Guyana – Go Lean…Caribbean

Tag: Guyana

Guyana Diaspora – Not the Panacea

Posted on February 11, 2020 in Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

It is Election Time in Guyana … March 2, 2020.

What are the issues at stake?

Some say the economy;
For some, it is security-public safety issues.
All vested parties, conclude that better governance is a universal requirement; see the Appendix VIDEO for local insights.
Whatever the motivation, everyone is being urged to vote the issues, and not race (Afro-Guyanese –vs- Indo-Guyanese) nor political legacy.

There are many factors in Guyana that need addressing; this beautiful Caribbean country on the South American mainland is one of the worse for the societal abandonment problem. See this chart here – from a previous blog-commentary – which shows that 89% of the college-educated population has fled this homeland:

Guyana therefore has a large Diaspora … abroad.

Could the strategy for reforming and transforming Guyana simply be The Diaspora?

This is the assertion of one of the candidates for President of Guyana, Dr. Irfaan Ali; see this news story here about a recent political rally:

Title: Ali plans to get Diaspora involved in every aspect of national development
Sub-title: Speaking at his party’s rally on Sunday in Stewartville, Mr. Ali said the diaspora should not be ignored and he has no problem with those who have dual citizenship.

The Presidential Candidate for the People’s Progressive Party, Irfaan Ali, believes that members of the Diaspora could play a meaningful role in Guyana development and a government under his watch would include the diaspora in every aspect of decision making in Guyana.

Speaking at his party’s rally on Sunday in Stewartville, Mr. Ali said the diaspora should not be ignored and he has no problem with those who have dual citizenship.

“You are a born Guyanese and you have a right here and we love you and this is your home. We are going to aggressively involve the Diaspora in every aspect of national life and development, they must come back and work and be part of the future”, Ali told his supporters at the large rally.

Ali also released a menu of development plans for the Region 3 area that he intends to put in place if he wins the upcoming elections.

He said the West Demerara will see a superhighway and a new fixed bridge across the Demerara River with improved health and educational facilities under his leadership.

Mr. Ali also promised to do more to assist the farmers of Region 3.

The Region 3 residents were also told that revenues from the oil and gas sector will trickle down to them, with training and jobs being made available.

Ali who also lives in the West Demerara area believes the residents of the region must continue to support his party to ensure development of their communities.

Source: Posted & retrieved February 10, 2020 from: https://newssourcegy.com/news/ali-plans-to-get-diaspora-involved-in-every-aspect-of-national-development/

Don’t get it twisted, the Diaspora has not been, is not currently nor will they ever be the panacea for what ills Guyana. Plus the [majority of the] Diaspora is not even listening to this appeal from the home country. So calling out to them is a waste of Guyana’s time and the Diaspora’s time.

This is a constant message from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. This was well communicated in a series of previous blogs on this same subject, for one Caribbean country after another:

The Diaspora – of all Caribbean countries – never listens to the appeals of their former homelands. Alas, Barbados [Guyana] is not the first to waste time, talent and treasuries to engage their Diaspora and urge them to come back and/or to invest in the homeland.

This quest has been pursued throughout the Caribbean world. Yet the failures has been loud.

Why? Because they – the Diaspora – are gone!

Yes, there is this preponderance for governments (and citizenry alike) in the region to pursue this same Diaspora strategy. [Since] the calendar year of 2017, we published a number of commentaries on this Caribbean pre-occupation, with these entries relating these homelands:

Barbados – April 30, 2019 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17325

Grenada– November 3, 2017 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13438

Dominica– October 18, 2017 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13288

Haiti– September 30, 2017 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13105

Jamaica– September 20, 2017 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13040

Bahamas– September 4, 2017 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12911

St. Lucia– March 3, 2017 – https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10657

The Diaspora is not the panacea, or cure-all, for the Caribbean ills.

There is a rhyme-and-reason for why a strategy of depending on the Diaspora fails every time:

The troubling flaw for the Diaspora strategy is that the expectation is that these people who have left ‘here” will now turnaround and fix what is broken here. [But] this is a fallacy!

Rather than a strategy to “Invite the Diaspora to Remember Us”, there needs to be a Way Forward with strategies, tactics and implementations to elevate the societal engines of the Caribbean so that people do not have to leave in the first place.

Why do people leave?

The reasons have been identified as “Push and Pull”:

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

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating based on a mirage of “greener pastures”; many times, this is elusive for the first generations.

It is far better to mitigate these “Push and Pull” factors; this would dissuade our people from leaving in the first place.

These words here are different than what the political candidates are promising for the Guyana March 2, 2020 Poll. Why?

The approach is different!

Guyana’s political establishment is proud of their independence status – one of the first in the British West Indies to secure this status. The Go Lean book, on the other hand, serving as a roadmap for a Way Forward, declares that this country went down the wrong road, that the key to success for Guyana is not independence, but rather it must be interdependence. The problems in Guyana are “too big for Guyana alone” to assuage, they need confederated solutions with their regional neighbors, who are all “in the same boat”.

This Go Lean roadmap is the Way Forward for Guyana.

The Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), asserts that the panacea for Guyana is not the Diaspora, but rather the strategies, tactics and implementations of this regional construct. The quest of this CU charter is not CariCom or the “Caribbean Community”. No, we are advocating for something better. We are advocating for economic empowerments, a regional security apparatus to optimize public safety and justice standards for all stakeholders – citizens, visitors and trading partners – and a technocratic regional governance.

How do we go about elevating these 3 vital societal engines (economics, security, governance)? Throughout the 370 pages of the Go Lean book, the details are provided as turn-by-turn directions on how to adopt new community ethos (attitudes and values), execute new strategies, tactics and implementations. These will reboot Guyana … and the other CariCom member-state on the Guiana Platte (Suriname). In fact, this actual advocacy in the Go Lean book contains specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 240, entitled:

10 Ways to Impact The Guianas

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* Confederation Treaty: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)** The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states for 42 million, including the independent states of Guyana and Suriname. Other territories that made up The Guianas region include French Guiana, Spanish Guiana (today, the Guayana Region comprises three of the federal States of Venezuela: Amazonas, Bolívar, Delta Amacuro), and Portuguese Guiana (Brazil’s State of Amapa). On the CU roadmap, annexations will be explored in Year 5; French Guiana is ideal candidate, but not the Venezuelan and Brazilian regions. But there is the immediate need for foreign policy synchronizations with these other states for common pool resources and regional threats.
2	Trading Partners based on Nature not Politics
3	Homeland Security Pact – Assurance of Economic Engines
4	Disaster Planning, Preparation & Response
5	Caribbean Dollar and the Caribbean Central Bank The CU Treaty allows the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to manage the monetary policy of the Caribbean Dollar, in place of the Guyanese Dollar or Suriname Dollar for global trade (supplanting US$). The independent-professional management will assuage devaluation risks while garnering the benefits of money multiplier. The C$ will be pegged to a basket of currencies, including the US dollar, Euro, British pound, so as to maximize value in the international markets.
6	Emigration Circuit Breaker Some chronic problems related to economic progress has been the shortage of skilled labor and a deficient infrastructure. The CU seeks to offer an alternative to citizens abandoning the region for EU or US shores. A diverse, well-managed economy of 42 million people, rather than the minimal 700,000 of Guyana alone and 540,000 of Suriname, offer more options to assuage pressures for Guianian talent fleeing. The whole CU can provide solutions to contend with the scarcity of skilled labor, innovation deficits, and financial risks in social pension systems.
7	Extraction of Natural Resources
8	Tourism Collective Bargaining
9	Financial Receivership
10	Host Country Entitlements

Guyana has had some encroachments of Failed-State status in the recent past; (plus the dire straits of Venezuela next door). Their societal engines are so deficient that they now have one of the highest suicides rates in the world. This is not a proud legacy to boast, but rather an emphatic cry for help. Here comes help!

In fact, the dire status and issues of “Guiana Region” has been detailed in many previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17691	‘Free Market’ Versus … Socialism – Very Prevalent in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16172	A Lesson in History: Jonestown, Guyana
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13299	Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Respecting Diwali
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12581	State of the Union – Annexation: French Guiana
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12098	Inaction on Venezuela: A Recipe for ‘Failed-State’ Status
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5396	‘Significant’ oil deposit found offshore Guyana
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2602	Guyana and Suriname Wrestle With High Rates of Suicides

So for the March 2, 2020 election, we urge the citizens of Guyana to vote early and often; just know that your Diaspora will probably have a small turn-out, (for those that are eligible from their foreign abodes). Do not waste time, talent and treasuries trying to engage this population. These one have left; support the ones who are still there and engaging their civil duty.

