Category: Government

European Reckoning – Settlers -vs- Immigrants

Posted on January 19, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

I have an older brother …

… he was born in 1962 while I was born in 1963. He is actually 18 months ahead of me. But for much of my youth, those 6 months every year after my birthday and before his, I felt as if I was catching up with him – being only 1 year behind. Then his birthday comes, and I was reminded that I can never really catch him. (This was the mind of a 4-year old boy).

There are a lot of things in life that are like this: We can get close but never quite catch up. One realizes that this is the same with immigrating to the United States. Despite being a Nation of Immigrants (NOI), new ones can never catch up with the Settlers. Consider the historicity of this distinction in the Appendix article below; composed by a “conservative” lawyer and published by the American Conservative Organization. (Conservatives are in contrast to liberals; while all conservatives are not racists, all racists are conservatives).

Yes, under the law (de jure), there is no difference between a First Generation American citizen and a Third Generation (or more) American citizen, but in reality (de facto) American society never really considers “you” as an Immigrant to be a full American.

Listen up you Black-and-Brown people of the Caribbean, yearning to emigrate to the US. You will never be a settler. Accepting this reality may dampen the “Welcome Sign” to those who aspire for an American life.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean highlights the “Push and Pull” reasons why Caribbean people leave their homeland:

“Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. For these people, they are “on fire” and need to stop-drop-and-roll.

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.

This is a Hot Topic today as Immigration Policy is all the rage. The current President of the US, Donald Trump, wants to curtail immigration into his country for the Black-and-Brown from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In fact, as of this date, there is a Federal Government Shutdown as Mr. Trump would not approve an appropriations bill (budget) unless there is funding for his “Wall” along the 2,000-mile southern border with Mexico. He has even vocally advocated for a different immigration policy that invites people from North-West Europe while discouraging African and LAC people, derisively calling these ones as coming from “shit-hole” countries.

In addition, consider this AUDIO-Podcast here, which details the complexities of this issue: Settlers or Immigrants – The Historicity of Immigration in the United States. Listen here:

AUDIO-Podcast – How The 1965 Immigration Act Made America A Nation Of Immigrants – https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/685819397/how-the-1965-immigration-act-made-america-a-nation-of-immigrants

Heard on Fresh Air

Published on January 16, 2019 – For many years, U.S. immigration favored immigrants from northern Europe. NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten explains how a 1965 law changed things — and led to the current debate about border security.

This foregoing AUDIO-Podcast conveys a consistent point: America was settled by Europeans (British, Dutch, French and German) founders; everyone else are immigrants. The immigrant legacy will NEVER catch up to the settler legacy. (The same as catching up to an older brother’s age). America is an European enclave. The rest of the world must reckon with this.

This commentary continues a 5-part series on European Reckoning. This entry is 3 of 5 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of the past, present and future of European interactions. While this series is on reconciling the European experience, this submission is on the White European history of the US. Even though the Caribbean was settled and organized by European powers, the same as the US, the lack of organizational efficiency in the Caribbean is a glaring concern. We have 30 member-states in the Caribbean region and yet, there is no coordinated regional stewardship of the economic, security and governing concerns of our communities. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. European Reckoning: IMF Apologies
  2. European Reckoning: China seeks to de-Americanize the world’s economy
  3. European Reckoning: Settlers -vs- Immigrants
  4. European Reckoning: Christianity’s Indictment
  5. European Reckoning: Black “Greco-Roman” Wrestler victimized for his hair

In the first two submissions in this series, the European Great Powers were also identified as the Western Alliance. The world economic eco-system is based on this White/Christian European and North American (US & Canada) legacy. Despite the larger population in the world, the goal of so many Asian, African or Latin American people is to get to these nations – sometimes at the risk of death – and to engage the societal engines there. Despite any success in places like Europe and the US, the reality is the same: Immigrants are not settlers; only a second-class citizenship status will ever be accorded to them.

For the Caribbean, the Go Lean book distinguishes that America or Western Europe is not home for them. If we must seek refuge there, go … but remember to return home at some point; the sooner the better. These foreign shores will welcome your labor, but may never consider you as equal brothers-sisters. In their minds and hearts you are “Less Than“.

Considering the “Push and Pull” factors above, the purpose of this commentary is to lower the “Pull” reasons. While we must work on the “Push” factors ourselves, it does improve our prospects if our citizenry do not feel like “the grass is greener on the other side”. If they know that if they emigrate they can never catch up with the settlers, they may not welcome the  immigrant status. They may be more inclined to try to prosper where planted in the Caribbean homeland.

The reality of our Caribbean Diaspora in these foreign lands – the US in particular – have been elaborated upon in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16395 The Caribbean – A People or A Place?
It is limited how much Caribbean culture can be exported away from the homeland.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15121 ‘Time to Go’ – America’s Racist History of Loitering
The blatant racists were defeated militarily (Civil War) so their spirit of racial superiority simply rose again. They took out their angst on the Black community, exploiting every appearance of loitering in Southern communities. Even today, the Cop-on-Black shootings are indicative of this bad community ethos.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14746 Calls for Repatriation Strategy
The Caribbean region has suffered from acute societal abandonment to the point that there is the need to reverse the trend and urge people to return, to repatriate.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14413 Repairing the Breach: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’

When the Black-and-Brown populations of the Caribbean emigrate to the foreign lands, they live among the Black-and-Brown native populations. After long periods of oppression and repression, these communities have higher crime rates, drug usage and other abusive behaviors.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14087 Opioids and the FDA – ‘Fox guarding the Henhouse’
Due to lax FDA’s oversight, pharmaceutical companies seem to have free reign with dispensing addictive drugs on their populations. Even Caribbean Diaspora members have been victimized.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11420 ‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’
A Black person speaking with a British accent gets more respect than a Black person speaking with a Caribbean slang or a ‘Hip-hop’ /‘Jive’ dialect. But even in Great Britain, accent or none, Blacks are still treated as “Less Than“.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13213 ‘Pulled’ – Despite American Guns
The US is the richest, most powerful democracy in the history of the world, but this country has some societal defects: guns, in addition to “Institutional Racism” and Crony-Capitalism. Yet still, Caribbean people flee there.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10654 Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US
There are many people in the US that are not so welcoming to new immigrants. They protest in words and deeds to sour the experience for our Diaspora living there.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10494 A Lesson In History – Ending the Military Draft
The end of the draft in the US started the bad trend for Caribbean emigration to America – no need to sacrifice sons to the “Altar of War”.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1773 Miami’s Caribbean Marketplace Re-opens
The American immigrant experience is one of eventual celebration, but only after a “long train of abuses”: rejection, anger, protest, bargaining, toleration and eventual acceptance. While the experience in Miami today is one of celebration, and Miami does profit from this Caribbean Diaspora, their social disposition will never exceed the immigrant status – never a “settler”.

Caribbean people have fled their homeland. Our abandonment rate is atrocious, with one report estimating that 70 percent of our professional classes have emigrated and now live abroad. It is time now to conduct a reckoning with our European (and American) destinations – they are not home. Quite simply, the reference to “European” is a de facto reference to White-Christian. So we can never be settlers; we can never catch up in Americanism, since it is based not just on timeline, but also race.

So the solution for Caribbean people to elevate their lives and societal disposition is to double-down in reforming and transforming our Caribbean homeland. Now is the time for the Caribbean region to lean-in to this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation, as described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The roadmap includes the empowerments, strategies and tactics to elevate the societal engines of the Caribbean homeland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

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

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

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Appendix – Title: The Nation of Immigrants Myth
By: Howard Sutherland

“We are a nation of immigrants.”

It is every American politician’s incantation, usually prefatory to some shibboleth lauding “strength in our diversity.” The creed of America as nation-of-immigrants (hereafter the “NOI creed”) is now unquestioned by Americans and foreigners alike.

The NOI creed’s assertion of national rootlessness justifies official multiculturalism and mass immigration. American schoolchildren are taught that the Statue of Liberty is a monument to immigration and that e pluribus unum on our currency celebrates the melting pot. Deutsche Bank recently published an analyst’s report, by a Polish immigrant in New York, lamenting a perceived rise in anti-immigration sentiments in the United States and instructing us that here “actually everybody is an immigrant,” so restricting immigration “would be devastating and virtually unthinkable.”

The creed is a half-truth but useful to social engineers transforming this country in ways alien to our history and heritage. Immigrants in the millions have come to the United States, most in waves beginning in the 1840s. Many immigrants and their descendants have contributed mightily to America. Others have contributed to the crime statistics. Some tried America, then went home. Nevertheless, the NOI creed is literally false: Despite thirty-plus years of mass immigration set off by the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, the vast majority of Americans are still American-born children of American-born parents. It is also historically false: Scores of millions of Americans are neither immigrants nor descendants of immigrants.

As for the Statue of Liberty, it is a gift from France to honor the centennial of American independence. Emma Lazarus’ “Give me your tired…”—a cri-de-coeur against Russian pogroms—is a later add-on. E pluribus unum explicitly commemorates the union of thirteen British colonies into one nation. The statue and the motto do not celebrate immigration; they salute the achievement of the settlers who founded those colonies and, in time, won independence from their Mother Country. It was the settlers’ nation, not empty wilderness, that later gave immigrants a new home.

To test the truth of the NOI creed, ask what a true nation of immigrants would be. Absent a founding group or majority, it would be no nation at all, but a random gathering of people of assorted races, religions, and nationalities, united only by their presence in the same land. With no native culture to provide national unity, the population would tend to fragment on racial and ethnic lines, ensuring division and strife as groups pursue their interests at each other’s expense. That may be our multicultural future. It is not the American past.

American history is the story of a varied nation with a distinct founding culture, one that remained dominant while assimilating—and being subtly changed by—later arrivals. That American culture is British, largely English, in origin, traditions, and religion. This article’s language is one small example.

By 1776, British colonists—mostly English, but with strong Scottish, Welsh, and Irish contingents, along with New York’s Dutch colonials and later German arrivals—had created an American branch of British civilization. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, they were long-settled: almost 170 years in Virginia, over 150 in Massachusetts. At great effort—and at the expense of the Indians they uprooted and the African slaves they imported—colonial Americans formed a nation in their own image. The diversity of their settlements reflected the variety of their British origins. David Hackett Fischer’s magisterial Albion’s Seed traces four great British colonial migrations that leave their mark still: Puritans from East Anglia to New England, Cavaliers from the West Country to Virginia, Quakers from the Midlands to the Delaware, and northern Britons, including the Scots-Irish, to the American backcountry.

Revolutionary Americans, the United States’ founders, were fairly homogeneous: 80 percent of British origin (60 percent English, 20 percent Scottish and Scots-Irish), most of the rest Dutch and German—the great majority American-born. Overwhelmingly Christian, 98 percent were Protestants. (Not included in these percentages are American Indians, who had no part in the political life of the colonies, and African slaves and freemen, who were largely excluded from political and social life.) These descendants of colonial settlers were American natives, if by America we mean the United States.

Samuel Huntington makes a useful distinction between the settlers of a country and immigrants to it. It helps answer whether the United States is truly a nation of immigrants or an organic nation with an ethnic and cultural core: a nation of the settlers’ posterity augmented by immigrants and their posterity. In Huntington’s words:

Immigrants are people who leave one country, one society, and move to another society. But there has to be a recipient society to which the immigrants move. In our case, the recipient society was created by the settlers who came here in the 17th and 18th centuries. … They came in groups to create new societies up and down the Atlantic seaboard. They weren’t immigrating to some existing society; indeed, they often did whatever they could to destroy whatever existed here in the way of Indian society. … It was [the settlers’ Anglo-Protestant] society and culture that…attracted subsequent generations of immigrants to this country.

One demographic study concluded that, had there been no immigration after 1790, the settlers’ posterity alone—including African slaves’ and freemen’s descendants—would have grown by 1990 to approximately half the size of the actual population, which implies roughly half of Americans still have roots in the founding stock whose existence the NOI creed denies.

The federal structure the Founding Fathers erected for the United States is firmly grounded in their British heritage and American experience. No surprise: they were overwhelmingly of British descent, mostly English. Those who signed the Declaration and the Constitution knew of Locke and Enlightenment philosophes but knew their native law best: the English Common Law. Common Law remains the bedrock of every state’s law, with the unique exception of Louisiana. The rights of Englishmen were the animating spirit of the Bill of Rights, meant to secure them more effectively in America than they often were in England.

Despite the evidence of American history, the NOI creed is entrenched, as is its corollary: the idea that the United States is a “propositional nation” with no ethnic basis, defined entirely by allegiance to the Declaration’s propositions. It is worth asking why. Acknowledging that America is a nation like others, with a native stock and traditions, does not deny the contributions of millions of immigrants and their descendants. Nor does it imply that Americans of immigrant descent are somehow lesser citizens. American success is the work of settler and immigrant alike. The propositional nation idea, that America’s British origins are immaterial to our national character, is also a half-truth. One has only to look at Mexico or Brazil to see how differently Spanish and Portuguese settler nations developed. An America that abandons its heritage and founding culture will be a different, and poorer, place. As Russell Kirk put it: “So dominant has British culture been in America, north of the Rio Grande, from the seventeenth century to the present (1993), that if somehow the British elements could be eliminated from all the cultural patterns of the United States—why Americans would be left with no coherent culture in public or in private life.”

Why, then, such pressure to pretend that the United States is not really a country but an inhabited idea? One reason may be the attractiveness of the propositional nation idea to immigrant groups that do not want to feel second-class next to the natives. A benign motive but unnecessary: the United States accords no preference to settlers’ descendants. Another is that the NOI, dedicated to a democratic proposition, provides a pretext for foreign interventionism: is it not the highest calling of such a state to democratize, through conquest and occupation if necessary, the less-fortunate rest of the world whence its immigrant-citizens came?

