Book Review – Go Lean…Caribbean

Tag: Book Review

Zero Sum: Book Review of “The Sum of Us” – Racism is a factor in “Us vs Them”

Posted on February 25, 2021 in Economics, Ethos, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

White America had it all wrong!

Racism was not a privilege, it cost them more than they had bargained for. In fact, pursuing a racist agenda deprived them of privileges that they were entitled to.

Imagine, denying yourself of a swimming pool on a hot day because by opening the pool, Black people would get to swim too.

This was bad … and yet, if lessons are not learned that same expensive consequence will be repeated again and again.

This is the lessons we glean from the new book by Heather McGhee, that the Zero Sum experience is expensive when Non-Zero Sum is so much cheaper, easier and … just.

The movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean proclaims that people in the Caribbean – mostly Black and Brown – can benefit by consuming Heather McGhee’s book and the resultant lessons. The actual title-subtitle is as follows:

“The Sum of Us”: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

The book is about America, but we can apply these lessons in the Caribbean too.

See the full Book Review here:

Book Title: The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together – By: Heather McGhee

Review by: Jennifer Szalai

Hinton Rowan Helper was an unreserved bigot from North Carolina who wrote hateful, racist tracts during Reconstruction. He was also, in the years leading up to the Civil War, a determined abolitionist.

His 1857 book, “The Impending Crisis of the South,” argued that chattel slavery had deformed the Southern economy and impoverished the region. Members of the plantation class refused to invest in education, in enterprise, in the community at large, because they didn’t have to. Helper’s concern wasn’t the enslaved Black people brutalized by what he called the “lords of the lash”; he was worried about the white laborers in the South, relegated by the slave economy and its ruling oligarchs to a “cesspool of ignorance and degradation.”

Helper and his argument come up early on in Heather McGhee’s illuminating and hopeful new book, “The Sum of Us” — though McGhee, a descendant of enslaved people, is very much concerned with the situation of Black Americans, making clear that the primary victims of racism are the people of color who are subjected to it. But “The Sum of Us” is predicated on the idea that little will change until white people realize what racism has cost them too.

The material legacy of slavery can be felt to this day, McGhee says, in depressed wages and scarce access to health care in the former Confederacy. But it’s a blight that’s no longer relegated to the region. “To a large degree,” she writes, “the story of the hollowing out of the American working class is a story of the Southern economy, with its deep legacy of exploitative labor and divide-and-conquer tactics, going national.”

As the pandemic has laid bare, the United States is a rich country that also happens to be one of the stingiest when it comes to the welfare of its own people. McGhee, who spent years working on economic policy for Demos, a liberal think tank, says it was the election of Donald Trump in 2016 by a majority of white voters that made her realize how most white voters weren’t “operating in their own rational economic self-interest.” Despite Trump’s populist noises, she writes, his agenda “promised to wreak economic, social and environmental havoc on them along with everyone else.”

At several points in McGhee’s book, I was reminded of the old saw about “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face,” though she prefers a less gruesome metaphor — the drained swimming pool. Grand public pools were sumptuous emblems of common leisure in the early decades of the 20th century, steadfastly supported by white Americans until they were told to integrate them. McGhee visited the site of one such pool in Montgomery, Ala., drained and cemented over since 1959 so that nobody, white or Black, could ever enjoy it again.

It’s a self-defeating form of exclusion, a determination not to share resources even if the ultimate result is that everyone suffers. McGhee writes about health care, voting rights and the environment; she persuasively argues that white Americans have been steeped in the notion of “zero sum” — that any gains by another group must come at white people’s expense. She talks to scholars who have found that white respondents believed that anti-white bias was more prevalent than anti-Black bias, even though by any factual measure this isn’t true. This cramped mentality is another legacy of slavery, McGhee says, which really was zero sum — extractive and exploitative, like the settler colonialism that enabled it. She writes that zero-sum thinking “has always optimally benefited only the few while limiting the potential of the rest of us, and therefore the whole.”

Recent books like Jonathan Metzl’s “Dying of Whiteness” have explained how racial animus ends up harming those who cling to a chimera of privilege. While reading McGhee I was also reminded of Thomas Frank’s argument in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (2004), about how the Republican Party had figured out a way to push through an unpopular economic agenda by stowing it inside a Trojan horse of social conservatism and cultural grievance.

But there are major differences between their books. Frank derides the idea that racism has anything to do with what he’s writing about. Not to mention that McGhee isn’t a stinging polemicist; she cajoles instead of ridicules. She appeals to concrete self-interest in order to show how our fortunes are tied up with the fortunes of others. “We suffer because our society was raised deficient in social solidarity,” she writes, explaining that this idea is “true to my optimistic nature.” She is compassionate but also cleareyed, refusing to downplay the horrors of racism, even if her own book suggests that the white readers she’s trying to reach can be easily triggered into seeking the safe space of white identity politics. Color blindness, she says, is just another form of denial.

One of the phenomena that emerges from McGhee’s account is that the zero-sum mentality tends to get questioned only in times of actual scarcity — when people are so desperate that they realize how much they need one another. She gives the example of the Fight for $15 movement: Already earning poverty-level wages, fast-food workers began to ask what they had to lose by organizing.

Against “zero-sum” she proposes “win-win” — without fully addressing how the ideal of win-win has been deployed for cynical ends. McGhee discusses how the subprime mortgage crisis was fueled by racism, but it was also inflated by promises of a constantly expanding housing market and rising prices. Once the credit dried up, win-win reverted to zero-sum, with the drowned (underwater homeowners) losing out to the saved (well-connected bankers).

“We live under the same sky,” McGhee writes. There is a striking clarity to this book; there is also a depth of kindness in it that all but the most churlish readers will find moving. She explains in exacting detail how racism causes white people to suffer. Still, I couldn’t help thinking back to the abolitionist Helper, who knew full well how slavery caused white people to suffer, but remained an unrepentant racist to the end.

Follow Jennifer Szalai on Twitter: @jenszalai.

Source: New York Times – posted February 23, 2021; retrieved February 25, 2021 from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/books/review-sum-of-us-heather-mcghee.html

America has some reconciliations to do.

Their Good Old Days weren’t all so good …

Racism is embedded in the country’s DNA …

Institutional Racism is institutional … and weaved into many facets of the American eco-system …

For the Caribbean, the urging is to be On Guard while emulating and role-modeling America as the regional hegemony. Their preponderance for “Us versus Them” continues to proliferate.

HBCU’s – Historically Black Colleges & Universities – continue to strive among the African-American population for tertiary education.
Housing Discrimination continues unabated; Urban for Blacks; suburban for Whites; in fact, the term “Urban” is even now considered the new slang for “Black”; i.e. Urban Contemporary Music is Hip-Hop for Black people.

This problem in America – racism as a factor in “Us vs Them” – continues as a defective Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society. Despite the passage of time, the bad Community Ethos persists. This is why, for the Caribbean to learn from the American experience, we must start with reforming and transforming Community Ethos before the consideration for any strategy, tactic or implementation in the economic, security or governing engines in Caribbean society.

“Us vs Them” …

… is the continuation of the February 2021 Teaching Series for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. (Every month, we present a series relevant to Caribbean life, culture and economics). For this month, we are looking at the subject of Zero Sum Thinking and lamenting how “Us vs Them” thinking permeates so much of the Caribbean mindset. It is NOT true for us to win, someone else must lose. Not rather, it is possible for “Win-Win”. This is Non-Zero Sum cooperation, collaboration, collusion, collectivity and community. This is the fifth entry, 5-of-6, on this Teaching Series. Consider, how this seamlessly fits in with the full catalog for this month:

Zero Sum: Lesson 101 – No more “Gold Standard”
Zero Sum: Realities of Globalism – “Non-Zero Sum” for the whole world
Zero Sum: ICT as a tool, the “Great Equalizer”
Zero Sum: Regional Tourism should not be a competition – Encore
Zero Sum: Book Review – Racism is a factor; “Us vs Them”
Zero Sum: How to fix “Inequality” – Raise the tide, all boats are elevated

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at economic principles, establishing that since we are no longer on a “Gold Standard”, any view of “haves versus have-nots” should no longer be an issue. We, the full 30 Caribbean member-states, can now all win, gain and grow. There should be no “Us vs Them” strategizing. This is a great lesson we can learn from this American experience; (do not be misled, the blatant racial segregation in the Jim Crow South was also practiced in other New World countries, including many Caribbean destinations; in fact, Colorism persists even in this day).

The book Go Lean … Caribbean posits that America’s history (and present) has been plagued with institutional racism (and another defect Crony-Capitalism). This should not the role model for the Caribbean to emulate. Rather, the book advocates for a Non-Zero Sum climate, with no “Us vs Them” racially. No, the roadmap calls for reforming and transforming Caribbean society to be the just, equitable homeland that we all seek. The book stressed that to accomplish this goal, there are some key community ethos that the community must adapt, and then also some strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies that must be executed.

Yes, we can …

In addition to the Go Lean book, this commentary has addressed this subject matter – reforming racial inequities – on many occasions. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18963	Happy Chinese New Year – Honoring Sino people worldwide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20203	Black Image – Pluralism is the Goal
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18749	Good Example of Diversity and a ‘Great Place to Work’: Mercedes-Benz
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16102	Celebrating Diwali – A Glimpse of our Pluralistic Democracy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14558	A Role Model of Being the Change in Civil Rights – Linda Brown, RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14413	Repairing the Breach: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’ – Lynching History
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7204	‘The Covenant with Black America’ – Ten Years Later
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5733	Better than America? Yes, We Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1909	Using Music to Change Americas Race Relations – Berry Gordy

Heather McGhee is the American Author that penned this book, The Sum of Us, on the economic impact of racism in America. She did not only journalized the problems, she strategized solutions as well; see this depicted in an interview in the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Heather McGhee – “The Sum of Us” & The True Cost of Racism | The Daily Social Distancing Show – https://youtu.be/IZpse-90KTY

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Published on Feb 18, 2021 – Heather McGhee talks about examining the economic impact of racism in America in her new book “The Sum of Us,” and underlines the importance of having honest conversations about past and present racism at a community level. #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #HeatherMcGhee

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Per Heather McGhee, the First Step in resolving society’s woes: Stop being racist; stop pitting “Us vs Them”; stop being Zero-Sum; try including everyone in the community in elevating the economic, social and governing engines.

Again, yes, we can … . While the American South languished during the Bad Old Days, other communities thrived, as they did better with universal community building. The South had a lot of work to do.

Consider this example from Sports: In 1947, the Owner of the Major League Baseball Team “The Brooklyn Dodgers”, Branch Rickey, was the first to hire a Black Man – Jackie Robinson – on a baseball team. What was his motivation? To win baseball games … and championships. He was successful with this goal with a World Series Championship in 1955 … and then some:

Jackie Robinson was named National League Rookie of the Year [in 1947, the year he broke the racial barrier]. In 1949 he was the league’s Most Valuable Player. Robinson led the Brooklyn Dodgers to six league championships and one World Series victory. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. – https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jackie-Robinson

White-Only teams henceforth sacrificed the ability to win by discriminating against minorities. Today, Major League Baseball (MLB) is dominated by the best athletes in the world; the only thing that matters is talent, with little regards to ethnicity; (now Whites are the minority).

The Caribbean also, has some work to do. We must look for “Win-Win” with people who may be different.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for effecting change in the Caribbean; it introduces the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a vehicle to bring about desired change in the region’s economics, security and governing engines. We want to be a pluralistic democracy with opportunity, equal rights and justice for all. All persons in the Caribbean are hereby urged to lean-in for this Go Lean roadmap.