As related in a previous blog-commentary – A Change is Gonna Come – this Chinese proverb is apropos:

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

A change will come to Guyana. We urge the stakeholders there to hold-on and hold-out for the reformations and transformations that will come, either with the General Election on March 2, 2020 or soon thereafter with the Go Lean roadmap. We urge all Guyana stakeholders and Caribbean stakeholders alike to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … to do the heavy-lifting of elevating our regional society and making our homelands better places 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————

APPENDIX VIDEO – This Week in 60 Minutes … – https://youtu.be/baIzuIIatx0

Peoples Progressive Party/Civic
Posted February 8, 2020 –

Category: News & Politics

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A Lesson in History: Jonestown, Guyana

Posted on November 18, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

On this day, 40 years ago, the Caribbean member-state of Guyana was home to one of the worst abuses of religious freedoms in the history of the world. This was the Jonestown People’s Temple “Revolutionary Suicide” on November 18, 1978.

From a Caribbean perspective, we must admit and accept the culpability: “My Bad!”

We have bloodguilt on our hands for the 918 people who died on this day in Guyana 40 years ago; (one third of whom were minor children). See the encyclopedic details here:

Tile: Jonestown
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name “Jonestown“, was a remote settlement established by the Peoples Temple, an American cult under the leadership of reverend Jim Jones, in north Guyana. It became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918^[1][2] people died in the settlement, at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.

909 individuals died in Jonestown,^[1] all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at Port Kaituma, including United States Congressman Leo Ryan, an act that Jones ordered. Four other Temple members committed murder-suicide in Georgetown at Jones’ command.

While some refer to the events in Jonestown as mass suicide, many others, including Jonestown survivors, regard them as mass murder.^[3][4] As many as 70 people may have been injected with poison, and a third of the victims (304) were minors.^[5][6] It was the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001.^[7]

…

Selection and establishment of Guyanese land

…
The Temple chose Guyana, in part, because of its own socialist politics, which were moving further to the [political] left during the selection process.^[18][19] Former Temple member Tim Carter stated that the reasons for choosing Guyana were the Temple’s view of a perceived dominance of racism and multinational corporations in the U.S. government.^[20] According to Carter, the Temple concluded that Guyana, an English-speaking, socialist country with a predominantly indigenous population and with a government including prominent black leaders, would afford black Temple members a peaceful place to live.^[20] Later, Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham stated that Jones may have “wanted to use cooperatives as the basis for the establishment of socialism, and maybe his idea of setting up a commune meshed with that”.^[19] Jones also thought that Guyana was small, poor, and independent enough for him to easily obtain influence and official protection.^[18]

…

See the remaining reference in the Source link here …

Source: Retrieved November 18, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

Surely this Jonestown drama is a manifestation of evil, despite the “Reverend” Jim Jones and the Christian affiliation of the People’s Temple.

This atrocity is on us!

Actually, after the events of the November 18, 1978 tragedy, there was a formal inquest – Commission of Inquiry – which concluded that Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham was responsible for the deaths at Jonestown. There is no way to misconstrue the culpability in this drama:

As a representative democracy, the leaders act on behalf of the people.

What kind of environment was the Caribbean country of Guyana to where a Bad Actor with evil Intents and Purposes could thrive in our neighborhood?

Surely, there were societal defects in place then; the Guyana orthodoxy was surely flawed. (Even though, on the surface, the solidarity of Guyana’s political leadership aligned with Jim Jones and the People’s Temple movement in their opposition to racial inequality and Crony-Capitalism. See the Appendix VIDEO below).

This is the lesson we learn from Jonestown 1978: When we tolerate Human Rights abuses, things go from bad to worse.

How about today?

Is Guyana reformed or transformed today, away from that old bad society to a more viable society today?

According to the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean, the answer is:

No, actually!

The Go Lean book asserts that the Caribbean is in crisis. We have many societal defects that are so badly in need of reform. Guyana’s disposition is especially acute. Of all the societal abandonment transpiring in the region, Guyana is among the worst. One report related a 89% Brain Drain rate with their college educated populations. In addition, Guyana is still notoriously bad for mitigating and counteracting suicides. In a 2014 report, this country was ranked #1 for Suicides Per Capita.

Guyana needs a reboot!

The whole Caribbean region needs a reboot.

This is the “why” the Go Lean book presents a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of a super-national governing authority, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This entity will be empowered to effect change in all 30 Caribbean member-states. This would be a new regime for the region; one that is apolitical (not left nor right-leaning) and religiously-neutral; (no blindspots in oversights to “Christian” religious groups).

Under this new regime, as described in the Go Lean book, religious institutions will be recognized, respected and defined as Non-Government Organizations (NGO), nothing more … nothing less. Caribbean integration is the priority and this priority would allow for a more efficient delivery of the Social Contract. (Social Contract is defined for when citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights).

It is universally accepted that the Government of Guyana failed those 918 people in 1978. The religious eco-system should not have been looked on for protection and security. No, Jonestown was a failing of the government. There is a variety of religious adherents in this country – Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Indigenous Animists – no one religious group should ever be put above or below another. Religious diversity must be a concern for all Caribbean member-states; the Social Contract for the Caribbean must reflect a Pluralistic Democracy.

40 years later, and the stewards for a new Caribbean have learned how to apply the lessons of Jonestown in this plan to forge a better society. The Go Lean/CU roadmap presents the strategies, tactics and implementations to impact Caribbean communities and all their societal engines. In fact, these statements are identified as the prime directives for this roadmap:

Optimize the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establish a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines, plus ensure public safety and justice institutions. Security provisions should apply to the macro and the micro.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies, plus even oversight for NGO’s.

These prime directives transcend religions and national borders. There is an expectation of Human Rights that is expected no matter the country, languages or culture. Protections of Human Rights should just be delivered. The approach is to move the Caribbean region to a Single Market. Guyana-based CariCom started this vision, but they have failed to deliver on it. We need a better integration – with a stronger foundation – that would ensure that a Jonestown can never happen again – NEVER AGAIN.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – opened with the assessment that regional governance is dysfunctional and the challenges for the Caribbean are too Big for anyone one of these small islands or coastal states alone – there must be regional solutions. Thusly, the roadmap calls for a regional interdependence. This need was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 – 12):

Preamble: That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government … when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

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 of criminology and penology 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.

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 transform the Caribbean region into a “better society”. The book details a “better society” in terms of Human Rights in one specific Chapter on Page 220. See here, some of the excerpts and headlines from that Chapter:

10 Ways to Protect Human Rights

1	Lean-in for Caribbean Integration This regional re-boot will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. The CU will assume the primary coordination for the region’s economy and the requisite security to protect the resultant economic engines. While the CU is an economic initiative, there is a mission to monitor/mitigate Fail State Indices, and Human Rights violations constitute a Failed State Indicator.
2	Watchful World A CU mission is to monitor the image of the Caribbean to the rest of the world. Not only will the world be watching the activities in the region, but the “story” being told will be directed to depict a positive behind-the-scenes view, that the region is the best place to live-work-play.
3	Caribbeans with Disabilities
4	Women & Youth The CU will allow for empowerment and protections of women & children, orphans & widows, in compliance with Judeo-Christian precepts, Human Rights requirements, & natural instincts. These efforts will include the special needs for young girls, adult women and senior women.
5	LGBT Toleration
6	Reconciliations There were many reasons why Caribbean citizens abandoned their homelands and fled to distant shores. In some cases, the expatriates were actually political/human rights refugees. The CU mission for formal Truth & Reconciliation Commissions will allow many past issues to be settled and set aside, not necessary as criminal prosecutions, as statutes of limitations may have been exceeded. Plus punishing the past, at times may short circuit the future.
7	Future Focus
8	Justice Focus The people of the Caribbean have the right to good government and the fulfillment of the social contract. This would ensure law-and-order, due process, the rule of law, and some justice assurance. The CU will facilitate monitoring and accountability of the justice institutions to ensure compliance and mitigate abuse, compared to times in the past.
9	Tourist Omnipresence Extending hospitability to guests is putting “the best foot forward”. The vertical industries of tourism are based on this premise. The CU will expand tourist offerings away from resort-life, including eco-tourism (i.e. rainforest & scuba-diving excursions, bird-watching). This brings more tourists into daily interaction with residents – always on our best behavior.
10	Long-Form Journalism The CU will support and promote Public Broadcasting media outlets for TV/Radio. This has historically allowed for long-form journalistic productions, a great advantage for human rights foundations & agencies. This allows messaging to get deep and detailed, beyond the headline-only of compressed newscasts. These types of endeavors have forged many changes in American society, like exposing the ills of rural poverty and the atrocities of the old peonage system.

