Month: January 2020

Forging Change – Labor’s Cautionary Tale

Posted on January 31, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Forging Change by doubling-down on the Labor Movement – that sounds so 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s or maybe even 1960’s. This cannot be how the stewards of the Caribbean plan to Forge Change in 2020’s.

Those times – 50 years ago and beyond – have past; now we must be concerned with Best Practices. The full history of the Labor Movement gives us lessons in the Art and Science of Forging Change … and also the Cautionary Tale of the backlash of Going too Far, Too Fast.

Yet still, there have been many social revolutions that have spurned from Labor Movements, around the world and here in the Caribbean. This has always been a model for Forging Change. In fact, the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean highlighted how the Labor Movement Forged Change in 2009 in the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. See the highlights from the book here (Page 17):

In January/February 2009, an umbrella group of approximately fifty labor unions and other associations called for a €200 ($260 USD) monthly pay increase for Guadeloupe and Martinique’s low income workers. The protesters had proposed that authorities “lower business taxes as a top up to company finances” to pay for the €200 pay raises. Employers and business leaders in Guadeloupe had said that they could not afford the salary increase. The strike lasted 44 days, during the high season, and escalated to “the verge of revolt”, finally ending with an accord in March 2009 in which the French government agreed to raise the salaries of the lowest paid by the requested €200 and granted the petitioners top 20 demands. Tourism suffered greatly during this time and affected the 2010 tourist season as well; the islands were believed to have lost millions of dollars in tourism revenues due to cancelled vacations and closed hotels. The strikes exposed deep ethnic, racial, and class tensions and disparities – discord – within the French Caribbean territories.

This was not the only time that the Labor Movement Forged Change in the Caribbean; though not mentioned in the Go Lean book, these incidences are of high notoriety:

  • British West Indian labour unrest of 1934–39 – Various starting points for the cycle of disturbances have been proposed: the February 1934 labour agitation in British Honduras [today’s Belize] (which ended in a riot in September)[1] the May–July 1934 sugar estate disturbance on Trinidad (which broke out on several estates in the central sugar belt, involving over 15,000 Indian estate labourers)[2] and the January 1935 Saint Kitts sugar strike.[3]
    In any event, after St Kitts (which turned into a general strike of agricultural labourers) came a March strike in Trinidad’s oilfields and a hunger march to Port of Spain.
    In Jamaica labour protests broke out in May on the island’s north coast. Rioting among banana workers in the town of Oracabessa was succeeded by a strike of dockworkers in Falmouth which ended in violence.
    In September and October there were riots on various sugar estates in British Guiana [today’s Guyana]; there had been strikes the previous September on five sugar estates on the west coast of Demerara.
    In October rioting also took place on St Vincent in Kingstown and Camden Park. The year ended with a November strike of coal workers in St Lucia.
    After a relatively tranquil year in 1936, there was widespread unrest in Trinidad (extraordinary because blacks and Indians cooperated in working-class activities)[4] and Barbados in June 1937 and in Jamaica in May–June 1938.
    The 1937-38 disturbances were of greater magnitude than the 1934-35 ones, which had been more localized. In Trinidad, for example, the protest began in the oilfields but eventually spread to the sugar belt and the towns. In Barbados the disorders which started in Bridgetown spread to the rural areas. In Jamaica most areas of the island experienced serious strikes and disturbances. At least two ending points have also been suggested: the Jamaican cane-cutters’ strike of 1938[5] or the major February 1939 strike at the Plantation Leonora in British Guiana, which led to further disturbances.[6]
  • Bahamas: Burma Road Labor Riots – June 1st, 1942, the Burma Road Riots was a short-lived impulsive outburst by a group of disgruntled laborers. “In those days it was illegal for workers to ‘combine’ or unionize against their employer”. So this riot was the first sign of a popular movement in the Bahamas that led to long overdue reforms, and eventually, Majority Rule.

Civil Disobedience was effective then and can be effective again … now. The key has always been: Collective Bargaining.

The workers ‘combined’ or unionized and as a result “set-off the dominoes for change”. This aligns to the Art and Science of Forging Change.

This is the conclusion of this series of ‘teaching commentaries’ by the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean. This January 2020 focus is about more than just the Art and Science of Forging Change in society, but also on how to ensure the change is permanent by neutralizing the resultant backlash. This is entry 4 of 4 for this series, which details the Community Ethos that is first needed to ensure that the societal change is palatable. Otherwise there is the pejorative declaration:

Keep the Change!

The first submission in this series stressed that change must Build-up to a Momentum; this allows for evolutionary change and not just revolutionary change. This means affecting the heart … or as the Go Lean book states (Page 20) affecting the Community Ethos:

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

Other Forging Change considerations are presented in this series; see the full series catalog here:

  1. Forging Change – By Building Momentum
  2. Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest
  3. Forging Change – Public Private Partnerships (PPP)
  4. Forging Change – Labor Movement Cautionary Tale – Backlash: Going too far

Beyond these, we see that the thought of Forging Change had been a common theme for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for more than 5 years. See the full catalog here of the previous 13 blog-commentaries – before this series – that detailed approaches for Forging Change (in reverse chronological order):

  1. Forging Change – ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ (July 9, 2019)
  2. Forging Change – Corporate Vigilantism (March 29, 2018)
  3. Forging Change – Soft Power (February 21, 2018)
  4. Forging Change – Collective Bargaining (April 27, 2017)
  5. Forging Change – Addicted to Home (April 14, 2017)
  6. Forging Change – Arts & Artists (December 1, 2016)
  7. Forging Change – Panem et Circenses (November 15, 2016)
  8. Forging Change – Herd Mentality (October 11, 2016)
  9. Forging Change – ‘Something To Lose’ (November 18, 2015)
  10. Forging Change – ‘Food’ for Thought (April 29, 2015)
  11. Forging Change – Music Moves People (December 30, 2014)
  12. Forging Change – The Sales Process (December 22, 2014)
  13. Forging Change – The Fun Theory (September 9, 2014)

As related in the foregoing, what was so powerful for Labor Movements is the strategy of Collective Bargaining…or else! No doubt, there is the need for more Collective Bargaining today and always, as related in a previous blog-commentary from April 28, 2017:

There is the need to Forge Change in the Caribbean; the same as there was the need to Forge Change in 1960’s America. Consuming cruises is just one of the challenges that we have to contend with in our region. This is reflective of the disrespect that exists in our society. We have dysfunctions in our economics, security and governing engines. We are 2nd class citizens on the world stage! We have the greatest address on the planet – demonstrated in that 80 million tourists consume our marketplace every year, 10 million via cruises – and yet our own people have to break down the doors to get out to find the respectful life that they need, want and deserve in foreign countries.

What is the Cautionary Tale that we must all learn from the historicity of Labor Unions? “Going Too Far Too Fast”; this why evolutionary change is preferred. The Cautionary Tale of Unions is depicted here, in this Economics Journal, as the final consequence:

Title: What’s the point of unions [anymore]?

Unions are associations that allow workers to approach their employers not as individuals, but as a more powerful collective. This power makes unions pretty controversial; some people think they’re necessary for keeping employers in check, but others think they’re too powerful and hurt the economy.

While some economists think that wages are mostly determined by how productive a worker will be in a given job, others think it has more to do with the bargaining power of each side. Workers generally want higher wages and better working conditions. Employers on the other hand usually want to keep costs down. Wages, and working conditions in this theory are determined by how much power each side has to make the other give in to their demands.

Employers are in a pretty powerful position because they can hire and fire people. When there are tons of jobs to go around this is less of an advantage, because fired workers can just get jobs somewhere else. But when there’s high unemployment, being fired can be a really serious problem for workers. Unemployment gives employers some leeway in deciding how much to pay workers; if one person won’t accept a lower wage, someone else probably will.

One way workers limit this power is by organizing into unions which allow workers to speak out together and bargain collectively with employers. Within a union workers can vote to stop working in order to put economic pressure on the business (called going on strike). The idea is that it would be very costly for a business to fire or discipline all the workers at the same time, so they’ll hopefully agree to compromise and raise wages instead.

Historically unions have been really important for creating a lot of things we see as basic working rights in rich countries, like safe workplaces, 8 hour workdays, weekends, and the end of child labor. Unions and collective bargaining have played a big role in the creation of middle class jobs in most well-off countries.

But unions also draw a lot of criticism. A lot of people agree with the basic premise of unions, but think in practice that they have gone too far. In many rich countries, the decline of manufacturing has been blamed on unions that wanted to keep wages high, even when competition increased from overseas. Some people say that unions make it harder to fire bad workers, which hurts employers, customers and other employees. Public sector unions create even more debate, as wage increases for government workers can mean higher taxes for everyone else.

Some economists also argue that when unions win wage increases, they actually create bigger problems for unemployed people, who are willing to work for lower wages than the high wages negotiated by the union. That’s called the insider outsider problem, because the insiders (workers with jobs) create a bigger problem for outsiders (people who want jobs). Other economists don’t think this effect is actually that big in practice, and is outweighed by the extra economic activity created by giving workers more money to spend in the local economy.

Source: Economy – Ecnmy.org – Making economics less confusing – retrieved January 31, 2020 from; https://www.ecnmy.org/learn/your-livelihood/wages/whats-point-of-unions/

As related in this foregoing article, when Labor Unions win wage increases, they actually create bigger problems in society, so there is the need to be aware and be On Guard for the negative consequences of “Going Too Far Too Fast”. The employer must never be viewed as the enemy, but rather a partner in the stewardship of the region’s economic engines. However, there are enemies, adversaries and organized opposition – think Globalization, Technology, Crony-Capitalists or Plutocrats – for the progress our Caribbean general society must make. We must all be aware of these pressures.

See a related VIDEO here … from an American perspective, yet still relevant for the Caribbean:

VIDEO – Robert Reich: Why Unions Matter to You – https://youtu.be/402m57yFjTM

Robert Reich
Robert Reich [(former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton)] explains why labor unions impact the middle class and raise wages.

Watch More: Why Right to Work is Wrong ►► https://youtu.be/WqjdsfMPl_A

The Go Lean book addressed this! In fact, within the 370 pages of the Go Lean book, many details are provided on how to reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society with the cooperation and partnership of Labor Unions and other stakeholders advocating for workers. The book features the new community ethos (attitudes and values) that must be adopted; plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to Forge Change among workers (Blue Collar and skilled professionals) to work in harmony with market demands to elevate the Caribbean homeland. In fact, this actual advocacy on Page 164, in the Go Lean book, contains specific plans, excerpts and headlines; it is hereby entitled:

10 Ways to Impact Labor Unions

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, expanding to an economy of 30 member-states of 42 million people. The CU is a reboot of the economic engines of the region resulting in the creation of 2.2 million new jobs after 5 years of accedence. Jobs mean labor unions must be part of the discussion and part of the equation. The labor unions in the region have the potential of being part of the solution, as the CU advocates a “meritocracy” rather than seniority. For unemployment, the CU envisions the Ghent System with “Union” management powered by CU systems.
2 Labor Unions and e-Government

Under the CU plan, trade/labor unions will have access to e-Government services and functionalities, (same as Foundations). Therefore, the Unions will be able to access online account management and transaction processing systems to review, request CU services on behalf of their members. They will have the tools to service their charters.
3 Expertise Certification
4 Community Ethos – Automation & Partnership

The CU’s mission is to level the playing field for global competition by fostering and deploying technology to the fullest extent possible. Technology and Labor do not also align in objectives (think: The Legend of John Henry). But there are case studies of successful adoption of Internet & Communications Technology (ICT) embedded in the quality processes to maximize the outputs of the labor force. The ethos for Caribbean labor must be partnership with management.
5 QA Adoption
6 Work-At-Home Promotion
7 Federal Civil Service.
8 Self-Governing Entities (SGE)
9 Volunteers / Foundation
10 Emergencies – Martial Law – Union Suspension

This advocacy projects that Labor Union stakeholders can be partners in the stewardship of Caribbean society. They care about the workers; there is external pressure on those workers and the whole economic system; we are “all in this together”; we need “all hands on deck”. This is the attitude and value system that will foster societal progress.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … to allow us all – workers and employers – to work together as partners. This is one more way to Forge Change and make our Caribbean 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 & 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.

