It has been 4 years already! The hope now is for an incident-free Boston Marathon today, April 17, 2017.
But hope is not the only emotion at work in Boston. There is also fear, concern, anticipation and preparation. The City of Boston has learned important lessons from that terrible attack at the Patriots Day Marathon in 2013. See highlights from this VIDEO here:
How about the Caribbean? Have we learned lessons? Are we engaging the needed remediation and mitigation?
We have events – think Carnival in the Caribbean member-states or in the Diaspora – on our calendar that could also be victimized by attacks, assaults and incidents (terrorism or just plain street-crime). It is very important that we do better to present our participants, spectators, guests and tourists a more secure environment.
More than economic interests are at stake. It could be life-or-death.
Notice some of the headlines here describing the security dynamics of some Caribbean events (around the Caribbean and the world):
Also, see the Encore of the previous blog-commentary that considered lessons learned from the Boston Marathon terrorist attack; this review was published on the 1-year anniversary in 2014. See it again here-now:
April 15 [2014] is the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. 3 people died directly, and countless others were maimed and injured. From any perspective this was a tragedy! To the families that lost loved ones on that date, our deepest condolences.
There are many lessons for the Caribbean to learn from this experience.
The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU is proffered to provide economic, security and governing solutions for the 30 member Caribbean states. This book posits that the Caribbean is not immune to similar experiences like Boston; that terrorism requires mitigation beyond the member-states; there needs to be a regional solution. The CU will furnish such a focus. There will be proactive and reactive measures to monitor, interdict, and marshal terroristic threats in the Caribbean. Most of the Caribbean has legacy affiliation with European/US countries that have been victims of terrorism. Though we have not had the tragedies of backpacks exploding at marathons, or chemical weapons used in subways, or airplanes crashing into our buildings, we must still hold a constant vigilance. The roadmap posits that “bad actors” always emerge where there is economic successes. See a related news article here:
Title: Year after Boston bombing, it’s clear that threat of homegrown terrorism overhyped By: David Schanzer and Charles Kurzman
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing one year ago Tuesday, many commentators and public officials called this tragedy a harbinger of more homegrown terrorist attacks to come.
“We’re going to see an explosion in this radicalization and recruitment,” predicted Congressman Frank Wolf. “We are less secure than we were 12 years ago,” claimed think-tank terrorism expert Michael Swetnam. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Americans to “worry – a lot.
”To many, the Boston attack demonstrated the potency of the Islamist extremist ideology, the difficulty of detecting individuals radicalized through social media and the Internet, and the ease with which amateurs could cause massive harm in our open society. The Tsarnaev brothers, they claimed, had paved the way for more terrorism.
While only one year has passed, much of this concern appears to have been hyperbole.
No one has been killed by homegrown terrorists in the past year, and there have been no copycat attacks. To put this in context, over the same period there have been 14,000 murders in the United States, including 46 murders in Boston.
There also has been no epidemic of al-Qaida-inspired extremist behavior directed at American civilians. Our research shows that in the year since the marathon bombing, there have been 15 arrests of Muslim-Americans for terrorism-related offenses, below the average of 20 arrests per year since 9/11. Almost all of these arrests were for attempting to join a foreign terrorist organization abroad, not for planning attacks in the homeland, and were motivated by sympathies with rebels in Syria and elsewhere rather than by al-Qaida’s call for Muslims to attack the West.
Our law enforcement agencies have a far more balanced understanding of the nature of the extremist threat than many of those providing public commentary after the Boston attacks. A nationwide survey of law enforcement agencies we are conducting in collaboration with the Police Executive Research Forum shows that more than half of the agencies report little or no threat from al-Qaida-inspired extremism. Only 2 percent report the threat as “severe.” Agencies from large metropolitan areas reported somewhat higher levels of concern (27 percent reporting a low threat and 7 percent reporting a severe threat). Overall, law enforcement agencies are treating this as a serious, but manageable, issue rather than the existential crisis that many have feared.
Law enforcement agencies have embraced community outreach as an effective strategy to counter violent extremism. Almost every large metropolitan police force surveyed collaborates with Muslim-American communities that are targeted for recruitment by al-Qaida and related extremists. Most of these agencies report they have established a high level of trust with the community, and two-thirds say these relationships have helped develop actionable information. This track record contradicts claims by Congressman Peter King, a New York Republican, and others that Muslim-Americans have failed to cooperate with law enforcement.
One year after two individuals inflicted pain and suffering on the streets of Boston, we should not be overly fearful or cavalier about the threat of violent extremism. The low levels of violent conduct both before and after the Boston Marathon show that no matter how many extremist videos are posted on the Internet, the baseless ideas these videos propagate appeal to only a tiny fraction of our populace. Yet, since small numbers of people can do so much harm, law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve must be constantly vigilant and continue to work together to prevent the next atrocity.
David Schanzer is a Professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
Charles Kurzman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
How can we apply lessons from this foregoing article in the stewardship of the Caribbean Homeland Security?
First, we have the direct lessons of the scourge of piracy in the Caribbean for centuries. The “after-effects” of this legacy still remain, even today. As Caribbean society traversed over the centuries, the attitudes that tolerated piracy, described in the book as “community ethos”, evolved to tolerate, incubate and even promote other lawless activities; (shipwrecking, bootlegging, drug smuggling). So with this history in mind, and the prime directive to elevate Caribbean society, the Go Lean economic empowerment mission is coupled with appropriate security provisions. This mandate is detailed early on in the book’s Declaration of Interdependence, with the following pronouncements (Page 12):
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 of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.
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.
There are many other lessons for us to learn from Boston. But there are other tragedies that appear to have gotten less attention in the past year since the marathon bombings. In Boston alone, there have been 46 murders since April 15, 2013. In total, there have been 14,000+ murders in the entire Unites States in that time. See the foregoing news article/commentary.
These have not gone unnoticed! Especially terrorism’s junior partner-in-crime, bullying; such incidents also call for mitigations.
The Go Lean roadmap therefore comes BIG, in its offering to effectuate change in the Caribbean. Notice these strategies, tactics, implementations, and advocacies detailed in the book related to Caribbean security:
10 Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
10 Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up
Page 102
10 Security Initiatives at Start-up
Page 103
10 Ways to Impact Justice
Page 177
10 Ways to Reduce Crime
Page 178
10 Ways to Improve for Gun Control
Page 179
10 Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
10 Ways to Mitigate Terrorism
Page 181
10 Ways to Improve Intelligence [Gathering]
Page 182
10 Ways to Improve Animal Husbandry
Page 185
10 Ways to Impact the Prison-Industrial Complex
Page 211
10 Ways to Impact Youth
Page 227
Further, the Go Lean roadmap portrays the need for public messaging to encourage adoption of better community ethos for the Greater Good (Page 37). We must not allow those innocent lives in Boston to pass without positive lessons for our society.
The warning was sounded 3 years ago, today. What is the status now? Have the warnings been heeded?
Surely, we have paid attention and we have put in the risk mitigations so as to preserve life-and-limb in the activities of cosmetic surgeries in the Dominican Republic.
Sad to report, but the answer is “No”.
The risks continue; the disfigurements continue; the deaths continue.
Say it ain’t so!
See the news article in the Appendix relating the details of a fresh warning from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In this previous Go Lean blog-commentary – being ENCORED below – the prospects of Medical Tourism were heralded, with the caution for proper regulatory control. The appeal was made for the new Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to serve as that regulator, under the guise of a Self-Governing Entity. That appeal is echoed again here-now. There is too much …
… money at stake.
… jobs at stake.
… lives at stake.
But while this original blog-commentary below published on April 1, 2014 related the death of Beverly Brignoni (28), there have been other deaths; as with these women:
To the family of Beverly Brignoni, according to the foregoing news article, the publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, SFE Foundation, extend condolences for the loss of their dearly departed loved one. This article – as follows – shows the down-side of medical tourism, an accidental death from an apparent lax oversight in a cosmetic surgery clinic.
By: Ben Fox and Ezequiel Abiu Lopez
Beverly Brignoni was a young New Yorker seeking a less expensive way to enhance her appearance and she did what many other people are now doing: travel to the Dominican Republic for cosmetic surgery; (see undated “selfie” photo posted to her Instagram account, courtesy of the Brignoni family).
It went horribly wrong. The 28-year-old died Feb. 20 from what the doctor told her family was a massive pulmonary embolism while getting a tummy tuck and liposuction at a clinic in the Dominican capital recommended by friends. Family members want local authorities to investigate.
“We want to know exactly what happened,” said Bernadette Lamboy, Brignoni’s godmother. “We want to know if there was negligence.”
The district attorney’s office for Santo Domingo says it has not yet begun an investigation because it has not received a formal complaint from Brignoni’s relatives. Family members say they plan to make one.
Shortly after Brignoni’s death, the Health Ministry inspected the Vista del Jardin Medical Center where she was treated and ordered the operating room temporarily closed, citing the presence of bacteria and violations of bio-sanitary regulations. The doctor who performed the procedure and the clinic have not responded to requests for comment.
Brignoni’s death is unusual, but it is not isolated. Concerns about the booming cosmetic surgery business in the Dominican Republic are enough of an issue that the State Department has posted a warning on its page for travel to that country, noting that in several cases U.S. citizens have suffered serious complications or died.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued an alert March 7 after health authorities in the United States reported that at least 19 women in five states had developed serious mycobacterial wound infections over the previous 12 months following cosmetic procedures in the Dominican Republic such as liposuction, tummy tucks and breast implants.
There were no reported deaths in those cases, but treatment for these types of infections, which have been caused in the past by contaminated medical equipment, tend to involve long courses of antibiotics and can require new surgery to remove infected tissue and drain fluid, said Dr. Douglas Esposito, a CDC medical officer.
“Some of these patients end up going through one or more surgeries and various travels through the medical system,” Esposito said. “They take a long time typically to get better.”
The Dominican Republic, like countries such as Mexico, Costa Rica and Thailand, has promoted itself as a destination for medical tourism, so-called because people will often tack on a few days at a resort after undergoing surgery. The main allure is much lower costs along with the promise that conditions will be on par with what a patient
would encounter at home.
In 2013, there were more than 1,000 cosmetic procedures performed in the Dominican Republic, 60 percent of them on foreigners, according to the country’s Plastic Surgery Society.
The Internet is flooded with advertisements and testimonials from people who say they have had successful procedures in the Dominican Republic, and an industry of “recovery houses” has sprung up to serve clients, along with promoters who canvass for clients in the United States. The price is often about a third of the cost in the United States.
Dr. Braun Graham, a plastic surgeon in Sarasota, Florida, says he done corrective surgery on people for what he says were inferior procedures abroad. He warns that even if a foreign doctor is talented, nurses and support staff may lack adequate training.
“Clearly, the cost savings is certainly not worth the increased risk of a fatal complication,” said Graham, past president for Florida Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Brignoni was referred to the Vista del Jardin Medical Center by several acquaintances in the New York borough of the Bronx where she lived, said Lamboy and Lenny Ulloa, the father of the 4-year-old daughter she left behind.
“Supposedly, it was a high-end clinic, one of the best in the city,” Ulloa said.
The doctor who performed Brignoni’s procedure, Guillermo Lorenzo, is certified by the Plastic Surgery Society, but there
are at least 300 surgeons performing cosmetic procedures who are not, said Dr. Severo Mercedes, the organization’s director. He said the government knows about the problem but has not taken any action. “We complain but we can’t go after anyone because we’re not law enforcement,” Mercedes said.
The number of people pursuing treatment in the Dominican Republic doesn’t seem to have been affected by negative reports, including a previous CDC warning about a cluster of 12 infections in 2003-04.
In one recent case, the Dominican government in February closed a widely advertised clinic known as “Efecto Brush,” for operating without a license. Prosecutors opened a criminal case after at least six women accused the clinic of fraud and negligence. The director, Franklin Polanco, is free while awaiting trial. He denies wrongdoing.
There was also the case of Dr. Hector Cabral. New York prosecutors accused him of conducting examinations of women in health spas and beauty parlors in that state in 2006-09 without a license, then operating on them in the Dominican Republic, leaving some disfigured. Cabral pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized practice of medicine in October 2011 and returned to the Dominican Republic, where he still practices.
In 2009, Dominican authorities charged Dr. Johan Tapia Bueno with illegally practicing plastic surgery at his apartment after several women, including a local television personality, accused him of malpractice that left them with infections. Awaiting trial, he has pleaded innocent to charges that include fraud.
Juan Linares, a lawyer hired by Brignoni’s boyfriend, said he is still awaiting an autopsy report.