Our region has gotten a “Black-Eye” because of the atrocities of Jonestown, Guyana. We must do better, going forward. That “better society” is one that pursues this definition of the Greater Good:

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

The Caribbean must foster a better homeland that protects its citizens and visitors; (the 918 people who died on November 18, 1978 were Americans – non-Guyanese citizens). Considering the lessons being learned from Jonestown, we must also hold religious organizations – and NGO’s – accountable for their actions and violations of Human Rights and modern justice requirements. This Go Lean movement has previously detailed many related issues and advocacies for Human Rights mandates in our region; consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15580	Caribbean Unity? Religion’s Role: False Friend
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14482	International Women’s Day – Protecting Rural Women
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11224	‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ – Fanatical Theologians Undermine Tourism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566	Funding the Caribbean Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10216	Waging a Successful War on Orthodoxy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9766	Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologize for genocide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6718	A Lesson in History Before the Civil War: Compromising Human Rights
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695	Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5210	Cruise Ship Labor Abuses – Getting Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971	A Lesson in Church History – Royal Charters: Truth & Consequence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	US slams Caribbean human rights practices

As a result of Jonestown 1978, the expression “drinking the Kool-Aid” has entered into the English-speaking lexicon. Yes, this 40 year old tragedy in Guyana has branded the Caribbean with a global brand as inadequate and Less Than when it comes to effective governance in public safety and Human Rights protection.

After all, one third of the 918 victims in Jonestown were minor children.

Surely we have learned lessons in the 40 years since. Surely, we have now learned how to protect our people … and our visitors.

Surely, our communities will embrace all strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to ensure such a tragedy will never happen again.

The Go Lean book is the lesson-learn.

Surely, this roadmap will be embraced and adopted as part of the regional pledge of NEVER AGAIN.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap to reboot the region, to bring change … and empowerment. We must make sure those 918 lives were not lost in vain; We must learn the lessons from Jonestown. We must make our communities better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

—————–

Appendix VIDEO – The Story of The Jonestown Massacre – https://youtu.be/GKqQ1CyneWw

FactFile
Published on Feb 5, 2018 – The Jonestown massacre was a horrendous event that led to the deaths of almost a thousand people. Today we tell the story that led up to that most horrendous of days.

Category: Education

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Diwali 2018 – A Glimpse of our Pluralistic Democracy – ENCORE

Posted on November 6, 2018 in Ethos, Locations, Social, Strategy

Happy Diwali!

As the clay pots are lit from the villages to the center centers, the Festival of Lights is about to begin. Diwali is one of the biggest and brightest holidays celebrated all across India and the U.S. each year. Fireworks, song and prayer fill the five-day festival to celebrate inner light over spiritual darkness.

Today and always, we honor the many cultures and traditions among our beautifully diverse global organization. As we join in celebrating Diwali, we hope you enjoy this special time with friends and family.

May the divine light of Diwali shine with peace, prosperity, happiness and good health in your life. Happy Diwali.

Signed: The Technology Leadership Team and Saul Van Beurden, CIO, JPMorganChase Consumer & Community Bank

Today is the start of Diwali 2018.

This is one of the biggest holidays for a the global Hindu community. That is the population of India and the Indian Diaspora. That Diaspora includes the Caribbean. JPMorganChase, Americas largest bank, has a large staff based in India. They are a pluralistic corporation; they obviously want their team members to feel honored in their institution.

We want our Caribbean brothers and sisters with Indian heritage to feel that they are honored here in their Caribbean homeland. This was addressed in a previous Go Lean commentary on October 19, 2017. It is appropriate to Encore that submission here-now:

————————–

Go Lean Commentary – Respecting Diwali – Making a Pluralistic Democracy

What is the ethnic composition of the Caribbean?

Not a singularity!

Our quest now is to make the Caribbean a Single Market and a “Pluralistic Democracy”. This means a society where the many different ethnic groups (and religions) have respect, equal rights, equal privileges and equal protections under the law; where there are no superior rights to any majority and no special deprivations to any minority. The expectation is for anyone person to be treated like everyone else. The legal definition of Pluralism as a political philosophy is as follows …

… the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which permits the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions and lifestyles.^[1] While not all political pluralists advocate for a pluralist democracy, this is most common as democracy is often viewed as the most fair and effective way to moderate between the discrete values.^[2] – Wikipedia

This vision of a Caribbean “Pluralistic Democracy” should be more than words; it must be action too!

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

Diwali (or Deepavali) is the Hindu festival of lights celebrated every year in autumn in the northern hemisphere (spring in southern hemisphere).^[4][5] It is an official holiday in Fiji, Guyana, India,^[6] Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago. One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, it spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.^[7][8][9] Its celebration includes millions of lights shining on housetops, outside doors and windows, around temples and other buildings in the communities and countries where it is observed.^[10] The festival preparations and rituals typically extend over a five-day period, but the main festival night of Diwali coincides with the dark night of the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika in Bikram Sambat calendar (the month of Aippasi in Tamil Calendar), on the 15th of the month. In the Gregorian calendar, Diwali night falls between mid-October and mid-November.^[11]

Before Diwali night, people clean, renovate, and decorate their homes and offices.^[12] On Diwali night, people dress up in new clothes or their best outfits, light up diyas (lamps and candles) inside and outside their home, participate in family puja (prayers) typically to Lakshmi – the goddess of fertility and prosperity. After puja, fireworks follow,^[13] then a family feast including mithai (sweets), and an exchange of gifts between family members and close friends. Deepavali also marks a major shopping period in nations where it is celebrated.^[14]

The name of festive days as well as the rituals of Diwali vary significantly among Hindus, based on the region of India. – Wikipedia.

See the VIDEO’s in the Appendix below.

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

“the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair”.

This year Diwali is celebrated between October 18 – 22, 2017. It is a public holiday only for Wednesday October 18 in Trinidad and Guyana; plus on Thursday October 19 in Suriname.

This celebration of Diwali is only MEDIUM in these 3 Caribbean member-states; but with the proper fostering it could be BIG; it could be an impactful event! Imagine Event Tourism targeted to the 1.2 Billion people of the emerging economy of India; plus the 35 million people in the Indian Diaspora world-wide.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean presents the advocacy of Event Tourism (Page 191). This is fundamental to elevating Caribbean society to be a better place to live, work and play; (or live, work and pray). The Go Lean book – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all 30 member-states – to foster a “Pluralistic Democracy”. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

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

The Go Lean roadmap posits that events can be fostered so as to better impact the economic, security and governing engines of society. This was this declaration from a previous blog-commentary, that touristic events could be so much more lucrative, if only there was a whole-souled commitment by the full community – everyone show respect. Think of the success in Sturgis, South Dakota where a small town of 10,000 hosts up to 600,000 visitors (Page 288). Imagine the economic impact!

The movement behind the Go Lean book has repeatedly related that there is a need for new stewardship of the Caribbean tourism apparatus. The world has changed; our target markets have changed. We cannot just advertise to the Northeast corner of North America for the peak winter season (January & February) anymore. No we must now look to alternate markets and target alternate calendar days so as to expand our product offering.

Imagine the prospect of marketing Diwali – see VIDEO’s below – usually in the tourist-slow month of October.

This is what is needed to expand the region economically. There is no longer the need for tourism stewards to just “rub shoulders” with travel agents, but rather, there is the need for e-Commerce strategies and tactics (think: Search Engines Optimization) and for efficient execution of events. Welcome to Technocracy 101.

