Tag: History

The Spoken and Unspoken on Haiti

Posted on January 16, 2018 in Ethos, Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The US President said what?! 

He – Donald J. Trump – called Haiti a “shit-hole” country while negotiating the details for an immigration reform bill with his political opponents.

This declaration spewed controversy and disgust in the US … and abroad; even here in the Caribbean. See VIDEO’s here:

VIDEO 1 – The U.S.’s complicated relationship with a country Trump called a ‘shithole – http://wapo.st/2ATEOSZ

According to the Washington Post, this is how ignorant you have to be to call Haiti a ‘shithole’.

President Trump’s defenders don’t know anything about Haiti’s history — or the United States’s. See the full article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/12/this-is-how-ignorant-you-have-to-be-to-call-haiti-a-shithole/?utm_term=.f82e10bad3d8

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VIDEO 2 – CNN and Fox News hosts react to Trump’s ‘shithole’ remark – https://youtu.be/NrynNeqx48I

Published on Jan 12, 2018 – President Trump referred to African nations and Haiti as “shithole” countries on Jan. 11. Here’s how hosts on CNN and Fox News reacted. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2qiJ4dy

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See commentary from the Caribbean Intelligentsia here posted on the regional site Caribbean News Now:

Commentary: President Trump’s ‘shithole’ comments unfortunately deserve follow up

By: Youri A Kemp

In a bi-partisan meeting with Democrat and Republican lawmakers on immigration and particularly on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) portion of the immigration reform package, in an unprecedented show of extreme ignorance and crassness, the president of the USA, Donald Trump, referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as “shitholes”.

No further comment [is] necessary, but I will comment anyway. I will because the overt stupidity of such a statement, particularly a statement made in the presence of Democrat and Republican lawmakers, shows how “off the rails” and “loose with his mouth” President Trump is.

For me personally, I cry foul on such comments. As everyone should. The president, or any world leader, should not be using such language in the open and especially not disparaging other countries, no matter how he or the grouping may feel about the issue.
…

See the full commentary here: http://wp.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/01/12/commentary-president-trumps-shithole-comments-unfortunately-deserve-follow/#comment-1747 

Source: Caribbean New Noe e-Zine; posted January 12, 2018; retrieved January 16, 2018

No wait, it wasn’t “shit-hole” that he said, it was “shit-house”.

No wait, maybe he didn’t say these at all!

Just what is spoken and what is unspoken about the disposition of Haiti in the minds of American leaders?

The Bible says:

“From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” – Luke 6:45

For people to say something like the above about a Caribbean country shows that truly, they have no regard for that country. Take away their words and study their actions (i.e. policies) and we see a consistent trend – spoken or unspoken – that there is really no regard for Haiti – and other Caribbean member-states.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – have said a lot about Haiti. We have told the truth, and the truth is not pretty.

Haiti is effectively a Failed-State.

Yet, still we make this statements in love – not hate; not bias; not prejudice nor blatant racism. We have also followed-up from “talking this talk” to “walking the walk” and have presented an Action Plan, a Way Forward for reforming and transforming Haiti. We have been doing this all along – since the start of these commentaries. See the previous submissions here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13916 Haiti – Beauty ‘Only a Mother Can Love’
Many women sacrifice to help Haiti create jobs and elevate their society. The Go Lean roadmap presents a model for Self-Governing Entities as a job-creating engine.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13105 Fixing Haiti – Can the Diaspora be the Answer?
Any plan that encourages people to leave their homeland and try to remember it later when they find success, double-downs on failure. We need solutions that encourage our people to prosper where planted in the homeland, like Haiti.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10336 A Lesson in History: Haiti’s Reasonable Doubt
There is the little-known history of an American occupation in Haiti in 1915. This suppressed, oppressed and repressed this island-nation further. Haiti needs to accept that America is not always its friend.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8767 A Lesson in History: Haiti 1804
Haiti has the proud legacy of being the first successful Slave Rebellion to liberate its people and start the effort of nation-building. Though Haiti became a Republic, they paid a steep price for the brazen acts of 1804.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8508 Support sought for kids left behind by UN troops in Haiti.
The UN’s efforts to help Haiti was a good intention, but there were many bad consequences. Rather than the UN, Haiti needs its neighbors to help.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7896 The Logistics of Disaster Relief
When Caribbean communities suffer from disasters – earthquakes and hurricanes – we need technocratic efficiency to manage the relief and response. The past track record is truly sad.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695 Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
Haiti has been on the “wrong-side” of so many atrocities, there must be a reconciliation focus to have peace with neighbors, going forward.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5462 In Search Of The Red Cross’ $500 Million In Haiti Relief.
The 2010 earthquake devastation brought-in a lot of money that somehow never made it to Haiti. This proves that Caribbean people need the maturity to manage charities ourselves.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5333 France – Haiti Legacy: Cause and Effect – Still matters today.
As finally the President of France made a proclamation of acknowledgement that the Republic of Haiti has endured a long legacy of paying a debt (in blood and finances) for the natural right of freedom.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3662 Migrant flow into US from Caribbean spikes. Haitians take to the dangerous seas in desperation to flee their homeland.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3473 Haiti to Receive $70 Million Grant to Expand Caracol Industrial Park. This is a model for Self-Governing Entities that the Go Lean roadmap stresses.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2907 Local Miami Haitian leaders protest Bahamian immigration policy.
Bad treatment of Haitians is not just limited to Americans; other Caribbean countries (the Bahamas in this case) are guilty of unfair treatment. The Go Lean strategy is to elevate the entire region, not one country over another.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547 Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure
Miami is thriving now, mostly due to the contributions of the Caribbean Diaspora.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1773 Miami’s Caribbean Marketplace Re-opens. The City of Miami now celebrates their Haitian community as opposed to the initial ridicule and rejection. This appears to be standard arc – rejection => toleration => acceptance => celebration – for all new immigrants.

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

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

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit of Caribbean people doing the work themselves for the Caribbean. This Way Forward was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

xii. 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.

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, including Haiti. We urge every Caribbean stakeholder to lean-in to this roadmap.

We must do this ourselves – as a confederation, a brotherhood – rather than waiting for other people to lead us or love us. Because frankly …

They don’t!

So let’s get busy in the hard-work and heavy-lifting to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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Blog # 700 – We Need to Talk!

Posted on January 5, 2018 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Hello, to those of you who live in and/or love the Caribbean, we have to make this urgent plea:

We need to talk …

This is a familiar advocacy from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. The book declares that the Caribbean is in crisis, and opens with this sad disposition (Page 3):

There is something wrong in the Caribbean. It is the greatest address in the world for its 4 language groups, but instead of the world “beating a path” to these doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out. For some Caribbean countries, their population has declined or been flat for the last 3 decades. This is only possible if despite new births and the absence of war, people are fleeing. This scenario, human flight, is a constant threat to prosperity for all the Caribbean despite their colonial legacies. Our youth, the next generation, may not be inspired to participate in the future workings of their country; they may measure success only by their exodus from their Caribbean homeland.

Today is January 5, 2018, as the rest of North America dips into a deep freeze – Winter Storm Grayson – the expectation should have been that the Caribbean would be a refuge. But sadly, we have to conclude that “all is not well in the sunny Caribbean“.

No, our dire situation depicts our wonderful Caribbean cultures flirting with failure, abandonment and extinction. Consider these highlights of island communities that have had to contend with failure and extinction:

  • Sad Puerto Rico, despite American power and prosperity, this US Territory is between a “rock and a hard-place” after Hurricane Maria this past season. More and more residents are now fleeing the island on a daily basis, justifiably so.
  • There are no guarantees that communities, countries and nations will survive. Just this past year, the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda evacuated Barbuda – it is a twin-island nation no more.
  • The Pacific island nation of Kiribati has engaged a plan to evacuate the whole country and relocate to a foreign land – in a few generations Kiribati citizenship will cease to exist.
  • A few years ago, a volcano eruption in Montserrat led to the near-evacuation – a ghost-town – of the whole island.

Once again, no guarantees exist for the future. We reap what we sow.

In order to secure a future, communities must do the heavy-lifting to reform and transform their societal engines. So to you Caribbean people, the entreaty is:

We need to talk …

We need to consider some solutions that can bring us from the precipice of extinction to forge a new future. We need to talk about the workable strategies, tactics and implementations to reach this goal.

There had been some plans in the past, that failed to launch viable solutions:

  • There was the West Indies Federation among the Anglophone Caribbean. It failed after 4 years. (At one point there was talk of integrating the British Caribbean possessions into Canada as overseas territories, much like Hawaii is to the United States).
  • There was the renewed attempt for integration with the formal Caribbean Community organization, but its failures are so evident that now there is even talk of the EU funding a study to consider CariCom’s dissolution.

No, we need to talk about a newer, better plan, a roadmap to finally elevate Caribbean communities, all Caribbean communities – all 30 member-states in the geographic region. This is the thrust of the Go Lean book …

The Go Lean book therefore serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society; this is a Way Forward for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, with one stewardship among all Caribbean member-states despite the colonial heritage of American, British, Dutch, French or Spanish.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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.

So the Caribbean needs to talk … about our current assessments and how we can move forward. The “talk” we need to have is really collaborative problem-solving. Just how do we conduct this “talk”?

A new book by radio-journalist Celeste Headlee gives us some suggestions. See the Book Review here and an accompanying Ted Talk VIDEO that follows:

Book Title: “WE NEED TO TALK” by Celeste Headlee
Sub-title: How to Have Conversations That Matter

In this urgent and insightful book, public radio journalist Celeste Headlee shows us how to bridge what divides us–by having real conversations. (BASED ON THE TED TALK WITH OVER 10 MILLION VIEWS)

NPR’s Best Books of 2017

“We Need to Talk is an important read for a conversationally-challenged, disconnected age. Headlee is a talented, honest storyteller, and her advice has helped me become a better spouse, friend, and mother.”  (Jessica Lahey, author of New York Times bestseller The Gift of Failure)

Today most of us communicate from behind electronic screens, and studies show that Americans feel less connected and more divided than ever before. The blame for some of this disconnect can be attributed to our political landscape, but the erosion of our conversational skills as a society lies with us as individuals.

And the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other. In We Need to Talk, she outlines the strategies that have made her a better conversationalist—and offers simple tools that can improve anyone’s communication. For example:

  • BE THERE OR GO ELSEWHERE. Human beings are incapable of multitasking, and this is especially true of tasks that involve language. Think you can type up a few emails while on a business call, or hold a conversation with your child while texting your spouse? Think again.
  • CHECK YOUR BIAS. The belief that your intelligence protects you from erroneous assumptions can end up making you more vulnerable to them. We all have blind spots that affect the way we view others. Check your bias before you judge someone else.
  • HIDE YOUR PHONE. Don’t just put down your phone, put it away. New research suggests that the mere presence of a cell phone can negatively impact the quality of a conversation.

Whether you’re struggling to communicate with your kid’s teacher at school, an employee at work, or the people you love the most — Headlee offers smart strategies that can help us all have conversations that matter.

Source: Retrieved January 4, 2018 from: https://www.amazon.com/We-Need-Talk-Conversations-Matter/dp/0062669001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515111400&sr=1-1&keywords=we+need+to+talk

Biography
Celeste Headlee is the host of the daily news show On Second Thought on Georgia Public Broadcasting. She has spent more than a decade with National Public Radio and has been a host for Public Radio International since 2008. Celeste has appeared on CNN, the BBC, PBS, and MSNBC. She’s also a classically trained soprano who doesn’t get enough time to sing anymore. She has one son and one rescue dog, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. <<< Photo 2 >>>
Source: Retrieved January 4, 2018 from: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062669001/we-need-to-talk

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VIDEO – 10 ways to have a better conversation | Celeste Headlee – https://youtu.be/R1vskiVDwl4

TED
Published on Mar 8, 2016 – When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations — and that most of us don’t converse very well. Celeste Headlee has worked as a radio host for decades, and she knows the ingredients of a great conversation: Honesty, brevity, clarity and a healthy amount of listening. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having better conversations. “Go out, talk to people, listen to people,” she says. “And, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed.”
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate

Follow TED news on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tednews

Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED

Subscribe to our channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksD…

This foregoing Book Review describes this global deficiency of talking-and-listening from an American perspective. But the need for collaborative problem-solving is really location agnostic. This is because America has problems; the Caribbean has problems; the whole world has problems. We need to come together and work towards assuaging our problems, yet the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other.

The Go Lean book provides a Way Forward, 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.

This is Blog # 700, a major milestone within this Go Lean movement for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. Over the years, the concept of a Way Forward for the universal Caribbean has been explored in other previous Go Lean blog-commentaries; see sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12416 Conscientizing – Talking about Solutions – on the Radio
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12274 State of the Union – Spanish Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11812 State of the Union – Hope and Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11544 State of the Union – Need for Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10554 State of the Union – French Caribbean Seeking Integration
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4551 State of the Union – US Territories
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4263 State of the Union – Aruba and Dutch Territories
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3956 Art and Science of Collaboration

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean – the people in all the islands and coastal states and those in the Diaspora – to lean-in for this collaborative effort, the integrated Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

We can do this. We can all talk … and collaborate and conceive solutions to our regional problems. We can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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2017 Review – Mr. Trump shows the ‘Wrong Way’

Posted on December 21, 2017 in Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The year 2017 is coming to a close. This was the first year of the federal administration of the 45th President of the United States, the non-politician, billionaire real estate developer Donald J. Trump. In retrospect, it has been a “year of Biblical proportions”, one to lament. While we thought 2016 was bad, and it was, its “wow oh wow” for 2017 …

… if the summary of 2017 was named after one of the 66 books of the Bible, it would not be Revelations, nor Exodus. No, it would be:

Lamentations
The Bible book of Lamentations reveals how God viewed the ancient City of Jerusalem and the land of Judah after their enemy, the Kingdom of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, burned the city and laid the land desolate in the year 607 BC. The expressions of acknowledgment of sin recorded therein make it clear that from God’s standpoint, the reason for the calamity was the error of the people. – Source.