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.

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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Forging Change – Public-Private Partnerships

Posted on January 31, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

There is the Public … and there is Private Enterprise …

… sometimes these different entities, with different objectives actually have to work together.

Forging Change assumes there is a Status Quo that we will have to Change From in a quest to reach a goal or a destination. There is no doubt – if finances are not a hindrance – that it is easier to create something from nothing (scratch) – there is no demolition, discarding or displacing of the Status Quo. Alternatively, if the Status Quo must be replaced, then a “Fast Wipe” would be preferred, think of the reality after a bombing, tornado or hurricane.

These following expressions describe this truism in Forging Change, conveying  that it is easier to build up from nothing than to work with an existing structure (public or private) and then have to rebuild.

  • Burn, Build, Repeat
  • Will Build to Suit
  • “Genesis is life from lifelessness … destroy the existing in favor of its new matrix” – see this Movie Quote in the Appendix VIDEO.

Rebuilding – keeping the old – is perilous – See Appendix A below on the need for the strategy of Self-Governing Entities.

Creating something new from nothing would be so much better …

… but what if we cannot? What if we must engage the current infrastructure (buildings), people and processes? Then we must find a way to meld or blend the Old with the New, to merge the actuality of existing infrastructure with the need for the new development. How do we Forge Change in this reality?

One solution: Public-Private Partnerships (PPP).

What? How? Why? See this encyclopedic details here:

Reference: Public–private partnership
A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a cooperative arrangement between two or more public and private sectors, typically of a long-term nature.[1][2] It involves an arrangement between a unit of government and a business that brings better services or improves the city’s capacity to operate effectively.[3] Public–private partnerships are primarily used for infrastructure provision, such as the building and equipping of schools, hospitals, transport systems, and water and sewerage systems.[4] PPPs have been highly controversial as funding tools, largely over concerns that public return on investment is lower than returns for the private funder. PPPs are closely related to concepts such as privatization and the contracting out of government services.[1][5] The lack of a shared understanding of what a PPP is makes the process of evaluating whether PPPs have been successful complex.[6] Evidence of PPP performance in terms of value for money and efficiency, for example, is mixed and often unavailable.[7] Common themes of PPPs are the sharing of risk and the development of innovation.[6] …
Origins
Governments have used such a mix of public and private endeavors throughout history.[12][13] Muhammad Ali of Egypt utilized “concessions” in the early 1800s to obtain public works for minimal cost while the concessionaires’ companies made most of the profits from projects such as railroads and dams.[14] Much of the early infrastructure of the United States was built by what can be considered public-private partnerships. This includes an early steamboat line between New York and New Jersey in 1808; many of the railroads, including the nation’s first railroad, chartered in New Jersey in 1815; and most of the modern electric grid. In Newfoundland, Robert Gillespie Reid contracted to operate the railways for fifty years from 1898, though originally they were to become his property at the end of the period. However, the late 20th and early 21st century saw a clear trend toward governments across the globe making greater use of various PPP arrangements.[2] This trend seems to have reversed since the global financial crisis of 2008.[6] …

Economic theory
In economic theory, public–private partnerships have been studied through the lens of contract theory. The first theoretical study on PPPs was conducted by Oliver Hart.[17] From an economic theory perspective, what distinguishes a PPP from traditional public procurement of infrastructure services is that in the case of PPPs, the building and operating stages are bundled. Hence, the private firm has strong incentives in the building stage to make investments with regard to the operating stage. These investments can be desirable but may also be undesirable (e.g., when the investments not only reduce operating costs but also reduce service quality). Hence, there is a trade-off, and it depends on the particular situation whether a PPP or traditional procurement is preferable. Hart’s model has been extended in several directions. For instance, authors have studied various externalities between the building and operating stages,[18] insurance when firms are risk-averse,[19] and implications of PPPs for incentives to innovate and gather information.[20][21]

Clarence N. Stone frames public–private partnerships as “governing coalitions”. In Regime Politics Governing Atlanta 1946–1988, he specifically analyzes the “crosscurrents in coalition mobilization”. Government coalitions are revealed as susceptible to a number of problems, primarily corruption and conflicts of interest. This slippery slope is generally created by a lack of sufficient oversight.[22] Corruption and conflicts of interest, in this case, lead to costs of opportunism; other costs related to P3s are production and bargaining costs.[23] …

Profit sharing
Some public–private partnerships, when the development of new technologies is involved, include profit-sharing agreements. This generally involves splitting revenues between the inventor and the public once a technology is commercialized. Profit-sharing agreements may stand over a fixed period of time or in perpetuity.[34] …


Source: Retrieved January 31, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%80%93private_partnership

So a PPP is a formal cooperative, just between public (government) entities and for-profit enterprises. These have proven effective in Forging Change among societal engines: economic, security and governance. Cooperative is the key word. (Consider the example of successful PPP deployments in India).

This commentary is the continuation of this January 2020 series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean on the Art and Science of Forging Change in society. This entry is 3 of 4 for this series, promoting the Art and Science of Public-Private Partnerships. This is presented as an excellent strategy for melding the old infrastructure (government) with the new innovators (cutting-edge private enterprises) to make progress in Caribbean communities. We cannot ignore this obvious solution. Other Forging Change considerations are presented in this series; see the full series catalog here:

  1. Forging Change – By Building Momentum
  2. Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest
  3. Forging Change – Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)
  4. Forging Change – Labor Movement Cautionary Tale – Backlash: Going too far

This is all about Forging Change. As related, this is not an easy assignment; it is both an Art and Science. But, the Art and Science gives insights on “how” the stewards of a new Caribbean can move the Old (people, process, establishments and institutions) to succeed in reaching New goals and accomplishments for their constituents and clients.

This thought of Forging Change has been a common theme for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for more than 5 years. Before this 4-part series (this January 2020), there were 13 previous blog-commentaries that detailed approaches for forging change; see the full catalog here (in reverse chronological order):

  1. Forging Change – ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ (July 9, 2019)
  2. Forging Change – Corporate Vigilantism (March 29, 2018)
  3. Forging Change – Soft Power (February 21, 2018)
  4. Forging Change – Collective Bargaining (April 27, 2017)
  5. Forging Change – Addicted to Home (April 14, 2017)
  6. Forging Change – Arts & Artists (December 1, 2016)
  7. Forging Change – Panem et Circenses (November 15, 2016)
  8. Forging Change – Herd Mentality (October 11, 2016)
  9. Forging Change – ‘Something To Lose’ (November 18, 2015)
  10. Forging Change – ‘Food’ for Thought (April 29, 2015)
  11. Forging Change – Music Moves People (December 30, 2014)
  12. Forging Change – The Sales Process (December 22, 2014)
  13. Forging Change – The Fun Theory (September 9, 2014)

Forging Change is not easy; some strategies work in some communities, while they may not work in others. So we must “push all the buttons”. We must do anything and everything to get Caribbean stakeholders to accept the changes that must be forged in our region. Public-Private Partnerships are just another expression of the formal cooperative movement.

The cooperative (co-op) movement began in Europe in the 19th century, primarily in Britain and France, in response to the industrial revolution and increased mechanization threatening the livelihoods of so many tradesmen. In 1844, the Rochdale Society was formed as a cooperative for textile workers to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. They designed the now famous Rochdale Principles, the basis on which co-operatives around the world operate to this day. – Source: Book Go Lean Page 176 quoting from the “International Co-operative Alliance”.

Cooperatives are not unfamiliar to the Go Lean roadmap; in fact the within the 370 pages of the Go Lean book, many details are provided on how to reform and transform the economic, security and governing engines for the Caribbean region using formal cooperatives. The book features the new community ethos (attitudes and values) that must be adopted; plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to succeed in getting different entities – in this case Public ones and Private ones – to work together to elevate the Caribbean homeland. In fact, this actual advocacy on Page 176, in the Go Lean book, contains specific plans, excerpts and headlines; it is hereby entitled:

10 Ways to Foster Cooperatives

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
The CU in effect represents a cooperative with the unification of the region into a Single Market of 42 million people across 30 member-states with a GDP of $800 Billion (2010 figures). Following the Rochdale principles, the CU will structure other cooperative endeavors to marshal the economic and homeland security interest of the region.
2 Consumer Cooperatives
3 Worker Cooperatives
4 Purchasing Cooperatives
5 Cooperative Banking

The Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) is a cooperative among the region’s Central Banks. The CCB will be the sole controlling agent of the monetary policies for the Caribbean Dollar and aggregate currency printing and coin pressing.
6 Housing Cooperatives
7 Agricultural Cooperatives.
8 Utility Cooperatives
9 Mutual Education
10 Mutual Insurance and Risk Management

This advocacy projects that there is hope that the Caribbean region can foster the needed Public-Private Partnerships to foster societal progress. Government are not known for innovative solutions – think Silicon Valley – but governments do bring access to markets (constituents) and capital (monopolies and taxes/fees on infrastructure utilization).

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … to allow us to work with partners, both domestic and internationally. This is one more way to Forge Change and make our Caribbean 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 & 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 ccidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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

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

————-

Appendix A – Self Governing Entities – Building from Scratch

The dread of rebuilding is that the first effort must go towards clearing away the Old Space, before effort can be applied to the New Space. This is true for Public entities (buildings, Common Pool Resources, etc.) or for Private entities (corporations, families, and individuals). Remember this Old Wives Tale: “A stitch in time saves Nine”. This is true for Public/Private enterprises and for human development too:

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, presents a plan, as a roadmap, to reform and transform the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region. There is a lot of focus on building from scratch. In fact, the book introduces a novel concept of Self-Governing Entities (SGE), a strategy for facilitating the construction – building from scratch – and administration of independent landmasses specifically as economic engines. These SGE’s are necessary features of the Go Lean roadmap, allowing for industrial parks, technology labs, medical campuses, agricultural ventures, Research & Development facilities and other expressions. Remember these SGE models that previously been detailed:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13138 Industrial Reboot – Prisons 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12146 Commerce of the Seas – Shipbuilding Model of Ingalls
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750 Disney World – Role Model for Self-Governing Entities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003 Ship-breaking under SGE Structure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 Fairgrounds as SGE and Landlords for Sports Leagues
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=286 Puerto Rico’s Comprehensive Cancer Center Project – Medical SGE?

