less and Less People Reading Newspapers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10052 Fake News? Welcome to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328 New Media Example: YouTube Millionaire – ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6464 Sports Role Model – ‘WWE Network’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5353 POTUS and the Internet
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974 Google and Mobile Phones – Here comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1634 Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right – A Book Review
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=248 Print is dead … soon

The Go Lean movement has collected the insights of Caribbean media entrepreneurs … like Louby Georges in the foregoing interview. This book was the result. This movement declares that while “Radio is Dead or Dying”, there is the appealing opportunity for a new media landscape. Imagine a www.myCaribbean.gov network for 42 million people, 10 million Diaspora, and 80 million visitors. Imagine too, a Caribbean Union channel on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This prospect, and the benefits are before us if we prepare and forge a new unified, integrated Single Market for all of the Caribbean.

Yes, this vision is within reach.

Welcome to the future, to New Media. Say “Goodbye” to yesterday, to Old Media. Can we transform our Caribbean society?

Yes, we can! While this is not easy – it is heavy-lifting – it is conceivable, believable and achievable.

This is the kind of Future Focused efforts that are needed to reform and transform the Bahamas and all of Caribbean society; to make our homeland a better place to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

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

———

Appendix A – ECCO Boss believes more local radio stations could close

The General Manager of the  Eastern Caribbean Collective Organisation for Music Rights (ECCO), Steve Etienne,  has expressed the view that Saint Lucia could see the closure of more radio stations, following the recent announcement of the planned closure of state-owned Radio Saint Lucia.

He said the planned closure has come as no surprise to him.

“It should not be a surprise to anyone because RSL has operated in challenging situations that have been known to the public for some time,” Etienne observed.

However the ECCO official noted that the closure of the station will leave a void in the field of broadcasting because RSL played a unique role, despite its association with the government.

“They provided a lot of information and educational focus in lots of the areas that are not normally seen as attractive to radio,” Etienne stated.

He observed that ECCO has had a long relationship with RSL.

“We will miss that relationship,” Etienne said.

He noted that the station owed ECCO a substantial sum of money which the organisation will be seeking to recover.

Etienne explained that the closure of the station would be a loss to ECCO’s members because RSL provided a lot of air time for local music producers.

He stated that the station had a day set aside for playing local music.

“We will miss that, but I think that the slack will be picked up by other media houses – some have already started to focus on having specific segments for local music,” he remarked.

Etienne expressed the view that what is happening to RSL could befall  other broadcasting entities.

“We have far too many radio stations and we haven’t got the finance – our economy cannot sustain or support twenty  or so radio stations that we have and if business is done as business ought to be done, then  several other radio stations will go the same way as RSL,” the ECCO General Manager said.

He explained that because ECCO is funded by a percentage of advertising revenue, the organisation is aware that lots of radio stations are struggling.

“Or  at least they are telling us they are struggling and if that is the truth, then many would follow RSL,” he pointed out.

According to Etienne, Saint Lucia needs a thriving economy.

He declared that having radio stations that are unsustainable will not help the economy.

Source: Posted May 13, 2017; retrieved November 12, 2017 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2017/05/13/ecco-boss-believes-more-local-radio-stations-could-close

———

Appendix B – FCC Moves to End TV-Newspaper Ownership Ban

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said he’ll move to weaken or kill local media ownership restrictions next month, potentially clearing the way for more consolidation among companies that own TV and radio stations.

Chairman Ajit Pai told Congress he’ll ask the FCC, where he leads a Republican majority, to eliminate the rule barring common ownership of a newspaper and nearby broadcast station, and to revise restrictions on owning multiple broadcast outlets in a single market.

“If you believe, as I do, that the federal government has no business intervening in the news, then we must stop the federal government from intervening in the news business,” Pai said in a hearing of the House communications subcommittee. He said that’s why he offered his rules revision to “help pull the government once and for all out of the newsroom.”

Republicans have been calling, without success, to weaken or kill those rules for more than a decade, and Pai’s ascension to FCC chair as President Donald Trump’s choice gives the party a chance to accomplish that goal. He set a vote for Nov. 16.

Relaxed rules could help Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., which earlier told the FCC that its proposed $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media Inc. would violate local-market ownership strictures in 10 cities.