Because she arrived in the country late at night on a delayed flight and was on the operating table early the next morning, a main concern is whether she received an adequate medical evaluation before the procedure. Graham, the Florida surgeon, said sitting on a plane for several hours can cause blood to stagnate in the legs and increase the risk of an embolism.
Brignoni paid the Dominican clinic $6,300 for a combination of liposuction, tummy tuck and breast surgery. Lamboy said she had decided not to have the work done on her breasts and was expecting a partial refund. The woman, who worked as a property manager, had lost about 80 pounds about a year earlier after gastric bypass surgery.
Brignoni was clearly excited about the procedure. Her final post on Facebook was a photo she took of her hands holding her passport and boarding pass for the flight from New York to Santo Domingo.
“She wanted it so bad,” her godmother said. “It felt like she was going to have a better outlook on life, getting this done.”
Associated Press writer Ben Fox reported this story from Miami and Ezequiel Abiu Lopez reported in Santo Domingo.
This is a very important issue for the planning and execution of the new inter-governmental agency: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). First of all, someone died – life is too precious to skim over this issue with indifference. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap to introduce and implement the CU, so as to re-boot the region’s economic engines, including avenues of medical tourism.
There are also peripheral issues associated with this news story, many of which are examined, as missions, in great details in the Go Lean book. The issues/missions are:
Image: Confidence in the competence of service providers is sometimes based on reputation and branding. This is para-mount in medical fields. While the Caribbean is home to many excellent medical schools, facilities and practitioners, there is no regional “sentinel” role-player. The CU mandate is to zealously protect and promote the image and branding for industrial developments. So now when the media portrays “negative” depiction of Caribbean life, culture and people, there is no formal response mechanism. But with the CU’s implementation, there will be an entity to effectuate an anti-defamation response and better manage the region’s image.
Health Administration: The Go Lean roadmap recognizes healthcare as a basic need for the people of the Caribbean. As such, there is the acknowledgement that health delivery systems generate excessive costs and risks for a community. As a planning tool, the roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing regional integration (Page 11) as the strategy for optimized benefits:
IX. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, obesity and smoking cessation programs. The Federation must proactively anticipate the demand and supply of organ transplantation as developing countries are often exploited by richer neighbors for illicit organ trade.
Self-Government Entities: The foregoing news story involves a clinic regulated by a Caribbean member-state, the Dominican Republic. The Go Lean roadmap institutes an arrangement for medical/research campuses as SGE’s (Self-Governing Entities) that are only regulated by the CU federal authorities. Had this tragedy occurred on such a facility, the response would have been immediate and comprehensive, employing best-practices of trauma medicine arts and sciences, thusly requiring a post-mortem lessons-learned process that would be fully transparent and accountable.
Lean Government: The Go Lean roadmap also extends optimizations to the member-states governments, requiring a separation-of-powers dictum to transfer oversight and administration of certain state functions to federal authorities. This includes standards, licensing and administration of healthcare facilities. The application of best-practices would most assuredly minimize the risk of medical negligence.
US Exceptionalism: The Go Lean roadmap maintains that other countries have their own version of the American Dream. The quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not exclusively American. Whereas there are millions of negligent deaths in the US hospitals/clinics every year, one American dying in a Caribbean facility does not constitute an exceptional event; bad things do happen to good people … everywhere, in the US, in the Caribbean and in the Dominican Republic. Having a tourism-based regional economy means we always want to extend hospitality to our American guests, but embarking on medical tourism, also means assuming some degree of risks, for the facilities, the doctors and most importantly the patients.
The foregoing article crystalizes the need for the CU Trade Federation, a super-national administration to regulate, protect, promote and foster quality delivery of the most vital public services. The publishers of the Go Lean roadmap will hereby “sit back”, observe-and-report on the manifestations of this case, hoping for the quest for justice and accountability to be fulfilled. And remembering the unconscionable loss of the beautiful 28-year-old woman, Beverly Brignoni; RIP.
Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
———–
Appendix – CDC warns of dangers of plastic surgery in Dominican Republic
(HealthDay) — U.S. health officials are warning about the dangers of “medical tourism” after at least 18 women from the East Coast became infected with a disfiguring bacteria following plastic surgery procedures they had in the Dominican Republic.
The infections, caused by a type of germ called mycobacteria, can be difficult to treat. At least several of the women had to be hospitalized, undergo surgery to treat the infection and take antibiotics for months, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One expert said the effects can be devastating.
“It’s a very mutilating infection. They’re going for cosmetic surgery, and they will be scarred. It’s a terrible scenario for people to go down there, get surgery and come back worse than they imagined they could be,” said Dr. Charles Daley. He is a Denver infectious disease physician whose clinic has seen patients infected after undergoing these kinds of procedures in the Dominican Republic.
According to the CDC, 21 women from six Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states appear to have been affected by mycobacterial infections after visiting five plastic surgery clinics in the Dominican Republic, a nation in the Caribbean. (Eighteen of the cases are confirmed, and three are considered probable.)
Mycobacteria, which are found worldwide in the environment, “usually infect the skin or lungs, and are responsible for chronic and recurrent infections that are notoriously resistant to antibiotics and difficult to treat,” said report co-author Dr. Douglas Esposito. He is a medical officer and epidemiologist with the CDC’s Travelers’ Health Branch.
More than 80 percent of the infected women reported swelling, pain and scarring. Daley, who works at the National Jewish Health respiratory hospital in Denver, said infected people often need to undergo reconstructive surgery.
It’s not clear how the women were infected, although Daley said it’s possible the bacteria entered their plastic surgery wounds through tap water or instruments used in surgery. Most underwent liposuction and at least one other surgery, such as procedures to expand the size of the breasts and buttocks, or breast reduction.
Daley said his clinic has seen two patients infected after plastic surgery and consulted on a third case. It’s not clear how many, if any, are among those in the CDC report.
The risk of this kind of infection is higher in countries like the Dominican Republic and Brazil, he noted, but patients have become infected in the United States, too. “We are definitely seeing more of these postoperative infections, particularly ones that are related to cosmetic surgery,” Daley said.
The CDC report warns about the risks of medical tourism, a term that describes leaving the United States for medical procedures to save money. According to the report, many of the women—most of whom were born in the Dominican Republic—said they went to the country for plastic surgery to save money.
People who have undergone plastic surgery in the Dominican Republic should talk to their doctor about getting tested, Daley suggested. And, people who plan to go there for a procedure should ask the clinic whether they’ve had infections, he added.
“I would never go to one of those places,” he said. “I know too many stories about what’s happened to people. It has ruined people’s lives.”
The study was published online July 13 in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Welcome to a ‘Day of Happiness’, the International Day of Happiness to be exact, a few days early. (The International Day of Happiness is celebrated every March by the United Nations; this year on March 20th). The celebration in this commentary is being presented a few days early to correspond with the annual Jazz in the Gardens (JITG) Music Festival in Miami Gardens, Florida.
As previously related, Miami is a frontier city in the United States that draws its success from the impact of Caribbean cultures. This event is a music festival that appeals more to the African-American community from around the US and the Caribbean region. This allows us to celebrate the “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain” of music and Miami. A good time is to be had by all attendees – a ‘Day of Happiness’ for each day in this elated weekend. The event, in its 12th year now in 2017, has proven to be one of the most growing music festivals in the world – the 2015 event saw a record 73,000 attendees. See the music-artist line-up here for just one day (Saturday) of the 3-day JITG festival:
Click on photo to Enlarge
In many previous years, the musical artist/group Frankie Beverly and Maze performed as the final performer of the festival; their classic anthem – “Joy. Pain. Sunshine. Rain.” – is the theme of this previous blog from March 20, 2016 (for last year’s International Day of Happiness); it is being Encored here:
The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean strives to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. Having success in this quest would mean more joy (happiness) for the stakeholders (residents and visitors alike) of the tropical sunshine. We also try to soften the pain of day-to-day life, for “in every life, a little rain must fall”.
“Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain” – Sounds familiar, right? It is the title and chorus of a popular Rhythm & Blues song by the Grammy Award winning band Frankie Beverly and Maze; see the VIDEO-AUDIO here:
Uploaded on Oct 31, 2011 – {DISCLAIMER}
No Copyright Intended. This Song Belongs To It Respective Owners.
Please Support The Artist By Buying Their Songs/Album – “Joy and Pain” by Maze Listen ad-free with YouTube Red
There are a lot of famous quotes alluding to the power of music, but here’s an old favorite:
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” — Plato
Consider this list where music (songs & concerts) has changed the world in past campaigns:
1
Bob Dylan: Times They Are A-Changin’ – 1960’s Civil Rights Anthem
2
Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief – Telethon on Jan 22, 2010
3
“Sun City” – 1985 Anti-Apartheid Group Song and Album
4
Bob Marley and the Wailers: “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)” – 1975 song
5
K’naan: “Wavin’ Flag” – 2010 Soccer World Cup anthem advocating rights for refugees
6
Live Aid – 1985 “simul”-concerts in London & Philadelphia for famine relief in Ethiopia
7
46664 Concerts – (Mandela’s Prison #) – 2003 advocacy against HIV/AIDS in South Africa
8
John Lennon: “Imagine” – 1971 iconic song for world peace
9
Tsunami Aid: Concert of Hope – 2004 Benefit for Indian Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami
10
The Concert for Bangladesh – 1971 Benefit for refugees from (then) East Pakistan
11
Live 8 – 2005 series of concerts in the G8 member-states for foreign aid to poorest countries
12
Patti Smith: “People Have the Power” – 1988 song condemning war and human rights abuses
13
Farm Aid – Annual concerts starting in 1985 advocating Family Farms
14
Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On” – 1971 album against the Vietnam war, drugs and poverty
15
Concert in celebration of “It Takes Two” – 2014 effort tackling high teenage pregnancy in Uganda
16
Joni Mitchell: “Big Yellow Taxi” – 1970 hit song addresses environmental concerns
[17]
[“We Are the World” – 1985 super-group (most famous music artists) song by USA for Africa]
The Go Lean book identifies the art and science of the music business among the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies of the roadmap to elevate the Caribbean’s societal engines. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), an initiative to elevate and empower the region, to make the homelands better and happier. From the outset, the book recognized the significance of music and happiness in this roadmap with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14):
Preamble. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness …
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.
xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.
The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is not music, but rather to make the Caribbean region a better homeland, a happier place to live, work and play. Music can be an effective tool for campaigns … to convey the important message of happiness, to pronounce that “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain” is part-and-parcel of any happiness advocacy.
This Go Lean roadmap calls for heavy-lifting in shepherding important aspects of Caribbean life. In fact, the empowerment roadmap has 3 prime directives that are critical for forging a happy society; they are identified as follows:
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 engines.
The book describes the CU as a hallmark of a technocracy, with a commitment to efficiency and effectiveness in these societal engines, while still not ignoring principles of fun such as music, arts, heritage and overall happiness. In fact, one of the 144 different missions of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to promote happiness (10 Ways to Promote Happiness – Page 36).
Happiness is the focus of this commentary…
… thousands of people all around the world took action to support the International Day of Happiness on March 20, 2016. (This is celebrated in March every year). See a related alternate commentary of this year’s advocacy in the Appendix below.
“I will try to create more happiness in the world around me”.
… this Go Lean/CU effort is “our” attempt to do more … for the Caribbean. The Go Lean/CU roadmap was constructed with the community ethos in mind to make the region more happy, plus the execution of related strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to forge permanent happiness. The following is a sample of these specific details of the roadmap from the book:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius
Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property
Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development
Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide
Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Around
Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art, People and Culture of the Caribbean
Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber-Caribbean
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 136
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed
Page 137
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts
Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music
Page 231
Appendix – Case Study Managing Copyright Infringements
Page 351
The Go Lean/CU roadmap is optimistic, but it is realistic and pragmatic too. There is the acknowledgement that while music is powerful, the music business on the other hand, not so much. This industry has changed in the light of modern dynamics (technology and globalization), particularly due to Internet & Communications Technologies. The industry needs to adapt accordingly – we need a fully functional music industry. To spur more development in the industrial dimensions of the music business, this roadmap seeks to secure the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean region. This point was detailed in these previous Go Lean blog/commentaries:
Music Role Model Berry Gordy – Reflecting & Effecting Change
We need a fully functional music industry because we need music, and the effects of music: the power to reach, soothe and move people. This point was previously detailed in other Go Lean blog/commentaries; a sample follows:
This quest to elevate the Caribbean region is heavy-lifting; more is involved than just saying “Don’t Worry Be Happy“. It is more complex than just playing or listening to music. Though this is serious, it should also be fun; it should be “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain”.
