Month: January 2019

Ready for February – Black History Month – Encore

Posted on January 31, 2019 in Ethos, Social

While Black History Month is official only in the United States of America, it is recognized elsewhere.

It needs to be …

It should be appreciated, commemorated and celebrated worldwide, because Black History has had an impact worldwide: good, bad and ugly.

So here-now, from a Caribbean perspective, we are ready for February 2019 and all the planned Black History events, activities, stories and remembrances. See this Encore of the previous blog-commentary from 2018 remembering the originator of the concept of setting-aside time for Black History considerations: Carter G. Woodson.

See the full submission of that previous blog, here:

————–

Go Lean Commentary – Carter Woodson – One Man Made a Difference … for Black History

Its February 1st – Black History Month commences…

Believe it or not, this was not always recognized or considered important. It was at the urging of one man that this cultural phenomenon came about. That one man is:

        Carter G. Woodson 

Yes, one man can make a difference. His research and archive accomplishments are fully recognized and celebrated, as is his subject – the contributions of the African-American people in the development of the United States. This high regard for Woodson is not just our opinion alone; today, Google has awarded Woodson with a Google Doodle – see above photo.

Also, see the full Wikipedia reference article on Carter Woodson in the Appendix below.

Though Woodson died in 1950 and the monthly observance started in 1970, he is still credited for the creation and fostering of this cultural phenomenon of Black History Month.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – tracks and monitors the developments of the African-American community. Since the majority population of 28 of the 30 Caribbean member-states is Black, we share the same ancestral heritage (Africa), same colonial origins (slave trade), and same history of societal oppression as American Blacks. Plus the vast majority of our Caribbean Diaspora who fled their homeland lives in the US – one estimate is 22 million.

The Go Lean book posits that one person – an advocate like Woodson – can make a difference (Page 122). It relates:

An advocacy is an act of pleading for, supporting, or recommending a cause or subject. For this book, it’s a situational analysis, strategy or tactic for dealing with a narrowly defined subject.

Advocacies are not uncommon in modern history. There are many that have defined generations and personalities. Consider these notable examples from the last two centuries in different locales around the world:

  • Frederick Douglas
  • Mohandas Gandhi
  • Martin Luther King
  • Nelson Mandela
  • Cesar Chavez
  • Candice Lightner

We must now consider Carter G. Woodson in this ilk; he is deserving of double honor:

Let the elders who preside in a fine way be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard in speaking and teaching. – The Bible 1 Timothy 5:17

The Go Lean book seeks to advocate and teach the Caribbean – and the people who love it; it strives to learn lessons from history and direct regional stakeholders to a Way Forward from the dysfunctional past to a brighter future. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

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

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit – we must unite all of the Caribbean: Black, White, Red and Yellow – that the problems are too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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

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 …

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts … of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts … in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

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 …

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.

The Go Lean movement calls on every man, woman and child in the Caribbean to be an advocate, and/or appreciate the efforts of previous advocates. Their examples can truly help us today with our passions and purpose. Consider this sample of prior blog/commentaries where advocates and role models have been elaborated upon:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12542 Dr. Thomas W. Mason – FAMU Professor & STEM Influencer
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11963 Oscar López Rivera – The ‘Nelson Mandela’ of the Caribbean?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11442 Caribbean Roots: Al Roker – ‘Climate Change’ Defender
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10801 Caribbean Roots: John Carlos – The Man. The Moment. The Movement
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10114 Caribbean Roots: Esther Rolle of ‘Good Times’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948 Caribbean Roots: Sammy Davis, Jr.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9300 Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724 Remembering Marcus Garvey: Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8495 The NBA’s Tim Duncan – Champion On and Off the Court
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328 YouTube Millionaire: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8165 Role Model Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682 Frederick Douglass: Role Model for Single Cause – Death or Diaspora
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866 Bob Marley: The legend lives on!

In summary, we conclude about Carter Woodson as we do about our own Caribbean historians and advocates; we say (Go Lean book conclusion Page 252):

Thank you for your service, love and commitment to all Caribbean people. We will take it from here.

The movement behind the Go Lean book, the planners of a new Caribbean stresses that a ‘change is going to come’, one way or another. We have endured failure for far too long; we have seen what works and what does not. We want to learn from history – the good, bad and ugly lessons. We have looked, listened, learned and lend-a-hand since then. We are now ready to lead our region to a better destination, to being a homeland that is better 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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Appendix Reference Title: Carter G. Woodson 

Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950)[1] was an American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been cited as the “father of black history“.[2] In February 1926 he launched the celebration of “Negro History Week”, the precursor of Black History Month.[3]

[He] was born in Buckingham County, Virginia[4] on December 19, 1875, the son of former slaves, James and Eliza Riddle Woodson.[5] His father helped Union soldiers during the Civil War and moved his family to West Virginia when he heard that Huntington was building a high school for blacks.

Coming from a large, poor family, Carter Woodson could not regularly attend school. Through self-instruction, he mastered the fundamentals of common school subjects by the age of 17. Wanting more education, he went to Fayette County to earn a living as a miner in the coal fields, and was able to devote only a few months each year to his schooling.

In 1895, at the age of 20, Woodson entered Douglass High School, where he received his diploma in less than two years.[6] From 1897 to 1900, Woodson taught at Winona in Fayette County. In 1900 he was selected as the principal of Douglass High School. He earned his Bachelor of Literature degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903 by taking classes part-time between 1901 and 1903. From 1903 to 1907, Woodson was a school supervisor in the Philippines.

Woodson later attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an A.B. and A.M. in 1908. He was a member of the first black professional fraternity Sigma Pi Phi[7] and a member of Omega Psi Phi. He completed his PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was the second African American (after W. E. B. Du Bois) to earn a doctorate.[8] His doctoral dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia, was based on research he did at the Library of Congress while teaching high school in Washington, D.C. After earning the doctoral degree, he continued teaching in public schools, later joining the faculty at Howard University as a professor, and served there as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Career
Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with Alexander L. Jackson and three associates, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History on September 9, 1915, in Chicago.[9][10] That was the year Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration (1918) and The History of the Negro Church (1927). His work The Negro in Our History has been reprinted in numerous editions and was revised by Charles H. Wesley after Woodson’s death in 1950.

In January 1916, Woodson began publication of the scholarly Journal of Negro History. It has never missed an issue, despite the Great Depression, loss of support from foundations, and two World Wars. In 2002, it was renamed the Journal of African American History and continues to be published by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).

…

Woodson believed that education and increasing social and professional contacts among blacks and whites could reduce racism and he promoted the organized study of African-American history partly for that purpose. He would later promote the first Negro History Week in Washington, D.C., in 1926, forerunner of Black History Month.[13] The Bronzeville neighborhood declined during the late 1960s and 1970s like many other inner-city neighborhoods across the country, and the Wabash Avenue YMCA was forced to close during the 1970s, until being restored in 1992 by The Renaissance Collaborative.[14]

He served as Academic Dean of the West Virginia Collegiate Institute, now West Virginia State University, from 1920 to 1922.[15]

He studied many aspects of African-American history. For instance, in 1924, he published the first survey of free black slaveowners in the United States in 1830.[16]

He once wrote: “If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have to worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”

NAACP
Woodson became affiliated with the Washington, D.C. branch of the NAACP, and its chairman Archibald Grimké. On January 28, 1915, Woodson wrote a letter to Grimké expressing his dissatisfaction with activities and making two proposals:

  1. That the branch secure an office for a center to which persons may report whatever concerns the black race may have, and from which the Association may extend its operations into every part of the city; and
  2. That a canvasser be appointed to enlist members and obtain subscriptions for The Crisis, the NAACP magazine edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Du Bois added the proposal to divert “patronage from business establishments which do not treat races alike,” that is, boycott businesses. Woodson wrote that he would cooperate as one of the twenty-five effective canvassers, adding that he would pay the office rent for one month. [But] Grimké did not welcome Woodson’s ideas. …

[Woodson’s] difference of opinion with Grimké, who wanted a more conservative course, contributed to Woodson’s ending his affiliation with the NAACP.

Black History Month
Woodson devoted the rest of his life to historical research. He worked to preserve the history of African Americans and accumulated a collection of thousands of artifacts and publications. He noted that African-American contributions “were overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.”[18] Race prejudice, he concluded, “is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.”[18]

In 1926, Woodson pioneered the celebration of “Negro History Week”,[19] designated for the second week in February, to coincide with marking the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.[20] However, it was the Black United Students and Black educators at Kent State University that founded Black History Month, on February 1, 1970.[21] Six years later Black History Month was being celebrated all across the country in educational institutions, centers of Black culture and community centers, both great and small, when President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month, during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial. He urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”[22]

Colleagues 
Woodson believed in self-reliance and racial respect, values he shared with Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican activist who worked in New York. Woodson became a regular columnist for Garvey’s weekly Negro World.

…

Death and legacy
Woodson died … within his home in … Washington, D.C., on April 3, 1950, at the age of 74.

The time that schools have set aside each year to focus on African-American history is Woodson’s most visible legacy. His determination to further the recognition of the Negro in American and world history, however, inspired countless other scholars. Woodson remained focused on his work throughout his life. Many see him as a man of vision and understanding. Although Woodson was among the ranks of the educated few, he did not feel particularly sentimental about elite educational institutions. The Association and journal that he started are still operating, and both have earned intellectual respect.

Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – retrieved February 1, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_G._Woodson

 

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Justice and Economics – Both needed to forge change

Posted on January 30, 2019 in Economics, Government, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Duels are now a thing of the past – Yippee!!!

