‘Too Big To Fail’ – China’s Version

Go Lean Commentary

A New World Order is good!

A New World Order is bad!

Now with the global accountability, Bad Actors cannot hide; they are called into account quickly – they are named, blamed and shamed; (think of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of young girls in Africa).

That is good!

But with global interactions, any one contagion in one part of the world can easily and quickly affect the rest of the world. This is true of viruses; epidemics become pandemics – think of the currency of COVID-19. In addition to infectious diseases, the same consequence can happen with economic contagions.

… spread of an economic crisis from one market or region to another and can occur at both a domestic or international level. Contagion can occur because many of the same goods and services, especially labor and capital goods, can be used across many different markets and because virtually all markets are connected through monetary and financial systems. – Investopedia

This was the reality with the 2008 Great Recession crisis, and the Sovereign Debt crisis a decade ago …

… and it may be happening again now with a “Too Big To Fail” crisis in China. See the full news story & VIDEO here:

News Article – Title: China: What is Evergrande and is it too big to fail?
Sub-title: Global financial markets have been on high alert as cash-strapped Chinese property giant Evergrande faces several key tests in the coming days.

The world’s most indebted real estate developer is set to hit a series of deadlines for bond interest payments, totalling tens of millions of dollars.

As the company struggles to meet those payments, it has started to repay some investors in its wealth management business with property.

What does Evergrande do?

Businessman Hui Ka Yan founded Evergrande, formerly known as the Hengda Group, in 1996 in Guangzhou, southern China.

Evergrande Real Estate currently owns more than 1,300 projects in more than 280 cities across China.

The broader Evergrande Group now encompasses far more than just real estate development.

Its businesses range from wealth management, making electric cars and food and drink manufacturing. It even owns one of country’s biggest football teams – Guangzhou FC.

Mr Hui was once Asia’s richest person and, despite seeing his wealth plummet in recent months, has a personal fortune of more than $10bn (£7.3bn), according to Forbes.

Why is Evergrande in trouble?

Evergrande expanded aggressively to become one of China’s biggest companies by borrowing more than $300bn.

Last year, Beijing brought in new rules to control the amount owed by big real estate developers.

The new measures led Evergrande to offer its properties at major discounts to ensure money was coming in to keep the business afloat.

Now, it is struggling to meet the interest payments on its debts.

This uncertainty has seen Evergrande’s share price tumble by around 80% this year. Its bonds have also been downgraded by global credit ratings agencies.

Why would it matter if Evergrande collapses?

There are several reasons why Evergrande’s problems are serious.

Firstly, many people bought property from Evergrande even before building work began. They have paid deposits and could potentially lose that money if it goes bust.

There are also the companies that do business with Evergrande. Firms including construction and design firms and materials suppliers are at risk of incurring major losses, which could force them into bankruptcy.

The third is the potential impact on China’s financial system.

“The financial fallout would be far reaching. Evergrande reportedly owes money to around 171 domestic banks and 121 other financial firms,” the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Mattie Bekink told the BBC.

If Evergrande defaults, banks and other lenders may be forced to lend less.

This could lead to what is known as a credit crunch, when companies struggle to borrow money at affordable rates.

A credit crunch would be very bad news for the world’s second largest economy, because companies that can’t borrow find it difficult to grow, and in some cases are unable to continue operating.

This may also unnerve foreign investors, who could see China as a less attractive place to put their money.

Is Evergrande ‘too big to fail’?

The very serious potential fallout of such a heavily-indebted company collapsing has led some analysts to suggest that Beijing may step in to rescue it.

The EIU’s Mattie Bekink thinks so: “Rather than risk disrupting supply chains and enraging homeowners, we think the government will probably find a way to ensure Evergrande’s core business survives.”

Others though are not sure.

In a post on China’s chat app and social media platform WeChat, the influential editor-in-chief of state-backed Global Times newspaper Hu Xijin said Evergrande should not rely on a government bailout and instead needs to save itself.

This also chimes with Beijing’s aim to rein in corporate debt, which means that such a high profile bailout could be seen as setting a bad example.

Reporting by Peter Hoskins and Katie Silver

Source: BBC Business News – Retrieved September 29, 2021 from: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58579833
Related VIDEO:


Posted September 28, 2021 – What China’s Evergrande crisis means for the world.

This key excerpt from this foregoing news article laments a credit crunch:

This could lead to what is known as a credit crunch, when companies struggle to borrow money at affordable rates.

A credit crunch would be very bad news for the world’s second largest economy, because companies that can’t borrow find it difficult to grow, and in some cases are unable to continue operating.

We saw the world’s largest economy, the USA, deal with “A Too Big to Fail” crisis. We also saw the European Union deal with their crisis. Now we get to see China – the #2 largest economy  – deal with this issue.