————-

Appendix B VIDEO – Star Trek II (1982) – Genesis Explained – https://youtu.be/GnziufszqSE

Admiral Titan Entertainment

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Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest

Posted on January 30, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The best offense is a good defense.

This is a winning strategy in football, yes (think NFL), but in nation-building as well. The actuality of the 30 Caribbean member-states is that we are losing … to the competition and opposition:

Who exactly are our competition or opposition?

What do we know of their motives or designs?

How can we overcome their hindrance?

These are important questions to consider – and answer – if we want to succeed in reforming and transforming the societal engines in our region. This activity is referred to as Opposition Research, where we study and gather intelligence on any adversarial opponent that may challenge us from reaching our goals. See the formal definition here:

In politics, opposition research (also called oppo research) is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them. The information can include biographical, legal, criminal, medical, educational, or financial history or activities, as well as prior media coverage, or the voting record of a politician. Opposition research can also entail using “trackers” to follow an individual and record their activities or political speeches.[1]

The research is usually conducted in the time period between announcement of intent to run and the actual election; however political parties maintain long-term databases that can cover several decades. The practice is both a tactical maneuver and a cost-saving measure.[2] The term is frequently used to refer not just to the collection of information but also how it is utilized, as a component of negative campaigning. – Source: Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_research

Politics, discrediting, negative campaigning … these sounds so ominous, so malevolent!

But for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, there is no evil intent. On the contrary, this is part of our effort to lower the “Push and Pull” factors that lure our citizens away from the homeland to seek refuge in foreign destinations. (“Push” refers to societal defects that compel people to leave; “Pull” refers to the perception that life is better abroad). Like any political campaign, we simply want the people to vote – with their wallets and their feet – for us rather than the “other guy”, our opposition.

There is a name for our pain; there are named opponents that hinders us; one of them is the United States of America. This is NOT a Declaration of War; rather this is just an acknowledgement that many of the policies and practices of America works counter-productive to Caribbean hopes and dreams. We are frenemies; see the full definition here:

“Frenemy” (also spelled “frienemy“) is an oxymoron and a portmanteau of “friend” and “enemy” that refers to “a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry” or “a person who combines the characteristics of a friend and an enemy”.[1] The term is used to describe personal, geopolitical and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions. This term also describes a competitive friendship.

What do we know of the motives or designs … of our frienemy, the USA?

For one, they do NOT play fair. They do NOT play fair in the global sandbox; they want all the marbles and for you to have none! To them “Up is Down and Down is Up”; “Right is Wrong and Wrong is Right”. They have even distorted “common sense”. For example, remember this reality in modern times:

The Haves and the Have-Nots

Well for America, the principle that they advocate, promote and message is different … and deceptive; see VIDEO here depicting this messaging:

There are no “Have-Nots”; there is only “Haves” and the “Soon-To-Haves”

VIDEO – Rubio: “We Are A Nation Of Haves And Soon-To-Haves” – https://youtu.be/WiKrCUiP-fg

Senator Marco Rubio
Published Dec 16, 2011 – During a Senate floor speech this afternoon, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (FL-R) offered his perspectives on his first year in office and the challenges that remain unsolved going into 2012. Below are excerpts from the speech. Rubio: “We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it. And that’s who we need to remain.”

Is this the American Dream?! Well, this is the problem right here. Common Sense dictates that there will always be winners and losers in any pursuit. Yet, with messaging like this, “hope springs eternal” that people will get to America and will someday be among the “Haves”.

This “Dream” is a fallacy! As a result, rather than empowerments to help the poor to elevate from poverty or programs to strengthen the middle class, there are only mandates that help the rich get richer – think tax cuts. So more Income Inequality is the end-result; see this actuality in the Appendix VIDEO below.

Who is the opposition? Needless to say, we are not talking about the common people on the street, rather we are referring to Crony-Capitalistic stakeholders in the country: Special Interest, Big Business, Corrupt Politicians. This is the Opposition.

The Late Great Comedian and Social Commentator George Carlin quipped that “you have to be asleep to believe the American Dream”. – follow this link to that VIDEO.

Reducing taxes on the rich while placing the tax burden on the middle class; this sounds like a good deal … for the rich.

The Opposition wants you Caribbean people to “beat down the doors” and get out of your beloved homeland and “Come to America” to join their workforce. The more people in the labor pool – the Supply – the more downward pressure on the wages for the available jobs – the Demand. This is Economics 101, when Supply exceed Demand, prices drop. This is how the rich get richer; alas, in this scenario, the middle class lose their bargaining power and wages become stagnate – in some cases people have lost their high-paying Union-backed jobs only to find near-minimum-wage service jobs.

How can we overcome the hindrance of the Opposition?

Answer: We overcome their hindrance by Forging Change in our society; we reform and transform the economic, security and governing engines despite the local opposition. We get the public to want the manifestation of this vision. We get the political leaders to lean-in this roadmap. This way we have Bottoms-Up and Top-Down pressure to make this roadmap succeed. Lastly, this dissuades our citizens from leaving the homeland as well; thereby sparing them from the American “nightmare” as the only available Dream – Caribbean people have dreams too!

This commentary is the continuation of this January 2020 series on the Art and Science of Forging Change in society. This entry is 2 of 4 for this series, unmasking the true Opposition to Caribbean progress. We must overcome these hindrance and obstacles to make progress on this roadmap. Other Forging Change considerations are presented in this series; see the full series catalog here:

  1. Forging Change – By Building Momentum
  2. Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest
  3. Forging Change – Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)
  4. Forging Change – Labor Movement Cautionary Tale – Backlash: Going too far

This is all about Forging Change. This is not an easy assignment; it is both an Art and Science. But, the Art and Science gives insights on “how” the stewards of a new Caribbean can persuade people, establishments and institutions to forge change in their communities. We want change, but we do not want to be America; We Want To Be Better.

The previous entry in this series presented a YouTube VIDEO where advocates identified the corrupting “ring of influence” over elected leaders – in Congress et al. The goal for that advocacy group is to neutralize Special Interest Groups that were curtailing the needed progress … in the USA.

The research has now been done, we have the answers, we must move from the status quo to mitigate the designs of the opposition. One way or another, Change is Gonna Come. This thought of Forging Change has been a common theme for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for more than 5 years. Before this series, there were 13 previous blog-commentaries that detailed approaches for forging change; see the full catalog here (in reverse chronological order):

  1. Forging Change – ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ (July 9, 2019)
  2. Forging Change – Corporate Vigilantism (March 29, 2018)
  3. Forging Change – Soft Power (February 21, 2018)
  4. Forging Change – Collective Bargaining (April 27, 2017)
  5. Forging Change – Addicted to Home (April 14, 2017)
  6. Forging Change – Arts & Artists (December 1, 2016)
  7. Forging Change – Panem et Circenses (November 15, 2016)
  8. Forging Change – Herd Mentality (October 11, 2016)
  9. Forging Change – ‘Something To Lose’ (November 18, 2015)
  10. Forging Change – ‘Food’ for Thought (April 29, 2015)
  11. Forging Change – Music Moves People (December 30, 2014)
  12. Forging Change – The Sales Process (December 22, 2014)
  13. Forging Change – The Fun Theory (September 9, 2014)

Forging Change is not easy; some strategies work with some people while others may be unmoved. This is why there is the need for so many different strategies, tactics and implementations. As evident by these foregoing 13 commentaries, the Go Lean movement presented a roadmap to “leave no stone unturned” for reforming and transforming the region. “Reforming and transforming” means making our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.

We hereby urge all stakeholders to lean into this Go Lean roadmap. 🙂

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 & 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 ccidence 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 – What does wealth inequality look like? – https://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/20200131132211-wealth-tax-floated-as-solution-to-americas-growing-wealth-inequality/

Posted January 31, 2020 – The growing gap between rich and poor Americans is one of the U.S.’s biggest challenges, with the top 1% controlling more wealth now than at any time in the last 50 years. A recent survey found that over half the country thinks it’s a problem, though most people might not know exactly what wealth inequality looks like. Tony Dokoupil speaks to Americans to see if they know what their “share of the pie” looks like.

https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_this_morning/video/7qsoOCpUsvJicQVaszWVcERqEwTgb72b/americans-know-wealth-inequality-is-a-problem-but-what-does-it-look-like-/

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Forging Change – By Building Momentum

Posted on January 30, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

There are two kinds of changes:

  • Revolutionary
  • Evolutionary

If the goal is to change society – to reform and transform the societal engines – which approach is better?

American Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King (MLK) asserted that the best time to correct an injustice is always NOW, thereby alluding to revolutionary change. In fact, when innocent people are oppressed, repressed or suppressed, there should be no gradual migration from “there to here”. The MLK quote is actually:

“I Have A Dream” speech, Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

If only we can Forge Change immediately here in our Caribbean homeland, but our reality is different, where change is gradual, it builds to a momentum – some people here and some people there – until finally … boom! The change becomes legally manifested … and codified in law. So both evolutionary and revolutionary change is the reality.

This is the subject of this commentary by the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean. Every month, we present a teaching series; for January 2020, the focus is on the Art and Science of Forging Change in society. This is entry 1 of 4 for this series, detailing the process of Building Momentum to get evolutionary change to become revolutionary.

While this is an American example, it does bear on the manifestations of change in the Caribbean – notice how all the social issues in this VIDEO – starting first with the corrupting influences of Big Money distorting campaigns and the will of the people; this also relates to Caribbean life:

VIDEO – Unbreaking America: Solving the Corruption Crisis – https://youtu.be/TfQij4aQq1k

RepresentUs
Published on February 27, 2019 – Our government is broken, and we have to fix it. RepresentUs board member Jennifer Lawrence and Director of RepresentUs Josh Silver, walks through three lines that show what’s wrong with legal corruption in our government, how we fix it and what you can do about it. Find out how you can get involved at http://represent.us.
Sources for video: https://act.represent.us/sign/Unbreak…

Other Forging Change considerations – gleaned from this foregoing VIDEO – are presented in this January series; see the full catalog here:

  1. Forging Change – By Building Momentum
  2. Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest
  3. Forging Change – Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)
  4. Forging Change – Labor Movement Cautionary Tale – Backlash: Going too far

The foregoing VIDEO relates how hard it is to apply changes to America’s fundamental laws – to amend the US Constitution. The gradual change must start at the local level, then State levels and only then, after building momentum, is federal action engaged.

The US Constitution does not apply to most Caribbean member-states, but the model of evolutionary change does relate to all societies. Everyone has had to contend with the Art and Science of Forging Change. This Art and Science give insights on “how” the stewards of a new Caribbean can persuade people, establishments and institutions to Forge Change in their communities.

This thought of Forging Change has been a common theme for the movement behind the book Go Lean book for almost 6 years. See the full catalog here of the previous 13 blog-commentaries that detailed approaches for Forging Change (in reverse chronological order):

  1. Forging Change – ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ (July 9, 2019)
  2. Forging Change – Corporate Vigilantism (March 29, 2018)
  3. Forging Change – Soft Power (February 21, 2018)
  4. Forging Change – Collective Bargaining (April 27, 2017)
  5. Forging Change – Addicted to Home (April 14, 2017)
  6. Forging Change – Arts & Artists (December 1, 2016)
  7. Forging Change – Panem et Circenses (November 15, 2016)
  8. Forging Change – Herd Mentality (October 11, 2016)
  9. Forging Change – ‘Something To Lose’ (November 18, 2015)
  10. Forging Change – ‘Food’ for Thought (April 29, 2015)
  11. Forging Change – Music Moves People (December 30, 2014)
  12. Forging Change – The Sales Process (December 22, 2014)
  13. Forging Change – The Fun Theory (September 9, 2014)

As related in these commentaries, Forging Change in the 3 societal engines of a community – economics, security and governance – is not easy; it is actually heavy-lifting.