Let’s create a happier world together; a happy world filled with laughter and music – “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain”. And if not the world, then maybe just the Caribbean. 🙂
I have a question for you: How often do you feel like a ‘room without a roof’? According to Pharrell Williams, this “space without limit” feeling is universally achievable. But for many of us, limitless happiness takes a little work. So, what are some of the best habits to practice for feeling happy every day?
MANAGE THE DOWN DAYS
You know the days. Those days when you’re telling yourself the ‘I’m not good enough’ story (which we all have, by the way). The days where things seem to go from bad to worse.
It’s very easy to get trapped at this point because many of us start feeling bad for feeling bad. There are enough external pressures to always be ‘up’ and cheerful, without applying internal pressure too. Acknowledge you’re feeling suboptimal, and do a quick stocktake.
If you can change things, take action. If not, do something that helps to calm you, comfort you or cheer you up (even a little bit).
Be gentle with yourself and don’t splatter your down day over your bystanders. Remember, no-one can ‘make’ you feel anything. You have all the controls. Which reminds me …
DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK
Much unhappiness is caused by paying way too much attention to our thoughts. Our minds are constantly telling us stories to explain the world around us. Many times these stories are accurate, but unfortunately, whenever we don’t have enough data, our mind just fills in the gaps.
Let’s face it, we really don’t know why they didn’t say hello to us this morning. We really don’t.
As soon as we hear our minds saying things like, “They ALWAYS let me down” or “She NEVER keeps her promises” we need to reach for the metaphorical handbrake.
Get in the habit of asking yourself if that’s strictly true. Remember it’s just a story you’re telling yourself. You can even give the story a name: “Oh, it’s the ‘I do everything around here’ story”. It is very unlikely that things NEVER or ALWAYS happen. There are always exceptions. Remembering to look for (and recognise) the exceptions means much happier states of mind.
KEEP WHAT ‘SPARKS JOY’
In her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo recommends a (once-off) festival of tidying where you gather categories of belongings into ginormous piles, pick items up one-by-one and ask a simple question: “Does it spark joy?”
If it does, you keep it. If it doesn’t, you can let it go.
Just imagine how it would be if every item around you had a happy association. Out would go that hideous fondue set from Aunt Bertha or those pyjamas from your ex. Because, according to Marie Kondo, a gift has done its job once it’s received. The freedom!
Oh, and on a side note, this totally applies to the humans in your life too.
EVERYONE’S DOING BETTER THAN ME
The International Day of Happiness website has a great downloadable resource containing 10 keys to happier living. Each key strategy has been inspired by the latest scientific happiness research and there are some excellent quotes.
The one that I recognised most from working with many different clients is “Don’t compare your insides with other people’s outsides”. This is easy to do.
I remember consulting at a very high-end corporate where everyone was incredibly polished and successful looking. One by one, they would come in and say, “Everyone else is doing okay, but I’m falling apart”.
The thing is, you can’t know what is going on inside someone else, especially if you only have their outside as your guide. Chances are, if you’re finding something difficult or challenging, other people are too. I’m talking work, parenting, studying, teaching, being single, being in a relationship …
WHAT WENT WELL?
One of the pioneers of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, outlines some quick and easy strategies that raise your wellbeing and lower your depression in his book, Flourish.
A simple exercise to do in the 10 minutes before you go to sleep every night is the ‘what-went-well’ exercise. Every night, you write down three things that went well and why they went well (e.g. I finished most of my important tasks today because I took time to plan in the morning or I didn’t yell at my partner this morning because I got up a little earlier and made sure I ate breakfast). This will greatly improve your mood over time.
ROOFLESS ROOMS
According to Sonja Lyubomirsky in The How of Happiness, up to 40 per cent of our happiness is within our power to change.
Being grateful, taking responsibility, blaming less, learning to forgive and yes, even practising random acts of kindness, all predictably increase our happiness.
Have a happy day and go well everyone!
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Dr. Christine Brown is an Inventiologist, Psychologist and Executive Coach.
The Caribbean has societal problems: our economics, security and governing engines are all defective. How do we fix these?
The book Go Lean…Caribbean prescribes a detailed, complex plan for effecting change in our society. The goal is to confederate under a unified entity made up of the region’s stakeholders to empower the economics and optimize Homeland Security. But Homeland Security for the Caribbean has a different meaning than for our North American or European counterparts. Though we too must be on defense against military intrusions like terrorism & piracy, we mostly have to contend with threats that may imperil the region’s economic engines, like our tourism products. This includes concerns like narco-terrorism and enterprise corruption, plus natural and man-made disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, oil/chemical spills, etc..
So the Go Lean security goal is mostly for public safety! This goal is detailed in the book as it serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). While the CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic empowerment, we must accept the established truth that the security dynamics of the region are inextricably linked to economic endeavors. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
All in all, the quest of these prime directives involves heavy-lifting.
Anything described as heavy-lifting requires a full measure of devotion and commitment; it requires time, talent and treasuries. But just how much time? How much talent? How much of our treasuries?
These are all good questions and the consensus is that the answer is all qualitative and subjective, except for the last one: how much money to spend on security initiatives can be quantitative. There are existing formulas for this determination, that are universally accepted. The formula comes from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has been presented in the Go Lean book as the example/role-model for the Caribbean to emulate. NATO was formed in 1949 as a collective response to security threats in the European region; member-states came together and confederated this inter-governmental security force to enjoy economies-of-scale of “many hands making a big job a smaller effort collectively”. See the relevant Appendix VIDEO below.
(The subject of NATO is en vogue right now as the new US President – Donald Trump – has voiced reservations about the other member-states (the US is 1 of 28) paying their “fair” share of NATO’s expenses. He had falsely related that the US was supplying 73% of NATO funds.)
In the Caribbean, we have a similar quest – fostering a security apparatus for our own needs – as was Europe’s original plan. The Go Lean book asserts these CU security mandates for a unified region at Page 103:
10 Security Initiatives at Start-up 1.Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: CU Trade Federation. The CU treaty integrates 30 member-states in the Caribbean region into a single market of 42 million people so as to reboot the economic engines of the region. The CU posits that whenever there is economic prosperity that “bad actors” would emerge to exploit the peace for their own illicit gains. This was the case with the Pirates of the Caribbean in the 17th & 18th centuries, and the Gold Rush / Outlaws of 19th century Old West. So at the outset, the CU must tie a security apparatus to its economic rebooting activities. There is a need to assuage current threats and abate crime, so the Trade Federation must implement security/defense initiatives and enhance law-and-order institutions to better “serve and protect” the region.
The Bottom Line on NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an inter-governmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up, [and remains to this day]. During the Cold War, NATO was intended to be a credible defense against a Soviet/Warsaw Pact threat. Starting with 11 member-states, there are 28 today.
2.Unified Command & Control with State Militias and Police
3. Intelligence Agencies Collaboration
4. Border Security – Immigration / Emigration Tracking; Data Capture & Big Data Analysis
5. Satellite Surveillance Contracts
6. Closed Circuit Camera Installations
7. US Aid – Air Support
8. UK/Dutch Aid – Naval Ships
9. Recruitment & Repatriation of Diaspora
10. Israeli Defense Force Modeling
The ‘T’ in the acronym for NATO means Treaty. A ratified treaty is the premise of this alliance between European and North American countries. It is also the premise for the Security Pact for the Caribbean, in which we have CU military forces and the host countries. The treaty is considered a Status of Forces Agreement; an agreement between a host country and a “foreign” stationing military force in that country. SOFA’s are often included, along with other types of military agreements, as part of a comprehensive security arrangement. The SOFA does not constitute the actual security arrangement, it establishes the rights and privileges of foreign personnel present in a host country in support of the larger security arrangement.
The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that the region must prepare its own security apparatus – a NATO-styled inter-governmental military alliance – for our own security arrangement, to execute a limited scope on their sovereign territories. The limited scope reflects the separation-of-powers between the member-state governments and the CU Homeland Security agencies. So the request is that all Caribbean member-states welcome this foreign military force – foreign as in from the neighboring countries, from the confederated authority.
Some CU Homeland Security activities include:
A Naval Authority for the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for the Caribbean Sea
A robust Intelligence Gathering and Analysis apparatus
A Group Purchasing Organization, for armament procurement
The book contends that this confederated authority is the best way to prepare for the bad actors that will emerge just as a result of new economic successes in our region. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
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.
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 public safety is intended to be a comprehensive endeavor; the funding should follow the NATO model of 2-percent – see Appendix below – the US has the largest NATO economy so they pay a much larger share of the funding. This 2-percent approach would dictate the following budget (in $millions) for the Caribbean Security Pact; using 2010 GDP numbers from the Go Lean book Page 66:
Member-State
2010 GDP
2% Defense
Anguilla
0.108
$0.00
Antigua and Barbuda
1,646
$32.92
Aruba
2,400
$48.00
Bahamas
9,228
$184.56
Barbados
5,244
$104.88
Belize
2,525
$50.50
Bermuda
5,085
$101.70
British Virgin Islands
84
$1.68
Cayman Islands
1,939
$38.78
Cuba
111,000
$2,220.00
Dominica
720
$14.40
Dominican Republic
76,304
$1,526.08
Grenada
1,153
$23.06
Guadeloupe
6,169
$123.38
Guyana
3,082
$61.64
Haiti
11,562
$231.24
Jamaica
20,958
$419.16
Martinique
9,610
$192.20
Montserrat
29
$0.58
Netherlands Antilles
2,450
$49.00
Puerto Rico
67,870
$1,357.40
Saint Barthélemy
255
$5.10
Saint Kitts and Nevis
750
$15.00
Saint Lucia
1,839
$36.78
Saint Martin
599
$11.98
Saint Vincent
1,086
$21.72
Suriname
4,436
$88.72
Trinidad and Tobago
27,038
$540.76
Turks and Caicos Islands
845
$16.90
US Virgin Islands
2,679
$53.58
$378,585.11
$7,571.70
$7.6 billion in spending to assure the regional defense? That would be nice!
The CU Trade Federation is designed to lead, fund and facilitate regional security forces. But the plan is NOT for the individual member-states to write checks to the CU. Rather, the CU Trade Federation creates its own funding – from regionalized services – and then encumbers the funds for each member-state to earmark the security initiatives, at the above rates. This is analogized as 2 Pies:
One ‘pie’ to represent the existing budgets of the member-states and how they distribute their government funding between government services (education, healthcare, etc.), security measures (Police, Coast Guards)
One ‘pie’ to represent the CU funding from exclusive activities (Spectrum Auctions, Lottery, Exploration Rights, Licenses, Foreign-Aid, etc.).
The concept of Foreign-Aid requires more than just a quick mention; this could be a significant source of CU security funding. We have the example-model of the US giving aid to Egypt; this is documented (circa November 2013) further in the Go Lean book on Page 103:
The Bottom Line on US Aid to Egypt Annually, the U.S. funds 20% of Egypt’s military budget (US$1.3 billion) and gives another US$250 million in economic aid. The US is now being pressured to suspend aid to [the] Egyptian military because the military has overturned the vote of the people and executed a coup d’état; [this is a violation of US law to support such a regime]. US Senator John McCain asserts that once a timetable is arranged for a new election and a new constitution “we should evaluate whether to continue with aid or not.” He was the first US politician to refer to the events as a coup. But as of August 31, 2013, the US was still set to go ahead with the delivery of F-16 jets promised to Egypt.
The foregoing SOFAis “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap for Homeland Security, covering the need for adequate funding, accountability and control. The Go Lean book details this along with a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide increased public safety & security in the Caribbean region:
Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future
Planning – Lessons Learned from the West Indies Federation
Page 135
Planning – Lessons from East Germany – Mitigating Threats
Page 139
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Need for Law & Order
Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt
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 Improve Leadership
Page 171
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
Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering/Analysis
Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters
Page 184
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights
Page 220
Other subjects related to security and governing empowerments for the region have been blogged in previous Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:
The movement behind the Go Lean roadmap wants to make the Caribbean homeland a better-safer place to live, work and play; this means optimizing the societal engines of economics, security and governance.