We can now look back and lament the happenings of 2017.

While this year 2017 has been a cliffhanger, it has been perfect for the stewards of a new Caribbean. The new President – Donald Trump – proved the “perfect example of what NOT to do” to elevate society – economics, security and governing engines. Yet, this is the country that so many Caribbean people have fled to. We can learn a lot from America’s accomplishments, and even more from their failures. See the satirical recaps in these VIDEO’s, here and the Appendix. 🙂

We can now look back, lament and laugh at the happenings of 2017, see here:

VIDEO – Stephen’s Greetings: 2017 Late Show Year In Review – https://youtu.be/E9VkweYGTwU


The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Published on Dec 4, 2017 – 2017 was rough for a lot of people, but here’s proof that it wasn’t a total wash. See some of Stephen Colbert’s best moments from The Late Show this year.

Subscribe To “The Late Show” Channel HERE: http://bit.ly/ColbertYouTube

For more content from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, click HERE: http://bit.ly/1AKISnR 

This commentary is presented by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The movement – book and accompanying blog-commentaries – relates that the United States of America should be lamented and not considered a refuge for the people of the Caribbean – the “grass is not greener on the other side”. The book laments the fact that despite residing in the best address on the planet, many of our people “beat down their doors” to get out (Page 3), and emigrate to the US and other countries.

Why do people leave such an idyllic place? The book identifies a series of reasons, classified as “push and pull” factors:

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

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

Surely, fleeing to the US must be likened to “jumping out of the frying pan into the fire”. Remember, this country was not built for the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown. They continue to experience racial discriminations, despite a recent Black President.

Here are some snippets from this 2017 Caribbean Yearbook against the backdrop of Trump’s exhortations; (this is just a sample in chronological order – from January 2017 to today):

Religious Intolerance – Trump banned travel from 6 Muslim countries

Fostering Discord – California wants out!  They have started a petition to secede from Tump’s America

Collaboration Flaws – Disinterest in Others  (Non-Americans) – Trumps yawns at the Caribbean’s priorities

Disparaging Messaging to Tourists/Visitors – Arrivals and Revenues down from some countries

Rejection of Evidence – Climate Change Denial – Paris Accords Withdrawal

Climate of Hate fostered by Trump – White Supremacists / Disdain of Immigrants

America First – Prioritization as World Leader downplayed – Other countries lose respect

Supply-side Economics Failures manifested in Kansas

Selective Law-and-Order Enforcement – Under Trump, Civil Rights cases downplayed

Claim to Ignorance on Natural Disasters – Who Knew?

Disdain of Female Empowerment – Female dissidents “diss-ed” by Trump; think Hillary, Pocahontas, etc.

Hurricane Response and Competence – Puerto Rico versus Texas – Black-and-Brown gets less

Societal Defects of Gun Culture – Trumps calls Black-and-Brown Shooters Terrorist, but silent on Whites

Aversion to Trade Agreements – Trump undermined TPP, NAFTA and others

Trump’s Compassion Exhaustion – Ending ‘Temporary Protection Status’ to Haitian Refugees

Sexual Harassment Complicity – Trump’s accusers re-emerged

Take from the Poor; Give to the Rich – Trump’s Tax Reform law

Surely, it is the conclusion of most people that 2017 has proven that America is not working for Caribbean priorities …

… they are not even working for their own priorities, as the country under Trump seems more and more divided with the President only supported by 33 percent of the people, the other 67% are outraged – see VIDEO in the Appendix below – i.e. the majority of the population are middle class, yet yesterday’s passage of the Tax Reform bill only benefits the rich.

Proudly, we say that for our societal elevation efforts, the quest of the Go Lean … Caribbean movement: we do not want to be America, we want to be better.

The Go Lean book – available for free download – does not only complain or lament America, but also prescribes a Way Forward for the Caribbean:

Way Forward – an action, plan etc. that seems a good idea because it is likely to lead to success; i.e.:

  • A way forward lies in developing more economic links.
  • This treatment may be the way forward for many inherited disorders.

Source: Retrieved December 22, 2016 from: http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/a-the-way-forward

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

This Go Lean movement (book and accompanying blogs) does not look to President Donald Trump to lead for the Caribbean; we look to lead ourselves. To our chagrin, so many of our citizens have previously fled the homeland for American shores. But now …

… we want them back!

The Go Lean book does not ignore these “push and pull” factors that cause our Caribbean people to leave in the first place. No, the book stresses (early at Page 13) the need to be on-guard for “push” factors in these Declaration of Interdependence statements:

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

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

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

For the Caribbean, we must succeed in our Way Forward / Go Lean roadmap, so as to dissuade our own people from giving up and abandoning their native homelands. While no society is perfect nor fully-optimized, some countries have been better than others; notwithstanding the US under Donald Trump. Many countries in North America and Western Europe have become lands of refuge for our Caribbean Diaspora.

Surely, we can do better in lowering the Push and Pull factors now. We should be able to dissuade Caribbean people from the lamentable decision of going to Trump’s America.

Yes, we can …

… if we do the heavy-lifting to convince all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, then truly we can make our region better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

—————

Appendix VIDEO – The Politics of Branding, Meeting Obama & Trump’s First Year: The Daily Show – https://youtu.be/bjKr2ltVKII

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Published on Dec 18, 2017

Trevor Noah explains why Republicans are better than Democrats at political branding, talks about meeting Barack Obama and reflects on the first year of the Trump administration.

Watch full episodes of The Daily Show for free: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-sho…

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

  • Category: Comedy 
  • License: Standard YouTube License

 

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Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams

Posted on December 15, 2017 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

There is a vision of a shield protecting the people and property of the Caribbean region. Is that a vision of something real, or is it a mirage?

The Caribbean region has an eclectic history when it comes to security, think the bad actors of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Yet, those Pirates have since all been extinguished, thanks to a multilateral effort among European (and now American) imperial powers. Credit goes to the British, French and the Dutch military/naval powers of the past.

That was a BIG accomplishment in terms of regional security. Can we get that again? Can these championing national powers – and their descendants – come together and provide a modern day shield so as to project Caribbean homeland security anew?

This has been a goal for Caribbean stewards for a long time, but to no avail, there has been a Failure to Launch.

The historicity of military conflicts (think: World War I and World War II) in the 20th Century has resulted in the emergence of just one Super Power, the United States of America, providing security assurances for the Western Hemisphere. The foregoing vision therefore is one of an American shield; this country boasts that they are keeping us safe in the Caribbean.

The perception of security – much like the perception of beauty – is in the eye of the beholder.

My job is to keep the ‘pink elephants‘ away.

Do you see any pink elephants? Well then, I am doing my job!

This seems to describe the efforts of the American hegemony with their formal efforts for Caribbean Basin security – see ‘Pax Americana’ in Appendix A below. Their job is just to keep the pink elephants away:

  • Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMD’s – i.e. nuclear, chemical, biological, etc.
  • Terrorism

Truthfully, we do not have the manifestation of these threats in the Caribbean region. But do we feel safe?

No!

The American-sponsored Caribbean Basin Security pact is only a Dream for us in the Caribbean; there is no feeling of security in this basin! Despite all the promise of a strong defense, we have serious deficiencies in our peace-and-security offerings … due to:

  • Narco-Terrorism
  • Organized Crime / Gang Activity
  • Human Trafficking
  • Border Intrusions
  • Environmental Protection
  • Disaster Response

This theme was also posited in a previous blog-commentary from 2015 regarding American homeland security solutions for the Caribbean region. While they use the term Caribbean Basin as a political catalogue, for us this is more than politics, this is home for 42 million people! That blog stated:

The United States of America is proud of its security commitment to their Caribbean neighbors, but the amount they devote is such a piddling – they prioritize 0.1968% of the total security budget towards the region – that the Caribbean should not be lulled into complacency. We need our own security solutions!

The start of the Troop Surge in 2007; to quell the insurgency.

The US is the only remaining super power; it devotes massive amounts of finances to its [Department of Defense ($526.6 billion for 2014) and Homeland Security ($59.9 billion)], far exceeding all other countries. The US also asserts that it will provide frontline protection for its neighboring countries, in this case the Caribbean Basin. Just how do we quantify that commitment? Budget percentage.

The US has committed $263 million in funding since 2010; … that’s 5 years combined. For easy arithmetic, divide that figure by 5 to yield $52.6 million a year in commitment. $52.6 million [over $526.6 billion plus $59.9 billion] … is just a “drop in the bucket”; [less that 2/10 of 1 percent].

Unfortunately, Caribbean people do not feel as if their homeland is secured. Among the “push and pull” reasons why people have fled away from the region, personal security has been listed as a high rationale. As communicated, our concern for homeland security is not WMD’s or terrorism – as is the case for our American neighbors – but rather it is the risks and threats of crime and the dread of emergencies.

Our societal abandonment rate is atrocious – one report stated that the professional classes have fled at a 70 percent rate, and recent hurricanes have resulted in more Failed-States and Ghost Towns. Remediation and mitigation for these concerns should be the primary focus of any security initiative for the Caribbean homeland.

This consideration is in harmony with the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for change in the region, affecting the economics, security and governing engines. It presents new measures and new empowerments as it introduces the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and an aligning Status of Forces Agreement for the 30 Caribbean member-states to benefit from an integrated security pact. This commentary is the 3rd of 4 parts in a series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch integrated solutions to elevate the region’s societal engines. The full series is catalogued as follows:

Where are the European Masters – British, French and the Dutch – now for contributing to the security of the Caribbean region?

British

Could the solution for Caribbean security needs be fulfilled by the British, who is a stakeholder in this region with 6 Overseas Territories and 12 members of the British Commonwealth?

Frankly, security needs are glaring for current and former UK Territories. Under this Commonwealth scheme, the UK is supposed to be “front and center” in a “mutual defence” for the Anglophone Caribbean’s security threats. But alas, the UK is not doing enough for the security of their Caribbean responsibilities – this is the assessment of British stakeholders themselves. In fact, the UK itself now depends on interdependence with others – North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO – to fulfill their own security needs.

Britain itself is now just one part of the NATO military alliance in which the Commonwealth had no role apart from Canada. The ANZUS treaty of 1955 linked Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in a defensive alliance, with Britain and the Commonwealth left out. – Wikipedia

This is all that remains of the once-great British military in the Caribbean region, notwithstanding visiting naval vessels:

Location Details
Belize British Army Training and Support Unit Belize: Used primarily for jungle warfare training, with access to 5,000 sq mi of jungle terrain. Although British facilities were mothballed in the 2010 SDSR, BATSUB is still seeing increased usage.
Bermuda The Royal Bermuda Regiment : Formed in 1965. Official website: www.bermudaregiment.bm
Montserrat Royal Montserrat Defence Force: Raised in 1899.

French

Could the solution for the Caribbean security needs be fulfilled by France, who is a stakeholder in this region with 2 Departments (governmental sub-sets like provinces) – Guadeloupe and Martinique – and 2 Overseas Territories – St Barthélemy and half of St. Martin? They do possess a military presence in the region, with these bases:

Territory Garrison No. of personnel
French Guiana Les forces armées en Guyane (FAG) 2,100
Martinique Les forces armées aux Antilles (FAA) 1,000

Dutch

Could the solution for the Caribbean security needs be fulfilled by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who is a stakeholder in this region with 3 Constituent nations within the Kingdom – Aruba,  Curaçao and Sint Maarten – and 3 Overseas Territories – Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius? They too possess a military presence in the region:

The Netherlands is responsible for the implementation of the Defence tasks of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean.

Military tasks in the Caribbean

Over 500 armed forces personnel in the Caribbean are tasked with:

  • protecting the borders of the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands;
  • supporting civil authorities;
  • maintaining the (inter)national rule of law  in the context of, for example:
    1. the international drug trade. Because of the location of its islands, the Caribbean is vulnerable to drug trafficking by sea. The navy is part of Joint Inter Agency Task Force South, an international organisation that conducts operations to counter drug trafficking.
    2. military assistance. The navy’s military units provide humanitarian assistance or maintain public order following disasters or accidents caused by the passage of hurricanes, for example. Each year, the navy is on standby from 1 June to 1 December to perform these tasks.
    3. illegal fishing and environmental offences. The navy supports the Dutch Caribbean Coastguard in conducting surveillance and taking action against illegal fishing and environmental offences. The navy also assists in search and rescue missions in Caribbean

Source: Retrieved December 13, 2017 from: https://english.defensie.nl/topics/caribbean/defence-tasks

The Dutch security solution for the Caribbean is organized under the Royal Marechaussee, a military Police with broad homeland security functionalities. See more of this perfect role model – this is our dream –  for Caribbean success in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Marechaussee in the Caribbean – https://youtu.be/m7ea2ZmV4oE

Published on Dec 14, 2017 – This VIDEO is the property of the Defense Ministry of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; all Rights Reserved to this property owner. Retrieved from https://english.defensie.nl/topics/caribbean/defence-tasks

American

Could the solution for the Caribbean security needs be fulfilled entirely by American defense apparatus? Yes, indeed; if this was their priority.