A previous blog-commentary (from September 15, 2015) regarding Tourism Stewardship related these details:

The book Go Lean…Caribbean calls for the elevation of Caribbean society, to re-focus, re-boot, and optimize all the engines of commerce so as to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. The category of “play” covers the full scope of tourism, which is the primary economic driver for our Caribbean region; the book estimates 80 million visitors among the region. (Since that number includes cruise passengers that may visit multiple Caribbean islands on one itinerary, each port is counted separately; without cruise passengers, a figure of 68 – 69 million is perhaps more accurate).

This commentary is a consideration of tourism, not travel. Tourism is a subset of the travel eco-system, so any Agent of Change in the world of travel must be carefully considered on tourism, on Caribbean tourism. …

The Go Lean book considers these Agents of Change (Page 57) that have dynamically affected the Caribbean economic eco-systems:

Technology

Globalization

Aging Diaspora

Climate Change

…

Technology, the Internet-Communications-Technology (ICT) in particular has furnished alternative and better options for travel enterprises to find passengers-guests-travelers-tourists…. Travel agents are now inconsequential. ….

The book Go Lean…Caribbean and the underlying movement seeks to re-boot the strategies and tactics of tourism marketing for the entire Caribbean region. The book asserts Caribbean member-states must expand and optimize their tourism outreach but that the requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state … alone. Rather, shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in greater production and greater accountability. This deputized agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The book thereafter introduces the CU and provides a roadmap for its implementation into a Single Market for the Caribbean economy … and tourism marketing.

The goal of the CU is to bring the proper tools and techniques to the Caribbean region to optimize the stewardship of the economic, security and governing engines. The book posits that the economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, with technocratic management and stewardship better than the status quo. While the goal of the roadmap is to pursue a diversification strategy, the reality is that tourism will continue to be the primary economic driver in the region for the foreseeable future. The publisher of the book Go Lean…Caribbean convenes the talents and skill-sets of movers-and-shakers in electronic commerce [and project management] so as to forge the best tools and techniques for this new ICT-based marketing.

Lessons need to be learned from the execution of events in these Hindu-populated Caribbean countries. Can the Caribbean flare of a dynamic Hindu culture be exploited further for global marketing and appeal? The Hindu Diaspora is huge, comprising sizeable populations in many countries, including BIG numbers (millions) here:

Australia Nepal

Canada Saudi Arabia

Fiji Singapore

India South Africa

Ireland Sri Lanka

Malaysia United Arab Emirates

Mauritius United Kingdom

Myanmar United States

This is the charter of the Go Lean roadmap, to deploy the technocratic administration to optimize Caribbean Event Tourism. The Go Lean book specifically details the community ethos Caribbean communities need to adopt to be successful in Event Tourism; plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to ensure successful deployments; see a sample here:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art and Culture of the Caribbean	Page 46
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Agencies versus Member-State Governments	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Lessons from Omaha – College World Series Model	Page 138
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism	Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events	Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds	Page 192
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231
Appendix – Case Study of “The Rally” in Sturgis, South Dakota	Page 288

In summary, the Caribbean is in good position to show respect to the Indian-Hindu community and their Festival of Lights – Diwali. In doing so, we double-down on our quest to be a “Pluralistic Democracy” and optimize our economic engines for Event Tourism.

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

What a contrast this is to the Climate of Hate that is so prevalent in so many Caribbean communities, towards people who are different or hold alternative viewpoints.

Yes, the Go Lean roadmap is different … and better.

It seeks to unite the people of the entire Caribbean region, diversify the regional economy (to create new 2.2 million jobs) and make our communities better places to live, work and play. This is why we have a quest for a “Pluralistic Democracy”. This is Part 1 of 3 in the series on this topic; the full collection is as follows:

Making a “Pluralistic Democracy” – Respect for Diwali
Making a “Pluralistic Democracy” – Freedom of Movement
Making a “Pluralistic Democracy” – Multilingual Realities

Now is the time for all stakeholders in the Caribbean – governments, residents, religious devotee (Hindus, Christians, etc.), event planners, participants and tourists – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. We can do better and be better. This quest for a “Pluralistic Democracy” is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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 A – Divali Festival in Trinidad and Tobago

By: Dr. Kumar Mahabir

Trinidad and Tobago is the land of Carnival, steel band, tassa, calypso and chutney. It is the same country that gives the world its unique brand of Divali. Indeed, the Hindu Festival of Lights has become Trinidad’s second largest national open-air festival after Carnival. Divali is a welcomed alternative to the rambunctious indulgence in meat, alcohol, party and “wine,” and is arguably the largest vegetarian alcohol-free festival in the Caribbean, if not the western hemisphere. Divali is an event that the Ministry of Tourism can market as a major attraction in the fastest-growing worldwide trend of spiritual tourism.

Divali is the defining event that marks Trinidad as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society with Hindus comprising the second largest religious group (24 percent) after Roman Catholics in the twin-island population of 1.3 million people. While Divali is essentially a Hindu festival, people of all faiths actively join in celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, and good over evil. Non-Hindu adherents are attracted to the festival’s universal message as well as to the extravaganza that is not only unique but also provides a clean environment for the cultivation of a healthy body, mind and soul.

Nowhere else in the world do non-Hindus and non-Indians actively take part in the lighting of over 10 million deyas on a single night in the year. These tiny clay lamps are lit in homes, yards, streets, offices, public parks and playing fields. It is perhaps only in Trinidad that one can find split bamboo tubes transformed into magnificent works of art on which the deyas are placed. The split bamboo strips reach out toward neighboring houses, streets and communities to symbolize the popular local mantra “all ah we is one.”

The eagerness to decorate is everywhere, and payment is the pride of the finished product. Streamers of all colors and patterns are made with kite paper and plastic and strung from jhandi [flag] poles. Brightly colored fabric, balloons and bulbs decorate homes, offices and stages. Indeed, it is Divali that heralds the joy of the end-of-year celebrations. Strings of twinkling lights—clear and colored—are strung high on buildings, trees, and even across streets. Effigies of Mother Lakshmi are made from bamboo tubes and large cardboard cutouts. Calligraphy on signs and banners glitters with decorative paint. The starry designs of deyas and bulbs transform simple houses into magical kingdoms.

The nights are filled with free public performances in public parks and playing fields. Divali provides the perfect forum for showcasing the talent of both foreign and local performers in Indian song, music, dance and drama. Fashion shows are the highlight of all celebrations. Indeed, no celebration is considered complete or magnificent without a fashion show that is always eagerly anticipated by all. Indians in the Caribbean keep the tradition of Indian fashion alive by wearing dhotis, kurtas, Nehru jackets, saris, shalwars, nose-pins, necklaces, bangles, anklets, eyeliners, mehendi markings and forehead tikkas/bindis. Most Divali celebrations end with a competition for women in the crowd who vie to be the best-dressed fashion finalist. A Divali Queen is not only bestowed with a crown, but she is also showered with gifts and prizes.

Divali also boasts of Ram Leela/Lila, which is perhaps the oldest living form of outdoor folk theatre in the Caribbean. The worship of Rama takes many forms, but community devotion [Ramayana yagna] outside the temple has the most public impact. During Divali, tons of sweetmeats like parsad, kurma, burfi, pera, ladoo, jalebi, gulab jamoon and kheer [sweet rice] are made and distributed free.

Indian trade fairs during Divali have become the shopping hotspots for women who flock to the sites in thousands to buy mainly clothes and accessories. A kind of dizzy euphoria can also be seen in any one of the Indian apparel stores in the countdown to Divali. It is all part of the excitement that hums through the air during this pre-Christmas celebration as women try to dress their best and stores try to outsell one another. More than men, women dress in their finest traditional Indian wear with matching jewelry, as models of grace and elegance.

The hub of all Divali celebrations in the island is Divali Nagar in central Trinidad. Indeed, the Nagar is the most frequented entertainment center in the country during Divali, second only to the Grand Stand in the Queen’s Park Savannah during Carnival. The grand display of fireworks in the air at the entertainment park resonates with the thunder of bamboo cannons, the explosions of firecrackers, and the sparkle of “star-lights” in villages across the country. On Divali night, thousands of people take to the streets on foot and in vehicles to behold houses and communities that look like an illuminated fairyland.