Modern civilizations would not tolerate people using violence to avenge their honor or property loss. The new way is to sue in the Court of Law …

… lawsuits are even prevalent when there is the Wrongful Death of an individual:

Wrongful death is a claim against a person who can be held liable for a death.[1] The claim is brought in a civil action, usually by close relatives, as enumerated by statute. …
Many wrongful death claims are based upon death resulting from negligence, for example following a motor vehicle accident caused by another driver, a dangerous roadway or defective vehicle, or medical malpractice.[2] Dangerous roadway claims result from deaths caused in whole or in part by the condition of the roadway.[3]
Source: Retrieved January 30, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_death_claim

While the life of a loved one cannot be substituted for money, it does help to bring justice to the survivors that there is a judgment that “someone” has to pay.

But what if there was a “magic bullet” that can just swipe out the accountability of a valid Wrongful Death claim. There is …

… it’s called bankruptcy!

See this actuality portrayed in this news article here about the recent forest fires in California. People died; there is corporate negligence; there should be a reckoning, accountability and justice. See the full article and VIDEO here:

Title: PG&E to file for bankruptcy following devastating California wildfires
Sub-title: Company blames liabilities, reconstruction costs and ‘increase in wildfire risk resulting from climate change’
By: Hamza Shaban and Steven Mufson

California’s largest power company intends to file for bankruptcy as it faces tens of billions of dollars in potential liability after massive wildfires devastated parts of the state over the past two years, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pacific Gas and Electric said Monday that declaring insolvency is “ultimately the only viable option to restore PG&E’s financial stability to fund ongoing operations and provide safe service to customers.”

The California wildfires, which have killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes, have led to a surge in insurance claims. PG&E estimates that it could be held liable for more than $30 billion, according to the SEC filing, not including potential punitive damages, fines or damages tied to future claims. The company’s wildfire insurance for 2018 was $1.4 billion.

The PG&E bankruptcy promises to be more complex and political than most bankruptcies, pitting fire victims, ratepayers, bankers, insurance companies and renewable-energy providers against one another. Homeowners with property insurance will collect from their insurers, and a person familiar with the bankruptcy planning said that hedge funds are already offering to buy settlement claims from insurance companies.

One casualty of a bankruptcy could be billions of dollars of funding for clean-energy initiatives designed to fight the effects of climate change, Ralph Cavanagh, a California-based energy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in an email. “PG&E is the state’s largest investor in energy efficiency and electric vehicle infrastructure alone, with annual commitments well in excess of $1 billion,” he said. “Other threatened initiatives involve grid upgrades, small-scale ‘distributed’ resources and technology innovation.”

Solar and wind-energy providers are among those who could suffer. In its drive to make the state electricity grid free from carbon dioxide emissions, California has pushed utilities to buy renewable energy. Gabe Grosberg, a utilities analyst at S&P Global, said Monday that “many of the power contracts are above market price” and that a renegotiation of those contracts “is something the bankruptcy judge will take a look at.”

The company said financial alternatives to bankruptcy would not serve the best interests of PG&E and its shareholders and “would not address the fundamental issues and challenges PG&E faces.” Among the many considerations that pushed the company closer to bankruptcy were the need to resolve its potential liabilities, extensive rebuilding efforts and “the significant increase in wildfire risk resulting from climate change,” PG&E said.

PG&E’s shares plummeted Monday, and closed at $8.38 a share, down 52 percent.

[As wildfires rage, California frets over a future of greater perils and higher costs]

The filing comes a day after the company announced the resignation of its chief executive, Geisha Williams. Williams, three other top executives who resigned last week and the company have come under harsh criticism in recent weeks over the utility’s corporate culture. The president of the California Public Utilities Commission had in November widened his investigation of PG&E to include its “safety culture” more generally.

“In our opinion, [PG&E] has significant organizational and leadership problems that have eroded the utility’s trust capital in Sacramento,” the investment advisory firm Height Securities said in a note at the time.

The company was already on federal probation as a result of a 2010 natural-gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif., that exposed violations of the Natural Gas Act and led to obstruction-of-justice charges. The five-year probation period runs through this year.

PG&E said it was required to give employees at least 15 days’ notice before it filed for bankruptcy, which it plans to do “on or about” Jan. 29.

PG&E said that, as of last week, it had about $1.5 billion in “cash or cash equivalents on hand” and was in discussions with “a number of major banks” to secure more than $5 billion to fund its ongoing operations as it seeks bankruptcy protection.

As a regulated utility, PG&E has appealed to the California Public Utilities Commission for higher gas and electric rates to recover costs. And the company has appealed to the California state legislature for protection, asking it to cap liabilities stemming from the fires.

Few politicians want to rush to the defense of a big utility, but many policy experts argue that PG&E wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for a unique California legal standard that makes utilities strictly liable for damages from wildfires linked to their equipment, even if the utilities were not negligent or unreasonable.

“The report of PG&E’s likely bankruptcy is deeply concerning news for the state, fire victims, and ratepayers,” California State Assembly member Chris Holden (D) said in a statement. “We don’t want to see the victims victimized again.” Holden, who has been an ally of PG&E, said he would work with the legislature and the state’s new governor, Gavin Newsom (D), on how to protect fire victims and ratepayers.

Newsom issued a statement saying that he would seek “a solution that ensures consumers have access to safe, affordable and reliable service, fire victims are treated fairly, and California can continue to make progress toward our climate goals.” He said the utility should “honor promises made to energy suppliers and to our community.”

Energy suppliers and the community, however, will join others with unsecured claims. Much of the power over how much they receive depends on how much higher the California Public Utilities Commission is willing to raise rates, PG&E’s revenue source.

PG&E, formed more than a century ago, has been blamed for dozens of major California fires that have started when trees have fallen on power lines, sending sparks onto dry grass or other trees. In response in May to a report by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) regarding October 2017 blazes, PG&E said it prunes or removes about 1.4 million trees a year in an effort to prevent such fires.

The company, which serves about 5.4 million electricity customers and 4.5 million natural-gas customers, also blamed changing weather for exacerbating the task of preventing fires. “Years of drought, extreme heat and 129 million dead trees have created a ‘new normal’ for our state,” the company said.

Moody’s investor rating service warned Nov. 15 that the potential liability of 21 major wildfires in 2017 was roughly $10 billion and that the destructive 2018 Camp Fire, which devastated the town of Paradise, Calif., and killed 86 people, would add further costs. PG&E said the cause of that fire was still under investigation, but Cal Fire is focusing on several of the utility’s transmission lines and towers.

The 2018 fires have compounded concerns about the viability of the company. Its stock has plunged about 80 percent since early November, wiping out about $19 billion of market value.

S&P Global’s Grosberg said that PG&E’s ratings were slashed as “public anger” spread after the Camp Fire, with protesters demonstrating outside a regulatory hearing in late November and in front of PG&E’s headquarters in early December.

“All Californians sympathize deeply with the victims of our recent catastrophes, which caused dozens of deaths and wreaked unprecedented destruction across the state,” the NRDC’s Cavanagh said. “But victims’ interests won’t be served by pushing utilities into bankruptcy, converting wildfire sufferers into one more class of frustrated creditors pursuing inadequate funds.”

Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

Source: Washington Post Daily Newspaper – Posted January 14, 2019; retrieved January 30, 2019 from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/14/pge-file-bankruptcy-following-devastating-california-wildfires/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b0662c33d98e

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VIDEO – California deadly Camp & Woolsey fires, compared by the numbers  – https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/californias-deadly-camp-and-woolsey-fires-compared-by-the-numbers/2018/11/20/7d71bb96-ecd3-11e8-8b47-bd0975fd6199_video.html

Published January 14, 2019 – The wildfires reduced Paradise to ashes and razed much of Malibu’s landscape. (Luis Velarde /The Washington Post)

This foregoing article was composed before hand, with the anticipation that PG&E would file bankruptcy, despite being profitable – see Appendix below. They did file; see here:

January 29, 2019 – Pacific Gas and Electric’s bankruptcy filing on Tuesday, to deal with billions of dollars in wildfire liability, set off a scramble by the company, investors and elected leaders in California to protect themselves and influence what happens next.

The corporate reorganization is shaping up to be one of the most complicated and difficult in recent years. In addition to traditional legal tussles between the company and its creditors and suppliers, the bankruptcy court will contend with demands by California officials and victims to force PG&E to pay damage claims estimated at tens of billions of dollars for wildfires started by its equipment. …
See the full article here; (retrieved January 30, 2019): https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/business/energy-environment/pge-file-bankruptcy.html

This is about the Social Contract – where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights. The important lesson is that to have security and justice, there must be an economic requirement as well. The book Go Lean…Caribbean presents a roadmap to reform and transform the Caribbean societal engines of economics, security and governance. It introduces a new federal government branded the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); this plan asserts that bankruptcy functionality must be elevated to federal jurisdiction rather than remain at the member-state level for processing. The need for justice is the rationale why; (as related here from the Go Lean book):

Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds – Bankruptcy Processing (Page 33)
Upon acceding this treaty, all bankruptcy processing in the region will be assimilated under the CU Federal Courts – applying to individuals, companies and even municipalities – thereby bringing protection to plaintiffs, but also balance and fairness to creditors.

Separation of Powers – Federal Courts (Page 90)
Upon the accedence of this CU Trade Federation, all the bankruptcy processing in the region will be assembled and rolled under the federal courts. These cases apply for individuals, companies and even municipalities. This federalized process will bring protection to plaintiffs, but also will bring balance and fairness to the creditors and avoid abuse by debtors.

