Government – Page 11 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Category: Government

‘Free Market’ Versus … Communism – Lessons from History

Posted on June 19, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Government

Go Lean Commentary

The member-states of the Caribbean are “in a pickle”.

We are “bleeding”; we are losing our populations more and more. Our people are emigrating away in search of greater prosperity. Many times, our people leave for lands that promote Free Market economic principles, as opposed to what we are currently promoting here in our region.

Every society needs to continuously grow; so population “bleeding” is a bad thing. We need to better compete. What systems are we promoting … officially or unofficially? Let’s discuss …

First, let’s talk about Free Market as an economic principle. This is the system in which the prices for goods and services are only determined by the open market and by consumers and not forcibly determined by local governments – centrally controlled – see the encyclopedic references in the Appendices below.

After some debate – 100 years – the judgment is that Free Market economies are more prosperous than centrally controlled economies, think Communist states. Even Russia, the former Head of the communist-bloc Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has transformed and is now a Free Market country. See the list here of “Countries by their GDP Rankings”:

In fact, few communist (pure socialist) states remain; think Laos, Vietnam, China and Cuba.

(China is a special consideration for this commentary – see below).

Cuba is not a Free Market economy, right now. But it might be soon. Cuba sera Libre!

Think back to 1959 in Cuba; truth be told, the United States of America really did not and does not care that much whether a society embraces central-controlled versus Free Market, Communism versus Capitalism. Just as long as governments do not take (nationalize) the assets that belong to Americans. (The US does huge business – Trade – with China, Vietnam and Laos; but Cuba alone remains in a trade embargo).

Truly, the problem in Cuba was the subsequent seizing of assets rather than the political – leftist – ideology. The seizing of American businesses was in effect a de facto Act of War. (The US never engaged official warfare on Cuba because of the geo-political wrangling with the Soviet Union; the island remained a protectorate of that nuclear-armed Super Power; think Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962).

So as we contemplate the economic stewardship that exists in our Caribbean region now, this history should be front-and-center in our minds. (Cuba was not the first nor the last country to embrace leftist ideologies in the Caribbean; think Guyana, Antigua and Grenada. All these countries flirted with far extremes away from Free Market economies. Yet the US still maintained a status quo in terms of diplomatic relations with them. (Leftist Grenada was invaded by the US in 1982 at the behest of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to rectify a military coup and for violating human and civil rights).

There is so much that the Caribbean can benefit from with a discussion on this history of Free Markets in this region; this is not just a dry lecture in economics, rather this is an energetic debate on the form of economic governance that the new Caribbean should be pursuing. In a recent blog-commentary regarding the American Big Box retailer Wal-Mart, the question was asked of a reader:

“Should the Caribbean economic stewards welcome Wal-Mart in the region?”.

The reader’s default answer was:

“No, they would imperil Main Street retailers”.

Such an innocent declaration is actually anti-Free Market. This scenario demonstrates why there is the need for this discussion – to better understand the economics and the history – in the following series of commentaries on the distinct differences of Free Market Versus … – see the related Music VIDEO in the Appendix below. This submission is entry 1-of-6 in a full series cataloged as follows:

Free Market Versus: Communism – Can they both co-exist?
Free Market Versus: China – Two systems at play in ‘Words and Actions’
Free Market Versus: Socialism – Prevalent in the Caribbean
Free Market Versus: Cooperatives
Free Market Versus: Labor Unions – Junior Communists?
Free Market Versus: Common Pool Resources – Simpler Cooperation

In this series, reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of the Caribbean member-states. The book Go Lean…Caribbean – a roadmap for the implementation for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – introduced a new roadmap by which Free Market exercises can exist and thrive right next door to alternative economic systems (i.e. central-controlled).

There is a lot for us to unwrap here.

This Go Lean strategy to consider is that of Self-Governing Entities (SGE). The book (Page 7) defines SGE’s as follows:

Bordered areas managed only under CU jurisdiction. These include Enterprise Zones, Industrial Parks, Technology Campuses, Medical Labs and others.

To better understand the co-existence of Self-Governing Entities, think of the military base that has been installed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 1898; referred to as GITMO. Even though it is located physically in the Caribbean nation, it is 100% sovereign territory of the United States, legally established by a treaty – the 1903 Cuban–American Treaty of Relations. The Go Lean book (Page 177), in discussing the Justice requirements for a new Caribbean regime, details this background of this GITMO venue as follows:

The Bottom Line on Guantánamo Bay
Guantánamo Bay is a natural harbor, with superior attributes, south of the city of Guantánamo, in Eastern Cuba.

The harbor has been controlled by the United States as the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base since 1902, following the Platt Amendment decree. It is the site of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Control over the naval base was granted to the US in partial compensation for the sacrifices made by US military in obtaining Cuba’s independence from Spain, something which the Cuban people had been unable to do for themselves. The detention camp is a detainment and interrogation (with torture tactics) complex established in January 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees that have been connected with opponents in the Global War on Terror. The military prison relevance is in itself controversial, as the February 1903 lease states that the US is allowed “generally to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose”. In 2007, Camp Justice was the informal name granted to the complex where Guantánamo captives would face charges before the Guantanamo military commissions.

So while one justice standard exists along-side another justice standard (US Military versus Cuba), can we truly expect a parallel structure with economics?

Absolutely! This is the very strategy of SGE’s for economic empowerment in the region.

Also, we have “it” now … already in place. (The “it” refers to alternating yet parallel economic systems).

Consider cruise ship commerce …

… while food and beverage is free for cruise ship passengers, hard alcohol is a premium charge. While cruise ships are in port in the different Caribbean member-states, they are not required to abide by local alcohol sales policies and regulations: drinking age, excessive drinking guidelines, no sales tax or VAT compliance. The cruise ships, operating under Maritime Laws can operate on the ship autonomously of local governments. The cruise ship, under this scenario, is a Self-Governing Entity.

Cruise ships do service the port cities in Cuba.

So yes, SGE’s can promote Free Market schemes, right along side communist regimes.

Are we encouraging communism? Are we tolerating societal defects and dysfunctions?

No … and No!

We simply realize that changing governing policies is not so easy and straight forward. Cuba has continued voluntarily with their communist priorities despite failures for 60 years. (It will take a Marshall Plan-type effort to reform their societal engines). The Go Lean book states (Page 4) that …

… the CU is a loose confederation, identified as a Trade Federation. There is no expectation of sovereignty with this entity, so a commitment to the goals and aspirations of this Federation must be voluntary.

Plus, if we are insinuating that communism is bad, truth be told, capitalism has a lot of defects too. For example, the crony-capitalism and institutional racism in American and Western European societies have been duly documented and lamented; (remember the derisive term: Plutocracy and references to “Foreign Investors as Dragons“).

There is no one perfect society.

The “co-exist strategy of SGE’s” may be ideal.

This theme – carefully balancing capitalism – aligns with many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16000	Getting ‘Out of the Way’ of Local Economic Empowerment Good Governance must reflect shepherding and oversight with an eye towards local needs, not just some distant economic controller. Growing the economy must include local economic empowerment as well, a reflection on the supply and demand of the marketplace.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338	Welcoming the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’ A mono-industrial economy creates a reality for industrial-corporate titans can have abusive effect on the societal engines in a community.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11057	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Book Review: Sold-Out! Wealthy business interests try to control everything and make all the important decisions, so that they can get ‘more for themselves and less for everybody else’.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7372	Media Fantasies versus Weather Realities There is some “bad intent” in the American media eco-system. Many believe that media hype over weather forecasts spurs retail spending (surplus food, gasoline, generators, and firewood) to benefit companies that contract media purchases (advertising) with the media outlets.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6819	The … Downside of ‘Western’ Diets American food standards (Standard American Diet = SAD) is notorious for many physical-medical and mental repercussions. Many times the motivation is crony-capitalistic. We want to do better in our homeland.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5993	Carnival Cruise Lines to ban carry-on bottled beverages Cruise lines rarely conform to labor, anti-trust and competition laws. Mandating bottled beverages to be exclusively delivered by the merchant ship is just one more example of their crony-capitalism.

Free Market capitalism versus …

(See Music VIDEO in the Appendix below).

The Caribbean region is urged to simply do better, to not just lean left (towards communism) or right (towards pure capitalism), but rather to pursue what is best for the Greater Good. This is defined as:

“It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. – Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832)

All in all, our economic, security and political structures are defective and deficient, we must reboot and reform our society. There are role models to the left – think China – and to the right – think Iceland – where communities have succeeded in elevating their societal engines. Despite initial appearances, the “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”, on these foreign shores; they should not be considered the panacea of our ills; nor should emigrating there be considered the destination of our hopes and dreams.

We must work on our Caribbean Dreams right here at home. We must study and observe these ‘other communities’. We can then deploy the best-practices we glean. Much is at stake; we must dissuade our young people from abandoning our beautiful homeland, as they are our most precious resource.

This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap. We want to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.

We hereby urge the people and governing institutions in the region to lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. 🙂

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

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Appendix – Reference: Free Market
In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.^[1] Proponents of the concept of free market contrast it with a regulated market in which a government intervenes in supply and demand through various methods such as tariffs used to restrict trade and to protect the local economy. In an idealized free-market economy, prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy. [Consider images here of Equilibrium curves for coffee and for gasoline].

Scholars contrast the concept of a free market with the concept of a coordinated market in fields of study such as political economy, new institutional economics, economic sociology and political science. All of these fields emphasize the importance in currently existing market systems of rule-making institutions external to the simple forces of supply and demand which create space for those forces to operate to control productive output and distribution. Although free markets are commonly associated with capitalism within a market economy in contemporary usage and popular culture, free markets have also been advocated by anarchists, socialists and some proponents of cooperatives and advocates of profit sharing.^[2] Criticism of the theoretical concept may regard systems with significant market power, inequality of bargaining power, or information asymmetry as less than free, with regulation being necessary to control those imbalances in order to allow markets to function more efficiently as well as produce more desirable social outcomes.

Contents

Source: Retrieved June 11, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

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Appendix VIDEO – CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM SONG | Economics & Politics Music Video – https://youtu.be/23p1AYq8jBA

Jam Campus

Premiered Mar 4, 2019 – Excerpts of Lyrics:

“Systems with different ideas, opposite of each other
Both argue they manage production and resources better
But most modern countries use both systems blended together
Mixed economies, mixed economies …”

Lyrics and performance by Jam Campus
Instrumental composition by: https://www.fiverr.com/napbak

Category: Education

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Crony-Capitalism, Cruise, Cuba, History, Model, Power, SGE

Is the US a ‘Just’ Society? Hardly! – ENCORE

Posted on June 14, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

People want to live in a just society.

So many Caribbean people have fled their ancestral homelands in search of refuge in foreign lands, like the US. If our expatriates are seeking a more just society, then they will be sadly disappointed with the American experience.

Ah, the American legal system! So many courts – County, Circuit, District, Appeals and Supreme – and yet justice is so elusive. One population groups gets too much mercy and one population group gets too much punishment.

Is there any doubt as to which population group gets what treatment? White people get the privilege, while the Black-and-Brown gets the shaft.

These are not just my words alone. Consider these anecdotes.

First, we have the sentencing – yesterday June 13, 2019 – of John Vandemoer, the Stanford sailing coach who confessed to racketeering charges in connection with the college entrance scam. He will serve no time in prison. He is White. See the full story here:

Title: Former Stanford sailing coach gets no prison time in the college admissions scam
By: Mark Morales, CNN
Former Stanford sailing coach John Vandemoer will serve no time in prison in connection with the college entrance scam. He is the first among 50 people charged in connection with the scheme to be sentenced.

Vandemoer was sentenced to two years supervised release and a $10,000 fine. He must spend the first six months of the sentence in home detention with electronic monitoring, Massachusetts Judge Rya Zobel said.

Vandemoer pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering for arranging bribes of $110,000 and $160,000 to the sailing program and then designating two applicants, who had no sailing experience, as sailing recruits, according to his criminal complaint.

Neither student completed the application process, university officials said.

The 50 people charged in the scam include coaches, parents, and members of mastermind William Rick Singer‘s inner circle, who were arrested in connection with the scandal in March.

“Mr Vandemoer is probably the least culpable,” Judge Zobel said during sentencing. “They (the others charged) took money for themselves. He did not do that. All the money he took went directly to the sailing program.”

