Trinidad – Go Lean…Caribbean

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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:

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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.

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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

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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

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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

Enjoy Carnival and Be Safe!

Posted on February 11, 2018 in Economics, Government, Implementation, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

It’s Carnival time … in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). The streets of Port-of-Spain will be jumping, jiving, jamming, bumping, grinding and all the other festive adjectives.

Enjoy you people … and be safe too!

As the planners for a new Caribbean, we do not have to tell you how to enjoy – that is your legacy – but we do need to guide you on security and safety – it turns out that there are active foreign threats and domestic inadequacies.

Yes, the Caribbean legacy is one of “being lax”. So we need T&T to pay more than the usual attention; and we need to convey to the whole world that Caribbean events can be safe and secure.

“Active foreign threats” …

… that is industry-speak for terrorism warnings.

Indeed, the “War on Terror” is real; there has been countless attacks since the World Trade Center Terrorist Attack in New York City on September 11, 2001. This war is still waging, though its some 17 years later, and it is not limited to the United States alone. Canada, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and others have all reported terrorist attacks. The Caribbean has been spared thus far …

… but according to some reports, that streak is about to end.

Let’s hope this story here in the British tabloid The Sun – see Appendix below – is more hype than news, but can we truly ignore it?

Title # 1: Terror threat raised for Trinidad and Tobago Carnival

(The Sun) – British tourists in the Caribbean have been warned an ISIS terror attack is “very likely” during carnival celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Foreign Office warned to avoid crowded places after cops discovered a suspected plot to target the Mardi Gras festivities on Monday and Tuesday.

In a dramatic late-night announcement, the Foreign Office said: “The Trinidad and Tobago authorities have arrested some individuals who planned to carry out attacks against Carnival on February 12 and 13.”

Officials added: “An attack is still possible. The Trinidad and Tobago government is increasing security measures for the Carnival.

“Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Trinidad and Tobago.

“Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in crowded spaces and places visited by foreigners. You should remain vigilant and avoid crowded places and large gatherings.”

Around 30,000 Britons a year visit the country. Some have family links to Trinidad but most are tourists heading to Tobago, which has direct flights from London on BA and Virgin.

Surprisingly, the island nation of just 1.3million has the highest ISIS recruitment rate of any country in the Western hemisphere.

Around 125 people are feared to have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq, and they pose a severe threat when they return home. Authorities are also wary of home-grown terrorists radicalised in the country.

The Foreign Office travel advice update warned: “There’s a threat from individuals who may have been inspired by terrorist groups, including Daesh and al Qaeda, to carry out so-called ‘lone actor’ attacks targeting public events or places.”

The crowded streets during carnival would be a soft target for an ISIS-inspired bomb or truck attack.

Last year Trinidad jihadi Shane Crawford, who goes by the nom-de guerre Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, featured in the group’s propaganda magazine.

The sniper called on ISIS supporters back home to “attack the interests of the Crusader coalition”, including embassies, businesses and civilians.

He said: “Follow the example of the lions in France and Belgium, the example of the blessed couple in California, and the examples of the knights in Orlando and Nice.

“You have the ability to terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”

Trinidad and Tobago, the southernmost nation in the Caribbean, is ethnically diverse with many people of African and Indian heritage as well as Chinese, European and Arab minorities.

Around 5 per cent of the population are Muslim, according to the 2011 census.

A small radical group known as Jamaat al-Muslimeen (“Community of Muslims”) launched a coup attempt in 1990, led by a convert named Yasin Abu Bakr who is now an imam on Trinidad and hosts a weekly radio show.

Last night it emerged the remaining two Brit members of the “Beatles” beheading gang led by Jihadi John had been captured in Syria.

Last month we revealed the world’s tourist terror hot spots at “high risk” of attacks.

Source: St. Lucia Times quoting the UK’s The SUN; posted February 9, 2018; retrieved February 10, 2018 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/02/09/terror-threat-raised-trinidad-tobago-carnival/

Related Story:
https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/caribbean-breaking-news-featured/terrorist-threats-tt-carnival/

Carnival is a BIG Deal in Trinidad and other Caribbean countries. Just the thought of active threats can discourage travel to and consumption of related events. Our regional tourism would be in jeopardy!

So we – the Caribbean member-states individually and collectively – must not disregard any security threats or risks. Any news headline that features the words “ISIS” and “Caribbean” is a scandalous combination! This thesis was elaborated on by the promoters of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, in a previous blog-commentary describing an ISIS terrorism-threat in the region.

No one wants to be accused of ignoring terrorism. Yet, as reported in another previous blog-commentary, the US and many other advanced democracy countries, are very alarmed of the Caribbean member-states and their bad practices for regional security. The troubling evidence include these inadequacies:

Indiscriminant Citizen By Investment Programs
Indiscriminant Offshore Banking practices
Facilitating Tax Avoidance and Lawless Corporate Behavior
Disregard for Intellectual Property rights and Information Security

The foregoing all draw reference to the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available for free download – as it details the quest to reform and transform Caribbean society, The book is a how-to guide and roadmap for elevating the region’s societal engines for (1.) economics, (2.) security and (3.) governance. Strategies, tactics and implementations for a successful ‘War on Terrorism’ have been a consistent theme of this book and subsequent blog-commentaries.

But people can be terrorized by domestic or local bad actors as well. Carnival has had the bad practice of people – mostly men – being too jovial, solicitous and harassing to women participants on the streets of Port-of-Spain. This too can be terrifying …

This issue is finally being addressed this year by the T&T Police. See one news story here, reported by a Miami, Florida newspaper:

Title # 2: This Caribbean Carnival won’t allow you to twerk —unless you ask permission first
By: Jacqueline Charles

Attention all Carnival revelers and masqueraders attending the Caribbean’s biggest bacchanal: Non-consensual grinding, the provocative hip-gyrating, free-for-all that’s known in Caribbean parlance as “wining,” can get you slapped with an assault charge.

Trinidad and Tobago, the two-island country that’s considered the birthplace of the modern-day Pre-Lenten Caribbean Carnival, is telling all attendees that before you back it up on someone, ask permission. And the same goes for twerking, when the street party kicks off Monday and Tuesday in Port-of-Spain.

The ask-permission edict from the police comes after years of protests by Trinidadian women who want to be free to dance without having to worry at Carnival, the annual cultural event that draws everyone from tourists to costumed diplomats two days before Ash Wednesday.

Last year, one of the biggest hits in the lead-up to Carnival was the song “Leave Me Alone” by Calypso Rose, about a woman trying to dance in the streets free of harassment. The lyrics — “Boy, don’t touch me” — made the song a feminist anthem and inspired hundreds of gyrating women to wear “Leave Me Alone” and “Leave She Alone” T-shirts during last year’s Carnival.

Like the song, the new consent rule is part of a Caribbean-wide push by women to have more say over their bodies, said Gabrielle Hosein, the head of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad.

“What you’re getting is an argument that has been made by tens of thousands of women over three or more decades in the Caribbean, long before the me-too movement addressing sexual harassment,” Hosein said. “Women have a right to be sexual and feminine in public without that happening on terms set by male aggression.”

And what’s happening in Trinidad is more radical than the me-too movement, she said. It’s women, who often dress in racy costumes during the revelry, saying they have a right to express sexual freedom without fear of sexual violence.

The concern over sexual harassment during Carnival isn’t only in Trinidad. In 2016, 22-year-old college student Tiarah Poyau was fatally shot in Brooklyn during the J’Ouvert street party before the West Indian Day Parade after telling a man to stop rubbing against her and dancing provocatively close. Police later arrested 20-year-old Reginald Moise. [See VIDEO below of Carnival in Greater Miami.]

Hosein commended the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service for warning last month that those who “thief a wine” — or hip-grind on a person without consent — during the raucous street party can be charged with assault, based on a law prohibiting physical touching without consent.

“This is a struggle that is finally recognized not only in law, which it was before, but explicitly in the language of the police in what is an extremely progressive position and statement the police service has taken,” she said.

Soca artists, whose performances are designed to provoke hip-grinding and gyrating, are divided about the controversial rule.

But when one well-known singer, soca king Machel Montano, objected and told fans at a concert that no consent was needed to wine, the public backlash forced a quick turnaround.

“Once you get consent, take a wine and have a time,” Montano told the Trinidad Express in a written statement.

Source: Miami Herald’s America Column – Posted Februay 8, 2018; retrieved February 11, 2018 from: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article199040889.html

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VIDEO – Carnival color: Miami-Dade and Broward celebrate – http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/article38770695.html

Carnival lovers and revelers geared up for one of the most anticipated cultural Caribbean traditions, Miami Broward Carnival on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2015 at the Miami-Dade County Fairgrounds. VIDEO Credit: Carl Juste

Say it ain’t so?

Only now in 2018, will the T&T Police start to treat an assault like an assault.