America’s integrity is strained by multiculturalism, affirmative action, and mass immigration. The NOI creed is most convenient for those in government, ethnic pressure groups, and academia who want to cut America loose from her history and traditions to recast her as a multicultural mélange they can rule by distributing spoils to contending groups. In short, the creed has become a weapon for those who would dissolve America as it has evolved and replace it with something else. Those who would conserve this country need to know enough history to refute it.
__________________________________________

Howard Sutherland is an attorney in New York.

Source: The American Conservative – Posted November 18, 2002; retrieved January 18, 2019 from: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-nation-of-immigrants-myth/

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About Us

The American Conservative exists to promote a “Main Street” conservatism that opposes unchecked power in government and business; promotes the flourishing of families and communities through vibrant markets and free people; and embraces realism and restraint in foreign affairs based on America’s vital national interests.
…
The American Conservative is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) organization that presents a measured, pertinent, principled conservatism for our time. We believe in constitutional government, fiscal prudence, sound monetary policy, clearly delineated borders, protection of civil liberties, authentically free markets, and restraint in foreign policy mixed with diplomatic acuity. We adhere closely to our institutional maxim: ideas over ideology; principles over party.

Source: Retrieved January 19, 2019 from: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/

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European Reckoning – Reconciling the IMF’s Past, Present and Future

Posted on January 17, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

If you had a benefactor – think scholarship for your college education – and your benefactor files for bankruptcy, should you be concerned, weary and/or pessimistic that future monies will continue to flow?

That would be stupid!

It is only logical that you would be expected to find another benefactor. (This is not just academic – in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved, the Caribbean country of Cuba was left out in the cold).

Europe, the continent, the countries and the people have been the Caribbean’s benefactor for many years in our history. It is time now to reckon with that! We must review, reflect and reconcile this past, present and our future interactions, especially when it comes to economic crises, escalations and bailouts.

When we refer to reconciling Europe’s past, we refer to the Imperial Conquests, Slave Trade, Slavery, Colonialism and Post-Colonialism.

When we refer to Europe’s present, we refer to all the recent developments in modern day Europe, as in the events of the recent economic crises; think Sovereign Debt Crisis with Greece and others.

When we refer to Europe’s future, we are referring to the tenuous status in their integration movements – think European Union (EU), IMF, and the resultant unrest on the European mainland.

This commentary opens a 5-part series on European Reckoning. This entry is 1 of 5 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of root history of Caribbean colonialism and how modern reconciliation developments are exacerbating our communities. We are all mostly independent and sovereign countries in the Caribbean, so it is expected that we would now be mature and responsible; we must now be protégés not parasites of the European world. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. European Reckoning: IMF Apologies
  2. European Reckoning: China seeks to de-Americanize the world’s economy
  3. European Reckoning: Settlers -vs- Immigrants
  4. European Reckoning: Christianity’s Indictment
  5. European Reckoning: Black “Greco-Roman” Wrestler victimized for his hair

In this series, reference is made to the Great Powers of the Western Hemisphere, sometimes called the Western Alliance. This refers to the White/Christian European nations and North America (US & Canada). In fact, sometimes the Western Alliance is cross-labeled with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also called the North Atlantic Alliance; this is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries.

While none of the 29 NATO members include any Caribbean independent states, 16 Caribbean Overseas Territories are thusly aligned as dependents of the American (2), British (6), Dutch (6) and French (4) imperial powers. Plus with the Caribbean Basin Security Pact, the full Caribbean – except Cuba – is aligned with NATO members: United States and Canada.

The reference to Europe in this series of commentaries is to “White Westerners”. This special sub-group had wielded absolute power on the planet. It is time now to look back at that history and “call a spade a spade”!

In this first submission of this series, the overt favoritism of economic bailouts toward White Westerners was exposed and commiserated. This reflects the need for reconciliation. For the Caribbean, considering our European history, presence and future, we need to participate in this reconciliation. See this article here addressing the flawed favoritism of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), (the intergovernmental financial institution composed of 189 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world”[1]). It appears that the ‘International’ in the brand IMF has not been as global as they claimed. The full article is presented here:

Title: IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro and apologises for the immolation of Greece
By: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory.

This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions.

It describes a “culture of complacency”, prone to “superficial and mechanistic” analysis, and traces a shocking breakdown in the governance of the IMF, leaving it unclear who is ultimately in charge of this extremely powerful organisation.

The report by the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) goes above the head of the managing director, Christine Lagarde. It answers solely to the board of executive directors, and those from Asia and Latin America are clearly incensed at the way European Union insiders used the fund to rescue their own rich currency union and banking system.

The three main bailouts for Greece, Portugal and Ireland were unprecedented in scale and character. The trio were each allowed to borrow over 2,000pc of their allocated quota – more than three times the normal limit – and accounted for 80pc of all lending by the fund between 2011 and 2014.

In an astonishing admission, the report said its own investigators were unable to obtain key records or penetrate the activities of secretive “ad-hoc task forces”. Mrs Lagarde herself is not accused of obstruction.

“Many documents were prepared outside the regular established channels; written documentation on some sensitive matters could not be located. The IEO in some instances has not been able to determine who made certain decisions or what information was available, nor has it been able to assess the relative roles of management and staff,” it said.

The report said the whole approach to the eurozone was characterised by “groupthink” and intellectual capture. They had no fall-back plans on how to tackle a systemic crisis in the eurozone – or how to deal with the politics of a multinational currency union – because they had ruled out any possibility that it could happen.

“Before the launch of the euro, the IMF’s public statements tended to emphasise the advantages of the common currency,” it said. Some staff members warned that the design of the euro was fundamentally flawed but they were overruled.

“After a heated internal debate, the view supportive of what was perceived to be Europe’s political project ultimately prevailed,” it said.

This pro-EMU bias continued to corrupt their thinking for years. “The IMF remained upbeat about the soundness of the European banking system and the quality of banking supervision in euro-area countries until after the start of the global financial crisis in mid-2007. This lapse was largely due to the IMF’s readiness to take the reassurances of national and euro area authorities at face value,” it said.

The IMF persistently played down the risks posed by ballooning current account deficits and the flood of capital pouring into the eurozone periphery, and neglected the danger of a “sudden stop” in capital flows.

“The possibility of a balance of payments crisis in a monetary union was thought to be all but non-existent,” it said. As late as mid-2007, the IMF still thought that “in view of Greece’s EMU membership, the availability of external financing is not a concern”.

At root was a failure to grasp the elemental point that currency unions with no treasury or political union to back them up are inherently vulnerable to debt crises. States facing a shock no longer have sovereign tools to defend themselves. Devaluation risk is switched into bankruptcy risk.

“In a monetary union, the basics of debt dynamics change as countries forgo monetary policy and exchange rate adjustment tools,” said the report. This would be amplified by a “vicious feedback between banks and sovereigns”, each taking the other down. That the IMF failed to anticipate any of this was a serious scientific and professional failure.

In Greece, the IMF violated its own cardinal rule by signing off on a bailout in 2010 even though it could offer no assurance that the package would bring the country’s debts under control or clear the way for recovery, and many suspected from the start that it was doomed.

The organisation got around this by slipping through a radical change in IMF rescue policy, allowing an exemption (since abolished) if there was a risk of systemic contagion. “The board was not consulted or informed,” it said. The directors discovered the bombshell “tucked into the text” of the Greek package, but by then it was a fait accompli.

The IMF was in an invidious position when it was first drawn into the Greek crisis.  The Lehman crisis was still fresh. “There were concerns that such a credit event could spread to other members of the euro area, and more widely to a fragile global economy,” said the report.

The eurozone had no firewall against contagion, and its banks were tottering. The European Central Bank had not yet stepped up to the plate as lender of last resort. It was deemed too dangerous to push for a debt restructuring in Greece.

While the fund’s actions were understandable in the white heat of the crisis, the harsh truth is that the bailout sacrificed Greece in a “holding action” to save the euro and north European banks. Greece endured the traditional IMF shock of austerity, without the offsetting IMF cure of debt relief and devaluation to restore viability.

A sub-report on the Greek saga said the country was forced to go through a staggering squeeze, equal to 11pc of GDP over the first three years. This set off a self-feeding downward spiral. The worse it became, the more Greece was forced to cut – what ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis called “fiscal water-boarding”.

“The automatic stabilisers were not allowed to operate, thus aggravating the pro-cyclicality of the fiscal policy, which exacerbated the contraction,” said the report.

The attempt to force through an “internal devaluation” of 20pc to 30pc by means of deflationary wage cuts was self-defeating since it necessarily shrank the economic base and sent the debt trajectory spiralling upwards. “A fundamental problem was the inconsistency between attempting to regain price competitiveness and simultaneously trying to reduce the debt to nominal GDP ratio,” it said.

The IMF thought the fiscal multiplier was 0.5 when it may in reality have been five times as high, given the fragility of the Greek system. The result is that nominal GDP ended 25pc lower than the IMF’s projections, and unemployment soared to 25pc instead of 15pc as expected. “The magnitude of Greece’s growth forecast errors looks extraordinary,” it said.

The strategy relied on forlorn hopes that the “confidence fairy” would lift Greece out of this policy-induced nose-dive. “Highly optimistic” plans to raise $50bn from privatisation sales came to little. Some assets did not even have clear legal ownership. The chronic “lack of realism” lasted until late 2011. By then the damage was done.

The injustice is that the cost of the bailouts was switched to ordinary Greek citizens  – the least able to support the burden  – and it was never acknowledged that the true motive of EU-IMF Troika policy was to protect monetary union. Indeed, the Greeks were repeatedly blamed for failures that stemmed from the policy itself. This unfairness – the root of so much bitterness in Greece – is finally recognised in the report.

“If preventing international contagion was an essential concern, the cost of its prevention should have been borne – at least in part – by the international community as the prime beneficiary,” it said.

Better late than never.

Source: Posted July, 29 2016 ; retrieved January 10, 2019 from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/28/imf-admits-disastrous-love-affair-with-euro-apologises-for-the-i/

The foregoing article highlights: “Asian and Latin American stakeholders are clearly incensed at the way European Union insiders used the [IMF] fund to rescue their own rich currency union and banking system”. Maybe just maybe, Europeans are not as egalitarian and pluralistic as they claim. Maybe just maybe, when push comes to shove they first look after their own before supporting others, even though they are contractually obligated to do so.

This is Tribalism 101…

Tribalism is the state of being organized by, or advocating for, tribes or tribal lifestyles. Human evolution has primarily occurred in small groups, as opposed to mass societies, and humans naturally maintain a social network.
In popular culture, tribalism may also refer to a way of thinking or behaving in which people are loyal to their social group above all else,[1] or, derogatorily, a type of discrimination or animosity based upon group differences.[2]

This ‘Tribalism’ is the reckoning that Europe is doing right now regarding the IMF. They are reconciling their past, present and future and recognizing that they now have to build trust, anew – see the Appendix VIDEO below.

This is also the reckoning that we, in the Caribbean, must do. How should we deal with fiscal/monetary escalations – rescues of our currency and banking systems? The conclusion from this commentary is that we need to do the heavy-lifting ourselves and facilitate our own solutions for economic and fiscal management. The proposed solution: the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) as a formal “cooperative” among the region’s Central Banks. The CCB will be the sole controlling agent of the monetary policies of a regional currency union: Caribbean Dollar. When there is economic dysfunction and a need for “receivership”. That role would be assumed by the CCB, not the IMF.

This theme of technocratic monetary stewardship aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16210 In Defense of Trade – Currency Assassins: Real Threat
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15796 Lessons Learned from 2008: Righting The Wrong
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15787 Lessons Learned from 2008: Too Big to Fail –vs- Too Small to Thrive
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14248 Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744 Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6563 Lessons from Iceland – Model of Banking Recovery
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858 European Central Bank unveils 1 trillion Euro stimulus program
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3814 Lesson Learned from the Swiss unpegging their currency: Franc
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3582 For Canadian Banks: Caribbean is a ‘Bad Bet’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833 One currency, divergent economies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=467 Barbados Central Bank records $3.7m loss in 2013

Now is the time for the Caribbean region to lean-in for this roadmap described here-in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are too alluring to ignore: emergence of an $800 Billion economy, with solid technocratic management of a regional currency union. Finally, we will have the opportunity to stand-up as a protégé to our North American and European counterparts. We will not be looking to them to bail-us-out; we will forge our own growth and clean-up and own mess. We will be mature … finally.

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

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the aligning Caribbean Central Bank (CCB), 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.

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 … 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 … member states and the Federation as a whole.

xxiii. Whereas many countries in our region are dependent Overseas Territory of imperial powers, the systems of governance can be instituted on a regional and local basis, rather than requiring oversight or accountability from distant masters far removed from their subjects of administration. The Federation must facilitate success in autonomous rule …

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

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

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

—————–

Appendix VIDEO – IMF’s Christine Lagarde: Truth and transparency are key to rebuilding trust – https://youtu.be/0Iia6FUzVc4


CNBC International TV
Published on Apr 22, 2018 – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) welcomed calls from the U.S. that it should push for more transparency in global trade and lending, the Fund’s boss said Sunday.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said she’s “delighted” U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wants the Fund to increase transparency on trade imbalances and debt sustainability in countries like China, an effort she said is already underway. “It’s clearly a project that we have been working on, that we will continue to work on, and I’m delighted that he’s supporting us,” Lagarde said in an interview with CNBC’s Elizabeth Schulze at the IMF Spring Meetings [2018] in Washington.