Assistant US Attorney Eric Rosen had recommended a 13-month prison sentence for Vandemoer, arguing that it would help deter others in powerful university positions from similar crimes and that punishment would help restore confidence in the admission system.

“His actions not only deceived and defrauded the university that employed him, but also validated a national cynicism over college admissions by helping wealthy and unscrupulous applicants enjoy an unjust advantage over those who either lack deep pockets or are simply unwilling to cheat to get ahead,” Rosen wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed on June 7.

Vandemoer’s attorney, Robert Fisher, wrote to Judge Zobel in a memorandum on Friday that he should get probation and not a prison sentence, arguing that he didn’t pocket any of the money, didn’t take any money from the university and that this was his only instance of bad judgement.

“Mr. Vandemoer failed in one instance to live up to the high expectations he sets for himself,” Fisher wrote. “He fully accepts responsibility for his mistake. Mr. Vandemoer is determined to make amends for this mistake move on with his life and continue to provide for his family.”

Just two days before Vandemoer’s sentencing, Stanford University officials submitted a victim impact statement which details how Vandemoer, who traded his slots reserved for student-athletes for bribes, has damaged the university.

“Mr. Vandemoer’s actions in this matter are profoundly disappointing and especially so as he had a reputation of caring deeply for his student-athletes,” said Debra Zumwalt, vice president and general counsel for Stanford University in a statement.

The impact statement charged that Vandemoer and Singer not only undermined the public’s trust in the college admissions process, but also cost the university valuable time and money dealing with the fallout from the federal investigation.

Stanford fired Vandemoer the very same day he plead guilty.

“I spent my life trying to be a good, moral person and here, I made a mistake,” Vandemoer said when given a chance to address the court Wednesday.

The former coach apologized to the school, alumni, the sailing team and his family and friends.

“I deserve all of this. I caused it and for that I’m deeply ashamed.”

A third student was identified by the university as having worked with Singer and Vandemoer to get admitted into Stanford, university officials said. That student’s admission was rescinded and their credits were vacated, according to the impact statement.

Stanford officials previously said the Key Worldwide Foundation, Singer’s sham charity, contributed a total of $770,000 to the sailing program in the form of three separate gifts.

That money, Zumwalt said in the statement, was considered tainted, and university officials are working with the California Attorney General to donate that money for the public’s good.

“Stanford does not wish to benefit in any way from Mr. Vandemoer’s conduct,” Zumwalt said.

Twenty-seven letters of support for Vandemoer were sent to Judge Zobel, all pleading for leniency.

“I must say they are an extraordinary group of letters … that speak of the person they love and support,” Judge Zobel said during sentencing. “That is highly unusual in this setting.”

Vandemoer’s wife, Molly Vandemoer, wrote about how the former university sailing coach found a therapist shortly after his firing and is working toward his MBA as a way to put his life back together.

“I know he made a mistake,” Molly wrote. “I know it is extremely costly to his livelihood, to our family, etc. But I know he will never do something like this again.”

Clinton Hayes, once Vandemoer’s top assistant, became the interim head of the sailing team after the coach was fired by the university. Hayes wrote about how Vandemoer put student athletes first, letting them skip out on sailing meets for valuable internships or important trips, something he said spoke to the coach’s selflessness.

“John truly cared that everyone of our student athletes left Stanford a better person and productive member of society…” Hates wrote. “John always did what was right for each individual.”

Other letters came from former students, parents, and other family members.

———-

CNN’s Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.
Source: Retrieved June 14, 2019 from: https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/11/us/college-admissions-scandal-john-vandemoer/index.html

Just 1 day in prison … Wow!

The defendant in this case gets 1 day in jail, time served, and a 13-month suspended sentence – a “slap on the wrist” for a crime that undermines the entire US college admissions integrity.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is the treatment of Black defendants in the court system. According to this previous blog-commentary by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean, Black people are usually sentenced for longer jail-time by judges whose political affiliation is associated with the Republican Party.

See the Encore of that full blog-commentary here:

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Go Lean Commentary – ‘Time to Go’ – Blacks get longer sentences from ‘Republican’ Judges

“Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are” – Old Adage

This Old Adage was drummed in me as a youth; I may have wanted to question its validity, but time has proven its accuracy. As humans, we are affected by the people we associate with; their values, principles, character, aspirations – or lack thereof – will have an effect on us. This statement even harmonizes with the Bible scripture at 1 Corinthians 15:33, which states:

“Bad companions ruin good character.” – Today’s English Version

This commentary highlights a disturbing trend in American jurisprudence; it turns out that among judges that associates with the conservative political parties or the liberal political parties, one group consistently sentences Black defendants to longer prison sentences. This is indicative of more than just the tolerance of criminality; this shows some hidden bias, that severely endangers the Black populations in America. These judges, despite claims of non-partisanship, are affected by their party.

Say it ain’t so!

The party with the harsher sentences is the Republican Party or GOP (for Grand Old Party).

Sometimes, we need to step back and look at the whole picture before we can notice trends and leanings. This is the common sense in the old expression: “One cannot see the forest for the trees”. This was the purpose of a study on judicial bias; it looked at a range of 500,000 cases to summarize its findings. Intelligence and wisdom can be gleaned from this data.

The numbers – and conclusions – must not be ignored. See the full story here:

Title: Black Defendants Get Longer Sentences From Republican-Appointed Judges, Study Finds
By: Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — Judges appointed by Republican presidents gave longer sentences to black defendants and shorter ones to women than judges appointed by Democrats, according to a new study that analyzed data on more than half a million defendants.

“Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to three more months than similar nonblacks and female defendants to two fewer months than similar males compared with Democratic-appointed judges,” the study found, adding, “These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics and grow substantially larger when judges are granted more discretion.”

The study was conducted by two professors at Harvard Law School, Alma Cohen and Crystal S. Yang. They examined the sentencing practices of about 1,400 federal trial judges over more than 15 years, relying on information from the Federal Judicial Center, the United States Sentencing Commission and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the study contained “amazing new empirical research.”

“It’s an extraordinarily important contribution to our statistical understanding of sentencing decision making in federal courts over the last two decades,” he said.

It has long been known that there is an overall racial sentencing gap, with judges of all political affiliations meting out longer sentences to black offenders. The new study confirmed this, finding that black defendants are sentenced to 4.8 months more than similar offenders of other races.

It was also well known, and perhaps not terribly surprising, that Republican appointees are tougher on crime over all, imposing sentences an average of 2.4 months longer than Democratic appointees.

But the study’s findings on how judges’ partisan affiliations affected the racial and gender gaps were new and startling.

“The racial gap by political affiliation is three months, approximately 65 percent of the baseline racial sentence gap,” the authors wrote. “We also find that Republican-appointed judges give female defendants two months less in prison than similar male defendants compared to Democratic-appointed judges, 17 percent of the baseline gender sentence gap.”

The two kinds of gaps appear to have slightly different explanations. “We find evidence that gender disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by violent offenses and drug offenses,” the study said. “We also find that racial disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by drug offenses.”

The authors of the study sounded a note of caution. “The precise reasons why these disparities by political affiliation exist remain unknown and we caution that our results cannot speak to whether the sentences imposed by Republican- or Democratic-appointed judges are warranted or ‘right,’” the authors wrote. “Our results, however, do suggest that Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges treat defendants differently on the basis of their race and gender given that we observe robust disparities despite the random assignment of cases to judges within the same court.”

The study is studded with fascinating tidbits. Black judges treat male and female offenders more equally than white judges do. Black judges appointed by Republicans treat black offenders more leniently than do other Republican appointees.

More experienced judges are less apt to treat black and female defendants differently. Judges in states with higher levels of racism, as measured by popular support for laws against interracial marriage, are more likely to treat black defendants more harshly than white ones.

The Trump administration has been quite successful in stocking the federal bench with its appointees, and by some estimates the share of Republican appointees on the federal district courts could rise to 50 percent in 2020, from 34 percent in early 2017.

The study said these trends were likely to widen the sentencing gaps.

“Our estimates suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of Republican-appointed judges in each court would increase the racial sentencing gap by approximately 5 percent and the gender sentencing gap by roughly 2 percent,” the authors wrote. “During an average four-year term, a Republican president has the potential to alter the partisan composition of the district courts by over 15 percentage points, potentially increasing the racial and gender sentencing gap by 7.5 and 3 percent, respectively.”

There are a couple of reasons to question that prediction. The Trump administration has been more energetic in appointing appeals court judges than trial judges. And in recent years many conservatives have started to shift positions on sentencing policy. The very scope of the study, which considered sentences imposed from 1999 to 2015, could mask trends in the later years.

Supreme Court justices like to say that partisan affiliation plays no role in judicial decision making.

“There’s no such thing as a Republican judge or a Democratic judge,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, said at his confirmation hearing last year. “We just have judges in this country.”

Political scientists have disagreed, finding that Republican appointees are markedly more likely to vote in a conservative direction than Democratic ones. Senate Republicans, by refusing to hold hearings for Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, seemed to agree.

So has Mr. Trump. “We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!” he tweeted in March.

But judicial ideology is one thing. The race and gender gaps identified by the new study present a different and difficult set of questions.

Professor Berman said the study should prompt both research and reflection. “It only begins a conversation,” he said, “about what sets of factors really influence judges at sentencing in modern times.”

Follow Adam Liptak on Twitter: @adamliptak.

Source: New York Times – published May 28, 2018; retrieved June 26, 2018 from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/us/politics/black-defendants-women-prison-terms-study.html

This article alludes to a stereotype; one where women are sentenced lighter, but Blacks harsher. This stereotype transcends the entire history of the United States … right up to this day. The more things change, the more they remain the same!

This commentary continues the series on Time to Go, considering the reality for life of the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown population in the US. This entry is Number 10 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean which started in September 2016 with the first 6 issues. Now, this revisit, this commentary, examines a disturbing trend with the sentences of federal court judges; these ones are appointed by the President of the United States. Needless to say, Presidents appoint judges that reflect and respect their values – it’s a natural expectation that they would have the same (virtual) association. So “we” can tell a lot about federal judges, just by knowing which President appointed them.

These were the 2016 submissions in this series:

Now, we consider these 5 new entries along that same theme:

All of these commentaries relate to Caribbean people and their disposition in foreign lands – in this case in the US – and why they need to Go Back Home. Surely, it is obvious and evident that institutional racism is “Alive & Well” in the US. We can and must do better at home. The Go Lean book – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to assuage the societal defects in this region. It is “out of scope” for our movement to fix America; our efforts to reform and transform is limited to the Caribbean.

‘Republican’ Judges???

This is as opposed to Democratic Judges! Yes, this is a reference to specific political parties in the US. Yet, we are not making these assessments with any political leaning. Rather, this movement behind the Go Lean book and blogs, the SFE Foundation, is an apolitical organization with no favoritism for one political party over the other. In fact, the first 6 commentaries in this Time to Go series were published during the presidential administration of Barack Obama, a Democrat.

The subject of Optimized Criminal Justice is a failing for all previous presidential administrations – though Blacks lean more to the Democrats – see/listen to the AUDIO-Podcast in the Appendix below. This is a familiar theme for this Go Lean commentary. This movement have consistently related the lack of respect for those in America fitting the Black-and-Brown description; consider these prior submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14627	Cop-on-Black Shootings – In America’s DNA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14413	Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8202	Lessons Learned from American Dysfunctional Minority Relations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8200	Climate of Hate for American Minorities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221	Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4863	Video of Police Shooting: Worth a Million Words
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4447	Probe of Ferguson, Missouri shows cops & court bias
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546	Book Review – ‘The Divide’ – Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	Hypocritical US slams Caribbean human rights practices

It is a dangerous proposition to be Black in America. This is why this movement consistently urges the Black-and-Brown of the Caribbean to Stay Home! In fact, The Bahamas urged its majority Black population (and the young men) to exercise extreme caution when traveling to the US and dealing with police authorities. There is no doubt that the America of Old – would have been no place for Caribbean people to seek refuge. But now we are asserting that the disposition is still the same:

Our Black-and-Brown Diaspora should plan to repatriate back to the Caribbean
While our young people, in the homeland, who plan to prosper where planted rather than setting their sights on American shores.