This – lax security – is why there is the need for a new Caribbean stewardship. This recognition is part-and-parcel to the Go Lean movement’s effort to optimize the societal engines – including homeland security – of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region. This priority on homeland security was pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

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

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

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

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

The Caribbean appointing these “new guards” will include many strategies, tactics and implementations considered “best-practices” for improved public safety and the ‘War Against Terror’. The book Go Lean … Caribbean presents its 370 pages as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s societal engines of economics, security and governance. With a brand name like Trade Federation, obviously the primary focus is on economics – so promoting the image of safe Caribbean festivals is paramount – but the book also asserts (Page 23) that peace, security and public safety must be coupled with an economic empowerments. The book continues that “bad things will [always] happen to good people” and so the community needs to be prepared to contend with the risks that can imperil the homeland. The Go Lean book therefore promotes these 3 prime directives:

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

The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to improve public protections: interpersonal violence, crime mitigation efforts, and even wage a successful ‘War on Terrorism’. This charter includes all proactive and reactive public safety/security measures in the Caribbean region. There have been many previous blog-commentaries that have elaborated on policing and governing empowerments for the region’s homeland security needs. Consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746	Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126	The Requirement for Better Security: Must Love Dogs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11054	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Mitigating Bullying
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566	Funding the Caribbean Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9974	Lessons Learned from Pearl Harbor
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072	Securing the Homeland – On the Ground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9070	Securing the Homeland – From the Seas
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9068	Securing the Homeland – From the Air
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7345	ISIS in the Caribbean?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6720	A Lesson in History – During the Civil War: Fighting for Our Own Cause
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6103	Sum of All Fears – ‘On Guard’ Against Deadly Threats
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4809	America’s Model of Monitoring for Terroristic Activities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360	Dreading the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554	Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076	Trinidad Muslims travel to Venezuela for Jihadist training
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=809	Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535	Remembering and learning from Boston for Festival Security

An effort to provide better public safety and homeland security solutions in the Caribbean should be welcomed by all stakeholders. The effort to project the image of Safe Caribbean is a pressing need. We do not need to undermine our economic engines with lax security measures or attitudes.

It is past time to do better!

It is past time for a new Caribbean stewardship. One that must foster good security habits … and ‘war against a lax attitude’ – the world is watching!

Now is the time to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. Now is the time to better secure our homeland: monitor for threats, gather intelligence, investigate incidences, police communities, arm a defense apparatus and prepare for the worst. Now is time now to grow up and secure our economic engines.

All Caribbean stakeholders are therefore urged to lean-in to this roadmap, to this conceivable, believable and achievable plan to make the Caribbean a better, safer place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———-

Appendix – The Sun Tabloid Newspaper

The Sun is a tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Since The Sun on Sunday was launched in February 2012, the paper has been a seven-day operation. As a broadsheet, it was founded in 1964 as a successor to the Daily Herald; it became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owners.^[6] It is published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp.^[7][8]

The Sun has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom,^[7] but in late 2013 slipped to second largest Saturday newspaper behind the Daily Mail.^[9] It had an average daily circulation of 2.2 million copies in March 2014.^[7] Between July and December 2013 the paper had an average daily readership of approximately 5.5 million, with approximately 31% of those falling into the ABC1 demographic and 68% in the C2DE demographic. Approximately 41% of readers are women and 59% are men.^[7] The Sun has been involved in many controversies in its history …

Source: Retrieved February 10, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_(United_Kingdom)

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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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Caribbean Roots: Cast of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’

Posted on February 25, 2017 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

For the generation born between 1980 and 2000 – Millennials – this TV show is an icon of their generation:

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

It was a situation comedy (sit-com) with laughter, hip-hop music, urban cool lifestyle, family values and thought-provoking drama. This show was formative for all demographics of this generation – White and the Black-and-Brown – but most people do not realize that a large number of the cast members had Caribbean roots.

We are so proud!

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean recognizes the significance of this art-form: sit-com television. On a consistent basis, audiences tuned into this show for entertainment and walked away with enlightenment as well – average ratings were 13 – 14 million viewers. They were constantly exposed to an affluent African-American household with an intact family structure: father, mother, and compliant children navigating a changing world. That was a different perspective – see Image Awards details in the Appendix below – compared to the realities of Black America and the pervasive media portrayals.

The show was not a docu-drama of “Black versus White America”, though many times, plotlines covered these dynamics. In general the storylines addressed teenage angst, but many plotlines addressed the family’s affluence versus working class families; this exposes a familiar rift in the Black community with passionate advocates for a Talented Tenth versus a ‘Power to the People’ contingent. See these encyclopedic details and VIDEO of the show here:

Title: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is an American sitcom that originally aired on NBC from September 10, 1990, to May 20, 1996. The show stars Will Smith as a fictionalized version of himself, a street-smart teenager from West Philadelphia who is sent to move in with his wealthy aunt and uncle in their Bel Air mansion after getting into a fight on a local basketball court. In the series, his lifestyle often clashes with the lifestyle of his relatives in Bel Air. The series ran for six seasons and aired 148 episodes.^[1][2]

Starring Cast
Will Smith as Will “The Fresh Prince” Smith
James Avery as Philip Banks
Janet Hubert-Whitten as Vivian Banks (1st)
Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks
Karyn Parsons as Hilary Banks
Tatyana M. Ali as Ashley Banks
Joseph Marcell as Geoffrey The Butler
Daphne Maxwell Reid as Vivian Banks (2nd)
Ross Bagley as Nicholas “Nicky” Banks (Seasons 5 & 6 only)

Development
In December 1989, NBC approached Will Smith, a popular rapper during the late 1980s.^[3] The pilot episode began taping on May 1, 1990.^[4] Season 1 aired in July 1990 and ended in March 1991. The series finale was taped on Thursday, March 21, 1996.^[5][6]

The theme song was written and performed by Smith under his rap stage name, The Fresh Prince. The music was composed by QDIII (Quincy Jones III), who is credited with Smith at the end of each episode.

The music often used to bridge scenes together during the show is based on a similar chord structure. The full version of the theme song was used unedited in the first three episodes. The full length version, which is 2:52, was included on Will Smith’s Greatest Hits album and attributed to him only, as well as DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince in 1998. A 3:23 version was released in the Netherlands in 1992, reaching #3 on the charts.

In the second season, the kitchen and living room sets were rebuilt much larger with a more contemporary style (as opposed to the much more formal style of the first season), and were connected directly by an archway, allowing scenes to be shot continuously between the sets.

Plot
The theme song and opening sequence set the premise of the show. Will Smith is a street-smart teenager, born and raised in West Philadelphia. While playing basketball, Will misses a shot and the ball hits a group of people, causing a confrontation that frightens his mother, who sends him to live with his aunt and uncle in the town of Bel Air, Los Angeles.

He flies from Philadelphia to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket in first class. He then whistles for a taxi that has dice in the reflection screen and the word “FRESH” on its vanity plates. Will’s working class background ends up clashing in various humorous ways with the upper class, “bourgeois” world of the Banks family – Will’s uncle Phil and aunt Vivian and their children, Will’s cousins Hilary, Carlton, and Ashley.
Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved February 24, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air

————

VIDEO – The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air Theme Song – https://youtu.be/1nCqRmx3Dnw

Published on Feb 3, 2013 – This was obviously the first episode.

The reference to The Fresh Prince refers to the hip-hop rapper Will Smith; the show revolved around him.

The Go Lean book identifies that music – even hip-hop – and the arts can greatly impact society; in addition to the entertainment value, there is also image and impression. People can override many false precepts with excellent deliveries and contributions from great role models.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to advance Caribbean image and culture in the region and throughout the world, with these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance.

This roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean “community ethos”; (the underlying attitude/spirit/sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices). Early in the book, the contributions that culture (music, television, film, theater and dance) can make is pronounced as an ethos for the entire region to embrace, (opening Declaration of Interdependence – DOI – Pages 15) with this statement:

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

The Go Lean/CU asserts that change has now come to the Caribbean, collectively and for each of the 30 member-states. The people, institutions and governance of the region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. We know it is important to highlight the positive contributions of Caribbean people, even their descendants and legacies.

The great role models being considered here are the many cast members of this iconic TV show – The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – who had Caribbean roots. We learn lessons from these great role models: lessons that are good, bad and ugly.

The cast members for consideration are:

Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks
This American-born actor has displayed many talents, beginning his career at the age of eight but securing his first TV sit-com on the series Silver Spoons at the age of 13; he is also accomplished as a television director, dancer, and show host. He was born in New York City to Trinidadian parents Michael and Joy Ribeiro (née De Leon) of Portuguese, Spanish and Afro-Trinidadian descent from Trinidad and Tobago. His mother was the daughter of Trinidadian Calypsonian the Roaring Lion, Rafael de Leon.^[2][3]
Tatyana M. Ali as Ashley Banks
This artist has excelled in her roles as an actress, model and R&B singer. She was born in New York to a mother of Afro-Panamanian^[2][3] heritage and a father who is Indo-Trinidadian.^[3] She began her acting career at the young age of six, starting as a regular child performer on Sesame Street starting in 1985. She has not stopped working in the entertainment industry, featuring acting and singing roles right up to the present day.
Joseph Marcell as Geoffrey The Butler
This Saint Lucian-born British actor moved to the United Kingdom at the age of nine, grew up in South London, and still lives in that metropolitan area. He studied theatre and science at college, then took courses in speech and dance. As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he appeared in productions of Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He has also appeared often on British television and in feature films.^[2]

These artists have placed their signatures on the entertainment world – The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air show delivered 148 episodes – notwithstanding their Caribbean heritage. This is among the ‘Good‘ lessons.

What is ‘Bad and Ugly‘ is how they have excelled in their crafts in the US and the UK as opposed to their ancestral homelands. Their parents left the islands for greater opportunities 50 – 70 years ago and despite the passage of time we still do not have any manifestations that would have allowed their artistic expressions in the Caribbean region.