Divali will be celebrated as a national holiday in Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday, October 17 [2009].

Dr. Kumar Mahabir is the chairman of the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Council and assistant professor at the University of Trinidad and Tobago.

Source: Posted October 14, 2009; retrieved October 19, 2017 from: http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3437.cfm

————

Appendix B VIDEO – Diwali – Festival of Lights | National Geographic – https://youtu.be/HrrW3rO51ak

Published on May 19, 2010 – In India, one of the most significant festivals is Diwali, or the Festival of Lights. It’s a five day celebration that includes good food, fireworks, colored sand, and special candles and lamps.
Diwali – Festival of Lights | National Geographic https://youtu.be/HrrW3rO51ak

National Geographic https://www.youtube.com/natgeo

Category: Entertainment
License: Standard YouTube License

————

Appendix C VIDEO – Diwali – The Festival of Lights – https://youtu.be/mPwmXRws7FA

WildFilmsIndia

Published on May 30, 2013 – Diwali is certainly one of the biggest, brightest and most important festivals of India. While Diwali is popularly known as the “festival of lights”. The celebration of Diwali as the “victory of good over evil” refers to the light of higher knowledge dispelling all ignorance. While the story behind Diwali and the manner of celebration of the festival differ greatly depending on the region, the essence of the festival remains the same – the celebration of life, its enjoyment and goodness. …

Category: Travel & Events
License: Standard YouTube License

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Guyana, Suriname, Transform, Trinidad

[Top]

Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Respecting Diwali

Posted on October 19, 2017 in Locations, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

What is the ethnic composition of the Caribbean?

Not a singularity!

… the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which permits the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions and lifestyles.^[1] While not all political pluralists advocate for a pluralist democracy, this is most common as democracy is often viewed as the most fair and effective way to moderate between the discrete values.^[2] – Wikipedia

This vision of a Caribbean “Pluralistic Democracy” should be more than words; it must be action too!

Diwali (or Deepavali) is the Hindu festival of lights celebrated every year in autumn in the northern hemisphere (spring in southern hemisphere).^[4][5] It is an official holiday in Fiji, Guyana, India,^[6] Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago. One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, it spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.^[7][8][9] Its celebration includes millions of lights shining on housetops, outside doors and windows, around temples and other buildings in the communities and countries where it is observed.^[10] The festival preparations and rituals typically extend over a five-day period, but the main festival night of Diwali coincides with the dark night of the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika in Bikram Sambat calendar (the month of Aippasi in Tamil Calendar), on the 15th of the month. In the Gregorian calendar, Diwali night falls between mid-October and mid-November.^[11]

Before Diwali night, people clean, renovate, and decorate their homes and offices.^[12] On Diwali night, people dress up in new clothes or their best outfits, light up diyas (lamps and candles) inside and outside their home, participate in family puja (prayers) typically to Lakshmi – the goddess of fertility and prosperity. After puja, fireworks follow,^[13] then a family feast including mithai (sweets), and an exchange of gifts between family members and close friends. Deepavali also marks a major shopping period in nations where it is celebrated.^[14]

The name of festive days as well as the rituals of Diwali vary significantly among Hindus, based on the region of India. – Wikipedia.

See the VIDEO’s in the Appendix below.

“the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair”.

This year Diwali is celebrated between October 18 – 22, 2017. It is a public holiday only for Wednesday October 18 in Trinidad and Guyana; plus on Thursday October 19 in Suriname.

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

Imagine the prospect of marketing Diwali – see VIDEO’s below – usually in the tourist-slow month of October.

A previous blog-commentary (from September 15, 2015) regarding Tourism Stewardship related these details:

The book Go Lean…Caribbean calls for the elevation of Caribbean society, to re-focus, re-boot, and optimize all the engines of commerce so as to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. The category of “play” covers the full scope of tourism, which is the primary economic driver for our Caribbean region; the book estimates 80 million visitors among the region. (Since that number includes cruise passengers that may visit multiple Caribbean islands on one itinerary, each port is counted separately; without cruise passengers, a figure of 68 – 69 million is perhaps more accurate).

This commentary is a consideration of tourism, not travel. Tourism is a subset of the travel eco-system, so any Agent of Change in the world of travel must be carefully considered on tourism, on Caribbean tourism. …

The Go Lean book considers these Agents of Change (Page 57) that have dynamically affected the Caribbean economic eco-systems:

Technology

Globalization

Aging Diaspora

Climate Change

…

Technology, the Internet-Communications-Technology (ICT) in particular has furnished alternative and better options for travel enterprises to find passengers-guests-travelers-tourists…. Travel agents are now inconsequential. ….

The book Go Lean…Caribbean and the underlying movement seeks to re-boot the strategies and tactics of tourism marketing for the entire Caribbean region. The book asserts Caribbean member-states must expand and optimize their tourism outreach but that the requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state … alone. Rather, shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in greater production and greater accountability. This deputized agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The book thereafter introduces the CU and provides a roadmap for its implementation into a Single Market for the Caribbean economy … and tourism marketing.

The goal of the CU is to bring the proper tools and techniques to the Caribbean region to optimize the stewardship of the economic, security and governing engines. The book posits that the economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, with technocratic management and stewardship better than the status quo. While the goal of the roadmap is to pursue a diversification strategy, the reality is that tourism will continue to be the primary economic driver in the region for the foreseeable future. The publisher of the book Go Lean…Caribbean convenes the talents and skill-sets of movers-and-shakers in electronic commerce [and project management] so as to forge the best tools and techniques for this new ICT-based marketing.

Australia Nepal

Canada Saudi Arabia

Fiji Singapore

India South Africa

Ireland Sri Lanka

Malaysia United Arab Emirates

Mauritius United Kingdom

Myanmar United States

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art and Culture of the Caribbean	Page 46
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Agencies versus Member-State Governments	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Lessons from Omaha – College World Series Model	Page 138
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism	Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events	Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds	Page 192
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231
Appendix – Case Study of “The Rally” in Sturgis, South Dakota	Page 288

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

What a contrast this is to the Climate of Hate that is so prevalent in so many Caribbean communities, towards people who are different or hold alternative viewpoints.

Yes, the Go Lean roadmap is different … and better.

Making a “Pluralistic Democracy” – Respect for Diwali
Making a “Pluralistic Democracy” – Freedom of Movement
Making a “Pluralistic Democracy” – Multilingual Realities

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 A – Divali Festival in Trinidad and Tobago

By: Dr. Kumar Mahabir

Divali will be celebrated as a national holiday in Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday, October 17 [2009].

Dr. Kumar Mahabir is the chairman of the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Council and assistant professor at the University of Trinidad and Tobago.

Source: Posted October 14, 2009; retrieved October 19, 2017 from: http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3437.cfm

————

Appendix B VIDEO – Diwali – Festival of Lights | National Geographic – https://youtu.be/HrrW3rO51ak

National Geographic https://www.youtube.com/natgeo

Category: Entertainment
License: Standard YouTube License

————

Appendix C VIDEO – Diwali – The Festival of Lights – https://youtu.be/mPwmXRws7FA

WildFilmsIndia

Category: Travel & Events
License: Standard YouTube License

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‘Significant’ oil deposit found offshore Guyana

Posted on May 25, 2015 in Economics, Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

Oil is up and down.

Just recently the price per barrel was so low that it was traded on the commodities market for the rock-bottom price of $48. But in 2008, (a familiar year for this commentary), the price was as high as $144 per barrel. That’s wholesale for crude. At the retail level, the price at the low was below $2 per gallon in some US cities; (as reported in this previous blog, a Oklahoma gas station posted a price at $1.99). At the 2008 high, the retail price was over $5.00 in some American cities, like in California.

It could be a dizzying ride, up and down, complete with exhilaration and anxiety, especially for communities with mono-industrial economic engines. Trinidad is one such community. Now Guyana wants to be added to the fray.

This news article speaks of the success of the oil exploration activities undergoing in the waters off the coast of Guyana. This is not just off-shore, but rather within the 200-mile region called the Exclusive Economic Zone. The news article relates as follows:

Title: ‘Significant’ oil deposit found offshore Guyana

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (GINA) — Guyana looks to be set to join the group of oil producing nations, as news was made public by ExxonMobil that it has found a deposit of a ‘significant’ amount of oil in the Stabroek Block, some 120 nautical miles offshore Guyana.