Despite the fact that this society – modern America – is still no place for Black-and-Brown Caribbean people to seek refuge, all 30 member-states of the region continue to suffer from an abominable brain drain rate – one report proclaims 70 percent – in which so many Caribbean citizens have emigrated to the US (and other places). We must resist this bad trend! How?!

Good messaging
Heavy-lifting to reform and transform the societal engines

The Go Lean book identifies the reasons why people abandon their homeland as “push and pull”. While the “push” refers to the societal defects that people take refuge from, the “pull” is mostly due to messaging. Our people perceive that the US is better for them, and that landing in the US is the panacea – cure-all – for all societal short-comings. Good messaging will mitigate that trend. Yet, still, we must do the hard work for fixing our society.

The Go Lean book asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than in the United States. Plus, we need these people’s help to reform and transform our society. We need some to lead, and some just to follow. We need some to produce, and some just to consume. We need growth! So abandonment is counter-productive.

This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform our Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos that needs to be adopted, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to optimize the societal engines in a community. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for optimizing our societal engines:

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.

As related in this blog series, it is Time to Go! We have a better chance of optimizing our society in the Caribbean for our Black-and-Brown majority populations than the US will do for our people; we can actually be better than America. Just look, their distinguished judges are still adjudicating like its 1868, and not 2018. America has gone “2 steps forward and 1 step backwards”.

Now is the Time to Go and now is the time to lean-in to this Go Lean/CU roadmap. This quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. Yes, we can … reform and transform our society. We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————–

AUDIO Podcast – Why Did Black Voters Flee The Republican Party In The 1960s? – https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/07/14/331298996/why-did-black-voters-flee-the-republican-party-in-the-1960s

Posted July 14, 2014 – If you’d walked into a gathering of older black folks 100 years ago, you’d have found that most of them would have been Republican.

Wait… what?

Yep. Republican. Party of Lincoln. Party of the Emancipation. Party that pushed not only black votes but black politicians during that post-bellum period known as Reconstruction.

Today, it’s almost the exact opposite. That migration of black voters away from the GOP reached its last phase 50 years ago this week.

…

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Civil Rights, Diaspora, Justice, Model, Power

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A Lesson in History – 25 years after the “OJ Murders”

Posted on June 11, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Do you remember the O.J. Simpson case; where he was accused of killing 2 people including his ex-wife? Do you realize, that was 25 years ago now?

Yep! The deaths took place on June 12, 1994.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” – Martin Luther King, quoting Theodore Parker.

There is a lesson in history when we consider the OJ Murders from 1994: things always work itself out towards justice, fairness and freedom … eventually. Sometimes though, the milestones in the journey towards a more just society are reversed or negative; we may make 2 steps forward with 1 step back; or 1 step forward and 2 steps back.

This is just the reality of change in society.

Our lesson in history teaches us that there was a bad orthodoxy in modern society, regarding both race and gender. Many times, minorities – those of the Black-and-Brown races – and women had to endure a lot more abuse than would be any acceptable standard in a just society. Plus when it comes to women, intersectionality (race, age, religion, LGBT, etc.) also applies, so even when one group get more civil rights granted, progress for some other women’s groups may continue to trail. Yet, still …

… You’ve have come a long way, Baby!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean addresses this history as the actuality of Natural Law. The book states (Page 226):

The Bottom Line on Natural Law and Women’s Rights

17th century natural law philosophers in Britain and America, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, developed the theory of natural rights in reference to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and the Christian theologist Aquinas. Like the ancient philosophers, 17th century natural law philosophers defended slavery and an inferior status of women in law.

Relying on ancient Greek philosophers, natural law philosophers argued that natural rights where not derived from god, but were “universal, self-evident, and intuitive”, a law that could be found in nature. They believed that natural rights were self-evident to “civilized man” who lives “in the highest form of society”. Natural rights derived from human nature, a concept first established by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium in Concerning Human Nature. Zenon argued that each rational and civilized male Greek citizen had a “divine spark” or “soul” within him that existed independent of the body. Zeno founded the Stoic philosophy and the idea of a human nature was adopted by other Greek philosophers, and later natural law philosophers and western humanists. Aristotle developed the widely adopted idea of rationality, arguing that man was a “rational animal” and as such a natural power of reason.

Concepts of human nature in ancient Greece depended on gender, ethnic, and other qualifications and 17th century natural law philosophers came to regard women along with children, slaves and non-whites, as neither “rational” nor “civilized”. Natural law philosophers claimed the inferior status of women was “common sense” and a matter of “nature”. They believed that women could not be treated as equal due to their “inner nature”. The views of 17th century natural law philosophers were opposed in the 18th and 19th century by Evangelical natural theology philosophers such as William Wilberforce and Charles Spurgeon, who argued for the abolition of slavery and advocated for women to have rights equal to that of men. Modern natural law theorists, and advocates of natural rights, claimed that all people have a human nature, regardless of gender, ethnicity or other qualifications; therefore all people have natural rights [120].

These thoughts on Natural Law and Women’s Rights persist to this day, despite how archaic they may seem.

Before the OJ Murders, there was an obvious nonchalance about domestic violence in America.

“Mind your own business”

“You’re not in mortal danger”

OJ Simpson was not the first domestic abuser nor was he the last; but now, in the 25 years since, the country has been more forthright and responsive. They have listened to the outcries of victims and the needs of abusers. It is no longer acceptable for the rest of society to just “mind their own business”.

What changed?

Later that same year in 1994, Congress debated and passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)- see the summarized details in Appendix B below – and many mitigations were put in place as a result.

The actuality of the infamous OJ Simpson case propelled VAWA; and though “he” still walks the street without any murder conviction – see Appendix A – the country can still credit him, for perpetrating a crisis and forcing more sensible jurisprudence over the time, with the “long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice”.

This theme – mitigating domestic violence – aligns with many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16408	Mitigating the Bad Ethos on Home Violence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13664	High Profile Sexual Harassment Accusers – Finally Believed
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7490	A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence – Domestic
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=695	Abused Latina wives find help by going to ‘Dona Carmen’

To this day, 25 years later – the OJ Simpson Murder Prosecution is still considered the “Trial of the Century”.

This OJ Murder drama – arrest, criminal trial acquittal; civil trial culpability – facilitated a lot of dialogue and debate on American Justice. There was always an American penchant to protect “White Women from Black Men”; this was the premise for so many extra-judicial executions (think the 4,733 recognized cases of Lynchings) in the American past. So the 1995 acquittal in the OJ Simpson Criminal case drove a wedge between “Black America versus White America”. For many in the African-American community, they recognized that the double standard of Rich White Justice versus Poor Black Justice may have finally swung favorably for a Black defendant. A previous Go Lean commentary added this observation:

There it is, the United States, where there seems to be a Great Divide in justice, one set of standards for the rich, another set for the poor.

The grass is not greener on that (American) side!

The reasons for emigration are “push-and-pull”. This source book identifies and qualifies a “pull” factor, the issue of justice in America. The book informs the reader that America should not be considered alluring from a justice perspective, especially if the reader/audience is poor and of a minority ethnicity.

This leaves the “push” factors. The Caribbean must address its issues, as to why its population is so inclined to emigrate. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap. It features the assessments, strategies, tactics and implementations to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

In contrast, back in the 1990’s, White America “dug in their heels” on this OJ Murder Case that despite any reasonable doubt in the court case, this Black Man had murdered the two White victims. They therefore yearned of the “Bad Old Days” of meting out immediate justice on presumed Black offenders. The defective landscape in American justice had left “an open sore to fester“.

This open sore has still not healed; think “Make America Great Again”; see Appendix C VIDEO below.

In many previous Go Lean commentaries, the dimensions of continuous racial inequities in the US mainland had been detailed and debated; see this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16944	Accepting Black Women ‘As Is’ – A Case for Women Empowerment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16532	European Reckoning – Settlers -vs- Immigrants
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15123	Blacks get longer prison sentences from ‘Republican’ Judges
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14627	Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings embedded in America’s DNA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9216	‘Time to Go’ – No Respect for our Hair
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9214	‘Time to Go’ – Spot-on for Protest

All in all, it remains the conclusion of this commentary:

“No Justice; No Peace”.

“The long arc of the moral universe bends toward justice”.

The OJ Murder drama demonstrated a lesson for us, that justice is not perfect in the US, and we as Caribbean immigrants cannot effect change there.

But we can effect change here in the Caribbean homeland … (one person can make a difference).

Yes, the heavy-lifting of reforming and transforming Caribbean justice institutions is conceivable, believable and achievable. We must ensure the proper response and protections for domestic violence here in our region. We must protect the victims and prosecute the abusers. We must ensure that the Strong Never Abuse the Weak with impunity.

This is how … and why we must act now. We must step-in, step-up and step forward to ensure our homeland is a better place to live, work and play for everyone: strong and weak, men and women, rich and poor. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

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.

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

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

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

————–

Appendix A – 25 years after murders, OJ says ‘Life is fine’

By: Linda Deutsch, Associated Press June 10, 2019

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After 25 years living under the shadow of one of the nation’s most notorious murder cases, O.J. Simpson says his life has entered a phase he calls the “no negative zone.”

In a telephone interview, the 71-year-old Simpson told The Associated Press he is healthy and happy living in Las Vegas. And neither he nor his children want to look back by talking about June 12, 1994 , when his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death and Simpson was transformed from Hall of Fame football hero to murder suspect.

“We don’t need to go back and relive the worst day of our lives,” he said. “The subject of the moment is the subject I will never revisit again. My family and I have moved on to what we call the ‘no negative zone.’ We focus on the positives.”

But the pain has not faded for Goldman’s family.

“Closure,” said Goldman’s sister Kim, “isn’t a word that resonates with me. I don’t think it’s applicable when it comes to tragedy and trauma and loss of life.”

“I don’t suffocate in my grief,” she said. “But every milestone that my kid hits, every milestone that I hit, you know, those are just reminders of what I’m not able to share with my brother and what he is missing out on.”

Ron Goldman, then 25, was returning a pair of sunglasses that Nicole Brown Simpson’s mother had left at a restaurant where he worked when he and Simpson’s ex-wife were stabbed and slashed dozens of times.

O.J. Simpson’s televised “Trial of the Century” lasted nearly a year and became a national obsession, fraught with issues of racism, police misconduct, celebrity and domestic violence.

Represented by a legal “Dream Team” that included Johnnie Cochran Jr. and F. Lee Bailey, he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 in a verdict that seemed to split the country along racial lines, with many white Americans believing he got away with murder and many black people considering him innocent.

He has continued to declare his innocence. The murder case is officially listed as unsolved.

The victims’ families subsequently filed a civil suit against him, and in 1997 he was ordered to pay $33.5 million for the wrongful deaths of his ex-wife and Goldman. Some of his property was seized and auctioned, but most of the judgment has not been paid.

For a man who once lived for the spotlight , Simpson has generally kept a low profile since his release from prison in October 2017 after serving nine years for a robbery and kidnapping conviction in Las Vegas. He insisted his conviction and sentence for trying to steal back his own memorabilia were unfair but said: “I believe in the legal system and I honored it. I served my time.”

After his release from prison in Nevada, many expected him to return to Florida, where he had lived for several years. But friends in Las Vegas persuaded him to stay there.

“The town has been good to me,” Simpson said. “Everybody I meet seems to be apologizing for what happened to me here.”

His time in the city hasn’t been without controversy. A month after his release, an outing to a steakhouse and lounge off the Las Vegas Strip ended in a dispute. Simpson was ordered off the property and barred from returning.

No such problems have occurred since, and Simpson is among the most sought-after figures in town for selfies with those who encounter him at restaurants or athletic events he attends occasionally.

He plays golf almost every day. The knees that helped him run to football glory at the University of Southern California and with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills have been replaced, and he recently had laser surgery on his eyes.

Simpson said he remains close to his children and other relatives. His parole officer has given him permission to take short trips, including to Florida, where his two younger children, Justin and Sydney, have built careers in real estate.

His older daughter, Arnelle, lives with him much of the time but also commutes to Los Angeles.

“I’ve been to Florida two or three times to see the kids and my old buddies in Miami. I even managed to play a game of golf with them,” he said. “But I live in a town I’ve learned to love. Life is fine.”

He also visited relatives in Louisiana, he said, and spoke to a group of black judges and prosecutors in New Orleans.