It is not!

They should have a motivation; they are a stakeholder in this region with 2 sovereign territories (Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands). Plus, they have signed treaties with neighboring countries, as in the Caribbean Basin treaty and NATO accords identified earlier. This is demonstrative of the militaristic society the US has become. They are the largest operators of military bases abroad, with 38 “named bases” having active-duty, national guard, reserve, or civilian personnel (as of September 30, 2014). According to sources, the American military Caribbean footprint include:

Bahamas: Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Detachment AUTEC

Cuba: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

Puerto Rico: There are only two remaining military installations in Puerto Rico: the U.S. Army’s small Ft. Buchanan (supporting local veterans and reserve units) and the PRANG (Puerto Rico Air National Guard) Muñiz Air Base (the C-130 Fleet).

The American security efforts are coordinated with laser-focused precision by professionals in their Southern Command, based in Greater Miami; see reference in Appendix B below.

The Americans “talk the talk, but do not walk the walk”. So the vision of an American shield protecting the Caribbean region is just a dream. We need a realistic solution.

Way Forward

American, British, French, Dutch … not enough! Let’s try a reboot, something different: all of these efforts … together.

As related in a previous Go Lean commentary …

… the book Go Lean…Caribbean prescribes a detailed, complex plan for effecting change in our society. The goal is to confederate under a unified entity made up of the region’s stakeholders to empower the economics and optimize Homeland Security. But Homeland Security for the Caribbean has a different meaning than for our North American or European counterparts. Though we too must be on defense against military intrusions like terrorism & piracy, we mostly have to contend with threats that may imperil the region’s economic engines, like our tourism products. This includes concerns like narco-terrorism and enterprise corruption, plus natural and man-made disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, oil/chemical spills, etc..

So the Go Lean security goal is mostly for public safety!

We do not have the public safety assurances that would be expected of an advanced democracy. The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that the region must therefore prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs. So the request is that all Caribbean member-states confederate to execute a limited scope on their sovereign territories. This ideal solution is for an integrated, unified regional entity – a confederation. This solution is conceivable, believable and achievable for the Caribbean. What we need is a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to be embedded in the treaty for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation among the 30 member-states. Under international law, this approach allows for a military presence in a homeland without the view of an occupation force – SOFA allows for mutual consent between both the host and engaging powers. There after allowing us to:

This security goal is detailed in the Go Lean book as it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic CU Trade Federation. The roadmap ensures that security dynamics of the region are inextricably linked with the economics and governing engines of the region. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

The book contends that bad actors will always emerge just as a result of economic successes in the region. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

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

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

The Caribbean appointing “new guards”, or a security pact to ensure public safety is not so new an endeavor. Different strategies have been deployed in the past, but have Failed to Launch a successful solution. Consider these:

  • West Indies Regiment within the West Indies Federation
    In the previous submission of this blog series – Part 1 of 4 – the history of the failed West Indies Federation (1958 to 1962) was detailed. This effort only related to the Anglophone countries (United Kingdom) and among its many initiatives was the West Indies Regiment. The Go Lean book provided more details (Page 302):This infantry unit of the British Army recruited from and normally stationed in the British colonies of the Caribbean between 1795 and 1927. Throughout its history, the regiment was involved in a number of campaigns in the West Indies and Africa, and also took part in the First World War, where it served in the Middle East and East Africa. In 1958 the regiment was revived with the West Indies Federation with the establishment of three battalions; however it was disbanded in 1962 when its personnel were used to establish other units in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.Though the West Indies Federation was aborted, the need for security among the overseas territories of the United Kingdom remains.
  • Regional Security System (RSS)
    There is currently a security pact; shared by 5 Eastern Caribbean member-states that was first consummated in 1982 – this was discussed in full depth in a previous commentary regarding the Regional Security System:This RSS is an international agreement for the defence and security of the eastern Caribbean region; [it] was created in 1982 to counter threats to the stability of the region in the late 1970s and early 1980s. On 29 October four members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States—namely, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Barbados to provide for “mutual assistance on request”. The signatories agreed to prepare contingency plans and assist one another, on request, in national emergencies, prevention of smuggling, search and rescue, immigration control, fishery protection, customs and excise control, maritime policing duties, protection of off-shore installations, pollution control, national and other disasters and threats to national security.[1] Saint Kitts and Nevis joined following independence in 1983, and Grenada followed two years later.
  • Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA)
    The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency was established in 1991 as CDERA (Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency) with primary responsibility for the coordination of emergency response and relief efforts to Participating States that require such assistance. It transitioned to CDEMA in 2009 to fully embrace the principles and practice of Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM).(CDM) is an integrated and proactive approach to disaster management and seeks to reduce the risk and loss associated with natural and technological hazards and the effects of climate change to enhance regional sustainable development.This CDEMA agency was detailed in a previous commentary lamenting the fact that the region is often faced with a “Clear and Present Danger”. Though there is a regional agency to attempt to prepare and respond, it is far inadequate. For example, the accompanying Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility associated with CDEMA – also detailed in a previous blog – only pays out “pennies on the dollar” that the member-states need to re-pair-recover-rebuild after a natural disaster in the region.

All of these prior instances of regional integration have been deficient to meeting the needs of Caribbean stakeholders. Though they have made a good faith effort, they have Failed to Launch adequate solutions to satisfy any Social Contract – the implication that citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights.

The Go Lean roadmap however calls for a permanent professional security forces that complements and supplement existing Police and Defense Forces; there will be opportunity for Defense Force assimilation later in the Go Lean roadmap. The CU Trade Federation will lead, fund and facilitate the security forces, encapsulating (full-time or part-time) all the existing armed forces in the region. This CU Homeland Security Force would get its legal authorization from the Status of Forces Agreement vested with the ascension of the CU treaty.

This SOFA is “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. The Go Lean book provides a full 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-security engines of Caribbean society. There is a lot of consideration in the book for optimizing the currency and monetary eco-systems.

Other subjects related to security and governing empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476 Plan for ‘Policing the Police’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12466 State of the Union: Unstable ‘Volcano States’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400 Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11905 Want Better Security? ’Must Love Dogs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566 Funding the Caribbean Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7345 ISIS reaches the Caribbean Region
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7119 Security Role Model for the Caribbean: African Standby Force
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6247 Tragic images show refugee crisis at a tipping point in Europe
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531 A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago – World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487 Here come the Drones … and the Concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076 Trinidad Muslims travel to Venezuela for jihadist training
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789 America’s War on the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535 Remembering and learning from Boston
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341 US slams Caribbean human rights practices
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want – Pax Americana

Underlying to the prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play.

  • There will always be “bad actors” to disrupt the peace of society. We need to be ready for them.
  • There will always be natural disasters. We must be ready for them too.
  • Bad things will happen to good people!

We must no longer Fail to Launch … workable security solutions. We know exactly what we want to be and do in the Caribbean; we want to deploy a regional-federal security force to ensure homeland protections, much like the Dutch Marechaussee – see the above VIDEO – we only want it for the full region. All Caribbean stakeholders are therefore urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. 🙂

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

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

———-

Appendix A – The Bottom Line on Pax Americana

Pax Americana refers to the historical concept of the relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later the Western world resulting from the preponderance of power of the military establishment of the USA. The term is primarily used in its modern connotations to refer to the peace established after the end of World War II in 1945. Since then, it has come to indicate the military and economic position of the United States in relation to other nations. The USA is the only remaining super power and as such they exert a vigorous defense for their version of capitalistic democracy in the region. The focus on the Western Hemisphere is still guided by the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North/South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring US intervention. Pax Americana is the underlying policy that led to escalations (with Russia) during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. – Go Lean book Page 180.

———-

Appendix B – United States Southern Command 
The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), located in Doral, Florida in Greater Miami, is one of nine Unified Combatant Commands (CCMDs) in the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for providing contingency planning, operations, and security cooperation for Central and South America, the Caribbean (except US commonwealths, territories, and possessions), their territorial waters, and for the force protection of US military resources at these locations. USSOUTHCOM is also responsible for ensuring the defense of the Panama Canal and the canal area. As explained below, USSOUTHCOM has been under scrutiny due to several human rights and rule of law controversies in which it has been embroiled for nearly a decade.

Under the leadership of a four-star Commander, USSOUTHCOM is organized into a headquarters with six main directorates, component commands and military groups that represent SOUTHCOM in the region. The current commander is Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, USN.

USSOUTHCOM is a joint command[1] of more than 1,201 military and civilian personnel representing the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and several other federal agencies. Civilians working at USSOUTHCOM are, for the most part, civilian employees of the Army, as the Army is USSOUTHCOM’s Combatant Command Support Agent. The Services provide USSOUTHCOM with component commands which, along with their Joint Special Operations component, two Joint Task Forces, one Joint Interagency Task Force, and Security Cooperation Offices, perform USSOUTHCOM missions and security cooperation activities. USSOUTHCOM exercises its authority through the commanders of its components, Joint Task Forces/Joint Interagency Task Force, and Security Cooperation Organizations.

Source: Retrieved December 14, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Southern_Command

———-

Appendix C – The U.S. Military’s Presence in the Greater Caribbean Basin: More a Matter of Trade Strategy and Ideology than Drugs

Washington’s initiative to have access to at least seven Colombian military facilities …

… would [help the] fulfillment of U.S. policy goals in the region. Two of the facilities soon to be available to the U.S. are located in the Caribbean region – the military port in Cartagena and the air base in Malambo – and will serve the needs of the U.S. Navy.

The new Caribbean coast facilities will join an array of existing U.S. military establishments in the region dating back to 1903. Up to now, the official raison d’etre for a U.S. presence in the Caribbean was to combat drug trafficking. However, the proliferation of security threats, in particular developments possibly against the interests of Chávez’s Venezuela, has led some to argue that no matter how much Washington’s officials deny it, an unspoken reason for the U.S. deployment to Colombia is to keep Chavez under check. With the Washington-Bogotá decision, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between masking antinarcotics efforts as a cover for a variety of U.S. security concerns and aspirations throughout Latin America, especially in the coming trade war over commodities.

Read the full story … posted September 23, 2009; retrieved December 14, 2017 from: http://www.coha.org/the-u-s-militarys-presence-in-the-greater-caribbean-basin-more-a-matter-of-trade-strategy-and-ideology-than-drugs/

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Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’

Posted on December 11, 2017 in Economics, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Money is more important in society than people are willing to accept. Though some critics say that love, family, faith, country and other principles are more important. But an obscure Murphy’s Law states (and is quoted in the book Go Lean…Caribbean at Page 32) this ironic truth:

“When people claim that it’s the principle, and not the money, chances are, it’s the money”.

There are indeed more important things in life than money, but somehow all these things can be bought/sold … for money. The strategy in this Go Lean book is to optimize money issues: consolidate monetary reserves for the region into a Single Currency, the Caribbean Dollar (C$), managed by the technocratic Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). The C$ will be based on a mixed-basket of foreign reserves (US dollars, Euros, British pounds & Yens).

This is a simple but effective plan – a best practice: introduce the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) and Caribbean Dollar as a Single Currency for the region’s 30 member-states.

Huge benefits abound! And so this economic initiative is important for Caribbean elevation. The rationale is that this strategy “enables economies to be more resilient to exogenous shocks”.

exogenous shocks – In economics, a shock is an unexpected or unpredictable event that affects an economy, either positively or negatively. Technically, it refers to an unpredictable change in exogenous factors — that is, factors unexplained by economics — which may influence endogenous economic variables. – Wikipedia.

This benefit is so obvious that others have thought of this before …

Yet there has consistently been a Failure to Launch this economic initiative; or to do so successfully. Consider the historicity of the CariCom Multilateral Clearing Facility (CMCF) in Appendix A below – a normal functionality of regional Central Banks.

Currently, the Caribbean has no regional Central Bank, so safety-net, no shock absorption, and no integration. This is the quest of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it urges the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). The book serves as a roadmap for this goal, with turn-by-turn directions to integrate the 30 member-states of the region and forge an $800 Billion economy.

We have the great models of the United States and Europe to consider how a Single Currency can positively impact a consolidated regional economy; see VIDEOs in the Appendices below. We do not have to invent innovative solutions on our own; we can simply model the best-practices of these other communities. This is the familiar advocacy for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary from May 10, 2014 the merits of Single Market and Single Currency economic integrations were related as follows:

Europe has the safety net of the economies-of-scale of 508 million people and a GDP of $15 Trillion in 28 member-states in the EU; (the Eurozone subset is 18 states, 333 million people and $13.1 Trillion GDP). The US has 50 states and 320 million people. Shocks and dips can therefore be absorbed and leveraged across the entire region .The EU is still the #1 economy in the world; the US is #2. – [See related VIDEO here: https://youtu.be/vRzFAvgBhU0.]