We may not be able to manifest the changes we need, want and deserve in “one fell swoop”. (Even though injustices should be immediately remediated). This is why Forging Change is presented as an Art and a Science.

These past commentaries align with the Go Lean roadmap – a plan to leverage the 30 member-states of the political Caribbean region by creating a federal government, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – described in the Go Lean book. This will allow for the economy-of-scale to fund and implement the solutions to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.

The foregoing VIDEO urges us to join us in the Momentum Building activities, starting on the local level, and then to continue to press hard as the messaging leads to a crescendo, at the CU federal level. Let us get going with this plan here in the Caribbean. We urge all stakeholders – citizens and leaders – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to Forge Change … finally. This quest is conceivable, believable and achievable.

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 & 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 ccidence 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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Cursed in Paradise – ‘Enriquillo’ Fault-line

Posted on January 29, 2020 in Government, Planning, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

The Caribbean is the “greatest address on the planet … “

We have said this repeatedly; the Creator has blessed this region with such beauty.

Yet, we must confess, considering a religious argument: “The Gods must be crazy” … putting such a beautiful place in the middle of a dangerous Earthquake Fault-line. This refers to the Enriquillo Fault-line across the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean archipelago – see Photo here:

This is not just a theory; this is actuality. We have this news headline now: “7.7 Earthquake north of Jamaica”. So, crediting Godly devotion again, maybe the earthquake activity is some kind of Divine Retribution?

Retribution of what?

Well, just like the Curse of Montezuma or Curse of the Bambino, there were some egregious atrocities that maybe had to be prosecuted-reconciled-remediated for justice from some higher authority (God). Therefore, the thesis is that there is a “curse on this landmass for retribution against the ‘powers that be’ for the inflictions against the indigenous people and their leader Enriquillo”. See those details here on the Enriquillo namesake and the encyclopedic reference of the Fault-line in the Appendix below:

Reference: Enriquillo
Good relations between Christopher Columbus and the indigenous Taíno of the large island Columbus called Hispaniola did not last more than a few days. The Taínos were forced into terrible conditions as laborers in gold mining operations, badly housed in the mountains, poorly fed, extremely overworked, and forced to live in close quarters with the Spaniards.[5] Additionally, due to taking men away from the villages, the cycle of food production was disrupted, causing widespread malnutrition.[5] This malnutrition further aided the Taínos’ vulnerability to deadly new types of diseases introduced by the foreigners.[5] After Columbus tortured and killed many in his quest for gold, he turned to slavery and sugar cane plantations as a way to profit from his voyages.

Several revolts followed in the first half of the 16th century, the most famous began in 1519. Enriquillo, one of the few remaining caciques, or indigenous chiefs, started the revolt with a large number of Taínos from the mountain range of Bahoruco. The Tainos were able to continue the rebellion because of their better knowledge of the region.[6] As the Spaniards were not able to control the rebellion, a treaty was signed granting to the Native population among others the right of Freedom and of Possession. It had little consequences, however, as by this time the Native population was rapidly declining due to European diseases.

Enriquillo, also known as “Enrique” by the Spaniards, was a Taíno cacique [(Tribal Chief)] who rebelled against the Spaniards between 1519 and 1533. Enriquillo’s rebellion is the best known rebellion of the early Caribbean period. He is also considered a hero in the modern day Dominican Republic and Haiti for his resistance in favor of the indigenous peoples.[1] Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas, who documented and rallied against Spanish abuse of the indigenous, wrote sympathetically of Enriquillo.[2]

His father, his aunt Anacaona, and eighty other regional chieftains were killed by Nicolás de Ovando while attending supposed “peace talks” with the Spanish in Jaragua. During the talks, Spanish soldiers ambushed the chieftains, also known as caciques, set the meeting house on fire, and then proceeded to kill anyone who fled the flames (causing his father’s death). Enriquillo, an orphan, was later raised in a Santo Domingo monastery and given the name of “Enrico” [3]. One of his mentors was Bartolomé de Las Casas. De Las Casas was a Spanish Roman Catholic Priest focused on the rights of Native Americans. [4]

Enriquillo also had a wife, called Mencía, later with the noble title Doña due to Enriquillo’s high standing and relations with the Spaniards. She was raped by a Spaniard named Valenzuela. When Enriquillo tried to take the issue to the Spanish courts, nothing could be done, since it was Doña Mencia’s word against the Spaniard’s word. This, according to some writers, was the tipping point for Enriquillo which led to his revolt in the Bahoruco mountains.
Source: Retrieved January 29, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriquillo

Theory, thesis, religious inference – Yada Yada!

It is what it is – these earthquakes are real! We must simply prepare. This is quest of the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean; the book stated (Page 23):

c-7. “Crap” Happens
Economic security is tied to the community quest to reboot the Caribbean region to ensure a better place to live, work and play. To ensure economic security, the economic engines must be protected to ensure their continuous operations despite natural or man-made deterrents. Bad things do happen to good people, so we cannot be caught unprepared. We must institute the process and provisions to respond, react, restore and recover. Any and everyone may need to dial “911”.

The Caribbean community ethos is to consider the facts and realities:

  1. climate change cannot be dismissed – tropical storms are now more common and more ferocious;
  2. there are two geologic fault-lines that run through the Caribbean region;
  3. there is an active volcano on Montserrat.

It is not a matter of “if” but “when” emergencies will strike. The security principle therefore is to be prepared for all incidents, big and small, that involve all aspects of society: islands, institutions, companies, families and individuals.

As related in the foregoing headline – 7.7 Earthquake north of Jamaica – this is of serious concern. This seismic activity had its epicenter in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, away from land, but spurring the threat of a tsunami in one place after another. Everyone is On Alert. See this actuality depicted in this news story here:

Title: Mag 7.7 quake hits between Cuba and Jamaica, but no injuries
Sub-title: A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck in the Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and eastern Cuba
By: Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press
HAVANA – A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and eastern Cuba on Tuesday, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no reports of casualties or heavy damage.

The quake was centered 139 kilometers (86 miles) northwest of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 140 kilometers (87 miles) west-southwest of Niquero, Cuba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It hit at 2:10 p.m. (1910 GMT) and the epicenter was a relatively shallow 10 kilometers (6 miles) beneath the surface.

Dr. Enrique Arango Arias, head of Cuba’s National Seismological Service, told state media that there had been no serious damage or injuries reported.

Gov. Carlos Joaquín González of Mexico’s Quintana Roo, which is home to Cancun, Tulum and other popular beach resorts, said the earthquake was felt in multiple parts of the low-lying Caribbean state but there were no early reports of damage or injuries.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially warned that the quake could generate waves 1 to 3 feet above normal in Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Mexico and Belize, but issued a later message saying the danger had passed.

The initial tremor was followed by a series of strong aftershocks, including one measured at magnitude 6.1.

The quake was felt strongly in Santiago, the largest city in eastern Cuba, said Belkis Guerrero, who works in a Roman Catholic cultural center in the center of Santiago

“We were all sitting and we felt the chairs move,” she said. “We heard the noise of everything moving around.”

She said there was no apparent damage in the heart of the colonial city.

“It felt very strong but it doesn’t look like anything happened,’’ she told The Associated Press.

It was also felt a little farther east at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the southeastern coast of the island. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages, said J. Overton, a spokesman for the installation, which has a total population of about 6,000 people.

Several South Florida buildings were evacuated as a precaution, according to city of Miami and Miami-Dade County officials. No injuries or road closures were reported. No shaking was felt at the Hard Rock stadium in Miami Gardens, which will host the Super Bowl on Sunday.

The quake also hit the Cayman Islands, leaving cracked roads and what appeared to be sewage spilling from cracked mains. There were no immediate reports of deaths, injuries or more severe damage, said Kevin Morales, editor-in-chief of the Cayman Compass newspaper.

The islands experience so few earthquakes that newsroom staff were puzzled when it hit, he said.

“It was just like a big dump truck was rolling past,” Morales said. “Then it continued and got more intense.”

Dr. Stenette Davis, a psychiatrist at a Cayman Islands hospital, said she saw manhole covers blown off by the force of the quake, and sewage exploding into the street, but no more serious damage.

Claude Diedrick, 71, who owns a fencing business in Montego Bay, said he was sitting in his vehicle reading when the earth began to sway.

“It felt to me like I was on a bridge and like there were two or three heavy trucks and the bridge was rocking but there were no trucks,” he said.

He said he had seen no damage around his home in northern Jamaica.

Mexico’s National Seismological Service reported that the quake was felt in five states including as far away as Veracruz, on the country’s Gulf Coast.

————— Associated Press writer Kate Chappell in Kingston, Jamaica, contributed to this report.

Source: Posted & Retrieved January 28, 2020 from: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/powerful-earthquake-hits-cuba-jamaica-68592066

Considering the geological science of earthquakes, we know there are main shocks and after-shocks. Some geologists also credit pre-shocks, where minor seismic activities come as a prelude to main shocks. See more on the “Science of Earthquakes” in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – What is an earthquake? – https://abcn.ws/2M4FtKM

An earthquake is caused when two blocks of earth slip past each other on a fault plane, according to the US Geological Survey.

The Richter Scale is exponential between the numbers 3 and 8, so 7.7 is very strong … and dangerous.

There truly have been pre-shocks leading up to this “7.7 Earthquake north of Jamaica”; consider this related story:

2020 Puerto Rico Earthquakes
At the end of December 2019 and in early January 2020, the southwestern part of the island of Puerto Rico was struck by an earthquake swarm,[1] including six that were of magnitude 5 or greater.[2] The largest and most damaging of this sequence occurred on January 7 at 04:24 AST (08:24 UTC) and had a magnitude of 6.4 Mw and a maximum felt intensity of VII (Very strong) on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale.[3] At least one person was killed and several others were injured.[4][5]

A 5.8 Mw  earthquake the previous day caused the destruction of a natural arch, a tourist attraction at Punta Ventana in Guayanilla.[6] A 5.9 Mw  aftershock on Saturday, January 11, damaged many structures, including several historical buildings as well as modern high-rises in the city of Ponce.[7]

Power was lost Island-wide immediately after the quake, and was increasingly restored over a period of a week. Damage to homes was extensive and, by 14 January, more than 8,000 people were homeless and camping outdoors in various types of shelters, with 40,000 others camping outside their homes, just in the city of Ponce alone.[8]

Needless to say, the Enriquillo Fault-line has been very active in these recent days. To all Caribbean stakeholders, we urge:

Be afraid; be very afraid.