Pai cast his ownership proposals as part of his commitment to the First Amendmentthat guarantees free speech — a live topic since Trump threatened broadcast licenses over news reports.

Democrats announced opposition even before Pai spoke.

“The already consolidated broadcast media market will become even more so, offering little to no discernible benefit for consumers,” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, said in testimony prepared for the hearing where Pai and the other commissioners appeared.

Broadcasters eager to consider merger deals have chafed under the ownership restrictions. The rules were written to guarantee a diversity of voices for local communities, and broadcasters say they’re outdated in an era of media abundance featuring cable and internet programming.

The local rules are separate from the national audience cap that limits companies to owning stations that reach 39 percent of the U.S. audience, which Pai didn’t address. That rule could force Sinclair to sell some stations in return for approval of its proposed purchase of Tribune. The deal is before the FCC and antitrust officials for approval.

Pai’s proposed deregulation could set off local transactions, involving station swaps and other small-scale deals, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said in a note.

“We do NOT expect transformative M&A,” Ryvicker wrote, using a shorthand term for merger and acquisition activity. She said the broadcast industry would be strengthened because two-station sets are more profitable than stand-alone outlets.

Pai’s proposal needs to win a majority at the FCC, and will be subject to intense lobbying in the three weeks leading to the next monthly meeting when the vote is to take place.

Regulations to be revised include the local-TV rule. It allows a company to own two stations in a market if at least one of the stations is not ranked among the top four stations locally, and if the market still will have at least eight independently owned TV stations.

Pai told lawmakers he will propose to the commission that it eliminate the latter provision, known as the eight-voices test, and put in place a case-by-case review for allowing exceptions to the top-four prohibition.

Pai also said he’d seek to eliminate a rule restricting common ownership of a TV station and nearby radio station. The agency is to publish the proposed rules on Thursday, he said.

The National Association of Broadcasters said it “strongly supports” the proposal.

FCC restrictions have “punished free and local broadcasters at the expense of our pay TV and radio competitors,” said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the trade group. “We look forward to rational media ownership rules that foster a bright future for broadcasters and our tens of millions of listeners and viewers.”

The News Media Alliance, formerly called the Newspaper Association of America, focused on the newspaper-broadcast rule, put in place in the 1970s.

“Outdated regulations preventing investment in one sector of the media market do not make sense, particularly when newspapers compete with countless sources of news and information every day,” said the trade group’s president, David Chavern.

The Free Press policy group objected.

“We need to strengthen local voices and increase viewpoint diversity, not surrender our airwaves to an ever-smaller group of giant conglomerates,” said Craig Aaron, president of the group. “Pai is clearly committed to doing the bidding of companies like Sinclair and clearing any obstacles to their voracious expansion.”

Representatives of cable and satellite-TV companies wary of the negotiating clout of combined stations have said they will be concerned if the top-four restriction is relaxed or eliminated. Broadcasters are raising fees they charge to cable and satellite companies in return for permission to carry their signals.

“Pai’s statement to end media rules is most retrograde in FCC history,” Michael Copps, a former Democratic FCC commissioner, said in a tweet. “Halloween sweets for Big Media, paves way for huge Yule for Sinclair.”

Source: Bloomberg posted October 25, 2017 retrieved November 12, 2017 from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-25/fcc-s-pai-sets-nov-16-vote-on-lifting-media-ownership-limits

———

Appendix VIDEO – Hearst CEO Says the Death of Old Media Is Not True – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-10-24/hearst-ceo-says-the-death-of-old-media-is-not-true-video

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Back to the Future: Textbooks or Tablets in School?

Posted on August 15, 2017 in Economics, Strategy, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

CU Blog - Textbooks or Tablets in School - Photo 1Its back-to-school time … again.

That there – what you just did: reminiscing about your own back-to-school experiences – that is the problem. You see, we cannot project “our” back-to-school visuals on today’s students.

  • The world has changed;
  • Schools have to change;
  • Students have to change; and yes …
  • We – parents – must change too.

We have said it repeatedly in these commentaries: the Caribbean is “partying like it’s 1999” when in truth the world’s academic competition is clocking in at 2017.

Don’t believe it?