Now’s the time for these empowerments in the Caribbean! It is time to build our better society. The strategies, tactics and implementations proposed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean are conceivable, believable and achievable. Yes, we can … do this; we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Book Review, Civil Rights, Model, Power

BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) Actuality

Posted on March 12, 2020 in Planning, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

There are times when your leaders need to go BIG, projecting hope, assurance and confidence. History is littered with such examples, think of these prominent ones (in chronological order):

Abraham Lincoln – Gettysburg Address
1863: One of the greatest and most influential statements on American national purpose; despite the Civil War, there is “hope that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
Winston Churchill – Identifying the Nazi’s ‘Dark Cloud over the Continent’
1940: In preparation, Churchill marshalled the nation (United Kingdom) for war: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour‘”.^[422]
Franklin D Roosevelt – Pearl Harbor Attack Response
1941: A positive statement – of ‘A Day that will live in infamy’ – on behalf of the entire American people in the face of a great collective trauma. “In proclaiming the indelibility of the attack, and expressing outrage at its “dastardly” nature, the speech worked to crystallize and channel the response of the nation into a collective response and resolve”.^[9]
John F Kennedy – Announcing the Moonshot
1961: President Kennedy announced his support for the American Space program’s “Apollo” missions and redefined the ultimate goal of the Space Race in an address to a special joint session of Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”. His justification for the Moonshot was both that it was vital to national security and that it would focus the nation’s energies in other scientific and social fields.
Ronald Reagan – Soviet’s Evil Empire
1983: Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and as “the focus of evil in the modern world”. He explicitly rejected the notion that the United States and the Soviet Union were equally responsible for the ongoing nuclear arms race between the two nations; rather, he asserted that the conflict was a battle between good and evil.
George H Bush – Declaring a New World Order
1990: President Bush’s speech presented the notion of world governance in a sense of new collective efforts to address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve. After the end of the Cold War, he assured the nation (and the world) of the new unipolar status of the US; his vision was realistic in saying that “there is no substitute for American leadership”.^[1] The Gulf War of 1991 was regarded as the first test of the new world order: “Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order”.^[2][3]
George W Bush – Post 9-11 Response
2001: President G.W. Bush prepared the nation for a different kind of war, one with sustained battle against terrorist groups responsible for the 9/11 attacks on America. The President cast the terrorists as “evil” and awakened the country to their danger and the need to defend freedom. “Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.
Barack Obama – Election Day Victory Speech – Yes, We Can
2008: “Because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America. … The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even in one term—but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”^[1] … “To all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope”.

Yes, the need to project hope is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG); a leader has to transform despair to promise, darkness to light and pessimism to optimism.

This need is heighten right now today! Last night, the current President of the US (POTUS), Donald J. Trump, gave an Oval Office speech on the catastrophic imminence of the Coronavirus – COVID-I9. The consequence of the speech: “Rather than hope today, the people feel despair”. See this summary, from The Atlantic Magazine here:

There was one something in the speech: a ban on travel from Europe, but not the United Kingdom. It’s a classic Trump formulation. It seeks to protect America by erecting a wall against the world, without thinking very hard how or whether the wall can work. The disease is already here. … The travel ban is an act of panic. Financial futures began crashing even as Trump was talking, perhaps shocked by his lack of an economic plan, perhaps aghast at his latest attack on world trade.

The next day, today (March 12, 2020), the Stock Market or the New York Stock Exchange, had to be halted within minutes after the start of the trading day, a “pressure-release” valve to prevent drastic selling, had been triggered. – Consider this New York Post source:

The S&P 500 plunged 7 percent within minutes of the opening bell, triggering a New York Stock Exchange circuit-breaker that was last tripped on Monday. The drop put the index into bear market territory: It stopped trading at 2,549.05 points, down 24.8 percent from the 52-week high reached last month.

After trading was lifted 15 minutes later, the S&P 500 plunged even further — as much as 8.4 percent to an new intraday low of 2,508.93. … (See this actuality in the Appendix VIDEO).

This transcript on POTUS Donald Trump’s impact is in direct contrast to the transcript of POTUS Barack Obama. Plus, one president presented policies more conducive to the Caribbean compared to the other one. Which one?

Obama.

Why the parallel? Considering that 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states possess a majority Black population, Obama is a Black Man who won the presidency of the US, despite the deficient racial history and actuality of that country.

In fact, the historicity of Obama, when he was only a US Senator, was started as a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – he published a pre-campaign book, a best-seller, with a similar title; (“audacity” is the noun for the adjective “audacious”):

Title: The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006)

Amazon Review: The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a new kind of politics—a politics that builds upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans. Lucid in his vision of America’s place in the world, refreshingly candid about his family life and his time in the Senate, Obama here sets out his political convictions and inspires us to trust in the dogged optimism that has long defined us and that is our best hope going forward. Source: Retrieved March 12, 2020 from: https://www.amazon.com/Audacity-Hope-Thoughts-Reclaiming-American/dp/0307455874

Reader Review By: Thriftbooks.com User:
I read this book out of pure curiosity. It was written in 2006. I am an octogenarian and a registered Independent. What impressed me was that it was written by the author and not a “ghost.” He expresses himself very well. The portions dealing with his background while growing up were fascinating. His grasp of what the general public can do to unite this country is quite provocative. I have listened to many politicians who impressed me negatively with subjects of hate and one liners. It is my concept that this man is a healer and a deep thinker. What’s more he is able to think on his feet. Most of the politicians I have heard all my life were so dependent upon a tele-prompter that I found them, to say the least, boring. This man excites this old man as never before. I applaud his writings. I recommend this book to any thinking person who wants to know this man a little more personally. Source: Posted October 20, 2008; retrieved March 12, 2020 from: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-audacity-of-hope-thoughts-on-reclaiming-the-american-dream_barack-obama/246072/item/545627/#isbn=0307237702&idiq=6376425

The foregoing refer to historic and current characters of the United States and the United Kingdom; though we have a lot of Caribbean Diaspora in those countries, the drama of their BHAG is all their drama. We can look, listen and learn from their experiences but it is not our actuality to embrace.

But can’t we have goals right here – in the Caribbean and for the Caribbean? Do we have our own aspirational goals?

Big Goals?
Big Hairy, Audacious Goals?

Yes, we can. Yes, we do!

Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean present a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this March 2020, our focus is on the Big Hairy Audacious Goals for the Caribbean. This is entry 1-of-6 for this series, which details that there are BHAG’s for the Caribbean, as a whole region, and the individual member-states. The world BHAG was not used in the 2013 book, rather there was a Chapter with a similar theme: “Big Ideas”. There is an actual advocacy for this purpose in the Go Lean book; see here some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from Page 127, entitled:

10 Big Ideas … in the Caribbean Region

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* Confederation Treaty: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)** The CU is a big idea for the Caribbean, our parallel of the American “moon quest”, allowing for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people. This creates the world’s 29th largest economy, based on 2010 figures. The pre-ascension GDP figures are actually less than $800 Billion, but the aggregation into a single market will manifest the economic “catch-up” principle [180], in 5 years. Further, after 10 years the CU’s GDP should double and rank among the Top 20 or G20 nations.
2	Currency Union / Single Currency
3	Defense / Homeland Security Pact The political reality is that the economics of the region is tied to the security of the region, This treaty teams-up to implement anti-crime, anti-terrorism measures, both proactive and reactionary, to insure the economic engines. This will be in supplement with the US Defense initiatives but our role will increase while the US role decreases, we must assume the security needs for our own commerce.
4	Confederation Without Sovereignty
5	Four Languages in Unison
6	Self-Governing Entities (SGE)
7	Virtual “Turnpike” Operations Ferries, Causeways/Bridges, Pipelines, Tunnels, Railways and limited access highways will function as “blood vessels to connect all the organs” within the region, thus allowing easier transport of goods and people among the islands and the mainland states (Belize, Guyana or Suriname) – See Appendix IC (Page 280) Alaska Marine Highway.
8	Cyber Caribbean
9	e-Learning – Versus – Studying Abroad The Caribbean has tried the Study Abroad model, the result: a “brain drain” where our best students leave and may never return for residence, employment or investments, (only family visits). The new approach is to keep the talent here in the Caribbean, educate them here and notice the positive efforts on societal institutions.
10	Cuba & Haiti Cuba has suffered under the US Trade Embargo for 50-plus years. Now the paradigm shift is that the CU will trade with the rest of the world on behalf of Cuba. The CU will be a reboot for Cuba. Haiti is the poorest nation in the hemisphere. But what they have is impassioned human capital as opposed to financial capital or valuable minerals. The CU is an economic reboot for this country, one that involves developing internally and not thru emigration. The economic principle is “every year of education raises a country’s GDP”. Haiti will exploit the opportunities of the rest of the Caribbean by employing “leap-frog” methodologies; there is no need for gradual advances, rather just jump to where technological infrastructure is moving to, not coming from.

These 10 Big Ideas is just the introduction on our discussion on BHAG’s. The other entries in this month’s series are cataloged as follows:

BHAG – The Audacity of Hope – Yes, we can!
BHAG – Regional Currency – In God We Trust
BHAG – Infrastructure Spending … finally funding Toll Roads
BHAG – One Voice – Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Stance
BHAG – Outreach to the World – Why Not a Profit Center
BHAG – Netflix, Hulu, CBS, Peacock ==> Caribbean Media

The points of BIG Hairy Audacious technocratic projects and initiatives have been further elaborated upon in these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19347	Missing Solar (Panel) Systems – One Caribbean Country Goes Green … finally
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19097	Forging Big Changes – Public-Private Partnerships
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18831	Food Security – Opportunity: Supplies Beef for Cruise Lines
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18301	After Hurricane Dorian, Rebuilding Partners: China Versus America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17358	Marshall Plans: Past and Future Strategy for Big Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17337	Industrial Reboot – Big Amusement Parks
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15346	Industrial Reboot – Shipbuilding … for Big Cruise Ships
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15331	Industrial Reboot – Introducing Auto-making to the Region
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15075	e-Government 3.0 – This is how to do ‘More’ with ‘Less’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8590	Build It and They Will Come – Politics of Infrastructure

This is how change is forged; first it starts as a vision, a goal. We must plan the plan; then work the plan; then … after a lot of heavy-lifting, the vision is materialized. This is how we make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

——————-

Appendix VIDEO – Stock trading halted as markets plunge after Trump’s coronavirus travel ban – https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/stock-trading-halted-as-markets-plunge-after-trumps-coronavirus-travel-ban/

Big Think
Posted March 12, 2020 – US stocks fell fast enough Thursday to halt trading for the second time in a week after President Trump’s efforts to address the coronavirus outbreak further panicked global markets instead of relieving them.

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Brain Drain – Tiger Moms – Is that so bad?

Posted on February 28, 2020 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Have you heard of retirement panning – pensions, Social Security, National Insurance, etc.?

Of course you have; but did you know that all of these concepts are new concepts – emerging for everyday acceptance only in the 20^th century.

What did people do before?

Two things: Savings and Children.

Most ironic, before the Second World War (1939 – 1945) the middle class was very sparse; there was mostly only rich or poor. So for the majority: the retirement plan was their children.

Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it. – The Bible Proverbs 22:6 NKJV

In modern times, and in the advanced democracies, people are facilitating their old age with the Art and Science of retirement planning. But for some ancient cultures, they still adhere to the ethos of “training children” for future success. This is the case for the Chinese Diaspora in America. They have the practice of strict upbringing and regimented discipline to the point of …

Tiger Moms …

Tiger parenting is strict or demanding parenting. Tiger parents push and pressure their children to attaining high levels of academic achievement or success in high-status extracurricular activities such as music, using authoritarian parenting methods.^[1] The term “tiger mother” (or “tiger mom”) was coined by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua in her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.^[2] A largely Chinese-American concept, the term draws parallels to strict parenting styles typically enforced throughout households in East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} – Wikipedia

This is not a commentary on reforming or transforming Asian cultures. No, our focus is limited to the Caribbean only. But we can learn best-practices from studying this tradition. We want our children to achieve; we want them to be “all they can be”.

As related in a previous blog-commentary in this series, the song “The Greatest Love” (see Appendix VIDEO below), cast a light on an important directive that stewards of society should work towards – in fact, this should be a Community Ethos (spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices).

“I believe that children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way”.

If Caribbean parents can push and guide their children to be high achievers, would that be so bad?