This is the same fault-line that devastated Haiti in January 2010 – almost 10 years exactly – plus many other times in the past. The Go Lean movement and organization originated in response to that unmitigated disaster. See this salient reference to it in the Go Lean book (Page 115):

The Bottom Line on the Haiti’s Earthquakes

As of 2010, the following major earthquakes have been recorded in Haiti, along the Enriquillo or Septentrional-Oriente faults:

  • 1564: Quake destroyed Concepción de la Vega and Santiago de los Caballeros.
  • 1701: On November 9, severe destruction occurred and “part of the area along the north shore of the Tiburon Peninsula from Logane to Petit Goave sank into the sea”.
  • 1751 Port-au-Prince earthquake (18 October): According to French historian Moreau de Saint-Méry, “only one masonry building had not collapsed” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city.
  • 1770 Port-au-Prince earthquake (3 June): The city was leveled in this magnitude 7.5 quake, killing over 200 people.
  • 1783: A strong quake partially destroyed the church in Santiago.
  • 1842 Cap-Haitien earthquake (7 May): An earthquake destroyed the city of Cap-Haïtien and other towns in the north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic; this earthquake also destroyed the Sans-Souci Palace. 10,000 people were killed. It has been estimated that its magnitude was 8.1.
  • 1946 Dominican Republic earthquake (4 August): This 8.0-magnitude quake in Samaná also shook Haiti horrifically, producing a tsunami that killed 1,600 people.
  • 2010 Haiti earthquake (12 January):. The epicenter of this magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake was near Léogâne, approximately 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 8.1 miles. The United States Geological Survey recorded a series of at least 33 aftershocks, 14 of which were between magnitudes 5.0 and 5.9. The International Red Cross estimated that about three million people were affected by the quake; the Haitian Government reports that over 316,000 people had been identified as dead, an estimated 300,000 injured, and an estimated 1,000,000 homeless.

Based on this observation, one can hypothesize the theory of: “An accursed land, indeed”!

Yet still, the Go Lean promoters assert – in a previous blog-commentary – that we do not want our people abandoning home, seeking refuge elsewhere. We can reform and transform the homeland to better prepare for the eventualities of Mother Nature. See that message here:

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean is standing up, stepping up and speaking up:

  • “… Here I am, send me” – The Bible; Isaiah 6:8 (New International Version: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”)

The basic premise of the economic analysis in the Go Lean book is that we need our population to stay, remain and return to the Caribbean; the more people we have in the market the better.

What is it that we can do to reform and transform for earthquakes? The Go Lean book relates (Page 76), in introducing the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a technocracy to plan and respond to natural disasters. See this excerpt here:

B4 – Emergency Management
This area is perhaps one of the most important functions of the CU. The Emergency Management Department will coordinate the planning, response, rebuilding and recovery before, during and after natural disasters and other emergency events. This is the risk management arm of the CU Trade Federation. As such, the scope of Emergency Management will also include education, mentoring, monitoring, mitigation, licensing and coordination of all volunteer activities.

The scope of this department also includes a number of proactive initiatives: (1). establishing and administering volunteer fire/rescue departments for sparsely populated areas; and (2). installing/maintaining emergency notification systems. In ancient cultures there is the practice of ringing a bell, a church bell or one at the town square, to alert the community of an imminent threat. A lot of western democracies embrace the same tactic with more modern technologies, such as audible alarms/sirens.

The imminent threat includes tornado landfall warning, tsunami, mudslide, volcano eruption, etc. The CU will extend this practice further by installing a standard audible siren system for any/all emergency events. A great lesson learned from the US Midwestern city of Omaha-Nebraska is the schedule for siren testing, the first Wednesday every month at 11:00am.

A best practice for Emergency Management is electronic notification. This includes an Emergency Broadcasting/Alert system for TV and radio. Plus now the latest advance is the use of telephone/internet and contact center technologies, allowing features like Reverse 911 – automated/robo calls to every active phone in a location – and text message blasting to every cell phone. With the embrace of www.myCaribbean.gov, the CU can target an alert message to any & every email address, social media screen names, or provide Pop-up Screens for internet browsing sessions for all IP addresses in the strike area.

As such, the scope of natural emergencies covered by this agency will cover more than hurricanes. As such, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, flooding, forest fires, and droughts will also be monitored, managed and responded to. (These have all been experienced recently in the Caribbean).

Emergencies also include the man-made variety as in industrial (oil spills, factory accidents, chemical spills), explosions, terroristic attacks and prison riots. The purpose of the Trade Federation is to enhance the economic engines of the region. While the #1 economic driver in the region is tourism, any poorly managed episode of “man-made” emergencies will have devastating effects on tourist bookings. Therefore, the CU must respond quickly, forcefully and professionally to contain the physical and image damage that can occur from these incidents.

Though not exclusive, this agency will coordinate its specialized services, skill-sets and occupations like Paramedic, EMT, Search-and-Rescue, Canine (K-9) with other governing (law enforcement) entities. Regional training will therefore be coordinated, licensed, and certified by this CU Emergency Management Department.

This Emergency Management agency will also coordinate the training and management of animal responders, in conjunction with the other federal agencies of Justice, Agriculture, Interior (Parks). The animals will include bomb sniffing dogs, cadaver dogs, drug dogs and mounted police horses.

There is also an economic/financial scope for this department. As the effort for a comprehensive property-casualty fund to cover the entire Caribbean region will also be coordinated by this agency. The classic solution is a large pool of premium payers and claims filed by the affected area. Beyond this model, there are also advanced products like re-issuance side-cars for market assimilation. The public can then invest and profit from the threat/realization of regional risks. This derivative product is a bet, a gamble, but in the end, the result is an insurance fund of last resort, much like the Joint Underwriters Agency (JUA) in Florida.

The Go Lean movement has addressed the subject of Earthquakes and Emergency Management on many occasions. See this sample of the many previous blog-commentaries here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18182 Disaster Relief: Helping, Not Hurting
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17373 A Marshall Plan for Haiti – Finally
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15996 Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15267 Industrial Reboot – Prefab (Earthquake Tolerant) Housing 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13974 The Spoken and Unspoken on Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2614 Modeling the ‘Great ShakeOut’ Earthquake Drill
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=87 6.5M Earthquake Shakes Eastern Caribbean

“Here I am send me”? That sounds similar to the mantra “To Change the World, Start With Me”!

While not subscribing to any religious dogma, “it is what it is”, the End of Days Prophecies in the Bible seem to have validity – Matthew 24: 3, 7:

3 What will be the sign … of the Last Days?
7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

So we must simply be more resilient and responsive to earthquakes – and tsunamis. There is no reason to expect any less activity.

So let’s get busy …  let’s prepare our homes, families, communities, nations and region for the eventuality of this Enriquillo Fault-line (and other geologic weak-points that are undeniable in our homeland).

Most importantly, let’s lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap – this is the Way Forward for Caribbean Disaster Preparation and Response – and finally make our region, each of the 30 Caribbean member-states, 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 & 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 11 – 13):

ii. Whereas the natural formation of the landmass for our lands constitutes some extreme seismic activity, it is our responsibility and ours alone to provide, protect and promote our society to coexist, prepare and recover from the realities of nature’s occurrences.

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 ccidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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. …

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 – Enriquillo–Plantain Garden Fault Zone

The Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone (EPGFZ or EPGZ) is a system of active coaxial left lateral-moving strike slip faults which runs along the southern side of the island of Hispaniola, where Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located.[1] The EPGFZ is named for Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic where the fault zone emerges, and extends across the southern portion of Hispaniola through the Caribbean to the region of the Plantain Garden River in Jamaica.

Geology
The EPGFZ shares approximately half of the relative motion between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates with the Septentrional-Oriente fault zone which runs along the northern side of Hispaniola. Both faults merge into the Cayman Trench to the west. The fault accommodates about 20.6±1.66 millimeters of lateral motion per year (mm/yr).[2] Additionally, a component of compression is present as the North American Plate pushes toward the southwest. This results in vertical deformation manifest in the mountainous terrain of Hispaniola. Some researchers believe that the EPGFZ and the Septentrional-Orient fault zone bound a microplate, dubbed the Gonâve Microplate, a 190,000 km2 (73,000 sq mi) area of the northern Caribbean Plate that is in the process of shearing off the Caribbean Plate and accreting to the North America Plate.[3]

[Prominent] Earthquakes

Other historical large earthquakes in 1860, 1761, 1684, 1673, and 1618 are also likely attributed to the EPGFZ, though none of these have been confirmed in the field as associated with this fault.[7]

Source: Retrieved January 29, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriquillo%E2%80%93Plantain_Garden_fault_zone

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Remembering Auschwitz – Still Relevant

Posted on January 27, 2020 in Ethos, Social, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

75 years ago today – January 27, 1945 – was the Big Reveal …

There were rumors, accusations and suspicions of cruel atrocities against victims behind the German lines during World War II. Nevertheless, there was also a degree of doubt as well. Nazi Germany had deniability … until this day 75 years ago. This is when Soviet troops liberated the Concentration Camp in Auschwitz, Poland:

“The cat was out the bag”.

See a summary and highlights of Auschwitz here:

Title: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
The camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp built with several gas chambers; Auschwitz III–Monowitz, a labor camp created to staff a factory for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps.[3] The camps became a major site of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking World War II, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish political prisoners.[4] The first inmates, German criminals brought to the camp in May 1940 as functionaries, established the camp’s reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died. The death toll includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.[5] Those not gassed died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.

At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who staffed the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Only 789 staff (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial;[6] several, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allies‘ failure to act on early reports of atrocities in the camp by bombing it or its railways remains controversial.

As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp’s population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947 Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Table I – Auschwitz Death Estimates

Nationality/ethnicity
(Source: Franciszek Piper)[2]		 Registered deaths
(Auschwitz)		 Unregistered deaths
(Auschwitz)		 Total
Jews 95,000 865,000 960,000
Ethnic Poles 64,000 10,000 74,000 (70,000–75,000)
Roma and Sinti 19,000 2,000 21,000
Soviet prisoners of war 12,000 3,000 15,000
Other Europeans:
Soviet citizens (Byelorussians, Russians, Ukrainians),
Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, Austrians		 10,000–15,000 n/a 10,000–15,000
Total deaths in Auschwitz, 1940–1945 200,000–205,000 880,000 1,080,000–1,085,000

Source: Retrieved January 27, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

    

This was mankind’s lowest point, the “darkest chapter in human history” … or was it?

“Never Again” became the mantra from this point forward for Holocaust victims and other stakeholders. These ones wanted to present Auschwitz as a Cautionary Tale so that “the world” would Never Again tolerate “man mistreating man” so egregiously.

Never Again lasted “for a minute”!

But “Never Again” has only been empty words. Within the days, weeks, months and years of this atrocity, more atrocities emerged. This is not just my assertion; this is the fact … as chronicled by historians, anthropologists, academicians, journalists and newscasters alike; see the highlights of a sample book on the subject here:

The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities – a popular history book by Matthew White, an independent scholar and self-described atrocitologist. The book provides a ranking of the hundred worst atrocities of mankind based on the number of deaths.