—–

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Transforming Hindus versus Women – What it means for us?

Posted on January 7, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The responsibility to assuage these bad behaviors must lie first with the religious institutions. But any failure to deliver protection by these institutions would truly mandate that the “State” (government) step in and deliver.

Separation of Church and State be damned!

Separation of Church and State has been the standard for governments ever since the Enlightenment Age. In fact, the governing standard – the Social Contract – is a concept that was codified during that period. That contract states:

Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights. – Book  Go Lean…Caribbean Page 170.

Christianity! Islam! Guilty … of failing to protect their congregants and adherents from the bad orthodoxies in their communities!

Now its Hinduism time to secede to civil “protections of natural rights”. There are abuses that are victimizing segments of their population. It is no longer acceptable to tolerate such abuse.

Change has come to the world, Separation of Church and State is now suspect! Sometimes the “Church” is the problem; so the State is therefore expected to step in and break that Separation shield. See how this is playing out in India right now. See the full news article here:

Title: Hindu hardliners clash with police over women at shrine

NEW DELHI (AP) — Hindu hardliners vandalized shops, shut businesses and clashed with police in a southern state Thursday to protest the entry of two women in one of India’s largest Hindu pilgrimage sites, police said.

Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protesters who also blocked roads by placing burning tires and concrete blocks in key towns, including Kozhikode, Kannur, Malappuram, Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram.

Pinarayi Vijayan, the state’s top elected official, accused supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party of triggering violence that reportedly claimed one life.

Most state-run buses kept off roads after several were damaged by protesters.

Supporters of Modi’s party held protest marches in the state as part of a strike call by Sabarimala Karma Samithi, an umbrella organization of Hindu groups.

The two women entered the temple to pray early Wednesday, triggering protests. They were escorted by police because it is “the government’s constitutional responsibility to give protection to women,” Vijayan said.

Women of menstruating age were forbidden to pray at the temple until the Supreme Court lifted the ban in September. The ban was informal for many years but became law in 1972.

Some devotees have filed a petition saying the court decision revoking the ban was an affront to the celibate deity Ayyappa.

Vijayan said Thursday that 39 police officers were injured while trying to control the protesters, who damaged 79 state-run buses in the state.

The Press Trust of India news agency reported that a 55-year-old passer-by died after being injured amid rock throwing by protesters in Pandalam.

Source: Associated Press posted January 3, 2019; retrieved January 5, 2019 from: https://news.yahoo.com/hindu-hard-liners-paralyze-indian-state-over-women-090122760.html

The concept is simple for “States“, while they must allow for Freedom of Religion, they cannot allow religious intimidation of their citizens. No More!

This is an issue of Orthodoxy and it is not only a concern in India. Even here in the Caribbean we have to make progress. Clearly we understand the oppression, suppression and repression experienced in India prohibiting women to pray in the Temple, and so there is the acceptance that it is right for that State to act against continued abuse. There has always been a need for States to legislate morality in society over the years; consider these examples:

  • Slavery – The Pope approved African Slavery in 1491; but it took the Protestant and Enlightenment movements to unravel the end of the Slave Trade and eventually the institution of Slavery itself. By the mid-1800’s all European Powers ended slavery in their New World territories.
  • Indian Widows – As detailed in a previous blog-commentary, the “Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act of 1856” legalized the remarriage of Hindu widows in all jurisdictions of India under British rule. Upper-caste Hindu society had long disallowed the remarriage of widows, even child and adolescent ones, all of whom were expected to live a life of austerity and abnegation. The law provided legal safeguards against loss of certain forms of inheritance for remarrying a Hindu widow.
    See the Appendix VIDEO below.
  • Drunk Driving – A classic example is that in France where Evan’s Law regulated alcohol advertising; advertising affected alcohol demand; so the end result on alcohol consumption was that in 1960, the average adult in France consumed 30 liters of alcohol while that figure is down to 13.5 liters today. Drunk Driving incidences naturally declined.

The assertion of the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 20) is that there must be a new regime for our region; one that is apolitical and religiously-neutral. The community ethos – underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices – that must be pursued by this new Caribbean regime is that of the Greater Good; that it can be pursued despite any religiosity. This book defines this Greater Good community ethos as follows:

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

In the Caribbean, we have adherents to many religions: Christianity, Islam, Hindu and indigenous animism. We must insist on a clear “Separation of Church and State” in order to mold the behavior and character development we want to see in our communities. Seeing the default orthodoxy in these religions, it is obvious that our ideals must be Greater.

For one, we must protect and promote women in our communities. This is a charge that we must execute whether it is popular or not. This theme – protecting and promoting women in society – aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16408 Bad Ethos on Home Violence leads to more “Stranger” Abuse
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14482 UN’s International Women’s Day – Protecting Rural Women
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13664 High Profile Sexual Harassment Accusers – Finally Believed?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13063 Gender Equity without a ‘Battle of the Sexes’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8306 Women Get Ready for New Lean-In Campaign
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6937 Women in Politics – Yes, They Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2709 Caribbean Study: 58% Of Boys Agree to Female ‘Discipline’

This is the Year 2019 and we are still talking about women being suppressed, oppressed and repressed in society. Change just doesn’t happen because the ‘clock is ticking’. No, people have to forge change, overcome the obstacles and embed the needed new value systems to get improvements institutionalized instead of just a passing trend. Change takes heavy-lifting.

This is what the lessons from India mean to us here-now in the Caribbean.

So many women in our communities flee due to the lack of protections and promotions for them. We want that bad trend to now end, so we must do the heavy-lifting ourselves. We must lower the “Push and Pull” factors that have plagued our society and caused abandonment.

We must do this! Women are half of our population; and they are beloved. This is how we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play for all.  🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – The Horrible Plight of India’s Widows – https://youtu.be/CS8euwO4o8k

Published on Aug 20, 2007 – India Widows (2007): In many conservative Indian families, widows are seen as a liability. Cast out of the family home, they live the rest of their lives in poverty and isolation.

For downloads and more information visit http://journeyman.tv/57526/short-film…

“She becomes a zero and all her powers are lost”, states Dr Giri, explaining how some women’s status change when their husband dies. With no where else to go, thousands come to Vrindavan, city of widows. It was the childhood home of Hindu God, Krishna, who championed downtrodden women. “They come here in search of death”, explains Dr Giri, in the hope they will have a better afterlife” – ABC Australia – Ref. 3587

Journeyman Pictures is your independent source for the world’s most powerful films, exploring the burning issues of today. We represent stories from the world’s top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. On our channel you’ll find outstanding and controversial journalism covering any global subject you can imagine wanting to know about.

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News on the 8’s – Review of Impactful Years … ending in 8 (1918 – 2018)

Posted on December 24, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The Year 2018 is now over, and what an impactful year it has been. In fact, an analysis over the annals of time shows that all years ending in “8” seems to be impactful, especially in the last 100 years. We are truly able to concur with the American Media (Radio and TV) tagline: “News on the 8’s“.

This review is not just world history, but for specific events-issues-episodes that affected us in the Caribbean.

This is important … for us here and now!

The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – 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. The book, among its 370 pages, asserts that there are important lessons for the Caribbean region to learn from a consideration of the recent history of the economics, security and governing engines of other times and places. This exercise is analogous to reaping crops from the harvest. In fact the book features formal Lessons from History as follows:

  • West Indies Federation – Page 135
  • Year 2008 – Page 136
  • East Germany – Page 139
  • Detroit – Page 140
  • Indian Reservations – Page 141
  • The American West – Page 142
  • Egypt – Page 143
  • The Bible – Page 144
  • The US Constitution – Page 145
  • Canada’s History – Page 146
  • Caribbean Currencies – Page 149
  • Nuyorican Movement – Page 303
  • European Conquest of the Guianas – Page 307

And now … for consideration of the Year 2018; (the hyperlinks refer to previous blog-commentaries):

  • December: The 41st US President George H.W. Bush dies  The memorial and obituaries reminded the Caribbean, and the world, that reasonable accommodations for Persons with Disabilities is good for all of society.
  • November: The Mid-Term Elections in the US proved the actuality of a bitter lesson in democracy: “Bad things happen when Good people do not participate (vote); the opposite of justice is not injustice; it’s apathy, indifference and inaction”. So many people that did NOT vote in 2016 came out in force for 2018, to take back the direction of their country.
  • October: The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that we only have 12 years to adopt any Climate Change abatements, otherwise that dire consequences that have been warned and feared will be unavoidable.
  • September: A girl with Caribbean heritage (a meld of Haitian and Japanese), Naomi Osaka, shocks the world and became the US Open Tennis Champion. Yes, we can … produce greatness in our region.
  • August: Caribbean member-state Saint Lucia set in motion to ban Styrofoam and plastics in their sovereign territories therefore setting a model for how the rest of the Caribbean can be responsive to the realities of global pollution. Next up: we must confederate to abate Climate Change.
  • July: The world celebrated 100 Years of Mandela; we, in the Caribbean, did too and should have made more of a Big Deal about it. Mandela taught us all how to co-exist with colonialism bloody past and still work towards a prosperous future with native citizens, expatriates and Direct Foreign Investors alike.
  • June: Regional Tourism stewards declared that there must be regional coordination of their tourism product. This is an affirmation of the confederation quest for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. Hurricanes always affect one part of the Caribbean region, while sparing the other parts, leaving them “open for business”. But geographic misconceptions are hurting Caribbean economies that are completely unscathed by a hurricane. This actuality cries out for regional stewardship.
  • May: As related and released by a university study, there is “No Love for Puerto Rico in Life or in Death“. The American government apparatus under-counted the true counts of deaths attributed to Hurricane Maria in September 2017. This is just proof positive that PR need to divorce the US and elevate from it’s parasite status and emerge as a protégé. This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU movement.
  • April: a. A Caribbean Political Leader – Senator, the Honorable Dr. Adrian Augier, a St. Lucian Economist – advocated for better outreach to the Diaspora. He lamented how most member-states adopted the lazy approach of just asking for the Diaspora’s money (investments); Dr. Augier, on the other hand, is asking for their outright return.
    b. Cuba’s Raul Castro retires, thus ending the reign of a Castro in the Presidency of Cuba for the first time since 1959; though Raul remains as Chairman of the Communist Party.
  • March: Young students seek to change America by “Marching for their Lives“  to change gun laws and protections. This was in response to senseless shootings, one which occurred in Parkland, FL where 17 children were slain by an ex-student. One of the victims was of the Caribbean Diaspora (Jamaica) who’s parents had sought refuge in Florida from economic distress in their homeland.
  • February: The movie Black Panther, casted with many Caribbean actors, proved the prospect of forging change in an African-majority society and transforming the societal engines is a cause than we can conceive, believe and achieve.
  • January: From the “abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” – this biblical proverb was validated when it was revealed that the US President Donald Trump called Haiti and other Latin American countries “shit holes”. This also vindicates the cause of the Go Lean/CU movement to reform and transform Caribbean society to not be parasites of an unappreciative America.

2018 was an impactful year indeed. This year was also fodder for comedians and satirists alike. See the VIDEO here by the Daily Show:

VIDEO – The Daily Show’s The Yearly Show 2018: Weird Trump, Things You Forgot Happened & 911 Calls – https://youtu.be/nsm9aL-7s8E

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Published on Dec 19, 2018 – In The Daily Show’s final show of the year, the team looks back on how weird Donald Trump was in 2018, the stories that everyone has forgotten about and all the white people who couldn’t call 911 enough.

Subscribe to The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWh…

About The Daily Show: Trevor Noah and The World’s Fakest News Team tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

Despite the adult humor, this VIDEO was spot-on for the laughable premise of anyone expecting American leadership for global (and Caribbean) affairs. For the last 100 years, the years ending in “8” – 2018, 2008, 1998 … 1918 – have been the most impactful in modern history. Just consider the following subjective analysis; consider the News on the 8’s for the other years, here as follows:

  • 2008 – Great Recession – This economic disaster imperiled the world’s economy; what’s worse is that it is still imperiling the Caribbean region even today, despite recoveries elsewhere. Why so long for us in the Caribbean to elevate our economic landscape? We are not “too big to fail” but rather “Too Small to Thrive“.
  • 1998 – Clinton Impeachment – This American-only drama had a far reaching arch on the Caribbean: The Haitian eco-system resented the role of the Clinton Foundation in Haiti’s post-2010 Earthquake recovery-rebuild. The Haitian Diaspora, and many others disillusioned with the Clinton brand, took out their angst on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton … resulting in a win for the candidate Donald Trump, an anti-Caribbean actor.
  • 1988 – George Bush Election was an affirmation for the continuation of policies by Ronald Reagan. These policies incentivized Caribbean citizens, especially the professional classes, to emigrate away from the homeland to US soil.
  • 1978 – Jonestown, Guyana – This tragedy took place right here in the Caribbean member-state of Guyana. This evil act is on us! Have we learned? Have we reformed and transformed? Do we still tolerate a Climate of Hate? Are we overly protective of orthodoxy?
  • 1968 – Olympics’ Proudest Moment & Movement – The cause for Human Rights had it biggest impact at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. The winners of the 200 meters Track-and-Field race – including the Bronze-medal winner with Caribbean (Cuban) roots, John Carlos – shocked the world by standing in solidarity with minority civil rights around the world.
  • 1958 – West Indies Federation – This attempt at integration had the potential to consolidate and confederate all the Anglo-Caribbean under a Single Market, single currency and a unified government. But despite the good intentions, this construct reflected a deficient foundation; the Federation failed 4 years later, though some remnants persist even today: i.e. BWI Airlines, University of the West Indies and the West Indies Cricket Federation.
  • 1948 – a. United Nations Human Rights Declaration  – The Human Rights standard we take for granted now was not always en vogue. It started in this year as a Lesson Learn from World War II.
    b. Windrush Departure – This London-bound ship started the bad trend of emigration from the Caribbean homeland.
  • 1938 – a. Start of Jewish Persecution in Nazi Germany; this is the lesson for where Climate of Hate leads a society.
    b. Joe Louis Wins Heavyweight Championship over a German, Nazi-backed boxer. This is the forerunner for Muhammad Ali and Boxing’s potential to shook the world.
  • 1928 – a. Birth of Mickey Mouse and the start of the Disney Empire Dream. The Black-n-White cartoon film Steamboat Willie was the start of the media enterprise. The current Orlando resort is a model for us in the Caribbean for Self-Governing Entities.
    b. Penicillin – as the start of antibiotics; this meant the end to mortality for many tropical diseases; still evolving today.
  • 1918 – End of WW I – The Great War was the start of the End of Colonialism. At the time of this global conflict the European powers over the Caribbean included Denmark, who subsequently ceded the Virgin Islands to the US.