It was discovered in one of the two wells it drilled in the Liza-1 site, which realised more than 295 feet of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone. The well was started or “spudded” on March 5, 2015, and the data will be analysed in the coming months to determine the full resource potential.

It was drilled to 17,825 feet (5,433 metres) in 5,719 feet (1,743 metres) of water in the Stabroek Block, which is 6.6 million acres (26,800 square kilometers), the statement noted.

In the released statement, president of ExxonMobil Exploration Company, Stephen Greenlee, said, “I am encouraged by the results of the first well on the Stabroek Block… over the coming months we will work to determine the commercial viability of the discovered resource, as well as evaluate other resource potential on the block.”

Guyana has been identified by several surveying companies as one of the world’s greatest untapped potential sources for hydrocarbons.
Source: Caribbean News Now – Regional Online News Site – Posted May 22, 2015; retrieved from: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-%27Significant%27-oil-deposit-found-offshore-Guyana-26217.html

Congratulations to Guyana!

There are other countries in the region hoping for similar success. This is just a sample list:

What feature about these aspiring countries, and the existing oil-producing countries, makes oil exploration possible?

The answer is the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which constitutes additional territory to explore and exploit. Every Caribbean nation, with no immediate neighbor within 200 miles, has this EEZ territory for their benefit; see Appendix A.

How does this process work?

It is simple and it is complicated. This duplicity is part of the heavy-lifting for elevating the region.

This is the guidance from the book Go Lean … Caribbean. It serves as a roadmap – turn by turn directions – for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This federation is designed to employ best practices for economics, security and governance. The CU/Go Lean roadmap posits that “Extractions” (Oil and Rare Earths) must be a significant strategy for the Caribbean region to elevate its society. In fact, the 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, including emergency management, to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between member-state governments and the CU.

The implementation of the CU allows for the designation of more Exclusive Economic Zones, the consolidation of existing EEZ’s and the technocratic-cooperative administration of “Extractions” within these geographic spaces.

The process of benefiting from the EEZ starts with exploration. This is what Guyana has just concluded. They embarked on a scanning / diagnostic process to map out a geological survey of the subterranean formations under the seabed within their EEZ. First they found ideal indicators, then they drilled wells and “lo and behold” the announcement in the foregoing news article.

Guianan officials are not trained oil explorers. They hired and out-sourced to technocrats or Subject Matter Experts (SME), for both the drilling and the earlier step of geologic scanning. The foregoing article reveals that the drilling was performed by the drilling SME ExxonMobil. But the scanning was done by a different SME, a company branded Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS); see Appendix B & VIDEO.

PGS also works with Trinidad & Tobago, helping to map out the geological surveys for that country’s Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries for further exploration in their EEZ. Trinidad is already an oil-exporting country.

Within the exploration process, there is a step for public bidding. This allows a drilling SME to make financial commitments (and immediate down payments) to the host country for a split of any resultant revenues derived from successful drilling expeditions. Once bids have been accepted by the host country and permits issued, then the exploring entity proceeds to drill test wells, after more detailed analysis and diagnostic mapping. The results are “hit and miss”.

The foregoing news article reports that the exploratory effort in the Guianan EEZ has been made a “hit”.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap designates an enlarged Exclusive Economic Zone for the integrated Caribbean region, for the geographic area of the Caribbean Sea.

An EEZ can have non-standard dimensions (beyond the 200 miles of the coastline) only with approval of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas. (Consider the examples of Denmark, Philippines and Portugal in Appendix A). The confederation of the 30 member-states, the CU, will be the administrator of this EEZ. Step One / Day One of the roadmap calls for awarding contracts for oil exploration and other extractions in the EEZ – this is what the Go Lean book describes as one of the methods for financing the CU start-up; this is how to Pay For Change (Page 101).

The Go Lean roadmap details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster development, administration and protections in the Caribbean EEZ. The following list applies:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Anecdote – Pipeline Transport – Strategies, Tactics & Implementations	Page 43
Strategy – Alternative Energy: Harness the power of the sun, winds and tides in the EEZ	Page 46
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 82
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Extractions (Mining, Materials & Drilling) Administration	Page 83
Anecdote – “Lean” in Government – Environment Regulations & Permits	Page 93
Anecdote – Caribbean Energy Grid Implementation	Page 100
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the EEZ	Page 104
Implementation – Ways to Develop Pipeline Industry	Page 107
Implementation – Ways to Improve Energy Usage – Deploy Wind Turbines in EEZ	Page 113
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Extractions – Oil Mitigation Plan	Page 195
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Fisheries – Model of Alaska EEZ	Page 210
Advocacy – Ways Impact Trinidad & Tobago – Oil Boom to Expire without new Exploration	Page 240
Advocacy – Ways Impact The Guianas – Guyana’s Societal Challenges	Page 241
Appendix – North Dakota Oil Boom Economic-Societal Effects	Page 334
Appendix – Cape Cod Wind Farm – Model for Caribbean EEZ	Page 335

Oil is good; oil is bad! The Go Lean roadmap asserts that the world’s energy needs are undeniable – constant demand – and that the oil-producing economies do have prospects of prosperity (Trinidad & Tobago is no longer considered developing / Third World). The Caribbean sorely needs the empowerments in this roadmap to explore and exploit “oil” in the modern economy. The region also needs mitigations and security measures in the roadmap to guarantee environmental protection.

Oil prices are cyclical – constantly up and down. It is difficult to manage certainties in governance without certainties in revenues. Thusly, the Go Lean roadmap calls for economic diversifications; this is apropos for tourism-service economies as well. There is much at stake when communities “miss the mark” on the diversity quest: fight and flight. The “fight” has been consistent in oil-producing Trinidad with security incidents big and small; big as in Martial Law declaration and terrorist threats; small as in constant crime and employment insecurities. The flight consequence has been consistent in Trinidad; they have experienced one of the highest societal abandonment rates in the region where 70% of the college-educated population have fled.

Guyana is encouraged to take heed from Trinidad.

The CU/Go Lean roadmap is designed to bring the long-awaited economic diversity and efficiency to the Caribbean. The goal is to optimize Caribbean society, allowing us to better compete globally and present more favorable options for our youth to prosper here in their homeland.

Oil exploration and production requires heavy-lifting to derive full benefits for the community; and mitigate accompanying risks. Welcome to the CU technocracy.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people, business, institutions and governments, to lean-in for the efficiencies and diversities described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. 🙂

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

————-

Appendix A – Exclusive Economic Zone

An Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is a sea zone prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea over which a state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.^[1] It stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (nmi) from its coast. In colloquial usage, the term may include the continental shelf. The term does not include either the territorial sea or the continental shelf beyond the 200 nmi limit. The difference between the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone is that the first confers full sovereignty over the waters, whereas the second is merely a “sovereign right” which refers to the coastal state’s rights below the surface of the sea. The surface waters, as can be seen in the map, are international waters.^[2]

Generally, a state’s EEZ extends to a distance of 200 nautical miles (370 km) out from its coastal baseline. The exception to this rule occurs when EEZs would overlap; that is, state coastal baselines are less than 400 nautical miles (740 km) apart. When an overlap occurs, it is up to the states to delineate the actual maritime boundary.^[3] Generally, any point within an overlapping area defaults to the nearest state.^[4]

A state’s Exclusive Economic Zone starts at the landward edge of its territorial sea and extends outward to a distance of 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) from the baseline. The Exclusive Economic Zone stretches much further into sea than the territorial waters, which end at 12 nmi (22 km) from the coastal baseline (if following the rules set out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea).^[5] Thus, the EEZ includes the contiguous zone. States also have rights to the seabed of what is called the continental shelf up to 350 nautical miles (648 km) from the coastal baseline, beyond the EEZ, but such areas are not part of their EEZ. The legal definition of the continental shelf does not directly correspond to the geological meaning of the term, as it also includes the continental rise and slope, and the entire seabed within the EEZ.