We do not have to wage a World War, only ensure protections for our people and trading partners. It is unfortunate, but true, that domestic and foreign “bad actors” will always emerge as societal threats. The Caribbean has this experience. So we do not want to play catch-up with our security needs, we want to proactively enable this security apparatus from Day One of this new Caribbean empowerment roadmap. As related: We must therefore appoint“new guards” to ensure our public safety …
Appointing is one thing; funding it is another, thusly the thorough Go Lean roadmap, detailing the required strategies and tactics to fund the Security Pact. This roadmap is therefore conceivable, believable and achievable. All of the Caribbean are hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap. 🙂
Appendix Title: Funding NATO Member countries make direct and indirect contributions to the costs of running NATO and implementing its policies and activities.
Highlights
Indirect – or national – contributions are the largest and come, for instance, when a member volunteers equipment or troops to a military operation and bears the costs of the decision to do so.
Direct contributions are made to finance requirements of the Alliance that serve the interests of all 28 members – and are not the responsibility of any single member – such as NATO-wide air defence or command and control systems. Costs are borne collectively, often using the principle of common funding.
Within the principle of common funding, all 28 members contribute according to an agreed cost-share formula, based on Gross National Income, which represents a small percentage of each member’s defence budget.
Common funding arrangements are used to finance NATO’s principal budgets: the civil budget (NATO HQ running costs), the military budget (costs of the integrated Command Structure) and the NATO Security Investment Programme (military capabilities).
Projects can also be jointly funded, which means that the participating countries can identify the requirements, the priorities and the funding arrangements, but NATO provides political and financial oversight. The funding process is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, managed by the Resource Policy and Planning Board, and implemented by the Budget Committee and the Investment Committee.
In 2014, at the Wales Summit, NATO leaders tasked further work in the areas of delivery of common funded capabilities, reform governance and transparency and accountability, especially in the management of NATO’s financial resources.
… The 2% defence investment guideline
In 2006, NATO member countries agreed to commit a minimum of two per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to spending on defence. This guideline principally served as an indicator of a country’s political will to contribute to the Alliance’s common defence efforts. Additionally, the defence capacity of each member country has an important impact on the overall perception of the Alliance’s credibility as a politico-military organisation.
The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, exceeds that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defence. This imbalance has been a constant, with variations, throughout the history of the Alliance and more so since the tragic events of 11 September 2001, after which the United States significantly increased its defence spending. The gap between defence spending in the United States compared to Canada and European members combined has therefore increased.
Today, the volume of the US defence expenditure effectively represents 72 per cent of the defence spending of the Alliance as a whole. This does not mean that the United States covers 72 per cent of the costs involved in the operational running of NATO as an organisation, including its headquarters in Brussels and its subordinate military commands, but it does mean that there is an over-reliance by the Alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refuelling; ballistic missile defence; and airborne electronic warfare.
The effects of the financial crisis and the declining share of resources devoted to defence in many Allied countries have exacerbated this imbalance and also revealed growing asymmetries in capability among European Allies. France, Germany and the United Kingdom together represent more than 50 per cent of the non-US Allies defence spending, which creates another kind of over-reliance within Europe on a few capable European Allies. Furthermore, their defence spending is under increasing pressure, as is that of the United States, to meet deficit and indebtedness reduction targets. At the Wales Summit in 2014, NATO leaders agreed to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets and decided:
Allies currently meeting the 2% guideline on defence spending will aim to continue to do so;
Allies whose current proportion of GDP spent on defence is below this level will halt any decline; aim to increase defence expenditure as GDP grows; and will move toward the 2% guideline within a decade.
While the 2% of GDP guideline alone is no guarantee that money will be spent in the most effective and efficient way to acquire and deploy modern capabilities, it remains, nonetheless, an important indicator of the political resolve of individual Allies to devote to defence a relatively small, but still significant, level of resources at a time of considerable international uncertainty and economic adversity. Source: North Atlantic Treaty Organization – Official Website; posted January 19, 2017; retrieved 02/21/2017 from: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm?
———-
Appendix VIDEO – NATO chief comments on Russia, defence funding in first official address – https://youtu.be/6Rf7gi81zPk
Published on Aug 3, 2015 – NATO’s new secretary-general said Tuesday that only a strong Western alliance can negotiate better ties with Russia.
Jens Stoltenberg said his experience as Norway’s prime minister was that robust defence capabilities and a strong trans-Atlantic bond were fundamental to bring about constructive relations with Russia.
In his first policy speech since taking office Oct. 1, Stoltenberg said there was no contradiction between wanting to keep NATO strong and continuing to attempt to engage with the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“NATO is here to stay. Russia is here to stay. So we’re going to have some kind of relationship,” Stoltenberg said. The question, he said, is “what kind.”
Stoltenberg also spoke about the threats facing NATO in the south, where Islamic State group extremists have seized large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic empire.
The group launched its offensive on the Syrian border town of Kobani and nearby villages in mid-September.
The fighting has killed more than 800 people, according to activists.
Kobani borders the Turkish town of Mursitpınar.
He said NATO had already deployed Patriot batteries to Turkey and had pushed ahead with a missile defence system.
“This sends a strong signal of solidarity and a strong signal of deterrence,” he said, adding “we must be prepared to use military force when necessary.”
Stoltenberg said defence budgets that were trimmed after the end of the Cold War needed to be replenished due new security threats.
“We are moving into more uncertain times, more uncertain security environment and therefore there are strong arguments of increasing defence spending again after a long period of reducing them.”
The NATO chief spoke in Brussels at an event organised by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to elevate society in the entire Caribbean homeland. The book, serving as a roadmap with turn-by-turn directions, seeks to transform – remediate and mitigate – the engines of regional economics, security and governance. This means optimizing justice institutions to ensure “liberty, equality and justice for all”.
Here’s a question for the Caribbean in general, and considering the subsequent news article, the Bahamas in particular:
Do minorities have any rights if the majority do not accord them?
Bahamas Parliament – House of Assembly – Nassau
This is a serious issue!
This relates to the June 7th, 2016 referendum in the Bahamas. The measure listed 4 bills for constitutional amendments relating to Gender Equality, designed to correct some inequities in the legal structures of the country. The following summaries apply:
BILL 1: Would allow a child born outside of the Bahamas to a Bahamian mother and a non-Bahamian father to have citizenship.
BILL 2: Would allow a foreign man married to a Bahamian woman to seek citizenship.
BILL 3: Would allow an unmarried Bahamian father to pass his citizenship to a child born to a foreign mother.
Update June 8, 2016: The Referendum failed in every constituency and every precinct. The ‘No‘ Vote movement succeeded overwhelmingly; see a related article here.
Like most societies, there are males and females, majorities and minorities. So an even more grave issue is brought to mind:
Human / Natural Rights of Men versus Women and Majorities versus Minorities
The Human Rights premise is: for those people who are not treated equal in a society, their rights should NOT be dependent on some popularity contests among the majority. No one should have to seek someone else’s permission to be happy. This is easier said than done, as our Caribbean is notorious for repression for those who do not conform with the majority.
This commentary asserts that natural rights / human rights should be accorded, no matter the results of some referendum.
The disposition of the Bahamas “lay in the balance” from this referendum. What message has been sent to the world: inviting or disinviting?
The book Go Lean … Caribbean addresses these issues, from the perspective of economics and nation-building. This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); the purpose of which is to elevate Caribbean society, for all 30 member-states. The book stresses the need to guarantee human rights protections for all Caribbean people (Page 220), recognizing that the region is diverse in ethnicities and cultures.
Can’t we all just get along?! – Rodney King 1994
If we fail to try, or send the wrong message as to our inclusiveness, we suffer a dire consequence – “brain drain”. This is also the strong point made by the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation in the following news article:
The upcoming constitutional referendum’s outcome could have far-reaching consequences for the Bahamian economy and its ability to reverse the “brain drain”, a senior private sector executive warned yesterday.
Edison Sumner, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive, told Tribune Business that the four Bills that Bahamians will vote on have profound implications beyond gender equality.
Depending on the outcome, Mr Sumner said the referendum may impact the Bahamas’ ability to retain – and attract – the ‘best and brightest’, including future generations of entrepreneurs and managers, given that it would affect how citizenship is bestowed.
“The Bahamas already complains, as does the region, about there being a ‘brain drain’,” he told Tribune Business, referring to how many college and university graduates elected to remain abroad after completing their studies.
Most cited the lack of opportunity, and economic diversification, as the reasons behind this choice, but Mr Sumner warned that this trend could be exacerbated depending on which way Bahamians vote.
The Bills, as designed, will enable a child born outside the Bahamas to automatically become a Bahamian citizen at birth if either of the parents was a Bahamian citizen at birth.
They will also “enable a Bahamian woman married to a foreign man to secure for him the same entitlements to citizenship that a Bahamian man married to a foreign woman already has under the constitution”.
The Bahamian father of a child born outside of marriage will be able to pass on his citizenship to that child if the third Bill is approved by the electorate, while the fourth Bill effectively enshrines gender equality as a fundamental right under the constitution.
Mr Sumner said that, viewed strictly from an economic and workforce perspective, the Bills would eventually have major ramifications for the Bahamas’ ability to expand its labour and entrepreneur pools, plus its attraction for investors.
Making it easier for children born to Bahamians in the circumstances outlined by the Bills to obtain citizenship/status, he added, would be key to ensuring these people became positive contributors to the Bahamas’ economic development and growth
“Those born to a Bahamian parent outside the outside the country, or born outside marriage, may find themselves in a precarious position where they are not Bahamian, and have no more entitlement to become Bahamian,” Mr Sumner explained.
“We want to retain as much of our intellectual capital in the Bahamas as possible to help us grow the economy, the education system, the infrastructure of the country.
“It has to be one of those situations where they must see the benefits in coming to the Bahamas, getting their citizenship here, and helping to build the country and the economy.”
Mr Sumner also warned that Bahamian employers needed to “pay attention” to what happens with the Bills and the referendum, given that the outcome might impact employee workplace relations and hiring practices.
Given that the constitution “trumps all legislation”, he added that the Employment Act, Industrial Relations Act and other labour legislation might be impacted by the referendum.
So voting wrong on the referendum could exacerbate the “brain drain”? Yes! Justice for all? No!
Public referendums are a product of a democratic process. But there is something else more important: rule of law or a constitution. This normally defines the moral code by which a society is to judge “right from wrong”. For many Caribbean nations, their constitutions embed principles from the Judeo-Christian principles – from the Bible. But does that mean they are “Christian nations”. Just consider the comments of one of the founding fathers of the Bahamas, Arthur D. Hanna. See VIDEO here:
Published on Nov 15, 2014 – Founding Father, framer of the constitution and former Governor-General Arthur Dion Hanna makes it abundantly clear that the Bahamas is NOT a Christian nation. (recorded at the Bahamas Historical Society, 13th November, 2014)
A Christian character is preferred for the individual; a “Christian nation”, not so much. A Christian nation would impose orthodoxy and dogma, prohibiting gender equality and establishing men as the “head” in their families and communities; plus a Christian nation would prohibit the activities of the LGBT communities, due to the religious orthodoxy. This orthodoxy premise often lead victims to flee their homeland to find refuge abroad, exacerbating the “brain drain” further.
So what principle would be recommended for a Caribbean nation or the region as a whole? The Go Lean book (Page 37) answers: the Greater Good:
“It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
The Go Lean book (Page 20) advocates for all of the Caribbean the community ethos of the Greater Good – “fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society”. But respect for the sovereign territories of each member-state mandates that we respect the individual laws enacted there. (Though we can use peer-pressure to foster change).
The Go Lean/CU roadmap employs a tactic of a “Separation-of-Powers between CU federal agencies and Caribbean member-state governments”; so the limitations of national laws in a member-state does not have to override the CU. The CU constitution would apply to the installation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and Self-Governing Entities (SGE) that operate in controlled bordered territories like campuses, industrial parks, research labs and industrial plants.
This roadmap brings hope to assuage the Caribbean orthodoxy.
The CU – applying the Greater Good principle – would facilitate the regional 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 protect the resultant economic engines, specifically in EEZ’s and SGE’s.
Improvement of Caribbean governance, with the appropriate separation-of-powers, to support these engines.
The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that CU controlled territories – like EEZ’s and SGE’s – can be strategic, tactical and operationally efficient for elevating Caribbean society and mandating “justice for all”. These sites can serve as peer pressure on the rest of the region. These points are pronounced early in the book with this Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), including these statements:
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
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 subject of optimizing justice institutions and the “truth and consequences” of justice failures have been directly addressed and further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:
The Go Lean book itself details the economic principles and community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to mitigate the “push and pull” factors that imperil our Caribbean region:
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Privacy –vs- Public Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Whistleblower Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Witness Security & Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Minority Equalization
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations
Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Trade Federation with Proxy Powers of a Confederacy
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Build and Foster Local Economic Engines
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect Stakeholders with Vigorous Law-and-Order measures
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
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up
Page 102
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives
Page 103
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the EEZ – Security – Interdictions
Page 104
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities – Security and Justice
Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – For oppressed minority groups
Page 115
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better – Measures for the Rich and Poor
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Law Enforcement Oversight
Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Law & Order needed for progress
Page 142
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership
Page 171
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 Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis
Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights
Page 220
The Caribbean is comprised of males and females, majorities and minorities. Everyone must be afforded every opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But “push and pull” emigration factors are real and important considerations for the Caribbean. The standards of justice – or lack there-of – have and can contribute to the “push” factors for people abandoning their homeland.