This commentary serves as a review of the highlights of 2018, the same as was conducted for 2017 with 2017 Review – Mr. Trump shows the ‘Wrong Way’ and for 2016 with  How to make sense of 2016. But the purpose of these commentaries is not just to highlight the news, but rather to highlight the need for a new Caribbean regime, the Go Lean roadmap for the CU Trade Federation. Accepting the philosophical principle that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste“, then there is a strong motivation to reboot, reform and transform the Caribbean eco-systems.

This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap; it features these 3 prime directives:

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

The Go Lean book 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.

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

The Go Lean book provides the 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. One advocacy on Page 131 is particular is entitled 10 Ways to Make the Caribbean Better. The rationale for this advocacy is summarized well in the first tactic (Way), as follows:

Lean-in for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into a single market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 countries, 42 million people and GDP of over $800 Billion (based on 2010) figures. The mandate of the CU, (despite the references to advanced technical concepts of economic empowerment, homeland security and emergency management), is simply to make the Caribbean a better place to: a). Live b). Work and c). Play.

This triple threat impacts daily Caribbean life and ultimately, our children’s future.

Yes, we can learn form the historic “8” years and from this year then make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. This quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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

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

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5 Years Later – Climate Change: Coming so fast, so furious

Posted on December 19, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

A little less conversation, a little more action – Elvis Presley song

3 years ago – Paris COP21 – the world came together and devised a plan to tackle the global threat of Climate Change. This year, many of the same players came back together to implement the actions.

So we went from “planning the plan” to now “planning the action”.

This is a slow-motion response to a fast-moving threat.

This commentary is the second of a 4-part series – 2 of 4 – from the movement behind the Go Lean book in consideration of the 5 year anniversary of the book’s publication. The theme on these 4 submissions is “5 Years Later and what is the condition now“. The focus here is on the Agents of Change that the book identified: Globalization, Climate Change, Technology and the Aging Diaspora.

The first entry in this series asked the question: “Have the problems lessened, or have they intensified?

The answer is so emphatic! Climate Change has been all the rage in these 5 short years. The fast-and-furious threat is more than just academic; this is real-life and real-bad; especially for us in the Caribbean.

The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. 5 Years Later: New Post Office Eco-system – Globalization issues ‘loud and clear’ now.
  2. 5 Years Later: Climate Change – Coming so fast, so furious.
  3. 5 Years Later: Technology – Caribbean fully on board.
  4. 5 Years Later: Aging Diaspora – Finding Home … anywhere.

The Go Lean book was written 5 years ago as a 5 Year Plan to reform and transform the Caribbean region. Had the plan been adopted by the regional stakeholders, then the Agents of Change would have been better addressed. The plan, or roadmap, to introduce and implement the Caribbean Union Trade Federation is still rearing to start; and while we cannot single-handedly solve Climate Change, we can better prepare the region for the heavy-lifting involved. The book describes the community ethos to adopt plus the many strategies, tactics and implementation that need to be executed.

After the 2013 publication of the Go Lean book, many countries came together for COP21 (December 2015), also known as the Paris Accords. As alluded to above, this year’s follow-up, Katowice (Poland) 2018 had a few less participants for this “put speech into action” plan. See the news article about COP24 here:

News Title: Nations agree on rules for implementing Paris climate agreement
Sub-title: Nations dragged a deal over the line Saturday to implement the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon UN talks that failed to match the ambition the world’s most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.

Katowice, Poland – Delegates from nearly 200 states finalised a common rule book designed to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

“Putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility,” said COP24 president Michal Kurtyka as he gavelled through the manual following the talks in Poland that ran deep into overtime.

“It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no-one behind.”

But environmental groups said the package agreed in the Polish mining city of Katowice lacked the bold ambition needed to protect states already dealing with devastating floods, droughts and extreme weather made worse by climate change.

“We continue to witness an irresponsible divide between the vulnerable island states and impoverished countries pitted against those who would block climate action or who are immorally failing to act fast enough,” executive director of Greenpeace Jennifer Morgan said.

The final decision text was repeatedly delayed as negotiators sought guidelines that are effective in warding off the worst threats posed by our heating planet while protecting the economies of rich and poor nations alike.

“Without a clear rulebook, we won’t see how countries are tracking, whether they are actually doing what they say they are doing,” Canada’s Environment Minister Catherine McKenna told AFP.

At their heart, negotiations were about how each nation funds action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as how those actions are reported.

Developing nations wanted more clarity from richer ones over how the future climate fight will be funded and pushed for so-called “loss and damage” measures.

This would see richer countries giving money now to help deal with the effects of climate change many vulnerable states are already experiencing.

Another contentious issue was the integrity of carbon markets, looking ahead to the day when the patchwork of distinct exchanges — in China, the Europe Union, parts of the United States — may be joined up in a global system.

“To tap that potential, you have to get the rules right,” said Alex Hanafi, lead counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund in the United States.

“One of those key rules — which is the bedrock of carbon markets — is no double counting of emissions reductions.”

The Paris Agreement calls for setting up a mechanism to guard against practices that could undermine such a market, but finding a solution has proved so problematic that the debate has been kicked down the road to next year.

‘System needs to change’

One veteran observer told AFP Poland’s presidency at COP24 had left many countries out of the process and presented at-risk nations with a “take it or leave it” deal.

Progress had “been held up by Brazil, when it should have been held up by the small islands. It’s tragic.”

One of the largest disappointments for countries of all wealths and sizes was the lack of ambition to reduce emissions shown in the final COP24 text.

Most nations wanted the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to form a key part of future planning.

It highlighted the need for carbon pollution to be slashed to nearly half by 2030 in order to hit the 1.5C target.

But the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected, leading to watered-down wording.

The final statement from the Polish COP24 presidency welcomed “the timely conclusion” of the report and invited “parties to make use of it” — hardly the ringing endorsement many nations had called for.

“There’s been a shocking lack of response to the 1.5 report,” Morgan told AFP. “You can’t come together and say you can’t do more!”

With UN talks well into their third decade sputtering on as emissions rise remorselessly, activists have stepped up grassroots campaigns of civil disobedience to speed up action on climate.

“We are not a one-off protest, we are a rebellion,” a spokesman for the Extinction Rebellion movement, which disrupted at least one ministerial event at the COP, told AFP.

“We are organising for repeated disruption, and we are targeting our governments, calling for the system change needed to deal with the crisis that we are facing.”

Source: AFP – France24 News Service – Posted December 16, 2018; retrieved December 18, 2018 from: https://www.france24.com/en/20181215-cop24-poland-climate-summit-deal-paris-climate-agreement-negotiations-un-environment

—————-

VIDEO # 1 – Nations agree on rules for implementing Paris climate agreement – https://youtu.be/SBUZS3cl2X0

FRANCE 24 English
Published on Dec 17, 2018 – Nations dragged a deal over the line Saturday to implement the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon UN talks that failed to match the ambition the world’s most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com

FRANCE 24 live news stream: all the latest news 24/7 http://f24.my/YTliveEN

———————

VIDEO # 2 – UN climate talks: ‘A transition to a greener economy is possible’ – https://youtu.be/qqbQ1hyWc_Y

FRANCE 24 English
Uploaded on Dec 15, 2018

Subscribe to France 24 now: http://f24.my/youtubeEN

FRANCE 24 live news stream: all the latest news 24/7 http://f24.my/YTliveEN

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com

One notable absentee from Katowice has been the United States of America. This is due to the sad fact that the “Leader of the Free World” – a moniker assigned to the US President – is a Climate Change denier. Donald Trump campaigned on his denial and has manifested his dismay with subsequent actions. His blatant disregard was previously detailed in a prior Go Lean commentary from June 1, 2017, as follows:

Its June 1st, the start of the Hurricane season. According to Weather Authorities, it is going to be a tumultuous season, maybe even more destructive than last year….

Thanks Climate Change.

What hope is there to abate the threats from Climate Change?

Thanks to the Paris Accord, there is now hope; (we remember the effectiveness of the accord to abate “Acid Rain”).

But wait! The American President – Donald Trump – announces that he is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Accord. WTH?!?!
…

The Caribbean status quo is unsustainable under the real threats of Climate Change. The region must reboot, reform and transform. We must do the heavy-lifting ourselves; we cannot expect relief and refuge from others, like the American Super-Power. We must find and “sail” under our own power. 🙂

The Caribbean is more on the frontlines of Climate Change distress than the US – think hurricanes. We do not have the luxury to deny, defer and dispute. We must “batten down the hatches” and prepare for the worst. (Many claim this is also the disposition of many American destinations, think California forest fires). So we must take the lead ourselves for our own relief!

The Caribbean frontlines have been depicted in many previous Go Lean blog-commentaries. Consider the sample – as follows – highlighting some of the many Climate Change-infused storms that have impacted our region and others over the short timeframe – 5 years – since the publication of the Go Lean book:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15996 Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
October 2018 Trinidad heavy rains – not associated with a hurricane.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14925 ‘Climate Change’ Reality!? Numbers Don’t Lie
There is no longer any doubt, the Numbers don’t lie: the earth has had 400 straight warmer-than-average months.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391 After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection
Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. 1 year and a half later, recovery is still slow and frustrating. Islands like Dominica, are still struggling to recover; Ross University fled there to go to Barbados.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996 After Irma, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection 
Hurricane Irma devastated Caribbean islands, like Saint Martin.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12977 After Irma, Barbuda Becomes a ‘Ghost Town’
Climate Change threats are real for the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. Barbuda is no more, after Hurricane Irma.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12924 Hurricane Categories – The Science
Category 5 Hurricanes – Once rare; now normal and common.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12879 Disaster Preparation: ‘Rinse and Repeat’
Hurricane Harvey proved that even the advanced democracy of the USA is not ready.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12834 Hurricane Andrew – 25 Years of Hoopla
Climate Change disasters are not new; 1992 storm was an eye-opener.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7896 The Logistics of Disaster Relief
“Preparing for the worst” means being more efficient and technocratic.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449 ‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
Hurricane Wilma brought chaos to this city’s economic engines in 2004.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6189 A Lesson in History – ‘Katrina’ is helping today’s crises
There are many lessons learned from this 2005 American disaster.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4741 Vanuatu and Tuvalu – Inadequate response to human suffering
Lessons learned from these small Pacific Islands climate failures.

So it has been 5 years since the publication of the Go Lean book. Climate Change was identified as an Agent of Change that the region was struggling with and losing. Since then, conditions have worsened. The book asserts that the entire region must unite in order to “hope for the best and prepare for the worst”. The “hope” is really a call to action, that the regional neighbors would confederate and join in to the global campaign of mitigating and abating Climate Change. This aligns with the first pronouncement (Page 11) of the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

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

The Go Lean book – a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – presents a 370-page roadmap for re-booting the economic, security and governmental institutions of the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region, especially in light of the realities of Climate Change. While this is a global battle, we, the Caribbean member-states, are on the frontlines, so we must be doubly prepared for the surety of destruction from this threat. We must do our share and “Go Green” to arrest our own carbon footprint. We must not be hypocritical as we call on the Big Polluting nations to reform – we must reform ourselves, so as to have moral authority.

As detailed in a previous blog-commentary, the dire effects of Climate Change may be irreversible after the next 12 years, if we do not work to abate this disaster. So we must fight!

This is an inconvenient truth: We must fight like our lives depend on it. A product of these COP24 Katowice Accords, is now definitive plans and rules for implementing abatements around the world; carbon footprints must be reduced … globally, now!

A change has now come to the Caribbean region. This is Climate Change and it is not a good thing. Now is the time for a permanent union to provide efficient stewardship for our economic, security and governing engines. All regional stakeholders – the people and governing institutions – are hereby urged to lean-in to the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Yes, we can … make our region, these islands and coastal states, better places to live, work and play.

There is the successful track record of abating environment pollution: remember Acid Rain in the 1990’s. So despite the doom and gloom, mitigation and abatement of Climate Change is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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

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

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5 Years Later – They can hear you now about the Post Office – ENCORE

Posted on December 15, 2018 in Government, Implementation, Industries

5 years ago, the book Go Lean … Caribbean was introduced; the publication date was November 2013.

The book scanned the landscape in the Caribbean and found a lot of deficiencies in the economics, security and governance in the region. For example, for those 5 years the movement behind the Go Lean book have been telling people that there is an overriding need for a technocratic postal solution in the Caribbean region. This is how to keep up with the demands of globalization.