What lessons do we learn?

How can we apply those lessons in the Caribbean?

As related previously, China subscribes to a more technocratic approach, rather than the Western model of yielding to the Crony-Capitalism influences for bail-outs; this was the conclusion of the foregoing news article:

… Beijing’s aim to rein in corporate debt, which means that such a high profile bailout could be seen as setting a bad example.

Consider our insights here; these 6 points extracted from previous blog-commentaries on Too Big To Fail contagions and a bad Debt culture:

1. Lessons Learned from 2008: Too Big to Fail –vs- Too Small to Thrive – September 18, 2018

“Too Big to Fail” was a Big Deal. This is more than just an academic discussion …. In 2008 the biggest impact of the global financial contagions was the dilution of net worth for the citizens of the affected countries: US, Canada and Western Europe. These economies are the primary source of Caribbean tourists; since tourism is the primary economic driver, this was a real problem for the pocketbooks of every individual and institution in the region.

The 2008 Great Recession / Financial Crisis exposed the trappings of the interconnected global economy. If we, in the Caribbean, are going to “play in this sandbox” – transact in this marketplace – then we must be prepared and On Guard, for the risks, threats and dangers.

2. Lessons Learned from 2008: Still Recovering – September 20, 2018

When policies are put in place that allow greedy people – bad actors – to continue unabated, bad things happen … to the bad actors and to society in general. This reality is something that stewards of every society must contend with. Every community is required to implement public safety provisions – at great expense. But the lesson is undisputed: whatever law enforcement costs, pales in comparison to lawlessness.

This actuality applies all the more so to economic crimes and misdeeds; this was definitely true with all the economic crimes leading up to the Great Recession of 2008 – lost of net worth estimated at $11 Trillion. And yet, the US is throwing out much of the wisdom gleaned after 2008. There is the trend now to undo a lot of the reforms that were implemented after the Financial Crisis – to de-fang the Dodd-Frank regulations. This is unwise! The regulations that were imposed are designed to mitigate the risk of subsequent economic meltdowns.

History does repeat itself. …

2008 was a giant mess for the US. We want to learn and apply lessons from their experiences. But truthfully, we have no power there. We have no vote and no voice to change them. We can only protect ourselves from their abusive activities; (the abuse to the American-self and the interconnected world). The bad trend of America stripping the new financial protections has begun – already after less than 10 years.

3. ‘Too Big To Fail’ – Caribbean Version – November 14, 2014

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 …

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.

4. Day of Reckoning for NINJA Loans – January 19, 2017

It is time for the Day of Reckoning for one of the players in the recent housing bubble and financial crisis, referred to as the Great Recession of 2008. Industry stakeholders had been “skimming of the public coffers for mortgage guarantees and giving unwise mortgages to people who had what was considered NINJA qualification:

  • NIncome
  • NJob or Assets

Such activities in the retail mortgage industry, plus bad practices in the wholesale lending, credit ratings and mortgage-back securities industries had congealed to form a “perfect storm” for disaster in the financial markets (Wall Street, et al) in the US and around the world.

Many innocent people lost fortune and faith in the American eco-system. There had to be an accounting of the “sins and sinister plots”; there had to be a Day of Reckoning. That day came for one Michigan-based (Detroit area) company, United Shore Financial Services. See the full story here …

5. Lessons from Iceland – Model of Recovery – September 23, 2015

There are so many lessons the Caribbean region can learn from the island Republic of Iceland. …

During the bad days of the Great Recession – at the precipice of disaster – the country deviated from other troubled regions …

    Iceland let its banks fail in 2008 because they proved too big to save.

How does it relate to the Caribbean? The Caribbean is at the precipice … now; many of the member-states are near Failed-State status, while others are still hoping to recover from the devastating Great Recession of 2008. Turn-around should not take this long – 7 years. Strategies, tactics and implementations of best-practices to effect a turn-around must be pursued now.

Iceland has now recovered, and complaining about a 2% unemployment rate. What did they do that was so radically different than other locations? For one, they changed course regarding economics, security and governing policies. An ultra-capitalist movement had taken hold of the country and business communities; they pursued an aggressive “boom-or-bust” strategy, that ultimately “busted”, rather than continue on that road, the country – all aspects of society – altered course and returned to a path of sound fundamentals.

They rebooted and turned-around! Iceland embraced all aspects of turn-around strategies, mandating bankruptcies and “wind-downs” so that the economy – and society in general – could start anew.

6. Beware of Vulture Capitalists – February 25, 2016

… just say “No” to debt!

Many bad things happen when people, institutions and countries depend on debt. A “slippery slope” can emerge … from dependence, to reliance, to requirement, to a “vital” status, to … debt slavery. Emancipation from debt slavery is not so easy, as many times its a voluntary slavery. The ransom to redeem from slavery is all about money, finance and/or economics. This is why the sage advice from a Subject Matter Expert in Economics is: The further one stays away from debt, the better!