The Go Lean roadmap signals change for the region. It introduces new measures, new opportunities and new recoveries. Exogenous shocks are a reality. Economies will rise and fall; the recovery is key. Prices will inflate and deflate; there are very effective measures – at the regional level – for managing all these indices. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the establishment of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), and the allied Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to manage the monetary-currency affairs of this region. The book describes the breath-and-width of the CCB and the Caribbean Dollar Single Currency.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean also detailed previous (inadequate) attempts to integrate Caribbean currencies …

… this commentary is the 2nd of 4 parts in a series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch solutions to elevate the region’s societal engines. The full series is catalogued as follows:

  1. Failure to Launch – Past Failures for Integration
  2. Failure to Launch – Economics: Caribbean Central Banks and the Quest for a Single Currency
  3. Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
  4. Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Regional Alphabet Organizations

In the previous submission – Part 1 of 4 – the history of the failed West Indies Federation was detailed. This effort only related to the Anglophone countries but among its many initiatives was the plan to introduce a consolidated currency. This excerpt is derived from the Go Lean book’s Anecdote on Caribbean currencies relating English-speaking and other language groups:

Anecdote # 16 – Caribbean Currencies (Page 149)

Anglophone

…

In 1946, a West Indian Currency Conference saw Barbados, British Guiana, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad & Tobago and the Windward Islands agree to establish a unified decimal currency system based on a new West Indian dollar to replace the current arrangement of having three different Boards of Commissioners of Currency (for Barbados, British Guiana and Trinidad) manage monetary issues in the Eastern Caribbean. In 1949, the British government formalized the dollar system of accounts in British Guiana and the Eastern Caribbean territories by introducing the British West Indies dollar (BWI$) at the already existing conversion rate of $4.80 per pound sterling (or $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence). It was one of the many experimental political and economic ventures tested by the British government to form a uniform system within their British West Indies territories. The symbol “BWI$” was frequently used and the currency was known verbally as the “Beewee” (slang for British West Indies) dollar. Shortly thereafter in 1950, the British Caribbean Currency Board (BCCB) was set up in Trinidad with the sole right to issue notes and coins of the new unified currency and given the mandate of keeping full foreign exchange cover to ensure convertibility at $4.80 per pound sterling. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands joined the arrangement, but this led to discontent because that territory was more naturally drawn to the currency of the neighboring US Virgin Islands. In 1961, the British Virgin Islands withdrew from the arrangement and adopted the US dollar.

Until 1955, the BWI$ existed only as banknotes in conjunction with sterling fractional coinage. Decimal coins replaced the sterling coins in 1955. These decimal coins were denominated in cents, with each cent being worth one halfpenny in sterling.

In 1958, the West Indies Federation was established and the BWI$ was its currency. However, although Jamaica (including the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands) was part of the West Indies Federation, it retained the Jamaican pound, despite adopting the BWI$ as legal tender from 1954. Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands were already long established users of the sterling accounts system of pounds, shillings, and pence.

In 1964 Jamaica ended their legal tender status of the BWI$ and Trinidad & Tobago withdrew from the currency union (adopting “dollars” representing their national currency: Jamaican and T&T Dollar – see Appendix ZB [on Page 316]). This forced the movement of the headquarters of the BCCB to Barbados and soon the “BWI$” dollar lost its regional support.

In 1965, the BWI dollar of the now defunct West Indies Federation was replaced at par by the East Caribbean dollar and the BCCB was replaced by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority or ECCA. Guyana withdrew from the currency union in 1966. Grenada rejoined the common currency arrangement in 1968 having utilized the Trinidad & Tobago dollar from 1964. Barbados withdrew from the currency union in 1972, following which the ECCA headquarters were moved to St. Kitts.

Between 1965 and 1983, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued the EC$, with banknotes from 1965 and coins from 1981. The EC$ is now issued by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, (Basseterre, Saint Kitts), established July 1983.

The exchange rate of $4.80 = £1 sterling (equivalent to the old $1 = 4s 2d) continued right into up until July 7, 1976 for the new Eastern Caribbean dollar, until it was pegged to the US dollar, at the exchange rate of US$1 = EC$2.70.

Today, the East Caribbean dollar (EC$) is the currency for eight of nine members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the one exception being the British Virgin Islands, which uses the United States dollar exclusively; so too does non-OECS member-state Turks and Caicos Islands.

Francophone

The French franc was the former currency of France until the Euro was adopted in 1999 (by law, 2002 de facto). The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription francorum rex (“King of the Franks”) on early French coins, or from the French franc, meaning “free” (and “frank”). The franc was also used within the French Empire’s colonies, including the French West Indies or French Antilles, referring to the territories currently under French sovereignty in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean:

    Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy; plus in islands of strong French heritage such as Dominica & Saint Lucia. Haiti, though, because of its early independence (1793) employs the Gourde currency, initially pegged to the Franc.

Dutch / Netherlands

The Dutch guilder was the national currency of the Netherlands until it was replaced by the Euro on 1 January 2002. The Netherlands Antillean guilder is currently the only guilder in use, which after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles remained the currency of the new countries Curaçao and Sint Maarten and (until 1 January 2011) the Caribbean Netherlands.

The Caribbean guilder is the proposed currency of the Caribbean islands of Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which formed after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in October 2010. The Netherlands Antillean guilder (NAg) is expected to continue to circulate until 2013 as the currency was not finalized in time for the islands’ separate autonomous status. The currency will be abbreviated CMg (for Curacao, Sint Maarten guilder) and will be pegged to the US dollar at the same exchange rate as the Netherlands Antillean Guilder (1 USD = 1.79 NAg = 1.79 CMg). Since, the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba adopted the US dollar directly on 1 January 2011, the introduction of the CMg will mean the end of the circulation of NAg.

The diverse colonial Caribbean also had Spanish (Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) islands and Danish territories, as in today’s US Virgin Islands.

There would be many benefits if multiple countries come together and finally form a Single Market-Single Currency economy. This is the quest for the CU/Go Lean roadmap: to form a Single Market-Single Currency of the Caribbean Dollar (C$).

This CU/CCB/C$/Go Lean roadmap therefore urges this Single Market / Single Currency effort with these 3 prime directives:

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

Central Banks are required to …

  1. facilitate monetary and currency policies,
  2. oversee bank regulations, and
  3. execute inter-bank financial transactions (like payment settlements described in the Appendix A below regarding the previous CMCF).

Presently, the Caribbean region has no integrated Central Bank, nor have we ever had one in the past. There has always been a Failure to Launch this needed solution. Even the Anglo-Caribbean’s previous offering of the CMCF only addressed one of these 3 central banking functionalities: payments. Unfortunately, we need them all! We need to launch a fitting solution to assuage all Caribbean’s monetary-currency deficiencies.

(Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands monetary needs are managed as a subset of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; 2600 miles away from their territorial markets).

A Single Currency in the Caribbean – for the Caribbean – is a BIG idea for reforming and transforming the economic engines of the 42 million people among the 30 member-states (including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands). The Go Lean book stresses that our effort must be a regional pursuit, and it must also optimize our currency landscape. 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.

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

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. There is a lot of consideration in the book for establishing the CCB and the Single Currency in the region. The Caribbean’s Failure to Launch this in the past is … inexcusable.

There have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that have highlighted the eco-system of monetary, central banking and currency best practices. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13365 Case Study from West Africa: Single Currency for 8 Diverse Countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513 Case Study from India: Transforming Money Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8381 Case Study on Central Banking for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7140 Case Study from Azerbaijan: Setting its currency on free float
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6800 Case Study from Venezuela: Suing Black Market currency website
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4166 Case Study from Panama: History of the Balboa Currency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858 Case Study from ECB: Unveiling 1 trillion Euro stimulus program
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3814 Case Study from Switzerland: Unpegging the franc
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360 Case Study on Central Banks: Creating Money from ‘Thin Air’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833 Case Study from the Euro: One Currency, Diverse Economies

In summary, shepherding the economy is no simple task; the regional economy, even harder still – described as heavy-lifting. It requires the best practices of skilled technocrats. But the benefits of the heavy-lifting are too alluring to ignore: growing the monetary supply, expanding the availability of investment capital and leveraging across a larger base to absorb the shocks naturally associated with a Free Market Economy.

We are past the time of needing this Caribbean Dollar Single Currency reform. We needed it 60 years ago, and even more now. We must not fail to launch …

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – government officials, bankers and ordinary citizens – to lean-in for the innovations  and empowerments detailed in this CU/CCB/Go Lean roadmap. It is so obvious; these are among the best practices of America and Europe! The successful delivery of this banking-economic-currency solution can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix A – Caricom Multilateral Clearing Facility: A Brief Note

Payments clearing and settlement in the Caribbean has historically been a battleground of discontent. There have been many attempts since the Colonial period to structure the payments landscape but none of these efforts have been successful. This blog will briefly outline one such effort — the Caricom Multilateral Clearing Facility.

…

The Caricom [Caribbean Community]Multilateral Clearing Facility (1977–1983) introduced a centralized accounting system for all eligible payments institutions within the region. The original agreement establishing the CMCF was signed by the Central Bank of Barbados, the Monetary Authority of Belize, the East Caribbean Currency Authority, the Bank of Guyana, the Bank of Jamaica, and the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT) acted as the agent bank for the CMCF. That is, the CBTT carried out the secretariat functions as well as being responsible for the accounting records and distribution of cash settlements.

The main objectives of the CMCF were to:

  1. facilitate settlement on a multilateral basis of eligible transactions between participating countries;
  2. promote the use of currencies of members in settling eligible transactions between the individual countries, thereby economizing on the use of foreign exchange; and,
  3. promote monetary co-operation among the participants, thereby contributing to the expansion of trade and economic activity within Caricom.

Advantages of multilateral clearing to regional banks:

  1. reduction of correspondent deposits in foreign exchange
  2. longer time for investment of deposits where drawn cheques are in circulation within the region

Disadvantages of multilateral clearing to regional banks:

  1. legal implications arising from fact that the CMCF was not established as a separate legal entity
  2. lack of formal enforcement mechanism in the event of debtor default
  3. need for an independent regulatory body
  4. technical and administrative complexities

The failure of the CMCF was caused by its abusive usage by some member countries. Instead of being used for its primary purpose of simply minimizing the foreign exchange requirement for intra-regional trade, some members saw it as a balance of payments support facility to allow them to continue purchasing goods which they otherwise would not have been able to. Thus the closing of the CMCF was only inevitable because of the overuse of its informal credit facility.

After the closing of the CMCF the region regressed to a costly nexus of bilateral agreements which offer far less efficiency than multilateral systems.

The demise of the CMCF was unfortunate because it was a clever device for effecting small but significant economies in the use of foreign exchange. In fact, the CMCF might have formed an institutional base for a federal system of Caricom central banks.

Source: CMCF and Caricom Trade. Ginne Lea Miller, 1993

Source: Retrieved December 11, 2017 from https://medium.com/@RJGriffith/caricom-multilateral-clearing-facility-a-brief-note-ab5085a9c8d1

————

Appendix B VIDEO – The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank – How it Works, and What it Does – Money, Dollars, & Currency – https://youtu.be/y1OJlJ9COg0


Bright Enlightenment

Published on Dec 25, 2012 – The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank – How it Works & What it Does – Money, Currency, & the Dollar
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– WEBSITE: http://www.BrightEnlightenment.com/

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Appendix C VIDEO – ECB and the Eurosystem explained in 3 min. – https://youtu.be/TAlcFwGIQBg


European Central Bank

Published on Sep 26, 2013 – Who takes care of the “euro”? What is inflation ? Why is price stability important for you? Find the answers to these questions and more in this three-minute introduction to the ECB and the Eurosystem’s role and tasks. To discover more about the ECB, please visit http://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb

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Failure to Launch: Past Failures for Integration

Posted on December 9, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“3 Generations of imbeciles are enough” – Justice of US Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes (1927)

“3 Generations of imbecilic governance is enough” – Summary from 2013 Go Lean…Caribbean Book (Page 3)

It has been that long!

According to Dictionary.com, a generation is “the term of years, roughly 30 among human beings, accepted as the average period between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring”. Integration is so important, yet there have been 3 generations of failure for integration-optimization efforts – explored herewith – in the Caribbean region:

  1. West Indies Federation / Netherlands Antilles – 1950’s – Failed
  2. CariCom – 1970’s – Failing
  3. Caribbean Single Market & Economy – 2000’s – Failed

Enough failing already! Though no efforts have been made to integrate the Spanish-speaking nor French-speaking territories; historically these lands were governed as “overseas” territories with foreign masters (for planning and control).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for a Single Market, the introduction and implementation of a technocratic inter-government agency to shepherd the elevation of the region’s societal engines: economics, security and governance. This agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), and is designed to benefit all 30 member-states for all 4 language groups. This Go Lean/CU roadmap is intended to be a deviation from the past record of failures. The book states (Page 3):

There have been some efforts at regional integration, but only for [2] individual language groups.

The Caribbean Union is the next evolution from the structured economic integration that became the Caribbean Community [(CariCom)], but now for all neighbors. The globally accepted 7 degrees of economic integration, which spurned CariCom, are defined as:

  1. Preferential trading area
  2. Free trade area, Monetary union
  3. Customs union, Common market
  4. Economic union, Customs and monetary union
  5. Economic and monetary union
  6. Fiscal union
  7. Complete economic integration

CariCom was enacted in 1973 as Stage 3; but Stage 4 was ratified in 2001 and branded the Caribbean Single Market & Economy. This effort sputtered – see Anecdote # 1 [on Page 15]. The CU is a new manifestation of Stage 4; a graduation for CariCom.