What is sad is that most of the Caribbean Diaspora left their beloved homelands with some aspirations of returning some day. This is depicted in the Go Lean book with this quotation (Page 118):

The Bottom Line for the Caribbean Diaspora
The Caribbean is the best address in the world. However for over 50 years many Caribbean citizens left their island homes to find greater opportunity in foreign lands: USA, Canada and Europe. Though the “man was taken out of the island, the island was never taken out of the man”, and as such many of the Diaspora live in pockets with other Caribbean expatriates in their foreign homelands (i.e. Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York, USA). What’s more, their children, legacies, are still raised and bred with Caribbean values and culture. Many left initially with the intention of returning someday, but life, loves and livelihoods got in the way of a successful return. Worse, many tried to return and found that they were targets of crime and terrorism, mandating that they abandon all hopes and dreams of a successful repatriation. The CU therefore must allow for the repatriation of peoples of the Diaspora, in all classes of society, “the good, the bad and the ugly”.

We salute these artists from the TV show ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’. Great job; great performances and great portrayals. We accept that these artists are great Americans and Britons; they may never be grouped with Caribbean artists.

This is our loss.

May we do better with our next generation. We can and have done some good in the past; Caribbean people have impacted the art world (music and culture) right from their Caribbean homeland. Consider Caribbean musical icon, Bob Marley; he set a pathway for success for other generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists to follow. More artists of Caribbean heritage are sure to emerge to “impact the world” with their artistry. The planners for a new more opportunistic Caribbean – the Go Lean movement – are preparing for it, as specified in the same DOI – Page 13:

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

The foregoing three artists should be proud of their executions; we are proud of their heritage and thusly have an affinity for their works. We acknowledge those ones from our past who left their Caribbean homelands for better opportunities in the world of entertainment and we know that there are “new” artists who are just waiting to be fostered throughout the Caribbean member-states. We salute these ones as our future, and pledge to do better. The following list details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster future entertainment options in the Caribbean:

Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius – All Artists	Page 27
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Caribbean Vision	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231

These foregoing artists – all good people in their own rite – have been impactful for their communities:

Alfonso Ribeiro has been front-and-center in charitable endeavors, exerting much time and resources in helping with children’s medical needs through his Shriners Hospital association.
Tatyana Ali has been very active politically, campaigning for “hope and change” with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.^[10][11] In 2012, she continued showing her support for the re-election campaign and other Democratic Party causes.^[12]
Joseph Marcell devotes a lot of time, talent and treasuries to educational causes within the theater community.

These examples continue the theme of the impact of good role models in their community. We need, want and deserve more of this in the Caribbean. This thought has been presented many times in this commentary; consider these previous Go Lean blogs that identified other role models, from many cultures, with these submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10114	Esther Rolle – Caribbean Roots
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948	Sammy Davis, Jr. – Caribbean Roots
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	Remembering Marcus Garvey: A Role Model; Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8619	Clive Campbell – Jamaican Innovation for Hip Hop
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8495	NBA Greatness and Caribbean Roots: Tim Duncan Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	YouTube Role Model with Caribbean Roots: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682	Frederick Douglass: Role Model for a Single Cause
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6593	Dr. Mobley – Role Model as a Business School Dean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297	The Black Contrast: Booker T Washington versus W.E.B. Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1037	Role Model and Humanities Advocate – Maya Angelou – R.I.P.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Caribbean Musical Icon and Role Model: Bob Marley

The world is a better place, arts-wise, because of Caribbean contributions. Thank you to all past, present and future artists.

Just one more thing: Let’s make these contributions at home, from home; let’s prosper where we are planted.

This helps us to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————–

Appendix Title: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air‘s NAACP Image Awards

Outstanding Comedy Series	Nominated		1997
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	Won	Alfonso Ribeiro	1996
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Will Smith	1997
Outstanding Youth Actor/Actress	Won	Tatyana M. Ali	1997
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Janet Hubert-Whitten	1991
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Nia Long	1996
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Daphne Maxwell Reid	1996

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ISIS reaches the Caribbean Region

Posted on January 31, 2016 in Economics, Government, Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Caribbean

See, we told you … repeatedly … that this would happen.

But this is not about being right; this is about being prepared.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean – and accompanying blogs – wants to reform and transform the societal engines of the Caribbean. This refers to economics, security and governing aspects in the homeland of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region: all the Caribbean islands, plus the 2 member-states on the South American mainland (Guyana and Suriname) and 1 member-state on the Central American isthmus (Belize). Despite our difference, the Go Lean book posits that “we are all in the same boat” and need to “have each others’ back”.

The book further relates that once we remediate and mitigate our broken economic engines, we most assuredly will have security challenges to contend with. It turns out, according to the below news article, that we have those security concerns .. anyway; fix or no fix; prosperous or struggling. See the article here:

Title: ISIS reaches the Caribbean Region
Posted by caribemedia on November 11, 2015; retrieved January 31, 2015.

ISTANBUL – Since its emergence in Syria and Iraq, the extremist group of Islamic State (ISIS) has been expanding to reach several countries including Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, some of the former Soviet republics and recently the Caribbean Islands.

Pro-ISIS activists have recently circulated a video under the banner “Those who Believe and Made the Hijra”, showing a man beside his three children calling on Muslims in the idyllic islands of Trinidad and Tobago to rebel.

“I fled my homeland because Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago were restricted and oppressed,” Abu Zayd al-Muhajir said in the video clip.

“People were free to wear the hijab or other Islamic clothing, but Muslims could only practice what they were told,” he added.

“You cannot practice your true Islamic religion outright,” al-Muhajir said. “I insisted on leaving that land, because my children will grow up without knowing true Islam.”

He said that his three children are now learning English, Math, and Sharia at an ISIS-run school.

Another ISIS militant speaking in the video, identified as Abu Khalid, said he had converted to Islam because “Muslims’ family structure is much stronger”.

“The holy Quran taught me how to be determined to make jihad,” he added.

Abu Mansour al-Muhajir, another ISIS member from the twin island Caribbean country who appeared in the video, said he had travelled to Syria to fight allies of the devil (in reference to Syrian president’s allies, mainly Russia and Iran).

Al-Muhajir pointed out that Islam’s Prophet mentioned that there will come an era when all the nations of the world will gather around to wipe you out; “we the Muslims,” he said.

The man thanked God, saying “we will make jihad for this cause and to gain the reward of Allah.”

Last year, 30 citizens of Trinidad travelled to Syria to fight alongside the terror group, according to the republic’s former national security minister, Gary Griffith.

The United Nations has also warned the country is being a fertile environment for recruiting and training militants to carry out suicide operations.

Earlier this year, an American senior official revealed that dozens of militants have already left Caribbean countries to fight for ISIS in Syria.

“Extremists could potentially get across the U.S. border when they return back home from the war-torn countries,” Marine Gen. John F Kelly, chief of the US Southern Command, has said.

Noteworthy, seventeen EU members including France, Germany, Britain and Belgium inked an international agreement Thursday designed lately to thwart the recruitment of “foreign terrorist fighters” who travel from Europe to conflict zones abroad.

Source: ARA News quoted here: http://www.caribemedianetwork.com/isis-reaches-the-caribbean-region/

This foregoing article speaks of “Jihad”; this has become a scary term in modern society – see Appendices. Since the publishers of this commentary seek a religiously neutral stance, there is not attempt to stereotype all terrorist activities as belonging to Islamic Extremists; (there are White Supremacists and many nationalistic groups that have practiced terrorism). But, the currency of suicide bombers loyal to Muslim groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and al-Qaeda is a real cause for concern around the planet and this reality cannot be ignored.

In a previous blog-commentary, the question was posed as to whether World War III had commenced, with the reality of terrorism campaigns being waged everywhere, around the globe. That assertion was determined to be a bit exaggerated, but still appropriately alarming. These campaigns are being waged in almost every geographical theater except a few. The Caribbean was previously spared.

Now? According to the foregoing article, “not so much”.

Even if this position here is perceived as another exaggeration, it should be easily accepted that we, the Caribbean, have a lot at stake; we do have terrorist risks and threats; we have to be “on guard” for “bad actors” to emerge, maybe even from within our communities. (In addition to Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana has a large Muslim population). It is truly time now for our region to “get real” in our preparation: both overtly and covertly!

Overt! And covert!

The book Go Lean … Caribbean addresses the overt and covert security needs for the region. It describes the security pact – Status of Forces Agreement – that must be instituted with the treaty for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU would be established by the sovereign powers of the 30 Caribbean member-states to empower the region with this Security / Defense Pact (Armed Forces) with a fully-empowered Naval Force and adequately manned Expeditionary Marine Forces to facilitate the region’s security interest. For covert empowerments, the book details the width-and-breadth of an Intelligence Gathering & Analysis Apparatus to fully round-out the security efforts. The Go Lean book therefore serves as a roadmap for full Caribbean integration. This roadmap describes (Page 23) that peace, security and public safety must be tantamount to economic prosperity; that bad things will happen to good people and so the community needs to be prepared to contend with the risks that can imperil the homeland. This mandate is embedded in an advocacy for the Greater Good. In all, the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and to protect the resultant economic engines of the Caribbean homeland.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The priority on homeland security was pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

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

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

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

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

The Caribbean appointing these “new guards” will include many strategies, tactics and implementations considered “best-practices” around the world to ward off “bad actors”. This does not only address the military dimensions, but also other exigent circumstances; the roadmap therefore features a Emergency Management functionality with the Unified Command and Control for Disaster Response, Industrial incidences, epidemiological episodes and anti-crime initiatives.