Ways to Better Manage Debt – CU Federal Bankruptcies (Page 114)
When debt become too excessive and can no longer be managed by the debtor, the usual solution is bankruptcy. Most advanced economies even allow for governmental entities to avail this privilege. The CU treaty will grant this oversight (and receivership) to CU federal courts, with a mandate to lean towards reorganization, rather than outright dismissal of legitimate debt, though all creditors may have to take a “hair-cut” (minor loss). The courts will appoint direct receivership to Trustees to facilitate the processing of the bankruptcy obligations for municipalities, companies and individuals.

This bankruptcy theme aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15965 Retail Apocalypse and Sears Bankruptcy; Another One Bites the Dust
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15787 Lessons Learned from 2008: Too Big to Fail –vs- Too Small to Thrive
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11647 Righting a Wrong: Puerto Rico’s Bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3311 Detroit to exit historic bankruptcy

If bankruptcies are not regulated with the economic engines, then justice becomes elusive. This is because, as the Go Lean book posits, “bad actors” will always emerge in times of economic optimizations to exploit opportunities, with bad or evil intent. The institutions must be in place to marshal against injustice in society. Once there is a reckoning, it must not be easily undermined with abusive bankruptcy practices.

Everyone in the Caribbean, the people and institutions, are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap for elevation of Caribbean society. The roadmap calls for the heavy-lifting so that justice institutions, including the courts, can execute their responsibilities in a just manner, thus impacting the Greater Good.

We must do the heavy-lifting to ensure justice reigns – no justice; no peace. This is how we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

Download the free e-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 – PG&E Fortune 500 Metrics

PREVIOUS RANK: 157
REVENUES ($M): $17,135
REVENUE CHANGE: -3.0%
PROFITS ($M): $1,646.0
PROFIT CHANGE: 18.2%
ASSETS ($M): $68,012
MARKET VALUE AS OF 3/29/18 ($M): $22,664
EMPLOYEES: 23,000

Source: Retrieved January 30, 2019 from: http://fortune.com/fortune500/pge-corp/

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Bad Partners – Cruise Lines Interactions

Posted on January 27, 2019 in Government, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

So you got a partner …

… he/she should be working towards maximizing the returns for your partnership. Each one should be pursuing what’s best for “us”, not “me”. This is a basic premise for any partnership: think marriage, business, musical band …

A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments or combinations. Organizations may partner to increase the likelihood of each achieving their mission and to amplify their reach. A partnership may result in issuing and holding equity or may be only governed by a contract. – Source: Wikipedia

Here is the partnership objectives that should be operating in our Caribbean marketplace:

Caribbean Port-of-Call: We need travelers to visit our shores and spend money to spur economic activity.

Cruise Line: We need passengers to book our cruises to consume Caribbean hospitality from onboard ships.

But a basic fault seem to be present in this partnership between the Cruise Line industry and their Caribbean ports-of-call:

The relationship appears to be one of détente – easing of strained relations – rather than a true partnership.

“I won’t destroy you if you don’t destroy me”.

While the partnership model may mean hoping that all parties profit, the détente model assumes a posture of mitigating mutual destruction. Yet, destroying the image of a port city is exactly what this cruise ship Captain has appeared to have accomplished in Nassau, Bahamas in December (2018) with the release of this personal Crime-Warning letter:

Discouraging his passengers from consuming a port-city?! That seems counter-productive! That seems counter-partnering!

See this related news article here, depicting the complaint and rebuke of the Bahamas Tourism officials towards this cruise line:

Title: Bahamas persuades Royal Caribbean to tone down warnings about crime in Nassau

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has agreed to stop warning its cruise passengers about increased crime in Nassau and identifying parts of the city to avoid.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation for the island nation, told the Nassau Tribune this week that he employed “gentle nudging” to persuade Royal Caribbean to drop an “unwarranted” passenger advisory being distributed to disembarking passengers of the cruise line’s Anthem of the Seas.

D’Aguilar reached out to Miami-based Royal Caribbean after several cruise industry websites reported on the letter, signed by Anthem of the Seas’ captain Srecko Ban.

“We feel it is important to make our guests aware that Nassau has been experiencing an increase in crime,” the letter said.

A copy of Ban’s letter posted on various websites, dated Dec. 26, pointed out that the most common types of crimes are nonviolent, “such as theft of personal items,” and noted that “thousands of visitors routinely travel to Nassau without incident.”

It went on to provide safety tips and urged visitors to Nassau to be mindful of their personal safety “like visitors to all major foreign cities in the world today.”

Among the tips:

— Leave valuables and irreplaceable items inside your stateroom safe.

— Avoid wearing obviously expensive jewelry

— Carry only cash and credit cards needed on each outing.

— Use discretion when handling cash publicly.

— Keep belongings, especially expensive cameras and phones, secure and in sight.

The letter also recommended guests “not venture too far from tourist areas,” and identified as “particular areas of concern” the Sand Trap, the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay, “and areas of Nassau referred to as ‘Over the Hill’ by locals, which should be avoided after sunset.”

After stories about the letter were posted by such sites as cruiseradio.net and travelpulse.com, D’Aguilar on Dec. 27 told a Bahamas newspaper, the Nassau Tribune, that he felt “blindsided.”

But the Tribune story noted that the Anthem captain’s warning mirrored a January 2018 travel advisory by the U.S. State Department, telling tourists to “exercise increased caution in the Bahamas because of crime” and avoid the Over the Hill and Fish Fry areas at night.

The Canadian government warned tourists to avoid the same two areas in its own advisory on Dec. 20. Both countries’ advisories listed armed robberies, burglaries, purse snatchings, theft, fraud and sexual assaults as the most common crimes against travelers.

The Tribune story quoted D’Aguilar saying he had never heard complaints about the Fish Fry in numerous meetings with cruise line executives.

“I don’t know of any major or significant crime happening to a cruise passenger in quite some time,” he said. “I don’t know about petty crime, but in my humble opinion Nassau is as safe as any other city.”

Despite the warnings, the State Department advisory also reported statistics from Royal Bahamas Police Force Commissioner Anthony Ferguson showing a 14 percent drop in overall crime and a 22 percent drop in violent crime. “The one exception was a 10 percent increased in murders,” the advisory said, adding most reported violent crimes took place in areas not frequented by tourists.

On Monday, the Nassau Tribune posted a follow-up story quoting D’Aguilar saying he convinced Royal Caribbean through “gentle nudging” to withdraw its crime warning and replace it with “a more generalized warning … that does not mention Nassau by name and could be taken as referring to any of its ports of call.”

A story posted Wednesday on BahamasLocal.com, a search engine site, quoted a statement by Royal Caribbean pledging to replace the letters with a generic statement in its daily newsletter urging travelers to “use the same common sense you would in any major city” and consult the U.S. State Department for specific information about any country on the cruise line’s itinerary.

Reached by email Wednesday, Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Tracy Quan verified that the story in BahamasLocal “is accurate.”

The story further quotes Michael Bayley, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, as saying Nassau remains the cruise line’s most popular port of call among more than 300 destinations.

Source:The Sun-Sentinel – South Florida Daily Newspaper – Posted January 2, 2019; retrieved January 24, 2019 from: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-bz-royal-caribbean-bahamas-crime-warning-20190102-story.html

———–

VIDEO – ANTHEM OF THE SEAS – Highlights of Royal Caribbean’s amazing second Quantum-Class-Cruiseship – https://youtu.be/nwsS9PaF94w



Cruiseclips

Published on Nov 14, 2015 – A video produced by: Tobias Bruns in cooperation with: Oceanliner Pictures.com Schiffsjournal.de Special thanks to Royal Caribbean International! Want to book a cruise with the “Anthem of the Seas”? check out www.kreuzfahrten-mehr.de Informations about the ship (german langauge) ausfürhrliches Schiffsportrait auf Schiffsjournal.de: http://www.schiffsjournal.de/schiffsp…

Category: Travel & Events

———–

Related:

Bahamas unhappy with cruise passenger spending: no longer paying incentives to cruise lines.

It’s time to reboot the entire Cruise-Port-City eco-system. This is a familiar advocacy for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, a roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). “Stop competing“, the book urges, and start working together – collaborate, cooperate, confederate – as true partners.

Are there problems? Let’s collaborate to solve them.

You’re not making any profit? Then what changes can we make so that everyone wins.

There are no Bad Guys here; just the need to reboot. The first step is this rebooting must be the strategy of Collective Bargaining. The Go Lean book detailed this strategy (Page 32) early, as follows:

Cruise Line Collective Bargaining – Setting Matters Straight
The CU will collectively bargain with operators to garner more benefits and protections. In general, port cities are not gleaning much income from ship visits. In order to reboot the industry’s economic impact, changes need to be made, rescinding some exploitive rules the ships implemented and adding some new products, like smartcard e-purse options.