The glamor of his early life is just a memory.

After his football career, Simpson became a commercial pitchman, actor and football commentator. Once a multimillionaire, he says most of his fortune was spent defending himself from the murder charges.

Simpson declined to discuss his finances other than to say he lives on pensions.

To coincide with Wednesday’s anniversary, Kim Goldman will launch a 10-week podcast, “Confronting: O.J. Simpson,” in which she will interview her brother’s friends, the detective who investigated the killings, attorneys for the defense and prosecution, and two of the 12 jurors who acquitted Simpson. She will continue to make the case that Simpson was guilty.

___

Linda Deutsch is a retired special correspondent for The Associated Press. She covered all of Simpson’s legal cases during her 48-year career as a Los Angeles-based trial reporter.

Source: Posted and retrieved June 10, 2019 from: https://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-25-years-murders-045033971.html?.tsrc=notification-brknews

————–

Appendix B – 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, H.R. 3355) signed as Pub.L. 103–322 by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994 (codified in part at 42 U.S.C. sections 13701 through 14040). The Act provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave un-prosecuted. The Act also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice.

VAWA was drafted by the office of Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and co-written by Democrat Louise Slaughter, the Representative from New York, 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 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. 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, but it was reauthorized in 2013, after a long legislative battle. As a result of the United States federal government shutdown of 2018–2019, the Violence Against Women Act expired on December 21, 2018. It was temporarily reinstated via a short-term spending bill on January 25, 2019, but expired again on February 15, 2019. The House of Representatives passed a bill reauthorizing VAWA in April 2019; the bill, which includes new provisions protecting transgender victims and banning individuals convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing firearms, has yet to be considered by the Senate as of April 11[, 2019].^[5]

…

See the full article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act retrieved June 10, 2019.

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Appendix C VIDEO – Is ‘make America great again’ racist? – https://youtu.be/kIQdb-1Lxso

Fox News
Published on Sep 9, 2016

‘The O’Reilly Factor’ examines Bill Clinton’s criticism of the slogan.

Category: News & Politics

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Civil Rights, Gender, History, Security

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Caribbean Regiment – We were ‘there’ in World War II

Posted on June 6, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

75 years ago today – June 6, 1944 – was the Big One …

… the fight to end all fights.

It goes down in history as “D-Day“. See the encyclopedic details in the Appendix below, and this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – WWII veterans and world leaders gather in Normandy for D-Day anniversary – https://youtu.be/DK6-l1w6J_w

CBS This Morning
Published on Jun 5, 2019 – Leaders from around the world are starting two days of observances to remember the 75th anniversary of D-Day. President Trump and Queen Elizabeth are part of this morning’s ceremony in Portsmouth, England, one of the main departure points for the WWII invasion of German-occupied France. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also there, along with representatives from all 16 allied nations that took part in D-Day. Anthony Mason reports from Normandy.

Category: News & Politics

History shows that this was the beginning of the end of World War II (WWII). The world has been forever changed since this war. This applies 100 percent for us in the Caribbean and we were ‘there’ in-person and “in spirit”. At the time of this war there were only 3 independent Caribbean member-states (Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Now today, in the 75 years since, there are 16 independent states. Those 3 independent nations did NOT participate in World War II. But the other countries – at that time colonies of the European powers at conflict (Britain, France, The Netherlands, USA) – did have to submit personnel to the war effort.

… submit personnel to the war effort – that’s a euphemism for risking their lives for King and Country. As related in a previous commentary, that required ethos – National Sacrifice – had normally been missing in Caribbean life. An excerpt from that commentary continues as follows:

The term National Sacrifice is defined here as the willingness to die for a greater cause; think “King/Queen and Country”. This spirit is currently missing in the recipe for “community” in the Caribbean homeland.

To be willing to die for a cause means that one is willing to live for the cause. Admittedly, “dying” is a bit extreme. The concept of “sacrifice” in general is the focus of this commentary.

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean wants to forge change in the Caribbean, we want to change the attitudes for an entire community, country and region. We have the track record of this type of commitment being exemplified in other communities. (Think: The US during WWII). Now we want to bring a National Sacrifice attitude to the Caribbean, as it is undoubtedly missing. This is evidenced by the fact the every Caribbean member-state suffers from alarming rates of societal abandonment: 70% of college educated population in the English states have left in a brain drain, while the US [dependent] territories have lost more than 50% of their populations).

So on D-Day, when all the sacrifices were spilled on those beaches in Normandy on the French coastline, Caribbean people were there, but not representing their Caribbean homeland; they represented their colonial masters. As a people, we did not have a “seat at the table”, but verily we were “on the menu”.

We need to further examine that day, D-Day; we need to look at the voluminous sacrifices of that day and take stock of where we are as a people today, still with no “seat at the table” … and still “on the menu”.

Why should we concern ourselves with this 75-year old historic sacrifice?

Because we need change and change only comes about as a result of sacrifice – someone’s sacrifice ensured that we have the changes-progress in society that we enjoy today. For most of the 42 million people in our region, the self-determination – think: majority rule, voters rights and civil rights – that is expected is a harvested by-product of the sacrifices of many people in World War II in general – 55 million people died – and on the French coastal beaches of Normandy on D-Day in particular – 19,000 people that day: 10,000 Allied troops & up to 9,000 Germans.

A previous blog-commentary with the title “‘At the Table’ or ‘On the Menu’” highlights this main point:

Change is hard! Reforming and transforming a community is heavy-lifting. A lot of societal reforms – human and civil rights – only come about as a result of advocates fighting for change … “at the top” or “from the bottom”. Changing “at the top” means conferring, convincing, consulting and cajoling leaders (political and business) to implement changes in policies and procedures; it means being “at the table”. Changing “from the bottom” means “taking to the streets” and rallying the masses to force governments and businesses – the establishment – to hear demands and make changes.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a confederation to bring change and empowerment to the Caribbean member-states; to make the region a better place to live, work and play for all stakeholders (residents, Diaspora, visitors, businesses and institutions). This Go Lean book posits that the permanent change we seek will only take root as a result of adjustments to the community attitudes, the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people. This is identified in the book as “community ethos” (Page 20); and that one such character, National Sacrifice is sorely missing in this region.

Why missing? Perhaps this is due to the ignorance that Caribbean people actually also gave blood, sweat and tears to the WWII war effort in 1944. The best example of our heroism and sacrifice is the historicity of the All-Volunteer Caribbean Regiment in the British Army. See some details here:

Title: Caribbean Regiment
The Caribbean Regiment (also known as the Carib Regiment) was a unit of the British Army during World War II. The regiment went overseas in July 1944 and saw service in the Middle East and Italy.

There had been resistance from the War Office to form the West Indian regiment but those who made their own way to the UK were able to enlist in the British Army. Nearly 10,000 West Indians travelled and joined the army in Britain.

Following discussion between the Colonial Office and the War Office, the Caribbean Regiment was formed in April 1944 of 1,200 volunteers. The recruits were drawn from all over the British West Indies; most were members of local Volunteer Defence Forces. A few officers and non-commissioned Officers were also drafted in from British Army units.

A detachment of 104 officers and men from the Atlantic island of Bermuda, made up of volunteers (conscription had been introduced to Bermuda shortly after the declaration of war, but those who were drafted to the Caribbean Regiment volunteered to do so) from the Bermuda Militia Artillery and Bermuda Militia Infantry, arrived on two ships, on the 13 and 23 April 1944, to form the training cadre of the new regiment at Fort Eustis, a US Army base near Williamsburg, Virginia. Under the command of Lt. Colonel H. Wilkin, OBE, MC, they prepared for the arrival of detachments from the West Indian islands, each under its own officers. Newly recruited men were tested in Virginia for fitness. With more experience, and a generally higher degree of education, many of the Bermudian men were made non-commissioned officers and distributed around the regiment.

Some of the Caribbean soldiers had already trained for deployment to the Pacific. The Bermudians had previously trained for the war in Europe. The new regiment trained in Virginia, where the regiment was the first to celebrate the King’s birthday in the U.S. since the American Revolution.

The Regiment left the USA for Oran, in North Africa, in June 1944. Oran was handed over to Free French Forces before their arrival, and the Regiment went on to Italy in July 1944, where it was employed in general duties behind the front line. In October it escorted 4000 German prisoners of war from Italy to Egypt, where it was used in mine clearance work around the Suez Canal area.

The regiment never saw front line action. This was due partly to inadequate training (with only a single battalion, it had not trained as part of a larger brigade – the smallest unit the British Army normally fielded on its own) and partly because of the anticipated political impact in the British West Indies if heavy casualties had been incurred.

In 1946 it returned to the West Indies and was disbanded.

Source: Retrieved June 5, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Regiment

The world is coming together to remember, mourn and celebrate the big sacrifices of D-Day 1944. We, the people of the Caribbean, need to pay more than the usual attention to these activities.

In that previous commentary, it related the community ethos that was associated with peoples who endured the sacrifices of WWII. This was National Sacrifice, a deferred gratification and priority on being future-focused. All the D-Day Fallen Soldiers should be mourned and remembered; their sacrifices must be duly acknowledged, appreciated and honored. This is how to create that proper community spirit and value system for public service and National Sacrifice.

Take note, you Caribbean people.

The former British colonies, though they contributed to the Caribbean Regiment, still have not adopted this National Sacrifice value system. Most of the Caribbean (outside the US Territories) member-states do not even have a (work-free) holiday to honor the sacrifices of those that fought, bled or died for their country’s previous war efforts.

No appreciation, no sacrifice; no sacrifice, no victory.

And we wonder why our people in the homeland are so quick to abandon their communities. We refuse to give honor to those that died for the homeland, and verily, we refuse to live for the homeland.

Time for a change.

The 5 L’s should be considered. We need to Look, Listen, Learn as the world commemorates D-Day. Then we need to Lend-a-hand ourselves to help our community. After which we must Lead, in forging the proper ethos-spirit-attitude in our young people going forward. This is why National Sacrifice matters.

We hereby urge every stakeholders – resident and Diaspora alike – that love the Caribbean to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to elevate our societal engines. All the mitigations and empowerments in this roadmap require people to be in the homeland, to stay and sacrifice when it would seem so much easier to just leave, rather we need them to prosper where planted. That is courageous. We also urge those that have left to consider repatriation – returning home – that would be heroic.

Too many defects in the homeland?

We hear you; we see you! We are making the sacrifices to make the progress. We hereby pledge to devote the needed “blood, sweat and tears” – but no war – to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

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

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

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

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

————-

Appendix – D-Day (Normandy landings)
The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied France (and later western Europe) from Nazi control, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on D-Day was far from ideal and the operation had to be delayed 24 hours; a further postponement would have meant a delay of at least two weeks as the invasion planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days each month were deemed suitable. Adolf Hitler placed German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of German forces and of developing fortifications along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an Allied invasion.

The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment and an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 US, British, and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France at 06:30. The target 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several fortified towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting, and two major gun emplacements at Gold were disabled, using specialised tanks.

The Allies failed to achieve any of their goals on the first day. Carentan, St. Lô, and Bayeux remained in German hands, and Caen, a major objective, was not captured until 21 July. Only two of the beaches (Juno and Gold) were linked on the first day, and all five beachheads were not connected until 12 June; however, the operation gained a foothold which the Allies gradually expanded over the coming months. German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.

Museums, memorials, and war cemeteries in the area now host many visitors each year.
…
See the full Wikipedia article (retrieved June 5, 2019) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings

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Dealing with Hurricane Season 2019 … and beyond

Posted on June 2, 2019 in Government, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Welcome to Hurricane Season 2019.

I wish I could say it will be uneventful. I can’t …

Just the opposite, scientists have told us that as the earth’s atmosphere heats more and more, that Climate Change-fueled events will only worsen and worsen. So far, Spring 2019 has been proof positive. We have seen floods, tornadoes, unusual wintry weather, etc. As reported in a previous blog-commentary, the planet must prepare to “rinse and repeat“.