Look at all those high school students that graduated from their Caribbean high schools in 2017, 2016, 2015, etc.. Where are they now? For far too many Caribbean communities, a majority of those graduates have abandoned their Caribbean homes. Why? Our inability to compete.

So it should not be “Back to school” or “back to the status quo”, rather it should be …

“Back to the Future”.

The Caribbean must now transform to become a community that they have never been before; a community only envisioned for the future.

The future is now! Even textbooks are so “Old School”, while e-Textbooks are so new …

CU Blog - Textbooks or Tablets in School - Photo 2

This is the debate right now: Should schools continue to distribute textbooks or deploy tablets or PC’s (personal computers) for students’ course work?

This is a debate … everywhere – even here in the Caribbean – see this news article here from the local St Lucia Times Daily Newspaper:

News Article: Textbooks or Tablets in School?

(By Marie Miguel) There is a huge debate going on in schools all across the country. It is not about violence, bullying, drugs, or similar issues. The debate is whether schools should continue using text books or switch to using computer tablets. There are many good arguments on both sides, but the fact is, schools are doing it anyway, regardless of what the parents want. Of course, you have the choice whether to sign the paper saying it is alright for your child to use a tablet and be on the internet. However, if you do not sign that paper, your child will not get the same education as the rest of the class. The world has gone digital and there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it.

The Pros and Cons of Tablets in School
Here are some of the pros and cons of tablets in the classroom:

Pros

  • According to the United States Department of Education, students learn 30-80% faster with tablets.
  • A tablet can hold hundreds of books on one device as well as homework, files, and communication with the teachers. This means no more heavy backpacks or lost books.
  • E-books are up to 60% cheaper than printed books.
  • Children scored 30% higher on tests using a tablet rather than a textbook.
  • Tablets have interactive features that textbooks do not have such as a search function, highlighters, and a built-in dictionary and thesaurus.
  • Learning technology skills are important for their future.
  • Tablets can be automatically updated.
  • Students and schools save money on paper, pencils, and other items that tablets do not need.
  • Files on the tablet can be transferred to other electronic devices and portable data recorders. That means no more lost homework.
  • Students enjoy learning on tablets more than with textbooks so they learn more.

Cons

  • There are medical consequences with using tablets such as neck pain, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, dry eyes, blurred vision, headaches, and eye strain.
  • Textbooks are five times cheaper than tablets, including training teachers and buying software.
  • Tablets have a lot of distractions such as games, email, apps, and other websites the children can get onto instead of doing their work or listening to the teacher.
  • The brain is able to comprehend more when reading printed text rather than digital text. In fact, on average, people read digital text up to 30% slower than printed text.
  • Many students do not have (or cannot afford) sufficient internet service to use their tablets at home. That means homework is not going to get done.
  • Repairing a tablet costs a great deal more than fixing a book.
  • Textbooks do not get malware, spyware, freeze, crash, and cannot get hacked.
  • Tablets need to be charged and cannot last a whole school day.
  • Students are able to cheat or use shortcuts to do their schoolwork.
  • Some textbooks are still not available in digital format.

Time for a Solution
Many parents just do not want their children to use the internet. Some have never had the opportunity to experience the technological advances that are available to their children or they just do not understand. These feelings of inadequacy can make parents angry and ill-equipped to make a good decision for their children. Other parents are computer savvy but do not think their child is ready for the internet. It is important for these parents to have someone to talk to that understands these issues and can help them realize the benefits of letting their children learn computer skills. There are licensed professionals that parents and their children can talk to or chat with online or over the phone. Together they may be able to come to some kind of compromise that works out well for everyone.

Source: St Lucia Times – Daily Newspaper (Posted 08-03-2014) from:  https://stluciatimes.com/2017/08/03/textbooks-tablets-school

In a previous Go Lean commentary, it was detailed how a related issue, textbooks pricing, reflects American Capitalism – not free market economics – whereby the College Textbook industry is known for their abuses and classic Crony-Capitalism, (where public policy is set to benefit private parties). That commentary explained that since many college expenses are subsidized by governments (federal and state) by means of grants or low-interest, deferred student loans, the marketplace knows that governmental entities will pay…unconditionally, so textbook prices go up … and up.