In the pages of his book, the author, Matthew White, details the 100 Worst Atrocities of Mankind from Antiquity to Modernity. Let’s pick up his ranking from World War II and present the detailed list since those atrocious events. See here-now:

Table II – White’s ranking of atrocities

Rank Event Place Start year End year Death toll
1 World War Two Europe, Asia, Africa 1939 1945 66,000,000
36 Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe Eastern Europe 1945 1947 2,100,000
88 French Indochina War French Indochina 1945 1954 393,000
70 Partition of India India and Pakistan 1947 1947 500,000
2 Mao Zedong‘s rule China 1949 1976 40,000,000
30 Korean War Korea 1950 1953 3,000,000
30 North Korea North Korea 1948 3,000,000
69 Algerian War of Independence Algeria 1954 1962 525,000
35 Sudanese Civil Wars Sudan, South Sudan 1955 2,600,000
24 Vietnam War Southeast Asia 1959 1975 4,200,000
81 Suharto’s purge Indonesia 1965 1966 400,000
46 Biafran War Nigeria 1966 1970 1,000,000
40 Bengali Genocide Bangladesh 1971 1971 1,500,000
96 Idi Amin‘s rule Uganda 1971 1979 300,000
37 Mengistu Haile‘s rule Ethiopia 1974 1991 2,000,000
91 Postwar Vietnam Vietnam 1975 1992 365,000
39 Democratic Kampuchea Cambodia 1975 1979 1,670,000
55 Mozambican Civil War Mozambique 1975 1992 800,000
70 Angolan Civil War Angola 1975 1994 500,000
70 Ugandan Bush War Uganda 1979 1986 500,000
40 Soviet–Afghan War Afghanistan 1979 1992 1,500,000
96 Saddam Hussein‘s peacetime rule Iraq 1979 2003 300,000
61 Iran–Iraq War Persian Gulf 1980 1988 700,000
94 Sanctions against Iraq Iraq 1990 2003 350,000
70 Anarchy in Somalia Somalia 1991 500,000
53 Rwandan genocide Rwanda 1994 1994 937,000
27 Second Congo War Central Africa 1998 2002 3,800,000

Source: Retrieved January 27, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Big_Book_of_Horrible_Things#White’s_ranking_of_atrocities

This is the lesson for us today. This is the relevance of Auschwitz 75 years later. This aligns with the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. It asserts (Page 23) that “history teaches that with the emergence of new economic engines, ‘bad actors’ will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. A Bible verse declares: ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’” – Ecclesiastes 1:9 New International Version.

This is why we must always be On Guard for slight movements towards societal dysfunctions, tyranny and Failed-State status; this is when atrocities occur. Again, this is the lesson from Auschwitz by the victims of Auschwitz who still survive today; see this depiction in this VIDEO here from CBS News:

VIDEO – Holocaust survivor opens up about Auschwitz – https://www.cbsnews.com/video/holocaust-survivor-visits-auschwitz-for-first-time-since-camps-liberation/

Posted January 27, 2020 – Monday marks 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, the largest Nazi death camp. Around 200 Holocaust survivors are expected to be honored guests at a place where they were once sent to die. Mark Phillips spoke with a 91-year-old survivor who hasn’t talked about what happened to him in the camp until now.

The Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), asserts that in addition to economic empowerments, the stewards for a new Caribbean must also optimize the security apparatus in the region to ensure public safety and justice standards for all stakeholders: citizens, visitors and trading partners.

How do we go about empowering the economics and security engines? Throughout the 370 pages of the Go Lean book, the details are provided as turn-by-turn directions on how to mitigate against Failed-State encroachment. There is an Index Number that reflect Failed-State eventuality. The book defines this Index and the related eco-system, as follows (Page 134) :

The Bottom Line on the Failed States Index

The Failed States Index (Appendix F on Page 271) is an annual ranking of 177 nations based on their levels of stability and capacity. The Index is compiled by the Fund for Peace Institute, an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational organization, based in Washington DC, that works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security.

As a leader in the conflict assessment and early warning field, the Fund for Peace focuses on the problems of weak and failing states. The strength of the Failed States Index is its ability to distill millions of pieces of information into a form that is relevant as well as easily digestible and informative, as an indicator code. Each Indicator is rated on a 1 to 10 scale with 1 (low) being the most stable and 10 (high) being the most at-risk of collapse and violence. Think of it as trying to bring down a fever, with high being dangerous, low being acceptable. An obvious example, consider Somalia, the state’s complete inability to provide public services for its citizens would warrant a score of 10 for the Public Service indicator. Conversely, Sweden’s extensive provision of health, education & other public services would produce a 1 or 2 for that indicator. – Fund For Peace®

This Go Lean roadmap includes the new community ethos (attitudes and values) that must be adopted; plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate the region’s security and justice institutions. In fact, this actual advocacy in the Go Lean book contains specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 134, entitled:

10 Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty
This will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby creating an economic zone to protect the interest of the participant trading partner-member-states. The GDP of the region will amount to $800 Billion (circa 2010). In addition, the treaty calls for a collective security agreement of the member states so as to ensure homeland security and assuage against systemic threats. The CU will ensure that law-and-order persist during times of distress. When a member state declares a State of Emergency, due to natural disaster or civil unrest, this triggers an automatic CU response – this is equivalent to the governmental dialing 911.
2 Image and Defamation

When a country’s primary foreign currency generator is tourism/hospitality, just the perception of a weak or failing state could be devastating. The index is a number that can rise and fall, like a credit score, so any upward movement in the index triggers the negative perception. The pressures are not only internal; there may be external entities that can have a defaming effect: credit rating, country risk, threat assessment, K-n-R (Kidnap and Ransom) insurance rates. The CU will manage the image of the region’s member-states against defamation and work to promote a better image.
3 Local Government and the Social Contract
4 Law Enforcement Oversight
5 Military and Political Monitoring
6 Crime/Homeland Intelligence
7 Minority and Human Rights

The CU will protect the minority and human rights for the region’s population; this includes ethnic mixes of African, European, Amerindian, and Asian heritage; 4 languages, various religions, and 5 colonial legacies. The CU  strategizes this diversity as an asset, rather than a source of contention, to be exploited as cultural exchanges in music, festivals, events, and food services. This will have a positive effect on tourism (foreign & domestic) and media initiatives.
8 Election Outsourcing
9 War Against Poverty
10 Big Data

The CU will embrace an e-Government and e-Delivery model. There will be a lot of data to collect and analyze. In addition, the CU Commerce Department will function as a regional OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development), accumulating and measuring economic metrics and statistical analysis. Any decline in Failed-State indices will be detected, and managed in both a predictive and reactionary manner.

We never want to spiral down to the level of Auschwitz, so we must monitor early and often. The Go Lean movement addressed the subject of monitoring for the encroachment of Failed-State status on many occasions. See this sample of many previous blog-commentaries here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15039 Failed-State “Venezuela” – ‘On the Menu’ in California
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13974 The Spoken and Unspoken on Haiti’s Failed-State
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391 After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction & Defection for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996 After Irma, Failed State Indicators: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12274 State of the Union – Spanish Caribbean Failing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12098 Inaction on Venezuela: A Recipe for Failed-State Status
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5818 Greece: From Bad to Worse

“Never Again” has only been empty words in the modern world; but let’s do better here at home.

In truth, when people are victimized, they want the world to Never Forget; but when people are villainous, they want the world to Not Remember. The former European Jews repatriated to a homeland in Palestine and proceeded to bully, oppress and suppress their neighbors there, the Palestinian people. The drama of Israel and Palestine is complicated and difficult to solve; the solutions are out-of scope for this Caribbean focus. We simply wanted to study history and apply the lessons learned in the effort to reform our society.

Yes, we can … do better in protecting our citizen and ensuring “justice for all”. This is heavy-lifting, yes, but it is conceivable, believable and achievable.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … to do the heavy-lifting and elevating Caribbean society and making the 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 & 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 of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

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

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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Happy Chinese New Year

Posted on January 25, 2020 in Economics, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Happy New Year …

No, not the January 1st thing, but rather the January 25th thing – the Chinese New Year.

This is a Big Deal in China and among the Chinese Diaspora – Sinophone – throughout the world. There is great importance to this observation. See this VIDEO and encyclopedic reference here:

VIDEO – Everything you need to know about the Chinese New Year – https://youtu.be/3I-R5S3czyw

TRT World
Posted January 24, 2020 – Here’s everything you need to know about the Chinese New Year – how it’s celebrated, it’s history, and what the animals represent.

#Chinese New Year #Spring Festival #metalrat

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Title: Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year[a], also referred to as Lunar New Year, is the Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. The festival is usually referred to as the Spring Festival in mainland China,[b] and is one of several Lunar New Years in Asia. Observances traditionally take place from the evening preceding the first day of the year to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year. The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.[2] In 2020, the first day of the Chinese New Year will be on Saturday, 25 January, initiating the Year of the Rat.

Chinese New Year is a major holiday in China, and has strongly influenced Lunar new year celebrations of China’s neighbouring cultures, including the Korean New Year (seol), the Tết of Vietnam, and the Losar of Tibet.[3] It is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries with significant Overseas Chinese or Sinophone populations, including Singapore,[4]Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar,[5]Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines,[6] and Mauritius,[7] as well as many in North America and Europe.[8][9][10]

Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs. The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities as well as ancestors.[11] Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the New Year vary widely,[12] and the evening preceding Chinese New Year’s Day is frequently regarded as an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly clean their house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for incoming good luck. Another custom is the decoration of windows and doors with red paper-cuts and couplets. Popular themes among these paper-cuts and couplets include that of good fortune or happiness, wealth, and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes. For the northern regions of China, dumplings are featured prominently in meals celebrating the festival. It often serves as the first meal of the year either at midnight or as breakfast of the first day.
…
Festivities
New Year’s Eve
The biggest event of any Chinese New Year’s Eve is the annual reunion dinner. Dishes consisting of special meats are served at the tables, as a main course for the dinner and offering for the New Year. This meal is comparable to Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S. and remotely similar to Christmas dinner in other countries with a high percentage of Christians.

In northern China, it is customary to make jiaozi, or dumplings, after dinner to eat around midnight. Dumplings symbolize wealth because their shape resembles a Chinese sycee. In contrast, in the South, it is customary to make a glutinous new year cake (niangao) and send pieces of it as gifts to relatives and friends in the coming days. Niángāo [Pinyin] literally means “new year cake” with a homophonous meaning of “increasingly prosperous year in year out”.[44]

After dinner, some families go to local temples hours before the new year begins to pray for a prosperous new year by lighting the first incense of the year; however in modern practice, many households hold parties and even hold a countdown to the new year. Traditionally, firecrackers were lit to scare away evil spirits with the household doors sealed, not to be reopened until the new morning in a ritual called “opening the door of fortune” (开财门; 開財門; kāicáimén).[45]

Beginning in 1982, the CCTV New Year’s Gala is broadcast in China four hours before the start of the New Year and lasts until the succeeding early morning. Watching it has gradually become a tradition in China. A tradition of going to bed late on New Year’s Eve, or even keeping awake the whole night and morning, known as shousui (守岁), is still practised as it is thought to add on to one’s parents’ longevity.

First day
The first day is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and earth, officially beginning at midnight. It is a traditional practice to light fireworks, burn bamboo sticks and firecrackers and to make as much of a din as possible to chase off the evil spirits as encapsulated by nian of which the term Guo Nian was derived. Many Buddhists abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed to ensure longevity for them. Some consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year’s Day, so all food to be consumed is cooked the days before. On this day, it is considered bad luck to use the broom, as good fortune is not to be “swept away” symbolically.