People – the audience – have only yawned.

Now the Caribbean member-state of The Bahamas has a crisis with their postal facility. The people there should now be ready, willing and able to consider alternatives and improvements to their regional governance.

Title: Wells confirms “undeliverable” mail was shredded
NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Addressing allegations that mail at the General Post Office had been shredded, Minister responsible for the post office, Renward Wells, confirmed on Thursday that the most recent and deliberate destruction of “undeliverable” mail was on November 1 and 2, upon the authorization of the Postmaster General.
…
The Bahamas has membership in the United Postal Union (UPU) and it is therefore required to ensure that delivery of mail among countries follows consistent rules and standards.
…
The General Post Office is in the process of being relocated to the Town Centre Mall in early 2019.

Wells outlined in his statement that the standards of the Post Office will be restored to one that will regain the respect of international partners.

“Postal workers and the Bahamian public have been in excess of three years without an adequate means for providing this essential service,” he said.
…
Source: Posted December 14, 2018; retrieved December 15, 2018 from: https://ewnews.com/wells-confirms-undeliverable-mail-was-shredded

This commentary is the first of a 4-part series from the movement behind the Go Lean book in consideration of the 5 year anniversary of the book’s publication. The theme on these 4 submissions is “5 Years Later and what is the condition now“. The focus here is on the Agents of Change that the book identified: Globalization, Climate Change, Technology and the Aging Diaspora.

Have the problems lessened, or have they intensified? The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. 5 Years Later: New Post Office Eco-system – Globalization issues ‘loud and clear’ now.
  2. 5 Years Later: Climate Change – Coming so fast, so furious.
  3. 5 Years Later: Technology – Caribbean fully on board.
  4. 5 Years Later: Aging Diaspora – Finding Home … anywhere.

The Go Lean book was written 5 years ago as a 5 Year Plan to reform and transform the Caribbean region. Had the plan been adopted by the regional stakeholders, then the Agents of Change would have been mostly assuaged. The plan, or roadmap, to introduce and implement the Caribbean Union Trade Federation is still outstanding to even start. We now need to push the leaders – Top Down – and the subjects – Bottoms’s Up – to execute the strategies, tactics and implementation prescribed in this book.

This approach – rebooting the postal eco-system – had been relayed in a previous blog-commentary from January 23, 2018; it  is appropriate to Encore that blog-commentary here-now:

——————–

Go Lean Commentary – First Steps – A Powerful C.P.U.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean wants to deploy an “apolitical technocracy” in the Caribbean. What is an apolitical technocracy?

Quite simply, an organizational structure designed to just deliver.

Sounds familiar? Frankly, the Post Office is a powerful example of an apolitical technocracy:

They just deliver the mail …

… “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”.

(While the Postal Service has no official motto, the popular belief is that these words are tribute to America’s postal workers).

Technocracies are supposed to be automatons, a machine that just chugs-and-chugs. Think computers; think C.P.U.. But in the case of this Go Lean scheme, C.P.U. does not mean Central Processing Unit, no, it means Caribbean Postal Union.

The book Go Lean book – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Postal Union, 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 and create 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.

This commentary is Part 6 of 6-parts; it completes the series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of the First Steps for instituting a new regime in governance for the Caribbean homeland. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. First Steps: EU: Free European Money – To Start at Top
  2. First Steps: UK: Dignified and Efficient
  3. First Steps: US: Congressional Interstate Compact – No Vote; No Voice
  4. First Steps: CariCom: One Man One Vote Defects 
  5. First Steps: Deputize ‘Me’! 
  6. First Steps: A Powerful C.P.U.

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the Caribbean can finally get started with adapting the organizational structures to optimize the region’s societal engines. Whereas all the previous submissions addressed the need for reform at the Top. This commentary addressed the automation, the technocratic C.P.U.. This is designed to affect every man-woman-child in the Caribbean region, to just deliver. This simple functionality will do wonders for the quest of this roadmap: make the Caribbean member-states better places to live, work and play.

The Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal and postal 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.

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

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

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

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. One advocacy in the book is entitled “10 Ways to Improve Mail Service … in the Caribbean Region“; this detailed the best practices for postal mail and logistics; (Page 108). See this Bottom Line introduction:

The Bottom Line for the Caribbean Postal Union
Without a regional hub-and-spoke system, mail from one island to another can take weeks – such a business climate cannot breathe success with this lack of efficiency. The purpose of the CU is to facilitate the economic engines of the region. Therefore postal communications between individuals, households, businesses and governmental institutions must be efficient and effective – establishments must be able to connect with their customers and governments to its constituents. The Caribbean Postal Union (CPU) will operate as a private business, a multi-national corporation, owned by CU member-states, chartered to employ best practices and world class methods in the execution of the fulfillment side of the e-Delivery model. A mark of success: delivery of first-class mail in 3 – 5 days.

Improving the postal mail eco-system in the Caribbean can have a transformative effect on regional society. CPU is mostly an e-Logistics enterprise. Imagine the following (global) trends that wait in the balance:

Imagine a Caribbean reality with flat-rate envelopes and flat-rate boxes. Imagine the automation, the robotic technologies, the scanning and sorting. The brand CPU would really be apropos – more software, e-Commerce and Internet Communications Technology – as opposed to the neighborhood mail-carrier. See this industrial shift in the related news article in the Appendix below. In fact, the company www.Stamps.com provides a model for the CPU to emulate. See this Introductory VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Welcome to Stamps.com, USPS Postage Software Overview – https://youtu.be/wCCAkRkUWE0

Stamps.com

Published on Apr 23, 2013 – Welcome to Stamps.com, USPS Postage Software Overview This video shows new customers how Stamps.com software works. Highlights include how to buy and print postage stamps and shipping labels, e-commerce shipping features, postage spending reports plus many more features.

In addition, previous Go Lean blog-commentaries detailed the width-and-breadth of the mail-logistics business model for the Caribbean; see these prior submissions here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13627 Amazon as a Role Mode: Then and Now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9839 Alibaba Cloud stretches global reach with four new facilities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991 Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3187 Amazon Role Model – Robots helping tackle Cyber Monday
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488 Alibaba – A Chinese Role Model for the C.P.U.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416 Amazon – An American Role Model for the C.P.U.

Forging change is heavy-lifting for the CU/Go Lean roadmap, but conceivable, believable and achievable? Why because so many other entities have executed these action plans before. We do not need to “re-invent the wheel”; we only need to conform to the published best-practices. This applies to the Caribbean Postal Union and all other societal engines.

Yes, we can succeed in forging change and assuaging the crises in the Caribbean. We have the existing organizations constructs of the CariCom, British Overseas Territories, US Territories and the EU. We can use these to “touch” every country-establishment-person in the region. This will lead to the success of our goals, to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———–

Appendix Title: Important: USPS making changes to First-Class Mail International Flats

January 21, 2018 Update: Stamps.com has launched a new International Flat service.  Get more info on how to ship merchandise with International Flats.

Merchandise No Longer Allowed in First Class Mail International Flats
If you ship merchandise abroad using USPS First Class Mail International Flats, there’s a new rule going into effect soon that you need to know about. Effective Sunday, January 21, 2018, First Class Mail International Large Envelope/Flat service for merchandise will NO LONGER be available from the USPS. First Class Mail International Flats will only be approved for use when sending documents. This change is occurring to comply with Universal Postal Union requirements.

Here are some examples of what USPS considers a document (still OK to ship using First Class Mail International Flats):

  • Audit and business records
  • Personal correspondence
  • Circulars
  • Pamphlets
  • Advertisements
  • Written instruments not intended to be resold
  • Money orders, checks, and similar items that cannot be negotiated or converted into cash without forgery.

Here are examples of items that will NO LONGER be allowed to be shipped as First Class Mail International Flats, effective Jan. 21, 2018:

  • CDs, DVDs, flash drives, video and cassette tapes, and other digital and electronic storage media (regardless of whether they are blank or contain electronic documents or other prerecorded media)
  • Artwork
  • Collector or antique document items
  • Books
  • Periodicals
  • Printed music
  • Printed educational or test material
  • Player piano rolls
  • Commercial photographs, blueprints and engineering drawings
  • Film and negatives
  • X-rays
  • Separation negatives

These goods are dutiable and must be must be shipped using First Class Package International Service. Once this change goes into effect, shippers will need to include Customs Forms and the recipient could pay a duty or tax to receive the product.

Cost Savings Using First Class Mail International Flats
Moving from First Class Mail International Flats to First Class Package International Service will have a big impact on shippers.

Source: Posted December 26th, 2017; retrieved January 21, 2018 from: http://blog.stamps.com/2017/12/26/important-usps-making-changes-first-class-mail-international-flats/ 

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When ‘Elizabeth’ Dies …

Posted on December 11, 2018 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Long Live the Queen!

But at her ripe age of 94, the ‘long” part needs a realistic assessment. At some point, soon, that dreaded day will come, Queen Elizabeth II will die. This is an important consideration as she is the monarch of the United Kingdom and Head of State, Head of the Commonwealth for 18 of the 30 Caribbean member-states. So these entities and institutions need this consideration.

  • What will happen?
  • What should happen?
  • What change will this death bring to the Caribbean?
  • What change – the ideal – that should be considered?

The truth of the matter is  that there is a formal comprehensive plan in London for this eventuality; (there should be one in the Caribbean as well). See the details of this British plan in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – What Happens When The Queen Dies | Vanity Fair – https://youtu.be/v61JI6h423E

Vanity Fair
Published on Aug 16, 2018 – After nearly 66 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II is the longest reigning monarch in British history and has been a constant and calming force amidst the fast-paced changes their country has faced, making it even more inconceivable to think about what happens when she dies.
Since Buckingham Palace doesn’t shy away from procedure, it’s no surprise there’s already a comprehensive plan in place for what happens after she passes, known as Operation London Bridge. On the day Queen Elizabeth II dies, her death will elicit a comprehensive plan that has been in place since the 1960s. What will happen when Her Majesty’s reign comes to an end and how will Britain mourn the loss? Here is what we know so far.

Now is the time to ask ourselves: should the British neo-colonial status continue? Is it time to consider a formal exit?

While there is love for the current British monarch – Queen Elizabeth – her death should be viewed as a checkpoint in our sovereignty considerations.

The British eco-system is not working for all non-British-Isles stakeholders; consider Brexit; this is a nationalistic expression of “Britain First”.

With that reality, could their be any hope for maintaining the status quo in the Overseas Territories?

It is London’s claim that “they” will sustain their commitments and priorities. See a related Press Release here:

Overseas Territories meet in London for annual Joint Ministerial Council
Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, Foreign Office Minister of State for the Overseas Territories, hosted political leaders from UK Overseas Territories on 4-5 December 2018. The discussions covered a range of topics, including Brexit, trade and investment, financial services, safeguarding, disaster management and constitutional issues.

See the remaining of the article at the source here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/overseas-territories-meet-in-london-for-annual-joint-ministerial-council

Can we truly expect the UK Territories status quo to continue? This is a shocking concern, worthy of skepticism!

Wasn’t a similar commitment-promise made to the EU?

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – asserts that it is past-time for the Caribbean member-states to “throw off the shackles of colonialism” – whichever European power – we must now reform and transform our society to better deliver, ourselves, for the future for our citizens.

No more parasitical dependence! We must be protégés rather than parasites.

But, these European territories (colonies) in our region are too small to effect change alone; therefore there is the need to convene, collaborate and confederate as regional neighbors. Of the total (30 member-states), there are 18 that reflect some British neo-colonial stance (overseas territory or commonwealth member). In addition there are 6 direct territories (Aruba and the 5 formerly branded Netherlands Antilles) with active governance from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 4 embedded in the Republic of France, and 2 American territories.

Some of these lands are small territories, i.e. Anguilla, Montserrat and St. Barthélemy have less than 10,000 people in each island. Rather than these standing alone as a small island, these territories need to stand united with their regional brothers. Yes, the Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit – for all 30 member-states. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

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

xxiii. Whereas many countries in our region are dependent Overseas Territory of imperial powers, the systems of governance can be instituted on a regional and local basis, rather than requiring oversight or accountability from distant masters far removed from their subjects of administration. The Federation must facilitate success in autonomous rule by sharing tools, systems and teamwork within the geographical region.

The proposed regional pursuit is a new confederation, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of this technocratic CU Trade Federation, 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.

It is the urging here that upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the 12 British Commonwealth countries should exit the commonwealth – its a voluntary  club with no benefits; security is enforced by NATO, not the Commonwealth. Plus too, the 6 British Overseas Territories should petition for full membership in this new CU Trade Federation. The Go Lean book opens with this explanation (Page 4):

There is no expectation of sovereignty with this entity, so a commitment to the goals and aspirations of this Federation must be voluntary. The member-states of the region must therefore lean-in, to embrace the values, hopes and dreams of an integrated brotherhood of neighbors.