So how do we move the community forward into the future while also being “on guard” for Crony-Capitalistic abuses?

As related in that commentary from August 25, 2014, the book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean region must not allow the US to take the lead for our own nation-building, that American capitalistic interest tends to hijack policies intended for the Greater Good. The recommended strategy is to leverage the needs of all 30 countries (42 million people & 4 languages) with Group Purchasing and fully embrace e-Learning (e-Books and tablets).

This book, Go Lean… Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), which represents change for the region. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 future-focused prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines – and the educational apparatus – in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance – including primary, secondary and tertiary school administrations plus Group Purchasing Organizations – to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to leverage Group Purchasing and to elevate the Caribbean’s tertiary education systems as a whole. This roadmap is presented as a planning tool, pronouncing the collaborative benefits of a unified educational agenda with these early statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14):

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

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.

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

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

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

The Go Lean book posits that even though education is a vital ingredient for Caribbean economic empowerment, there has been a lot of flawed decision-making in the past, both individually and community-wise. The vision in the Go Lean/CU roadmap is that of a confederation of the 30 Caribbean member-states doing the heavy-lifting of optimizing economic and education policies. The Go Lean book details those future-focused policies; and other ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the tertiary education in the region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations – Group Purchase Organizations Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI) Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing – Purchasing Cooperatives Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Education Department Page 85
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Labor Department – On Job Training Page 89
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization Page 119
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Student Loans Page 160
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Libraries Page 187
Appendix – Education and Economic Growth Page 258
Appendix – Measuring Education Page 266
Appendix – New Student Loan Scandal – Bad American Example Page 286
Appendix – India’s $35 Tablet– Good Model-Example Page 296

This is the assertion of the Go Lean book (Page 31): if there is a choice or debate between Textbooks versus Tablets, choose Tablets. This quest should be pursued aggressively by Caribbean stakeholders, welcoming any help from global foundations:

The Bottom Line on One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
OLPC is a project supported by the Miami-based “One Laptop per Child Association” (OLPCA) and the Cambridge, MA-based OLPC Foundation (OLPCF), two U.S. non-profit organizations set up to oversee the creation of affordable educational devices for use in the developing world. The project was originally founded by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte and funded by member organizations like AMD, Chi Mei, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, Nortel, RedHat, & Quanta. In the first years of the project, the Association managed development and logistics, and the Foundation managed fundraising such as the Give One Get One campaign. In 2010 the Association set up a new office in Miami under Rodrigo Halaby, and currently oversees deployment and support for their XO-1.5 laptop and its successors, and country partnerships. The foundation, led by now Chairman Nicholas Negroponte, currently oversees development of future software and hardware, including the ARM based OLPC XO-1.75 laptop ($180) and the OLPC XO-3 tablet ($100).

Information on the official site of OLPC indicates that as of 2011 there were about over 2.4 million XO laptops delivered.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for bridging the Digital Divide and aligning with many not-for-profit foundations, of domestic and foreign sources. For example, the One Laptop Per Child movement – identified above – offers $200 laptops (or cheaper) for Third World countries. In addition, there are now $35 tablets emerging from India (Page 296 – Appendix OC). The plan is for the CU to steer foundations and philanthropic causes to impact this mission, to equip/train low-income Caribbean residents for computerized terminals and access.

CU Blog - Textbooks or Tablets in School - Photo 3

Tablets and e-Books should be all the rage. See here for the 8 Best Tablets for Students for 2017:

VIDEO – 8 Best Tablets For Students 2017 – https://youtu.be/7XqZIeDC-lU

Published on May 17, 2017
CLICK FOR WIKI ►► https://wiki.ezvid.com/best-tablets-f…
Please Note: Our choices for this wiki may have changed since we published this review video. Our most recent set of reviews in this category, including our selection for the year’s best tablet for students, is exclusively available on Ezvid Wiki.
Tablets for students included in this wiki include the dell venue 8 7000, amazon fire hd 8, lenovo tab 10, lg electronics g pad ii, microsoft surface pro 4, apple ipad pro, samsung galaxy tab s3, and asus zenpad z580c.
Most Recent Picks: https://wiki.ezvid.com/best-tablets-f…

The foregoing news article and VIDEO relate to topics that should be of serious concern for Caribbean planners. We want to foster an education agenda that propels the Caribbean’s best interest. We do not want to be parasites of the American hegemony; we want to be better. While the US is the world’s largest Single Market economy, we only want to model some of their examples.