In addition, here are some suggestions, as summarized and excerpted from this advocacy in the Go Lean book (Page 193) entitled – 10 Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism:

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market – Negotiate-Bargain as a Collective agent for the region.
2 Quality Assurance Programs
The CU will regulate and enforce high standards among the port-side establishments, therefore eliminating the need for cruise lines to “curry favor” with merchants. A Charge-back eco-system and quality assurance programs like surveys for passenger feedback will be used and the results published extensively.
3 e-Purse Settlement with Central Bank in Caribbean Dollars
4 Port-side Risk Mitigations
Economic crimes against tourists are the jurisdiction of the CU. Therefore crime prevention responsibility rest primarily with the CU for monitoring, investigations and interdictions of systemic and racketeering threats. As such the ship ID cards can feature NFC features for location tagging.
5 Disabled Passengers Accommodations
6 Emergency Management Proactive and Reactive Services

The cruise lines will not go at it alone for emergencies in the region. The CU Emergency Managers will collaborate with cruise line managers for best practices/tactics during hurricane threats. As of late, (2013), Carnival Cruise Lines had a number of bad incidents impacting their cruise operations and generating bad publicity. The CU will deploy emergency support barges on demand, for Cruise lines to quickly respond and return ships to normal services.
7 Medical Escalated Response
8 Co-Marketing with National Tourism Departments, Excess Inventory and One-Way Travel

The Cruise industry should not be considered a competitor of Caribbean tourism, but rather a cooperative partner and even a transportation mode, ship lines could help with sea-lifts. Travel planners should be able to plan one-way cruise travel coupled with air-hotel packages. This option could extend to excess inventory during the slow season.
9 Domestic Market

The CU market of 42 million people also has vacation needs. Cruises should be able to start/end locally in the region, for example a passenger should be able to join a cruise in the Bahamas and complete the circuit back in the Bahamas. The Caribbean represents different cultures, languages, urban and rural destinations, therefore many taste can be accommodated. An alignment with tender boats can also accommodate eco-tourism hand-off to/from cruise ships. These are among the service offerings for collective bargaining negotiations.
10 Shipbuilding Support Services

The CU roadmap calls for fostering a shipbuilding/maintenance industry, so transfer prices and rebates could be offered to cruise lines for in-sourcing shipyard and dry-dock engagements in the CU region. The travel time to CU area shipyards can minimize the downtime for active cruise ships, positively affecting cruise lines cash flows.

More and more cruise ships are equipped with amenities once only available at on-shore facilities; think: ice-skating rink, zip line, go-cart racing, etc. – see foregoing VIDEO. This sends the message to on-island resorts that cruise lines will do Caribbean hospitality without them. This undermines any precept of a partnership.

This theme – trouble in the Cruise-Port-City eco-system – aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15380 Industrial Reboot – Cruise Tourism 2.0
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11544 Forging Change in Cruises: Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635 New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5307 8th Violent Crime Warning to Bahamas Tourists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5210 Cruise Ship Commerce – Getting Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4639 Tobago: A Model for Cruise Tourism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2207 Hotels undermining Cruise Competition with Resort-fees

The problems in cruise tourism are not just in the Bahamas alone; rather all Caribbean port-cities are affected; think Montego Bay, Jamaica; Saint Martin, Grand Cayman, etc.. In summary, the assumed partnership between cruise lines and port-cities needs to be rebooted. In fact, all the societal engines of the Caribbean – economics, security and governance – need to be rebooted. The defects are glaring! But a regional approach, rather than a national focus, allows us the opportunity to finally pursue better strategies, tactics and implementations to improve the tourism product for all.

The effort to improve the Cruise-Port-City eco-system is Day One/Step One in the Go Lean roadmap. These pursuits need to succeed sooner, rather than later.

Let’s do this! Let’s make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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European Reckoning – Black ‘Greco-Roman’ Wrestler victimized for his hair

Posted on January 21, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

We did a reckoning of the European eco-system – called to account their prior actions; demanded they fulfill their obligations – as it relates to the past, present and future of Caribbean relations. We started this reckoning with a look at economic motivations of European society … at the time of the New World exploration and conquest. We wanted to start at the beginning and we assessed that would be economics, not religion.

Pray tell …

The Original Sin of the New World was not slavery, but rather Crony-Capitalism – where private-short-term profits are made at the expense of innocent people, moral values and/or long term benefits. This was the past; we have supposedly “come a long way, Baby”. But have we?

This commentary concludes this 5-part series on European Reckoning. This entry is 5 of 5 in this series from the movement behind the Go Lean book in consideration of White-Christian European interactions with the Caribbean; (White-Christian Europe includes the culture of the North American countries of the US and Canada). Previous submissions in this series addressed both the economic eco-system and the religious reality (hypocrisy); now this entry posits that modern Western society has not reformed as much as advertised. There continues to be racial inadequacies in the West. It raises the question: “when will European, African and Native American people truly live together in harmony?” The answer is not “Today”. But maybe, if we do the reckoning now, the answer can be “Soon”.  At least, this is our quest for the Caribbean.

The other commentaries in this 5-part 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

A consistent theme in this series is that there is both an Old World and New World theater to the European actuality. We now consider that even the Old World was new compared to the previous societal influences – Greece and Rome:

The Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman culture, or the term Greco-Roman, when used as an adjective, as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to those geographical regions and countries that culturally (and so historically) were directly, long-term, and intimately influenced by the language, culture, government and religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is also better known as the Classical Civilisation. In exact terms the area refers to the “Mediterranean world“, the extensive tracts of land centered on the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, the “swimming-pool and spa” of the Greeks and Romans, i.e. one wherein the cultural perceptions, ideas and sensitivities of these peoples were dominant.

This process was aided by the universal adoption of Greek as the language of intellectual culture and commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, and of Latin as the tongue for public management and forensic advocacy, especially in the Western Mediterranean.
…
Culture
In the schools of art, philosophy and rhetoric, the foundations of education were transmitted throughout the lands of Greek and Roman rule. Within its educated class spanning all of the “Greco-Roman” eras, the testimony of literary borrowings and influences is overwhelming proof of a mantle of mutual knowledge.
Source: Retrieved January 21, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_world

There was only one race that comprised that ancient world: White European. The Greco-Roman influences are not just ancient; there are a lot of cultural references in our modern world that derived from the formal Greco-Roman eco-system; sports too. There are many people in White European world that would like to keep it “White”. In fact, the purpose of this commentary is to report on the case of a Black (African-American) New Jersey teenage athlete who was participating in his school’s athletic program as a Greco-Roman wrestler.

Greco-Roman wrestling is a style of wrestling that is practiced worldwide. It was contested at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and has been included in every edition of the summer Olympics held since 1908.[2]This style of wrestling forbids holds below the waist; this is the major difference from freestyle wrestling, the other form of wrestling at the Olympics. This restriction results in an emphasis on throws because a wrestler cannot use trips to take an opponent to the ground, or avoid throws by hooking or grabbing the opponent’s leg.

According to United World Wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling is one of the six main forms of amateur competitive wrestling practised internationally today. The other five forms are Freestyle wrestling, Grappling/Submission wrestling, Beach wrestling, Pankration athlima, Alysh/Belt wrestling and Traditional/Folk wrestling.[3]

Source: Retrieved January 21, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_wrestling

How far has the New World evolved away from the mono-racial Greco-Roman Old World? Plenty. The New World (in this case the US and Canada) is a pluralistic democracy now, home to Europeans, Native Americans, Asians and Africans. But still not evolved enough; there are many segments in the North American population that would dissuade this pluralism.

See this reality portrayed in the news article here:

Title: N.J. wrestler forced to cut dreadlocks still targeted over hair, lawyer says
Sub-title: Video of Andrew Johnson’s haircut during a match last month led to a firestorm of criticism and accusations of abuse of power and racism.
By: Erik Ortiz
Video of a black high school wrestler in New Jersey who was forced to cut his dreadlocks at a match last month led to a firestorm of criticism against the referee and accusations of abuse of power and racism.

But following outcry from the community and the opening of a state civil rights investigation, an attorney for wrestler Andrew Johnson claims officials and referees are still giving him grief over his hair and have an “unrelenting fixation” with him.

In a letter sent Wednesday to the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, the Johnson family’s lawyer, Dominic Speziali, wrote that Johnson initially took a break from competing with his team at Buena Regional High School in Atlantic County so he wouldn’t be a distraction after the Dec. 19 match grabbed national headlines.

During Johnson’s first match back last weekend, the 16-year-old varsity wrestler went through a routine weigh-in and check of his hair and skin. But then, Speziali said, a referee informed a Buena coach that Johnson would have to cover his hair before he could wrestle.

After Johnson’s mother questioned why, she was told “that there was some confusion and it was another wrestler that would have to wear a hair covering, not Andrew,” Speziali wrote.

“However, no wrestler for Buena or Buena’s first opponent wore any type of hair covering,” he continued. “Andrew wrestled in four matches without wearing a hair covering and without any referee raising an issue about his hair.”

Then, on Monday, an official with the state association that regulates athletics and conducts tournaments sent an email to state wrestling officials detailing which hairstyles require the hair to be covered. One image, according to NJ Advance Media, which reviewed the email, was of an unidentified black person with short, braided or dreadlocked hair and closely shaved sides.

But Elliott Hopkins, a director with the National Federation of State High School Associations, which writes the rules for competitions, told NJ Advance Media that the hair shown in the images would not require a covering despite what a state athletics association official had indicated. In general, if a wrestler’s hair “in its natural state” extends past the earlobe or touches the top of a shirt, a “legal hair cover” must be worn, the rules say.

Finally, Johnson’s team was set to compete again Wednesday at a home match. Speziali wrote in his letter that a day before, a referee had already warned Buena’s athletic director that he “planned to require Andrew to wear a hair covering if he intended on wrestling.”

As questions over hairstyle came up again, the match was abruptly canceled just hours earlier without reason.

Now, Speziali said he wants an explanation.

“Yet it appears, for reasons that the Division can hopefully soon unmask, that certain officials have a desire to unnecessarily escalate and prolong this ordeal due on an unrelenting fixation on the hair of a 16-year-old young man that asked for absolutely none of this,” he added.

On Wednesday, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association announced it was also opening an investigation alongside the state to determine whether national rules in regard to hairstyle had been properly enforced.

The initial incident in December was condemned by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Olympic wrestler Jordan Burroughs and film director Ava DuVernay, among others.

The referee at that match, Alan Maloney, who is white, had told Johnson that his hair and headgear did not comply with rules, and that if he wanted to compete, he would have to immediately cut his dreadlocks — or forfeit.