The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide the proactive and reactive public safety/security in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a non-sovereign permanent union	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Coast Guard & Naval Authorities	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Ground Militia Forces	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management Agency	Page 76
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol: Marshals & Investigations	Page 75
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Foreign Policy Initiatives	Page 102
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid	Page 115
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #3: Consolidated Homeland Security Pact	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Escalation Role	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Needed Law & Order	Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Law & Order for Tourism	Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy – Quick Disaster Recovery	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Policing the Police	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime – Regional Security Intelligence	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Watchful World	Page 220

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

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7119	Security Role Model for the Caribbean: African Standby Force
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6720	A Lesson in History – During the Civil War: Principle over Principal
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6103	Sum of All Fears – ‘On Guard’ Against Deadly Threats
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5183	A Lesson in History – Cinco De Mayo and Mexico’s Security Lapses
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4809	Americans arrest 2 would-be terrorists – a Clear and Present Danger
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360	Dreading the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965	America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554	Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531	A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago – Root Causes of World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076	Trinidad Muslims travel to Venezuela for Jihadist training
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=809	Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535	Remembering and learning from Boston
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We Want from the US – #4: Pax Americana

An effort to provide a better security solutions in the Caribbean should be welcomed here. But some might argue: “We want to build up for peace not build up for war; the Caribbean should be all about ‘making love not making war'”. This is a valid argument, except that the appearance of peace is very tenuous. Just one incident of a terrorist attack and any pristine peaceful brand would be ruined … for a long time. This has been the case many times over; think Bali in Indonesia after their terrorist bombings in 2002 and again in 2005.

Let those with eyes … see.
Let those with ears … hear.

Our focus is only, to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. But this quest must not be “empty words alone”, there must be strong actions behind the words.

Everyone in the Caribbean – citizens, institutions and governments – are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to make the region a better, stronger and safer homeland.

🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix – Jihad

Jihad is an Islamic term referring to the religious duty of Muslims to maintain the religion. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning the act of “striving, applying oneself, struggling, persevering”.^[1] A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid, the plural of which is mujahideen (مجاهدين). The word jihad appears frequently in the Quran,^[2] often in the idiomatic expression “striving in the way of God (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)“, to refer to the act of striving to serve the purposes of God on this earth.^[1]^[3]^[4]^[5]

Muslims^[6] and scholars do not all agree on its definition. Many observers—both Muslim^[7] and non-Muslim^[8]—as well as the Dictionary of Islam,^[3] talk of jihad having two meanings: an inner spiritual struggle (the “greater jihad”), and an outer physical struggle against the enemies of Islam (the “lesser jihad”)^[3]^[9] which may take a violent or non-violent form.^[1]^[10] Jihad is often translated as “Holy War”,^[11]^[12]^[13] although this term is controversial.^[14]^[15] According to orientalist Bernard Lewis, “the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists”, and specialists in the hadith “understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.”^[16] Javed Ahmad Ghamidi states that there is consensus among Islamic scholars that the concept of jihad will always include armed struggle against wrong doers.^[17]Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad retrieved January 31, 2016.

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Appendix VIDEO – https://youtu.be/cD1HQFcav1M – Bill Maher Vs Brian Levin on “Real Time” – Islamophobia

Published on Apr 21, 2013 – Bill Maher’s Debate with Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino on “Real Time” Friday night, arguing that in this day and age, Islam is more dangerous than other religions.

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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!

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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, Model, Trade, Transform, Trinidad

[Top]

Trinidad cuts 2015 budget as oil prices tumble

Posted on January 12, 2015 in Economics, Government, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure; on the other hand, one man’s windfall is another man’s shortfall. This parallel poetry is indicative of what is transpiring in the world market for producers and consumers of oil. Consumers are enjoying a windfall with sub-$2.00 pricing (per gallon) while petroleum producing nations are having to suffer and adapt to a shortfall of revenues.

For one oil-exporting country in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, this constitutes a crisis. The book Go Lean … Caribbean was written to address crises, declaring in the foreword that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste”.

See news article here:

Title: Trinidad and Tobago cuts 2015 budget as oil prices tumble
By: Ria Taitt, Political Editor
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — A $7.4 billion (US$1.16 billion) budget shortfall as a result of falling oil prices is what Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar identified on Thursday night.

The PM reaffirmed that the support grants, senior citizens’ pension, new minimum wage and baby grants will be untouched. But she provided no precise cost-cutting details or any sacrifices that the population might be called upon to make.

What the Prime Minister did announce was the government’s 2015 budget would now be pegged on a revised oil price of US$45 a barrel, a 44 percent reduction from the original benchmark of US$80 a barrel.

The natural gas price on which the budget is premised was also revised, from US$2.75 per mmbtu to $2.25 per mmbtu, she stated.

This points to a major realignment in Government revenue and therefore adjustments in spending.

However, delivering her address to the nation on the economic situation, in light of the new budgetary and fiscal situation, Persad-Bissessar identified savings in government expenditure from one source — $1.4 billion from a lower fuel subsidy outlay.

“What (areas) are we adjusting? In moving forward there’ll be areas where we must moderate or redirect our spending in order to manage the present situation, always making sure that we keep people and country first — reviews of our PSIP and current expenditure are ongoing, with the aim of identifying savings of approximately $4.5 billion,” the Prime Minister stated.

“Amongst the areas identified for re-directional spending and indeed in helping us to make up the shortfall of the $7.5 billion… these are the areas that we would consider — infrastructural projects for which funding has not yet been confirmed; lower expenditure on non-critical goods and services; and cuts in allocation in selective ministries by about 15 percent.

“Any additional shortfall will be met from revenues generated as a result of our continued public offering programme,” she added, referring to the IPO to be held for the public sale of shares in Phoenix Park Gas Processors Limited.
“This would be the first-ever listing of an energy stock on the local stock market, thereby giving the citizens a direct stake in our very important energy sector.”

The Prime Minister said the international credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have projected that oil will rebound to between US$62.7 and US$70 a barrel in the near to medium term.

However, she said, government decided to use the “more conservative assumptions” (of US$45 a barrel) for oil and gas.
“What this means is that the shortfall we may experience in Trinidad and Tobago would be in the region of TT$7.4 billion,” she said.

The price of oil has moved from a high of US$107 per barrel in June 2014 to US$48.65 at the close of business on Thursday, representing a 55 percent decline, Persad-Bissessar pointed out.

But in noting that the country had to adjust its spending, she committed her government to continue expenditure on “the things that matter most to you (the population)”.

Persad-Bissessar singled out the energy corridor — San Fernando to Mayaro highway, describing it as a “key investment”.
She also cited her government’s commitment to the “provision of protection to the vulnerable and disadvantaged; to ensuring the pace of business activity continues; to preserving jobs and personal incomes; to intensifying its efforts in making our nation safer; to maintaining successful investments in education; to making improvements in the quality of health care so urgently required; and to keeping our commitment to critical infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals and the housing programme”.

The Prime Minister gave the assurance that her government will navigate safety through these turbulent times.
She pointed to the achievements of her government, stating that the economic fundamentals were stronger today than ever and that her government’s economic policies had halted the decline that it inherited.

Persad-Bissessar recalled that, when she was a member of the government in the 1990s the oil price fell to as low as US$9 a barrel, yet the economy was kept strong and investor confidence high and stability was maintained.

“I make this reference to reinforce the reference that Trinidad and Tobago has been here before and was able to overcome the challenges faced. The population can feel confident that once again the nation is fortunate to have a government in place that has demonstrated responsible fiscal policies, that has balanced investment in social programmes and people-centred development whilst simultaneously turning the fragile economy we inherited in 2010 into the stable and strong one that it is today,” she said.

“The same prudence with which we managed the economy since 2010, to bring us to a position of resilience and stability, will be used in shifting our priorities and maintaining stability,” the Prime Minister stated.

“History will record this period as one of our finest when we stood strong, made the right choices, exercised the right amount of restraint, held the right course and indeed saw the right results,” Persad-Bissessar said.

Before delivering her address, the Prime Minister met with senior executives of the energy companies in the state sector and the Ministry of Energy and held another meeting of a sub-committee of the Cabinet.

Republished with permission of the Trinidad Express
Caribbean News Now – Regional Online News Site (Posted 01-10-2015; retrieved 01-12-2015
http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Trinidad-and-Tobago-cuts-2015-budget-as-oil-prices-tumble-24325.html

In 2008, a pivotal year in Go Lean consideration, prices for a gallon of gas reached $5.00 in some locations, (California for example). Now most locales in the US are enjoying sub $2.00/gallon prices. See this reporting in a previous blog.

There is no evil, no malice at work here; the fluctuations in oil prices is simply a product of economics, of supply-and-demand. Higher demand, lower supply equals to higher prices. While on the other hand, higher supply and lower demand equals lower prices. The forces pushing for higher prices (OPEC) are simply pursuing their stakeholders’ self-interest.

Trinidad, a non-OPEC country, is simply squeezed in the middle. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This federation is built on economic principles, designed to exploit the best practices of the social science of global economics. Instead of looking for ways to increase supply-demand of petroleum, the CU seeks to diversify: energy mix of the 30 Caribbean member-states and the revenue generators of the overall Caribbean economy. In fact, the 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, including energy security, to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The goal of the CU is to optimize Caribbean society, allowing us to better compete globally and hopefully present more favorable options for our youth to prosper here at homeland, instead of fleeing the region as practiced by previous generations.

Considering the foregoing article, it is obvious that Trinidad’s economy is overly dependent on the oil market. An unsavory dip in oil prices is affecting all aspects of this country’s societal engines (economy, security and governance). This is not a formula for success. This describes a mono-industrial society; they ebb-and-flow with the fortunes of the one economic driver. This is also the case in many other Caribbean member-states with their mono-industrial expressions of tourism. The region needs to do better with the diversification quest. The Go Lean roadmap asserts many unrelated, disconnected, industries for job creation – a decades-old pursuit.