Most importantly, we want our students to study at home, primarily, or at worst, remain in the region. This minimizes the risks of matriculating abroad and never returning – a frequent Caribbean dilemma.

All of these educational issues have been addressed in previous Go Lean blog-commentaries; consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11054 American Bad Model: Lower Ed!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10845 American Good Example: College Sports
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10733 American Experiences: 150 Years of HBCU’s
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9751 Where the Jobs Are – Animation and Game Design
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669 Detroit makes Community College free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9724 Bahamas Welcomes the New University
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698 STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1470 College of the Bahamas Master Plan 2025 – Reach for the Lamp-Post
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433 Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=459 CXC and UK textbook publisher hosting CCSLC workshops in Barbados

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that many problems of the region – education, a most prominent issue – are too big for any one member-state to solve alone, that there is the need for the leverage of a wider Caribbean confederacy. The purpose of this Go Lean/CU roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work, learn and play. This effort is more than academic, more than just future scheming; no, this must be a plan for today.

We first employ e-Learning … and all of its related arts and sciences. And do it now!

We need to better compete with the world; education and e-learning could be the great equalizer. The book projects a Cyber Caribbean (Page 127):

Forge electronic commerce industries so that the internet communications technology (ICT) can be a great equalizer in economic battles of global trade. This includes e-Government (outsourcing and in-sourcing for member-states systems) and e-Delivery, Postal Electronic Last Leg mail, e-Learning and wireline/wireless/satellite initiatives.

Strategically, the Go Lean roadmap posits that to succeed in the global marketplace, the Caribbean region must not only consume but rather also create, produce, and distribute intellectual property. So subjects like tablets and e-books are germane for our considerations. Tactics like Group Purchasing (GPO) makes it efficient and effective to minimize the associated costs of educating the general population, and specific learning needs.

These are hallmarks of the CU technocracy: policies that reflect a future-focus.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and school administrations, to lean-in for the changes described in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. 🙂

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

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Commerce of the Seas – Lessons from Alang (India)

Posted on June 13, 2017 in Economics, Government, Industries, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Despite our beautiful vistas in the Caribbean – with our sun, sand and sea – not everywhere is paradisiac. Some locations are just plain ordinary, or even Less-Than. Tourism is the region’s Number 1 economic activity, but there are certain areas where tourists should not venture. This is true for agricultural areas and certain industrial zones.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean wants to add another type of “not for tourists” industrial zone to the Caribbean landscape: Ship-breaking Yards.

Just that combination of words – “Ship” + “Breaking” – connotes some negative images. The lessons we learned from the Indian port city of Alang is that Ship-breaking is dirty; see the encyclopedic reference here:

Reference Title: Alang,  Indian State of Gujarat. 

CU Blog - Commerce of the Seas - Lessons from Alang - Photo 5Alang is a census town in Bhavnagar district in the Indian state of Gujarat. In the past three decades, its beaches have become a major worldwide centre for ship breaking. The longest ship ever built, Seawise Giant, was sailed to and beached here for demolition in December 2009. [1]

Marine salvage industry
The shipyards at Alang recycle approximately half of all ships salvaged around the world.[2] It is considered the world’s largest graveyard of ships.[3] The yards are located on the Gulf of Khambat, 50 km (31 mi) southeast of Bhavnagar. Large supertankers, car ferries, container ships, and a dwindling number of ocean liners are beached during high tide, and as the tide recedes, hundreds of manual laborers move onto the beach to dismantle each ship, salvaging what they can and reducing the rest to scrap.

The salvage yards at Alang have generated controversy about working conditions, workers’ living conditions, and the impact on the environment. One major problem is that despite many serious work-related injuries, the nearest full service hospital is 50 km (31 mi) away in Bhavnagar.