The book proceeds to detail the following definitions and developments for Caribbean sovereignty:

  • Go Lean Strategy
    The Caribbean Union is not envisioned to be a sovereign “unified” state, but rather a Trade Federation, a proxy entity similar to a confederacy, a champion to “wage battle” on behalf of its member-nation-states. – Page 45
  • Fostering a Technocracy
    The Caribbean Union is a non-sovereign union, of which the right to rule remains with the member-states, in whatever constitutionality at the time of the CU accedence: Republic, Commonwealth, Department (French), Collectivity (French) Constituent Country (Netherlands) or Overseas Territory (USA and UK). The CU is therefore a confederation, a ”service provider”, acting on before and with the authority of the member-states. – Page 63
  • Caribbean Supreme Court
    With sovereignty not tied to the CU, there can also be the technical challenges as to whether the Caribbean Supreme is the final escalation of the judicial process. Consider an example of a case in Guadeloupe, a French Overseas Territory, a plaintiff may feel that the French courts maintain jurisdiction. A few test cases like this, early in the CU history should establish the precedence. – Page 90
  • Autonomous Rule for Territories
    The CU treaty includes the American, British, Dutch and French Overseas…. Though the legacy powers are among the world’s biggest economies, such prosperity has not always extended [here]. The CU only seeks autonomous rule from their legacies, not sovereignty, and receivership status in the case of any financial insolvency. – Page 120
  • Confederation Without Sovereignty
    The CU is only a trade and security bloc, so the sovereignty of island nations remains with its current possessors. So Puerto Rico remains with the US; the Caymans with the UK; Curacao with the Netherlands; Guadeloupe with France, etc. Yet there are still severe consequences for violating the mandates of the CU, that of economic sanctions. When a country’s currency is maintained by the regional bloc, they are less inclined to egregiously work against their best interest. (This is the EU model). For Cuba, a Communist country, their political structure remains their choice, as the CU is only the technocratic and economic engine that does their trade bidding. – Page 127
  • Ways to Model the EU
    The EU region has quite an ignoble history of contending with differences, spurning 2 World Wars in the last century. Yet they came together to unite and integrate to make Europe a better place to live, work and play. Just like the EU, the CU will not possess sovereignty; this feature remains with each member-state. – Page 130
  • White Paper [Excerpt]: “Towards A CariCom Parliament”
    The Caribbean … difficulty in establishing a common Parliament has to do with leadership. Because of their history as slave and indentured societies, it has been suggested that the leaders in the Caribbean were reluctant to transfer authority and cede their sovereign status. While these factors are no doubt valid, the paper argued that the major problem in the Caribbean may be the absence of a well- thought out federal political arrangement and the inability by the various countries to articulate clearly defined procedures and practices. …
    This paper concluded that given the global imperatives, the countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean must re-examine their options and perhaps extend CariCom to that of a CariCom Parliament. – Page 167
  • Economic Sanctions and Penalties
    Since the CU does not have sovereignty, the only legal response is sanctions for state governments not complying with CU mandates. The “death penalty” would be a Failed-State designation. The CU is the designated receiver/trustee. – Page 168
  • Spanish Integration
    The CU allows the reunification of Spanish Caribbean (PR, Cuba, DR) to one economic market, a reversal of European Imperialism of the 19th Century. There are no sovereignty issues with the CU…, so the neighbors get to integrate and scale with no political disparity. This is a lesson learned from the Samoa Islands experience. – Page 244
  • Ways to Impact British Territories
    The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states for 42 million people with the scale to effect change; the CU does not involve sovereignty. The treaty includes the British Overseas Territories of Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks & Caicos and the Virgin Islands. Though the UK is one of the biggest (richest) economies, British economic prosperity has not always extended to these islands; many chose to just emigrate there. – Page 245

The Queen of England, Elizabeth II, does help to run the governments of England, Great Britain, United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. She serves as the Head of State and asks the political parties in the individual countries to form a government in her name. The theme of this style of governance – Westminster – has been detailed in previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13993 First Steps – Following the ‘Dignified and Efficient’ British Model
The British model for governance – where Queen Elizabeth II is the Head of State – strives to provide the dual functions of “the Dignified and the Efficient”. There are lessons to learned regards the strengths and weaknesses of this scheme.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12447 State of the Union: Deficient ‘Westminster System’
The Westminster structure of governance is not as efficient as we need for a new Caribbean. What are the defects and how do we fix our governance?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11420 ‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’
Any appeal of the British eco-system must be rebutted with the reality of life in the UK for the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown. Racial supremacy and discrimination is still a concern. Our people are still considered “Less Than” there.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9485 10 Things We Want from the UK and 10 Things We Do Not Want
There is a “give and take” relationship between the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. They have given a lot to the Caribbean over the centuries: systems of commerce, systems of governance, education, language, art and culture. They also gave things we do not want: racism, mercantilism, global war, etc.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4840 Jamaican Poll: ‘Bring back the British!’
The island-nation of Jamaica requested and was granted independence from the UK in 1962. Now those days before independence seem now to be nostalgic for many older Jamaicans. They long for a simpler time: with more economic prosperity, more jobs, more security (less crime), and more governing efficiency.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683 British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’
For many of the Caribbean Diaspora that fled to England over the decades, the only employment option were with government agencies; this was due the blatant racism in the private society. But even those jobs were less than adequate with their poverty-level pay scales.

The death of Queen Elizabeth II will be an end of an era and a sad day …

… but  it does not have to be the end or our actuality; it could be a new beginning …

… for a new rebooted Anglo-Caribbean region.

Yet, still the end of Queen Elizabeth should equal the end of the Anglo-Caribbean and the start of the Unified Caribbean.

London has a plan in place for that dreaded day. The Caribbean has this plan here-in. This plan is for more than just post-Elizabeth, it is for a bright Caribbean future. One in which 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.

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This Day in 1941: Pearl Harbor – ENCORE

Posted on December 7, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social, Strategy

This day 77 years ago is a “day that will live in infamy”.

This is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on the United States Navy at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This event changed the world, as it ushered the US into World War II when they declared war against Japan the next day. Japan (Hirohito) was aligned with Germany (Hitler) and Italy (Mussolini), so by the US declaring war on Japan, the direct and immediate result was Germany and Italy declared war against the United States.

Germany, Italy, Japan, United States of America, …. these are just a sample of the countries involved in the conflict; it was a global war, the second one in 30 years.

There are a lot of lessons for the Caribbean in this history. This was the theme of this previous blog-commentary on December 7, 2016 during the 75th Anniversary commemoration. That entry is being Encored here-now, for the 2018 commemoration:

——————–

Go Lean Commentary – Lessons Learned from Pearl Harbor

What would you do if backed into a corner and there’s a threat on your life?

For many people their natural impulse is to come out fighting. They say that this is not aggression, rather just a survival instinct.

Believe it or not, this depiction describes one of the biggest attacks in American history: the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. See VIDEO here:

VIDEO – World War II History: Attack on Pearl Harbor – http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history/videos/attack-pearl-harbor

Retrieved December 7, 2016 from History.com – On December 7, 1941, Japan launches a surprise attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor.

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This is the 75th Anniversary of that attack – a few days ago: December 7. That’s a lot of years and a lot of lessons. Still, 75 is a pretty round number, like 25, 50 and 100. This commentary has been reserved for now, a few days late on purpose because of the best-practice to “not speak ill of the dead” at a funeral or memorial service. But a “lessons learned analysis” is still an important exercise for benefiting from catastrophic efforts. After 75 years since the Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7, 1941, this post-mortem analysis is just as shocking as it was on this “day of infamy”.

Consider the details of this maligning article here (and the Appendices below); notice that it assumes a conspiracy:

Title: How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
By: Robert Higgs

cu-blog-lessons-learned-from-pearl-harbor-photo-1Ask a typical American how the United States got into World War II, and he will almost certainly tell you that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Americans fought back. Ask him why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he will probably need some time to gather his thoughts. He might say that the Japanese were aggressive militarists who wanted to take over the world, or at least the Asia-Pacific part of it. Ask him what the United States did to provoke the Japanese, and he will probably say that the Americans did nothing: we were just minding our own business when the crazy Japanese, completely without justification, mounted a sneak attack on us, catching us totally by surprise in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

You can’t blame him much. For more than 60 years such beliefs have constituted the generally accepted view among Americans, the one taught in schools and depicted in movies—what “every schoolboy knows.” Unfortunately, this orthodox view is a tissue of misconceptions. Don’t bother to ask the typical American what U.S. economic warfare had to do with provoking the Japanese to mount their attack, because he won’t know. Indeed, he will have no idea what you are talking about.

In the late nineteenth century, Japan’s economy began to grow and to industrialize rapidly. Because Japan has few natural resources, many of the burgeoning industries had to rely on imported raw materials, such as coal, iron ore or steel scrap, tin, copper, bauxite, rubber, and petroleum. Without access to such imports, many of which came from the United States or from European colonies in southeast Asia, Japan’s industrial economy would have ground to a halt. By engaging in international trade, however, the Japanese had built a moderately advanced industrial economy by 1941.

At the same time, they also built a military-industrial complex to support an increasingly powerful army and navy. These armed forces allowed Japan to project its power into various places in the Pacific and east Asia, including Korea and northern China, much as the United States used its growing industrial might to equip armed forces that projected U.S. power into the Caribbean and Latin America, and even as far away as the Philippine Islands.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, the U.S. government fell under the control of a man who disliked the Japanese and harbored a romantic affection for the Chinese because, some writers have speculated, Roosevelt’s ancestors had made money in the China trade.[1] Roosevelt also disliked the Germans (and of course Adolf Hitler), and he tended to favor the British in his personal relations and in world affairs. He did not pay much attention to foreign policy, however, until his New Deal began to peter out in 1937. Afterward, he relied heavily on foreign policy to fulfill his political ambitions, including his desire for reelection to an unprecedented third term.

When Germany began to rearm and to seek Lebensraum aggressively in the late 1930s, the Roosevelt administration cooperated closely with the British and the French in measures to oppose German expansion. After World War II commenced in 1939, this U.S. assistance grew ever greater and included such measures as the so-called destroyer deal and the deceptively named Lend-Lease program. In anticipation of U.S. entry into the war, British and U.S. military staffs secretly formulated plans for joint operations. U.S. forces sought to create a war-justifying incident by cooperating with the British navy in attacks on German U-boats in the north Atlantic, but Hitler refused to take the bait, thus denying Roosevelt the pretext he craved for making the United States a full-fledged, declared belligerent—an end that the great majority of Americans opposed.

In June 1940, Henry L. Stimson, who had been secretary of war under Taft and secretary of state under Hoover, became secretary of war again. Stimson was a lion of the Anglophile, northeastern upper crust and no friend of the Japanese. In support of the so-called Open Door Policy for China, Stimson favored the use of economic sanctions to obstruct Japan’s advance in Asia. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes vigorously endorsed this policy. Roosevelt hoped that such sanctions would goad the Japanese into making a rash mistake by launching a war against the United States, which would bring in Germany because Japan and Germany were allied.

Accordingly, the Roosevelt administration, while curtly dismissing Japanese diplomatic overtures to harmonize relations, imposed a series of increasingly stringent economic sanctions on Japan. In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. “On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.” Under this authority, “[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted.” Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.” Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt “froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan.”[2] The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in southeast Asia.

An Untenable Position
cu-blog-lessons-learned-from-pearl-harbor-photo-6Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the Americans knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: “Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.”[3]

Because American cryptographers had also broken the Japanese naval code, the leaders in Washington knew as well that Japan’s “measures” would include an attack on Pearl Harbor.[4] Yet they withheld this critical information from the commanders in Hawaii, who might have headed off the attack or prepared themselves to defend against it. That Roosevelt and his chieftains did not ring the tocsin makes perfect sense: after all, the impending attack constituted precisely what they had been seeking for a long time. As Stimson confided to his diary after a meeting of the war cabinet on November 25, “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”[5] After the attack, Stimson confessed that “my first feeling was of relief … that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.[6]

Source: The Independent Institute – Online Community – Posted: May 1, 2006; retrieved December 7, 2016 from: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1930
——–
See Appendices below for cited references and profiles of the Author and the Organization.

So this establishes why the Japanese may have been motivated to attack Pearl Harbor in the first place. The motivation seems more complicated than initially reported.

The Bible declares that:

“For there is nothing hidden that will not become manifest” – Luke 8:17

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After 75 years, the before-during-after facts associated with the Pearl Harbor Attack should be available for full disclosure. What are the lessons here for the Caribbean and today’s effort to secure the Caribbean homeland while expanding the regional economy? We truly want to consider these main points, these lessons; (the hyperlinks refer to previous Go Lean commentaries):

Lessons

Territories have a status of disregard Hawaii (Pearl Harbor) and Philippines were attacked by the Japanese. These were both US Territories at the same. The levels of protection and preparedness for territories are sub-standard compared to the American mainland. As a result there was no meaningful plan for the air defense of Hawaii.
Colonialism is/was really bad Japan protested the sub-standard reality of the native Asians under the European colonial schemes. A people oppressed, suppressed and repressed would not remain docile forever; “that a downtrodden people would not stay down, that they would rise and revolt, that they would risk their lives and that of their children to pursue freedom.” – Go Lean book Page 251.
White Supremacy is/was a really bad construct The US Territories (Hawaii and Philippines) were not the first targets for Japan. They targeted all European colonies (British, French and Dutch) territories. Their campaign was to rail against White Supremacy.
Bullies only respond to a superior force Japan avail themselves of expansion opportunities in Far-East Asia as the European powers became distracted in the time period during and after World War I. (Manchuria in China was occupied by Japan starting in 1931). Only a superior force, the US, was able to assuage their aggression.
Economic Warfare can back a Government into a corner When the supply of basic needs (food, clothing, shelter and energy) are curtailed, a crisis ensues. When people are in crisis, they consider “fight or flight” options. Japan chose to fight; Caribbean people choose flight.
Societies can double-down on a bad Community Ethos Japan’s aggression was a direct result of their community ethos that honored Samurai warrior and battle culture. Men would walk the streets with their swords, ready for a challenge. On the other hand, the US (and Western Europe) community ethos of racism was so ingrained that the natural response in the US, post-Pearl Harbor, was to intern Japanese Americans in camps.
All of these bad community ethos were weeded out with post-WWII Human Rights reconciliations. – Go Lean book Page 220.
Double Standards are hard to ignore Japan felt justified in their Pacific aggression because of the US’s regional aggression in the Americas. Before Pearl Harbor, they withdrew from the League of Nations in protest of double standards.
Even after WWII, this double standard continues with countries with Veto power on the UN Security Council.
People have short memories There are movements to re-ignite many of the same developments that led to the devastation of WWII: right wing initiatives in Japan and Germany; Human Rights disregard for large minority groups (Muslims, etc.).
The more things change, the more they remain the same.