This Go Lean/CU roadmap seeks to end the pattern of failure from these integration mis-steps of the past. This commentary opens a series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch workable solutions for the defects and deficiencies in our regional society; this is Part 1 of 4 on this subject. The full series is catalogued as follows:

  1. Failure to Launch – Past Failures for Integration
  2. Failure to Launch – Economics: Caribbean Central Bank and the Quest for a Single Currency
  3. Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
  4. Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Regional Alphabet Organizations

The Go Lean book defines failure in many different dimensions of relativity. It identifies the extreme of Failing-States, all the way down to the simple assessment: “All is not well”. But in general, there is the consensus that the Caribbean region is in crisis (Page 8) and declares that this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”.

The roadmap therefore has these 3 prime directives to assuage this crisis status:

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 forge a better future by learning lessons from past failures in regional integration movements. One advocacy embedded in the book is the specific lessons-learned from the previous Anglophone West Indies Federation. Consider the Appendix VIDEO below and these excerpts-headlines from Page 135 with this title, (which gleans analysis based on the history in the Appendix S and Appendix S1, starting on Page 301):

10 Lessons Learned from the West Indies Federation

1 WI Federation Quest for Independence replaced with CU Quest for Interdependence

After 50 years of reflection (see Appendix S1 #1 thru #10), it is conclusive that the West Indies (WI) Federation strived more for independence than for governmental efficiency. It is also obvious that the instincts of the British Federation planners were right, that the common territories needed to integrate to deploy common solutions (Appendix S). As such, the CU advocates for “interdependence” for the Caribbean countries – the challenges of the region transcends any alignment to the European legacies, so the CU advocates that the former British colonies need to confederate with Dutch, French and Spanish former colonies and current American Territories. The CU will represent a population base of 42 million, with the largest population centers concentrated in the Spanish and French states, not Jamaica and Trinidad. However, the CU aggregation of $800 Billion in GDP (based on 2010 figures) represents a larger contribution (GDP per capita) from the English speaking countries.
2 Federal Government versus Provincial Governments

The CU advocates a separation of powers between Federal Departments and the member-states administrations. The CU will avail itself of the “economies of scale” by deploying systems across the entire region designed for efficient and effective governance. Consider for example, implementing revenue systems for property assessments/collections. The CU will in-source the costs for the systems & people, while maximizing the return to State treasuries – Appendix S1 #2. The CU will also generate its own revenue streams, from regional-wide deployments (broadcast rights, lotteries, etc).
3 Jamaican Dynamic

Among the Caribbean nations, Haiti is highest on the 2012 Failed State Index (#7), Jamaica is among the next set of Caribbean countries at #119, just slightly behind South Africa (#115) and Albania (#118). Obviously, the nation-building

needs of Jamaica has been truncated, plus the country’s brain drain is worst in the region with almost a matching population living abroad in a Diaspora as opposed to residing in and contributing to the local economy. The CU will ensure better representation of larger populated states by employing a bicameral legislative branch: while the Senate is “one-man-one-vote” (2 Senators per state), the lower house has balanced representation based on population. Geographically, Jamaica is not the furthest west (Belize), nor south (Aruba) in the region. The Capitol for the CU is slated for a Federal District on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic – See Appendix S1 # 3.
4 Trinidad Dynamic

Trinidad and Tobago has thrived, somewhat, as an independent nation, they have one of the highest per-capita GDP in the region and have just recently been upgraded from “developing” status. (They are the only oil-producing country in the region; but their oil reserves are due to be depleted in the next decade). Yet, the country has a huge gulf between the “haves-and-have-nots”, to the point that emigration continues to be a major deterrent to their nation-building efforts. Trinidad is #122 on the Failed State Index – See Appendix S1 # 4.
5 Lack of Local Popular Support (See Parallel at Appendix S1 #5)

The CU empowers the economic engines, societal institutions and cultural provisions of the region to promote growth and development in the member-states. These efforts will be complemented with the invitation to repatriate for the Caribbean Diaspora. So the local markets will be the target of promotional campaigns and public media outreach.
6 Smaller Countries

The smaller countries get the greatest benefit of the CU initiative as they get to leverage the size of the Caribbean Single Market to their advantage. They will enjoy the strength of the currency union, access to capital markets and the deployment of economic engines in the local market. The CU will assimilate the Eastern Caribbean Federation and Monetary Union into the governmental delivery structure – See Appendix S1 # 6.
7 Location of the Capitol

Even though the CU will embrace e-Government delivery methods (data centers, call centers and web sites), the Trade Federation will still institute physical edifices (Post Offices, Administrative Centers, Libraries, Museums). There will be an actual Capitol. The CU capital is slated for a Federal District on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This is a center-“ish” site considering north: Bermuda & Bahamas; west: Belize & Cuba; south: Guyana & Suriname).
8 University of the West Indies
9 West Indies Regiment

The CU is also a security pact that will empower a Homeland Security Department. The State Militia and Naval Operations, derivatives of the West Indies Regiment, will enter a new phase of existence with the facilitation of an  ultra-modern defense unit with drones, attack helicopters, underwater submersibles and intelligence gathering and analysis.
10 Relationship with Canada

The West Indies Federation was an Anglophone effort only! Though it sought the goal of “Step 7 – Complete Economic Integration“, as specified in the foregoing introduction, it failed miserably here. (This is the disposition of the United States of America, but unfortunately, due to societal defects of territorial status, this is not the disposition of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.)

So these developments refer to the English and American territories; this is not the full Caribbean. There are other legacies …

The Go Lean book also details effort in the Dutch Caribbean, or the Netherland Antilles. This excerpt – on Integration and Secessions – is derived from Page 16 of the book:

Anecdote # 2: Dutch Caribbean – Integration & Secessions 

This Dutch Caribbean has had a varied history of integration and secession events. The Netherlands Antilles also referred to informally as the Dutch Antilles, was an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Although the country has now been dissolved, all of its constituent islands remain part of the kingdom under a different legal status and the term is still used to refer to these Dutch Caribbean islands [a].

The Netherlands Antilles consisted of two island groups. The ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao are located just off the Venezuelan coast. The SSS islands of Sint Maarten, Saba, and Sint Eustatius are in the Leeward Islands southeast of the Virgin Islands near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles. The Dutch colonized these islands in the 17th century, (at one point, Anguilla, Tobago, the British Virgin Islands, and St. Croix of the US Virgin Islands had also been Dutch), and united them in the new constituent state of the Netherlands Antilles in December 1954. Wanting to shed the appearance of any colonial shackles, the Netherlands Antilles, Suriname, and the Netherlands acceded as equal member-countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. With this move, the United Nations deemed decolonization of the Dutch Caribbean territory complete and removed it from the UN’s official List of Non-Self-Governing Territories.

Suriname sought and was granted independence in 1975, but continued their quest for regional integration. Today, they are a member of CariCom and are considered a Caribbean country with their trade and cultural links with the Caribbean nations.

The arrangement of the integrated Netherlands Antilles proved to be an unhappy one. The idea never enjoyed the full support of all islands, and political relations between islands were often strained. Geographically, the ABC Islands and the Leeward (SSS) Islands lie almost 1,000 kilometers apart. Culturally, the ABC Islands have deep connections with the South American mainland, especially Venezuela, and its population speaks a Portuguese-Dutch Creole language called Papiamento; the Leeward SSS islands, on the other hand, are part of the English-speaking Caribbean.

When the new constitutional relationship between the Netherlands and its Caribbean colonies was enshrined in the Kingdom Charter of 1954, the colonial administrative division of the Netherlands Antilles grouped all six Caribbean islands together under one administration. Despite the fact that Aruba calls for secession from the Netherlands Antilles originated as far back as the 1930s [b], the governments of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles did everything in their power to keep the six islands together.

First, Aruba became a separate state within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1986. Then between June 2000 and April 2005, each remaining island of the Netherlands Antilles had a new referendum on its future status. The four options that could be voted on were the following:

• closer ties with the Netherlands

• remaining within the Netherlands Antilles

• autonomy as a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands (status aparte)

• independence

Of the five islands, Sint Maarten and Curaçao voted for status aparte, Saba and Bonaire voted for closer ties to the Netherlands, and Sint Eustatius voted to stay within the Netherlands Antilles.

In November 2005, a negotiation began between the governments of the Netherlands, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles, and each island in the Netherlands Antilles. The end results were autonomy status for Curaçao and Sint Maarten, as previously enacted by Aruba, plus a new status for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba (BES) making these islands special municipalities.

In November 2006, Curaçao and Sint Maarten were granted an agreement for the autonomy they sought. After some political maneuvering and a subsequent referendum, the acts of parliament integrating the “BES” islands into the Kingdom of the Netherlands were given royal assent in May 2010. After ratification by the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba, this Kingdom act amending the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands with regard to the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles was signed off by the three countries (Netherlands, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles) in September 2010.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit for interdependence, not autonomy – some problems are just too big for any one member-state to tackle alone. 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.

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

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.

In the past, the optimization of regional integration has been so elusive for Caribbean people. Our Failure to Launch has been a sad reality, despite the accepted wisdom that …

… only when a people come together to address issues that affect them collectively can they ever hope to resolve their problems. – Go Lean book Page 135.

Too bad … all our past efforts – despite limited to just one language – have failed. Integration is still a good idea, a Big Idea!

The CU is a big idea for the Caribbean … allowing for the unification of the region into one [a Single] Market of 42 million people [from all 30 countries & territories]. This creates the world’s 29th largest economy, based on 2010 figures. … After 10 years the CU’s GDP should double and rank among the Top 20 or G20 nations. – Page 127.

Let’s do this! The benefits from this Go Lean roadmap are too alluring to ignore. We can learn from failure; we can forge success. We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

————-

Appendix VIDEO – West Indies Federation – https://youtu.be/wfoWBqUMAls


Audiopedia
Published on Jan 6, 2016 – The West Indies Federation, also known as the Federation of the West Indies, was a short-lived political union that existed from 3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962. Various islands in the Caribbean that were colonies of the United Kingdom, including Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, and those on the Leeward and Windward Islands, came together to form the Federation, with its capital in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The expressed intention of the Federation was to create a political unit that would become independent from Britain as a single state—possibly similar to the Canadian Confederation, Australian Commonwealth, or Central African Federation; however, before that could happen, the Federation collapsed due to internal political conflicts.

The territories of the federation eventually became the nine contemporary sovereign states of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago; with Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands becoming British overseas territories. British Guiana and British Honduras held observer status within the West Indies Federation.

This video is targeted to blind users.

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Africa: Past, Present and Future of Caribbean Relations

Posted on November 30, 2017 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man,
To see the unification of all Africans”
– Bob Marley’s Song Africa Unite; see Appendix VIDEO below.

These rhyming words of this song are shaping up to be more than just platitudes. There is an actual movement to forge an integrated, united Africa … at least economically. This is the movement for a Free Trade area for the whole continent of Africa. (A previous commentary detailed a continental security apparatus for Africa that the Caribbean should model).

Wow! That would be a start to fulfilling the dream of people like Bob Marley … and others (think: Marcus Garvey).

What is amazing is that these two late-great role models where movers-and-shakers for Africa, though they were natives, citizens and residents of the Caribbean.

This is because there is a historic Africa-Caribbean relationship that transcends time; there is a Past, Present and Future to Africa-Caribbean Relations, and it is more than just song-and-dance.

Past
The link between the Caribbean and Africa has always been one of interconnection. Yes, there is the ugly history of the African Slave Trade, but after that East-West human-capital flow ended (1807) the flow had since shifted to West-East between the two regions. (Think: Freetown, Sierra Leone and Liberia).

Following the Slave Trade, there was the legacy of colonialism and White Supremacy (think: South Africa’s Apartheid) until finally the post-colonial period arrived after World War II. This allowed for independence movements and nationalism, but not the integration and unity that Marley sang of.

Caribbean stakeholders where not just the singers and dreamers; no, they were fighters and soldiers as well. There is the one example of the southern Africa country of Angola. During their post-colonial independence drive, there were dissenting movements: one for a minority rule Apartheid-style system and one for majority rule democratic socialism. The Cuban Army helped to defeat the Apartheid-style regime.

This was the Caribbean reaching back and helping Africa.

Present
Today, the southern African region is at peace, liberated and striving for the best way to advance their societies on the world’s stage. Though still trailing, they have made some progress.

Congratulations to Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters of South Africa who was crowned Miss Universe 2018 on November 26, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.[12] (Miss Jamaica finished 3rd). This is the fourth time a contestant from the African continent has been crowned with this honor; the others include: 2011 Miss Angola, 1999 Miss Botswana and 1978 Miss South Africa (Apartheid-era).

Africa has “come a long way, Baby”.

That “Dark Continent” may be the cradle of mankind and the Motherland for many people in the Caribbean, but “she” is playing catch-up in a lot of areas of modernity. For this reason, all embedded countries are considered “developing”. With 1.2 billion[1] people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the world’s human population. (The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos). It contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states (countries), nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition[3] (Western Sahara and Somaliland); a potential of 65 member-states.