The following is a list of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones; by country with a few noticeable deviations:

Country	EEZ Kilometers²	Additional Details
United States	11,351,000	The American EEZ – the world’s largest – includes the Caribbean overseas territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
France	11,035,000	The French EEZ includes the Caribbean overseas territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy and French Guiana.
Australia	8,505,348	Australia has the third largest exclusive economic zone, behind the United States and France, with the total area actually exceeding that of its land territory. Per the UN convention, Australia’s EEZ generally extends 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the coastline of Australia and its external territories, except where a maritime delimitation agreement exists with another state.^[15]The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf confirmed, in April 2008, Australia’s rights over an additional 2.5 million square kilometres of seabed beyond the limits of Australia’s EEZ.^[16][17] Australia also claimed, in its submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, additional Continental Shelf past its EEZ from the Australian Antarctic Territory,^[18] but these claims were deferred on Australia’s request. However, Australia’s EEZ from its Antarctic Territory is approximately 2 million square kilometres.^[17]
Russia	7,566,673
United Kingdom	6,805,586	The UK includes the Caribbean territories of Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks & Caicos and the British Virgin Islands.
Indonesia	6,159,032
Canada	5,599,077	Canada is unusual in that its EEZ, covering 2,755,564 km², is slightly smaller than its territorial waters.^[20] The latter generally extend only 12 nautical miles from the shore, but also include inland marine waters such as Hudson Bay (about 300 nautical miles (560 km; 350 mi) across), the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the internal waters of the Arctic archipelago.
Japan	4,479,388	In addition to Japan’s recognized EEZ, it also has a joint regime with Republic of (South) Korea and has disputes over other territories it claims but are in dispute with all its Asian neighbors (Russia, Republic of Korea and China).
New Zealand	4,083,744
Chile	3,681,989
Brazil	3,660,955	In 2004, the country submitted its claims to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to extend its maritime continental margin.^[19]
Mexico	3,269,386	Mexico’s EEZ comprises half of the Gulf of Mexico, with the other half claimed by the US.^[32]
Micronesia	2,996,419	The Federated States of Micronesia comprise around 607 islands (a combined land area of approximately 702 km² or 271 sq mi) that cover a longitudinal distance of almost 2,700 km (1,678 mi) just north of the equator. They lie northeast of New Guinea, south of Guam and the Marianas, west of Nauru and the Marshall Islands, east of Palau and the Philippines, about 2,900 km (1,802 mi) north of eastern Australia and some 4,000 km (2,485 mi) southwest of the main islands of Hawaii. While the FSM’s total land area is quite small, its EEZ occupies more than 2,900,000 km2 (1,000,000 sq mi) of the Pacific Ocean.
Denmark	2,551,238	The Kingdom of Denmark includes the autonomous province of Greenland and the self-governing province of the Faroe Islands. The EEZs of the latter two do not form part of the EEZ of the European Union.
Papua New Guinea	2,402,288
China	2,287,969
Marshall Islands	1,990,530	The Republic of the Marshall Islands is an island country located near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the International Date Line. Geographically, the country is part of the larger island group of Micronesia. The country’s population of 68,480 people is spread out over 24 coral atolls, comprising 1,156 individual islands and islets. The land mass amounts to 181 km² (70 sq mi) but the EEZ is 1,990,000 km², one of the world’s largest.
Portugal	1,727,408	Portugal has the 10th largest EEZ in the world. Presently, it is divided in three non-contiguous sub-zones: Continental Portugal 327,667 km² Azores 953,633 km² Madeira 446,108 km² Portugal submitted a claim to extend its jurisdiction over additional 2.15 million square kilometers of the neighboring continental shelf in May 2009,^[44] resulting in an area with a total of more than 3,877,408 km². The submission, as well as a detailed map, can be found in the Task Group for the extension of the Continental Shelf website. Spain disputes the EEZ’s southern border, maintaining that it should be drawn halfway between Madeira and the Canary Islands. But Portugal exercises sovereignty over the Savage Islands, a small archipelago north of the Canaries, claiming an EEZ border further south. Spain objects, arguing that the SavageIslands do not have a separate continental shelf,^[45] citing article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.^[46]
Philippines	1,590,780	The Philippines’ EEZ covers 2,265,684 (135,783) km^2[41].
Solomon Islands	1,589,477
South Africa	1,535,538
Fiji	1,282,978	Fiji is an archipelago of more than 332 islands, of which 110 are permanently inhabited, and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about 18,300 square kilometres (7,100 sq mi).
Argentina	1,159,063
Spain	1,039,233
Bahamas	654,715
Cuba	350,751
Jamaica	258,137
Dominican Republic	255,898
Barbados	186,898
Netherlands	154,011	The Kingdom of the Netherlands include the Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Sint Maarten and Sint Eustatius
Guyana	137,765
Suriname	127,772
Haiti	126,760
Antigua and Barbuda	110,089
Trinidad and Tobago	74,199
St Vincent and the Grenadines	36,302
Belize	35,351
Dominica	28,985
Grenada	27,426
Saint Lucia	15,617
Saint Kitts and Nevis	9,974

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone)

————-

Appendix B – Guyana Stabroek MC2D Description

Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), in conjunction with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), is pleased to announce the availability of the MultiClient 2D survey acquired over the Stabroek concession. The survey consists of approximately 7,603 km of seismic that has been acquired and processed over the block and tie lines to existing well information with the objective of providing for the first time detailed imaging and geological understanding of this as yet undrilled concession. PGS acquired the data using its GeoStreamer® technology which is a solid streamer with the combination of two different sensors which provide data that exhibits a wider bandwidth and better penetration than conventional data. This MC2D survey provides the GGMC with a state of the art data set that assists industry in their evaluation of this frontier area.

SURVEY AREA
7,603 km

ACQUISITION DETAILS:
2008 – M/V Aquila Explorer
2D Acquisition Mode
GeoStreamer®

ACQUISITION PARAMETERS:
2 ms sample rate
Record Length 14000 ms
Shot Interval 37.5 m
Streamer Length 12000 m
Nominal fold 160

PROCESSING PARAMETERS:
Wavefield summation
SRME
Radon Demultiple
Pre-Stack Time Migration

AVAILABLE DATASETS:
TAPSTM Gathers
Raw PSTM Stack SEGY
Final PSTM Stack SEGY
Near, Mid and Far Angle Stack SEGY
Navigation UKOOA
Velocity Data in ASCII format
Gravity data

About PGS
Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) offers a broad range of products including seismic and electromagnetic services, data acquisition, processing, reservoir analysis/interpretation and multi-client library data. We help oil companies to find oil and gas reserves offshore worldwide.

PGS was founded in Norway in 1991, with two seismic ships and some highly innovative ideas on how to reshape the industry. Today we share the same drive to innovate as inspired our founders, though the team is bigger:

12 offshore seismic vessels
30 offices worldwide, employing over 70 nationalities

PGS has a presence in 21 countries with regional centers in London, Houston and Singapore. Our headquarters is in Oslo, Norway and the PGS share is listed on the Oslo stock exchange (OSE:PGS).

VIDEO – PGS Seismic Principles – https://youtu.be/q4PqkV0SBe0

Published on Mar 21, 2014 – A short video explaining the seismic principles.

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Guyana and Suriname Wrestle With High Rates of Suicides

Posted on October 16, 2014 in Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

This Caribbean member-state, Guyana, is Number One …

Not Number One on the list of most productive countries, but Number One on this infamous list: as the country with the highest rate of suicides in the world, according to the latest WHO report. (Suriname is also in the Top 10, at Number 6).

This is a tragedy!

The book Go Lean… Caribbean claims that this region is the best address in the world…physically. And yet this below article asserts that per capita, more people voluntarily “check-out permanently” here than anywhere else in the world. In a previous blog, this commentary presented that this same country Guyana is also Number One in the region with a 89% brain drain among college graduates.

This is not a coincidence, this is a crisis!

Title: Sleepy Guyana Wrestles With High Rate of Suicides

Lesbeholden, Guyana – The young man responds all too easily when asked whether he knows anyone who has committed suicide in his village, a sleepy cluster of homes and rum shops surrounded by vast brown fields of rice awaiting harvest.

Less than a year ago, Omadat Ramlackhan recalls, his younger brother swallowed pesticide after a drunken argument with their father and died five days later. “I don’t know what got into him,” the 23-year-old said. “It just happened like that.”

It wasn’t the family’s first brush with suicide. His stepmother, Sharmilla Pooran, volunteers that her brother hanged himself and the man’s son tried to do the same but survived, with rope marks on his neck to remember it. She once contemplated killing herself.