June 1st is the official start of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, so every year at this time we have to start dealing with the realities of hurricanes and Caribbean life. The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean (Page 10) declares that we need “to provide new guards for our future security”. This is not our first year planning for and dealing with Hurricane Season; nor will it be our last. “This” is our new reality. The book relates on Page 11:

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

This theme – planning for and dealing with Hurricane Season – aligns with many previous Go Lean commentaries; see here, this consideration from recent years:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15012	Hurricane Season 2018 and Puerto Rico continued sufferings
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12068	Hurricane Season 2017 and ‘Climate Change’ Abatement

Dealing with Hurricane Seasons must include more than just naming hurricanes or responding to the storms’ devastation; we must also mitigate the threat of Climate Change and do our share to reduce global warming. Yes, we must!

Why?

Because we are responsible for the causes of Climate Change; so says this recent report; consider the story here:

Title: 99.9999% chance humans are causing global warming, and other science-based facts on Climate Change for Earth Day
By: Doyle Rice and Elizabeth Weise

Climate change is real and increasingly a part of our daily lives. New research and studies out in just the past six months highlight the latest facts about the human-caused shift to our global weather systems and its effects on our planet.

First among them, there’s no longer any question that rising temperatures and increasingly chaotic weather are the work of humanity. There’s a 99.9999% chance that humans are the cause of global warming, a February study reported. That means we’ve reached the “gold standard” for certainty, a statistical measure typically used in particle physics.

The mechanism is well understood and has been for decades. Humans burn fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas, which release carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and other gases into the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. CO2 is the greenhouse gas that’s most responsible for warming.

Study lead author Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, told Reuters that “the narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong.”

Hottest on record
The past five years have been the five warmest since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. The Earth has experienced 42 straight years (since 1977) with an above-average global temperature, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Based on five separate data sets that keep track of the Earth’s climate, the global average temperature for the first 10 months of 2018 was about 1.8 degrees above what it was in the late 1800s. That was when industry started to emit large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Australia experienced record summer heat in January of this year. The town of Port Augusta reached the hottest day since record-keeping began in 1962 with a temperature of 121, according to the Guardian.

The heat was so intense it caused bats to fall from trees, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Carbon dioxide up 46%
Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases being released into the atmosphere by industry, transportation and energy production from burning fossil fuels are enhancing what’s known as the planet’s natural greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide is the most prevalent among all greenhouse gases produced by human activities, attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.

The atmospheric carbon dioxide level for March was 411.97 parts per million and continue to rise. It has now reached levels in the atmosphere not seen in 3 million years.

That’s an increase of 46% from just before the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, when CO2 levels were around 280 parts per million. Levels began to rise when humans began to burn large amounts of fossil fuels to run factories and heat homes, releasing CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Scientists say to keep a livable planet, we need to cut the level to 350 parts per million.

Rising seas
A consequence of higher temperatures is the melting of the polar ice caps, which is causing sea levels to rise. The world’s oceans have risen about an inch in the past 50 years due to melting glaciers alone, a study published this month in the journal Nature found.

The Earth’s glaciers are now losing up to 390 billion tons of ice and snow per year, the study suggests.

Global warming has caused over 3 trillion tons of ice to melt from Antarctica in the past quarter-century and tripled ice loss there in the past decade, another study, released in June, said.

More: Life after solving climate change: Not mud huts and gruel but clean air and warm homes

Source: Posted for “Earth Day 2019” on April 22, 2019; retrieved June 1, 2019 from: https://www.yahoo.com/now/earth-day-2019-high-temperatures-131301815.html

99.9999% is a special number! It is near to Six Sigma – process which 99.9999998% of products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). So this near sign of operational perfection means that it is “on us”. If we accept that us humans are the cause of Climate Change, then that means that us humans can stop the bad actions and do good ones. As reported here previously, we only have until 2030 as a fix window to try to effect change; (after that, there is no hope for a turn-around):

[A report from the] UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) … asserts that if there are no mitigations [by 2030], then the catastrophic future that we all dread will be unavoidable. Life may continue on the planet, but the status quo would be no more. …

After [2030], there may not be any turning back from a Greenhouse planet. Once we accept this fact – the eventuality of the Climate Change Catastrophe – only then can we start to make efforts to address the truth: our “house is on fire”. …

Fixing Climate Change in the US or Canada is out-of-scope for this Go Lean movement; but we still need them to act. We also need Europe, China, India – all Big Polluters – and all countries of the world to act. We must stand on soap boxes, podiums and stages and tell the world – everyone must listen; we must make them listen. This is now everyone’s job, everyone’s responsibility. …

There is … a roadmap [for] reforming and transforming the Caribbean’s societal engines to abate Climate Change; [it] is possible; it is conceivable, believable and achievable.

The current US President, Donald Trump, is not a partner in the effort to abate Climate Change. He is a denier! He is also undermining legitimate scientific efforts – see Appendix VIDEO.

The start of Hurricane Season 2019 reminds us to recommit to the urgency to mitigate and remediate Climate Change. While we must Go Green here in the Caribbean, we must do more too. We must urge the rest of the world to Go Green. Otherwise, our small tropical islands will be the first to become extinct. It is that serious!

Let’s lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to effect change here in the homeland and then lets urge the rest of the world to also do more. Yes, we can make a difference here in the homeland and around the world. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

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

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

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

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

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – Climate Change: Why Trump’s panel on climate science is controversial – https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2019/02/27/climate-change-why-trumps-panel-climate-science-controversial/2998078002/

Posted February 26, 2019 – President Trump’s pick for leading a climate change panel is notorious for denying the science behind human-caused global warming. We dive into the counter-arguments on climate change. USA TODAY.

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Remembering Rwanda – ENCORE

Posted on May 29, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

What would you have done if you were around for the Spanish Inquisition, where Spain forcibly attempted to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity … or else?

What would you have done if you were around for the Jewish Holocaust by Nazi Germany?

Would you have complained? Would you have protested in the streets with marches and with boycotts? Would you have taken up arms to stop the evil, mitigate the atrocities and to force justice?

These are valid questions! I assume you as the reader were not in position to alleviate any of those horrific events?

How about Rwanda – the Hutu-Tutsi Genocide – in 1994?

What did you do to protest those horrors? (I know you were here and conscious of the events). We must now reflect and consider … because “Inaction” is a Recipe for ‘Failed-State’ Status. Remember this famous quotation:

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

Today, this week, this month is special in the history of Rwanda. These days measure the 25th anniversary of what took place during the 7 April to 15 July 1994 genocide?

The world must never forget! Yes, but most important, the world must care.

The declaration that the world did not care … is a serious charge. We did not make this declaration; no, it was a Mea Culpa of the religious stakeholders who were in Rwanda – the Church – at the time of the atrocities. We published a blog-commentary of this acknowledgement on November 22, 2016.

Now is a good time to encore that previous blog-commentary. See here:

———–

Go Lean Commentary – Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologize for genocide

Is mainstream religion a force for moral good in modern society … in the Caribbean? In Africa? Anywhere?

This is a timely discussion right now as there are a lot of threats and dissension in the world, mostly spurred on by religious extremism; think: Islamic terrorists, Shia – Shiite conflicts, Hindu-India versus Muslim Pakistan, Anglicanism versus Catholicism in Northern Ireland. Many samples and examples abound. The case in point for this consideration is the religious-fueled genocide in Rwanda in 1994; see the country’s flag here.

The religious institutions have a tarnished record; not always being a force for moral good in society. They have betrayed the vows and values they are supposed to be committed to. Instead, they have become “drunk with the blood of so many innocent people”.

This reality and cautionary tale from Rwanda provides us a deep lesson, though of a religious nature. See this core scripture:

A mysterious name was written on her forehead: “Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World.”
I could see that she was drunk–drunk with the blood of God’s holy people who were witnesses for Jesus. I stared at her in complete amazement. – Revelation 17:5 – 6; New Living Translation

Who/What is Babylon the Great? (See Appendix A below).

For one religious group founded in the Caribbean – Rastafarians – they assign the identity to the country of the United States of America. But most religious scholars assign the identity to the world’s orthodox religions.

Some theologians make a narrow accusation and declare that “there can be only one conclusion: The Vatican [(Roman Catholic Headquarters)] is the Mystery Babylon of Revelation; they relate that this false religious system that has deceived the people of the world that will be destroyed at the time of Armageddon”.

Whatever your faith, being associated with Babylon the Great is not a good thing. “She” has a vengeful reckoning in store.

As depicted in a previous blog-commentary, the religions of Christendom have a sullied past! Unfortunately that “past” is not only centuries ago, as chronicled in the recent experiences in 1994 with the Rwandan Ethnic Cleansing. This sad drama is in the news again, as the Roman Catholic Church has now just issued a formal apology for its actions and in-actions in those atrocities.

Considering the real history, they are guilty as charged; see the news story here:

Title: Rwanda: Catholic bishops apologize for role in genocide
By: Ignatius Ssuuna
KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — The Catholic Church in Rwanda apologized on Sunday for the church’s role in the 1994 genocide, saying it regretted the actions of those who participated in the massacres.

“We apologize for all the wrongs the church committed. We apologize on behalf of all Christians for all forms of wrongs we committed. We regret that church members violated (their) oath of allegiance to God’s commandments,” said the statement by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was read out in parishes across the country.

The statement acknowledged that church members planned, aided and executed the genocide, in which over 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.

In the years since the genocide — which was sparked by a contentious plane crash that killed the then-president, a Hutu — the local church had resisted efforts by the government and groups of survivors to acknowledge the church’s complicity in mass murder, saying those church officials who committed crimes acted individually.

Many of the victims died at the hands of priests, clergymen and nuns, according to some accounts by survivors, and the Rwandan government says many died in the churches where they had sought refuge.

The bishops’ statement is seen as a positive development in Rwanda’s efforts at reconciliation.

“Forgive us for the crime of hate in the country to the extent of also hating our colleagues because of their ethnicity. We didn’t show that we are one family but instead killed each other,” the statement said.

The statement was timed to coincide with the formal end Sunday of the Holy Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis to encourage greater reconciliation and forgiveness in his church and in the world, said Bishop Phillipe Rukamba, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Rwanda.

Tom Ndahiro, a Rwandan genocide researcher, said he hoped the church’s statement will encourage unity among Rwandans.

“I am also happy to learn that in their statement, bishops apologize for not having been able to avert the genocide,” he said.

========

Photo Caption – In this Sunday, April 6, 2014 file photo, Rwandan children listen and pray during a Sunday morning service at the Saint-Famille Catholic church, the scene of many killings during the 1994 genocide, in the capital Kigali, Rwanda. The Catholic Church in Rwanda apologized on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, for the church’s role in the 1994 genocide, saying it regretted the actions of those who participated in the massacres. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

The recap: “800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists” during the Rwanda Holocaust in 1994. (This history was dramatized in the movie Hotel Rwanda; see Appendix B VIDEO below).

How does a community – like Rwanda in the foregoing – repent, forgive and reconcile from such a bad legacy?

“Confession is good for the soul”!

This commentary is part-and-parcel of the effort to reform and transform the Caribbean. We too, have some atrocities to reconcile. Plus we have many recent bad actions to reckon with. Think:

Haiti
Cuba
Guyana
Belize

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that any success in reforming and transforming the Caribbean must include a unified region – we need to be a Single Market – despite the 30 different member-states, 5 different colonial legacies and 4 different languages. We have a lot of differences – just like the differences of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda – and a history of dysfunction. We must consider the ancient and modern conflicts some member-states have had with others.

The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). A mission of the roadmap is to reverse the prior “human flight” and invite the Diaspora back to the homeland. Accepting that many people fled the Caribbean seeking refuge, means that we must mitigate these causes of prior distress; and reconcile them. “Old parties” returning to their communities can open a lot of “old wounds” – Rwanda never reconciled their Hutu-Tutsi conflicts before 1994. Therefore an additional mission is to facilitate formal reconciliations, much like the model in South Africa with the Truth & Reconciliation Commissions (TRC). This mission will assuage these Failed-State indicators and threats (Page 272):

“Revenge seeking” groups
Group Grievances

The foregoing article depicts a bad episode in history of Rwanda and the Catholic Church’s complexities. The best-practice is to repent, forgive and reconcile. Repentance would include desisting in the bad behavior, confession and making amends. Religious orthodoxy is responsible for a lot of harm in the world. To finally answer the opening question: Is mainstream religion a force for moral good in modern society … in the Caribbean?

The answer is: No!