The foregoing news article depicts the crisis for the Bahamas.
The strong references to “brain drain” in the foregoing article and this commentary indicate that many in the community have felt oppressed or repressed, and have thusly “taken their talents to South Beach” or South New York, or South Toronto, or South London, etc. Since we need our talented human resources to build-up our own communities, we must examine all the debilitating factors – societal defects – in our homelands. We need to do better. The Caribbean in general and Bahamas in particular needs to send this message to the world that in our homeland, the legal premise must be:
… liberty, equality and justice for all.
The Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap seeks to employ strategies, tactics and implementations to dissuade the societal abandonment, invite the Diaspora to repatriate and further to recruit empowering immigrants to join us in our quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean strives to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. Having success in this quest would mean more joy (happiness) for the stakeholders (residents and visitors alike) of the tropical sunshine. We also try to soften the pain of day-to-day life, for “in every life, a little rain must fall”.
“Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain” – Sounds familiar, right? It is the title and chorus of a popular Rhythm & Blues song by the Grammy Award winning band Frankie Beverly and Maze; see the VIDEO-AUDIO here:
Uploaded on Oct 31, 2011 – {DISCLAIMER}
No Copyright Intended. This Song Belongs To It Respective Owners.
Please Support The Artist By Buying Their Songs/Album – “Joy and Pain” by Maze Listen ad-free with YouTube Red
There are a lot of famous quotes alluding to the power of music, but here’s an old favorite:
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” — Plato
Consider this list where music (songs & concerts) has changed the world in past campaigns:
1
Bob Dylan: Times They Are A-Changin’ – 1960’s Civil Rights Anthem
2
Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief – Telethon on Jan 22, 2010
3
“Sun City” – 1985 Anti-Apartheid Group Song and Album
4
Bob Marley and the Wailers: “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)” – 1975 song
5
K’naan: “Wavin’ Flag” – 2010 Soccer World Cup anthem advocating rights for refugees
6
Live Aid – 1985 “simul”-concerts in London & Philadelphia for famine relief in Ethiopia
7
46664 Concerts – (Mandela’s Prison #) – 2003 advocacy against HIV/AIDS in South Africa
8
John Lennon: “Imagine” – 1971 iconic song for world peace
9
Tsunami Aid: Concert of Hope – 2004 Benefit for Indian Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami
10
The Concert for Bangladesh – 1971 Benefit for refugees from (then) East Pakistan
11
Live 8 – 2005 series of concerts in the G8 member-states for foreign aid to poorest countries
12
Patti Smith: “People Have the Power” – 1988 song condemning war and human rights abuses
13
Farm Aid – Annual concerts starting in 1985 advocating Family Farms
14
Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On” – 1971 album against the Vietnam war, drugs and poverty
15
Concert in celebration of “It Takes Two” – 2014 effort tackling high teenage pregnancy in Uganda
16
Joni Mitchell: “Big Yellow Taxi” – 1970 hit song addresses environmental concerns
[17]
[“We Are the World” – 1985 super-group (most famous music artists) song by USA for Africa]
The Go Lean book identifies the art and science of the music business among the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies of the roadmap to elevate the Caribbean’s societal engines. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), an initiative to elevate and empower the region, to make the homelands better and happier. From the outset, the book recognized the significance of music and happiness in this roadmap with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14):
Preamble. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness …
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.
xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.
The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is not music, but rather to make the Caribbean region a better homeland, a happier place to live, work and play. Music can be an effective tool for campaigns … to convey the important message of happiness, to pronounce that “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain” is part-and-parcel of any happiness advocacy.
This Go Lean roadmap calls for heavy-lifting in shepherding important aspects of Caribbean life. In fact, the empowerment roadmap has 3 prime directives that are critical for forging a happy society; they are identified as follows:
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 engines.
The book describes the CU as a hallmark of a technocracy, with a commitment to efficiency and effectiveness in these societal engines, while still not ignoring principles of fun such as music, arts, heritage and overall happiness. In fact, one of the 144 different missions of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to promote happiness (10 Ways to Promote Happiness – Page 36).
Happiness is the focus of this commentary…
… thousands of people all around the world took action to support the International Day of Happiness on March 20, 2016. (This is celebrated in March every year). See a related alternate commentary of this year’s advocacy in the Appendix below.
“I will try to create more happiness in the world around me”.
… this Go Lean/CU effort is “our” attempt to do more … for the Caribbean. The Go Lean/CU roadmap was constructed with the community ethos in mind to make the region more happy, plus the execution of related strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to forge permanent happiness. The following is a sample of these specific details of the roadmap from the book:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius
Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property
Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development
Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide
Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Around
Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art, People and Culture of the Caribbean
Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber-Caribbean
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 136
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed
Page 137
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts
Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music
Page 231
Appendix – Case Study Managing Copyright Infringements
Page 351
The Go Lean/CU roadmap is optimistic, but it is realistic and pragmatic too. There is the acknowledgement that while music is powerful, the music business on the other hand, not so much. This industry has changed in the light of modern dynamics (technology and globalization), particularly due to Internet & Communications Technologies. The industry needs to adapt accordingly – we need a fully functional music industry. To spur more development in the industrial dimensions of the music business, this roadmap seeks to secure the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean region. This point was detailed in these previous Go Lean blog/commentaries:
Music Role Model Berry Gordy – Reflecting & Effecting Change
We need a fully functional music industry because we need music, and the effects of music: the power to reach, soothe and move people. This point was previously detailed in other Go Lean blog/commentaries; a sample follows:
This quest to elevate the Caribbean region is heavy-lifting; more is involved than just saying “Don’t Worry Be Happy“. It is more complex than just playing or listening to music. Though this is serious, it should also be fun; it should be “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain”.
Let’s create a happier world together; a happy world filled with laughter and music – “Joy, Pain, Sunshine and Rain”. And if not the world, then maybe just the Caribbean. 🙂
I have a question for you: How often do you feel like a ‘room without a roof’? According to Pharrell Williams, this “space without limit” feeling is universally achievable. But for many of us, limitless happiness takes a little work. So, what are some of the best habits to practice for feeling happy every day?
MANAGE THE DOWN DAYS
You know the days. Those days when you’re telling yourself the ‘I’m not good enough’ story (which we all have, by the way). The days where things seem to go from bad to worse.
It’s very easy to get trapped at this point because many of us start feeling bad for feeling bad. There are enough external pressures to always be ‘up’ and cheerful, without applying internal pressure too. Acknowledge you’re feeling suboptimal, and do a quick stocktake.
If you can change things, take action. If not, do something that helps to calm you, comfort you or cheer you up (even a little bit).
Be gentle with yourself and don’t splatter your down day over your bystanders. Remember, no-one can ‘make’ you feel anything. You have all the controls. Which reminds me …
DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK
Much unhappiness is caused by paying way too much attention to our thoughts. Our minds are constantly telling us stories to explain the world around us. Many times these stories are accurate, but unfortunately, whenever we don’t have enough data, our mind just fills in the gaps.
Let’s face it, we really don’t know why they didn’t say hello to us this morning. We really don’t.
As soon as we hear our minds saying things like, “They ALWAYS let me down” or “She NEVER keeps her promises” we need to reach for the metaphorical handbrake.
Get in the habit of asking yourself if that’s strictly true. Remember it’s just a story you’re telling yourself. You can even give the story a name: “Oh, it’s the ‘I do everything around here’ story”. It is very unlikely that things NEVER or ALWAYS happen. There are always exceptions. Remembering to look for (and recognise) the exceptions means much happier states of mind.
KEEP WHAT ‘SPARKS JOY’
In her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo recommends a (once-off) festival of tidying where you gather categories of belongings into ginormous piles, pick items up one-by-one and ask a simple question: “Does it spark joy?”
If it does, you keep it. If it doesn’t, you can let it go.
Just imagine how it would be if every item around you had a happy association. Out would go that hideous fondue set from Aunt Bertha or those pyjamas from your ex. Because, according to Marie Kondo, a gift has done its job once it’s received. The freedom!
Oh, and on a side note, this totally applies to the humans in your life too.
EVERYONE’S DOING BETTER THAN ME
The International Day of Happiness website has a great downloadable resource containing 10 keys to happier living. Each key strategy has been inspired by the latest scientific happiness research and there are some excellent quotes.
The one that I recognised most from working with many different clients is “Don’t compare your insides with other people’s outsides”. This is easy to do.
I remember consulting at a very high-end corporate where everyone was incredibly polished and successful looking. One by one, they would come in and say, “Everyone else is doing okay, but I’m falling apart”.
The thing is, you can’t know what is going on inside someone else, especially if you only have their outside as your guide. Chances are, if you’re finding something difficult or challenging, other people are too. I’m talking work, parenting, studying, teaching, being single, being in a relationship …
WHAT WENT WELL?
One of the pioneers of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, outlines some quick and easy strategies that raise your wellbeing and lower your depression in his book, Flourish.
A simple exercise to do in the 10 minutes before you go to sleep every night is the ‘what-went-well’ exercise. Every night, you write down three things that went well and why they went well (e.g. I finished most of my important tasks today because I took time to plan in the morning or I didn’t yell at my partner this morning because I got up a little earlier and made sure I ate breakfast). This will greatly improve your mood over time.
ROOFLESS ROOMS
According to Sonja Lyubomirsky in The How of Happiness, up to 40 per cent of our happiness is within our power to change.
Being grateful, taking responsibility, blaming less, learning to forgive and yes, even practising random acts of kindness, all predictably increase our happiness.
Have a happy day and go well everyone!
———-
Dr. Christine Brown is an Inventiologist, Psychologist and Executive Coach.
This is a simple fact: countries are comprised of communities; communities are comprised of families; families are comprised of individuals. So if there are defects in individuals, then there could be consequences to families. In turn, a debilitated state of the family can imperil the state of the community. There’s no doubt, Failed-States are comprised of failing communities.
What defect among individuals and families, therefore, should “we” be alarmed with? Domestic Violence!
There is no way to justify domestic violence. (This is not referring to corporal discipline of children, but rather wife-battering). Believe it or not, people still try to rationalize, excuse and shift the blame relating to domestic violence.
No more!
There are certain ethnic groups where domestic violence is more prominent than others. Sadly, our community – Latin America and the Caribbean – needs to be more “on guard”. Many times, men in our society feel that it is their honor to discipline their wives … as they see fit. This is a continuation of the series on the history of interpersonal violence; this is commentary 3 of 3. It relates to the Caribbean homeland and to the Caribbean Diaspora in the North America today. The historic issues addressed in this series are:
While we all want to live in a society free of crime, we are more concerned about being free of violence; no one’s honor should come at the expense of peace. This is innately assumed in the Social Contract between governments and their citizens. We all consider the curtailing of violence in society as a measurement of good civilization. It is one way in which we may judge societal success: simply, less interpersonal violence = success; more violence = Failed-State.
There is an evolutionary survival instinct: we all want to be physically safe, but many times, we are slow to apply this instinct to women in our lives; many times we feel that they must simply endure. No more! See Appendix VIDEO below.
It has been a long, hard road, overcoming these attitudinal defects. This attitude has been ingrained in many societies for a long time. However, the effort to reform and transform these bad practices have made some traction. The World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna, Austria, in 1993, and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in the same year, concluded that civil society and governments must acknowledge that domestic violence is a public health policy and human rights concern. The US responded accordingly…
The Violence Against Women Act – see Appendix Reference below – was developed and passed as a result of extensive grassroots efforts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with advocates and professionals from the battered women’s movement, sexual assault advocates, victim services field, law enforcement agencies, prosecutors’ offices, the courts, and the private bar urging Congress to adopt significant legislation to address domestic and sexual violence.
It has been a long, hard road, overcoming these domestic violence attitudes in the Caribbean. But overcome, we must! The Caribbean must catch up with the rest of the modern world in this regards; otherwise we lose … all around. We will continue to suffer societal abandonment due to “push and pull” factors. Domestic violence is a “push” factor; messaging of the transforming attitudes towards domestic and gender-based violence in North America is a “pull” factor. Many victims may want to flee their Caribbean homelands for refuge.