Alang - Photo 1

Alang - Photo 2

Alang - Photo 4

Future
Japan and the Gujarat government have joined hands to upgrade the existing Alang shipyard. The two parties have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which focuses on technology transfer and financial assistance from Japan to assist in the upgrading of operations at Alang to meet international standards. This is a part of the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor, a larger partnership between the Japanese and Gujarat government. Under this plan, Japan will address the environmental implications of ship breaking in Alang, and will develop a .marketing strategy. The project is to be carried out as a public-private partnership. The project’s aim is to make this shipyard the largest International Maritime Organisation-compliant ship recycling yard in the world.

Source: Retrieved June 8, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alang

The dirty nature of these industrial endeavors, as depicted in Alang, provides a negative lesson that we want to learn from to avoid all perilous consequences of doing this business in a “wrong” manner.

Another lesson we learn from Alang is that Ship-breaking work (jobs) is consistent and steady. There are many ships that have lived out their usefulness and now need to be dismantled for scrap; the more labor available, the more ships to break. This is such a positive lesson for us to learn right now, as the Caribbean region is badly in need of jobs. The economic engine involves salvaging the scrap metal (and other materials) for recycling.

The challenge is to embrace the commerce of Ship-breaking for the positives, while avoiding the negatives.

Challenge accepted! (The foregoing relates the welcoming support from Japan for clean ship-breaking).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This would be the governmental entity for a regional Single Market that covers the land territories of the 30 member-states, and their aligning seas; (including the 1,063,000 square miles of the Caribbean Sea). The Go Lean/CU roadmap features this prime directive, as defined by these 3 statements:

  • Optimization of the economic engines to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect public safety and ensure the economic engines of the region, including the seas.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines in local governments and in Self-Governing Entities, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

This commentary posits that there are opportunities for the Caribbean to better explore the “Commerce of the Seas”, to deploy International Maritime Organisation-compliant shipyards. There are so many lessons that we can learn from the Economic History of other communities’ exploitation of the high seas. This commentary is 4 of 4 in a series considering the Lessons in Economic History related to “Commerce of the Seas”. The full series is as follows:

  1. Commerce of the Seas – Stupidity of the Jones Act
  2. Commerce of the Seas – Book Review: ‘Sea Power’
  3. Commerce of the Seas – Shipbuilding Model of Ingalls
  4. Commerce of the Seas – Lessons from Alang (India)

The reference to “Commerce” refers to the economic interest of the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region. There is the need for more commercial opportunities that would impact the community with job and entrepreneurial empowerments. Ship-breaking could be providential!

Ship-breaking can provide high tech, mid tech and low tech jobs; especially if the salvage operation is executed in a technocratic manner. The Art & Science of technocratic ship-breaking versus dirty-breaking (i.e. Alang) was previously detailed in a blog-commentary on August 14, 2014. See some highlights from that blog in the excerpt here:

… ship-breaking activities in Third World countries, like Bangladesh, pose harm to the environment, workers and remaining systems of commerce. But when executed correctly, as in Brownsville-Texas, ship-breaking can be all positive. There are benefits in applying the appropriate best practices in handling hazardous materials. The tons of toxic waste (asbestos) can be properly managed and disposed of, with the proper eco-system surrounding the industry. The CU will facilitate the eco-system, especially with the Self-Governing Entities (SGE) concept for shipyards. This is covered in the Go Lean book under the auspices of “turn-around” industries, a federally regulated/promoted activity.

So there is a way to perform ship-breaking – one expression of maritime commerce – in a lean, clean manner while guaranteeing safety for the workers and profit for the investors.

This is the win-win … of the Go Lean roadmap.

The Go Lean book/roadmap was published in November 2013 with a vision for a new industrialization for the region. The quest is for the region to cooperate, collaborate and convene so as to accomplish more as a unified Single Market than may be possible alone. Not one of the Caribbean member-states – all Third World – can do ship-breaking right. It would quickly denigrate to the Alang and Bangladesh models. But together, leveraging the interdependence – so much more can be accomplished. This was the vision of the opening Declaration of Interdependence in the book. Here, the need for regional coordination and integration was pronounced as the basis of reforming and transforming Caribbean society.

See a sample of relevant stanzas from the Declaration here (Page 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.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building…. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like … fisheries … – impacting the region with more jobs.

Reforming and transforming the Caribbean is the quest. The Go Lean book explains “how”, providing 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos for economic regionalism, and “how” to execute the right strategies, tactics, and implementations to reboot, reform and transform the maritime commerce to benefit Caribbean society.