Despite an oil-producing country in the region, this Go Lean/CU roadmap pursues a viable mix of energy sources for Caribbean deployment. The book proposes solutions for the region to optimize energy generation, distribution and consumption. Some features include solar/wind/tidal power generation, a regional power grid, electric mass transit street cars, natural gas vehicles, electric-hybrid passenger cars, and the separation of power generating and power distribution utilities. The Go Lean posits that the average costs of energy can be lowered from an average of US$0.35/kWh to US$0.088/kWh with this roadmap. (Page 100).

Just how does energy affect our modern world? See VIDEO here depicting Exxon’s (known in the Caribbean as ESSO) strategic expressions in the world:

VIDEO: Energy lives here™ anthem – http://youtu.be/FZ3S2EOBbwE

Published on Nov 27, 2013 – If you could see energy, what would you see? It powers our lives. And no one applies more technology to produce American energy and refine it more efficiently than ExxonMobil.

The Go Lean roadmap details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the progress in the wide fields of the energy business: generation, distribution and consumption. The following list applies:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose	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 – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Regional Taxi Commissions – for Regional Energy Compliance Shift	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	Page 46
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 82
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Energy Commission	Page 82
Anecdote – “Lean” in Government – Energy Permits	Page 93
Anecdote – Caribbean Energy Grid Implementation	Page 100
Implementation – Ways to Develop Pipeline Industry	Page 107
Implementation – Ways to Improve Energy Usage	Page 113
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Public Works	Page 175
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Extractions – Oil Exploration & Mitigations	Page 195
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Monopolies – Ratings and Rankings	Page 202
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation – More Fuel Efficiency	Page 205
Advocacy – Ways to Develop a Local Auto Industry – Lead with Fuel Efficiency	Page 206
Advocacy – Ways Impact Trinidad & Tobago – Oil Boom to Expire in 2018	Page 240
Appendix – North Dakota Oil Boom Economic-Societal Effects	Page 334
Appendix – Off-Shore Wind Farm Sample/Model	Page 335

This commentary asserts that the Caribbean energy needs are undeniable and that the oil-depended economy of Trinidad & Tobago needs to diversify. The CU/Go Lean roadmap is here to help Trinidad, and all of the Caribbean. On a “per capita” basis Trinidad is among the most affluent of the Caribbean independent member-states (Page 66), even higher than the US Territory of Puerto Rico. But Trinidad sorely needs the mitigations and empowerments in this roadmap; their status quo is unsustainable; too many of their human capital flee their homeland, just like many other Caribbean locations.

More changes are imminent for Trinidad. After the $5.00/gallon prices of 2008 the world has a new resolve, to be less-dependent on oil. That imminence has now materialized with the manifestation of more energy options and less demand for oil. Thusly, oil prices have declined. It is the expectation that more efficiency and diversity will emerge and assimilate the world economy. The CU/Go Lean roadmap is designed to bring that efficiency and diversity to the Caribbean region as well.

The Go Lean roadmap will prepare and mitigate Trinidad & Tobago, and the rest of the Caribbean for global changes.

Trinidad’s oil reserves are also depleting … fast (Page 240). The stakeholders of Trinidad’s economic, security and governing engines cannot “stick their heads in the sand” while these change dynamics emerge. There is the need for heavy-lifting.

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 Book Go Lean … Caribbean – Now!

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Foreign Policy, Jobs, Model, Tourism, Transform, Trinidad

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‘Too Big To Fail’ – Caribbean Version

Posted on November 14, 2014 in Economics, Government

Go Lean Commentary

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap to implement the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to provide better stewardship, to ensure that the economic failures of the past do not re-occur.

What economic failures?

There were crises on 2 levels: the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 – 2009 and regional financial banking dysfunctions.

Global – The banks labeled “Too Big To Fail” impacted the world’s economy during the Global Financial Crisis. (See the VIDEO below on the anatomy and consequence of the Credit Crisis). Though the epi-center was on Wall Street, the Caribbean was not spared; it was deeply impacted with onslaughts to every aspect of Caribbean life (think: Tourism decline). In many ways, the crisis has still not passed.

Regional – The Caribbean region has not been front-and-center to many financial crises in the past, compared to the 465 US bank failures between 2008 and 2012.^[a]But over the past few decades, there have been some failures among local commercial banks and affiliated insurance companies where the institutions could not meet demands from depositors for withdrawal. Consider these examples from Jamaica and Trinidad:

There was a banking crisis in Jamaica in the 1990s. In January 1997, the decision was made to establish the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) with a mandate to take control and restructure the financial sector. FINSAC took control of 5 of the 9 commercial banks, 10 merchant banks, 21 insurance companies, 34 securities firms and 15 hotels. It was also involved in the re-capitalization and restructuring of 2 life insurance companies, with the requirement that they relinquish their shares in 2 commercial banks.^[b]
For Trinidad, the notable failure was the holding company CL Financial, with subsidiaries Colonial Life Insurance Company and the CLICO Investment Bank (CIB). In mid-January 2009, this group approached the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago requesting financial assistance due to persistent liquidity problems. The global financial events of 2008 combined with other factors placed tremendous strain on the group’s Balance Sheet. The CL Financial lines of business ranged from the areas of finance and energy to manufacturing and real estate services. The group’s assets were estimated at US$16 billion at year-end 2007, and it had a presence in at least thirty countries worldwide, including Barbados. Most significantly, the company held investments in real estate in Trinidad and the United States of America, and in the world’s largest methanol plant prior to its difficulties.

Welcome to the new Caribbean economy.

With the advent of the CARICOM Single Market & Economy (CSME), a more integrated region is expected to lead to greater linkages among the member-states of this existing economic union. The Go Lean roadmap calls for the deployment of the Caribbean Central Bank. So the issue of financial contagions will now have to be a constant concern for this regional sentinel.

The biggest threat of global financial contagions for this region has been dilution of net worth for the citizens of the US, Canada and Western Europe, the primary source of Caribbean tourists.

The prime directive of the CU is to optimize economic, security and governing engines to impact the Caribbean’s Greater Good, for all stakeholders: residents, visitors, bank depositors and mortgage-holders. This need was pronounced early in the Go Lean book, in the Declaration of Interdependence – (Page 13):

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the CU and of the member-states.

The foregoing news articles shows the type of functions executed by technocracies: monitoring risks, assessing risk factors, managing leverage and regulating industry performances. This first article considers and welcomes new stewardship for the global “too big to fail” banks:

Title #1: New bank rules proposed to end ‘too big to fail’
By: Joshua Franklin and Huw Jones

BASEL, Switzerland/LONDON (Reuters) – Banks may have to scrap dividends and rein in bonuses if they breach new rules designed to ensure that creditors rather than taxpayers pick up the bill when big lenders collapse.

Mark Carney, chairman of the Financial Stability Board and Bank of England governor, said the rules, proposed on Monday, marked a watershed in putting an end to taxpayer bailouts of banks considered too big to fail.

“Once implemented, these agreements will play important roles in enabling globally systemic banks to be resolved (wound down) without recourse to public subsidy and without disruption to the wider financial system,” Carney said in a statement.

After the financial crisis in 2007-2009, governments had to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money to rescue banks that ran into trouble and could have threatened the global financial system if allowed to go under.

Since then, regulators from the Group of 20 economies have been trying to find ways to prevent this happening again.

The plans envisage that global banks like Goldman Sachs and HSBC should have a buffer of bonds or equity equivalent to at least 16 to 20 percent of their risk-weighted assets, such as loans, from January 2019.

These bonds would be converted to equity to help shore up a stricken bank. The banks’ total buffer would include the minimum mandatory core capital requirements banks must already hold to bolster their defences against future crises.

The new rule will apply to 30 banks the regulators have deemed to be globally “systemically important,” though initially three from China on that list of 30 would be exempt.

G2O leaders are expected to back the proposal later this week in Australia. It is being put out to public consultation until Feb. 2, 2015.

David Ereira, a partner at law firm Linklaters, said that on its own the new rule as proposed would not end “too big to fail” banks and that politically tricky details still had to be settled.

BASELTOWER

Carney was confident the new rule would be applied as central banks and governments had a hand in drafting them.

“This isn’t something that we cooked up in Basel tower and are just presenting to everybody,” he told a news conference, referring to the FSB’s headquarters in Switzerland.

Most of the banks would need to sell more bonds to comply with the new rules, the FSB said. Some bonds, known as “senior debt” that banks have already sold to investors, would need restructuring.

Senior debt was largely protected during the financial crisis, which meant investors did not lose their money. But Carney said it in future these bonds might have to bear losses if allowed under national rules and if investors were warned in advance.

The new buffer, formally known as total loss absorbing capacity or TLAC, must be at least twice a bank’s leverage ratio, a separate measure of capital to total assets regardless of the level of risk.

Globally, the leverage ratio has been set provisionally at 3 percent but it could be higher when finalised in 2015.

Some of the buffer must be held at major overseas subsidiaries to reassure regulators outside a bank’s home country. Banks may have to hold more than the minimum because of “add-ons” due to specific business models, Carney said.

Elke Koenig, president of German regulator Bafin, said supervisors should orient themselves more toward the upper end of the 16-20 percent range, though banks may be given more time to comply.

Fitch ratings agency said banks might end up with a buffer equivalent to as much as a quarter of their risk-weighted assets once other capital requirements were included. Analysts have estimated this could run to billions of dollars.

Analysts at Citi estimated the new rule could cost European banks up to 3 percent of profits in 2016.