This commentary is 3 of 3 in this series considering the subject of interpersonal violence. The previous commentaries addressed issues of importance for mitigating interpersonal violence in our homeland. (This is not a consideration of military or terrorist violence; these are separate and distinct discussions). This commentary is a discussion about assuring public safety, so it must therefore address domestic violence abatement as it considers reducing other criminal activities.
Remediating and mitigating crime is a study in the “Art” and “Science” of violence. This academic study of the subject of interpersonal violence can be very practical. It can help to relieve pain for many of those suffering. It identifies reasons for violence: Need, Greed, Power, Justice and Honor; and how to re-program a community’s attitudes and expectations. The history of changes in community attitudes about domestic violence is well-documented. There are role models and advocates who have worked tirelessly to reform and transform their society. We appreciate their efforts and successes, and seek to emulate them here in the Caribbean. Consider the case of one American organization in the State of Georgia and its founder Julia Perilla:
Organization Profile: Caminar Latino Organization Profile – Mission The mission of Caminar Latino is to create possibilities for Latino families affected by violence to transform their lives and their communities.
Organization Profile – Core Values
1. Safety for Latinas and their families
2. Community-Driven Solutions
3. Individual and Community Transformation
4. Organizational Excellence
Caminar Latino or “Latino Journey” carries out its mission by creating safe spaces for each family member to begin their journey towards non-violence. Caminar Latino is Georgia’s first and only comprehensive domestic-violence intervention program for Latino families.
Organization Profile – Our Founder, Julia Perilla Dr. Julia Perilla, our founder, has received scores of awards and is considered a leader in her field but if you ask her, her life, her work rests on a simple philosophy: listen. In 1990 she listened when a Catholic sister talked to her about the problem of domestic violence in her community. That year she started Caminar Latino. Perilla didn’t have a background in dealing with these issues, a fact that gave her pause but she realized that the women would tell her what she needed to know. That’s why in 1993 Perilla and Caminar Latino started a children’s program. And why in 1995 they began programming for men. ”The women were the ones who told us what was needed.” Perilla says. They asked Perilla for help with their children and they asked Caminar Latino to not neglect the men. Perilla listened when the women said “you have to make sure the men are getting all the information that we are.” In describing her work, Perilla uses words like “collective” and “collaborative.” She’s quick to smile and insists, she’s no expert, she just listens. Her insight and wisdom has led Perilla to help countless of families in turmoil and along with the work, she’s also picked up some impressive accolades.
Perilla has consulted with the Centers for Disease Control, The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. She’s advised Georgia’s Commission on Family Violence and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, to name just a few. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals and garnered awards from her peers.
In 2005, just ten years after she obtained her doctorate in Psychology, Perilla was honored by the Georgia Psychological Association as their Woman of the Year. More recently, she was invited by Vice President [Joe] Biden to a dinner commemorating the Violence Against Women Act; [see Appendix Reference below].
In addition to writing and conducting research, Perilla also teaches. As faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University, Perilla relishes her role teaching classes on the ethics of psychology. She also heads up the National Latino Research Center on Family and Social Change. On campus her door is always open to students and she routinely mentors Goizueta Scholars. In 2011 her work was recognized with the Carl V. Patton President’s Award for Community Service and Social Action Outstanding Faculty Award. In all facets, Perilla manages to work with a smile because as she puts it “I never work alone.” Whether it’s sharing a laugh with her colleagues or accompanying one of Caminar Latino’s young people to speak at a conference, Perilla says she always learns as much as she teaches. Her life, her work, is “a dream come true.” She is now keeping busy mentoring the next generation of Latina/o scholars who can continue to work from a human rights and social justice perspective. Source: Caminar Latino – Organizational Website for Civic Organization – retrieved February 17, 2016 from: http://caminarlatino.org/profile-founder-julia-perilla/
The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that to elevate Caribbean society there must be a focus on the region’s economic, security and governing engines. While the book primarily targets economic empowerments (jobs, investments, education, entrepreneurship, etc.), it posits that security concerns – threats to public safety – must also be front-and-center along with these economic efforts. While the subject of domestic violence falls on the member-state side of the separation-of-powers divide, the Go Lean book details a jurisdiction of monitoring and metering (ratings, rankings, service levels, etc.) local governments and their delivery of the Social Contract, (i.e. Best Places in the Caribbean To Live …). This too, is within scope of optimizing the region’s governing engines.
The 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; these are the 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 better ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
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.
The Go Lean/CU roadmap is specifically designed (Page 23) to address the societal defects that harm and endanger people in Caribbean society with interpersonal violence, using these security mandates:
Adapting the Community Ethos: Public Protection over Privacy
Whistleblower Protection
Witness Security & Protection
Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
Intelligence Gathering – Video Surveillance
Light Up the Dark Places – Eliminate the figurative and literal “shadows”.
The quest of the Go Lean movement is to elevate Caribbean society above our dysfunctional past. Surely, we can message to the community that our wives, daughters and mothers need protection too. So many other communities have done so in the past; we can do it as well in the Caribbean.
Right now, we are failing … miserably!
It is a reality that many from the Caribbean have emigrated to US cities. One particular frontier city that has benefited from Caribbean homeland abandonment is Miami, Florida. But the experiences there is that many of the defective attitudes towards interpersonal and domestic violence have immigrated with the subjects. See a Reference Source here:
Florida’s Domestic Violence Statistics In 2014, 106,882 crimes of domestic violence were reported to Florida law enforcement agencies resulting in 64,460 arrests. During fiscal year 2014-2015, Florida’s certified domestic violence centers provided 546,658 nights of emergency shelter to 15,397 survivors of domestic violence and their children. Advocates created 109,045 tailored safety plans, provided a total of 297,669 hours of advocacy and counseling services, and received 130,776 domestic violence hotline calls from individuals seeking emergency services, information, and safety planning assistance.
Many more survivors of domestic violence are not reporting their abusers to the police or accessing services at domestic violence services due to reasons such as shame, fear, or being prevented from doing so by their abusers. For this reason, we may never know the true extent of abuse in our country and in our state.
See here, the exact number of domestic violence services provided in just Miami-Dade County for the last fiscal year numbers are available for, 2010 – 2011; notice the Black-and-Brown distributions in this community:
This above reference/data brings to mind a familiar (and sad) Caribbean expression:
You can take the man out of the island, but you cannot take the island out of the man.
The goal of this Go Lean/CU roadmap is to confederate all of the Caribbean – all 30 member-states – under a unified entity to provide societal solutions for the local region. We must abate the practice of domestic violence; no “ifs”, “ands” or “buts”. We must help the abused … and the abusers. The CU security goal is for public safety, to optimize the societal engines to ensure peace and security for all regional stakeholders.
The successful execution of this roadmap should result in the creation of millions of jobs and the growth of the regional economy. New funding would allow for grants to the member-states and their local communities to provide more remediation to these abused ones and the cooperative abusers in their neighborhoods. Communities can reform and transform; this is an accepted fact, aligning with the economic principle quoted in the Go Lean 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 of criminology and penology 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 new community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies. Consider the sample list here:
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 – No Unchecked Violence
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 Improve Leadership
Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice
Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime
Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control – Suspend Rights for Domestic Abusers
Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Include a focus on bullying
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
The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean have monitored the activities throughout the Caribbean neighborhood, and commented accordingly. Other subjects related to domestic-related crimes and security empowerments for the region have been blogged in other commentaries, as sampled here:
10 Things We Want from the US – #6: Crime Watch Initiatives
The vision of the Go Lean roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. This means measurable reductions mitigating and remediation) of interpersonal violence in the region. The Go Lean book is presented as a regional solution to remediate and mitigate all crime – White Collar, street and domestic – in the Caribbean.
The book’s premise is that “bad actors” will always emerge, from internal and external origins to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. This is a historical fact, and is bound to repeat. We must therefore be prepared and on-guard to defend our homeland against all threats, foreign and domestic, including crimes of interpersonal and domestic violence.
We must do better. Otherwise, our homeland will continue to be abandoned. These “push” factors will continue to cause our citizens to flee their homeland for foreign (North American and European) shores, just to find refuge from the victimization.
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 engines: economy, security and governance. We can do better; we can better impact the Greater Good for peace & security. 🙂
Appendix Reference – Title: Violence Against Women Act
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law (Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) signed [in to law] by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994 … The Act provides $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposes automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allows civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave un-prosecuted. The Act also establishes the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice.
VAWA was drafted by the office of Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), with support from a broad coalition of advocacy groups.[1] The Act passed through Congress with bipartisan support in 1994, clearing the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 235–195 and the Senate by a vote of 61–38, although the following year House Republicans attempted to cut the Act’s funding.[2] In the 2000 Supreme Court case United States v. Morrison, a sharply divided Court struck down the VAWA provision allowing women the right to sue their attackers in federal court. By a 5–4 majority, the Court’s conservative wing overturned the provision as exceeding the federal government’s powers under the Commerce Clause.[3][4]
VAWA was reauthorized by bipartisan majorities in Congress in 2000, and again in December 2005, and signed by President George W. Bush.[5] The Act’s 2012 renewal was opposed by conservative Republicans, who objected to extending the Act’s protections to same-sex couples and to provisions allowing battered undocumented immigrants to claim temporary visas.[6] Ultimately, VAWA was again reauthorized in 2013, after a long legislative battle throughout 2012–2013.[7]
Published on Feb 1, 2015 – Watch the official Super Bowl NO MORE ad (the first-ever Super Bowl commercial addressing domestic violence and sexual assault) and pledge to say NO MORE at http://nomore.org. The 30 second NO MORE PSA will air live during the first break after second quarter of NFL Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, 2015. Watch & share the NO MORE Public Service Announcement (PSA)!
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:
Street violence stems from 3 considerations: 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice.
The 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
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.
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:
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. 🙂
When we think of crime, what concerns us the most? Burglary, Fraud, or Assault?
Most likely, it is the threat to life-and-limb; to the person, and then secondarily, the threat to property.
While we all want to live in a society free of crime, we are more concerned about being free of violence. We all consider the curtailing of violence in society as a measurement of good civilization. It is one way in which we may judge societal success: simply, less interpersonal violence = success; more violence = Failed-State.
Sometimes this measurement is controversial. Many people feel that the misdeeds of corporate crimes (think Wall Street) are more troubling to society than muggings in the streets, and yet, we rarely see these types of White Collar crimes prosecuted, but society “throws the book” at people who commit violent crimes.
Blame it on an evolutionary survival instinct. We all want to be physically safe!
Public safety – remediating and mitigating crime – is therefore a study in the “Art” and “Science” of violence. (This is not a consideration of military or terrorist violence; these are separate and distinct discussions). The subject of interpersonal violence can be very academic; it can also be very practical. We therefore rely more heavily on artists and scientists to help in this cause. What can we learn today from a study in the history of interpersonal violence? Firstly, that there are 3 reasons for violence:
Need,
Greed, and
Honor.
The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that to elevate Caribbean society there must be a focus on the region’s economic, security and governing engines. While the book primarily targets economic empowerments (jobs, investments, education, entrepreneurship, etc.), it posits that security concerns – threats to public safety – must also be front-and-center along with these economic efforts. While a more effective execution of economic empowerment would address the availability for more jobs, and thusly lower the “need” factor for crime, this would not fully eliminate the incidences of violent crime; but this start will mitigate the risks.
This is due to the second factor: greed. The incidences of “greed” seems to be more opportunistic, than accidental. The Go Lean book is specifically designed (Page 23) to address these opportunities with the execution of its security mandates:
Privacy versus Public Protection
Whistleblower Protection
Witness Security & Protection
Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
Intelligence Gathering – Video Surveillance
Light Up the Dark Places – Eliminate the figurative and literal “shadows”.
This commentary is therefore focused on the third contributor to interpersonal violence, which surprisingly, is NOT covered in the Go Lean book: Honor or Honour.
This commentary is 1 of 3 considering the above subjects; these lessons are especially apropos for application in the Caribbean homeland of 2016. We have well-documented history of all of these incidences in our community.
The Go Lean book directly relates (Page 23) 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. This is a historical fact, and is bound to repeat. There have always been and will always be conflict among individuals and many “bad actors” assuredly resort to violence during conflicts. (Think Cain and Abel).