Future
There is the proposal for all countries on the African continent to convene and confederate and form a Single Market among the member-states. This would be transformative. See the full news article here:

Title: Op-Ed: How Africa can create a Continental Free Trade Area
By: Aboubaker Omar Hadi, Chairman of Djibouti Ports and Free Zone Authority

Ours is a continent rich in resources. From the coffee beans and cotton to mineral ores and oil wells, Africa is world-renowned for its raw materials.

However, exporting raw materials alone will not allow Africa to reach its potential. Indeed, the recent slump in global commodity prices has served as a harsh reminder that our traditional reliance on raw materials needs to evolve. It is only by transforming our commodities into value added goods that Africa will reap the full benefits of our natural strengths. Transforming our resources will create larger profit margins, growth and jobs. This transformation will, however, require a big industrialisation drive across the continent to foster trade and growth.

In the wake of Africa Industrialisation Day, which this year reflected on how to accelerate Africa’s progress towards the creation of a Continental Free Trade Area, we must also consider the supporting infrastructure required to make this pre-eminent objective a reality. All economies – on the global scale, but also on the regional and local level – demand a high level of circulation, which is only possible through the development of the necessary infrastructure.

In Africa, the lack of infrastructure is one of the greatest inhibitions preventing transformative growth. Ours is the only continent in the world without a transcontinental railway; in a continent where 16 out of 54 countries are landlocked, this is a real issue. Our infrastructure development therefore needs to be multimodal, ensuring that our coastlines are connected to our railways, airways and highways so that in-land countries and coastal countries are sharing in each others’ successes.

Beyond our transport links and trade zones, we also need to develop one further key aspect in our infrastructure framework: energy production. Around 600 million Africans still live without power on a daily basis. Not only is this unsustainable for our own populations but it is untenable if we are to attract foreign investors. To truly be players on the global stage, Africa needs to make sure that it has the capacity to support the industrial needs of the best of business from around the world.

As the Chairman of the Djibouti Ports and Free Zone Authority, I’ve made this industrial transformation, of both my country and the surrounding region, a priority. In the last year, we have completed and opened three state-of-the-art port facilities which have the capacity to welcome over 30,000 ships every year. As Djibouti sits on two of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes, our country has a key role to play in regional development, by ensuring our neighbours also benefit from this strategic location. Thus, the recently launched Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway will allow the continent’s fastest growing economy,

Ethiopia, to profit from our maritime façade. Already, over 90% of Ethiopia’s trade passes through Djibouti and infrastructure development is vital in ensuring that these trade routes are as efficient as possible.

In terms of our energy infrastructure, Djibouti has developed strong partnerships to strengthen investment in vital gas projects. Only last week, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Djibouti and the Chinese company Poly CGL. This MoU is the start of an important process which will see investment in a gas pipeline, a liquefaction plant and an export terminal in the south of the country, in Damerjog.

Industrial transformation is a long term effort. We will only achieve it with methodical determination and cooperation, as we enter a turning point for the continent. Africa is the second most populated continent in the world with over 1.2 billion inhabitants. By 2050, it is estimated that around a quarter of the world’s population will be living on the African continent. Several African countries are among the fastest growing in the world in terms of economic growth. Out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world, 3 of them are located in East Africa: Ethiopia, Djibouti and Tanzania. Now is the moment at which we must work hard to keep pace with the rate at which our continent is transforming.

Source: CNBC Africa; posted November 24, 2017; retrieved November 29, 2017 from: https://www.cnbcafrica.com/insights/2017/11/24/africa-potential/

——–

The Caribbean will “pay more than the usual attention” to these developments of 65 member-states for Africa. We have our own roadmap for integration, convention and confederation here in the Caribbean region. This quest is projected in the book Go Lean … Caribbean as it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This would be the administrator – a federal government – of a regional Single Market of the Caribbean’s 30 member-states.

With the same goal, the same heavy-lifting is necessary. This is true for Africa and the Caribbean; there would be the need to forge “Pluralistic Democracies” in each region. Imagine the diverse languages, religions, tribes, ethnicities and colonial heritage.  This is the epitome of pluralism, the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body. Success or failure with the African pluralism efforts can provide a lot of lessons for the Caribbean effort.

This CU/Go Lean roadmap does more than just forge a Single Market; it has a charter to elevate all the societal engines. As there is the need to assuage the societal defects and deficiencies in the region – there are many. The following are the 3 prime directives designed to elevate society and assuage deficiencies:

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

Wow, for the BIG ideas of fostering a Single Market … to elevate the economic engines for 1.2 billion people in Africa and 42 million people in the Caribbean.

The Go Lean book has a scope of the Caribbean only. Though we will pay attention to Africa, there is no effort to impact that region with strategies, tactics or implementations. We must sing the song, but have our own twist:

Africa Unite!

‘Cause the children wanna come home.
Not to fight your wars, but to love your shores.

Our limited scope is to “observe and report” on Africa and the rest of the world, while we “serve and protect” the Caribbean. The Go Lean book presented BIG ideas for reforming and transforming the economic-security-governing engines for the 42 million people in our 30 Caribbean member-states. The book stresses that our Caribbean effort 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.

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.

There have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that have highlighted lessons-learned from Africa. Consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13365 West African Case Study: ECOWAS to Launch ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8262 UberEverything in Africa
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7119 Role Model: African Standby Force
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5123 A Lesson in History – Royal Charter: Zimbabwe -vs- South Africa
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971 A Lesson in History – Royal Charters: Truth & Consequence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4145 The African Renaissance Monument

In summary, shepherding the continental region of Africa is no simple task. It requires the best practices of skilled technocrats. Hopefully the African member-states will thrive with this effort.

We will be watching!

Hopefully too, the Single Market efforts in our region – Caribbean Single Market & Economy – will proceed. This subject was detailed in the Go Lean book (Page 15); consider this sample:

What is the CSME? The initials refer to the Caribbean Single Market & Economy, the attempted integrated development strategy envisioned at the 10th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community which took place in July 1989 in Grand Anse, Grenada. The Grand Anse Declaration had three key features:

1. Deepening economic integration by advancing beyond a common market towards a Single Market and Economy.

2. Widening the membership and thereby expanding the economic mass of the Caribbean Community (e.g. Suriname and Haiti were admitted as full members in 1995 and 2002 respectively).

3. Progressive insertion of the region into the global trading and economic system by strengthening trading links with non-traditional partners.

What was the hope for CSME? Whereas CariCom started as a Common Market and Customs Union, to facilitate more intra-region trade, the CSME was intended to effect more integration of the economies of the member states. But this turned out to be mere talk, fanciful murmurings of politicians during their bi-annual Heads of Government meetings. No deployment plans ever emerged, even though up to 15 member-states signed on to the accord; (and 10 more as “Observers” only).

The benefits of a Single Market are too alluring to ignore: larger market, expanded trade, leveraging economic shocks across a larger base naturally associated with a Free Market economy.

Let’s do this … more earnestly in the Caribbean region.

We need to follow through on the words of Bob Marley – “African Unite” – and apply them here at home:

Caribbean Unite: ‘Cause the children wanna come home.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – government officials, residents and Diaspora – to lean-in for the empowerments detailed in this Go Lean roadmap. Yes, we can!  We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

How good and how pleasant it would …

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

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

———–

Appendix VIDEO – Africa Unite – https://youtu.be/QMS5vKarzO0

Published on Jun 24, 2009 – Lyrics

Africa, Unite
‘Cause we’re moving right out of Babylon,
And we’re going to our Father’s land, yea-ea.

How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man, yea-eah! –
To see the unification of all Africans, yeah! –
As it’s been said a’ready, let it be done, yeah!
We are the children of the Rastaman;
We are the children of the Iyaman.

So-o, Africa unite:
‘Cause the children (Africa unite) wanna come home.
Africa unite:
‘Cause we’re moving right out of Babylon, yea,
And we’re grooving to our Father’s land, yea-ea.

How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man
To see the unification of all Rastaman, yeah.
As it’s been said a’ready, let it be done!
I tell you who we are under the sun:
We are the children of the Rastaman;
We are the children of the Iyaman.

So-o: Africa unite,
Afri – Africa unite, yeah!
Unite for the benefit (Africa unite) for the benefit of your people!
Unite for it’s later (Africa unite) than you think!
Unite for the benefit (Africa unite) of my children!
Unite for it’s later (Africa uniting) than you think!
Africa awaits (Africa unite) its creators!
Africa awaiting (Africa uniting) its Creator!
Africa, you’re my (Africa unite) forefather cornerstone!
Unite for the Africans (Africa uniting) abroad
Unite for the Africans (Africa unite) a yard! [fadeout]

  • Category: Music 
  • License: Standard YouTube License

 

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Colonialism’s Bloody History Revisited – ‘Thor’ Movie

Posted on November 16, 2017 in Ethos, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

How much of our past make up who we are and what we will become?

  • Are all children of alcoholics condemned to alcoholism themselves?
  • Children from homes with domestic violence; will they become abusers themselves?

These questions about individuals can also be extended to whole communities:

  • Will the bloody history of European colonialism be revisited in modern times and the future?

This has to do with societal defects – orthodoxy. There is so much we need to learn, and so many corrections we need to make. This is the quest of the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states from our dysfunctional past so as to have a prosperous future. There are lots of lessons for us to consider; some from unusual places; consider the art world: comic books, world of film.

The edict of “life imitating art and art imitating life” provides a lot of teaching moments for the world in general and the Caribbean in particular. There is a lot we can learn from the art form of film and this newest blockbuster movie Thor: Ragnarok. (The film has grossed $212.1 million in US box office receipts after the first 2 weekends).

This is a film about comic book hero Thor, the God of Thunder, which is based on Norse mythology; the ancient culture of Nordic Vikings. There are other characters from that mythical homeland of Asgard: Odin, Loki, Hela and Valkyrie. This is all art and fiction, but it does imitate the real life history of colonialism; see here:

The film’s central revelation – that the legend of a benevolent Odin and Asgard ruling realms joined in peace is a lie, and that those realms were conquered by force – reflects British colonialism so perfectly it virtually had to come from a person of colour in the Commonwealth, [New Zealand-born Director Taika Waititi]. Though New Zealand today is markedly fairer in its treatment of its indigenous people than the rest of Britain’s English-speaking colonies, its history is still pockmarked with subjugation, violence, and deception, and it’s hard not to see the difference between the mythical and “true” Asgards as a representation of that.
Source: Retrieved November 15, 2017 from: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/11/05/thor-ragnarok-taika-waititi-very-kiwi-comedy

Shockingly, this is also a Caribbean debate: the historicity of colonialism and British orthodoxy – good or bad?

This debate, considering the foregoing, is bigger than just a consideration of British colonialism; it allows parallels with the Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish conquests in the New World; and truthfully, this also applies to the American empire building with the territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

See this news article here that presents this hypothesis; and also see the VIDEO in the Appendix below:

Title: Asgard’s bloody history refuses to stay buried in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’
By: Angie Han

Asgard is a realm removed from Midgard (or as we know it, Earth), but make no mistake: Thor: Ragnarok is as much about us as it is about them.

Specifically, it’s about the bloody history of colonialism, and that history’s refusal to stay buried, no matter how eager we are to whitewash our sins.

In Thor: Ragnarok, we learn exactly how Asgard came to be the wealthy and powerful kingdom it is today. The answer isn’t pretty. Before Odin was known as a wise and benevolent ruler, he was known as a bloodthirsty conquerer, tearing through nations with his daughter, Hela, at his side.

But, Hela explains, her appetite for destruction eventually outmatched his. Odin turned on her, locking her away and essentially writing her out of the history books. He has her literally painted over in the palace mural, replaced by prettier pictures of peace and prosperity. As Hela bitterly remarks, Odin is proud of his power and riches, but ashamed of how he got them.

Centuries later, younger Asgardians like Thor seem to have only the faintest idea of their land’s ugly past. Thor is aware that his father was once a fearsome warrior (it’s explicitly mentioned and demonstrated in his earlier movies), but apparently hasn’t spent much time thinking about whom his father was fighting, or why.

As for Hela, he doesn’t even realize that she exists.

Not that it matters. By burying Hela instead of properly reckoning with her, Odin has ensured that she will, someday, be someone else’s problem – and that that someone else will be woefully unprepared to deal with her when that day comes.

Sound familiar? The story of Asgard has echoes all around our own world: the “free world” built on the subjugation and slaughter of others; the sanitization of our past and current misdeeds; the younger generation raised on patriotic half-truths. Hela serves as a terrifying reminder that the past has a way of catching up to the present, no matter how desperately you’d like to erase old sins.

In Thor: Ragnarok, Thor is the one who rises to the occasion of facing down Asgard’s ugly past. He doesn’t have to – Hela’s already thrown him off-planet, and the simplest and safest thing for him to do would be to stay out of her path – but he feels a duty to protect his people from his sister. Emphasis on “his people”: Thor takes to heart that Asgard is a people, not a place or a thing.

His priority throughout the final battle is Asgard’s population, not its land or its gold or its reputation. In other words, he prioritizes people over patriotism.

By the end, Thor has abandoned the physical realm of Asgard entirely, leaving Hela and Surtur to tear it apart. He and the other surviving Asgardians are huddled together on a spaceship, refugees hoping to make a new home on Midgard.