Citi said European banks would be required to issue the biggest chunk of new bonds, including BNP Paribas , Deutsche Bank , BBVA and UniCredit , with Swiss and British banks the least affected in Europe.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Huebner in Bonn, Editing by Keiron Henderson and Jane Merriman)
Reuters Newswire Service – Online Site (Posted 11/10/2014; retrieved 11/13/2014) –
http://news.yahoo.com/g20-proposes-buffer-end-too-big-fail-banks-061252790–sector.html

Within the region, this second article considers the stewardship of one Caribbean financial institution in Jamaica and their lending practices:

Title #2: VMBS sees dramatic fall in foreclosures

VICTORIA Mutual Building Society (VMBS) recorded a three-quarters drop in property foreclosures last year.

It signals greater resilience by homeowners during an austere economy affected by heavy currency depreciation.

“The building society also enabled more members who were facing financial difficulties to retain ownership of their homes,” said VMBS in a statement about its year ended December 31, 2013. “Foreclosures on properties totalled 10 last year, compared to 37 the year before.”

Its non-performing loans, or loans unserviced for over 90 days, moved from 6.9 per cent at the beginning of the year to 5.6 per cent at the end.

“This improvement was the result of the continued drive to engage members who were having difficulty meeting their monthly mortgage payments, and working with them collaboratively, with the aim of helping them to bring their accounts current and retain ownership of their homes,” said Michael McMorris, chairman of Victoria Mutual, in his report for the group’s 135th annual general meeting held last month.

Greater focus was also placed on sales and services with mortgage disbursements up 133 per cent to $3.3 billion last year, the company indicated.

The Victoria Mutual Group, an amalgam of various financial, mortgage and insurance entities, made less after-tax surplus at $965.8 million for 2013 compared with $1 billion a year earlier.

The group’s pre-tax surplus actually increased year on year but its after-tax surplus dipped 4.2 per cent to $965.8 million as it was “adversely affected by the imposition of an asset tax on regulated financial institutions, which applied to both VMBS and VM Wealth Management,” stated the company.

The VM Group said that it aims to keep mortgage rates low by reducing administration costs, which augurs well for prospective homeowners.

Stated McMorris: “Internally, the year 2014 will see a continuation of a number of projects and initiatives geared towards improving efficiency and service delivery throughout the group.”

VM Group will seek to improve its financial advisory and brokerage services by growing the assets it manages on behalf of clients.

“To do this, Victoria Mutual Wealth Management Limited (VMWM) is working on new products to allow clients to customise their investment portfolios,” stated McMorris.

VMBS Money Transfer Services Limited (VMTS) plans to expand its services, both locally and overseas. The remittance company became profitable two years ago, and saw earnings grow by 61 per cent last year, due largely to an increase in fees, the company stated. VMTS also benefited from a 28 per cent increase in foreign exchange trading gains.

“Better gains on foreign exchange in part reflected a more challenging business environment last year, when depreciation of the Jamaican dollar was higher than 12 per cent,” stated the company.

VMBS allows its debit card holders free withdrawals at any of its teller machine or point-of-sale terminals.
Jamaica Observer Daily Newspaper – Online Site (Posted 08/20/2014; retrieved 11/13/2014) – http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/VMBS-sees-dramatic-fall-in-foreclosures_17381839

The related subjects of banking oversight and optimizing financial governance have been a frequent topic for blogging by the Go Lean promoters, as sampled here:

5 Steps of a Bubble – Learning to make a resilient economy

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce failing investment in FirstCaribbean Bank

Bitcoin needs regulatory framework to change ‘risky’ image

Open the Time Capsule: The Great Recession of 2008

What Usain Bolt can teach banks about financial risk

Barbados Central Bank records $3.7m loss in 2013

US Federal Reserve Releases Transcripts from 2008 Meetings

Dominica raises EC$20 million on regional securities market

Fractional Banking System – How to Create Money from Thin Air

Book Review: ‘Wrong – Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn…’

10 Things We Want from the US – # 2: American Capital

The Erosion of the Middle Class

All Caribbean countries have experienced economic dysfunction: English, Dutch, French and Spanish territories. In line with the foregoing articles, the Go Lean book details many infrastructural enhancements/advocacies to the region’s financial eco-system; to facilitate efficient management of the economy … going forward:

Ethos-Strategy-Tactics-Implementation-Advocacy	Page
Anecdote – Caribbean Single Market & Economy	15
Anecdote – Puerto Rico – The Caribbean’s Greece	18
Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	21
Improve Sharing	35
Confederating Non-Sovereignty	45
Facilitate Currency Union/Co-op of Caribbean Dollar	45
Fostering a Technocracy	64
Caribbean Central Bank	73
Deposit Insurance Regulations	73
Securities Regulatory Authority	74
Modeling the European Union / Central Bank	130
Lessons from 2008	136
Anecdote – Caribbean Currencies	149
Growing the Economy	151
Creating Jobs	152
Better Manage Foreign Exchange	154
Improve Credit Ratings	155
Foster Cooperatives	176
Banking Reforms	199
Wall Street – Capital/Securities Market	200
Impact the Diaspora	219
Impact Retirement – Need for Savings	221
Help the Middle Class	223
Re-boot Jamaica	239
Appendix – Alternative Remittance Modes	270

There is no doubt that there has been mis-management of the Caribbean economy in the past. Consider the example of Jamaica; their currency has suffered from many de-valuations and depreciations; an average amount of $2.50 a year since the 1970’s; trading at 87-to-1 US Dollar; (at the time that Go Lean was composed – November 2013). Social Anthropologist posit that when societies come under duress, the communities have 2 choices: ‘Fight” or “Flight”. How have the countries responded that are cited in this commentary? They have chosen “flight”. A previous blog reported an average of 70 percent brain-drain rate across the region; with Jamaica at 85% and Trinidad at 79%.

Now is the time for change; time for new stewards of the Caribbean economy, security and governing engines. It’s time for the CU/CCB. We must prove that we have learned from the past. See the VIDEO below on the anatomy and consequence of the Credit Crisis.

The purpose of this roadmap is to provide that new stewardship. A lot is at stake: the destination for the hopes and dreams of the Caribbean youth. No more flight! We must act now and make the Caribbean, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

———-

Appendix Video: – The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis – http://youtu.be/bx_LWm6_6tA

Source References:

[a]. https://news.yahoo.com/facts-numbers-us-bank-failures-183852568.html

[b]. http://www.centralbank.org.bb/WEBCBB.nsf/WorkingPapers/DB0CF759B9E97FB9042579D70047F645/$FILE/Exploring%20Liquidity%20Linkages%20among%20CARICOM%20Banking%20Systems.pdf

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2008, Banks, Crony-Capitalism, Jamaica, Security, Trinidad

[Top]

Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain

Posted on June 22, 2014 in Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The chart in the foregoing news article is more than troubling, it is just plain bad.

According to the analysis by the Inter-American Development Bank, the people in the “Caribbean 6” countries, including the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago have wasted money on educating their populations, especially tertiary (college) education.

“Say it aint so…”

Title: IDB: T&T lost more than 70 per cent of tertiary educated from brain drain
T&T has lost more than 70 per cent of its tertiary level educated labour force through emigration to developed countries, according to an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) report released Tuesday.

The report looks at events up to 2012.

The T&T labour force, according to statistics from the Central Statistical Office is made up of 635,100 persons as at the first quarter of 2013.

The report entitled, Is there a Caribbean Sclerosis? Stagnating Economic Growth in the Caribbean, said 79 per cent of the labour force in T&T who received tertiary level education up to 2011 migrated to member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“The OECD has been called a think tank, monitoring agency, rich man’s club and un-academic university. Whatever you want to call it, the OECD has a lot of power. Over the years, it has dealt with a range of issues, including raising the standard of living in member countries, contributing to the expansion of world trade and promoting economic stability,” according to Investopedia. The term “OECD countries” is often used loosely in economics as a euphemism for developed countries.

“Euro sclerosis” was a term coined in the 1970s to describe stagnant integration, high unemployment, and slow job creation in Europe relative to the United States, authors of the report explained. Since then, the term has been used more generally to refer to overall economic stagnation, they said.
The Guardian – Trinidad Daily Newspaper (Retrieved 06/19/2014) –
http://m.guardian.co.tt/business-guardian/2014-06-19/idb-tt-lost-more-70-cent-tertiary-educated-brain-drain

There is a similar concern expressed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean that education in the Caribbean needs to undergo a total re-boot, to be re-evaluated/re-organized, since the region has for far too long “fattened frogs for snakes”. The book further charges that this issue is not just in the CariCom states as the Caribbean 6 group represents, but also in the Dutch, French, and Spanish Caribbean. This problem is a real crisis for the Caribbean.

Alas, the book posits that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste” and thereafter proposes solutions and mitigations to effectuate change in the Caribbean. The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

The roadmap is for the elevation of Caribbean society. The prime directives of the CU are presented as the following 3 statements:

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

The book posits that all of the Caribbean is in crisis with this brain drain problem. This point is stressed early in the book (Page 13) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

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

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

This blog obviously relates to the now vibrant Caribbean Diaspora, the causes of emigration, and the continuous interaction with the “exile community”. These subjects have previously been covered in these Go Lean blogs, highlighted here in the following samples:

a.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1296	Remittances to Caribbean Increased By 3 Percent in 2013
b.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1256	Is a Traditional 4-year Degree a Terrible Investment?
c.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1112	Zuckerberg’s $100 Million for Newark’s Schools was a waste
d.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=607	Antigua Completes Construction of New National Library
e.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599	Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes
f.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=459	CXC and UK publisher hosting CCSLC workshops in Barbados
g.	https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=353	Book Review: ‘Wrong – Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn…’ – Example of Irish Famine leading to Emigration

The foregoing news article focuses on the tertiary emigration rates for Trinidad & Tobago, but the accompanying chart/photo demonstrates that many Caribbean countries have this same problem: 89% in Guyana, 61% in the Bahamas. These numbers validate the crisis.