Most importantly, the first day of Chinese New Year is a time to honor one’s elders and families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended families, usually their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

For Buddhists, the first day is also the designated holy day of MaitreyaBodhisattva (better known as the more familiar Budai Luohan), the Buddha-to-be. People also abstain from killing animals.

Some families may invite a lion dance troupe as a symbolic ritual to usher in the Chinese New Year as well as to evict bad spirits from the premises. Members of the family who are married also give red envelopes containing cash known as lai see (Cantonese dialect) or angpow (Hokkien, Chaozhou, and Fujian dialects), or hongbao (Mandarin), a form of blessings and to suppress the aging and challenges associated with the coming year, to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers. Business managers also give bonuses through red packets to employees for good luck, smooth-sailing, good health and wealth.

While fireworks and firecrackers are traditionally very popular, some regions have banned them due to concerns over fire hazards. For this reason, various city governments (e.g., Kowloon, Beijing, Shanghai for a number of years) issued bans over fireworks and firecrackers in certain precincts of the city. As a substitute, large-scale fireworks display have been launched by governments in such city-states as Hong Kong and Singapore. However, it is a tradition that the indigenous peoples of the walled villages of New Territories, Hong Kong are permitted to light firecrackers and launch fireworks in a limited scale.

Source: Retrieved January 25, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

What’s the Big Deal? Well, for starters, this relates to the 1.4 Billion people in China. That’s a market size that is bigger than North America and the European Union … combined. Consider the encyclopedic details in the Appendix below.

You see it, right? You do see why this is important; 1.5 Billion people (out of 7.7 Billion) in a world where Size Matters (as related in this previous blog-commentary from August 26, 2016):

For Hollywood – a metonym for the film-television-video industry – any access to large markets is a win-win.

Enter China…

… this country has 1.3 billion people. That’s a lot of “eye-balls”. This country, considering its history, used to be closed to western commerce and movie distributions. Now, its open … and advancing. Those 1.3 billion pairs of eye-balls are presenting a lot of opportunities and now starting to wield power.

For the Caribbean, this is a necessary discussion for the planners and stewards of a new Caribbean; this requires a consideration of the economic engines for our communities. This is the assertion of the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – that size matters when it comes to marketing your “Export Products & Services”. For us in the Caribbean, our primary export is tourism – we sell travel experiences to consumers around the world. – we must consider the 20-percent of the population that features Sinophone culture.

We must curry their favor!

So Happy New Year to our Sinophone friends and family.

Yes, we have Sinophone family members in the Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary, it was detailed how Chinese immigrants were “recruited” to come and impact the Caribbean eco-system. Consider this excerpt:

10 Things We Want from China and 10 Things We Do Not Want
Like it or not, the Caribbean is in competition with the rest of the world – and we are losing! …

Now we must consider other countries … that compete with us and are doing MUCH BETTER jobs of contending in this competitive environment. We must consider China and India:

China … went from “zero to hero”, emerging as an economic Super Power in short order. We can look, listen and learn from the Chinese eco-system; their mainland (the Peoples Republic of China), the special territories of Hong Kong and Taiwan (the Republic of China). We can lend-a-hand in reforming and transforming our own Caribbean region – as China has had to do – and we can eventually lead a reboot and turn-around of Caribbean society; again as China has done. …

While Caribbean people are not fleeing their homeland to relocate to China. there is a Diaspora issue associated with Caribbean-China relations: Indentured Servitude. At the end of the era of Caribbean slavery (1830’s to 1840’s), the plantation system required a replacement labor source; many Chinese nationals were thusly “recruited” as Indentured Servants to the region – British, French and Spanish lands – see here:

  • There were two main waves of Chinese migration to the Caribbean region. The first wave of Chinese consisted of indentured labourers who were brought to the Caribbean predominantly Trinidad, British Guiana and Cuba, to work on sugar plantations during the post-Emancipation period. The second wave was comprised of free voluntary migrants, consisting of either small groups (usually relatives) to British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad from the 1890’s to the 1940’s. In fact the most modern Caribbean Chinese are descended from this second group. – Caribbean-Atlas.com

Derivatives of the 18,000-plus Chinese immigrants are still here in the Caribbean today. These descendants have grown in numbers and power (economic and political) in the region. They are part of the fabric of our society. They are home in the Caribbean; and we are at home with them

So we need to embrace the Sinophone world, here and abroad – we must “curry their favor”. The liberal view is to value what they value and honor what they honor, while the conservative view is to NOT disrespect this people-culture and allow them to co-exist, survive and thrive. Doing so extends hospitality to these people and incentivizes them to trade with us – come visit as tourists – and impact our economic prospects.

This is the same thing we said about India and the Indophone Diaspora, in a previous blog-commentary from October 2017:

Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Respecting Diwali
A “Pluralistic Democracy” … means a society where the many different ethnic groups (and religions) have respect, equal rights, equal privileges and equal protections under the law; where there are no superior rights to any majority and no special deprivations to any minority. The expectation is for anyone person to be treated like everyone else. …

We fail so miserably in respecting non-standard traditions. The truth of the matter is that while religious toleration appears to be high in the Caribbean, this is really only true of European-styled Christian faiths. Other non-White religious traditions (let’s consider Hindu) are often ignored or even ridiculed in open Caribbean society, despite the large number of adherents. Of the 30 member-states to comprise the Caribbean Single Market, 3 of them have a large Indian-Hindu ethnicity. As a result, in these communities, though lowly promoted, one of the biggest annual celebrations for those communities is Diwali or Divali

… While Diwali is a religious celebration, many aspects of this culture spills-over to general society; see the detailed plans of a previous year (2009) in Appendix A below. This celebration, in many ways, is similar to Christmas spilling-over to non-Christian people in Christian countries. So the festivities carry a heavy civic-cultural “feel” as opposed to religious Hindu adherence. Plus, these values here are positive community ethos that any stewards in any society would want to promote: “the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair”.

What about the argument that this Chinese (and Indian) toleration – like celebrating the Chinese New Year – is not Christian?

Don’t get it twisted!

Christmas – the western equivalent to the Chinese New Year tradition – is not Christian either, consider – Four reasons Christmas is not Christian:

    1. Dec. 25 is the wrong day, and it’s celebrated for the wrong god. Dec. 25 is associated with many pagan birth myths—not Christ’s birth.
    2. Most Christmas traditions come from pagan religions, not the Bible.
    3. There is no Santa Claus. Parents shouldn’t lie to their children.
    4. Christians should keep the holy days that Jesus kept, not holidays that originated in paganism.

. Source:  January 25, 2020 from: https://lifehopeandtruth.com/god/blog/four-reasons-christmas-is-not-christian/

The movement behind the Go Lean book have always advocated this community ethos:

Live and let live.

Plus, we need to embrace China right now. They are one of the few groups of Direct Foreign Investors that have been showing interest in the Caribbean communities. We need all the help we can get to reform and transform our society. The heavy-lifting gets a little easier with a little help from our friends. Consider these previous blog-commentaries related to China’s investments in our region:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18301 After Hurricane Dorian, Rebuilding Partners: China Versus America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16192 In Defense of Trade – China Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8799 History of China Trade: Too Big to Ignore
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8813 Why China will soon be Hollywood’s largest market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8815 China’s Organ Transplantation: Facts and Fiction
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8817 Chinese Mobile Games Apps: The new Playground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8819 South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones??
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8823 China’s WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6231 China’s Caribbean Playbook: America’s Script

What about the argument that China is a Communist state and advocates for communism?

We have addressed this issue before – June 20, 2019:

‘Free Market’ Versus … China – Two Systems at Play
China is on the verge of overtaking the US as the Number 1 Single Market economy in the world…

  • Wait, isn’t China a communist state?
  • Hasn’t communism failed to deliver on its promises to elevate societies that abide by its principles?

Yes, and yes …

But China demonstrates that there is a difference between principles and practices. China abides by communist principles, but their practice is more aligned with Free Market concepts, especially with their doubling-down in trade, World Trade.

Do we truly consider Hong Kong as a communist state? Far from it; yet it is China; it is part of the “One country, two systems” practice.

All in all, we have nothing to fear from China – not their culture, religion, politics nor their military power. We should simply embrace them for trade in a give-and-take relationship. We must export to China as well; we need Chinese tourism.

We have to make changes, on our end, to make this Chinese tourism viable. We have to work harder to “live and let live”:

“Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come”.

- Photo 2

This is the charter of the Go Lean roadmap; we urge all stakeholders to lean-in to the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate our society. This is worth all the effort for us to do. This is how we make our Caribbean 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 & 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  – Reference: Sinophone

Chinese-speaking world or Sinophone or sinophone is a neologism that fundamentally means “Chinese-speaking”, typically referring to a person who speaks at least one variety of Chinese. Academic writers use Sinophone “Chinese-speaking regions” in two ambiguous meanings: either specifically “Chinese-speaking areas where it is a minority language, excluding China and Taiwan” or generally “Chinese-speaking areas, including where it is an official language”. Many authors use the collocation Sinophone world to mean the regions of Chinese diaspora outside of Greater China, and some for the entire Chinese-speaking world. Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language today, with over one billion people, approximately 20% of the world population, speaking it. …

Statistics (for populations outside of China and Taiwan)

Region Speakers Percentage Year Reference
 Anguilla 7 0.06% 2001 [1]
 Australia 877,654 3.8% 2016 [1][note 1]
 Austria 9,960 0.1% 2001 [1]
 Belize 2,600 0.8% 2010 [1]
 Cambodia 6,530 0.05% 2008 [1]
 Canada 1,290,095 3.7% 2016 [1]
 Cyprus 1,218 0.1% 2011 [1]
 Falkland Islands 1 0.03% 2006 [1]
 Finland 12,407 0.23% 2018 [1]
 Hong Kong 6,264,700 88.9% 2016 [1][note 2]
 Lithuania 64 0.002% 2011 [1]
 Macao 411,482 97.0% 2001 [1]
 Marshall Islands 79 0.2% 1999 [1]
 Mauritius 2,258 0.2% 2011 [1]
 Nepal 242 0.0009% 2011 [1]
 Northern Mariana Islands 14,862 23.4% 2000 [1]
 Palau 331 1.8% 2005 [1]
 Philippines 6,032 0.4% 2000 [1]
 Romania 2,039 0.01% 2011 [1]
 Russia 70,722 0.05% 2010 [1]
 Singapore 1,791,216 57.7% 2010 [1][note 3]
 South Africa 8,533 0.02% 1996 [1]
 Thailand 111,866 0.2% 2010 [1]
 Timor Leste 511 0.07% 2004 [1]
 United Kingdom 162,698 0.3% 2011 [1]
 United States 3,268,546 1.0% 2017 [2]

Source: Retrieved January 25, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinophone

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In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have reached 7.7 billion people as of April 2019.[2]

Source: Retrieved January 25, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

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Profiting from ‘Climate Change’

Posted on January 22, 2020 in Economics, Implementation, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Bad things happen to good people.

There is an actuality of Caribbean life; we are at the frontline of hurricanes. Every season, a number of storms brew and cause damage somewhere in the region. It may not be the same island or country, but at least one destination gets hit. This is a known threat confronting our region, under normal circumstances.

Now comes Climate Change; this is identified as the single most dangerous existential threat to modern life … for the whole planet. But, on the Caribbean frontlines, we are exposed to even more danger.