The issue of fostering industrial developments in the Art-and-Science of the salvage industry has been a frequent subject for previous blog-commentaries; consider this list of sample entries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10140 Lessons Learned: Detroit demolishes thousands of structures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6760 A Lesson in ‘Garbage’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2953 Funding Caribbean Entrepreneurs – The ‘Crowdfunding’ Way
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857 Where the Jobs Are – Entrepreneurism in Junk

All Caribbean member-states are islands or coastal territories – they can all be candidates for maritime salvaging (ship-breaking) operations – even all at the same time. While there is a large footprint of “cheap” ship-breakers in Asia, not as many proliferate in the Western Hemisphere. It is a perfect time to explore these opportunities.

This is not tourism! Ship-breaking activities are not paradisiac nor inviting so they should be limited to shipyards, not beaches.

Alang - Photo 3Imagine: towing an old ship from the Americas to the Caribbean, rather than across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans; see the experience of salvaging the “Love Boat” in the Appendix VIDEO below.

This is commerce!

There is a need to transform maritime commerce for the Caribbean region; we can get more economic activity from this sector; the Go Lean book projects 15,000 new direct jobs in the shipbuilding and/or ship-breaking activities. The possibility of these new jobs is hope-inspiring. At last we can arrest the societal abandonment where men and women leave the community looking for any kind of work.

This is Commerce of the Seas; we saw how previous generations of Caribbean people lived off the sea; we can again, with these creative expressions of maritime commerce.

This plan is conceivable, believable and achievable. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments, business owners and workers – to lean-in to this roadmap for economic empowerment. We can make the Caribbean homeland and seas better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————–

Appendix VIDEO – The End of The Love Boat – https://youtu.be/lauAeMtzMYM

Published on Nov 5, 2016 – English Captions Available!!!
MS Pacific Princess is a voyage send possessed by Princess Cruises and worked by Princess Cruises and P&O Cruises Australia. She was inherent 1999 by the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France as MS R Three for Renaissance Cruises.

The vessel initially entered operation in 1999, with Renaissance Cruises. The ship was not claimed by the organization, ownership rather living with a gathering of French speculators, who rented the ship to the organization. In late 2001, the whole Renaissance armada was seized by lenders.

Pacific Princess in Yalta inlet.

In late 2002, Princess Cruises sanctioned the R Three, alongside sister transport R Four (now Ocean Princess). Both vessels entered operation before the end of 2002. The contract ended toward the end of 2004, at which time both vessels were acquired by Princess Cruises. Gabi Hollows renamed the ship Pacific Princess in Sydney on 8 December 2002.
This ship has been the subject of a state help choice by the European Commission: Decision 2006/219.
—
Princess Cruise Line Youtube channel: youtube.com/user/princesscruises
Cruise Ships Info Youtube channel: youtube.com/cruiseshipsinfo
Cruise Ships Info Facebook Page: facebook.com/cruiseshipsinfo
Cruise Ships Info Twitter Page: twitter.com/cruiseship_info
Cruise Ships Info Pinterest Page: pinterest.com/cruiseshipinfo

————–

Additional VIDEO – Jobs of Workers in Ship-breaking Industry –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOGjYfBltZc

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Welcome to Kiribati – Hello and Goodbye

Posted on May 18, 2017 in Government, Planning, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Islands are the greatest places to live … until they are not.

There is nothing better than being surrounded by water on all sides: beach or bay, just having that vista is preferred. Until, higher tides come in … and stay.

CU Blog - Welcome to Kiribati - Hello and Goodbye - Photo 3

CU Blog - Welcome to Kiribati - Hello and Goodbye - Photo 4

CU Blog - Welcome to Kiribati - Hello and Goodbye - Photo 5

Welcome to Kiribati, an island nation (archipelago of 33 atolls and reef islands) in the central Pacific Ocean. This nation is strategically located at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, straddling the equator and the International Date Line; so it is the only country in all 4 hemispheres. (Source: Wikipedia)

CU Blog - Welcome to Kiribati - Hello and Goodbye - Photo 1Say ‘Hello’ to Kiribati.