Consider here the historicity of dueling or the “Duel” in the Appendix Reference below. This is how many addressed disputes or challenges to their “honor code” – today, instead they would sue each other for slander, libel or other offences to reputation – litigation is better than “pistols at dawn”. Consider the experience of Alexander Hamilton in the VIDEO here:
Published on Sep 16, 2013 – Watch a short biography video of Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury who was shot by Aaron Burr during a duel.
The story of Hamilton is all the vogue right now, there is a new Broadway Musical chronicling his life in song-and-dance. This original Caribbean immigrant (Nevis) teaches America … and the whole world so much. See Appendix VIDEO below.
(A consideration of duels is a reflection of “art imitating life”. Consider too, duels involving the fictional Lightsaber weapon are a cornerstone and major showpiece of the Star Wars franchise).
The quest of the Go Lean movement is to elevate Caribbean society above our dysfunctional past. Surely, duels are a fixture of the past; surely there are many civil alternatives in modern society – such as commencing a civil court case. Surely? But a cursory review of the Caribbean eco-system reveals that civil trials are cumbersome and complicated in this region. It may be easier for a Man of Honor to simply settle his differences in a back alley, than to take the matter to court. This is sad! We all know how this story ends:
One person brings his fist, while another comes with a knife; another a gun; another, a bigger gun. The one-upmanship continues.
We must reform and transform Caribbean life. We must remediate the “civil court” systems; we must make it easier to sue and/or have “your day in court”. The 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.
The goal of this roadmap is to confederate all of the Caribbean – all 30 member-states – under a unified entity to provide these societal solutions for the local region. The CU security goal is just for public safety, optimizing Caribbean society through economic empowerment, security optimization, and governing efficiencies in the region, since these are all inextricably linked to this same endeavor.
The cause-and-effect of failing economics leads to increasing criminality, the “need” factor. 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, the “greed” factor. Funding grants and heightened rankings-and-ratings (i.e. Best Places in the Caribbean To Live …) should allow for improved small claims and civil courts, the “honor” factor. 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 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). This represents “top-down” and “bottoms up” optimization of the justice and security processes to better protect the Caribbean homeland. This comprehensive focusis “Step One/Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap, covering the approach for adequate funding, accountability and control. The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize justice institution and provide increased public safety 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
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 Improve Leadership
Page 171
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
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 and security empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:
10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – #4 Gun Rights: The 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 reductions (remediation and mitigation) of interpersonal violence in the region. The Go Lean book presents a regional solution to remediate and mitigate crime in the Caribbean. There is the need for easier access to courts, mediators and “Justices of the Peace”. This latter is a feature from British Colonial history and is applicable in many Caribbean member-states; (not just the British legacy). Here are the technical details from Jamaica:
A Justice of the Peace (JP), according to the Ministry of Justice, is a person of unquestionable integrity who seeks to promote and protect the rights of the individual and helps to provide justice to persons in a particular community. Additionally, the JP serves as a justice in petty court sessions, attends juvenile court sessions, issues summonses, considers applications for bail, explains and signs legal documents, sits on licensing panels, and gives counsel/advice. Any Jamaican citizen that can speak and write English is eligible to become a JP. Any club/organisation/citizen can recommend someone to become JP for a community. JPs are chosen under the Governor-General‘s discretion.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_of_the_peace#Jamaica retrieved February 17, 2016.
The book features details of strategies, tactics and implementations designed from world class best-practices to reduce violence in the region, including:
Prison Industrial Complex – Messaging against the Honor Code
The premise 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 crime and interpersonal violence. Plus, we must accomplish this goal with maximum transparency, accountability, and commitment to due-process and the rule-of-law.
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. Among the many reasons people emigrate, 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 honor” reasons for interpersonal violence.
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 heavy-lifting so as to impact the Greater Good for justice, peace and security. 🙂
Appendix Reference – Title: Duel (Source: Wikipedia – Online Reference Source; retrieved February 16, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel)
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.
Duels in this form were chiefly practiced in early modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period (19th to early 20th centuries) especially among military officers.
During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly fought with swords (the rapier, later the smallsword), but beginning in the late 18th century in England, duels were more commonly fought using pistols; fencing and pistol duels continued to co-exist throughout the 19th century.
The duel was based on a code of honour. Duels were fought not so much to kill the opponent as to gain “satisfaction”, that is, to restore one’s honour by demonstrating a willingness to risk one’s life for it, and as such the tradition of dueling was originally reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era it extended to those of the upper classes generally. On rare occasions, duels with pistols or swords were fought between women; these were sometimes known as petticoat duels.[1][2]
Legislation against dueling goes back to the medieval period. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) outlawed duels,[3] and civil legislation in the Holy Roman Empire against duelling was passed in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War.[4] From the early 17th century, duels became illegal in the countries where they were practiced. Dueling largely fell out of favor in England by the mid-19th century and in Continental Europe by the turn of the 20th century. Dueling declined in the Eastern United States in the 19th century and by the time the American Civil War broke out, dueling had begun an irreversible decline, even in the South.[5] Public opinion, not legislation, caused the change.[5]
History Early history and Middle Ages In Western society, the formal concept of a duel developed out of the mediaeval judicial duel and older pre-Christian practices such as the Viking Age holmgang. In Medieval society, judicial duels were done by knights and squires to end various disputes.[6][7] Countries like Germany, Britain and Ireland practiced this tradition. Judicial combat were of two forms in medieval society, the feat of arms and chivalric combat.[6] The feat of arms were done to settle hostilities between two large parties and supervised by a judge. The battle was fought when one party’s honor was disrespected or challenged upon in which the conflict cannot be resolved in court. Weapons were standardized and must be of the same caliber. The duel lasted until the other party was too weak to fight back. In early cases, the defeated party are then subsequently executed…
Renaissance early modern period During the early Renaissance, dueling established the status of a respectable gentleman, and was an accepted manner to resolve disputes.
According to [writer] Ariel Roth, during the reign of Henry IV, over 4,000 French aristocrats were killed in duels “in an eighteen-year period” whilst a twenty-year period of Louis XIII’s reign saw some eight thousand pardons for “murders associated with duels”. Roth also notes that thousands of men in the Southern United States “died protecting what they believed to be their honour.”[10]
The first published code duello, or “code of dueling”, appeared in Renaissance Italy. The first formalised national code was France’s, during the Renaissance. In 1777, a code of practice was drawn up for the regulation of duels.… A copy of the code, known as ‘The twenty-six commandments’, was to be kept in a gentleman’s pistol case for reference should a dispute arise regarding procedure.[11] During the Early Modern period, there were also various attempts by secular legislators to curb the practice. Queen Elizabeth I officially condemned and outlawed duelling in 1571, shortly after the practice had been introduced to England.[12]
However, the tradition had become deeply rooted in European culture as a prerogative of the aristocracy, and these attempts largely failed. For example, King Louis XIII of France outlawed dueling in 1626, a law which remained in force for ever afterwards, and his successor Louis XIV intensified efforts to wipe out the duel. Despite these efforts, duelling continued unabated, and it is estimated that between 1685 and 1716, French officers fought 10,000 duels, leading to over 400 deaths.[13]
Enlightenment-era opposition By the late 18th century, Enlightenment era values began to influence society with new self-conscious ideas about politeness, civil behaviour and new attitudes towards violence. The cultivated art of politeness demanded that there should be no outward displays of anger or violence, and the concept of honour became more personalized.
By the 1770s the practice of dueling was increasingly coming under attack from many sections of enlightened society, as a violent relic of Europe’s medieval past unsuited for modern life. As England began to industrialize and benefit from urban planning and more effective police forces, the culture of street violence in general began to slowly wane. The growing middle class maintained their reputation with recourse to either bringing charges of libel, or to the fast-growing print media of the early nineteenth century, where they could defend their honour and resolve conflicts through correspondence in newspapers.[14]
Influential new intellectual trends at the turn of the nineteenth century bolstered the anti-duelling campaign; the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham stressed that praiseworthy actions were exclusively restricted to those that maximize human welfare and happiness, and the Evangelical notion of the “Christian conscience” began to actively promote social activism. Individuals … and similar societies, who had successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery, condemned dueling as ungodly violence and as an egocentric culture of honour.[15]
Modern history Dueling became popular in the United States – the former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel against the sitting Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804. Between 1798 and the Civil War, the US Navy lost two-thirds as many officers to dueling as it did in combat at sea, including naval hero Stephen Decatur. Many of those killed or wounded were midshipmen or junior officers. Despite prominent deaths, dueling persisted because of contemporary ideals of chivalry, particularly in the South, and because of the threat of ridicule if a challenge was rejected.[16][17]
By about 1770, the duel underwent a number of important changes in England. Firstly, unlike their counterparts in many continental nations, English duelists enthusiastically adopted the pistol, and sword duels dwindled.[18] Special sets of dueling pistols were crafted for the wealthiest of noblemen for this purpose. Secondly, the office of ‘second’ developed into ‘seconds’ or ‘friends’ being chosen by the aggrieved parties to conduct their honour dispute. These friends would attempt to resolve a dispute upon terms acceptable to both parties and, should this fail, they would arrange and oversee the mechanics of the encounter.[19]
In the United Kingdom, to kill in the course of a duel was formally judged as murder, but generally the courts were very lax in applying the law, as they were sympathetic to the culture of honour.[20] This attitude lingered on – Queen Victoria even expressed a hope that Lord Cardigan, prosecuted for wounding another in a duel, “would get off easily”. The Anglican Church was generally hostile to dueling, but non-conformist sects in particular began to actively campaign against it.
By 1840, dueling had declined dramatically; when the 7th Earl of Cardigan was acquitted on a legal technicality for homicide in connection with a duel with one of his former officers,[21] outrage was expressed in the media, with The Times (British newspaper) alleging that there was deliberate, high level complicity to leave the loop-hole in the prosecution case and reporting the view that “in England there is one law for the rich and another for the poor” and The Examiner [newspaper] describing the verdict as “a defeat of justice”.[22][23]
The last duel between Englishmen in England occurred in 1845, when James Alexander Seton had an altercation with Henry Hawkey over the affections of his wife, leading to a fatal duel at Southsea. However, the last fatal duel to occur in England was between two French political refugees, Frederic Cournet and Emmanuel Barthélemy near Old Windsor in 1852; the former was killed.[19] In both cases, the winners of the duels, Hawkey [24] and Bartholemy,[25] were tried for murder. But Hawkey was acquitted and Barthélemy was convicted only of manslaughter; he served seven months in prison. However, in 1855, Barthélemy was hanged after shooting and killing his employer and another man.[25]
Dueling also began to be criticized in America in the late 18th century; Benjamin Franklin denounced the practice as uselessly violent, and George Washington encouraged his officers to refuse challenges during the American Revolutionary War because he believed that the death by dueling of officers would have threatened the success of the war effort. However, the practice actually gained in popularity in the first half of the nineteenth century especially in the South and on the lawless Western Frontier. Dueling began an irreversible decline in the aftermath of the Civil War. Even in the South, public opinion increasingly came to regard the practice as little more than bloodshed.
Colonial North America and United States European styles of dueling established themselves in the colonies of European states in America. Duels were to challenge someone over a woman or to defend one’s honor. In the US, dueling was used to deal with political differences and disputes, particularly during the Civil War. Dueling in the US was not uncommon, even after 1859, when 18 states outlawed it, but it became a thing of the past in the United States by the start of the 20th century.[73]…
The quick draw duel is a stereotypical aspect of a gunfighter story in the American Western film genre – [mostly fiction and fantasy, rarely factual] – although real life Wild West duels did happen such as the Wild Bill Hickok – Davis Tutt shootout, Doc Holliday and Mike Gordon duel, and Luke Short – Jim Courtright duel (see Real-life Wild West duels). Fatal duels were often fought to uphold personal honor in the rural American frontier, and they were partly influenced by the “code duello” brought by Southern emigrants.[75][76][77] Towns such as Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas, prevented these duels by prohibiting civilians from carrying firearms, by local ordinance.[78]
To this day, any politician sworn in as Governor of Kentucky must declare under oath that he has not participated in a duel.[79]
Decline in the 20th century Duels had mostly ceased to be fought to the death by the late 19th century.