Maloney, who was once accused of calling another referee a racial slur during a March 2016 social gathering, has been suspended pending the outcome of the state investigation. He has not commented publicly about the incident, but his supporters say he was merely enforcing the rules.

David Cappuccio, the superintendent of the Buena Regional School District, has said the district “will continue to support and stand by all of our students and student athletes.”

——–

Erik Ortiz is an NBC News staff writer focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.

Source: HuffingtonPost Online News – Posted January 10, 2018; retrieved January 21, 2018 from: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/n-j-wrestler-forced-cut-dreadlocks-still-targeted-over-hair-n957116

—————-

VIDEO # 1 – School Board meets over Wrestler forced to cut dreadlocks – https://www.today.com/video/school-board-meets-over-wrestler-forced-to-cut-dreadlocks-1410338883938

Published on December 27, 2018

—————-

VIDEO # 2 – Community speaks out after wrestler forced to cut hair during match – https://www.nbcnews.com/video/after-new-jersey-high-school-wrestler-forced-to-cut-hair-during-match-community-speaks-out-in-hurt-anger-1409805379516

Published on December 26, 2018

This is not just a story about sports.

It is not just a story about dreadlocks hairstyle.

It is not just a story about multi-culturalism.

This is a story about racial intolerance, and how some people of the White European persuasion are slow to accept “common ground” with people not of that racial alignment. The reality that we have to reckon with is that the European people have always been slow to accept non-Europeans as Brothers. Some of the people will cooperate all the time, and all the people some of the time, but never all the people all the time.

This is why the standards of right and wrong must be color-blind and enforced at all times. This is the quest for the new Caribbean, to embed this post-racial standard in all societal engines: economics, security and governance. We have always been pluralistic in population, though not pluralistic in power or economics.

The movement behind the Go Lean book has addressed this issue – pluralistic democracy – previously. Consider these prior submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15664 Naomi Osaka’s recipe for success: Caribbean Meld for Sports
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15121 Racist History of Loitering still Valid in US Today – ‘Time to Go’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14541 One Woman – Viola Desmond – Helped Canada become Pluralistic
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13321 Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Multilingual Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13299 Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Respecting Hindu Festival of Diwali
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8186 Respect for Minorities: ‘All For One’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221 Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America

Say it with me:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness …

This premise from the Age of Enlightenment is valid and true on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the Old World of Europe and the New World for Europe. Everybody know this (mentally), but not everyone practices this; there are even some that feel that the White race is superior – even some non-White people:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10933 White is Right – This fallacy is the consensus view for many people!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4840 Jamaican Poll: ‘Bring back the British!’

In the New World, most of the political leaders reflect White European ancestry, even in countries that are majority Black-and-Brown, i.e. Brazil and Mexico. Even when a non-White person becomes “Head of Government”, the international focus is only on the fact that a “minority” is leading the government, rather than the  governing policies or principles. See this conveyed in a sample archive from one Caribbean country:

The act of “Reckoning European” history needs to be done on both sides of the Atlantic, and by all the ethnicities. There is Good and Bad in every population, Black and White. So our societies simply need to do the heavy-lifting to practice being a pluralistic democracy.

There are people in society that do not want pluralism. We must work to foster a society that respects everyone as equal. This is not the America of today, but we can facilitate this more in the Caribbean. The book Go Lean … Caribbean provides a full roadmap of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies 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):

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

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

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.

xxii.  Whereas the heritage of our lands share the distinction of cultural tutelage from European and American imperialists that forged their tongues upon our consciousness, it is imperative to form a society that is neutral and tolerant of the mother tongue influences of our people to foster efficient and effective communications among our citizens.

xxxi.  Whereas sports have been a source of great pride for the Caribbean region, the economic returns from these ventures have not been evenly distributed as in other societies. The Federation must therefore facilitate the eco-systems and vertical industries of sports as a business, recreation, national pastime and even sports tourism – modeling the Olympics.

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

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European Reckoning – Christianity’s Indictment

Posted on January 20, 2019 in Ethos, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

So for many centuries, Europe and Europeans have wielded absolute power on the planet. And this has not always been good for the planet. 🙁

  • Slave Trade & Slavery
  • Colonialism
  • World Wars

Every one of these atrocities yielded millions and maybe even billions of victims.

If only there was a moral guide to lead European society on how they should behave and treat their fellow man.

Wait, wait … this was the job of the Church. So Christianity’s holds the greatest blame for the failures of Europe to be a Good Neighbor.

For her sins are piled as high as heaven, and God remembers her evil deeds. – Revelation 18:5 New Living Translation
(“Her” in this case refers to “Babylon the Great”, identified as the world’s Religious Order).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean highlights the history of European expansion that led to the Caribbean society of today; see Appendix below. This commentary from the movement behind the Go Lean book asserts that the conduct of the Church during the history of the New World (including the Caribbean) is an indictment against Christianity.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Independence Leader and renown Hindu cleric.

The Church felt justified with the Slave Trade, Slavery and Colonialism because of their distorted values to make new disciples at all costs. This was echoed in a previous Go Lean commentary:

There was an earlier Papal Bull that sealed the fate and would prejudice the African Diaspora for 500 years. The African Slave Trade and institution of “Slavery” was legally predicated on a Papal Bull from Pope Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cybo) in 1491; just months before Christopher Columbus’s historic first voyage. Consider this encyclopedic reference:

“In his book “Black Africans in Renaissance Europe”, principal author N. H Minnich*described how the position of Renaissance popes towards slavery, a common institution in contemporary cultures, varied. The book states that those who allowed the slave trade did so in the hope of gaining converts to Christianity.[11] But in the case of Pope Innocent VIII, he permitted trade with Barbary # merchants, in which foodstuffs would be given in exchange for slaves who could then be converted to Christianity.[11]

This commentary continues this 5-part series on European Reckoning. This entry is 4 of 5 in this series from the movement behind the Go Lean book in consideration of the past, present and future of White-Christian European interactions. While this series is on reconciling the European experience, previous submissions addressed European economic leadership. This submission however asserts that the conduct of the Christian-side of White-Christian-European history has been worthy of indictment and the European institutions need to be held to account. Even though the New World and the Caribbean were established by European military power – see Appendix below – the Church was aligned and complicit. 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

The previous submissions in this series established that the US is an extension of the European New World experience. The European Great Powers are identified as the Western Alliance along with the North American countries of the US and Canada. While it is easy to accept the premise that the ancient European value system in the New World was flawed, surely today’s experiences are better, right?

Not so fast! (Notice the statements about White Christian Countries by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Appendix VIDEO below).

The current governing administration in the US, under President Donald Trump, has revealed the continuation of White-Christian-European religious hypocrisy. If not the rest of the world, Caribbean society at least should reckon with this actuality. See this news-opinion article here:

Title – Opinion: Conservative Christians Were The Political Pawns Of 2018
By: Brandi Miller, Columnist

To mark the end of 2018, we asked writers to revisit some of the year’s most noteworthy (for good or evil) events, people and ideas. See the other entries here between now and the new year.

This year, many have found themselves playing the role of political pawns, manipulated to perpetuate political agendas. And President Donald Trump has been the chess master.

From using asylum-seekers in the migrant caravans to push forward violent immigration policy to gathering Black pastors and people like Kanye West to appear sympathetic toward and popular in communities of color, the Trump administration seems to see all people as movable pieces on a game board serviceable to his political agendas.

While most have been forced into being pawns through circumstance and systemic oppression, conservative Christians have voluntarily chosen the role of being the most manipulatable people in the game. These Christians have been politically duped by Trump, who promised movement on their issues of deepest concern without actually following through in significantly measurable ways.

“Some Christians will go to any length to gain and maintain political power, sacrificing Jesus’ values of inclusion and justice.”

If 2017, the first year of Trump’s term, was a year of hype and of creating the illusion of a Christian nation, 2018 has been the year that Trump used his pawns to do his bidding, even at the expense of real Christian values. During his campaign, he promised to defund Planned Parenthood, and in doing so, solidified a conservative Christian base. “Every life is sacred, and . . . every child is a precious gift from God,” Trump declared. “We know that every life has meaning and that every life is totally worth protecting.”

Yet Trump’s administration has made it painfully clear that he doesn’t care about life at all; he simply cares about maintaining a base. He has put children in cages at the border, disregarded the value of Black lives, desecrated Native land with the Keystone XL pipeline, oppressed trans people in the military and regularly dehumanized people through his petulant Twitter tirades.

When Trump needed people to support militarization at the border, he manipulated the traditional values of protecting your family, when he needed to exclude people from predominantly Muslim countries, he leveraged Christian fear about freedom of all other religions. Culminating in the Religious Liberty Task Force introduced by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration has catered to its Christian constituency with a track record of either ignoring or demonizing other people of faith and simultaneously elevating and espousing (politicized) “Christian values.”

When he wanted to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court despite the sexual assault allegations the judge faced, Trump leaned on pro-life values that would appeal to his Christian base. And when he continuously violates all morals and ethics in his personal life, character and communication, he is able to rely on the notion of forgiveness, grace, or Christians choosing to put up with his lesser evils as long as their political motivations are legitimized and backed.

“Trump will continue to be a chess master, moving Christians toward the death of their integrity and the increase of his own power.”

This administration floats on hollow promises and grandiose rhetoric. Trump is a political siren, singing and swaying Christians away from the values of Jesus with the promise of single-issue victories on abortion, religious freedom and a seat at the political table. They seem plenty happy to go along with Trump, to the death of their integrity and the witness they so claim to desire.

It has become more and more clear that some Christians will go to any length to gain and maintain political power, sacrificing Jesus’ values of inclusion and justice in exchange for a front-row seat at this administration’s circus of oppressive activity. The sad irony is that members of Trump’s evangelical Christian base are the least powerful pieces on this political chessboard, mere pawns used to spread Trump’s message of hate and oppression.