This discussion is analyzing the concept of “fight or flight”. According to Anthropologists, individuals and societies facing a crisis have to contend with these two options for survival. The very concept of refugees indicate that most people choose to flee; they choose internal displacement or refuge status in foreign countries. This point is consistent with the theme in the book Go Lean … Caribbean that this region is in crisis and as a result people have fled from their beloved homelands to foreign destinations in North America and Europe. How bad? According to one report, we have lost 70 percent of our tertiary-educated population.

Enough said! Our indictment is valid. Rather than flee, we now want the region to fight. This is not advocating a change to a militaristic state, but rather this commentary, and the underlying Go Lean book, advocates devoting “blood, sweat and tears” to empowering change in the Caribbean region. The book states this in its introduction (Page 3):

We cannot ignore the past, as it defines who we are, but we do not wish to be shackled to the past either, for then, we miss the future. So we must learn from the past, our experiences and that of other states in similar situations, mount our feet solidly to the ground and then lean-in, to reach for new heights; forward, upward and onward. This is what is advocated in this book: to Go Lean … Caribbean!

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). One mission of this roadmap is to reduce the “push and pull” factors that contributes to the high emigration rates. For the most part the “push and pull” factors relate to the societal defects among the economic, security and governing engines. Another mission is to incentivize the far-flung Diaspora to consider a return to the region. Overall, the Go Lean roadmap asserts that the economy of the Caribbean is inextricably linked to the security of the Caribbean. The roadmap therefore proposes an accompanying Security Pact to accompany the CU treaty’s economic empowerment efforts. The plan is to cooperate, collaborate and confer with all regional counterparts so as to provide an optimized Caribbean defense, against all threats, foreign and domestic. This includes the American Caribbean territories (just like Pearl Harbor was on the American territory of Hawaii) of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. These American protectorates are included in this CU regional plan.

This CU/Go Lean regional plan strives to advance all of Caribbean society with these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to a $800 Billion Single Market by creating 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance in support of these endeavors.

The Go Lean book stresses the effectiveness and efficiency of protecting life and property of all Caribbean stakeholders: residents, trading partners, visitors, etc.. This is why the book posits that some deployments are too big for any one member-state to manage alone – especially with such close proximities of one island nation to another – there are times when there must be a cross-border multi-lateral coordination – a regional partnership. This is the vision that is defined in the book (Pages 12 – 14), starting with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

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

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

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. …

The Go Lean roadmap is not a call for a revolt against the governments, agencies or institutions of the Caribbean region, but rather a petition for a peaceful transition and optimization of the economic, security and governing engines in the region. To establish the security optimization, the Go Lean book presents a series of community ethos that must be adapted to forge this change. In addition, there are these specific strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to apply:

Community Ethos – new Economic Principles Page 21
Community Ethos – new Security Principles Page 22
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Impacting the Greater Good Page 34
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Defense Pact to defend the homeland Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Homeland Security – Naval Operations Page 75
Tactical – Homeland Security – Militias Page 75
Implementation – Assemble – US Overseas Territory into CU Page 96
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up Page 102
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence Page 120
Planning – Ways to Model the EU – Constructs after WW II Page 130
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism – Mitigate Risky Image Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories Page 244

Now is the time to lean-in to this roadmap and “fight” for Caribbean change, as depicted in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. At this time, there are no State Actor adversaries – like Imperial Japan – seeking to cause harm to our homeland, but that status quo can change very quickly. Some Caribbean member-states are still de facto “colonies”, so enemies of our colonial masters – France, Netherlands, US, UK – can quickly “pop up”. We must be ready and on guard to any possible threats and security risks.

The movement behind the Go Lean … Caribbean book seeks to make this homeland a better place to live, work and play. Since the Caribbean is arguably the best address of the planet, tourism is a primary concern. So security here in our homeland must take on a different priority. Tourists do not visit war zones – civil wars, genocides, active terrorism, Failed-States and rampant crime. Already our societal defects (economics) have created such crises that our people have chosen to flee as opposed to “fight”. We do not need security threats as well; we do not need Failed-States. We are now preparing to “fight” (exert great efforts), not flee, to wage economic war to elevate our  communities.

This will not be easy; this is heavy-lifting, but success is possible. The strategies, tactics and implementations in the Go Lean roadmap are conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix A – Reference Notes:
1.  Harry Elmer Barnes, “Summary and Conclusions,” in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace:A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath (Caldwell, Id.: Caxton Printers, 1953), pp. 682–83.
2.  All quotations in this paragraph from George Morgenstern, “The Actual Road to Pearl Harbor,” in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, pp. 322–23, 327–28.
3.  Quoted ibid., p. 329.
4.  Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (NewYork: Free Press, 2000).
5.  Stimson quoted in Morgenstern, p. 343.
6.  Stimson quoted ibid., p. 384.

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Appendix B – About the Author:

Robert Higgs is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from JohnsHopkinsUniversity, and he has taught at the University of Washington, LafayetteCollege, SeattleUniversity, the University of Economics, Prague, and GeorgeMasonUniversity.

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Appendix C – About the Independent Institute:

The Independent Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan, scholarly research and educational organization that sponsors in-depth studies of critical social and economic issues.

The mission of the Independent Institute is to boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity.

Today, the influence of partisan interests is so pervasive that public-policy debate has become too politicized and is largely confined to a narrow reconsideration of existing policies. In order to fully understand the nature of public issues and possible solutions, the Institute’s program adheres to the highest standards of independent scholarly inquiry.
Source: http://www.independent.org/aboutus/

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Remembering George H.W. Bush and ADA

Posted on December 3, 2018 in Government, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Old age is justice; it is when able-bodied people and disabled people become equally disabled.

We are being reminded of this sad reality of aging by the life-and-death of the 41st President of United States of America. At the end of his life, this able-bodied man (former war hero) was bound to a wheelchair.

The United States is mourning the death of its ex-president (1989 – 1993), George H. W. Bush. Wednesday December 5, 2018 is set-aside as the National Day of Mourning.

“The best 1 term president in the history of the country” – as declared by George W. Bush, the eldest son and subsequent president (#43 2001 – 2009).

Who’s best? Who’s the greatest? These are all questions for historians to consider. But for one group of Americans – Persons with Disabilities – they will surely concur with the “best” and “greatest” tag to George H.W. Bush because of one reason, his passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – presents this landmark ADA legislation as a model for emulation and adoption in the Caribbean. The book provided this ADA summary (Page 228):

The Bottom Line on the American with Disabilities Act (ADA)
This Act is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, and later amended with changes effective January 1, 2009. The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. Disability is defined by the ADA as “…a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.” The determination of whether any particular condition is considered a disability is made on a case by case basis. Certain specific conditions are excluded as disabilities, such as current substance abuse and visual impairment that is correctable by prescription lenses. [ADA is based on the premise of] reasonable accommodation – an adjustment made in a system to “accommodate” or make fair the same system for an individual based on a proven need. Accommodations can be religious, academic, or employment related. This provision is also prominent in international law as the United Nations has codified the principle in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. [There are many international signatories to these principles and resolutions].

The ADA allows private plaintiffs to receive only injunctive relief (a court order requiring the public accommodation to remedy violations of the accessibility regulations) and attorneys’ fees, and does not provide monetary rewards to private plaintiffs who sue non-compliant businesses. Unless a state law provides for monetary damages to private plaintiffs, qualified claimants do not obtain direct financial benefits from suing entities that violate the ADA. [Thus, no “professional plaintiffs”!]

Listen to this relevant AUDIO Podcast from today (December 3, 2018):

AUDIO Podcast – Americans With Disabilities Act Signed By George H.W. Bush Expanded Rights Of Millions –  https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/12/03/americans-with-disabilities-george-hw-bush

Published December 3, 2018 – President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law in 1990. It was landmark legislation that expanded rights and protections for millions of people. Bush, who died Friday at age 94, played a key role in its passage.

Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson talks with Marian Vessels, director of the Mid-Atlantic ADA Center in Maryland, who was at the ADA’s signing.

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

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

The book 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):

ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, mental health, obesity and smoking cessation programs. …

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.

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

The Go Lean book 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 – to benefit all people, able-bodied and the disabled. One specific advocacy addresses the needs of Persons with Disabilities. See the sample plans, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 228 entitled:

10 Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities

1 Lean-in for Treaty for a Caribbean Single Market
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 26 countries, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (per 2010). The CU will empower and enhance the economic engines for the participation and benefit of all people; this includes the number of citizens that may have some physical (deaf, blind, lame, etc.) or mental challenges. The CU’s vision is that this sector represents a critical talent pool that is underserved and underutilized. They will be included in this CU movement, with a Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities (CDA) provision embedded in the treaty. In addition, to the economic missions, the treaty also establishes a security pact, with the mission to fortify homeland security and to mitigate regional threats including a strategic gun control policy.
2 Cruise Ships and Disability Tourism
Since most western democracies have Reasonable Accommodation provisions for their citizenry, many disabled people in the US, Canada and EU countries live full-functioning lives with jobs, disposable income and the manifestation of vacation needs. The CU will incentivize the Cruise industry and tourism properties to make their own “reasonable accommodations” to cater to persons with disabilities. This also applies to the Elder-Care population.
3 Public Transportation and Public Accommodations – Assurance on CU facilities
4 Government Buildings and Proceedings
5 Mental Disabilities and Gun Control
6 Tele-type Call Center Access
The CU advocates e-Government and e-Delivery of government services, therefore call centers will be a primary feature for service delivery. To accommodate deaf residents, guests and trading partners, the CU call centers will be equipped with “Tele-type” terminals and agents with related certifiable skills (including 911).
7 Autism Awareness – Opt-Out Accommodations
8 Braille Websites
9 Closed Captioning … for Television
As the regulator for cross-border radio spectrum, the CU’s Media Regulatory Authority will mandate that all broadcasters provide a closed-captioning option on their channels. This enables the hearing-impaired to have full access.
10 Public Awareness Campaign – Improve Image

The Go Lean movement (book and blogs) have maintained that there must always be the empowerments for Persons with Disabilities. This cannot be left to chance; it must be enacted in law. Thank you for this model President George H.W. Bush. The need for Caribbean empowerments for Persons with Disabilities has been alluded to in many previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14480 Repairing the Breach: Mental Health Realities

Mental Health is a real concern for the population in general and for men in particular. One of the biggest problems is that men rarely want to admit to any problems or seek any help. Yet, the evidence of dysfunction is there: 1. Substance Abuse (Drugs and Alcohol) 2. Suicide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11052 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Mental Disabilities

The creed to protect the Weak from being abused by the Strong is age-old as an honor code. All societies have those that are mentally weak; the Social Contract must allow for protection and remediation of these ones.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Model of Hammurabi

In every society, there are those that are able-bodied and those that are disabled. so there is the need for the authorities to ensure that the “strong should not harm the weak”. This is the legacy of the 3,800 year-old Hammurabi Code.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6836 Role Model – #FatGirlsCan

The Go Lean movement campaigns for reasonable accommodations so that persons in the Caribbean that are differently-abled can live a full and engaging life … and help to elevate their communities. This difference also includes those who are “fat”, overweight or obese.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5901 The Demographic Theory of Elderly Suicide

Failures in health delivery results in suicides. Among senior citizens, this prevalence is due to the fact that they may not consider themselves as relevant in modern society. We can learn from others on health remediation and solutions for Caribbean senior citizens.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5720 Role Model of a Disability Advocate: Reasonable Accommodations

With just a reasonable accommodation, persons with disabilities can live a full and engaging life … and help to elevate their communities and make “home” better places to live, work and play.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2105 Recessions and Public Physical and Mental Health

Mental Health disorders can spark when the economy sours. Public Health officials need to be “on guard” for Mental Health fallout during periods of economic recession.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1751 New Hope in the Fight against Alzheimer’s Disease

Everyone ages, and so Alzheimer’s disease is a guaranteed risk in every community. This is a Mental Health reality that must be planned for, so as to ensure the best outcomes for communities.

As related above, American society is at the matured level now in their Social Contract deliveries. They now expect the standard to be “reasonable accommodations” so that Persons with Disabilities can participate in and contribute to society. This was not always the case, and then George H.W. Bush came along and forge change in American society. This is not the standard in the Caribbean member-states … yet. But part of this reboot effort – the quest of the Go Lean roadmap – is to reform and transform the societal engines to benefit all members of the community, able-bodied or not.

President Bush’s motives with the ADA efforts where not selfish; his legacy of public service is being lauded today leading up to his National Hero’s Funeral. But lo and behold, at the end of his life, he needed the reasonable accommodations he enshrined into law.

In the Caribbean, we need to apply this same lesson: even able-bodied people become disabled; therefore reasonable accommodations need to be ensured in society. Yes, we can benefit ourselves from such empowerments. This will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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In Defense of Trade – Currency Assassins: Real Threat

Posted on November 27, 2018 in Economics, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Want a good return on your investment? How about 45 percent? People have enjoyed these returns in the Foreign Currency Exchange (Fx) Markets.

Sounds appealing, right?!