If Caribbean children advanced to high achievement status, does that mean that they have to leave the Caribbean? No! Not any more…

This is the assertion of the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, a roadmap for elevating the societal engines (economics, security and governance) in the region to make the 30 member-states better places to live, work and play. Now there is the opportunity to foster genius children and engage them for the betterment of our society. The opportunities will be here.

No more “fattening frogs for snake” – a Jamaican expression relating the actuality of the Brain Drain.

Speaking of the Brain Drain. This is the continuation of this February 2020 Teaching Series; this is entry 4-of-5 from the Go Lean movement. This entry asserts that we can defy the previous trend of losing our best and brightest to foreign destinations. The Go Lean book presents 144 different missions (strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies) for elevating the Caribbean homeland. Other entries in this Brain Drain series includes the following:

Brain Drain – Where the Brains Are
Brain Drain – Brain Gain: Yes we can!
Brain Drain – Geeks and Freaks: Ultimate Revenge
Brain Drain – ‘Tiger Moms’ – Is that so bad?
Brain Drain – Live and Let Live – Introducing ‘Localism’

As for the references to Tiger Mom’s or Tiger Parenting, it is advisable to fully consider (study) the context in that aforementioned 2011 book. See details here:

Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Paperback (2011)
By: Amy Chua
Summary
An awe-inspiring, often hilarious, and unerringly honest story of one mother’s exercise in extreme parenting, revealing the rewards—and the costs—of raising her children the Chinese way.

“This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.” —Amy Chua

All decent parents want to do what’s best for their children. What Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother reveals is that the Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that. Western parents try to respect their children’s individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions and providing a nurturing environment. The Chinese believe that the best way to protect your children is by preparing them for the future and arming them with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chronicles Chua’s iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, her way—the Chinese way—and the remarkable results her choice inspires.

Here are some things Amy Chua would never allow her daughters to do:

have a playdate

be in a school play

complain about not being in a school play

not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama

play any instrument other than the piano or violin

not play the piano or violin

The truth is Lulu and Sophia would never have had time for a playdate. They were too busy practicing their instruments (two to three hours a day and double sessions on the weekend) and perfecting their Mandarin.

Of course no one is perfect, including Chua herself. Witness this scene:
“According to Sophia, here are three things I actually said to her at the piano as I supervised her practicing:

Oh my God, you’re just getting worse and worse.

I’m going to count to three, then I want musicality.

If the next time’s not PERFECT, I’m going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them!”

But Chua demands as much of herself as she does of her daughters. And in her sacrifices—the exacting attention spent studying her daughters’ performances, the office hours lost shuttling the girls to lessons—the depth of her love for her children becomes clear. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an eye-opening exploration of the differences in Eastern and Western parenting—and the lessons parents and children everywhere teach one another.

Source: Retrieved February 28, 2020 from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9160695-battle-hymn-of-the-tiger-mother

————

Reviews:
“[E]ntertaining, bracingly honest and, yes, thought-provoking.”—The New York Times Book Review

At once provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting. Amy Chua argues that Western parenting tries to respect and nurture children’s individuality, while Chinese parents typically believe that arming children with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence prepares them best for the future. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chronicles Chua’s iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, the Chinese way – and the remarkable, sometimes heartbreaking results her choice inspires. Achingly honest and profoundly challenging, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is one of the most talked-about books of our times.

“Few have the guts to parent in public. Amy [Chua]’s memoir is brutally honest, and her willingness to share her struggles is a gift. Whether or not you agree with her priorities and approach, she should be applauded for raising these issues with a thoughtful, humorous and authentic voice.” —Time Magazine

“[A] riveting read… Chua’s story is far more complicated and interesting than what you’ve heard to date — and well worth picking up… I guarantee that if you read the book, there’ll undoubtedly be places where you’ll cringe in recognition, and others where you’ll tear up in empathy.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother hit the parenting hot button, but also a lot more, including people’s complicated feelings about ambition, intellectualism, high culture, the Ivy League, strong women and America’s standing in a world where China is ascendant. Chua’s conviction that hard work leads to inner confidence is a resonant one.”—Chicago Tribune

“Readers will alternately gasp at and empathize with Chua’s struggles and aspirations, all the while enjoying her writing, which, like her kid-rearing philosophy, is brisk, lively and no-holds-barred. This memoir raises intriguing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about love, pride, ambition, achievement and self-worth that will resonate among success-obsessed parents… Readers of all stripes will respond to [Battle Hymn of the] Tiger Mother.”—The Washington Post

Source: Posted December 27, 2011; retrieved February 28, 2020 from: https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Hymn-Tiger-Mother-Chua/dp/0143120581/ref=asc_df_0143120581/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312069234664&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1067927149205499757&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1026411&hvtargid=pla-436599159541&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316181119&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312069234664&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1067927149205499757&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1026411&hvtargid=pla-436599159541
————

VIDEO – Kids of ‘Tiger Mom’ speak out (from Harvard and Yale), 5 years later – https://www.nbcnews.com/video/kids-of-tiger-mom-speak-out-from-harvard-and-yale-5-years-later-611455555505

Posted Jan. 29, 2016 – She was one of the most controversial figures of 2011: Mother of two, Amy Chua, better known as “Tiger Mom” after she authored the book “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and ignited a firestorm with her strict parenting methods. Five years later, her children are speaking out from Yale Law School and Harvard and say they plan to raise their kids the same way, TODAY’s Tamron Hall reports.

Of course, the reference to Tiger Mom (Mother) is a metonym for parent, guardian, grandparents, teachers (Music teachers), coaches, youth pastors or anyone else who takes the lead for guiding youngsters “in the way they should go”. This is one way we “teach them well to let them lead the way”. This is true even if it’s just “teaching some of them”, not all. (Also, consider the follow-up book in the Appendix below).

This is not the first time we have addressed the subject of teaching and tutelage for young people. In fact, any focus of guiding young people is actually a focus on the future. Of those 144 advocacies presented in the Go Lean book, one of them was specifically addressing the future. That advocacy is found on Page 26 of the book; see here some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines, under the title:

10 Ways to Impact the Future

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* Confederation Treaty: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)** This will allow for the unification of the region into a single market economy of 30 countries, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (based on 2010 figures), thereby creating the world’s 29th largest economy. The CU will then forge multiple Agencies to foster technology growth and garner benefits from the economic “Catch-Up” principle. This should double the GDP after 5 years and help create the structures for the meaningful future that past visionaries had foreseen.
2	Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is The 3-word phase “Return On Investment” imply investing time, talents and treasuries to a cause, though the rewards may not be immediate. History has shown (i.e. US during WW II) that people will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices – if they must — so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. This is the ethos for communities that invest R&D dollars. This is the ethos that the CU must adapt in order to impact the future.
3	Cannot Only Consume, We Must Produce As Well
4	Learn Lessons of Oversight
5	Count on the Greedy to be Greedy
6	Need People Too – Not All About Money, or is it? The quality of life for the citizenry is very important, otherwise, people leave, and take their time, talents and treasuries elsewhere. Family, cultural pride is more important than economics, and yet when the economics are bad, people leave. This is evident by the large Caribbean Diaspora in foreign lands – where they re-assembled their culture and civic pride.
7	Include Everyone in the Plan
8	Grow from the Middle
9	Add Priority to Energy as a basic need – like Food, Clothing, Shelter
10	*If Not Now, Then* …**

The purpose of this commentary is not the ideology of Future Planning, rather it is about the Brain Gain. The current Brain Drain rate for the Caribbean has been reported to average 70 percent – that is 70 percent of all college-educated citizens have fled the region and now live in the Diaspora. We cannot have the same future that we have had in the past.

We must do better. Brain Drains should only be the reality of our past, not our future.

We now have a plan … we don’t even have to engage everyone in order to change society, just some people, some high-achievers that excel in their fields of endeavors. Tiger Moms are hereby needed to teach-guide-foster these achievers.

Consider the many previous blog-commentaries that the Go Lean movement have published related to Future Planning and fostering the development of our youth. See this sample list here-now:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17992	What Went Wrong? Losing the Best; Nation-building with the Rest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13524	Future Focused – e-Government Portal 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13472	Future Focused – College, Caribbean Style
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13466	Future Focused – Personal Development and the Internet
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12645	Back to the Future: Textbooks or Tablets in School?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11520	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Lower Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10351	Culture and Ethos are More Important than Strategy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9550	10 Things We Want from Chinese and 10 Things We Do Not Want
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6269	Education & Economics – Need Top Level Attention
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5964	Lesson from Movie ‘Tomorrowland’: We only need ‘Some People’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5423	Extracurricular Music Programs Boost Students
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1634	Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1288	Future Bahamian Astronaut – Not so improbable

“I believe that children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way” …

… this is more than just the lyrics of a song – though music education seems to be a catalysts for achievement among young people – this is a recipe for reforming and transforming the Caribbean future. For many older Caribbean people, it may be too late to forge new values or attitudes (ethos), we may be limited to the next generations. So we need Tiger Moms and Dads … and teachers … and coaches, etc..

This is the heavy-lifting we must do to make our homeland a better place to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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..

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

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

————-

Appendix – Follow-up Book: Beyond the Tiger Mom: East-West Parenting for the Global Age (2016)
By: Maya Thiagarajan
How do Asian parents prime their children for success from a young age by encouraging them to achieve academic excellence? Why do Asian kids do so well in math and science? What is the difference between an Asian upbringing and a Western one?

These are just a few of the fascinating questions posed and discussed in Beyond the Tiger Mom, a captivating new book by educator, author, and mother, Maya Thiagarajan. In this research-backed guide, she examines each of the “tiger mother” stereotypes and goes beneath the surface to discover what happens in Asian parenting households. How do Asian parents think about childhood, family, and education and what can Western parents learn from them? And what benefits does a traditional Western upbringing have that Asian parents, too, may want to consider?

Some of the takeaways from this parenting book include:
The best of Asian parenting practices — such as how to teach children math, or raise tech-healthy kids
Teaching your child to broaden his or her attention span
Finding the right balance between work and play, while including family time
Helping your child see failure as a learning experience
And many, many more insights
Each chapter offers interviews with hundreds of Asian parents and kids and ends with a “How To” section of specific tips for Asian and Western parents both to aid childhood education and development inside and outside the classroom. Woven into this narrative are her reflections on teaching and parenting in locations that span the East and West.

In this book, Thiagarajan synthesizes an extensive body of research on child education and Asian parenting both to provide accessible and practical guidelines for parents.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25986958-beyond-the-tiger-mom

———–

Appendix B VIDEO – The Greatest Love Of All (lyrics) – Whitney Houston, A Tribute – https://youtu.be/hRX4ip6PVoo

TheMusic1022

Published on Feb 15, 2012

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 — February 11, 2012) was an American recording artist, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, the Guinness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time. Her awards include two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards in her lifetime. Houston was also one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. … RIP Whitney, you and your wonderful music will always be in our hearts.

Category: Entertainment
License: Standard YouTube License

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Repairing the Breach: Mental Health Realities

Posted on March 8, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Implementation, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Who are the manliest of the manly men?

The Ballers!

No doubt! Talented, athletic and rich. All the men want to be them and all the women want to be with them.

And yet, these ones too have the need for Mental Health services.

If this is the truth for the “greatest of the greats”, how much more so for the “lesser of the Less Than‘s”?

” Everyone is going through something that we can’t see ” – quote by Kevin Love: NBA All-Star and Cleveland Cavaliers Forward.

Kevin Love is in the news right now for something other than basketball, rather Mental Health requirements for men and boys. See the story here, as reported in this PODCAST from NPR’s daily show On-Point:

AUDIO-PODCAST: NPR On-Point: We Need to Talk About Mental Health of Men – https://www.npr.org/player/embed/591984234/591984273

Published March 8, 2018 – Basketball superstar Kevin Love opens up about his panic attacks. Are men getting the kind of Mental Health support they need?

The American experience in Mental Health should be a cautionary tale for neighboring countries. These statistics were related in a previous commentary by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean:

America is very much troubled with their management of [transactional and degenerative] mental weakness:

Millions suffer from Opioid additions – 33,000 die every year

7 Million Americans sufferfrom Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Suicide befall 40,000 Americans every year.