The Go Lean movement (book and blogs) have identified many bad community ethos – fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; the dominant assumptions of a people or period – that the Caribbean region needs to desist, confess and make amends. Many of these are based on religious orthodoxy; consider:

Patriarchy – Assigning more status and privileges to men, effectuates repression of women and girls.
Racial Prejudice & Dissension – The justification of African Slave Trade in the New World was religious expansionism.
Homosexual Persecution – Regulating the private affairs against homosexuality – i.e. British Buggery – has now been defined as a human rights violation.

The Go Lean movement (book and blogs) also details good-positive community ethos that the people of the region need to adopt. The motivating ethos underlying the Go Lean roadmap is the Greater Good. This is defined as “the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong” – Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. What is ironic is the fact that the Greater Good ethos aligns with the true values of most of the orthodox religions identified above; such as this scripture:

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. – James 1:27; New Living Translation

This CU/Go Lean mission is to elevate society for Caribbean people in the Caribbean. There is the need to monitor the enforcement of human rights and stand “on guard” against movements towards Failed-State status. The Go Lean roadmap calls for the CU to assume that role. Using cutting edge delivery of best practices, the CU will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

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

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

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

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

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

The Go Lean book details a lot more, a series of assessments, community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to ensure a safe and just society in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union of 30 Member-states	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home; Repatriate Diaspora	Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Truth & Reconciliation Courts	Page 78
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Anatomy of Advocacies	Page 122
Planning – Ways to Improve Image	Page 133
Planning – Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Truth & Reconciliation Commissions	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Appendix – Failed State Indicators & Definitions	Page 271
Appendix – Dominican Republic’s Trujillo Regime – Ethnic Cleansing	Page 306

The foregoing article conveys that the country of Rwanda is making efforts to come to grips with their atrocious past. This was not a Black-White conflict, but rather a Black-on-Black drama. This drama therefore relates to the Caribbean as we have majority Black populations in almost every Caribbean member-state. Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. There is reason to believe that we too can reform and transform our bad community ethos, as causes, advocacies and campaigns have shown success in previous societies. The Go Lean roadmap relates the experiences of how these single causes/advocacies have been forged throughout the world (Page 122 – Anatomy of Advocacies):

Frederick Douglass	Abolition of African-American Slavery
Mohandas Gandhi	Indian Independence
Dr. Martin Luther King	African-American Civil Rights Movement
Nelson Mandela	South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid
Cesar Chavez	Migrant Farm Workers in the US
Candice Lightner	Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)

The Caribbean can succeed too, in our efforts to improve the Caribbean community ethos. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries that delve into aspects of forging change in the Caribbean community ethos:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9428	Forging Change: Herd Mentality
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9017	Proclaim ‘International Caribbean Day’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8200	Respect for Minorities: Climate of Hate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7628	‘A Change Is Gonna Come’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695	Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971	A Lesson in History – Royal Charter: Truth & Consequence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3929	Success Recipe: Add Bacon to Eggs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3915	‘Change the way you see the world; you change the world you see’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3780	Forging a ‘National Sacrifice‘ Ethos
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=623	‘Only at the precipice, do they change’

The Go Lean movement wants to help reform and transform the Caribbean. We see the crisis; we recognize that status quo, including the root causes and influences. We perceive the harmful effects of the religious orthodoxy. Yet we do not want to ban religion! Just the opposite, we know that religion can be a force for moral good in society, when practiced right. But we also know that religion can give birth to extremist passions and foster the worst sentiments in the human psyche. This too is presented in the Bible:

¹ “I have told you these things so that you won’t abandon your faith. ² For you will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing a holy service for God. ³ This is because they have never known the Father or me. ⁴ Yes, I’m telling you these things now, so that when they happen, you will remember my warning…

A “Separation of Church and State” is the standard in the advanced democracies; this is now embedded in the implied Social Contract. Unfortunately this is not the norm in the Caribbean. Just consider these continued practices that demonstrate a highly charged religiosity in the region:

School uniforms forbidding girls from wearing pants
Carnival festivities banned for Sundays
Domestic violence toleration

The Go Lean book defines the Social Contract as follows:

“Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights” – Page 170.

The Caribbean Social Contract specifies that governments must protect their citizens, those in Christendom or not. Human rights assume a religious neutrality; even those who are “Spiritual But Not Religious” – see Appendix C below – must be respected and protected.

The vision for a new religiously neutral Caribbean specifies new community ethos for the homeland, one being the practice of reconciling conflicts from the past; to make an accounting (lay bare), repent, forgive and then hopefully forget the long history of human rights abuses. All of this heavy-lifting will contribute towards the effort to make the region a better homeland to live, work and play. We urge all to lean-in to this roadmap.

Closing exhortation about Babylon the Great:

Then I heard another voice calling from heaven, “Come away from her, my people. Do not take part in her sins, or you will be punished with her. – Revelation 18:4 – New Living Translation

Let him with ears, hear…

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———-

Appendix A – Cultural importance of “Babylon”

Due to Babylon’s historical significance as well as references to it in the Bible, the word “Babylon” in various languages has acquired a generic meaning of a large, bustling diverse city. Examples include:

Babilonas (Lithuanian name for “Babylon”)—a real estate development in Lithuania.
Babylon is used in reggae music as a concept in the Rastafari belief system, denoting the materialistic capitalist world.
Babylon 5—a science fiction series about a multi-racial futuristic space station.
Babylon A.D. takes place in New York City, decades in the future.

———-

Appendix B VIDEO – Hotel Rwanda (2004) – Official Movie Trailer – https://youtu.be/qZzfxL90100

Uploaded on Jun 18, 2011
Director: Terry George
Starring: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix.

———-

Appendix C – AUDIO Podcast – Spiritual But Not Religious – http://www.humanmedia.org/catalog/excerpts/141_spiritual_not_religious.mp3

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Marshall Plan – Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

Posted on May 14, 2019 in Economics, Government, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

The US gave $13 Billion to Western Europe to recover, reboot and turn-around the deficient societal engines of that region, post World War II. It made a huge difference and restored the national production (think GDP) to levels exceeding the years before the war.

This was the Marshall Plan; it worked for Europe. There are even lessons for us to learn and apply in our Caribbean region.

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico (PR), “bombing” its infrastructure. The island needed (actually still needs) all the help it could get. PR must reboot! Help came from the US Federal government … eventually. The US President now claims that his administration has given $91 Billion.

If so, wouldn’t this constitute a turn-around for Puerto Rico; perhaps another round – a redux – of the Marshall Plan, the original European Recovery Plan of 1948 – 1952?

The answer is: No!

Despite the need for a Marshall Plan for PR, they have not gotten one. They also did not get $91 Billion!

Wait, what?! See the news story-VIDEO here:

VIDEO – CNN reporter responds to Trump: That’s not true – https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/09/trump-puerto-rico-storm-relief-false-claim-crn-vpx.cnn

CNN Right Now
Posted May 9, 2019 – President Trump falsely claimed that Puerto Rico has been given $91 billion in disaster aid following Hurricane Maria that devastated the island.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean must first look to the Caribbean to effect the needed change in the region. The idea of someone “swooping in” and bringing the relief that the Caribbean needs – a panacea – is simply a fantasy. This has not happened, is not happening and will not happen.

“We” must be the change our homeland needs.

The 2013 Go Lean book anticipated the repercussions and consequences of natural disasters in the Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This is the solution that we need, a regional regime to shepherd the economic, security (including Emergency Management), and governing engines of the 30 member-states, as one integrated unit.

This could be fact, not fantasy!

The Go Lean/CU roadmap does include a Marshall Plan for some member-states (Cuba & Haiti), that need to simply catch-up. Puerto Rico, while needing a Way Forward to reboot, recover and turn-around, is not envisioned for such a Marshall Plan. This is entry 5-of-5 in this series of commentaries – the final one – on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

So if no Marshall Plan for PR, what solutions do we propose for this island. The theme of rebooting PR has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17135	Way Forward – Puerto Rico: Learns its status with America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15012	In Life or Death: No Love for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14101	‘We Are The World’ Style Campaign to Help Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13995	First Steps – Congressional Interstate Compacts – No Vote; No Voice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391	After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection for PR
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11647	Righting a Wrong: Puerto Rico’s Bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7963	‘Like a Good Neighbor’ – Being there for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6260	Puerto Rico Bondholders Coalition Launches Ad Campaign
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1325	Puerto Rico Attempts to Reboot the Landscape for Entrepreneurs (SME)
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599	Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes

The status quo for the Caribbean is deficient and defective. The status quo for Puerto Rico is deficient and defective. This same assessment requires some of the same solutions. The Go Lean/CU roadmap presents the solutions to fix the entire region.

This is the Way Forward.

Is the Way Forward part-and-parcel of their American experience?

How was the $91 Billion?

Oh wait! It’s a mirage. It is past time for PR to realize that its panacea is not the American eco-system. It is time to Grow Up, Already! The heavy-lifting that is needed for Puerto Rico must be exerted by Puerto Rico.

You are acting like a colony … towards your imperial masters, Washington D.C..

Instead, we propose that you act like a Good Neighbor, willing to partner with others “in the same boat” with common problems to find common solutions.

Puerto Rico should be fully inclusive in the political, social, economic, security, musical and athletic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future … and Puerto Rico’s future. This is how we can make our regional homeland, PR included, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

——-

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

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

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

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

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Marshall Plan – Funding: How to Pay for Change

Posted on May 13, 2019 in Economics, Government, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

About that purse …
… we have been saying here repeatedly:

Will someone walk-up to Cuba/Haiti and give them $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around their periods of dysfunction?

Probably, not!

So how to ensure that all this talk of a Marshall Plan is not just simply talk?

Answer: We create the purse ourselves.

Purse , noun
a: Resources, Funds
b: a sum of money offered as a prize or present also : the total amount of money offered in prizes for a given event

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean region as an entity can create a new regional purse, one that can fund the Marshall Plan that is needed to reform the de facto Failed-States of Cuba, Haiti and other declining member-states.

Once we reform these problematic communities, then we can focus on transforming the entire region. Leverage is the key!

So we can comfortably declare that change is on the way for the Caribbean!

While the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is NOT just Cuba & Haiti alone, we know that we cannot elevate the societal engines for all of the Caribbean while ignoring these near-Failed States. These member-states constitute 48% of the region’s population and a huge portion of the landmass. There is no Caribbean without these Cuban/Haitian countries and cultures.

So to repeat, if we can fix Cuba & Haiti, we can fix the entire Caribbean region. This is the “Why’ and “How” – Marshall Plan – and these are important considerations; but more importantly, we need to know how to fund our plans.

We must know if “someone” will walk-up to and give us $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around our dysfunctional member-states. We can now hereby declare:

Probably, not … for any external entities.
Definitely yes … for doing it ourselves … internally.

The Go Lean roadmap asserts that it is up to the Caribbean to solve the Caribbean’s problems. We must plan, fund and execute our own Marshall Plan. Yes, we can!