How did this crisis come about? What are the past/present experiences and what are the future prospects of the Caribbean Diaspora? An examination of this subject is most effective using an analogy of a road journey. A review of the past helps us to better understand the roadmap. The road began at some point in the past and continued up to today. Where will the road end?

The Go Lean book posits that the Caribbean is the greatest address in the world. So why would people want to leave? The book answers by relating “push” and “pull” factors. Push, in that the dire economic conditions in the Caribbean homeland, plus governmental failures in response, caused responsible people to look elsewhere to fulfill their responsibilities and aspirations. On the other hand, pull factors came from the geo-political circumstances in the world. For the Anglophone Caribbean, the pull factors were tied to their British colonial status. At the end of the second World War, British labor markets were devastated and so the invitation went out to the Caribbean colonies to come to England for gainful employment opportunities. The 1948 British Nationality Act gave British citizenship to all people living in Commonwealth countries, and full rights of entry and settlement in Britain. Many West Indians were attracted by these better prospects in what was often referred to as the mother country. The ship MV Empire Windrush brought the first group of 492 immigrants to Tilbury near London on 22 June 1948. The Windrush was en route from Australia to England via the Atlantic, docking in Kingston, Jamaica. An advertisement had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport on the ship for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK^[a].

Today, a majority of the African-Caribbean population in the UK is of Jamaican origin; other notable representation is from Trinidad & Tobago, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, Guyana, and Belize.

Parallel anecdotes exist for American, Dutch and French Caribbean colonies. (In total, there were over 60 million deaths from World War II; with very few losses in the Caribbean).

In the decades that followed European sclerosis, as cited in the foregoing article, the target of Caribbean emigrants shifted to North American destinations,

The Go Lean book posits that the recent global financial crisis has created economic stagnation in the very same countries in which the Caribbean Diaspora sought refuge. These countries are no longer a place of refuge – it is time to repatriate back to the Caribbean. But not back to the same parasite economies of 1948, or 1958, 1978, not even 2008. The Go Lean roadmap calls for a Caribbean re-boot, creating a Single Market of all Caribbean countries despite their European/American legacies; this is the plan for “Step One, Day One”. This approach allows for the optimizations discussed above for the economic, security and governing engines.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the Caribbean re-boot:

Anecdote – Caribbean Single Market & Economy	Page 15
Anecdote – Dutch Caribbean: Integration & Secessions	Page 16
Anecdote – French Caribbean: Organization & Discord	Page 17
Anecdote – Puerto Rico: The Greece of the Caribbean	Page 18
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influences Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choice Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 23
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
Strategy – Vision – Single Market & Economy	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Federal versus Member-States	Page 71
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase	Page 96
Implementation – Year 4 / Repatriate Phase	Page 98
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Student Loans	Page 160
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime – Repatriates’ Hate Crime Status	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Retirement	Page 221
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Elder-Care	Page 225
Appendix – Analysis of Caribbean Diaspora	Page 267
Appendix – Analysis of Caribbean Remittances	Page 268
Appendix – Analysis of Caribbean Emigration	Page 269
Appendix – Alternative Remittance Modes	Page 270
Appendix – Interstate Compacts	Page 278
Appendix – Jamaica’s International Perception	Page 297
Appendix – Nuyorican Movement	Page 303
Appendix – Puerto Rican Population in the US	Page 304

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the regional re-boot described in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. This big deal for the Caribbean will neutralize the “push and pull” factors that contributed to previous emigration patterns and a vibrant Diaspora. Losing 60, 70 and 80 percent of the college educated population is not a formula for nation-building success.

(One solution is the adoption of e-Learning schemes for residential educational options).

The Caribbean region features the world’s best address. The world should be beating down the doors to come to the Caribbean, not the Caribbean people beating down doors to get out. Already the best place to play, the region now needs to become better places to live and work. This is possible, if we Go Lean.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix – Cited Reference:
a. Retrieved June 21, 2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people.

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College, Diaspora, Jobs, Trinidad

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Trinidad Muslims travel to Venezuela for jihadist training

Posted on May 29, 2014 in Government, Locations, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

The American War on Terror has come to the Caribbean. This is obvious with the news in the subsequenr news article. It is also obvious that with two member-states (Guyana & Trinidad) with large Islamic populations, their Muslim adherents may invariably side with some of their Middle Eastern brothers.

The United States of America is the Caribbean’s biggest trading partner and benefactor. But, the US has enemies. What’s more, many American activities enrage their enemies. Consider these known facts:

Unmanned Drone attacks in Pakistan/Afghanistan, with collateral damage of innocent women/children.
NSA spying on its own citizens, and those of foreign lands in their home country, including the Caribbean; (this was disclosed last week by NSA Leaker Edward Snowden – see https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=960).
American “Vulture” Capitalism – painfully exploiting natural resources at the expense of indigenous people

American foreign policy is determined by the US government (White House & Congress). The needs of our small Caribbean states may not factor in US policy determinations. Even the US territories (Puerto Rico & US Virgin Islands) have little voice and no vote in the formation of policy. The Caribbean finds itself in the same role as the words (sang by Michael Jackson) of the Scarecrow in the 1977 movie The Wiz:

We can’t win,
We can’t break-even, and …
We can’t get out of the game.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that we must maintain our own security apparatus against systemic threats, like terrorism, that can imperil our way of life. This goal is detailed in the book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

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

The book contends that bad actors will emerge just as a result of economic successes in the region. Combine further, the alignments with the US, and we have to be prepared for even more “enemies at the gate”. The other European nations with Caribbean territories (Britain, France, and The Netherlands) also have to contend with terrorism activities. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13), and these claims:

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

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

Appointing “new guards” to ensure our public safety is not so new of an endeavor. This effort has commenced already. There is currently a security pact of 7 Eastern Caribbean member-states that was first consummated in 1982 – see the Regional Security System below. The roadmap calls for the expansion and professionalization of this security pact for all 30 member-states. It will be the responsibility of the CU to lead, fund and facilitate this pact.

Creating the CU security apparatus is “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. This implementation, with the appropriate funding mechanisms, is essential for success. In line with the foregoing news article, there is the absolute need for a Unified Command-and-Control (UCC), including intelligence gathering and analysis, to monitor and mitigate threats against the region.

By Caribbean News Now contributor

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — Cellphone images seized by SEBIN, Venezuela’s intelligence service, allegedly show Trinidadian Muslims arrested in Venezuela engaging in what SEBIN described as “pre-jihad training” on a firing range using high-powered weapons, the Trinidad Express reported.

The images were reportedly extracted from the cellphones seized from some of the Muslims in a group that travelled to Venezuela from Trinidad and were later arrested in a raid at the Plaza Hotel in Caracas on March 19, together with women and children, who were later released.

The training resembled what takes place in the Middle East as Muslims prepare for what they term jihad, or holy war, an important religious duty for Muslims that includes armed struggle against persecution and oppression.

Intense military, arms and ammunition training is part and parcel of their routine and some of this kind of training, SEBIN alleged, was taking place in Venezuela by some of the Trinidadian Muslims.

In a top secret document prepared by SEBIN and sent to the Trinidad and Tobago government, the pictures in question were taken by three Venezuelan police officers who were later arrested. There are at least six photographs showing the men.

Eight Trinidadian Muslims are currently detained by Venezuelan authorities on suspicion of terrorist activities. The 14 women and children who were held with them at the Plaza Hotel in Caracas on March 19 were released some ten days later and sent back to Trinidad.

This followed a visit of a Trinidad and Tobago delegation headed by Rear Admiral Richard Kelshall who met with Venezuelan authorities two days prior to their release.

Out of that meeting emanated the top secret document given to the Trinidad and Tobago government, which the Trinidad Express reported exposes some alarming security concerns that the country’s security forces need to monitor closely.

The document outlines in detail the day the Trinidadian Muslims were held at the Plaza Hotel in Caracas and revelations about possible terrorist activities that can have far reaching consequences for Trinidad and Tobago.

Minister of National Security Gary Griffith spoke about the document in late April.

“A secret document has been given to me through the delegation from the Venezuelan authorities and this is obviously a sensitive document and I would not be able to actually state what is in the document, it is sensitive correspondence,” Griffith said.

In the top secret document, there are dates of the arrivals for all the Trinidadians who touched down at the Simon Bolivar International Airport in Venezuela between January and March this year.

The raid on the Trinidadian Muslims at the Plaza Hotel, authorities said, was brought to the attention of SEBIN “after a prolonged stay at the hotel” and the use of “cash to cover their bills”.

Further suspicion arose, SEBIN stated, when members of the group were reclusive, as more persons continued to arrive and bills continued “to be paid exclusively in cash”.

Cleaning staff at the hotel were even barred from entering the rooms, the report revealed.

SEBIN’s suspicion was compounded further as they “implemented surveillance on the group and observed that Dominic Pitilal [one of the group] was routinely changing large sums of US” currency.

It was then SEBIN decided to make their move, executing a search warrant in the rooms occupied by “Pitilal and associates” and reportedly discovered: two satellite phones, 20 mobile phones, two laptops, six tablets, army type uniforms, combat paraphernalia, firearm training paraphernalia, telephone video of several of the detained persons in firearms training in Caracas.