The aging population – think Baby Boomers – and Alzheimer cases are taxing the Mental Health systems.

Mental Health is a real concern for the population in general and for men in particular. One of the biggest problems is that men rarely want to admit to any problems or seek any help. Yet, the evidence of dysfunction is there:

Substance Abuse (Drugs and Alcohol)
Suicide

Volumes have been written on the subject. One prominent book is mentioned in the foregoing PODCAST, with this quote:

“A man is as likely to ask for help with Mental Health as he is to ask for directions”. – Terry Real, Psychologist and Author of the book “I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression“. See the critical review in the Appendix below.

This is not just an American issue; where it is reported that 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness in a given year.

The Caribbean also has an atrocious record with Mental Health. If we measure Mental Health deficiencies by substance abuse and suicide, then we are in crisis. Recently (reported in a previous blog-commentary), one Caribbean member-state, Guyana, was rated Number One worldwide for suicides … per capita; Suriname was slightly behind at Number Six.

There is a movement to effect change in the Caribbean, among our Black men and boys. We cannot seriously consider the needs of this population without considering the Mental Health realities in the region. We have a lot more information about America’s Mental Health dispositions than we do about the Caribbean’s – this is an expected consequence of Third World status. But we know that there are Mental Health inadequacies. We can glean some insights by analyzing the Mental Health indices from Caribbean-born immigrants in the US. A recent study published this summary:

… a national study found that the small number of Blacks of Caribbean ancestry included in the sample had higher levels of psychological stress compared with US born Blacks,²⁴ and another national study found that persons of Black Caribbean ancestry had a lower frequency of heavy drinking compared with US Blacks in general.²⁵
Footnotes:
24. Williams DR. Race, stress, and mental health: findings from the Commonwealth Minority Health Survey. In: Hogue C, Hargraves M, Scott-Collins K, eds. Minority Health in America: Findings and Policy Implication from the Commonwealth Fund Minority Health Survey. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2000:209–243.

25. Dawson DA. Beyond black, white and Hispanic: race, ethnic origin and drinking patterns in the United States. J Subst Abuse. 1998;10:321–338.

Currently, there is no Caribbean governmental singularity. While there are some integration efforts by language groups (CariCom for English-speaking, Netherland Antilles, French Overseas territories, etc.), there is no one entity to tabulate consumption of Mental Health services in the full Caribbean region.

According to a White Paper by a Caribbean academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas, the Black men and boys of the Caribbean region is a dysfunctional population sub-group. This group is a “hurt people” that “hurt people”. These ones are victims and villains and have experienced a breach in good citizenship. The White Paper addresses the question: “How to repair this breach?”. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:

Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – Excerpt

By: Donald M. McCartney, D.M., MPA, MSc.Ed. (Hons.), B.A., T.C.

On 16 April 1889, while speaking on the occasion of the 27^th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, Frederick Douglass attempted to harness and clarify the defining questions that were of importance, at the time, with respect to Black men and boys. … He raised the following crucial and defining questions:

How does one protect a group from public dissection as if it existed as a mere aberration in the society?

How does one create for that group a group concept so that it is able to sustain itself as a self-respecting group within (the Caribbean) a society, which views it as an aberration?

The answers to these questions must be sought as we search for a way out of the morass in which we, as a people, find ourselves.

… Questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised … these questions are being revived because many, too many Black men and boys are not a part of the economic structure or the body politic. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that many of them are not in community with their ethnic group.

For the most part, Black men and boys live in isolation, better yet, they are marginalized. They find it difficult to connect with society in general and the significant persons in their lives in particular.
…
Even though [this] question goes far beyond Black men and boys, it is directly related to our young men in particular and their inability to participate and develop within the body politic and the economic structure of the Caribbean:
…
How do we expect to engage Black men and boys in constructive dialogue and participation within Caribbean society? …

In order to accomplish the goal of creating a better society for all stakeholders, there must be an integrated plan of action.
…
See the full White Paper here: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392

Surely, part of the problem of Black men and boys must be related to Mental Health. There is the need for viable solutions for the Caribbean region to consider.

This commentary revisits the foregoing White Paper; even though there is no mention of Mental Health, this is a consideration of the full width-and-breadth of Caribbean dysfunction. This submission therefore supplements the recent 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is a Plus-One for the 4 parts of the series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions – Way Forward – to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series were cataloged as follows:

Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics
———–
Repairing the Breach: Mental Health Realities

While all of the previous commentaries related to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the failing dispositions of the Caribbean among our Black men and boys, this supplemental submission highlights the need for universal Mental Health offerings in this region. Think of universal Mental Health as a quilt, a web or fabric with additions and subtractions. All new triggers add to the quilt, all remediation and Mental Health provisions subtract from it. Caribbean communities are re-thinking their views on recreational drug use. There is a movement to legalize and de-criminalize marijuana in society; this was reported previously about Jamaica and see this breaking news here of new legal acceptance in the country of Antigua and Barbuda. With this reality, there is the need for Caribbean Mental Health stakeholders to double-down the outreach for supportive services.

This discussion is relevant for the movement behind the Go Lean book, which serves a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); there-in is an advocacy to “Improve Healthcare“ in general (Page 156), but It also delves into strategies, tactics and implementations to provide more Mental Health solutions in the Caribbean region. The book projects this regional-federal law that summarizes the need:

Caribbean (Persons) with Disabilities
Modeled after Americans with Disability Act, the Caribbean people with physical and mental disabilities should have equal rights and the provisions of “reasonable accommodations” by the institutions and establishments in the Caribbean. This move would extend a “welcome mat” to tourists, residents and repatriates alike, who may not be considered fully whole, but can still contribute to society and the economic engines, with small adjustments …

In fact, the prime directives of the Go Lean roadmap for the CU federal administration is described as follows:

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

We have considered a lot of lessons-learned in prior Go Lean commentaries that we glean by considering the US experiences. But the reality of the Black men and boys in the Caribbean is even worse than the disposition of African-Americans in the US (or other Diasporic countries). So we need Mental Health solutions front-and-center if we hope to Repair the Breach in this region. This has been a consistent subject in these previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14087	Opioids Addiction and the FDA – ‘Fox guarding the Henhouse’ The American Opioid crisis is a self-made crisis due to the country’s blatant Crony-Capitalism. Big Pharma was allowed to peddle their addictive drugs on an unwitting public, and the regulator, the FDA, was complicit. This American model is a caution for us in the Caribbean.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11052	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Mental Disabilities The creed to protect the Weak from being abused by the Strong is age-old as an honor code. All societies have those that are mentally weak; the Social Contract must allow for protection and remediation of these ones.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5901	The Demographic Theory of Elderly Suicide Failures in Mental Health delivery results in suicides. Among senior citizens, this prevalence is due to the fact that they may not consider themselves as relevant in modern society. We can learn from others on Mental Health remediation and solutions for Caribbean senior citizens.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2633	Book Review: ‘The Protest Psychosis’ Advocates for change have often been labeled as insane for not accepting their status quo. This Protest Psychosis often is a distortion by the powerful to resist change and abuse those mandating improvement.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2602	Guyana and Suriname Wrestle With High Rates of Suicides Failures in Mental Health delivery results in suicides and some Caribbean countries have it worse than anywhere else in the world. Sad!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2105	Recessions and Public Physical and Mental Health Mental Health disorders can spark when the economy sours. Public Health officials need to be “on guard” for Mental Health fallout during periods of economic recession.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1751	New Hope in the Fight against Alzheimer’s Disease Everyone ages, and so Alzheimer’s disease is a guaranteed risk in every community. This is a Mental Health reality that must be planned for, so as to ensure the best outcomes for communities.

As related above, men in general do not like to acknowledge the need for Mental Health services, so Caribbean stewards must do some heavy-lifting with its Black men and boys to Repair the Breach they present in this society. There is a Way-Forward for effecting change and elevation.

Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean means “fixing our defects” in the service and delivery of Mental Health remediation. But this challenge is too big for any one member-state alone; this is why we need the economies-of-scale and leverage of an integrated Single Market; the Caribbean region is comprised of 30 member-states and 42 million people. This point was pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13) with many statements that demonstrate the need to collaborate so as to optimize Caribbean communities and elevate our Social Contract services:

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

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

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

The American role model for Mental Health care and support is not ideal; we must pay more than the usual attention and try to do better in the Caribbean. That should not be as hard, when the motive is the Greater Good. This would mean removing the institutional racism and Crony-Capitalism of American life.

The Go Lean book provides a roadmap for doing better, detailing 370-pages of turn-by-turn directions to better optimize the societal engines of economics, security and governance to better deliver on the Social Contract. All segments of the population need support with Mental Health concerns; Black men and boys need it especially, because “hurt people hurt people”.

Repairing the Breach for this population includes identifying, qualifying, proposing and delivering good Mental Health solutions. Only then can our homeland be 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 – Book Review: “I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression” (1998)

By: Terrence Real

A revolutionary and hopeful look at depression as a silent epidemic in men that manifests as workaholism, alcoholism, rage, difficulty with intimacy, and abusive behavior by the cofounder of Harvard’s Gender Research Project.

Twenty years of experience treating men and their families has convinced psychotherapist Terrence Real that depression is a silent epidemic in men—that men hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s “un-manliness.” Problems that we think of as typically male—difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage—are really attempts to escape depression. And these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children.

This groundbreaking book is the “pathway out of darkness” that these men and their families seek. Real reveals how men can unearth their pain, heal themselves, restore relationships, and break the legacy of abuse. He mixes penetrating analysis with compelling tales of his patients and even his own experiences with depression as the son of a violent, depressed father and the father of two young sons.

Source: Retrieved March 11, 2018 from: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Want-Talk-About-Overcoming/dp/0684835398

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Book Review, Civil, Health, Power

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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

———–

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

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

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

Category:

People & Blogs License: Standard YouTube License

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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Book Review, History, Milestone, Model

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Book Review: ‘Oral History of Bob Marley’

Posted on July 14, 2017 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Bob Marley was not a saint; but he was saintly. – Author Roger Steffens

Bob Marley was perhaps the most influential person of Caribbean heritage; arguably so. He died 36 years ago, after living only to the age of 36. We have doubled the years of his life …

36 years here … 36 years gone!

… but it seems as if he lived a life of achievement equaling two or 3 lifetimes.

He was more than just a musician or an entertainer, he was a revolutionary icon. Many of the advocacies that he championed have now come full circle; come to fruition and come to regret:

In fact, references to Bob Marley have been consistent for the movement behind the book Go Lean… Caribbean – a guide to confederate, collaborate and convene the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region into a Single Market – he is mentioned in the book (Pages 119, 133 & 218) and featured in multiple blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7738	A Lesson in History from Bob Marley – Buffalo Soldiers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Bob Marley: The legend lives on!

We now learn even more about Bob Marley in the new book by Reggae Archivist Roger Steffens, entitled: So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley. See a summary-review of that book here and listen to an AUDIO-Podcast interview with the Author:

Book Review for Book: So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley
By Roger Steffens

A revelatory, myth-shattering history of one of the most influential musicians of all time, told in the words of those who knew him best.

Roger Steffens is one of the world’s leading Bob Marley experts. He toured with the Wailers in the 1970s and was closely acquainted with Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh and the rest of the band members. Over several decades he has interviewed more than seventy-five friends, business managers, relatives and confidants—many speaking publicly for the first time. Forty years in the making, So Much Things to Say weaves this rich testimony into a definitive telling of the life of the reggae king—the full, inside account of how a boy from the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, became a cultural icon and inspiration to millions around the world.

The intimacy of the voices and the frankness of their revelations will astonish even longtime Marley fans. Readers see the intense bonds of teenage friendship among Peter, Bunny and Bob, the vibrant early sessions with the original Wailers (as witnessed by members Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cherry Green) and the tumultuous relationships with Rita Marley and Cindy Breakspeare.