Jesus warned against gaining the world and losing your soul, but some Christians have sold out the real Jesus in exchange for American political prestige and acclaim. Until they believe that Jesus himself is worth more than their ideas about him, Trump will continue to be a chess master, moving Christians toward the death of their integrity and the increase of his own power.

——–

Brandi Miller is a campus minister and justice program director from the Pacific Northwest. 

Source: HuffingtonPost Online News – Posted December 29, 2018; retrieved January 20, 2018 from: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-trump-conservative-christians_us_5c267b7de4b08aaf7a9044e4?%20fbclid=IwAR39fH9McWvQGWd0mGs7lly7F8sj3JFAvuS5GzjbAcPscj7rRAhAaLw-60w

The movement behind the Go Lean book has addressed this issue – religious hypocrisy – in previous blog-commentaries. Consider these prior submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16477 Transforming Hindus versus Women – What it means for us?
Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and other religions have been guilty and failed to protect their congregants and adherents from the bad orthodoxies in their communities! The new Caribbean must do better.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16172 A Lesson in History: Jonestown, Guyana

40 years ago – 1978 – a religious atrocity transpired on Caribbean soil; this was the mass-murder/suicides of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15998 Good Governance: The Kind of Society We Want
The kind of society we want to live in is even better than what was/is prescribed by Christian institutions; we want our vulnerable citizens to be protected from “Bad Actors” in our society. This must mean “Good Governance” at a standard beyond the status quo of what was provided by the nominal Christian standards left here by the Europeans.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15580 Caribbean Unity? Religion’s Role: False Friend
The Church has NOT been a uniting force … for good in the Caribbean region. All the European colonizers brought their own national religions that did not promote the Greater Good for the region.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14633 Nature or Nurture: Women Have Nurtured Change
Despite the religious orthodoxy and discouragement – “Natural Law” philosophy inherited from Imperial Europe – women have forged change in society; they have effectively applied pressure to all engines of society. The Caribbean needs to encourage and invite more women’s participation for change.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13579 Colonialism’s Bloody History Revisited
The bloody history of European (and American) colonialism have been revisited in modern times again and again. There must be a strenuous effort to dissuade societal defects and orthodoxies. (Colonialism is not dead with 18 Overseas Territories in the Caribbean region).
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11224 ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ – Leaders Undermine Tourism
Christian leaders in Caribbean communities are projecting “a Climate of Hate” towards certain minority groups. This is so bad that it undermines the tourism products and community economics.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Model of Hammurabi
The old “Code of Hammurabi” – “that the strong should not harm the weak” was not considered in the New World because of the assumption of Christian principles. But it turns out that our region went backwards instead of forward. Time to return to a protect-the-weak stance.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10216 Waging a Successful War on Orthodoxy
It takes a real battle to undo bad standards and orthodoxies in society – many of them religious.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9766 Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologize for genocide
The Church was not a force for moral good in modern society … in Africa nor the Caribbean. The Bishops in Rwanda owned up and apologized for their complicity in their 1990’s genocide.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9038 Charity Management: Grow Up Already!
The Caribbean is urged to mature and handle its own Charity Management rather than submitting to faith-based NGO’s with shady track records.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5462 In Search Of The Red Cross’ $500 Million In Haiti Relief
The Red Cross is a quasi-Christian organization; they abused their power by collecting $500 Million for Haiti’s Earthquake Relief/Recovery and misappropriating the funds.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=809 Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls
The Islamic religious orders also have a bad track record for protecting their vulnerable populations.

For the Caribbean and the rest of the world, European-based Christian churches have not been a model for good behavior and character development that we needed to elevate and empower our society. For the Way Forward, our ideals must be Greater. The Go Lean book specified the required “Separation of Church and State” mantra that is embedded in the implied Social Contract. The Go Lean book defines (Page 170) the Social Contract as follows:

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

The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that the Greater Good community ethos – underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices – would be better to promote in the Caribbean region, rather than some hypocritical European religious creed. The formal Greater Good ethos can be pursued despite any religiosity. This book defines this Greater Good community ethos as follows (Page 37):

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

Reconciling and reckoning European history in the Caribbean leads us to the conclusion that there is the need to double-down in reforming and transforming the Caribbean homeland. Our efforts for the Way Forward must be better than the previous European models – based on Christian orthodoxy – and better than the American model – Donald Trump has revealed the true American priorities and it is not us. We must simply be better. The book Go Lean … Caribbean provides a full roadmap; one with empowerments, strategies and tactics to elevate the societal engines of the Caribbean homeland.

Yes, we can do better; 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 (Page 12):

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

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

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

—————

Appendix – The Guianas Historic Timeline  

Source: Go Lean … Caribbean book – Page 307

—————

Appendix VIDEO – Putin: US Not A White Christian Country Anymore – We Europeans Need To Preserve Our Culture – https://youtu.be/h4YfPbvL9Gk

Russia Insight

Published on Oct 18, 2017

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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.

——————-

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 – China seeks to de-Americanize the world’s economy

Posted on January 18, 2019 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

How did the world measure money and wealth in the past? Simple: Gold.

Then in 1971, the US changed from the Gold Standard … to a Non-Gold Standard or Fiat money. (The Gold Standard refers to the monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. Most nations abandoned the gold standard as the basis of their monetary systems at some point in the 20th century). Now the value of American money is measured by “American money” (declared value). But wait, wait: the rest of the world’s money is also now measured by American money – the world measures money and wealth by US Dollars! (See the Appendix VIDEO below).

Even in Europe; when the Euro currency was launched in 1999, it was pegged close to the US dollar 1-to-1.17. Today, the world’s economy is measured by US Dollars (USD) and the Euro, which continue to be the primary reserve currency of most commercial and central banks[54]. The Dollar is first and the Euro is the second most widely held international reserve currency. As of August 2018, with more than €1.2 trillion in circulation, the Euro has one of the highest combined values of banknotes and coins in circulation in the world, having surpassed the U.S. dollar.[13]

Now the rest of the world – China most definitely – wants to de-Americanize the world’s economy. The world’s population is nearly 7 billion people, while the combined populations of the US and the EU is a little less than 1 billion; (340 million + 508 million respectively). There are some Big countries and Big economies at stake: think China with their 1.3 Billion people or India with their 1.2 Billion.  It is therefore logical to contemplate de-Americanizing the world’s economy – it makes so much sense. In addition, at the time of this writing, the US is in the midst of a federal government shutdown … again.

It is therefore plausible, viable and prudent for non-American stakeholders to want to be shielded from American chaos. See this reasoning in this White Paper here; published by the Government of Canada:

Title: Chimerica – The Beginnings of a New Regional Reserve

What is it?
Chinese concerns over the ability of the U.S. to manage its debt have led to recent calls by China to “de-Americanize” the world economy and seek an alternative to the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency.1 As far back as 2008, China proposed the need for a new international currency reserve which would limit the importance of any one national currency.2

In recent times, the U.S. economy has avoided a debt crisis by raising the debt ceiling level. Any adjustment has the potential to impact the Chinese economy, given the level of exposure to U.S. securities. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has amassed US$3.5 trillion in foreign reserves – largely U.S. Treasury securities. The fact that a single institution wields so much influence over global macroeconomic stability has caused considerable anxiety, with doomsayers predicting that doubts about U.S. debt sustainability will force China to sell off its holdings of U.S. debt. This would drive up interest rates in the U.S. and ultimately could trigger the dollar’s downfall.

However, selling off U.S. Treasury securities may not be in China’s interest, as it would drive up the renminbi’s (RMB) exchange rate against the U.S. dollar, diminishing the domestic value of China’s reserves and undermining the export sector’s competitiveness. Indeed, a U.S. Defense Department report last year on the national security implications of China’s holdings of U.S. debt concluded that “attempting to use U.S. Treasury securities as a coercive tool would have limited effect and likely would do more harm to China than to the [U.S.].”3

U.S. debt is only one side of the coin. Economist Robert Shiller believes that the real estate bubble is a serious problem in China.4 According to Shiller, people are buying apartments in the expectation that house prices will continue to rise. This gambling mentality is leading them to make completely irrational buying decisions. Slowing economic growth and exports has the potential to expose a serious financial bubble in the Chinese housing sector. The banking sector in China would need to be recapitalized should the Chinese housing bubble burst.

Why is it important?
The symbiotic relationship between Chinese export-led growth and U.S. consumption is such that should one economy falter the other will follow. Both of these disruptors exist against a backdrop of rising bilateral trade using national currencies and a call by the International Monetary Fund for a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar.5

Research by AMRO-Asia, the chief economists of ASEAN+3, finds that while the U.S. remains the anchor currency in the Asian region, the U.S. dollar has “seemingly lost its dominating status.”6 At the same time, the weight of the RMB in regional currency baskets has been increasing since 2005.7  8 The rise of the RMB as the Asian regional reserve has implications for regional trade and global growth. In the long run, the success of the U.S. economic pivot to Asia is likely to be slowed by the rise of the RMB and the corresponding decline in U.S. economic power. Over the last decade, U.S. growth has been facilitated by Chinese holdings of U.S. securities. Questions remain as to whether a decoupling in the long run will have a positive outcome for China and the U.S. as well as global growth.