Kiribati is also the first country expected to lose all its land territory to global warming. In June 2008, the then-President Anote Tong said that the country has reached “the point of no return.” He added, “to plan for the day when you no longer have a country is indeed painful but I think we have to do that.”[31][32][33][34]

This just got real …

The book Go Lean…Caribbean and accompanying blogs have asserted that there is no guarantee that countries and/or cultures must survive. Some of them do not!

Remember the Babylonians, Mayans, Lucayans, and others. Despite the array of archeological evidence of their historicity, their culture (language and traditions) simply no longer exist.

Kiribati can also no longer exist. In fact, in early 2012, the government of Kiribati purchased the 2,200-hectare Natoavatu Estate on the second largest island of Fiji, Vanua Levu. At the time it was widely reported[35][36][37] that the government planned to evacuate the entire population of Kiribati to Fiji. In April 2013, President Tong began urging citizens to evacuate the islands and migrate elsewhere.[38]

CU Blog - Welcome to Kiribati - Hello and Goodbye - Photo 2

We could … say ‘Goodbye’ to Kiribati. See the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Kiribati: The country killed by Climate Change – Truthloader – https://youtu.be/-jMddhJNr9U

Published on Jun 18, 2014 – Kiribati is a tiny nation of 100,000 people living on dozens of islands over a huge area of the South Pacific. And it is set to become the first state completely destroyed by climate change. The government estimates the country will vanish beneath the waves by 2050 due to rising sea levels and coastal erosion, and has an official policy of evacuating the native population. At the same time, it is doing everything it can to protect the pristine ocean environments within its territorial waters, so that even once the country is gone the nature will survive. It’s a pretty sad story.
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The fate of Kiribati is a cautionary tale for the Caribbean. “There but for the Grace of God go I”.

The Go Lean book anticipated the Agents of Change impacting the region, Climate Change is most prominent. This is the direct result of the excessive amount of carbon emitted into the planet’s atmosphere. The Small Islands States like Kiribati and the Caribbean are not the BIG polluters most responsible for this disposition – the US is #1 and China is #2 – but we are among the most affected. So we need to be front-and-center in the protests and advocacy for Climate Change mitigations.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – prepares the Caribbean region for the heavy-lifting of monitoring, managing and mitigating the acute risks of Global Warming, Climate Change and rising sea-levels. We must act now!

The book 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 book stresses that there are external and internal considerations. As any one country in the Caribbean region may be too small to get attention of the watching world, the whole region on the other hand – 30 member-states and 42 million people – operating as a Single Market and One Voice can have more of an impact.  Internally, we must “get our own house in order”, so the effort is to reform and transform the Caribbean societal engines as part of this 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.

iii. Whereas the natural formation of the landmass for our society is that of an archipelago of islands, inherent to this nature is the limitation of terrain and the natural resources there in. We must therefore provide “new guards” and protections to ensure the efficient and effective management of these resources.

iv. Whereas the natural formation of the landmass is in a tropical region, the flora and fauna allows for an inherent beauty that is enviable to peoples near and far. The structures must be strenuously guarded to protect and promote sustainable systems of commerce paramount to this reality.

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.

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 monitor, manage and mitigate the challenges of Climate Change.

In addition, these previous blog-commentaries detailed a lot of the issues and developments for the Caribbean’s Climate Change efforts:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11442 Caribbean Roots: Al Roker – ‘Climate Change’ Defender
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455 Fix ‘Climate Change’ – Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449 Due to Climate Change, ‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7103 COP21 – ‘Climate Change’ Acknowledged
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893 A Meteorologist’s View On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6016 ‘Hotter than July’ – Reality in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4673 ‘Climate Change‘ Merchants of Doubt … to Preserve Profits!!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465 Book: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276 Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2119 Cooling Effect – Oceans and the Climate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1883 Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1817 Caribbean grapples with intense cycles of flooding & drought
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=926 Conservative heavyweights have solar industry in their sights
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=915 Go ‘Green’ … Caribbean

We must learn from Kiribati – and other locales – and prepare our homeland as well. We must prepare for the good, bad and the ugly (think extinction). Things can get better, we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play – but this is not automatic; this quest will require a lot of heavy-lifting. 🙂

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

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

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