If only we can predict what will happen and then profit from it.

This is possible, probable and in practice now.

See this reference article from the Motley Fool Stock Advisory service:

Title: 3 Climate Change Stocks to Consider in 2020
Sub-Title: While an ever-warming world searches for solutions to wilder weather, we’ve found three stocks likely to make make the best of a bad situation.
By: Nathan Alderman, Stock Up Editor

The science is in: The world’s getting way too warm, way too fast, and it’s all but certain that we humans are to blame. Things are already getting bad — in Australia, six months of wildfires have scorched a chunk of land roughly the size of Oklahoma, killing an estimated 1 billion animals — and they’ll either get somewhat worse (if we act quickly and decisively) or a whole lot worse (if we keep doing next to nothing).

The three companies we’ve found:

  • A water utility as fresh water becomes scarcer
  • A pool provider as summers get hotter
  • A generator maker as fires and disasters cause more power outages

… can’t fix these problems. But they’re well-positioned to benefit, at least in the near term, from our changing climate.

For more on these three companies — and the very real, very urgent situation that could drive their shares higher — read the rest [of the stock advisory here].

Source: Retrieved January 22, 2020 from Motley Fool Stock Recommendation service at: https://bi-acq.motleyfool.com/track?t=v&enid=ZWFzPTEmbXNpZD0xJmF1aWQ9MjA1MjUzMjcmbWlkPTMzMDgyOCZtc2dpZD0xNDc4MTkmZGlkPTM4NDEzJmVkaWQ9Mzg0MTMmc249MTY4MDA4NTkmZWlkPXJvc2F3eWVyQGdtYWlsLmNvbSZlZWlkPXJvc2F3eWVyQGdtYWlsLmNvbSZ1aWQ9ODk0Njc5NjI5JnRhcmdldGlkPSZtbj0zNjQ3NjAmcmlkPTM0MTM4JmVyaWQ9MzQxMzgmZmw9Jm12aWQ9JnRnaWQ9JmV4dHJhPQ==&&&2141&eu=1&&&#

—————-

Excerpt – Title: 3 Climate Change Stocks to Consider Buying in 2020
Sub-title: These three diverse stocks are poised to rise as heat waves, droughts, and power shutoffs increase in frequency and/or severity.
By: Beth McKenna
One of the biggest trends of the 2020s decade will likely be an unfortunate one: climate change. Indeed, this topic tops the agenda at this week’s annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland, commonly called Davos, after the Alpine ski resort town in which the gathering of world leaders is held.

Evidence that the earth is warming is “unequivocal,” according to scientists around the world. Increasing average global temperatures and the rising frequency and severity of droughts in some areas, however, aren’t the only manifestations of climate change.

In 2018, while California was in the last official full year of its epic seven-year drought, dozens of cities across the East and Midwest set records for the wettest year on record, with most records dating back to the late 1800s. And last fall’s unprecedented widespread and days-long power shutoffs in Northern California can largely be attributed to climate change, as we’ll discuss further in a moment.

NASA weighs in as follows on the debate as to whether the climate change we’re experiencing is mainly a cyclical phenomenon or largely due to human activities:

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.

Even if the world acts relatively rapidly, it will likely take decades to halt or significantly slow down climate change. Moreover, our climate has already changed, and some of those changes are probably irreversible. Three stocks that should get a long-term tailwind from the changing climate are water utility giant American Water Works (NYSE:AWK), leading wholesaler of swimming pool supplies Pool Corp. (NASDAQ:POOL), and backup power generator maker Generac Holdings (NYSE:GNRC).

See the full article: Posted and retrieved Jan 22, 2020 from: https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/22/3-climate-change-stocks-to-consider-buying-in-2020.aspx

So an individual investor can profit from the perceived threats of Climate Change by investing (Stock Market) in one or all three companies:

  1. A Water Treatment/Management Company
  2. A Recreational Swimming Pools Company
  3. A Stand-by Generator Company

These investments seem practical and pragmatic; there will be a greater demand, so profit can be realized by supplying the needed products and services.

However, not just individuals, but also institutions and public entities can profit. How? In a previous blog-commentary – from June 6, 2018 – this business model was presented:

“Profiting” from Hurricanes
… there was [is] a way to make money on the hurricane season … its called reinsurance sidecars – where investors buy-in to the risks and returns of insurance premiums.

Hurricanes are bad! Yet still, profits can be made in these eventualities. In truth, profits can be made in the stock market even when companies are experiencing decline – one can “Make Money even When Stocks Go Down”; see this investing strategy portrayed in the following VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Make Money When Stocks Go Down: Beginner’s Guide to Short Selling Stocks! – https://youtu.be/bcbEypoYRGM

UKspreadbetting
A Beginner’s Guide to Short Selling Stocks. http://www.financial-spread-betting.c… PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE THIS VIDEO SO WE CAN DO MORE! Short selling is the secret to make money when stocks go down in price. But what is Short Selling? And how does one make money short selling? You are selling something you don’t own and buying it back later – but how does that work? How to Short a Stock: To go short I need to sell stock in the market and then buy it back at a later time. Theoretically what happens when you go short is that an institution will lend you the stock for a yearly percentage fee; you can then sell it on the market (pretending that you own it) hoping that the stock will decrease in value in time and thereby pocketing the difference. The fund isn’t too bothered about the stock movements in the short-term as typically they have very long term objectives unlike traders.

Shorters borrow shares from Pension Funds and Investment Houses, sell them onto the market and hope to buy them back later for a lower price, pocketing the difference. By borrowing a large number of shares and then selling them into the market the Hedge Funds usually manage to push the share price down. They will then buy them back in dribs and drabs so as not to push the price back up too much. The fact that any company is being heavily shorted alarms investors, which can also force down the share price, as they get frightened and sell up.

Related Videos on Short Selling and Going Short

Make Money When Stocks Go Down: Beginner’s Guide to Short Selling Stocks! 🚩 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcbEy…

Why is Short Selling Stocks Dangerous?⚠️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJzVq…

How To Find The Best Entry Points For Short Selling Stocks 👇 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I2Kg…

Rules and Strategies For Profitable Short Selling: Quantifying Risk When Selling New Lows 🚩
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs5OF…

Market Too OverSold to Press the Short Side? How to Avoid Shorting into the Hole! ⛳ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m_Zh…
Long/Short Equity Hedge Fund Strategy – 130/30 Strategy Explained Part 2 🙋
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElGNb…

Related Videos (Lucian Miers and Simon Cawkwell):
Is shorting unethical or immoral? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-lCb…
Is there anything morally dubious about short selling? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx-iH…
The Argument: Short Selling ruins Markets and Lives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_ReO…
What is the difference between short selling and naked short selling? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rpan…
Shorting Shares at a Support Level / after a Major Downward Spike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvipY…

If you’re into short selling those interviews will likely be interesting for you:
Interview with Lucian Miers, known as East London’s most feared short seller https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list… Interview with Simon Cawkwell (aka as Evil Knievil) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

In general, and in specifics, the actuality of profiting from perilous situations has been conveyed in many previous blog-commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book; see sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18301 After Dorian, Rebuilding Partners: China Versus America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17878 Profiting from the Migration Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13251 Funding Caribbean Risk
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13138 Industrial Reboot – Prisons 101 – Allowing Profits from Necessities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12959 After Irma, America Should Scrap the ‘Jones Act’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5559 Economic Principle: Profit-Seeking – When ‘Greed is Good’

The Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), identifies Climate Change as an Agent of Change; a dimension of external factors outside of our control that bring undeniable impact to the region. The book states (Page 57):

This issue is a major concern for the whole world, but particularly impactful on the Caribbean. There is some debate as to the causes of Climate Change, but no question as to its outcome: temperatures are rising, droughts prevail, and most devastating, hurricanes are more threatening. The CU roadmap must address the causes of Climate Change and most assuredly its consequences. The CU federal government must therefore advocate systems and schemes for a lower carbon footprint. Notwithstanding, the CU must implement recovery measures to respond, react and rebuild from the ever-more-devastating hurricanes.

Climate Change brings forth a lot of demand for cutting-edge products and services; supplying that demand will mean profits. Let’s keep those profits here in our region. Let’s allow for Caribbean investors in Caribbean companies.

Yes, we can …

Frankly, individuals and institutions investing in companies that supply cutting-edge Climate Change mitigating products is only an American actuality, now. But we must not be limited to this reality. The Go Lean/CU roadmap calls for promoting and elevating the 9 existing Stock Exchanges that are already in the region. The book identified these institutions (Page 200):

  • Bahamas (BISX)
  • Barbados (BSE)
  • Bermuda (BSX)
  • Cayman Islands (CSX)
  • Eastern Caribbean (ECSE)
  • Guyana (GASCI)
  • Haiti (HSE)
  • Jamaica (JSE)
  • Trinidad (TTSE)

So this is the How …

… throughout the 370 pages of the Go Lean book, the details are provided as turn-by-turn directions on how to reform and transform the economic, security and governing engines for the Caribbean region and their member-states. This roadmap includes the new community ethos (attitudes and values) that must be adopted; plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate the region’s existing Stock Exchanges – our versions of Wall Street. In fact, this actual advocacy in the Go Lean book contains specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 200, entitled:

10 Ways to Impact Wall Street

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 countries, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. The CU’s Single Market and Currency Union will allow for the emergence of viable capital markets for stocks, public/private bonds, and securities to create the economic engines needed to fuel growth, expansion and development. The CU will fill in the missing piece of the equation for successful international financial centers by providing the “whole institutional infrastructure of laws, regulations, contracts, trust and disclosure”.
2 Ensure Corporate Governance
3 Protect Public Financing Vehicles

The CU is a reboot of the regional governance for the Caribbean region. As such, “new guards” are implemented to ensure governmental financing. All public institutions (local authorities, municipal, national, and CU/federal) can avail the securities markets to sell municipal bonds and tax liens – this strategy ensure revenue collection. The CU will ensure a vertical industry of credit information and risk assessments to ensure the collectability of public debt.
4 Adopt Advanced Products

The regional securities markets will be encouraged to adopt advanced financial products like mutual funds, ETF, REITs, commodities futures and options. These products attract more people to avail themselves of investment opportunities.
5 Apply Common Sense – Derivatives – Lessons Learned
6 Ensure Quality and Limits on Electronic Trading systems
7 Downplay Lawless Impressions – Offshore Banking

Offshore banks have a place in the modern financial landscape without being viewed as “pirate” enterprises. When firms incorporate in CU financial centers to avail lower tax burden, this is a legal, opportunistic and a prudent business move. The CU will promote the vibrancy of this industry with better controls, oversight and image promotion.
8 Protect Against Foreign Currency Manipulators
9 Protect Against Insider Trading and Securities Fraud

Economic crimes involving the securities industry can have far reaching consequences beyond normal felonies. As such, the CU will maintain jurisdiction and marshal the investigations, prosecutions and sentencing of these crimes.
10 Learn from Occupy Wall Street Protest Movement

This advocacy projects that there is hope that the Caribbean region can foster the needed Capital Markets and Securities Exchanges to allow the funding vehicles for societal progress: stocks, bonds, options, reinsurance sidecars, warrants, and other financial products.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … to allow us to invest in ourselves … finally. This is how we can make our Caribbean 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 & 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 11 – 13):

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

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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