With unprecedented candor, these interviews tell dramatic, little-known stories, from the writing of some of Marley’s most beloved songs to the Wailers’ violent confrontation involving producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob’s intensive musical training with star singer Johnny Nash and the harrowing assassination attempt at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, which led to Marley’s defiant performance two nights later with a bullet lodged in his arm.

Readers witness Marley’s rise to international fame in London, his triumphant visit to Zimbabwe to sing for freedom fighters inspired by his anthems and the devastating moment of his collapse while jogging in New York’s Central Park. Steffens masterfully conducts the story of Marley’s last months, as Marley poignantly sings “Another One Bites the Dust” during the sound check before his final concert in Pittsburgh, followed by his tragic death at the age of thirty-six.

So Much Things to Say explores major controversies, examining who actually ordered the shooting attack on Hope Road, scrutinizing claims of CIA involvement and investigating why Marley’s fatal cancer wasn’t diagnosed sooner. Featuring Steffens’s own candid photographs of Marley and his circle, this magisterial work preserves an invaluable, transformative slice of music history: the life of the legendary performer who brought reggae to the international stage.

Source: Amazon Online Bookstore-Portal; retrieved July 13, 2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/So-Much-Things-Say-History-ebook/dp/B01M68LN7U

———-

AUDIO-Podcast – Bob Marley: Versions Of The Truth – https://the1a.org/segments/2017-07-10-oral-history-of-bob-marley/

Published July 10, 2017 – Reggae historian Roger Steffens has written that “there are no facts in Jamaica, just versions” of the truth. That’s certainly the case with the star of Steffens’ latest book: Bob Marley.

Marley lived a life of art, inspiration and hard and fast adherence to his principles and spirituality. While he only lived to the age of 36, Marley and his music inspired a wave of devotees who fought for freedom, as well as a few enemies who wanted him dead.

But even though he was a global superstar, there are many mysteries and misconceptions about Marley.

Steffens new book, “So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley” gathers 40 years of interviews with those closest to Marley to separate truth from the various versions.

Host Joshua Johnson interviews guest Roger Steffens, reggae archivist and author of the book “So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley“.

We learn so much more about Bob Marley and Caribbean culture from these foregoing media productions. Marley was truly a musical genius who overcame obstacles and the challenge of a dysfunctional Jamaican society to soar and shine as a star in the world of music. This corresponds with a theme in the book Go Lean…Caribbean which relates that genius – in its many forms, be it music, arts, sciences, sports, etc. – can flourish in the Caribbean … with the proper fostering. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This would be an inter-governmental entity to promote a regional Single Market that covers the homelands of all 30 Caribbean member-states. This effort strives to advance Caribbean culture. The Go Lean/CU roadmap features this prime directive, as defined by these 3 statements:

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

The Go Lean roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean “community ethos”. This book opens early with the declaration that music can contribute to the fabric of society, but that society must contribute to the fostering of musicians. The book relates that such an attitude – community ethos or national spirit – can be forged in the entire region; see these statements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 13 – 14):

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.

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

As related in a previous blog-commentary regarding Bob Marley …

“… he was the embodiment of all of these above values. He impacted the music, culture and economics of the region. He set a pathway for success for other generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists – musical geniuses – to follow. Other artists of Caribbean heritage are sure to emerge and “rock the world”; we are hereby “banking” on it, with these CU preparations.”

The CU presents that change has come to the Caribbean; with this Go Lean movement, there is a plan for new stewardship so that the Caribbean can better avail themselves of the benefits of music. So when we consider Bob Marley – as gleaned from the foregoing book by author Roger Steffens – we can assign all these descriptors and attributes to him:

Artist – Musician
Caribbean Ambassador
Inspirational Leader
Saintly, though not a saint.
Role Model for the Future

The world may never see another “star as bright” as Bob Marley; but we can still learn from his Role Model. 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. Consider the sample from this list detailing this “how” for the Caribbean region to foster more musical geniuses:

Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos –Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Celebrate the music, people and culture of the Caribbean	Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization	Page 118
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Image	Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Jamaica – To make it less dysfunctional	Page 239

Bob Marley – 36 years here … 36 years gone!

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens alike – to learn the lessons from the life and legacy of Bob Marley, and then lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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Book Review, Jamaica, Music, Transform

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Commerce of the Seas – Book Review: ‘Sea Power’

Posted on June 9, 2017 in Economics, Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

70% of the earth is covered by water
70% of the human body is made up by water

It seems that water is pretty important in managing the affairs of people and their community.

The quest of the movement behind the book Go Lean… Caribbean is to confederate, collaborate and convene the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region into a Single Market; this would include the territorial homelands and aligning seas. How, where, when ‘Sea Power’ is managed becomes a major consideration in this quest. A lesson we have learned from Economic History is that a people who wield ‘Sea Power’ can control the economic prospects of its people.

We learn this lesson even more succinctly now, thanks to the new book by Admiral James Stavridis entitled: Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans. See a summary-review of the book here and listen to an AUDIO-Podcast interview with the Author:

Book Review for Book: Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans By: Admiral James Stavridis

From one of the most admired admirals of his generation – and the only admiral to serve as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO – comes a remarkable voyage through all of the world’s most important bodies of water, providing the story of naval power as a driver of human history and a crucial element in our current geopolitical path.

From the time of the Greeks and the Persians clashing in the Mediterranean, sea power has determined world power. To an extent that is often underappreciated, it still does. No one understands this better than Admiral Jim Stavridis. In Sea Power, Admiral Stavridis takes us with him on a tour of the world’s oceans from the admiral’s chair, showing us how the geography of the oceans has shaped the destiny of nations, and how naval power has in a real sense made the world we live in today, and will shape the world we live in tomorrow.

Not least, Sea Power is marvelous naval history, giving us fresh insight into great naval engagements from the battles of Salamis and Lepanto through to Trafalgar, the Battle of the Atlantic, and submarine conflicts of the Cold War. It is also a keen-eyed reckoning with the likely sites of our next major naval conflicts, particularly the Arctic Ocean, Eastern Mediterranean, and the South China Sea. Finally, Sea Power steps back to take a holistic view of the plagues to our oceans that are best seen that way, from piracy to pollution.

When most of us look at a globe, we focus on the shape of the of the seven continents. Admiral Stavridis sees the shapes of the seven seas. After reading Sea Power, you will too. Not since Alfred Thayer Mahan’s legendary The Influence of Sea Power upon History have we had such a powerful reckoning with this vital subject.

Sea Power makes a great Father’s Day gift!

Source: Amazon Online Bookstore-Portal; retrieved June 9, 2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Power-History-Geopolitics-Worlds/dp/073522059X/

———–

Appendix AUDIO-Podcast – Stavridis’ Book ‘Sea Power’ Explains Why Oceans Matter In Global Politics – http://www.npr.org/2017/06/06/531701056/stavridis-book-sea-power-explains-why-oceans-matter-in-global-politics

Published June 6, 2017 – NPR’s Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep talks to retired Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander for NATO, about his new book: Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans.

Listen to an extended NPR Podcast here: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510053/on-point-with-tom-ashbrook

The theme of this new book aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean in explaining the significance of ‘Sea Power’ in any plan to elevate the Caribbean region’s societal engines. This commentary is 2 of 4 in a series considering the Lessons in Economic History related to “Commerce of the Seas”, the good, bad and ugly (think Crony-Capitalism) strategies and practices around the maritime eco-system in the United States … and other countries. The full series is as follows:

Commerce of the Seas – Stupidity of the Jones Act
Commerce of the Seas – Book Review: ‘Sea Power’
Commerce of the Seas – Shipbuilding Model of Ingalls
Commerce of the Seas – Lessons from Alang (India)

The previous commentary in this series relates how “Commerce” refers to the economic interest of the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region. Admiral Stavridis book has a heavy focus on naval military power; he posits that a strong Navy paves the way for and protects the continuation of maritime commerce. From the book Sea Power and the Go Lean book we see this consistent Lesson in Economic History:

Around the world, countries that have access to control of the “Sea” have a distinct advantage economically versus countries that are land-locked; i.e. England versus Austria.

As stated previously, the United States have wielded its ‘Sea Power’ to promote profit for its maritime industrial stakeholders at the expense of the residents of off-shore territories, like Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.

There is therefore a need to reboot, reform and transform the Caribbean region’s stewardship of the Seas. This is the purpose of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, to help empower and elevate the societal engines of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region and their waterscapes. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This would be the inter-governmental entity for a regional Single Market that covers the land territories of the 30 member-states, and their aligning seas; (including the 1,063,000 square miles of the Caribbean Sea in an Exclusive Economic Zone). The Go Lean/CU roadmap features this prime directive, as defined by these 3 statements:

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

This Go Lean roadmap envisioned a wide-ranging, fully-encompassing treaty for all Caribbean member-states to deputize a technocratic agency to better administer the affairs (economic, security and governance) of the waterscapes in the region. It was recognized that this quest was “out-of-scope” and too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone, but rather, acknowledging their regional interdependence, these stakeholders would be able to engage a new inter-governmental administration for better regional stewardship. This, regionalism, was the original intent of the Go Lean book, which commenced with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the need for regional coordination and integration so as to reform and transform Caribbean society. See a sample of relevant stanzas here (Page 11 – 12) as related to the Caribbean ‘Sea Power’:

v. Whereas the natural formation of our landmass and coastlines entail a large portion of waterscapes, the reality of management of our interior calls for extended oversight of the waterways between the islands. The internationally accepted 12-mile limits for national borders must be extended by International Tribunals to encompass the areas in between islands. The individual states must maintain their 12-mile borders while the sovereignty of this expanded area, the Exclusive Economic Zone, must be vested in the accedence of this Federation.

vi. Whereas the finite nature of the landmass of our lands limits the populations and markets of commerce, by extending the bonds of brotherhood to our geographic neighbors allows for extended opportunities and better execution of the kinetics of our economies through trade. This regional focus must foster and promote diverse economic stimuli.

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.

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 foregoing book, Sea Power, aligns with the Go Lean book references to strategies, tactics and implementations for the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn directions on “how” this EEZ can impact and benefit Caribbean society. Consider the Chapter excerpts and headlines from this sample on Page 104:

The Bottom Line on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)
The UNCLOS is the international agreement that resulted from the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea which took place between 1973 and 1982. This Convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources. As of October 2012, 164 countries and the European Union have joined in the Convention. The convention introduced a number of provisions. The most significant issues covered were setting limits, navigation, archipelagic status and transit regimes, exclusive economic zones (EEZs), continental shelf jurisdiction, deep seabed mining, the exploitation regime, protection of the marine environment, scientific research, and settlement of disputes. EEZs extend from the edge of the territorial sea out to 200 nautical miles (230 miles) from the 12-mile baseline. Within this area, the coastal nation has sole exploitation rights over all natural resources, including the continental shelf. EEZs were introduced to halt the increasingly heated clashes over fishing rights, although oil was also becoming important. The success of an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947 was soon repeated elsewhere in the world, and by 1970 it was technically feasible to operate in waters 4000 meters deep. Foreign nations still have freedoms of navigation and over-flights for the EEZ, subject to the regulation of the coastal states. Foreign states may also lay submarine pipes and cables.

CU independent UNCLOS member-states include: Antigua, Jamaica, Suriname, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Barbados, Saint Vincent, Saint Kitts, Trinidad, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Cuba, Bahamas & Belize.