References

  1. Puzzanghera, J. “Upset over U.S. Fiscal Crisis, China Urges a ‘de-Americanized World’.” Los Angeles Times. October 2013. http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-china-debt-limit-shutdown-de-americanized-economy-20131014,0,1990632.story#ixzz2mwhEb6II(link is external)
  2. Landler, M. “Seeing its Own Money at Risk, China Rails at U.S.” The New York Times. October 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/us/politics/china-rails-over-us-fiscal-crisis-seeing-its-own-money-at-risk.html?_r=0(link is external)
  3. Morrison, W. and M. Labonte. “China’s Holdings of U.S. Securities: Implications for the U.S. Economy.” (CRS Report for Congress.) Congressional Research Service. August 2013. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34314.pdf(link is external)
  4. “2013 Nobel Prize winner: China’s real estate bubble is serious.” People’s Daily Online. October 2013. http://english.people.com.cn/business/8427784.html(link is external)
  5. Snyder, M. “Shift From U.S. Dollar As World Reserve Currency Underway – What Will This Mean For America?” munKnee. http://www.munknee.com/shift-from-u-s-dollar-as-world-reserve-currency-underway-what-will-this-mean-for-america/(link is external)
  6. Chen, C., R. Siregar and M Yiu. “RMB as an Anchor Currency in ASEAN, China, Japan and Korea Region.” ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office. April 2013. https://www.cb.cityu.edu.hk/ef/doc/Conference%20on%20Renminbi%20and%20the%20Global%20Economy/papers/Chuling%20Chen.pdf(link is external)
  7. Chong, F. “Is RMB Approaching Safe Haven Status?” Asia Today International. June 2013. http://asiatoday.com.au/content/rmb-approaching-safe-haven-status(link is external)
  8. Irwin, N. “This one number explains how China is taking over the world.” Washington Post. December 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/03/this-one-number-explains-how-china-is-taking-over-the-world/

Source: Government of Canada – Posted September 28, 2018; retrieved January 17, 2019 from: http://www.horizons.gc.ca/en/content/chimerica-%E2%80%93-beginnings-new-regional-reserve

This commentary continues a 5-part series on European Reckoning. This entry is 2 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 the Caribbean were all settled and organized by European powers, the lack of organizational efficiency for our benefit is a glaring concern. We have 30 member-states in the Caribbean region and yet, there is no coordinated regional stewardship of the economic, fiscal and monetary affairs 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 submission of this series, the European Great Powers were also identified as the Western Alliance. It’s comprised of only White/Christian European nations and North America (US & Canada). It is understandable therefore if Asian, African or Latin American people do not feel adequately represented in the governance of the world’s economy. Yes this status quo is flawed. The US, being the dominant currency in global trade has proven fraught with deficiencies. The aft-mentioned “shutdown” – when Congress fails to pass sufficient appropriation bills or continuing resolutions to fund federal government operations and agencies, or when the President refuses to sign such bills or resolutions into law – is not the first one. In fact, there have been these previous shutdowns in the last 40+ years:

Since 1976, when the current budget and appropriations process was enacted, there have been 22 gaps in budget funding, 10 of which led to federal employees being furloughed. – Source: Wikipedia

The world must not wait for the US to get their political house in order before we can do business. China is a strong advocate for this de-Americanizing effort. Does this mean they want to supplant the US Dollar for their own Renminbi? (This is the currency of the People’s Republic of China, the basic unit of which is the yuan). If the answer to this question is Yes, then that would be China’s prerogative to address the needs of their economy.

Our focus in the Caribbean, must be first and foremost the Caribbean.

The advocacy of the movement behind the Go Lean book is to implement the institutional solutions to do the heavy-lifting ourselves to manage our own economic, fiscal and monetary affairs.

  • Not to be a parasite of the United States of America or Europe.
  • Not to be a parasite of China.

The proposed solution is the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB); this is structured as a formal “cooperative” among the region’s existing Central Banks. The CCB is modeled upon the European Central Bank (ECB), the same as the Caribbean Union is modeled upon the European Union. This CCB institutional strategy also calls for the introduction of a regional currency, the Caribbean Dollar (C$). The CCB will therefore be the sole controlling agent of the monetary policies of this regional C$ currency.

Introducing and implementing a new currency is a Big Deal. But yes, we can succeed! We have a proven track record – the Euro – to model and learn from. This theme of technocratic monetary and currency stewardship has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15923 Industrial Reboot – Payment Cards 101
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=13365 West African Case Study: ECOWAS to Launch ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10585 Two Pies: Economic Plan for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513 Transforming ‘Money’ Countrywide – Lessons Learned from India
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8704 Lessons Learned from NYC’s Transit Currency: MetroCard
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8381 Caribbean Economic Fallacy: Casino Currency US Dollars Only
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034 The Future of our Money – C$ Currency & Mobile Payment Systems
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425 Caribbean Dollar Reality: Cash/Coin, Payment Cards and iPhone
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3814 Lesson Learned from the Swiss Currency Management
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906 Implementing a Regulatory framework to dissuade ‘risky’ currecy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833 One currency, divergent economies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360 Why need local/regional currency? To Create Money from Thin Air

Having the American Dollar regulate the world economy has not been good … for anyone but America, when “they” are operating in a Situation Normal. But today, and 22 times in the last 43 years that they have had government shutdowns, it is Situation Normal All Foul Up (SNAFU). Moving that currency functionality to the Euro may be more of the same: there is also discord in the Euro lands – think Brexit and the Greece Sovereign Debt crisis.

What about moving the “world currency” functionality to China, or India, or Japan? Again, while these moves may be good for those countries, they may not necessarily be as good for the rest of the world, or our world in the Caribbean. This is what independence should mean to us: taking care of our own economic, fiscal and monetary needs. Even better than independence would be a regional interdependence among just our Caribbean neighbors.

Now is the time for the Caribbean region to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation and the Caribbean Central Bank, as described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are vast and varied, but first we stop being a parasite of these European-North American (White) World Powers; not parasites, we become protégés instead.

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.

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.

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Appendix VIDEO – How The U.S. Dollar Shaped The World Economy – https://youtu.be/EbJk1za74kE

NBC News
Published on Dec 21, 2014 – The official currency of the United States, the Federal Reserve Note, marks 100 years since it was first printed. Matt Rivera tracks the rise of the world’s reserve currency.

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How The U.S. Dollar Shaped The World Economy | Long Story Short | NBC News

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See an alternative yet relevant VIDEO here: https://youtu.be/CQMiNu6FI4M

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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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On Martin Luther King’s 90th Birthday – America is still ‘Dreaming’ – ENCORE

Posted on January 16, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Today – January 15, 2019 – would have been the 90th birthday for American Civil Rights hero Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968). Though an American drama, MLK was impactful for the entire world and every Civil Rights struggle. An assassin’s bullet ended his life of sacrifice on April 4, 1968.

“I have a dream …”

In contemplating the life and legacy of MLK, a great question comes to mind:

Has America achieved that vision of racial equality or is the country still dreaming?

This is an important question for the Caribbean, as more and more of our people “break down the door to get out” of their homeland to flee to America. Of our entire Diaspora, estimated between 10 and 25 million people, the United States of America is the Number 1 destination.

This question was asked and answered comprehensively in a previous blog-commentary on January 18, 2016. It is only appropriate to Encore that submission now, as follows:

============================================

Go Lean Commentary – Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America

We join the nation today to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. This day is an opportunity to honor Dr. King and his legacy.CU Blog - Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America - Photo 1

Born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. King was a well-respected activist, scholar, pastor and humanitarian. Although his life was brief, Dr. King’s accomplishments in the civil rights movement and social justice are echoed throughout the world still today. Considered to be one of the greatest non-violent leaders in world history, Dr. King’s exceptional achievements used the power of legislation and social change.

As an advocate for freedom and non-violent resistance, Dr. King offered the power of words through public protests, grassroots organizing, and powerful sermons to achieve nearly insurmountable goals. He fought against racial segregation and poverty, advocated for international peace, and eliminated lasting barriers to voting for African-Americans.

In honor of his work, Dr. King received numerous awards during his lifetime including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He continues to be remembered as one of the most lauded African-American leaders in history, often referenced by his 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream.” – Corporate Intranet Website for Credit Acceptance Corporation, Southfield (Detroit), Michigan; retrieved January 18, 2016.

“Ditto”, for the promoters of the book Go Lean … Caribbean and accompanying blogs advocating for change in the Caribbean. Dr. Martin Luther King proved that “one man can make a difference” – a frequent theme of this Go Lean movement. He thusly serves as a role model for current and future Caribbean advocates, activists and humanitarians hoping to impact the Greater Good in their homeland.

Based on these accomplishments, one would think honoring Dr. King with a street-naming would be a simple task.

One would think!

Let us see how far America has progressed regarding race relations, in the naming of streets after Martin Luther King, in one town after another!

Consider this encyclopedic source – a website:

Title: A street fit for a King?
Website: Politics of Naming Streets for Martin Luther King, Jr. – Retrieved January 18, 2016: http://mlkstreet.com/

Naming streets is one of the most widespread and contentious ways of commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.  Debates over whether to name a street for King and which specific street to identify with him have led to the boycott of businesses, protest marches, court actions, petition drives, the vandalizing of roads, and even activists chaining themselves to street signs.

Honoring King with a street name is often controversial when the road in question challenges long-standing racial and economic boundaries within communities.  While few scholars have studied the King street naming phenomena, the naming process is an important indicator of local political tensions as well as broader debates about race, memory, and place in America.

CU Blog - Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America - Photo 2I have studied the politics of naming streets after King for the past several years, seeking to understand the obstacles that face street naming proponents and the various strategies that communities have pursued in finding a street fit for remembering King. In many instances (but not all), public opposition has led King’s name to be socially and geographically marginalized within cities, which has worked to stigmatize these streets and create public anxiety about renaming more prominent streets.  As a cultural geographer, my work stresses the importance that location–the street’s site, situation, and scale within the city’s larger social landscape–plays in shaping the meaning of King’s commemoration.    Believing that my research and perspectives can be of some help to the public, I have set up this web page as a resource for engaging and assisting the movement to remember the civil rights leader.