The next step: graduate from just regional integration – Caribbean Community (CariCom) – to a Single Market.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), to facilitate a Single Market. The book features (Page 101) this one advocacy for creating a purse, entitled: “10 Ways to Pay for Change“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* – Ratify treaty for the CU.** This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, expanding to an economy of 30 member-states of 42 million people, to impact a GDP of over $800 Billion. In order for the CU to reboot the economic engines of the region, the political entity of the unified Caribbean must be rebooted first. … The CU will generate its own initial funding, as listed here, below.
2	Spectrum Auctions The CU will function as a government-owned multinational corporation to deliver services for an integrated Caribbean administration. Having the regional authority, the CU will hold auctions for the radio spectrum in the region. This will generate the CU’s own initial revenue stream, as only rights are being awarded; there is no performance – no fabrication of products or rendering of services. With this strategy, there will be revenues to return back to CU share-holders, member-states, even in the 1st year.
3	SGE Licenses The CU treaty empowers economic engines (Self-Governing Entities – SGE: industrial parks, technology labs, medical campuses, etc.) in and on behalf of the region. These independent entities pay fees to the CU, at the outset, so as to be licensed by the CU.
4	GPO Logistic Fees An important CU mission is the Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), an extension of the current [CariCom] Office of Trade Negotiations; but the CU will make purchases and fulfill delivery to member-states, for a handling fee.
5	Regional Lottery … The CU will implement a regional lottery, in conjunction with local state lotteries, with winnings awarded in Caribbean dollars (C$). The CU will outsource contracts for distribution, fund management and IT processing. These contracts can serve as an initial funding source.
6	EEZ Exploration Rights
7	Homeland Security – Private Protection Licensing
8	Homeland Security – Hurricane Insurance Fund
9	Warrants Paying for Change first optimizes the payment terms. All CU payments to member-states will be in the form of warrants attached to bonds; this allows the CU to pay lower interest rates. These warrants make the bonds sellable to the public. [See explanation of Registered Warrants in the Appendix below].
10	Foreign Aid & Grants *including Non-Government Organizations (NGOs)*

A Caribbean version of the previous European Marshall Plan will be very significant in the roadmap to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states. Planning the Plan is one thing; Executing the Plan is another. But in between the Plan and the Execution is the heavy-lifting task of funding the change. This is why this series of commentaries is so important. This is entry 4-of-5 in this series of commentaries on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this entry for this series we focus on “How” to fund the Marshall Plan. In the European model, “it” was about the money; for the Caribbean version, money will be equally important. The theme of recovering and rebooting the Caribbean economic landscape has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16848	‘Two Pies’ – Funding Plan for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16836	Crypto-currency: Here comes ‘Trouble’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16530	Efforts to de-Americanize the world’s economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16210	In Defense of Trade – The Real Threat of Currency Assassins
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15798	Lessons Learned from 2008 Great Recession – Region Still Recovering
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14834	Counter-culture – Monetizing the Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14248	Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar – From US$ to C$
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744	Caribbean Economics – The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513	Transforming ‘Money’ Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3582	For Canadian Banks – The Caribbean is a ‘Bad Bet’

The hope for a Marshall Plan for Cuba and Haiti will only be an empty promise unless the regional infrastructure accompanies the Planning and Executions. The Way Forward for the Caribbean economic landscape therefore presents these necessary ingredients:

Regional Currency – Trading in Caribbean Dollars (C$) rather than local currencies.
Regional Capital Markets – There are 9 Stock Exchanges; these will expand due to C$ adoption; i.e. Warrants.

The current economic landscape is deficient and defective. We must reboot and change all of it: Top-Down and Bottoms-Up. This is a Big Shift being considered here, transforming how we finance government spending: Looking to Capital Markets for fostering a landscape with Registered Warrants instead of “cash”. Wow! (See more on this in the Appendix below). Only with these technocratic strategies, tactics and implementations, can we even contemplate rebooting Cuba and Haiti.

This product offering – Registered Warrants – is part of the Way Forward for the new Caribbean.

Our Way Forward for the entire Caribbean includes the entire Caribbean, with Cuba & Haiti too. So we have to prepare the region for the full inclusion of these problematic countries. With them, we can better leverage the political, social, security and economic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future. This is how we intend to make our homeland, Cuba & Haiti included, better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

——-

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

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

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

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

—————

Appendix: Warrants of Payments

In financial transactions, a warrant is a written order from a first person that instructs a second person to pay a specified recipient a specific amount of money or goods at a specific time.^[1] The warrant may or may not be negotiable and may authorize payment to the warrant holder on demand or after a maturity date. Governments may choose to pay wages and other accounts payable by issuing warrants instead of checks.

History
In the 18th century, warrants were used by the military to authorize payments to soldiers and suppliers. George Washington, for example, signed warrants that ordered quartermasters to deliver money or acquire supplies.^[2] These warrants were used by quartermasters to issue vouchers to acquire food, supplies, munitions, clothing, transportation, etc., for the use of the American military and to maintain Washington’s headquarters. Warrants could be redeemed by the army paymasters, but most often they were used like cash by the recipient. Warrants, like bills of exchange and vouchers, were often heavily discounted and depreciated in value. The fortunes of war could be traced through the discount rates on warrants, vouchers, and Continental dollars.

Modern warrants
In government finance, a warrant is a written order to pay that instructs a federal, state, or county government treasurer to pay the warrant holder on demand or after a maturity date. Such warrants look like checks and clear through the banking system like checks, but are not drawn against cleared funds in a checking account (demand deposit account). Instead, they may be drawn against “available funds” or “out of fund 0027” so that the issuer can collect interest on the float or delay redemption. If the warrant is conditional on funds being available, the warrant is not a negotiable debt instrument. In the U.S., warrants are issued by government entities such as the military and state and county governments. Warrants are issued for payroll to individual employees, accounts payable to vendors, to local governments, to taxpayers receiving tax refunds, to recipients of unemployment benefits, and to owners of unclaimed money. A warrant differs from a check in that the warrant is not drawn on a checking account, is not necessarily payable on demand, and may not be negotiable.^[5][6]

Warrants deposited in a bank are routed (based on the MICR routing number) to a collecting bank which processes them as collection items like maturing treasury bills and presents the warrants to the government entity’s treasury department for payment to the bank each business day.

Regular warrants are redeemable by the government treasurer after they are issued. “Registered warrants” bear interest and need not be redeemed by the treasurer until the warrant maturity date.^[7] If warrants cannot be immediately redeemed by the issuing entity, the collecting bank may accept the warrants as short term debt instruments and collect interest when redeemed in accordance with a prior agreement with the issuing entity. The collecting bank may refuse to accept a warrant issue, in which case other banks may also refuse to accept them.^[8]

“The warrants of a municipal corporation are not negotiable instruments. They do not constitute a new debt, or evidence of a new debt, but are only the prescribed means devised by law for drawing money from the treasury.”^[9]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on July 9, 2009, that California’s registered warrants are “securities” under federal securities law and will be regulated as municipal securities by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.^[10] Under these regulations, anybody who profits by buying and reselling warrants must be registered as a municipal securities broker-dealer.^[11]

Although registered warrants are evidence of a municipality’s obligation to pay, because they demonstrate an intent to disburse funds when those funds become available, the US Supreme Court has ruled that a holder of a valid warrant cannot obtain a writ of mandamus for specific performance of the obligation to pay, enforced against a treasurer or other employee of the municipality.^[12] …

United Kingdom
In the UK, warrants are issued as payment by the NS&I when a Premium Bond is chosen.

The difference between a warrant and a cheque is that a cheque usually places no explicit time frame on when the amount is to be paid.

Source: Retrieved May 13, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_of_payment

—————

VIDEO – What is WARRANT OF PAYMENT? What does WARRANT OF PAYMENT mean? WARRANT OF PAYMENT meaning – https://youtu.be/9LY7Ol5ec6E

The Audiopedia

Published on Apr 20, 2017 – … Governments may choose to pay wages and other accounts payable by issuing warrants instead of checks …

Category: Education
License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

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Marshall Plan – Haiti: Past time for Mitigation

Posted on May 12, 2019 in Economics, Government, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

This is a deep philosophical discussion about Grace. What is it?

From a theological perspective, this can be defined as follows:

… not as a created substance of any kind, but as “the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it”,^[1] “Grace is favour, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.”^[2] It is understood by Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to people “generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved”^[3] – that takes the form of divine favor, love, clemency, and a share in the divine life of God.^[4]

So a summary definition of Grace may just be: Undeserved Kindness.

Europe endured a lot of dysfunction during the 20th Century; think World War I and World War II. Let’s face it, these European countries did NOT deserve any kindness or help (such as the $13 Billion in the Marshall Plan) that were eventually given to them after WWII; it was a kindness and an investment from the US to the Europeans. It was Grace!

A lot of people in the North America felt that Europe brought this dysfunction on themselves; “they sowed the wind; they would have to reap the whirlwind”. This philosophy was referred to as Isolationism. But after the photos of poor, starving children came to light, attitudes began to change. See this manifestation as recorded by the Save the Children Fund (UK):

At the end of World War II, images of malnourished and sick children ran throughout Europe. [The Founders] worked to gain public sympathy in order to elicit support aid.^[12] Save the Children staff were among the first into the liberated areas after World War II, working with refugee children and displaced persons in former occupied Europe, including survivors of Nazi concentration camps. At the same time, work in the United Kingdom focused on improving conditions for children growing up in cities devastated by bombing and facing huge disruptions in family life.^[8]

The need for Grace eventually became evident.

During the period leading up to World War II, Americans were highly isolationist, and many called the Marshall Plan a “milestone” for American ideology. By looking at polling data over time from pre-World War II to post-World War II, one would find that there was a change in public opinion in regards to ideology. Americans swapped their isolationist ideals for a much more global internationalist ideology after World War II. – Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Change_in_American_ideology

All of this time, and before, the Caribbean country of Haiti languished. They were past the time that they needed Grace and help; but such deliveries were fleeting. (The same Save the Children Fund – founded in London in 1919 – is now active in Haiti; but only since 1985; see Appendix below).

What’s the difference in the response and attitudes towards these two populations?

Duh! Since Human Rights and Civil Rights only played “catch-up” in the mid 20th Century – gaining momentum in the 1960’s and beyond – the answer is self-evident:

Ethnicity and racism.
See the distribution of the Marshall Plan beneficiary countries here:

This is the assertion by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – and the whole world knows it – that due to Haiti’s Black-and-Brown population demographic, their country was ignored or maybe even further abused. (After 1804, the former slaves were required to pay reparations to their former masters: France). This was also the experience – uninvited abusers – after this 2010 Earthquake.

Remember the Missing/Unprocessed $500 Million the American Red Cross collected for the Haiti earthquake.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that Haiti had been restrained from fully participating in the world economic systems for most of the 19th & 20th Centuries; all because of the bold stand they took to secure their own freedom: the 1804 Slave Rebellion and subsequent Independence Declaration. The realities and possibilities of Haiti’s past and future are identified early in the Go Lean book, embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing a need for reconciliation efforts (Page 12):

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

Change is on the way for Haiti! The country is now a de facto Failed-State. Their Way Forward to move upwards, must start with a Marshall Plan.

While the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is NOT just Haiti alone, we know that we cannot elevate the societal engines for all of the Caribbean while ignoring Haiti …

(It possesses 21% of the region’s population; with the same demographic mix as was the case in the last 200 years: majority Black-and-Brown people).

… there is no Caribbean without Haiti.

So to repeat, if we can fix Haiti, we can fix the entire Caribbean region. This is the “Why’; but for the “How”; we need that Marshall Plan.

The focus of the Go Lean roadmap is the recognition that our region’s status quo is bad, critical and even to be considered “in crisis”. The book declares that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, intimating that we must use crises as opportunities to forge change. This is the rationale for the Marshall Plan for Haiti. See the book’s proposal here (Page 238):

The Bottom Line on Marshall Plan
By the end of World War II much of Europe was devastated. The Marshall Plan, (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP), named after the then Secretary of State and retired general George Marshall, was the American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of the war. During the four years (1948 – 1952) that the plan was operational, US$13 billion in economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the European countries. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war.
.
Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reduce artificial trade barriers, and instill a sense of hope and self-reliance.
.
By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels; for all Marshall Plan recipients, output in 1951 was at least 35% higher than in 1938. Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity. Generally, economists agree that the Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level—that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of Western Europe.Today, the European Union, the latest successor of the integration effort, is the world largest integrated economy.

Will someone walk-up to Haiti and give them $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around the prior 2 centuries of dysfunction?

Probably, not!

(What’s really sad, is people walk-up to further exploit and abuse Haiti and Haitians).

It will be up to the Caribbean to solve the Caribbean’s problems. We do have more than one Failed-State; think Cuba; and we have many other member-states, just a few notches behind Cuba & Haiti on the Failed-State indices. So we must execute strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to effect the needed reboot, recovery and turn-around.

Yes, we can succeed, the same as post-World War II Europe succeeded with the 4-year execution of their Marshall Plan. Yes, we can!