10 Start-up Benefits from the EEZ

1	Lean-in for Caribbean Integration The CU treaty unifies the Caribbean region into one single market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby empowering the economic engines in and on behalf of the region. Integral to CU roadmap, is the territory between the island states. The CU will petition the United Nations for rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea for acquisition of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This will facilitate both economic empowerment (including Fisheries management) and security assurances for the region. (This effort was started by the Association of Caribbean States).
2	Funding by Selling Exploration Rights
3	Off-shore Wind Turbines
4	Pipelines
5	Extractions – Economic & Security
6	Security – Anti-Piracy The CU has the mission to defend the homeland against enemies: foreign, domestic, and in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Caribbean Seas. There is still a threat of piracy in modern times, and these “bad actors” hide behind jurisdictional confusions of one territorial waters after another. But the CU, with its regional oversight, can be more effective in bringing these ones to justice. Piracy is a form of terrorism, and cruise ships (smaller vessels catering to a High Net Worth – One Percent – market) and leisure crafts can be vulnerable to these threats.
7	Security – Interdictions There is the need to be on alert for seaborne drug smuggling activities, as these can have corrupting influences on the local community. This would be the direct responsibilities of the CU Naval Operations for the jurisdiction of the EEZ. Today the US Coast Guard conducts patrols in the Caribbean Seas with impunity. There is no plan in the CU roadmap to curtail any of this activity; instead the CU will better coordinate their routes and maneuvers with CU Naval Operations.
8	Security – Search & Rescue
9	Security Monitoring The CU will embrace many cutting-edge technological options to “keep eyes” on the Caribbean Seas. This includes satellite (visual & GPS), drones (unmanned airborne vehicles & dirigibles or blimps. Boaters will be incentivized tocooperate and install location beacons.
10	Security – Defense Pact (Naval Maneuvers) The US, France, Netherlands, UK and some European trading partners have declared a “War Against Terrorism”; those battles will surely come to Caribbean shores. The CU therefore invites the Navies of allied nations to train, visit and conduct operations in our Caribbean waters, especially in the EEZ.

The issue of managing marine resources for commerce and security in the Caribbean has been a frequent subject for previous blog-commentaries; consider this list of sample entries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11544	Forging Change in the Cruise Industry with Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566	Funding the Caribbean Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8819	Lessons from China – South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5210	Cruise Ship Commerce – Getting Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3594	Better Fisheries Management for Queen Conch
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965	America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=673	Ghost ships – Autonomous cargo vessels without a crew
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We Want from the US – # 4: Pax Americana

All Caribbean members are islands or coastal territories. The subject of ‘Sea Power’ and security of the waterscapes matters to us. Rather than 70 percent, we have to be concerned with 100 percent of the issues, challenges and opportunities.

There is a need to reform our maritime eco-system, for commerce and security. ‘Sea Power’ determines world power, so there is also a need to have a “seat at the table” among the big nations and sea-faring empires. As one small island alone, there is no chance for that consideration; but as a Single Market entity of 42 million people and 30 separate countries (and territories), the Caribbean can now have a Voice … and a Vote (in international forums) so as to shape the destiny of our homeland … and maybe even the whole world of commerce & security.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to better wield our ‘Sea Power’, so that our region can be a better homeland (and waterscapes) 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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Book Review, Fisheries, Model, Security, Ships, Trade, Transform

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Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – An American Sickness

Posted on April 11, 2017 in Economics, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“There is a special ‘place in hell’ …”
“… for someone that would steal your wallet after you collapse/faint due to a health crisis; (think heart-attack, epileptic seizure, etc.)”.

Imagine this scenario at the country level; how inconceivable for an advanced society. And yet, this is the actual situation in the United States. This is according to the new book – An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back – by Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, a former E.R. doctor and current journalist for medical issues.

This commentary asserts that there is a need for the Caribbean communities to reform and transform our healthcare deliveries, yet still, we do NOT want to model the American system. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which seeks to reboot the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region, to ensure better stewardship of the Social Contract for all citizens in our homelands, strong and weak. The Go Lean book petitions the Caribbean region to do better! It describes the necessary empowerments to optimize the economic, security and governing engines of Caribbean society to ensure a better adherence to the principle of the Greater Good.

In a 4-part series of blog-commentaries on the “Strong versus the Weak”, the pattern from the Code of Hammurabi was detailed and presented as an Old World model that was ignored in the formation of the New World. The Americans got it bad! If that ancient King Hammurabi was around in present day, he would have a harsh judgment for the American healthcare system. It is figuratively like “stealing the wallet when a person collapses”, as many of the financial abuses in American hospitals occur when the patient is unconscious or only concerned about seeking relief from pain and/or discomforts.

This commentary is an spin-off from that series; though it was originally presented as a 4-parter, we are hereby adding this 5^th entry. The full series is now as follows:

Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Model of Hammurabi
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Mental Disabilities
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Bullying in Schools
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Book Review: Sold-Out!
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – An American Sickness

The need for this 5^th entry arose with the release of this new book today – April 11, 2017. It is ‘spot-on’ for the criticism of the pattern of abuse of the ‘Weak’ in American society. See the review-synopsis of Dr. Rosenthal’s book here:

Book Review: An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back
By: Elisabeth Rosenthal (Author)

At a moment of drastic political upheaval, a shocking investigation into the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, as well as solutions to its myriad of problems

In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast?

Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw.

The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn’t just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Source: Posted and Retrieved 04-11-2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/American-Sickness-Healthcare-Became-Business/dp/1594206759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491928851&sr=8-1&keywords=Book+American+Sickness

—————

AUDIO Podcast – Terry Gross interviews Elisabeth Rosenthal – Heard on Fresh Air

April 10, 2017 – Health care is a trillion-dollar industry in America, but are we getting what we pay for? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, a medical journalist who formerly worked as a medical doctor, warns that the existing system too often focuses on financial incentives over health or science.

“We’ve trusted a lot of our health care to for-profit businesses and it’s their job, frankly, to make profit,” Rosenthal says. “You can’t expect them to act like Mother Teresas.”

Rosenthal’s new book, An American Sickness, examines the deeply rooted problems of the existing health-care system and also offers suggestions for a way forward. She notes that under the current system, it’s far more lucrative to provide a lifetime of treatments than a cure.

“One expert in the book joked to me … that if we relied on the current medical market to deal with polio, we would never have a polio vaccine,” Rosenthal says. “Instead we would have iron lungs in seven colors with iPhone apps.”

Notice this small sample of the book’s revelations and disclosures, symptomatic of Crony-Capitalism:

Healthcare economics do not align with normal economic laws: “Usual & Customary” versus supply-and-demand
Hospital systems behave like predatory lenders
Consumers cannot decide, as prices may be unknown at the time of delivery
Lifetime of treatment preferable for service-providers rather than a cure.
Doctors owning Surgical Centers, therefore dictating procedures that they can accommodate at their facilities
Unknown and unauthorized “Drive-by Doctors” adding to hospital bills.

This commentary and the previous 4 commentaries in this series all relate to nation-building, stressing the community ethos necessary to forge a society where all the people are protected all the time. While we are analyzing the American system, we clearly recognize that the Caribbean eco-system is equally – or perhaps even more – in a crisis and in need of reform. The premise in the Go Lean book and subsequent blog-commentaries is that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. We can use the acknowledgement of our crisis to optimize our healthcare deliveries once and for all. We must assuredly look beyond the American model. According to the foregoing book and AUDIO Podcast, many more successful models exist.

Dr. Rosenthal’s book asserts that there may be better models in Europe than there is in the US. This is already a familiar thesis for the Go Lean movement – a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – as the Go Lean book advocates studying all dimensions of the EU:

10 Ways to Model the EU – Page 130.
The CU will emulate the European Union by unifying and integrating the Caribbean region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (per 2010). The EU is 28 member-states, 507.89 million people and $16.6 Trillion GDP (per 2012). Though the CU is only a fraction the size of the EU, there is the similarity of divergent peoples (24 languages) putting aside their differences in a quest to confederate. The EU region has quite an ignoble history of contending with differences, spurning 2 World Wars in the last century. Yet they came together to unite and integrate to make Europe a better place to live, work and play. Just like the EU, the CU will not possess sovereignty; this feature remains with each member-state.

Still, there was a previous attempt to reform the American healthcare delivery eco-system. There is wisdom to glean from that development. The Go Lean book provides this excerpt (Page 156):

The Bottom Line on Obama Care
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called Obama Care is a US federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. It represents the most significant government expansion and regulatory overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The PPACA is aimed at increasing the rate of health insurance coverage for Americans and reducing the overall costs of health care. It provides a number of mechanisms—including mandates, subsidies, and tax credits — to employers and individuals to increase the coverage rate.Additional reforms aim to improve healthcare outcomes and streamline the delivery of health care. The PPACA requires insurance companies to cover all applicants and offer the same rates regardless of pre-existing conditions or sex. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the PPACA will lower both future deficits and Medicare spending. On June 28, 2012, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of most of the Obama Care.

The US, despite its advanced democracy status, has definite societal defects in the healthcare arena. Overcoming the defects – particularly Crony-Capitalism or exploiting public resources for private gains – make solving healthcare challenging.

It is truly heavy-lifting!

This was recently discovered by the new US president, Donald Trump.

After campaigning for the 2016 election on the promise of “repealing and replacing Obama Care”, the administration’s first healthcare legislation attempt flopped. The president’s exclamation:

President Trump: ‘Nobody Knew Health Care Could Be So Complicated’

The truth of the matter Mr. President, everybody – engaged in the process of transforming society – knew!

Transforming the Caribbean healthcare will also be equally complicated. It will engage all 3 societal engines: economic, security and governance. In fact, the prime directives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus – including emergency management – to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance for all people – with empowerments for healthcare – to support these engines.

This comprehensive view – economics, security and governance – is the charge of the Go Lean roadmap, opening with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11):

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

ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, mental health, obesity and smoking cessation programs. The Federation must proactively anticipate the demand and supply of organ transplantation as developing countries are often exploited by richer neighbors for illicit organ trade.

Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform healthcare delivery in the Caribbean; see this expressed in this one advocacy here:

10 Ways to Improve Healthcare – Page 156

1	Embrace the advent of the CU Single Market to leverage across the 42 million people in the 30 member-states.
2	Organ Procurement Authority
3	Deploy Disease Management Models
4	Universal Health Insurance Care Much like with auto insurance, there is a need to mandate health insurance coverage for most Caribbeans. The coverage does not have to be $0 deductible and 100% coverage, rather it could be less attractive – low-end terms – like $6000 deductible and 60% coverage. The US model, Obama Care has plans branded Bronze (low end), Silver, Gold and Platinum. The goal for the CU is simply to ensure that catastrophic illnesses or injuries do not imperil the financial viability of individual, families or communities. The coverage risk is minimized with insurance carriers having a larger premium base (42 million) to calculate their actuarial formulas. To maximize savings, individual states may choose to combine their health insurance marketplaces with other states or go at it alone.
5	Wellness, Nutrition, Fitness and Smoking Cessations Programs
6	Medical Tourism
7	*Repatriate MediCare* Beneficiaries**
8	Caribbeans with Disabilities
9	Medical Education Outreach
10	Public Health Extension Due to the systemic threat, epidemic response and disease control will be coordinated at the federal level. Also, the acquisition of public-bound pharmaceuticals (vaccinations, etc.) can be negotiated at the regional level, using the Group Purchasing Organizations (GPO) envisioned in this roadmap. This will lead to a better supply and pricing dynamics.

The points of effective, technocratic stewardship of healthcare were further elaborated upon in previous blog/commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7822	Cancer: Doing More
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7586	Blink Health: The Cure for High Drug Prices
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7430	Brazilian Shrunken Head Babies: Zika or Tdap?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6580	Capitalism of Drug Patents
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3276	Role Model Shaking Up the World of Cancer
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2522	The Cost of Cancer Drugs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2105	Recessions and Public Health
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1751	New Hope in the Fight against Alzheimer’s Disease
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1003	Painful and rapid spread of new virus in Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=554	Cuban cancer medication registered in 28 countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=286	PR’s Comprehensive Cancer Center Project Breaks Ground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=278	Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL – Health-care Concerns

The opening imagery:

“There is a special ‘place in hell’ …”

… is just an metaphorical reference. There is no assumption of a literal burning abyss of torment. But this does convey the abomination of the “strong abusing the weak”. So many times in the past this abuse has proliferated, for those weaker physically, mentally, economically and sadly, medically.

The movement behind the Go Lean/CU roadmap wants us, in the Caribbean, to do better. Yes, healthcare is not easy, but it is possible to reform and transform. There are so many good examples and models to learn from:

The underlying book reviewed here – An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back – considers Switzerland.