Below (Appendix A) are some research papers that I have written about naming streets for King as well as some questions that I frequently encounter in my discussions with journalists and street naming stakeholders (proponents and opponents).  If you have a question not listed here, email me and I will try to provide some feedback.

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Site established to spread information and commentary on the (re)naming of streets for slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. with the hope of informing public debate.

If you use any information or statistics from this site, please cite the source (Appendix C) as: Derek Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN.

To the uninitiated, one would think the year is 1956, rather than 2016; see the VIDEO (Appendix D) of the documentary “MLK Streets Project”. One would think that such a racially-charged society was only representative of the America of old; that now America has transformed, to the point that the President is of African-American descent. But it must be concluded that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The issue in the foregoing encyclopedic source (and the below VIDEO) relates the true disposition of the America many Caribbean citizens emigrate to, or want to. There is a great lure for Black-and-Brown Caribbean immigrants to come to America. But these portrayals/depictions would be the atmosphere that the new arrivals would have to navigate. Perhaps the shining light of that Welcome Sign should be dulled a little.

This consideration is brought to focus by the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the economic optimization in the region. One mission of the roadmap is to minimize the “push-and-pull” factors that contribute to the alarming high abandonment rate of Caribbean citizens – one report reflects a 70% brain drain rate.

The Go Lean book posits that when the economic engines are not sufficient that people will flee, abandon their homelands, despite the love of family, friends and culture and endure all obstacles to secure a better livelihood. This has been the reality for all of the Caribbean, even the American member-states (Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands). So is the “grass greener”, is life in the American urban communities better that the status quo in the Caribbean? Considering the actuality of Caribbean emigrants, and the fact that there is no migration in the opposite direction, the answer must be true.

Sad! If only, there would be a better option for the Caribbean?

The book and movement Go Lean…Caribbean present that option!

This CU/Go Lean roadmap provides the turn-by-turn directions with the following 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 protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The roadmap posits that the United States of America should not be viewed as the panacea for Caribbean ailments; that when the choices of a challenge is “fight or flight” that Caribbean society must now consider the “fight” options. (No violent conflict is being advocated, in emulation of Martin Luther King, but rather a strenuous effort, heavy-lifting, to compete and win economic battles).

Are there social issues in America that are more important than street naming?

CU Blog - Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America - Photo 3Proponents for naming streets for King often encounter the argument that African Americans should concern themselves with civil rights issues “more important” than street naming.

No doubt, there are a large number of worthy social and economic issues in need of addressing. At the same time, it is worth thinking about how the naming of roads is not necessarily separate from the larger racial/social justice picture. Naming streets for King can signal something very important about the willingness (or unwillingness) of the larger community to invest in African Americans, thus providing (or failing to provide) a platform on which to bring about more “substantive” change and improvement. When that community refuses to do something as seemingly minor as naming street, what does that say about the degree to which the community is really ready or willing to take on the “tough” issues?

I have argued in my research that the street naming issue is about the struggle to be seen and heard within public space, an important civil right in and of itself and one arguably necessary for other rights to be realized. Plus, we can also think about how street naming can be coupled with other larger and “more important” social and economic campaigns on streets in America, such as community redevelopment.

The problem is NOT that street naming is inherently less important. Rather it is the limited ways in which we imagine street naming as a social and political tool.  The photo above, from a street naming struggle in Melbourne, Florida, captures the deep emotions that proponents and opponents attach to the street renaming issue.  Street naming proponents in Melbourne were especially vocal about how honoring King was part of a larger campaign against racism. – Professor Derek Alderman.

As related in the foregoing article/VIDEO, America is not so welcoming a society for the “Black and Brown” populations from the Caribbean – and yet they come, they are in the USA and their numbers cannot be ignored. Here is the need for the heavy-lifting, to effect change to dissuade further brain drain and in reverse to incentivize repatriation. While not ignoring the “push” reason that cause people to flee, the book stresses (early at Page 13) the need to be on-guard for this fight in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

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.

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

xxvi.    Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

This commentary previously related details of the Caribbean Diaspora experience, the “push-and-pull” factors in the US, and the American record on Civil Rights. Here is a sample from earlier Go Lean blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7204 ‘The Covenant with Black America’ – Ten Years Later
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6722 A Lesson in History – After the Civil War: Birthright Mandates
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6434 ‘Good Hair’ and the Strong Black Woman
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527 American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5333 American Urban Segregation Legacies: Cause and Effect
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297 A Lesson in History – Booker T versus Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2222 Sports Role Model – Playing For Pride … And More
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1896 American “Pull” Factors – Crisis in Black Homeownership
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596 Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433 Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546 Book Review: ‘The Divide’: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=209 Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight

For the Caribbean Diaspora, fleeing from their homelands to reside in the US is akin to “jumping from the frying pan into the fire”. While we may not be able to change American society, we can – no, we must – impact our own society. How? What? When? Why? All of these questions are valid, because the answers are difficult. The Go Lean book details the heavy-lifting answers with a roadmap to implement new community ethos, strategies, tactics and operational advocacies to effectuate this goal:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influences Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choice Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Make the Caribbean the Best Address on Planet Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Repatriate Diaspora Page 46
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade Human Flight/“Brain Drain” Page 46
Tactical – Ways to Foster a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Federal Government versus Member-States Page 89
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate Page 118
Planning – Lessons Learned from the Year 2008 Page 136
Planning – Lessons from the US Constitutional Laws and Processes Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage Page 218
Advocacy – Battles in the War on Poverty Page 222
Advocacy – Ways to Help the Middle Class Page 223
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories Page 244
Appendix – Analysis of Caribbean Emigration Page 269
Appendix – Puerto Rican Population in the US Page 304

The scope of this roadmap is to focus on the changes we have to make in the Caribbean, not the changes for American society. The Caribbean can be the world’s best address. This success is conceivable, believable and achievable.  Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in to this Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap.

This is a big deal for the region. This roadmap is not just a plan, it’s a Dream. We want the same sense of possibility that was manifested by Dr. Martin Luther King. We too, have a dream that one day … [we would be] “free at last, free at last; thank God almighty we are free (and home) at last”. 🙂

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

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Appendix A – Publications Related to MLK Place/Street Naming

Mitchell, Jerry and Derek H. Alderman. 2014. “A Street Named for a King: A Lesson in the Politics of Place-Naming.” Social Education 78(3): 137-142.

Alderman, Derek H. and Joshua F.J. Inwood. 2013. “Street Naming and the Politics of Belonging: Spatial Injustices in the Toponymic Commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Social & Cultural Geography 14(2): 211-233.

Dwyer, Owen J. and Derek H. Alderman. 2008. Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory.  Book from Center for American Places and University of Georgia Press.

Alderman, Derek H. 2008. “Martin Luther King, Jr. Streets in the South: A New Landscape of Memory.” Southern Cultures 14(3): 88-105.

Alderman, Derek H., Steve Spina, and Preston Mitchell. 2008. “A Bumpy Road: the Challenges of Naming Streets for Martin Luther King, Jr.” Planning 74(1): 18-21. Contribution to American Planning Association magazine.

Alderman, Derek H. and Preston Mitchell. 2007. “A Sign of Changing Times: A Street Renaming Lesson from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.” Public Management  89(6): 37-38. Contribution to International City/County Management Association magazine as part of special feature entitled Street Naming: Not as Easy as You Might Think.

Mitchelson, Matthew, Derek H. Alderman, Jeff Popke. 2007. “Branded: The Economic Geographies of MLK Streets.” Social Science Quarterly 88(1): 120-145.

Alderman, Derek H. 2006. “Naming Streets after Martin Luther King, Jr.: No Easy Road.” In Landscape and Race in the United States, Routledge Press (edited by Richard Schein), pp. 213-236.

Alderman, Derek H. 2003. “Street names and the scaling of memory: The politics of commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. within the African-American community.” Area 35 (2): 163-173.

Alderman, Derek H. 2002. “Street Names as Memorial Arenas: The Reputational Politics of Commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. in a Georgia County.”  Historical Geography 30: 99-120.

Alderman, Derek H. 2002. “School Names as Cultural Arenas: The Naming of U.S. Public Schools after Martin Luther King, Jr.” Urban Geography 23(7): 601-626.

Alderman, Derek H. 2000.  “A Street fit for a King: Naming Places and Commemoration in the American South.”  Professional Geographer 52(4): 672-684.

Alderman, Derek H.  1996. “Creating a New Geography of Memory in the South: The (Re) Naming of Streets in Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.”  Southeastern Geographer 36(1): 51-69.

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Appendix B – MLK Street Naming Educational Pamphlet

Electronic copy (pdf) of community outreach pamphlet on MLK street naming (produced 2005). Note data is now old. Pamphlet distributed to various schools, activists groups, and civil rights; national meetings of the NAACP and SCLC; and MLK Historic Site in Atlanta, Georgia.

Outside cover of pamphlet

Inside content of pamphlet

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Appendix C – About Professor Derek Alderman

Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography and Head of the Department of Geography, University of Tennessee-Knoxville (formerly affiliated with East Carolina University)

CV/Resume

Homepage

Academia.edu Page 

Book on Civil Rights Memorials and Street Naming

Email at: dalderma@utk.edu

Follow on: @MLKStreet

———

Appendix D – Trailer MLK Street Project – https://youtu.be/dE73UMlqaIs


Uploaded on Sep 28, 2010 – Trailer for the documentary “The MLK Streets Project”. A film by One Common Unity and Straight No Chaser Productions

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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

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