The fact that self-inflected harm is such a presence in the lives of this family is not surprising given that they live in an area that Guyana’s Ministry of Health has designated the “suicide belt,” in a country that the World Health Organization says in a new report has the highest rate of suicide in the world.

Guyana, a largely rural country at the northeastern edge of South America, has a suicide rate four times the global average, ahead of North Korea, South Korea, and Sri Lanka. Neighboring Suriname was the only other country from the Americas in the top 10.

There seem to be a number of reasons that Guyana tops the list, including deep rural poverty, alcohol abuse and easy access to deadly pesticides. It apparently has nothing to do with the mass cult suicide and murder of more than 900 people in 1978 at Jonestown, the event that made the country notorious.

“It’s not that we are a population that has this native propensity for suicide or something like that,” said Supriya Singh-Bodden, founder of the non-governmental Guyana Foundation. “We have been trying to live off the stigma of Jonestown, which had nothing to do with Guyana as such. It was a cult that came into our country and left a very dark mark.”

Just before the WHO published its report last month, the foundation cited rampant alcoholism as a major factor in its own study of the suicide phenomenon, which has been a subject of concern in Guyana for years. In 2010, the government announced it was training priests, teachers and police officers to help identify people at risk of killing themselves in Berbice, the remote farming region along the southeast border with Suriname where 17-year-old Ramdat Ramlackhan committed suicide after quarreling with his father, Vijai.

More recently, the government has sought to restrict access to deadly pesticides, though that is difficult in a country dependent on agriculture. In May, authorities announced a suicide-prevention hotline would be established and Health Minister Bheri Ramsarran said he would deploy additional nurses and social-service workers in response to the WHO report.

Some countries have had success with national strategies in bringing down the number of people who take their own lives, according to the WHO. The number of suicides rose rapidly in Japan in the late 1990s, but started to decrease in 2009 amid government prevention efforts and as discussion of the subject became less taboo.

It has declined in China and India as a result of urbanization and efforts to control the most common means of suicide, said Dr. Alan Berman, a senior adviser to the American Association of Suicidology and a contributor to the WHO report.

“A certain proportion of suicides are rather impulsive and if you can restrict access to the means of suicide, whether it’s by pesticides, or by firearms or by bridge, you can thwart the behavior and give people an opportunity to change their minds,” Berman said.

The WHO estimates there are more than 800,000 suicides around the world per year. Statistics on the subject are unreliable because in some places the practice is stigmatized, or illegal.

The agency found Guyana, which has a population of about 800,000, had an age-adjusted rate of just over 44 per 100,000 people based on 2012 data. For males alone, it was nearly 71 per 100,000. In raw numbers, there are about 200 per year and 500 attempts, according to local health authorities. The U.S. overall rate was 12 per 100,000.

Most occur in Berbice, a flat, sun-baked expanse of farmlands along the river that forms the border with Suriname, where similar social and economic conditions prevail and which was 6th on the WHO list, just ahead of Mozambique.

“Suicides tend to be higher in rural areas than urban areas,” Berman said. “If I’m living in rural Montana, or if I’m living in rural India or in rural Suriname the question then is if I need help for whatever is going on with me how am I going to get it?”

It is a touchy subject in Guyana. The country is divided politically and ethnically between the descendants of people brought from Africa as slaves and the descendants of people brought from India, both Hindus and Muslims, as indentured workers to replace them.

Berbice has many people of Hindus of Indian descent and, as a result, suicide is often portrayed in Guyana as a largely Hindu phenomenon. But Singh-Bodden of the Guyana Foundation said that may be because self-inflicted death among the Hindus of Berbice is more likely to be reported as such. Their study, for example, found little reporting of suicide among native Amerindians who live in the country’s rugged interior.

“I don’t buy into the argument necessarily that it’s an ethnic thing, that Indo Guyanese are more susceptible to suicide,” she said. “There has been a lot of suicide among mixed people as well. I honestly believe it’s the hopelessness.”

Pooran, describing her family’s experiences, said her brother apparently killed himself after struggling with health problems for years and difficult home life. She said she thought about taking her own life while cleaning her house after a day’s work at a local sawmill.

“One day, I picked up the poison and thought about drinking it but I called God’s name and then realized my husband would just get another woman and soon forget me,” she said. “Don’t think I would do that today.”
———
By Bert Wilkinson in Guyana and Ben Fox reported from Miami.
Associated Press News Wire Service (Retrieved 10-15-2014) – http://abcnews.go.com/international/wirestory/sleepy-guyana-wrestles-high-rate-suicides-26174156

There is something providential about this crisis as the Go Lean… Caribbean book also asserts that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. The book declares (Page 36) that a man/woman needs three things to be happy:

	*Deficiency*	*Mitigation*
1.	Something to do	Jobs
2.	Someone to love	Repatriation of Diaspora
3.	Something to hope for	Future-focus

The book serves as a roadmap to mitigate these 3 deficiencies within Caribbean life, rural communities and also in The Guianas (Guyana & Suriname).

The subject of suicide is not a light matter and should not be ignored. It addresses one of the most serious aspects of the science of Mental Health. The Go Lean book is not a reference source for science, but it does glean from “social science” concepts in communicating the plan to elevate Caribbean society. The book thusly serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The complete prime directives are described as:

Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy and create 2.2 million new job.
Establish a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap immediately calls for the establishment of a regional sentinel, a federal Health Department, to monitor, manage and mitigate public health issues in the region. This focus includes mental health in its focus, just as seriously as any other health concern like cancer, trauma, bacterial/viral epidemiology. This direct correlation of physical/mental health issue with the Caribbean (and American) economy has been previously detailed in Go Lean blog/commentaries, as sampled here:

Public Health Economics – The Cost of Cancer Drugs

Antibiotics Misuse Associated With Obesity Risk

Regional Health Sentinel – Stopping Ebola

Recessions and Public Health in the Caribbean Region

Health Concern – Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones

New Hope in the Fight Against Alzheimer’s Disease

For Diabetes Mitigation, Google and Novartis to develop “smart” contact lens

Health-care fraud in America; criminals take $272 billion a year

Painful and rapid spread of new Chikungunya virus in the Caribbean

Cuban Cancer Medication registered in 28 countries

Being first on a list is not uncommon for the Caribbean – Cuba’s famous tobacco-cigar is already declared “Among the Best in the World”. This is the kind of notoriety we want with our global image; not suicides. No one wants to live in a society where these mental health crises remain unmitigated. But the foregoing article relates that suicide rates in Guyana (and Suriname) needs to be arrested.

A lot is at stake.

The Go Lean roadmap immediately calls for the coordination of the region’s healthcare needs. This point is declared early in the Go Lean book, commencing with this opening pronouncement in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), as follows:

ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare … 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 Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap constitutes a change for the region, a plan to consolidate 30 member-states into a Trade Federation with the tools/techniques to bring immediate change to the region to benefit one and all member-states. This includes the monitoring/tracking/studying the physical and mental health trends. This empowerment would allow for better coordination with member-states, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The book details Happiness as a community ethos that first must be adopted; this refers to the appropriate attitude/spirit to forge change in the region. Go Lean details this and other ethos; plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the region’s public [mental] health:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economics Influence Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 24
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Around	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Reform our Health Care Response	Page 47
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Separation of Powers – Department of Health	Page 86
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from Indian Reservations – Suicides	Page 148
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Healthcare	Page 156
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Rural Living	Page 235
Advocacy – Ways to Impact/Re-boot The Guianas	Page 241

Guyana is a “failing” state, economy-wise. The CU mitigation to re-boot the economy there (& the region) is Step One for minimizing the risk of suicide. The foregoing news article links economic downturns and rural poverty to suicide risks. All in all, there is the need for better stewardship for Caribbean society, the economy, security and governing engines.

Who will provide this better stewardship? Who will take the lead? The book Go Lean…Caribbean provide 370 pages of turn-by-turn directions for how the CU is to provide this role for the region. The people are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Australia	Nepal
Canada	Saudi Arabia
Fiji	Singapore
India	South Africa
Ireland	Sri Lanka
Malaysia	United Arab Emirates
Mauritius	United Kingdom
Myanmar	United States