Haiti is already a member-state in the Caribbean Community (CariCom). So they have already embraced the concept of regional interdependence. What’s missing now is the leveraging of the Single Market, adding “teeth to the prospect” of a unified neighborhood with “Trade & Security” initiatives.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap provides the “teeth”; it presents this one advocacy for Haiti, entitled: “10 Ways to Re-boot Haiti“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* – Ratify treaty for the CU.** This regional re-boot will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. Following the model of European integration, the CU will be the representative and negotiating body for Haiti and the entire region for all trade and security issues.
2	Marshall Plan for Haiti Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. But what they have is impassioned human capital as opposed to financial capital or valuable minerals. The CU is a total economic reboot for this country, one that involves developing internally and not thru emigration. To reboot Haiti will require a mini-Marshall Plan. The infrastructure, for the most part, is archaic compared to modern societies. The engines of the CU will enable a rapid upgrade of the infra-structure and some “low hanging fruit” for returns on the investment.
3	Leap Frog Philosophy There is no need to move Haiti’s technology infrastructure baseline from the 1960’s, then to the 1970’s, and so on. Rather, the CU’s vision is to move Haiti to where technology is going, not coming from. This includes advanced urban planning concepts like electrified light-rail, prefab house constructions, alternative energies and e-delivery of governmental services and payment systems.
4	Repatriation and Reconciliation of the Haitian Diaspora
5	Access to Capital Markets
6	National Historic Places
7	World Heritage Sites As of 2012, there are 2 World Heritage Sites in Haiti. The CU will promote these sites (both in the same compound) as tourist attractions for the domestic and foreign markets.
8	Labor, Immigration and Movement of People
9	Educational Mandates
10	Language Neutrality of the Union

Now is the time to prepare the Marshall Plan to execute in and for Haiti.

Haiti needs the Caribbean and the Caribbean needs Haiti; the more people we can leverage, the better. This is entry 3-of-5 in this series of commentaries on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this entry for this series we focus on Haiti, reforming and transforming that homeland. The theme of rebooting Haiti – finally mitigating their Bad Start with a Marshall Plan – has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13974	The Spoken and Unspoken on Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13916	Haiti – Beauty ‘Only a Mother Can Love’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13105	Fixing Haiti – Can the Diaspora be the Answer?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12821	Remembering the Slave Trade and Haiti’s Slave Rebellion
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10336	A Lesson in History: Haiti’s 1915 Abuse … again
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8767	A Lesson in History: Haiti’s Slave Rebellion in 1804
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8508	UN troops Abused Mothers and local Babies born in Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5333	Haiti’s Legacy: Cause and Effect
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3662	Haitian Migrant flow into US spikes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3473	Haiti to Receive $70 Million Grant to Expand Caracol Industrial Park

The status quo for the Caribbean is deficient and defective. The status quo for Haiti is deficient and defective. This same assessment requires some of the same solutions. If/when we fix Haiti, we fix the entire region.

Haiti needs this Marshall Plan.

The entire Caribbean needs a Way Forward.

Our Way Forward for the entire Caribbean includes the entire Caribbean, with Haiti too. So we have prepared the region for this full inclusion of Haiti in the political, social, musical, athletic, security and economic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future … and Haiti’s future. This is how we intend to make our homeland, Haiti included, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

——-

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

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

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

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

—————-

Appendix: Save the Children … in Haiti

We’ve been working in Haiti since 1985 helping children and families, providing child protection, education, health, food and helping people to earn a living. We also help children and families when disasters strike, like the devastating earthquake in 2010.

When the devastating earthquake struck on 12 January 2010, it created one of the most all-encompassing emergencies we’ve ever responded to.

Haiti’s earthquake killed 230,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless.
We were one of the first agencies to respond, reaching 100,000 people within two weeks.
By the end of 2010, we had helped a total of 870,000 people.

OUR WORK

Haiti was deep in poverty long before the disaster. That’s why we’ve been working there for more than 30 years, in urban and rural communities, making sure that children are protected, and providing education, health and food.

When disasters strike in Haiti, we’re there on the ground using our knowledge of the country and our expertise to help the most vulnerable children and their families.

Source: Save the Children Fund (UK) retrieved May 12, 2019 from: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/where-we-work/south-central-america/haiti

————–

See the related VIDEO here:

VIDEO – A New Morning: Building Hope for Haiti – Save the Children – https://youtu.be/luzcJdtKmYw

Save the Children USA
Published on Jul 1, 2010 – July 12, 2010 — Thank you for helping to support Save the Children’s relief efforts in Haiti!

With a 30-year history in Haiti, Save the Children was on the ground when the earthquake hit on January 12, 2010. The organization’s staff immediately responded with emergency relief, including lifesaving distributions of food, shelter and supplies. To date, the organization has been able to reach 682,000 people.

Save the Children foresees a long-term process of intense reconstruction, rehabilitation and investment ahead and is implementing a 5-year response and recovery plan. The organization is focusing its efforts on the areas that have the most impact on the lives and well-being of thousands of children: education, protection, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, shelter, livelihoods, food security and the provision of food and nonfood items.

Download Save the Children’s Haiti six month report: http://bit.ly/cuPl9Z

Learn more about Save the Children’s Haiti response: http://bit.ly/bBHMQC

Support Save the Children’s Haiti Earthquake Children in Emergency Fund: http://bit.ly/ahyLMb

Category: Nonprofits & Activism

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Marshall Plan – Cuba: An Imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence

Posted on May 10, 2019 in Economics, Government, Locations, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

im·mi·nent
adjective 1. about to happen.
Sample use: “they were in imminent danger of being swept away”

synonyms: impending, at hand, close, near, approaching, fast approaching, coming, forthcoming, on the way, about to happen, upon us, in store, in the offing, in the pipeline, on the horizon, in the air, in the wind, brewing, looming, looming large; threatening, menacing; expected, anticipated;
informal sample: “in the cards”
“there was speculation that a ceasefire was imminent”

This is the assertion – and the whole world knows it – Cuba will imminently re-emerge as a ‘Free Market’ economy.

Cuba sera libre!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the “sleeping giant” – that is the Cuban economy – will awaken. The book presents a roadmap in preparation for Cuba’s re-emergence as a ‘Free Market’ economy. (Their 60-year experiment with extreme Socialism is concluding and has yielded a verdict: Failure). The realities and possibilities of Cuba’s past and future are identified early in the Go Lean book, embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing a need for reconciliation efforts (Page 12):

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

Change is on the way for Cuba!

Already the Castro’s (Fidel & Raul) have moved on from the daily administration of the country; (Fidel has died and Raul has retired). See the related VIDEO in the Appendix below.

But 60 years is still 60 years; these Bad Old Days have created quite a legacy to overcome. This actuality “cries out” for a reboot and a turn-around. The 2013 Go Lean book anticipated as such and introduced the proposal for a Marshall Plan for Cuba in order to reform and transform that society. The country is a de facto Failed-State.

While the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is NOT Cuba alone, we know that we cannot elevate the societal engines for all of the Caribbean while ignoring Cuba. It possesses 26% of the region’s population and a huge portion of the landmass. There is no Caribbean without Cuba.

So to repeat, if we can fix Cuba, we can fix the entire Caribbean region. This is the “Why’; but for the “How”; we need that Marshall Plan.

The Bottom Line on Marshall Plan
By the end of World War II much of Europe was devastated. The Marshall Plan, named after the then Secretary of State and retired general George Marshall, was the American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of the war. During the four years (1948 – 1952) that the plan was operational, US $13 billion in economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the European countries. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war. Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reduce artificial trade barriers, and instill a sense of hope and self-reliance. This worked! By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels. Generally, economists agree that the Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a regional level—today, the European Union, the latest successor of the integration effort, is the world largest integrated economy.

Will someone walk-up to Cuba and give them $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around 60 years of dysfunction?

Probably, not!

It will be up to the Caribbean to solve the Caribbean’s problems. We have more than one Failed-State; think Haiti. We have many other member-states, just a few notches behind Cuba & Haiti on the Failed-State indices. The lyrics of this song – “Lean On Me” – nails it:

If there is a load you have to bear
That you can’t carry
I’m right up the road
I’ll share your load
If you just call me
— Lean On Me; by Bill Withers (1971)

Cuba’s 60-year experiment with extreme Socialism is concluding with this Failed-State acknowledgement. Now, we must execute strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to effect the needed reboot, recovery and turn-around. Yes, we can succeed, the same as Europe succeeded with the 4-year execution of their Marshall Plan.

Yes, we can! The next step:

Invite Cuba to join the regional integration effort; such as the Caribbean Community (CariCom).

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). It provides this one advocacy for Cuba, entitled: “10 Ways to Re-boot Cuba“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* – Ratify treaty for the CU.** This regional re-boot will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. Following the model of European integration, the CU will be the representative and negotiating body for Cuba and the entire region for all trade and security issues. This helps to assuage the political adversity expected from Anti-Castro [and Anti-Socialists] groups.
2	Political Neutrality of the Union Cuba is the only Communist-led state in the CU region. Other states have multiple party systems: left-leaning or right-leaning governments; many have more than 2 parties. The CU is officially neutral! The election of the popular leaders of each country is up to that country. The Election functionality of member-states can be outsourced to the CU as the organization structure will provide the systems, processes and personnel to facilitate smooth and fair election.
3	US Trade Embargo By-Pass The US embargo against Cuba is an economic, and financial embargo imposed in October 1960. It was designed to punish Cuba to dissuade communism and the nationalization of private property during the revolution. To date, there are judgments of up to $6 billion worth of claims against the Cuban government. Despite this US action, the rest of the Caribbean, Canada and Europe do trade with Cuba, with no repercussions in their relationship with the US. It is expected that after Fidel and Raul Castro, there will be greater liberalization of trade and diplomacy with the US.
4	Marshall Plan for Cuba To reboot Cuba will require a mini-Marshall Plan. The infrastructure, for the most part, is still the same as in 1958. The engines of the CU will enable a rapid upgrade of the infra-structure and some “low hanging fruit” for returns on the investment. The US-based Cuba Policy Foundation estimates that the embargo costs the U.S. economy $3.6 billion per year in economic output. The vision is for the CU to be the benefactor of a re-booted Cuban economy, not the US.
5	Leap Frog Philosophy There is no need to move Cuba’s 1950’s technology baseline to the 1960’s, then the 1970’s, and so on; rather, the vision is to leap-frog Cuba to where technology is going. This includes advance urban planning concepts like electrified light-rail, prefab house, alternative energies and e-delivery of governmental services and payment systems.
6	Repatriation and Reconciliation of the Cuban Diaspora
7	Access to Capital Markets
8	Optimization of Agricultural Exports
9	National Historic Places
10	World Heritage Sites As of 2012, there are 9 World Heritage Sites in Cuba. The CU will promote these sites as tourist attractions for the domestic and foreign markets.

Now is the time to prepare the Marshall Plan to execute in Cuba.

Cuba needs the Caribbean and the Caribbean needs Cuba; the more people/places we can leverage, the better. This is entry 2-of-5 in this series of commentaries on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An Imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this entry for this series we focus on Cuba, reforming and transforming that homeland. The theme of rebooting Cuba – the story arc and progress towards a ‘Free Market’ – has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16864	Cuba’s Progress: New Constitution with some ‘Free Market’ Guarantees
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14732	‘Red Letter Day’ for Cuba – Raul Castro Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7412	The Road to Restoring Cuba: Normalization of Travel, Mail, Internet, etc.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3455	Restoration of Diplomatic Relations Between Cuba and the USA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3354	CariCom Chairman calls for an end to US embargo on Cuba
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2330	‘Raul Castro reforms not enough’, Cuba’s in-country bishops declare
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1609	Cuba’s Parliament mulls economy and some ‘Free Market’ changes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789	A Lesson in History – America’s War on the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=436	Cuba Approves New “Law on Foreign Investment” – a Start for Progress

The status quo for the Caribbean is deficient and defective. The status quo for Cuba is deficient and defective. This same assessment requires some of the same solutions. If/when we fix Cuba, we fix the entire region.

Cuba needs a Marshall Plan.

The entire Caribbean needs a Way Forward.

Our Way Forward for the entire Caribbean includes the entire Caribbean, with Cuba too. So we have prepared the region for this full inclusion of Cuba in the political, social, musical, athletic, security and economic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future … and Cuba’s future. This is how we intend to make our homeland, Cuba included, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

——-

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

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

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

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

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

————-

Appendix VIDEO – Cuba After Castros: Facing the future without Fidel and Raul Castro – https://youtu.be/0hJrXYnpqbE

TRT World
Published on Apr 15, 2018 – Cuba’s President Raul Castro will step down on Thursday. His departure will mean the end of almost 60 years of the Castro family’s dominance over the Carribbean island. In the second part of our series on Cuba, Giles Gibson reports on Raul Castro, who in 2008, took over from his more famous brother Fidel.

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Cuba, History, Model, Transform

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