We want to “weed out” any bad practices of Crony-Capitalism in our health delivery system. Instead, we want to pursue the Greater Good (greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong). Most importantly, we want to proclaim the truth of American life. So many of our Caribbean citizens “beat down their doors to get out” and emigrate to the US. We want to “dull the lights on any American Welcome signs” – considering the reality of American Crony-Capitalism, the “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”.

Now is the time to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to reboot, reform and transform Caribbean healthcare. If we do this, we will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, heal and play. 🙂

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

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

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Book Review, Crony-Capitalism, Health, Model, Power

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Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Book Review: Sold-Out!

Posted on April 5, 2017 in Ethos, Government

Go Lean Commentary

George Carlin speaks from the grave about an American societal defect:

“The real owners of this country, the big wealthy business interest that controls everything and makes all the important decisions….
They spent billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. And what is it that they want: ‘more for themselves and less for everybody else’.” —

— George D. P. Carlin^[1] (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, actor and author. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him second (behind Richard Pryor) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.^[4] – Source: Wikipedia.

For millions of people affected with declining job options and under-employment, these words by George Carlin are spot on. The people stand back and see a trend with more and more (hundreds of thousands) of highly sought STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) jobs being created but not going to Americans, rather going to foreigners – on American soil – at below market prices. This is the drama of H-1B Visas discussed in the VIDEO in the Appendix below.

Something is wrong with this picture!

The United States has known societal defects. The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean have delved into the most prominent ones; they were identified as:

Institutional Racism – White Privilege and preferences over Black-and-Brown people.
Crony-Capiatalism – Exploitation of public goods and resources for private gain and profit.

This discussion – and the accompanying VIDEO in the Appendix below – allows us to better appreciate the community ethos – the fundamental spirit of a culture – that breathes these societal defects. There is a similarity with these two defects:

“The strong inflicts harm on the weak”

This commentary posits that this problem in America was imbrued as part of a New World experiment that deviated from the Old World values.

In the previous blog-commentary on the Model of Hammurabi it was detailed how that ancient King established laws to ensure that the “strong in society did not abuse the weak”. That blog concluded that New World societies need to do better in applying the sage advice from a 3,800-year-old regent. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which seeks to reform and transform the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region, to ensure better stewardship of the Social Contract – implied arrangement where all citizens (strong and weak) 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 book describes empowerments to target the economic, security and governing engines of society to ensure an adherence to the principle of the Greater Good; (greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong). This commentary is 4 of 4 in a series on “Managing the Strong versus the Weak”. The other commentaries in this series all considered the security and governmental deficiencies of American society – the model-advanced democracy that “pulls” so many of our Caribbean Diaspora. This commentary here focuses on economic abuses. The full details in this series are as follows:

Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Model of Hammurabi
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Mental Disabilities
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Bullying in Schools: “Teach them well and let them lead the way”
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Book Review: Sold-Out!

All of these commentaries relate to nation-building, stressing the community ethos necessary to forge a society where all the people are protected all the time. Looking at the American model, we clearly discern that “all that glitters is not Gold”. There are obvious abuses and deficiencies that should deter Caribbean citizens from setting their hopes-and-dreams on America as a land of refuge.

There is a similar theme in the book – Sold-Out! – by syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin. She scorches the American Crony-Capitalism associated with labor-certified immigration. She asserts that laws of supply-and-demand in the STEM fields are being distorted so that corporations can profit at the expense of American and foreign workers.

So sad! See the review of her book here:

Book Review for Book: Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best & Brightest Workers
Book Authors: Michelle Malkin, John Miano

The #1 New York Times bestselling author and firebrand syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin sets her sights on the corrupt businessmen, politicians, and lobbyists flooding our borders and selling out America’s best and brightest workers.

In Sold Out, Michelle Malkin and John Miano reveal the worst perpetrators screwing America’s high-skilled workers, how and why they’re doing it—and what we must do to stop them. In this book, they will name names and expose the lies of those who pretend to champion the middle class, while aiding and abetting massive layoffs of highly skilled American workers in favor of cheap foreign labor. Malkin and Miano will explode some of the most commonly told myths spread in the media like these:

Lie #1: America is suffering from an apocalyptic “shortage” of science, technology, engineering, and math workers.

Lie #2: US companies cannot function without an unlimited injection of the most “highly skilled” and “highly educated” foreign workers, who offer intellectual capital and entrepreneurial energy that American workers can’t match.

Lie #3: America’s best and brightest talents are protected because employers are required to demonstrate that they’ve made every effort to hire American citizens before resorting to foreign labor.

For too long, open-borders tech billionaires and their political enablers have escaped tough public scrutiny of their means and motives. Sold Out is an indictment of not only political corruption in Washington, but also the journalistic malpractice that enables it. It’s time to trade the whitewash for solvent. American workers deserve better and the public deserves the unvarnished truth.
Source: Good Reads – Online Bookstore-Portal; retrieved April 3, 2017 from: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25246754-sold-out

We can and must do better than this in the Caribbean. While the problem in the foregoing is an American drama, our region can learn so many lessons from the developments and executions of this blatant example of the “strong abusing the weak”. Keep this summary in mind, from Sold-Out (“Introduction” – Page viii):

With very few exceptions, the purported shortages of American workers don’t exist.
There is nothing special about the hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa holders flooding the workforce.
Most H-1B workers are sponsored by companies that specialize in offshore outsourcing of U.S. jobs.
Abuse of guest workers by both offshoring companies and their U.S. tech giant partners is rampant.
Enforcement is a joke.
The promises of U.S. worker protections were big fat whoppers.

This exposure of the exploitation in the American immigration eco-system reveals what is embedded in this country’s DNA – a propensity for the “strong to abuse the weak”; in this case it’s an economic abuse – manipulating market forces to keep salaries low. And yet, the Caribbean suffers from an atrocious emigration rate of our citizens fleeing to the American homeland. Verily, even this defective American labor market is better than the Caribbean status quo.

The reasons why people leave the Caribbean in the first place have been identified as “push and pull”:

“Push” refers to the reasons people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “These ones suffer from the abuse of the “strong over the weak”. Many from the Caribbean had to flee as refugees related to qualifiers like Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged and LGBT.

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating to communities where they perceive that there are more protections for the “weak against the abusive strong “.

The movement behind the Go Lean book has consistently urged Caribbean authority figures to work to dull the bright lights on American “Welcome Signs”. Our people need to know that the “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. The Go Lean book and blogs asserts that it is easier to reform and transform Caribbean society than abandoning our home and trying to fix the American eco-system. There is no much resistance due to the acute greed and adherence to a profit-seeking culture. Consider these sample blog-commentaries previous published:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10052	Fake News? Welcome to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9038	Fallacy of American Charity Altruism for Caribbean Causes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8966	American For-Profit Education – Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7430	Big Pharma and Zika – Too Much Profit Motivation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6819	The Academic Downside of ‘Western’ Diets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6580	Capitalism of Drug Patents
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5733	Better than America? Yes, We Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5529	American Defects: Inventory of Crony-Capitalism

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate Caribbean societal engines. We want to be a better society than we have been in the past, and even better than our American counterparts.

We want to pursue the Greater Good. This means promoting values that do NOT benefit the strong by abusing the weak. While this definitely applies to a security and governance mandate, it includes economic policies as well.

We can learn from the American experience. If we can assuage the “strong-weak” power abuses in our society, this will mitigate the “push and pull” factors for why people abandon our territories.

Yes, America is flawed!

… but we have to do better at home before we can condemn another country. Though we must deter our young people from “jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire”.

So let’s just be better and do better here … in reforming and transforming our societal engines. Let’s lean-in to the Go Lean roadmap and work to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play for all citizens, “strong or weak”. 🙂

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 – How H-1B visas have been abused since the beginning – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/h-1b-creator-1998-loophole-in-law-is-a-travesty

Published March 19, 2017 – The H-1B visa [program] creator says the program has been “hijacked” to take American jobs. But a 1993 60 Minutes piece shows the visas had problems from the start

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Book Review, Crony-Capitalism, History, Model

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ENCORE: Looking Back at the Obama Years

Posted on January 12, 2017 in Government, Social

Just one more week and the Obama years will be over. (The new President – Donald J. Trump – will be inaugurated on January 20, 2017).

This is good …
This is bad …

Barack H. Obama has been transformational as the 44th President of the United States. He has truly impacted American society, but the Caribbean, not so much. This was the theme of the previous blog-commentary (from March 31, 2016) that detailed Obama’s bad consequences on the Caribbean. See here:

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Title: Obama – Bad For Caribbean Status Quo

Go Lean Commentary

Yes, Barack Obama was elected in 2008 as the first Black President of the United States, with his campaign of “Hope and Change”. While one would think that would be good for all Black (African-American) people in the US – and around the world – alas, that has not been the case. It is the conclusion of many commentators and analysts that Obama has not been able to do as much for his race as he would like, nor his race would like. (Obama himself has confessed this). Or that another White person may have been able to do more for the African American community.

This seems like a paradox!

Yet, it is what it is. The truth of the matter is that race still plays a huge decision-making factor in all things in America. This reality has curtailed Obama in any quest to do more for his people.

This is the assessment by noted commentator and analyst, Professor Michael Eric Dyson, in his new book “The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America“. Professor Dyson points out some actual events during the Obama presidency and concludes that a White President would have been more successfully championing certain race-related causes. (Think: the Black Lives Matter movement was ignited during the Obama presidency).

VIDEO – Michael Eric Dyson on Democracy Now – https://youtu.be/F7Uo06_NfCw

Published on Feb 3, 2016 – http://democracynow.org – As the 2016 presidential race heats up and the nation marks Black History Month, we turn to look back on President Obama’s legacy as the nation’s first African-American president. Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson has just published a new book titled The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America. From the protests in Ferguson to the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, to the controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Michael Eric Dyson explores how President Obama has changed how he talks about race over the past seven years.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch the live-stream 8-9AM ET: http://democracynow.org.

The summary is that White Privilege still dominates in America. See the review of this book in Appendix A below.

This conclusion aligns with the assertions of the book Go Lean…Caribbean, and many aligned blog submissions, that America is not the ideal society for Caribbean citizens to seek for refuge, that rather Caribbean people can exert less effort to reform and transform their homelands than trying to prosper in this foreign land. The conclusion is the priority should be on a local/regional quest to prosper where planted in the Caribbean. This is a mission of the Go Lean…Caribbean movement, to lower the push and pull factors that lead many in the Caribbean to flee their tropical homes. Highlighting and enunciating the truths of American “Race Reality” aligns with that mission. We must lower the “pull” factors!

It is this commentary’s conclusion that Obama has been a good president for American self-interest. (The economy has recovered and rebounded from the “bad old days” of the 2008 financial crisis).

It is also this commentary’s conclusion that Obama has been a bad president for the Caribbean status-quo! His administration has brought ” change” to many facets of Caribbean life – good, bad and ugly, as follows:

Consider the good: The American re-approachment to Cuba – under Obama – is presenting an end to the Cold War animosity of these regional neighbors – Cuba’s status quo is changing. A bad actor from this conflict, former Cuban President Fidel Castro, just penned his own commentary lamenting Obama’s salesmanship in his recent official visit to Cuba on March 15; see Appendix B.
Consider the bad:
- (A) The US has doubled-down on globalization, forcing countries with little manufacturing or agricultural production to consume even more and produce even less; a lose-lose proposition.
- (B) The primary industry in the Caribbean – tourism – has experienced change and decline as a direct result of heightened income inequality in the US, the region’s biggest source of touristic visitors; now more middle class can only afford cruise vacations as opposed to the more lucrative (for the region) stop-overs.
- (C) The secondary industry in the Caribbean – Offshore Banking – has come under fire from the US-led Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) to deter offshore banking growth; the industry, jobs and economic contributions have thusly receded.
Consider the ugly: Emigration of Caribbean citizens to the US has accelerated during this presidency, more so than any other time in American-Caribbean history. Published rates of societal abandonment among the college educated classes have reported an average of 70 percent in most member-states, with some countries (i.e. Guyana) tallying up to 89 percent.