By the outbreak of World War I, dueling had not only been made illegal almost everywhere in the Western world, but was also widely seen as an anachronism. Military establishments in most countries frowned on dueling because officers were the main contestants. Officers were often trained at military academies at government’s expense; when officers killed one another it imposed an unnecessary financial and leadership strain on a military organization, making dueling unpopular with high-ranking officers.[36]
Charles I outlawed dueling in Austria-Hungary in 1917. Germany (the various states of the Holy Roman Empire) has a history of laws against dueling going back to the late medieval period, with a large amount of legislation dating from the period after the Thirty Years’ War (1618 and 1648). Prussia outlawed dueling in 1851, and the law was inherited by the Reichsstrafgesetzbuch of the German Empire after 1871.[4] Pope Leo XIII in the encyclica Pastoralis officii (1891) asked the bishops of Germany and Austria-Hungary to impose penalties on duelists.[38] In Germany, dueling was again outlawed by Adolph Hitler in 1937.[39] After World War II, German authorities persecuted academic fencing as duels until 1951, when a Göttingen court established the legal distinction between academic fencing and dueling.[40]
———–
Appendix VIDEO – HAMILTON, Starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Jonathan Groff & More – https://youtu.be/NBkI_9cr1Ws
This is an official video clips of Broadway’s HAMILTON, starring Lin-Manuel Miranda. The production opened August 6, 2015 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
… all of a sudden in 2014, Brazil signs a contract with Big Pharma to inoculate pregnant women with a TDAP booster and boom: a Microcephaly pandemic emerges.
Now “they” are banning pregnant women and all hoping to someday get pregnant from traveling to Latin America and the Caribbean…
… and this prohibition is in the middle of the Peak Winter tourist season.
Imagine the economic consequences. Imagine the public health and security consequences. Imagine the governmental complications.
This commentary urges the Caribbean to “call a spade a spade”, rather than blaming “it” all on mosquitoes. See the actual editorial article here:
Editorial Title: Brazilian Shrunken Head Babies: Zika or Tdap?
In late 2014, the Ministry of Health of Brazil announced the introduction of the Tdap (Tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis) vaccine for all pregnant women in that country as part of its routine vaccination program. The move was aimed at trying to contain the resurgence of pertussis in Brazil.
In December 2015, the Brazilian government declared an emergency after 2,400 Brazilian babies were found to be born with shrunken heads (microcephaly) and damaged brains since October.
Brazilian public health officials don’t know what is causing the increase in microcephaly cases in babies born in Brazil, but they are theorizing that it may be caused by a virus known as “Zika,” which is spread by mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti)—in the same way as is the West Nile virus.
The theory is largely based on the fact that they found the Zika virus in a baby with microcephaly following an autopsy of the dead child. The virus was also found in the amniotic fluid of two mothers whose babies had the condition.
Note that Zika is not a new virus; it has been around for decades. No explanation has been given as to why suddenly it could be causing all these cases of microcephaly. No one is seriously asking the question, “What has changed?”
There is no theorizing about the possibility that the cases of microcephaly could be linked to the mandating of the Tdap vaccine for all pregnant women in Brazil about 10 months earlier. The government has “assumed” the cause is a virus.
FACT—Drug companies did not test the safety and effectiveness of giving Tdap vaccine to pregnant women before the vaccines were licensed in the U.S. and there is almost no data on inflammatory or other biological responses to this vaccine that could affect pregnancy and birth outcomes.
FACT—According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adequate testing has not been done in humans to demonstrate safety for pregnant women and it is not known whether the vaccines can cause fetal harm or affect reproduction capacity. The manufacturers of the Tdap vaccine state that human toxicity and fertility studies are inadequate and warn that Tdap should “be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.”
FACT—There are ingredients pertussis containing Tdap vaccine that have not been fully evaluated for potential genotoxic or other adverse effects on the human fetus developing in the womb that may negatively affect health after birth, including aluminum adjuvants, mercury containing (Thimerosal) preservatives and many more bioactive and potentially toxic ingredients.
FACT—There are serious problems with outdated testing procedures for determining the potency and toxicity of pertussis vaccines and some scientists are calling for limits to be established for specific toxin content of pertussis-containing vaccines.
FACT—There are no published biological mechanism studies that assess pre-vaccination health status and measure changes in brain and immune function and chromosomal integrity after vaccination of pregnant women or their babies developing in the womb.
FACT—Since licensure of Tdap vaccine in the U.S., there have been no well designed prospective case controlled studies comparing the health outcomes of large groups of women who get pertussis containing Tdap vaccine during pregnancy either separately or simultaneously compared to those who do not get the vaccines, and no similar health outcome comparisons of their newborns at birth or in the first year of life have been conducted. Safety and effectiveness evaluations that have been conducted are either small, retrospective, compare vaccinated women to vaccinated women or have been performed by drug company or government health officials using unpublished data.
FACT—FACT—The FDA has licensed Tdap vaccines to be given once as a single dose pertussis booster shot to individuals over 10 or 11 years old. The CDC’s recommendation that doctors give every pregnant woman a Tdap vaccination during every pregnancy—regardless of whether a woman has already received one dose of Tdap—is an off-label use of the vaccine.
FACT—Injuries and deaths from pertussis-containing vaccines are the most compensated claims in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and influenza vaccine injuries and deaths are the second most compensated claim.
FACT—A 2013 published study evaluating reports of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) following vaccination in the U. S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and in a European vaccine reaction reporting system found that pertussis containing DTaP was among the vaccines most frequently associated with brain inflammation in children between birth and age five.
Tdap is manufactured by two pharmaceutical companies: Sanofi Pasteur of France and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) of the United Kingdom.
The Sanofi Pasteur product contains aluminum phosphate, residual formaldehyde, residual glutaraldehyde, and 2-phenoxyethanola, along with the following growth mediums and process ingredients: Stainer-Scholte medium, casamino acids, dimethyl-beta-cyclodextrin, glutaraldehyde, formaldehyde, aluminum phosphate, modified Mueller-Miller casamino acid medium without beef heart infusion, ammonium sulfate, 2-phenoxyethanol, water for injection.
The GSK product contains aluminum hydroxide, sodium chloride, residual formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 (Tween 80), along with the following growth mediums and process ingredients: modified Latham medium derived from bovine casein, Fenton medium containing bovine extract, formaldehyde, Stainer-Scholte liquid medium, glutaraldehyde, aluminum hydroxide.
Unsurprisingly, the Brazilian government announced on January 15, 2016 it will direct funds to a biomedical research center (Sao Paulo-based Butantan Institute) to help develop a vaccine against Zika. Development of the vaccine is expected to take 3-5 years. Again, no consideration to the irony that you may be developing a vaccine to address a problem that may have been CAUSED by a vaccine, and that that new vaccine may COMPOUND the problem No consideration to the possibility that the answer to the problem may not be to do MORE, but rather to do LESS (simply STOP giving Tdcap to pregnant women).
The number of cases of microcephaly in Brazil has grown to 3,530 babies, as of mid-January 2016. Fewer than 150 such cases were seen in all of 2014.
Most of the microcephaly cases have been concentrated in Brazil’s poor northeast, though cases in Rio de Janeiro and other big cities have also been on the rise, prompting people to stock up on mosquito repellent. Health officials are warning Brazilians—especially pregnant women—to stay inside when possible and wear plenty of bug spray if they have to go out.
Wanna look up the ingredients in mosquito spray? Oh, and what deadly insecticide do you reckon they’ll mass fumigate with? DDT perhaps?
(Note. Contains information pieced together—often copy and pasted—from newspaper articles and information from the NationalVaccineInformationCenter.) Source: Anonymous Blog Entry – WordPress.com – Posted 02-04-2016; retrieved 02-08-2016 from: https://brazilianshrunkenheadbabies.wordpress.com/about/
This commentary parallels with the book Go Lean … Caribbean in its quest to elevate societal life in the Caribbean. The book identifies that “bad actors” will always emerge to exploit the economic engines in the community. For the Zika virus, the “bad actor” was assumed to be mosquitoes; now it appears something more insidious is at work: This constitutes an accusation against Big Pharma. But that’s OK, this is not our first accusation and probably will not be the last. See here for previous blog/commentaries indicting Big Pharma’s cronyism:
These Go Lean commentaries are accusing Big Pharma of being willing to …
…Sacrifice children on the altar of corporate profits.
Yes, that is the accusation. In the case of Brazil’s Zika virus pandemic, the “bad actor” appears to be the Pharmaceutical companies and their consorts in the government’s public health agencies.
This all sounds familiar, as in the controversy with child immunizations and the public fear of a connection with Autism. Once these types of accusations are publicized, Big Pharma responds … by attacking and discrediting the accusers. So just wait: soon come the denials, defense and discrediting attacks for this allegation … any moment now.
This point is where this commentary relates to the overall plan to elevate Caribbean society: the book Go Lean…Caribbean. This book declares (Page 157) that Big Pharma may be more of an obstacle than a aid for effecting community health. They care more about profits than they do the well-being of the public, or the Greater Good. The Caribbean must therefore assume the leadership for its own destiny, and not be dependent on other parties. We must be protégés and not parasites.
Big Pharma is not the only stakeholders involved in this drama, as the directing organization is the World Health Organization. The WHO has altruistic motives in protecting the public health of the entire world, but at times their motives and executions can be flawed, biased and influenced by capitalistic forces. How much of these dynamics are at play now? Just consider the BIG economic issues attendant to this Zika viral outbreak:
Peak Winter Tourism Season in the Caribbean
Spring Break 2016 – Mexican and Caribbean locales are “hotspots”.
2016 Olympics in Brazil
Future Public Health mandate to “force” TDAP immunization on pregnant women.
This champion for the Zika virus, the WHO, is not the WTO nor the World Bank; though they are all multilateral/UN agencies but with different specialties, scopes and charters. Here is the WHO’s declaration:
There it is … this declaration appears to be legitimately concerned about public health. But alas, the Zika virus has been around since 1947 and never related to microcephaly. Now all of sudden, there is this correlation. Something seems awry; mosquitoes have not evolved that much, that fast. This foregoing editorial article, therefore may not be so far-fetched.
The Caribbean needs to take its own lead for its own causes. The Go Lean book strategizes a roadmap for economic empowerment in the region, clearly relating that healthcare, and pharmaceutical acquisitions are important in the quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, heal and play. At the outset of the Go Lean book, in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11), these points are pronounced:
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.
ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management …
The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the implementation and introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU‘s prime directives are identified with the following 3 statements:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The CU Trade Federation has the prime directive of optimizing the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean region. The foregoing editorial depicts that abuses have entered the quest for best practices in health management for the Brazilian public; and maybe other countries. We must learn from this cautionary tale and do better in the Caribbean.
The foregoing editorial presents perplexing questions about the legitimacy of the cause of the current crisis: Is the mosquito really to blame?
The Go Lean roadmap posits that more innovations need to emerge in the region, so as to take our own lead for our own needs. The CU needs a prioritization on science, technology, engineering and medical (STEM) activities so as to enable such leadership.
This is the manifestation and benefits of Research & Development (R&D) ethos in the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The roadmap describes the elevation on society from such a priority. The following list details additional ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize the region’s health deliveries and R&D investments:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives
Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development (R&D)
Page 30
Community Ethos – 10 Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Integrate and unify region in a Single Market
Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization
Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Health Department
Page 86
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Drug Administration
Page 87
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Implement Self-Government Entities – R&D Campuses
Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade
Page 128
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image
Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Healthcare
Page 156
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways Foster Cooperatives
Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management
Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Foundations
Page 219
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities
Page 228
Appendix – Emergency Management – Medical Trauma Centers
Page 336
The promoters of the Go Lean roadmap does not purport to be an authority on medical or Public Health best practices. But we are logical, like everyone else in society and we can see rubbish when presented:
You can fool all of the people some of the time.
… some of the people all of the time.
But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
The Go Lean economic-security-governance empowerment roadmap advocates for medical professionals making medical decisions, not accountants and business marketers. This imagery is the manifestation of Crony-Capitalism. There are so many examples in the US, and other countries. Consider the case of how one pharmaceutical company has been assailed over the cancer drug, Gleevec. This case study clearly depicts how the industry prioritizes profit over people.
Crony-Capitalism on the one hand, the Greater Good. on the other hand. These choices dictate public policies for economic, security and governing engines. Good, bad and ugly examples abound. The Caribbean is urged to choose its course wisely.
This is the calling for the CU Trade Federation, to set our community ethos to impact the Greater Good. Only then will we make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, heal and play. 🙂
April 15 [2014] is the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. 3 people died directly, and countless others were maimed and injured. From any perspective this was a tragedy! To the families that lost loved ones on that date, our deepest condolences.
There are many other lessons for us to learn from Boston. But there are other tragedies that appear to have gotten less attention in the past year since the marathon bombings. In Boston alone, there have been 46 murders since April 15, 2013. In total, there have been 14,000+ murders in the entire Unites States in that time. See the foregoing news article/commentary.