According to the Trinidad Express, the accusation of jihad is only the beginning of something more profoundly troubling.

Sources within the Muslim community in Trinidad told the Express they have received information about Trinidadian Muslims fighting in the Syrian civil war as part of the anti-Assad movement.

Sources said every individual is paid US$150,000 to come to Syria and fight.

The subject is rarely discussed in certain Muslim circles in Trinidad, some fearing if they say anything, their lives might be in jeopardy. It is also a case that Muslim women know about, but are not willing to inform on friends or family members.

Well-placed Muslim sources who met and spoke with the Express in the last few weeks on the condition of anonymity say some of the women and children who were detained in Venezuela were in transit to Syria.

Three well-placed sources say people had confided in them about how the operation would go down.

One said, “What they do is buy plane tickets showing travel from Venezuela to China in transit through Turkey. When the plane stops there they get off and cross the border into Syria, but many would be thinking they have gone on to China as the ticket states.”

Another indicated that a named Trinidadian Muslim now in Syria has been in contact with family members in Trinidad and is also in constant contact with another local Muslim man.

Intelligence sources said they have been monitoring the movements of certain people, but would not commit to a solid answer.

When asked about Trinidadians using Venezuela as a stepping stone to head to Syria to fight in the jihad, Griffith said, “We most definitely have intelligence of all matters of national security but pertaining to that quite obviously, I would not be able to actually state what intelligence that we have for obvious reasons.”

In the last three weeks, the UK Guardian has carried stories about Muslim men leaving the United Kingdom to fight the war in Syria with young women also trying to follow. When they return to their countries they could be a serious security risk and the Anti-Terrorism Unit in Britain is closely monitoring the situation.

CNN in a recent report online entitled “West’s biggest threat: Battle hardened homegrown terrorists”, warned about American Muslims leaving to fight in Syria and returning as a potential threat to the US.

Intelligence sources in Trinidad also said they are fearful that some of those fighting in Syria will return to Trinidad with the radical ability to carry out violent acts there.

In fact, SEBIN in its secret report made specific recommendations to Trinidad’s national security ministry indicating it should pay closer attention to particular mosques.

Concerns outlined in the report also included:

• The increase of illegal diesel trafficking.

• Increase of the volume and flow of narco-trafficking and arms and ammunition trafficking.

• Increase of persons from the Middle East entering and transiting Venezuela onward to Trinidad.

SEBIN also revealed to the Trinidad and Tobago government that “British and US sources have expressed through official channels that there is an uneasiness relative to chatter emanating from Trinidad and Tobago at this time.”

Griffith said, “When we get types of intelligence that can be perceived as individuals being enemies of the state or trying to have any plan to overthrow the government, or any democracy as we know it, we would have that pre-emptive strike. We would be aware of what is happening and we would ensure that we do it to them before they do it to us.”

Attempts to assess the level of US concern in relation to the security of the Caribbean generally – a region that is variously described as America’s “third border” and America’s “backyard” – by means of official comment have largely proven to be fruitless.

There has been the so-called Third Border Initiative (now apparently moribund) and the more recent Caribbean Basin Security Initiative but the latter has largely focused on maritime interdiction of drug traffickers while seemingly ignoring the fact that the vacuum left by US financial and political inattention has been quickly filled by the Chinese (economically), Venezuela (politically and economically) also acting as a proxy for Iran, and more recently by the Russians for their own reasons.

Apart from the fact that questionable individuals from these and other countries are using the economic citizenship programs of many of the small Caribbean countries to obscure their real nationality and background, there is the concern expressed by intelligence sources in Trinidad that some of their nationals fighting in Syria will return with the radical ability to carry out violent acts in that country – i.e. part of America’s “third border”.

The so far unanswered questions posed to various US House and Senate committees that ought to have an interest in this area have tried to address the apparent inattention to the situation in the region itself, thus allowing hostile elements virtual freedom of movement in an area up to the actual border when, with a fairly modest effort in the overall scheme of things, the situation could be dealt with much more effectively.

With all the ex post facto hand-wringing over events in Benghazi, an increased level of congressional interest and concern in working to prevent other potential problems closer to home might have been expected but is apparently thus far non-existent.

Caribbean News Now (Posted May 13, 2014; retrieved 05/29/2014) –http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-Trinidad-Muslims-travel-to-Venezuela-for-jihadist-training-21089.html

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide increased public safety & security in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Strategy – Security Pact to defend the homeland	Page 45
Tactical – Confederating a non-sovereign union	Page 63
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security	Page 75
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Foreign Policy Initiatives	Page 102
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives	Page 103
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Improve Intelligence Gathering/Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Improve for Natural Disasters	Page 184

Paramount to the prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the region is the desire to make the Caribbean, a better place to live, work and play. This has been the hope for generations. Finally now, the CU is here to traverse this journey. All of the Caribbean institutions are hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap, or better stated, to Go Lean.

Download the Book – Go Lean…Caribbean – Now!!!

Appendix – Regional Security System

(Retrieved 05/29/2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Security_System)

The Regional Security System (RSS) is an international agreement for the defence and security of the eastern Caribbean region. The Regional Security System was created out of a need for collective response to security threats, which were impacting on the stability of the region in the late 1970s and early 1980s. On 29 October 1982 four members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States—namely, Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines—signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Barbados to provide for “mutual assistance on request”. The signatories agreed to prepare contingency plans and assist one another, on request, in national emergencies, prevention of smuggling, search and rescue, immigration control, fishery protection, customs and excise control, maritime policing duties, protection of off-shore installations, pollution control, national and other disasters and threats to national security.^[1] Saint Kitts and Nevis joined following independence in 1983, and Grenada followed two years later after Operation Urgent Fury, a combined U.S. and RSS invasion of the country. The MOU was updated in 1992 and the system acquired juridical status on 5 March 1996 under the Treaty which was signed at St. Georges, Grenada.

The RSS initially started as a U.S. instrument to combat the spread of Communism in the Caribbean region.^[2][3] As of 2001, the RSS further cooperates with the CARICOM Regional Task Force on Crime and Security (CRTFCS).^[4]

In June 2010, United States and Caribbean regional officials resumed a plan for close cooperation established under the former Partnership for Prosperity and Security in the Caribbean (PPS) from the Clinton era.^[5] As part of the joint agreement the United States pledged assistance with the creation of an Eastern Caribbean Coast Guard unit among RSS countries.^[6] The Coast Guard unit will underpin the wider US-Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) which has deemed the RSS as “central to the CBSI’s success, given its reach across the Eastern Caribbean.”^[6]

Subsequently, Canada also pledged collaboration with the RSS bloc.^[7][8] to combat a threat of Central American criminal gangs from expanding into the English-speaking Caribbean region.^[9]

The current member nations are:

Antigua and Barbuda (since 1982)
Barbados (since 1982)
Dominica (since 1982)
Grenada (since 1985)
Saint Kitts and Nevis (since 1983)
Saint Lucia (since 1982)
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (since 1982)

Date	Operation name	Country	Reason
1983	Grenada Intervention	Grenada	Restore a government in Grenada
1989	Hugo	Antigua, Montserrat and Saint Kitts and Nevis	Assistance in aftermath of Hurricane Hugo
1990	Coup	Trinidad and Tobago	Aftermath of an attempted Coup d’état in Trinidad and Tobago
1994	Internal Security	Saint Kitts and Nevis	Prison riot
1995	Luis, Marilyn	Antigua and Saint Kitts and Nevis	Assistance in aftermath of Hurricane Luis and Hurricane Marilyn
1998	Georges	Saint Kitts and Nevis	Assistance in aftermath of Hurricane Georges
1998	Weedeater	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	Eradication of cannabis
2003	Bordelais	Saint Lucia	Transfer prisoners to new prison facility
2004	Ivan Relief Efforts	Grenada	Assistance in aftermath of Hurricane Ivan
2006	Glendairy	Barbados	Prison uprising
2009	Operation VINCYPAC	St Vincent and the Grenadines	Eradication of Cannabis
2010	Haiti	Haiti	Assistance in aftermath of the Haiti 2010 Earthquake

Sources References:

“APPROACHES ON SECURITY IN THE CARIBBEAN REGION: Statement by Ambassador Odeen Ishmael of Guyana at the Meeting of the Committee on Hemispheric Security of the OAS Washington DC, 29 October 2002”. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from: http://www.guyana.org/Speeches/ishmael_102902.html.
http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-3378.html
Lewis, Patsy (2002). Surviving Small Size: Regional Integration in Caribbean Mini-states. Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press. ISBN 976-640-116-0.
Regional Task Force, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS). Retrieved from: http://www.caricomimpacs.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=29
Singh, Rickey (13 June 2010). “A USA-CARIBBEAN ‘RENEWAL’?”. Guyana Chronicle. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
“CARIBBEAN SECURITY: United States to help upgrade Regional Security System”. Caribbean News Agency (CANA). Retrieved 17 September 2010 from: http://www.cananews.net/news/131/ARTICLE/48413/2010-04-17.html.
“Security important to Canada”. The Barbados Today. Retrieved 17 September 2010 from: http://news.barbadostoday.bb/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4431:Security-important-to-Canada&catid=1:latest-news.
“Canada to boost help to region”. Nation Newspaper. Retrieved 5 July 2010 from: http://www.nationnews.com/index.php/articles/view/canada-to-boost-help-to-region/.
H., J. (17 September 2010). “Region warned of displaced criminal elements”. The Barbados Advocate. Retrieved 17 September 2010 from: http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=local&NewsID=12798.

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Foreign Policy, Security, Terrorism, Trinidad, Venezuela

[Top]

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