The Caribbean status quo has changed. It is now time for a Caribbean version of “hope and change”.

This book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap presents “hope and change” for empowering the Caribbean region’s societal engines: economic, security and governance. In fact, the following are the prime directives of the roadmap:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

A mission of the CU is to minimize the push and pull factors that lead so many Caribbean citizens to migrate to foreign lands – to America; and also to invite the Diaspora living there to repatriate home. The argument is that America is not the most welcoming for the Black and Brown populations of the Caribbean. Let’s work to prosper where planted at home.

Yes, there are societal defects in the Caribbean, as there are defects in America. But the defects in America are greater: institutional racism and Crony-Capitalism. Though it is heavy-lifting, it is easier to reform and transform the Caribbean.

The reference sources in the Appendices relate that the Obama effect is changing the status quo … in America … and the Caribbean.

This issue of reducing the societal abandonment rate and encouraging repatriation has been a consistent theme of Go Lean blogs entries; as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7628	‘A Change Is Gonna Come’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7204	‘The Covenant with Black America’ – Ten Years Later
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151	The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7412	The Road to Restoring Cuba
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151	The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6016	Hotter than July – Still ‘Third World’ – The Need for Cooling …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5784	The Need for Human Rights/LGBT Reform in the Region
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4613	‘Luck of the Irish’ – Lessons from their Past, Present and Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4447	Probe of Ferguson, Missouri exposes Institutional Racism

All in all, the roadmap commences with the recognition that all the Caribbean is in crisis, with its high abandonment rate. These acknowledgements are pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13). The statements are included as follows:

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

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

The Go Lean roadmap lists the following details on the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to effectuate the “hope and change” in the Caribbean region to mitigate the continued risk of emigration and the brain drain. The list is as follows:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Strategic – Vision – Integrated Region in a Single Market	Page 45
Strategic – Vision – Agents of Change	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Growing to $800 Billion Regional Economy	Page 67
Tactical – Separation of Powers	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Planning – Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Planning – Lessons Learned from the US Constitution	Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Appendix – Source of 2.2 Million New Jobs	Page 257

The Go Lean roadmap allows for the Caribbean region to deliver success, to mitigate the risk of further push and pull. The world in general and the Caribbean in particular needs to know the truth of life in America for the Black and Brown populations. This heavy-lifting task is the mission of the CU technocracy.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and institutions, to lean-in for the “hope and change” that is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. Yes, we can … make this region a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

————–

Appendix A

Book Review: ‘The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America’ By Michael Eric Dyson. 346 Pages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $27. ISBN 978-0544387669
Review By: N. D. B. Connolly

What happens when the nation’s foremost voice on the race question is also its most confined and restrained? Michael Eric Dyson raises this question about President Obama in his latest book, “The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America.” The book inspires one to raise similar questions about Dyson himself. For, while hardly restrained, Dyson appears noticeably boxed in by the limitations placed on celebrity race commentators in the Age of Obama.

Readers will recognize Dyson’s practiced flair for language and metaphor as he makes an important and layered argument about American political culture and the narrowness of presidential speech. The book argues that Americans live under a black presidency — not so much because the president is black, but because Obama’s presidency remains bound by the rules and rituals of black respectability and white supremacy. Even the leader of the free world, we learn in Dyson’s book, conforms principally to white expectations. (Dyson maintained in the November issue of The New Republic that Hillary Clinton may well do more for black people than Obama did.) But Obama’s presidency is “black” in a more hopeful way, too, providing Americans with an opportunity to better realize the nation’s democratic ideals and promises. “Obama’s achievement gestures toward what the state had not allowed at the highest level before his emergence,” Dyson writes. “Equality of opportunity, fairness in democracy and justice in society.”

A certain optimism ebbs and flows in “The Black Presidency,” but only occasionally does it refer to white Americans’ beliefs about race. Far more often, Dyson hangs hope on Obama’s impromptu shows of racial solidarity. One such moment was the president’s remarks after the 2009 arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (who was arrested trying to get into his own home). Another was Obama’s public identification with Trayvon Martin. Both acts may have been politically risky, but they also greatly heartened African- Americans. Hope builds, and by book’s end, readers find a chapter-long celebration of the president’s soaring invocations of “Amazing Grace” during last year’s memorial service for the slain parishioners of EmanuelA.M.E.Church. For Dyson, the eulogy at Emanuel seems to serve as a sign of grace that black America may still yet enjoy from the Obama White House.

Its cresting invocations of hope aside, the book ably maintains a sharp critical edge. Dyson uncovers a troubling consistency to the president’s race speech and shows that in spite of Obama’s reliance on black political networks and black votes during his meteoric rise, the president chose to follow a governing and rhetorical template largely hewed by his white predecessors. As both candidate and president, Obama’s speeches have tended to allay white guilt. They have scolded African-American masses for cultural pathology and implied that blacks were to blame for lingering white antipathy. Obama’s speeches have also often consigned the worst forms of racism and anti-black violence to the past or to the fringes of American political culture. One finds passive-voice constructions everywhere in Obama’s race talk, as black folk are found suffering under pressures and at the hands of parties that go largely unnamed. “Obama is forced to exaggerate black responsibility,” Dyson advances, “because he must always underplay white responsibility.”

Critically, Dyson contends that the president’s tepid anti-racism comes from political pragmatism rather than a set of deeper ideological concerns. “Obama is anti-ideological,” Dyson maintains, and that is “the very reason he was electable.”

That characterization, however, overlooks how liberal pragmatism functions as ideology. What’s more, it ignores the marginalization and violence that black and brown people often suffer — at home and abroad — whenever moderates resolve to “get things done.” If the Obama era proved anything about liberalism, it’s that there remains little room for an explicit policy approach to racial justice — even, or perhaps especially, under a black president. As Obama himself explains to Dyson: “I have to appropriate dollars for any program which has to go through ways and means committees, or appropriations committees, that are not dominated by folks who read Cornel West or listen to Michael Eric Dyson.”

Upon a careful reading of Dyson’s book, loss seems always to arrive on the heels of hope. As we might expect, the author explores Obama’s estrangement from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in 2008. He also attends to his own very public and more recent split from Cornel West. But even beyond these signal episodes, “The Black Presidency” is suffused with a bittersweet tone about relationships strained. President Obama seems to leave a host of people and political commitments at the White House door as he conforms to the racial demands of a historically white office. Even Dyson seems unaware of all the ways in which “The Black Presidency,” as a book, both explicates and illustrates how the Obama administration leaves black folk behind.

All but the last two of the book’s eight chapters begin with the author placing himself in close and often luxurious proximity to Obama. The repetition has the literary effect of a Facebook feed. Here is Michael at Oprah’s sumptuous California mansion during a 2007 fund-raiser, sharing a joke with Barack and Chris Rock. Here is Michael on the private plane and in the S.U.V., giving the candidate tips on how to use a “ ‘blacker’ rhetorical style” during his debate performances against a surging Hillary Clinton. Here he is in the V.I.P. section of the 50th-anniversary ceremony for the March on Washington and, yet again, at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Through these and similar moments, Dyson projects his status and, in ways less clear, his authority. Dyson knows Obama, the reader is assured, because he has kept his company. He has swapped playful taunts and bro-hugs with the president; he has been intimate, one might say, with history.

Moments like these have a secondary effect. They illuminate a tension cutting through and profoundly limiting “The Black Presidency” as a work of political commentary. Regardless of who Michael Eric Dyson may have been to Obama the candidate, Dyson now has barely any access to Obama the president. Time and circumstance have rendered Dyson, the man and the thinker, increasingly irrelevant to Obama’s presidency. He can be at the party, but not at the table.

Perhaps worse in relation to the book’s stated aim to be the first full measure of Obama and America’s race problem, Dyson, the author, has none but only the smallest role to play in assessing and narrating Obama’s legacy. When Bill Clinton decided to chronicle his own historic turn in the White House, he called on Taylor Branch and recorded with the historian some 150 hours of interviews over 79 separate sessions. Dyson, in 2015, gets far shabbier treatment. Chapter 5, “The Scold of Black Folk,” opens: “I was waiting outside the Oval Office to speak to President Obama. I had a tough time getting on his schedule.” In response to Dyson’s request for a presidential audience, the White House offered the author 10 whole minutes. By his own telling, Dyson “politely declined” and pressed Obama’s confidante, Valerie Jarrett, to remember his long history with and support of the president. “I eventually negotiated a 20-minute interview that turned into half an hour.” It appears to be the only interview Dyson conducted for the book.

In the end, “The Black Presidency” possesses a loaves-and-fishes quality. Drawing mostly on the news cycle, close readings of carefully crafted speeches and a handful of glittering encounters, Dyson has managed to do a lot with a little. The book might well be considered an interpretive miracle, one performed in fealty and hope for a future show of presidential grace, either from this president or, should she get elected, the next one.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/books/review/the-black-presidency-barack-obama-and-the-politics-of-race-in-america-by-michael-eric-dyson.html. Posted February 2, 2016; retrieved March 29, 2016.

————–

Appendix B

Title: Cuba’s Fidel Castro knocks sweet-talking Obama after ‘honey-coated’ visit
By: Marc Frank

Havana – Retired leader Fidel Castro accused U.S. President Barack Obama of sweet-talking the Cuban people during his visit to the island last week and ignoring the accomplishments of Communist rule, in an opinion piece carried by all state-run media on Monday.

Obama’s visit was aimed at consolidating a detente between the once intractable Cold War enemies and the U.S. president said in a speech to the Cuban people that it was time for both nations to put the past behind them and face the future “as friends and as neighbors and as family, together.”

“One assumes that every one of us ran the risk of a heart attack listening to these words,” Castro said in his column, dismissing Obama’s comments as “honey-coated” and reminding Cubans of the many U.S. efforts to overthrow and weaken the Communist government.

Castro, 89, laced his opinion piece with nationalist sentiment and, bristling at Obama’s offer to help Cuba, said the country was able to produce the food and material riches it needs with the efforts of its people.

“We don’t need the empire to give us anything,” he wrote.

Asked about Fidel Castro’s criticisms on Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Obama administration was pleased with the reception the president received from the Cuban people and the conversations he had with Cuban officials.

“The fact that the former president felt compelled to respond so forcefully to the president’s visit, I think is an indication of the significant impact of President Obama’s visit to Cuba,” Earnest said.

After the visit, major obstacles remain to full normalization of ties between Cuba and the United States, with no major concessions offered by Cuba on rights and economic freedom.

“The president made clear time and time again both in private meetings with President Castro, but also in public when he delivered a speech to the Cuban people, that the U.S. commitment to human rights is rock solid and that’s not going to change,” Earnest said.

Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution and led the country until 2006, when he fell ill and passed power to his brother Raul Castro. He now lives in relative seclusion but is occasionally heard from in opinion pieces or seen on television and in photos meeting with visiting dignitaries.

The iconic figure’s influence has waned in his retirement and the introduction of market-style reforms carried out by Raul Castro, but Fidel Castro still has a moral authority among many residents, especially older generations.

Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during his three-day visit, nor mention him in any of his public appearances. It was the first visit of a sitting U.S. president for 88 years.

Fidel Castro blasted Obama for not referring in his speech to the extermination of native peoples in both the United States and Cuba, not recognizing Cuba’s gains in health and education, and not coming clean on what he might know about how South Africa obtained nuclear weapons before apartheid ended, presumably with the aid of the U.S. government.

“My modest suggestion is that he reflects (on the U.S. role in South Africa and Cuba’s in Angola) and not now try to elaborate theories about Cuban politics,” Castro said.

Castro also took aim at the tourism industry in Cuba, which has grown further since Obama’s rapprochement with Raul Castro in December 2014. He said it was dominated by large foreign corporations which took for granted billion-dollar profits.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Bill Rigby)

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2008, Book Review, Cuba, Diaspora, Transform

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Tag: Book Review

VIDEO – Kids of ‘Tiger Mom’ speak out (from Harvard and Yale), 5 years later – https://www.nbcnews.com/video/kids-of-tiger-mom-speak-out-from-harvard-and-yale-5-years-later-611455555505