Thor’s not the only one who has some key decisions to make in Ragnarok. Hela’s right-hand man is Skurge, who goes along with her rule not out of some great passion for her cause, but because it just seems like the easy thing to do. When it becomes clear that the tides are turning, he boards the refugee ship with the other Asgardians.

Then, at the last minute, he does something genuinely heroic: He sacrifices himself to ensure that the ship can get to safety, laying waste to Hela’s forces with two machine guns he picked up on a lark in Texas. (They’re named Des and Troy, because when he puts them together, they destroy. Thor: Ragnarok may have weighty thoughts on its mind, but it’s never one to pass up a good joke.)

With Skurge, Ragnarok shows us that great evil can be enabled by ordinary indifference, that “hero” and “villain” are not fixed states, that it’s never too late to do the right thing, and that even nobodies must decide how to wield whatever power they have. He’s the rare Marvel character who isn’t easily categorized as “good” or “bad.” He’s the undecided voter of Asgard, and he finally steps up.

Meanwhile, back on Sakaar, the Grandmaster has his own problems to deal with. Thor and Hulk’s escape has sparked a rebellion led by Korg (with an assist from the Revengers). Whereas Hela is overtly destructive and dominant, the Grandmaster is a more ingratiating figure.

He’s introduced via a video that reassures his contenders they’ve been found by someone who loves them. Never mind that the Grandmaster holding people captive and forcing them to fight to the death – he fancies himself a benevolent caretaker. In a jab at the modern prison system, the Grandmaster shudders at the word “slaves” and prefers the euphemism “prisoners with jobs.” The message is clear: he’s the same old oppressive bullshit, repackaged to look brighter and gentler.

Key to all of Thor: Ragnarok‘s themes are who’s telling this story. Taika Waititi is the franchise’s first non-white director, and one of its few non-American directors. That unusual-for-Marvel perspective may have something to do with his decision to turn this superhero smash-’em-up into a reflection on the horrors of colonialism. Others more qualified than I am to discuss it have taken also note of Ragnarok‘s uniquely Kiwi and uniquely Maori sensibility.

While Thor: Ragnarok still centers around a white guy, it’s got a meatier role than ever before for Heimdall, leader of the Asgardian resistance and protector of its people in Thor’s absence during Hela’s reign. The film introduces Valkyrie as a former hero of Asgard who steps up again in its time of need, hinting at the trauma she endured in between. Plus, of course, there’s Korg, voiced and mo-capped by Waititi himself in a distinct New Zealand accent. This is a story about oppression that actually makes room for non-white people, unlike so many of the others that hit our theaters.

And, yes, Thor: Ragnarok does all this while delivering jokes about Shake Weights and Hulk dick and introducing something called the Devil’s Anus to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s fizzy and funny and fun in a way that Thor’s earlier movies haven’t been. But don’t mistake its silliness for lack of depth.

Just as there’s more to Thor than his Point Break persona, there’s a lot more to Ragnarok than its gags.
Source: Posted November 8, 2017; retrieved November 15, 2017 from: http://mashable.com/2017/11/08/thor-ragnarok-themes-colonialism/#CZO2PDgfMZqP

There are so many points of consideration from this movie. In a previous blog/commentary regarding Caribbean Diaspora member and Hollywood great, Sidney Poitier, it was declared that …

“Movies are an amazing business model. People give money to spend a couple of hours watching someone else’s creation and then leave the theater with nothing to show for the investment; except perhaps a different perspective”.

Wow, this ‘Thor’ movie does present some different perspectives. The “art” of this movie does imitate the real life of the Caribbean colonial history. It was not benevolence that led to the European conquest; it was malevolence! The subjugation of the indigenous people, the introduction of slave economy, and continued mercantilism, until … just recently.

Some other/different perspectives gleaned from this movie are summarized here; (consider the links to previous blog-commentaries):

It is the commonly accepted history that colonialism was bad – even bloody, and yet so many Caribbean citizens “break down the doors to get out” to go to where the colonizers came from – Brain Drain reported at 70 percent  – and then live among these former colonizers.

This atrocious societal abandonment rate is so unbelievable … and unacceptable!

The book Go Lean … Caribbean discusses this history of European colonialism and the legacy left behind. Consider this excerpt from Page 241 regarding the Caribbean mainland states of the Guianas (Guyana and Suriname):

The Bottom Line on European Colonialism
The European colonial period was the era from the 1500s to the mid-1900s when several European powers (Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Portugal) established colonies in the Americas, in a Space Race to dominate the New World. The Northern Coast of South America became a typical New World battleground for conflict and pushing between these powers, and many military campaigns and diplomatic initiatives (treaties) ensued. Through the contact period following the 1498 discovery by Christopher Columbus, the term “Guiana” was used to refer to all this area, between the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon rivers; it was seen as a unified, isolated entity that it was often referred to as the “Island of Guiana”. The real interest in the exploration and colonization of the Guianas did not begin until the end of the sixteenth century when the other European powers developed interest in the Guianas. This is depicted in the Timeline in Appendix TE (Page 307). When did this European Colonial “push-shove-match” end? Not until almost 500 years later, after World War II, after the effects of that war left all these European powers drained – of finances and the will to continue.

In the Thor: Ragnarok movie, the hero completed a journey that led him to finally place a higher priority on the people of his homeland rather than the actual land. This is enlightening, but this relevance is questioned for the Caribbean’s priority. In the movie, there was an all encompassing war – Ragnarok refers to the Norse concept of Armageddon – while the Caribbean is experiencing no war at all – we are deemed the greatest address on the planet. It is reasonable to expect that we can place priority on our people and our homeland.

The quest of the Go Lean roadmap is to elevate the societal engines so that Caribbean people can prosper where planted here in the Caribbean. There should be no priority to relocate Caribbean culture as refugees to a foreign land.

Like in the movie where Thor had an interdependence with other heroes – like Hulk, Valkyrie, and Heimdall, (leader of the Asgardian resistance and protector of its people while Thor was absent) – there is the need for our own heroes to work together to help us accomplish our goals as well. The Go Lean movement seeks to engage Caribbean heroes; the book serves as a roadmap to introduce the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s societal engines – economics, homeland security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

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

The Go Lean book makes the point of the need for heroic actions early in a Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 & 13) that claims:

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

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 … of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

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

The Go Lean book describes the need for the Caribbean to appoint “new guards” to effect the necessary empowerments in the Caribbean. Those “old guards” would refer to the tenets of colonialism that the European masters left behind. Those are inadequate and deficient. We need the “new guards” or a regional security pact to engage to better protect our homeland from threats and risks, foreign and domestic. So the published strategies, tactics and implementations of this security pact is to ensure public safety as a comprehensive endeavor, encapsulating the needs of all Caribbean stakeholders: heroes and ordinary citizens alike.

Applying the edict of “life imitating art and art imitating life”, let’s lean-in for our own heroic instincts. Yes, we can … collectively if not individually, be heroes. We can lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. We can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
———–
Appendix VIDEO – Thor: Ragnarok – The Best Reviewed Super Hero Movie – http://mashable.com/2017/11/08/thor-ragnarok-themes-colonialism/#CZO2PDgfMZqP

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A Lesson in History – Whaling Expeditions

Posted on November 2, 2017 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

There are “high-risk, high-return” industries and then there are “low-risk, low-return” industries.

There is much for the Caribbean to learn about hedging and mitigating risks from the high-risk industries. The lessons learned should be considered for forging the best-practices for gleaning those high-returns. In this case, we have the opportunity to reach back in the annals of time and learn-apply lessons from the history of the commercial whaling industry – see History of Whaling in the Appendix.

The high-risks in these enterprises were the whales – intelligent mammals of the sea that defied and defended against predators. See this dramatized in the movie “In the Heart of The Sea“; the trailer is embedded in the Appendix VIDEO below. Yet still, the whaling industry was so effective that the “cash crop” (whales) were almost rendered extinct. In this day, however, whaling is considered inhumane. This is an appropriate judgement for this foul practice!

If only … we can learn the best-practices of risk management from this industry and apply it in other humane industries and endeavors to derive high-returns. This is the point of the article here from this “Fin-Tech” column in the world-renowned Economist Magazine:

Title: The First Venture Capitalists – Before there were tech startups, there was whaling

NEW BEDFORD – Few industries involve as much drama and risk as whaling did. The last voyage of the Essex, which inspired Herman Melville’s classic, “Moby Dick”, and is the subject of a new film, “In the Heart of The Sea”, gives a sense of the horrors involved. The ship left Nantucket in 1819 and sailed for over a year before being destroyed by a whale it was hunting. The 20 crew members survived the sinking, but found themselves adrift in the Pacific in three longboats, with little food and no water. Three opted to stay on a desert island, from which they were rescued three months later, on the verge of starvation. The others sailed on, hoping to reach South America but dying one by one. At first the survivors buried the dead at sea; then they resorted to eating the corpses of their crewmates. When they ran out of bodies, they drew lots to decide whom to shoot and eat. Only five of the 17 were eventually rescued. By then, they were so delirious that they did not understand what was happening.

The only reason that anyone could be induced to take part in such a dangerous business was the fabulous profit that could be made. Gideon Allen & Sons, a whaling syndicate based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, made returns of 60% a year during much of the 19th century by financing whaling voyages—perhaps the best performance of any firm in American history. It was the most successful of a very successful bunch. Overall returns in the whaling business in New Bedford between 1817 and 1892 averaged 14% a year—an impressive record by any standard.

New Bedford was not the only whaling port in America; nor was America the only whaling nation. Yet according to a study published in 1859, of the 900-odd active whaling ships around the world in 1850, 700 were American, and 70% of those came from New Bedford. The town’s whalers came to dominate the industry, and reap immense profits, thanks to a novel technology that remains relevant to this day. They did not invent a new type of ship, or a new means of tracking whales; instead, they developed a new business model that was extremely effective at marshalling capital and skilled workers despite the immense risks involved for both. Whaling all but disappeared as an industry after mineral oil supplanted whale oil as a fuel. But the business structures pioneered in New Bedford remain as relevant as they ever were. Without them, the tech booms of the 1990s and today would not have been possible.

Most historians trace the origins of the modern company back to outfits like the Dutch East India Company and its British equivalent. These were given national monopolies on trade in certain goods or with certain places. This legally buttressed status allowed them to fund themselves by selling shares to the public, helping to get stock markets off the ground. The managers of these multinational enterprises were professionals with only small ownership stakes. Lower-level employees generally had no shareholding at all.

By eliminating dependence on individual owners or managers, these entities became self-perpetuating. But their monopolies also embroiled them in politics and led inevitably to corruption. Both the British and Dutch versions ended up requiring government bail-outs—a habit giant firms have not yet kicked.

The whaling industry involved a radically different approach. It was one of the first to grapple with the difficulty of aligning incentives among owners, managers and employees, according to Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins of Harvard Business School. In this model, there was no state backing. Managers held big stakes in the business, giving them every reason to attend to the interests of the handful of outside investors. Their stakes were held through carefully constructed syndicates and rarely traded; everyone was, financially at least, on board for the entire voyage. Payment for the crew came from a cut of the profits, giving them a pressing interest in the success of the voyage as well. As a consequence, decision-making could be delegated down to the point where it really mattered, to the captain and crew in the throes of the hunt, when risk and return were palpable.

At the top of the New Bedford hierarchy was an agent or firm of agents like Gideon Allen, responsible for the purchase and outfitting of the ship, the hiring of the crew and the sale of the catch. To give them an incentive to cut the best deals possible, the agents put up a big share of the investment. Those with the best reputation received better terms from the other investors. Captains, who ran the show while the ship was at sea, often put up capital as well. A similar system of incentives is used in the riskier reaches of the investment-management business today, notes Mr Nicholas.

Investors received half to two-thirds of the profits. The rest was divided among the crew in what was known as the “lay” system. A captain might get a 12th lay (one-twelfth of the remaining profit). In Melville’s novel, Ishmael, who was new to the business, was originally offered a 777th lay but managed to haggle a 300th. Although that would probably have proved a paltry amount, it was a stake nonetheless, and set a benchmark for future pay. Ishmael’s friend Queequeg, a cannibal from the South Sea islands, got a 90th lay because he had experience with a harpoon. Demand for experienced crewmembers was so high that the Essex’s ill-fated captain, George Pollard, was immediately given a second command on the ship that rescued him (which sank as well).

Every participant wanted to bring in returns quickly, but there were no artificial deadlines—nothing resembling what is now called “quarterly capitalism”. When whales became rare in accessible places, the crews from New Bedford extended their search to every corner of every ocean, however many years that took.

Safety in numbers
To ensure that they were not ruined by a few disastrous voyages, the whaling firms invested in multiple expeditions at the same time, much as the venture capitalists of today “spray and pray”. A study published in 1997 concluded that, of the 787 boats launched from New Bedford during the 18th century, 272 sank or were destroyed. The firm that belonged to George Howland was not atypical: of its 15 ships, between four and nine were at sea at any given moment. One was sunk by a whale, three lost at sea, two burned by their crews, one destroyed by a Confederate gunboat during America’s civil war and five abandoned in Arctic ice. Yet Howland died a millionaire in 1852.

It helped that most of the whalers of New Bedford were strict Quakers, who prized frugality and shunned ostentation. This helped them not only husband their own capital, which was needed to finance voyages, but also to win over other investors. Hetty Howland Green, one of the richest agents, was said to have made her own shoes and to have owned only one dress.