This is why “they” do what “they” do. Currency Speculators & Vulture Capitalists that is! They can work their “Black Magic” and exploit vulnerable countries-currencies. Imagine the crime: “they” lend or borrow ill-advised monies requiring repayment in a foreign currency; then “they” manipulate supply and demand of the domestic currency against that foreign currency so as “to buy low and sell high”, at the expense of the foreign reserves maintained by a nation-state. Imagine hoarding the supply or artificially inflating the demand of the currency to manipulate a price increase. Boom! Instant profits.

This is the unrighteous work of Currency Assassins, Manipulators and/or Speculators. There are so many dangers of Speculative Attacks. Learn more here (in addition to the Appendix B VIDEO below):

In Economics, a speculative attack is a precipitous acquisition of some assets (currencies, gold, emission permits, remaining quotas) by previously inactive speculators. The first model of a speculative attack was contained in a 1975 discussion paper on the gold market by Stephen Salant and Dale Henderson at the Federal Reserve Board. Paul Krugman, who visited the Board as a graduate student intern, soon [1] adapted their mechanism[2] to explain speculative attacks in the foreign exchange market.[3] – Source.

These ones, who practice these exploits are indeed Bad Actors.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean warns the region to be On Guard for Bad Actors … like these:

… history teaches that with the emergence of new economic engines, “bad actors” will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. – Go Lean book Page 21.

This subject matter is not just academic; this happened for real, even to the large country of Great Britain/United Kingdom; this was the experience of the notorious Black Wednesday:

An example of this can be seen in the United Kingdom prior to the implementation of the Euro [currency] when European countries used a fixed exchange rate amongst the nations. The Bank of England had an interest rate that was too low while Germany had a relatively higher interest rate. Speculators increasingly borrowed money from the Bank of England and converted the money into the German mark at the fixed exchange rate. The demand for the British pound dropped so much that the exchange rate was no longer able to be maintained and the pound depreciated suddenly. Investors were then able to convert their German marks back into pounds at a significantly higher rate, allowing them to pay off their loans and keep large profits.

In a previous Go Lean Commentary, the dangers of currency speculation was identified and qualified:

Venezuela sues black market currency website in US
The Central Bank of Venezuela has filed a lawsuit in US courts against Miami-based entity DolarToday, alleging that this website undermines the Venezuelan bank, currency and economy by falsifying the country’s exchange rates.

Also, in another Go Lean Commentary, the dangers of Economic Assassins – Vulture Capitalists – were identified & qualified:

Beware of Vulture Capitalists
The term “vulture fund” is a metaphor, which can be considered a pejorative term, used to compare hedge funds to the behavior of vulture birds “preying” on debtors in financial distress by purchasing the now-cheap credit on a secondary market to make a large monetary gain, in many cases leaving the debtor in a worse state. …

This dire disposition of debt is … applies to many other communities, in North America, Europe (think Greece), Latin America and even in the Caribbean. …

The better the Credit Rating … the less of a chance to be limited to Vulture Capitalists.

Holy Cow! Economic Assassins; Vulture Capitalists; Currency Speculators; these are truly Bad Actors and a serious threat! Trade & economic stewardship is hard!

In truth, the book Go Lean…Caribbean calls this effort heavy-lifting, as it presents the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to shepherd the Caribbean economy. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the aligning Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). Considering the branding, the emphasis is on trade . The CU/CCB will serve as integrated entities to shepherd the complexities for the region’s currency affairs.

This commentary is the final of a 5-part series (5 of 5) from the movement behind the Go Lean book in consideration of the subject “In Defense of Trade“. A discussion on currency is a discussion on trade. The focus is that for a new economic regime, Trade optimization must be coupled with optimization in monetary governance. The commentaries in the series are as follows:

  1. In Defense of Trade: China Realities
  2. In Defense of Trade: Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Model – ENCORE
  3. In Defense of Trade: India BPO’s
  4. In Defense of Trade: Bilateral Tariffs – No one wins
  5. In Defense of Trade: Currency Assassins – Real Threat

No doubt, despite the identified dangers, there is the need to grow the Caribbean economy. We need the jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities, better educational and healthcare options that would arise because of the embrace of trade. So we must have “Guards at the Gate” to protect our homeland from all Bad Actors. This is the quest of the Go Lean movement. In fact, the books states this quest as prime directives. The prime directives are pronounced as the following statements:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate challenges/threats to ensure public safety for the region’s stakeholders.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance, including a separation-of-powers with member-states, to support these economic/security engines.

These prime directives reflect the best practice for managing Caribbean societal engines – economy, security and governance –  with an interdependent focus. This was pronounced at the outset of the book in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 – 13):

Preamble: … when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

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

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … 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.

There must be New Guards to mitigate the Caribbean advance into trade. This is the charter of the CU Trade Federation. The vision is to provide the stewardship for the region’s economic engines, to optimize trade for intra-region and also extra-regional. This vision details some sound principles for adoption; consider this nugget from Page 129:

Caribbean Dollar
The Caribbean Dollar will be the medium of exchange for trade between CU member-states. There is no need to trade in any foreign currency (i.e. US$). In fact, the Caribbean Central Bank will control the monetary policies of the CU region. Any mis-management of US fiscal policies, often the case with Congress’ deficit spending, would not impede on the necessary trade of one Caribbean state to another.

The CCB will be empowered to intervene in the currency affairs of the region. This constitute the New Guards that will be watching the Caribbean regional marketplace. This is what Central Banks do – should do – and now there will be one for our region:

Currency intervention is a monetary policy operation which occurs when a government or central bank buys or sells foreign currency in exchange for their own domestic currency, generally with the intention of influencing the exchange rate and trade policy. Policymakers may have different reasons for currency manipulation, such as controlling inflation, maintaining international competitiveness, financial stability, etc. – Source

In the Caribbean we have a crisis that stems from our high societal abandonment rate. Every time we have had currency devaluation episodes, a consequence has been citizens fleeing away from their homelands. What is the cause of these episodes? Number 1 reason/answer: Currency Speculators … trying to exploit our vulnerabilities. See this evidence-sample:

  1. Barbados
    Like many small developing countries, Barbados’ capital markets are comparatively unsophisticated and protected by legislative and non-legislative barriers to capital flows. However, by imposing a simple Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) condition, the counterfactual situation of free capital movements and efficient capital markets can be simulated. It is shown that in these conditions successful speculative attacks on the currency anchor would have occurred in times of macroeconomic disequilibrium. This paper is, therefore, supportive of those who, in the wake of the 1990s’ major financial, balance of payments and currency crises, have argued for a more cautious approach to financial and capital account liberalisation, particularly for those countries that have chosen to maintain a fixed currency arrangement.
    Source: Caribbean Development Bank Staff Working Paper May 2000; retrieved November 27, 2018 from: http://www.caribank.org/uploads/publications-reports/staff-papers/wkgppr_2_exchange_rates[1].pdf
  2. Jamaica
    This paper attempts to generate an empirical model aimed at predicting the timing and magnitude of currency depreciation forced by speculative attacks on Jamaica’s managed exchange rate system. The paper is grounded within a first generation approach (‘fundamentals approach’) to speculative attack modeling, which stresses the role played by weak economic fundamentals in inducing currency crises. –
    Source: Bank of Jamaica White Paper; “Estimation of Speculative Attach Models and the Implications for Macroeconomic Policy – 1990 to 2000“; published January 2001; retrieved November 27, 2018 from: http://www.boj.org.jm/uploads/pdf/papers_pamphlets/papers_pamphlets_Estimation_of_Speculative_Attack_Models_and_the_Implication_for_Macroeconomic_Policy.pdf
  3. Dominican Republic
    This paper examines the determinants of speculative attacks that occurred recently in the Dominican Republic, and proposes a series of indicators to serve as an early warning system for identifying vulnerable periods. The estimates were made using monthly data covering the period between January 1996 and June 2008. The results show that the proposed indicators have the ability to reasonably explain and predict the existence of a speculative attack.
    Source: Academic Paper – Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra; “Pressure and speculative attacks on the foreign exchange market of the Dominican Republic“; published November 2008; retrieved November 27, 2018 from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254443014_Pressure_and_speculative_attacks_on_the_foreign_exchange_market_of_the_Dominican_Republic

Here in the Caribbean, we must learn …

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice same on me.

This Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed to address all of this societal engines: economic (monetary), security and governance. The Go Lean book – within its 370 pages – describes how a new Caribbean regime can be empowered to promote and protect trade. The solutions include adopting new community ethos; plus the execution of new strategies, tactics, and implementations to impact the regional economy.  Consider this one advocacy from the book, for optimizing Foreign Currency management. See the specific plans, excerpts and headlines on Page 154 under the title:

10 Ways to Better Manage Foreign Exchange

The Bottom Line on Foreign Exchange Markets

The foreign exchange market is the most liquid financial market in the world. [This is a recent history compared to international commerce in general, with most of the market structure being developed since World War II and after the abandonment of the gold standard. After WWII, the Bretton Woods Accord was signed allowing currencies to fluctuate within a range of 1% to the currencies par; then this structure was eclipsed in the 1970’s, ending fixed rates of exchange and bringing about eventually a free-floating currency system. After 40 years and more iterations, we now have the status quo].

Today, currency traders include large banks, central banks, institutional investors, currency speculators, corporations, governments, other financial institutions, and retail investors. The average daily turnover in the global foreign exchange and related markets is continuously growing. According to the 2010 Triennial Central Bank Survey, coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements, average daily turnover was US$3.98 trillion in April 2010 (vs $1.7 trillion in 1998). Of this $3.98 trillion, $1.5 trillion was spot transactions and $2.5 trillion was traded in outright forwards, swaps and other derivatives. Foreign exchange trading increased by 20% between April 2007 and April 2010 and has more than doubled since 2004.

A foreign exchange market is closest to the ideal of perfect competition, notwithstanding currency intervention (capital controls) by central banks. Totally free markets spurn the development of complex products like derivatives. The 2007 – 2009 Global Financial Crisis demonstrated that free-radical derivative markets do bring systemic threats. (Appendix ZA on Page 315).
1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy

This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 countries, 42 million people and GDP of over $800 Billion (circa 2010). A mission of the CU is to empower the economic engines in the region. The Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) will manage the monetary policy and reserves, taking a long view to the region’s economic vibrancy. The Governors of the CCB will be appointed for 14-year terms, thus insulating them from political alignments. This strategy is necessary for the management of advanced exchange products affecting the region’s capital controls (derivatives will be managed in a controlled environment to assuage against systemic risk).
2 Mixed-Basket of Foreign Reserves

The Caribbean Central Bank will control the money supply of the region with new monetary tools (i.e. Open Market Operations not available before), and using a mixed-basket (modeled after the IMF) of foreign reserves assuage the risk tied to any one Super Power, (a la the US dollar). The tool-kits for capital controls (see Appendix ZA) expand under this management approach. The US decisions are made by and for Americans, the Caribbean gets no vote.
3 Overcome Fear of Math
4 E-Payments Neutralizations
5 Apply Lessons-Learned in Region
6 Currency Manipulators / Speculators

The Caribbean Central Bank will enforce monetary control for amounts exceeding a moderate limit, to assuage currency manipulators from “gaming” and abusing the system for illicit gains. This was a lesson-learned from Jamaica.
7 Realities of Dual Currencies

The CU Treaty does not nullify local currencies, rather the C$ is designed to replace the US Dollar default dominance in the region. As such all regional casinos (except in PR & USVI) will game in C$, not US$. This nullifies “black markets”.
8 Diaspora Realities
9 Euro Zone Model for CU and CCB
10 Add the British Pound Sterling to CCB Basket

Do you want to grow the economy?

Trade … more!

Do you want to trade more?

Be prepared to buy-and-sell foreign currency; and be prepared for foreigners to buy-and-sell your domestic currency.

They will be strangers; some will be nice; some will be Bad Actors – “Currency Assassins”.

This is the reality of global trade and foreign currency: Bad Actors will always merge … some with evil intent.

Currency Assassins … are real!

But we can be better and do better. We can trade with the globe and be On Guard for Bad Actors.

Yes, we can …

Mastering globalization, trade and foreign currency is how we must compete in today’s trade battles. This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap.

Everyone in the Caribbean is urged to lean-in to this roadmap to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

——————-

Appendix A – Understanding the Foreign Exchange Market

Lesson summary

The foreign exchange market is like any other market insofar as something is being bought and sold. However, the foreign exchange market is unique in two ways:

  1. A currencyis being bought and sold, rather than a good or service
  2. The currency being bought and sold is being bought with a different currency.

See remainder of lesson at source here:

Source- Khan Academy e-Learning retrieved November 26, 2018 from: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/macroeconomics/forex-trade-topic/macro-the-foreign-exchange-market/a/the-foreign-exchange-market

——————-

Appendix B VIDEO – Speculative attack on a currency | Foreign exchange and trade | Macroeconomics | Khan Academy – https://youtu.be/P2IWGlR1SHs

Khan Academy
Published on May 8, 2012 – Macroeconomics on Khan Academy: Topics covered in a traditional college level introductory macroeconomics course.

About Khan Academy: Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. We tackle math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more. Our math missions guide learners from kindergarten to calculus using state-of-the-art, adaptive technology that identifies strengths and learning gaps. We’ve also partnered with institutions like NASA, The Museum of Modern Art, The California Academy of Sciences, and MIT to offer specialized content.

For free. For everyone. Forever. #YouCanLearnAnything
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Original Source: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/macroeconomics/forex-trade-topic/macro-the-foreign-exchange-market/v/speculative-attack-on-a-currency

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