It also helped that they were open-minded: they readily employed anyone who could contribute to their ventures. Perhaps the single most important technological innovation used by New Bedford’s whaling fleet was the “Temple Toggle”, a harpoon tip devised by Lewis Temple, a former slave from Virginia.

But the whalers’ main asset was their business model. In the 1830s, the legislatures of six American states approved charters for whaling corporations giving them the right to raise capital by selling shares to the public—much the same corporate structure as the Dutch and British East India Companies. None of the six survived the 1840s. “The diffuse ownership structure of the corporations, and the reduced stakes held by their managers, likely diminished the incentives for the managers to perform their role diligently,” concludes Eric Hilt of Wellesley College. Given the expense of buying, outfitting and launching a boat into the perilous ocean, the link between risk and reward needed, it seems, to be tighter.

The lay system could work to the crew’s disadvantage, however. In an effort to reduce claims on the crew’s share of the profits, ruthless captains were said to abandon men on the trip home. (Similar shedding of employees is not unheard of at contemporary tech startups before a big payout.) Other schemes existed to cheat crew members, such as forcing them to buy clothing at inflated prices or to pay usurious interest on advances on their pay. And open-mindedness went only so far: although black sailors were not discriminated against in terms of pay, they were treated less well in other respects, receiving less food and worse quarters.

Yet the New Bedford system was undeniably effective. It soon emptied the oceans of whales, even as other lucrative opportunities emerged for daredevils determined to strike it rich, such as the California gold rush. “The same industrial growth that initially supplied markets and profits for whaling activity ultimately yielded opportunities more attractive than whaling to local capital,” wrote David Moment, a student at Harvard Business School, in 1957. In short, with returns dwindling, the crews and the capitalists turned to other ventures. But the business practices they developed are used in high-risk, high-return industries to this day.

Source: The Economist Magazine – posted Dec 30, 2015; retrieved November 1, 2017 from: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21684805-there-were-tech-startups-there-was-whaling-fin-tech

A key lesson from the history in this foregoing article is to arrange expeditions – one time ventures:

… a “business model that was extremely effective at marshalling capital and skilled workers despite the immense risks involved for both. Whaling all but disappeared as an industry after mineral oil supplanted whale oil as a fuel. But the business structures pioneered in New Bedford remain as relevant as they ever were.”

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that the region can enjoy high-risk returns from the industry of Shipbuilding and Ship-breaking. These industries are among the best for fostering new labor intensive jobs. There is no, to little,  industrial developments for these industries in the Caribbean now. It is the proposition here for the Caribbean member-states to engage in some high-risk investments and to incubate a Shipbuilding and Ship-breaking industry.

Shipbuilding?!

A classic form of maritime commerce. Imagine each ship – to be built/assembled – as a one-time venture, an expedition.

Ship-breaking?!

Disassembling ships for scrap metal and recycling. This, too, is a form of maritime commerce.
Imagine each ship – to be dismantled “cleanly” – as a one-time venture, an expedition.

These truly reflect the Industrial Reboot that the Caribbean region needs.

Shipbuilding and Ship-breaking have been a familiar theme for this Go Lean movement. We have detailed the historicity and economic prospects of these industry in these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12148 Commerce of the Seas – Lessons on Ship-breaking from Alang (India)
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12146 Commerce of the Seas – Shipbuilding Model of Ingalls
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003 Where the Jobs Are in Maritime Commerce? Consider Ship-breaking done right!

As related in these commentaries, “all Caribbean members are islands or coastal territories – they can all be candidates for shipbuilding and ship-breaking. There is a need to reform maritime commerce for the Caribbean region; we can get more economic activity from this sector; the Go Lean book projects 15,000 new direct jobs in the shipbuilding and/or ship-breaking activities. The possibility of these new jobs is hope-inspiring. At last we can arrest the societal abandonment where men and women leave the community looking for any kind of work.”

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

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs; this would include entrepreneurial ventures and Industrial Reboots. In addition to direct job creation, there is the factor of indirect job-multipliers, in this case a 3.75 multiplier rate.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. 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.

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 maritime commerce to benefit Caribbean society.

Tourism – and the current economic landscape – is not enough!

There is the need to deploy some new business models to accomplish this goal; we need “all hands on deck”: governments, citizens (including skilled labor groups – unions – and individuals), and financial institutions (banks and capital markets). The foregoing article related that whaling expeditions were propelled by creative financing models:

… allowed them to fund themselves by selling shares to the public …

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to optimize capital markets so as to facilitate industrial and entrepreneurial ventures. Consider these excerpts from the book detailing this strategy:

  • 10 Ways to Impact Wall Street – Page 200
    # 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.
  • 10 Ways to Develop Ship-Building – Page 209
    # 1 – Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) Initiative
    The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, creating an economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and 2010 GDP over $800 Billion. All of the member-states are either islands or coastal, therefore there are lots of coastline and harbors. Boats, yachts and ships are therefore plentiful in the region. Consistent with the CU’s mission for globalization, the region cannot just consume these vessels; we must create and build as well. There is a history of boatbuilding in the islands (slopes, schooners, clippers), but what had been missing to forge a formidable industry is the capital and the community “will”. The CU will now fill those gaps. The CU will tap the capital markets to secure long-term funding (stocks/bonds), prepare the labor force for advanced skill-sets, and negotiate treaties with “mature” EU states (i.e. Holland, Ireland) for master-apprentice labor-coaching. …

This commentary is a Lesson from History and also a study in “community ethos”. The Go Lean book defines (Page 20) this as 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”. There may be good and bad community ethos.

Lessons from History are important to apply in modern society. Can we repeat the good habits that up-build society? Can we avoid the bad habits that tear-down communities?

Yes, we can …

Hunting, killing and harvesting whales were inhumane and reflective of a bad community ethos that man can dominate nature for his own profit.

Expeditions, on the other hand, reflected a good community ethos; “marshalling capital and skilled workers despite the immense risks” where good examples for investing in the future, to positively impact society. We can and should foster this ethos; we should pursue industrial reboots and incubate entrepreneurial endeavors for-and-in our Caribbean communities.

We can do this … and make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———-

Appendix: The History of Whaling

This article discusses the history of whaling from prehistoric times up to the commencement of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986.

…

Modern whaling

At first slow whales were caught by men hurling harpoons from small open boats. Early harpoon guns were unsuccessful until Norwegian Svend Foyn invented a new, improved version in 1863 that used a harpoon with a flexible joint between the head and shaft. Norway invented many new techniques and disseminated them worldwide. Cannon-fired harpoons, strong cables, and steam winches were mounted on maneuverable, steam-powered catcher boats. They made possible the targeting of large and fast-swimming whale species that were taken to shore-based stations for processing. Breech-loading cannons were introduced in 1925; pistons were introduced in 1947 to reduce recoil. These highly efficient devices were too successful, for they reduced whale populations to the point where large-scale commercial whaling became unsustainable.

…

Source: Retrieved November 1, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_whaling

———–

Appendix VIDEO – In the Heart of the Sea – Final Trailer – https://youtu.be/K-H35Mpj4uk

Published on Nov 1, 2015 – Chris Hemsworth stars in Ron Howard’s IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, in theaters December 2015. http://intheheartoftheseamovie.com https://www.facebook.com/IntheHeartof…

—

Oscar winner Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”) directs the action adventure “In the Heart of the Sea,” based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s best-selling book about the dramatic true journey of the Essex.

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance.  The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.  But that told only half the story.

“In the Heart of the Sea” reveals the encounter’s harrowing aftermath, as the ship’s surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive.

 

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After Irma, America Should Scrap the ‘Jones Act’

Posted on September 15, 2017 in Economics, Government, Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The Caribbean has just been devastated by Hurricane Irma – the longest Category 5 storm recorded in modern times – it wreaked catastrophic havoc in Barbuda, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Anguilla, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as a Category 5 hurricane[4][5] .

CU Blog - After Irma, America Should Scrap the Jones Act - Photo 2

There is the need for relief, recovery and rebuilding!

This title, “After Irma, America Should Scrap the Jones Act” – in the news article in the below Appendix referring to the temporary waiver of the law – is also a familiar advocacy from this commentary, from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. A previous blog-commentary declared:

Stupidity of the Jones Act
The Jones Act mandates that for a ship to go from one US port to another US port it must be American-made and American flagged. Also, for foreign ships to trade in US Territories, they must first journey to a foreign port before they could journey to another American port to transport goods. This seems “stupid”; but the adherence to this law keeps American maritime commerce options afloat; this means someone is getting paid; … a distortion in the reality of Puerto Rico-[Virgin Islands]-to-US Mainland trade.

The Go Lean movement asserts that the US Territories in the Caribbean deserve better; they deserve the full exercise of the free market, not just now for the hurricane relief-recovery-rebuilding but all the time. This is why we call the ‘Jones Act’ stupid and strongly urge for its repeal. These US Territories – make that colonies – are pressed between a rock and a hard place, their best hope for survival and prosperity is to grow-up from their American neo-colonial status.

What? How? When? Where? All these questions and more are answered in the Go Lean book. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

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

The Go Lean book posits that devastating hurricanes – like Irma – will now be the norm. This problem is too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone to contend with. The book therefore 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):

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.

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

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

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of the American Caribbean Territories and all of Caribbean society. Puerto Rico and the USVI had problems before Irma; their daily life is filled with troubles and strife. While they need the ‘Jones Act’ to be waived for this hurricane relief-recovery-rebuilding effort, even more they need the ‘Jones Act’ repealed for everyday life.

This is not just our opinion alone, as attested by the Editorial – in the Appendix below – from Bloomberg News. This media organization is not just criticizing from afar; they truly care about the Greater Good of the US Territories; see Appendix VIDEO below.

This commentary commences a 4-part series on the Aftermath of Hurricane Irma. This storm was devastating to the Atlantic tropical region, the Caribbean and US State of Florida. There are a lot of mitigation and remediation efforts that can be done to lessen the impact of storms. There are lessons that we must consider; there are changes we must make; there are problems we must solve. The full list of the 4 entries in this series are detailed as follows:

  1. Aftermath of Hurricane Irma – America Should Scrap the ‘Jones Act’
  2. Aftermath of Hurricane Irma – Barbuda Becomes a ‘Ghost Town’
  3. Aftermath of Hurricane Irma – The Science of Power Restoration
  4. Aftermath of Hurricane Irma – Failed State Indicators: Destruction and Defection

Yes, we can do better in the future, even after devastating hurricanes; we can make all of the Caribbean homeland better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———–

Appendix – Title: After Irma, America Should Scrap the Jones Act
Sub-Title: The century-old law restricting trade between U.S. ports is a costly failure.

CU Blog - After Irma, America Should Scrap the Jones Act - Photo 1Another big hurricane, another temporary waiver of the Jones Act — the 1920 law mandating that goods and passengers shipped between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flagged ships, constructed primarily in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by them or by U.S. legal permanent residents.

Circumstances did indeed demand a new stay on this dumb law — but it would be better to get rid of it altogether, as Senator John McCain and others have argued.

The Jones Act was meant to ensure that the U.S. has a reliable merchant marine during times of national emergency. It has devolved into a classic protectionist racket that benefits a handful of shipbuilders and a dwindling number of U.S. mariners. It causes higher shipping costs that percolate throughout the economy, especially penalizing the people of Alaska, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Despite the law, the U.S. merchant fleet has continued to shrink. Today there are only about 100 large ships that meet its requirements — and many of them are past their best. In part because of the high cost of using Jones Act vessels, coastal shipping has steadily declined, even though it would otherwise be more efficient in many cases than trucks and railroads. The act distorts trade flows, giving imports carried by foreign ships an edge over goods shipped from within the U.S. Proposed extensions of the law could threaten the development of offshore energy resources as well as exports of U.S. oil and natural gas.

Defenders of the law say its effects are uncertain because there’s too little data. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests a way to put that right: Give a five-year Jones Act waiver to Puerto Rico. That would provide data for a more rigorous analysis while giving the island’s battered economy a lift. Short of outright repeal, Congress could also revisit the law’s ancient, burdensome rules on crew sizes and much else. If the law remains, its focus should be on restoring the vibrancy of coastal maritime commerce, not on counting ships and sailors.

Economics aside, one might ask, isn’t the Jones Act vital for national security? Hardly. Much of the U.S. Ready Reserve Fleet is foreign-built. Very few Jones Act ships are the roll-on, roll-off kind that the military wants. To be sure, the U.S. has sound strategic reasons for maintaining some shipbuilding capability — but smarter support narrowly directed to that purpose would be cheaper and fairer than a trade law that does so much pointless collateral harm.

The latest waiver is slated to expire this week. Modernizing the law would be a step forward. But the best thing to do with the Jones Act is scrap it.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View’s editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net .

Source: Posted September 13, 2017 from Bloomberg News Service; retrieved September 14, 2017 from: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-13/after-irma-america-should-scrap-the-jones-act

———–

Appendix VIDEO – After Irma, Bloomberg Helps With Recovery In U.S. Virgin Islands – http://www.msnbc.com/mtp-daily/watch/after-irma-bloomberg-helps-with-recovery-in-u-s-virgin-islands-1047755843759

Posted September 15, 2017 – Chuck Todd traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands to interview Fmr. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NBA All-Star Tim Duncan, who are both helping with the recovery effort after Hurricane Irma.

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