It’s a lesson learned, as chronicled in the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, from Detroit; not only does debt impact the past, but the future as well. Debt can be so bad that at times the providers … and collectors of debt may be derisively called “vultures” …

This dire disposition of debt is not exclusive nor limited to Detroit. This applies to many other communities, in North America, Europe (think Greece), Latin America and even in the Caribbean.

Some may conclude: “this Evergrande Debt Crisis is a Chinese problem for China to deal with alone”. Right?

Such people may think that this drama ”is none of our business”.

Alas, we have learned so much about economic contagions to know that this can affect us … quickly. Plus, in the last decades, China has emerged as a global giant in trade and also a regional player in the Caribbean for foreign investment and infrastructure-building. We are in too deep! See this portrayal in this excerpt from a previous blog-commentary:

China’s Caribbean Playbook: America’s Script – September 2, 2015

China has invested heavily in the Caribbean, as of recent; see [this] list here of selected announcements …

Just what is China’s motive, their end game?

Should we be leery or should we just embrace [the badly needed] help from whatever sources?

How much of this questioning is influenced by a pro-American yearning? Pro-Christian yearning? Fear of strangers? Racist under-valuing of non-White/European races?

There is the need for the Caribbean to take stock of its thoughts-feelings-actions and give all of these questions serious deliberation.

If this Golden Rule is true: “he who has the gold makes the rules”, then we will be held to account to stakeholders in China, as their many state-own companies are definitely “bringing gold” to the table. …

[China’s] This focus on trade is very familiar.

This is the same playbook of the United States of America in building the world’s largest Single Market economy. (Remember, with the Army Corp of Engineers, the US built the Panama Canal, but with more strings attached). China is simply following the same American script – minus the cronyism and militarism – of promoting trade of their products, services and capital.

Capital? Yes, many of the projects highlighted in the foregoing news articles are being financed by China’s state-owned banks and lending institutions. They are “putting their money, where their mouth is”.

The possibility of an economic contagion originating out of China should scare us.

(We are still dealing with the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, which originated out of China).

So let’s pay more than the usual attention … about the news and developments of this Evergrande Debt crisis. This is our business too. We must look, listen, learn, lend-a-hand and lead our own stewardship for economic contagions in our Caribbean region.

Everyone in the Caribbean are urged to lean-in to this consideration to glean the insights, strategies, tactics and implementations of China in managing this Evergrande crisis.

We are not being asked to change China; no, we are being asked to change “us”. It is heavy-lifting to remediate and mitigate threats and protect our society; but this is what it takes to lead: to reform and transform our society. Yes, we can make our regional homeland a better place to live, work and play.

Let’s get started; let’s stay alert; let’s protect our homeland … 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xvi.  Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … 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.

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

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

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Why not share … ? – Encore

There is still flooding in certain parts of the US.

There is still drought in certain parts of the US.

These two regions are still not sharing. Why continue this problem … unabated?!

Perhaps it is denial

This was the contention in a previous blog-commentary in June 27, 2014 where we highlighted the actuality of Climate Change and urged our American counterparts to get ready; invest in infrastructure to share water resources. Now, a popular Comedian/Pundit is making the same urging, though more comically.

See the Host here on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher as he lambasted this lack of sharing. See this embedded VIDEO here:

VIDEO – New Rule: America’s Pipe Dream – Real Time with Bill Maherhttps://youtu.be/SAsExSNfNXQ

So why still no sharing?

Why are factions in this country (USA) continuing to deny the actuality of Climate Change? For one, the age-old standard may have a lot to do with the issue:

You break it; you buy it.

Acknowledging the problem comes with the responsibility to “do something” about it; to address it; fix it; mitigate it and prepare for it.

We raised these points in that previous June 27, 2014 blog-commentary; it is only apropos to Encore it again now.

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Go Lean CommentaryFloods in Minnesota, Drought in California – Why Not Share?

Millions across Minnesota are in the middle of a flooding disaster as a severe storm system moves over the central U.S.. See this VIDEO:

VIDEO – CBS News; posted June 23, 2014; retrieved June 27 from: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/minnesota-communities-face-weeks-of-flooding/
Title: Minnesota communities face weeks of flooding

(VIDEO plays best in Internet Explorer).

At the same time, California continues to endure serious drought conditions. Many feel, though not supported by the facts, that this may be the worst drought in California history. See the aligning VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Win Rosenfeld, NBC News; posted June 2, 2014; retrieved June 27 from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx7vFqU8iGY
Title: California’s Drought History | Debunker

So on the one hand, part of the United States is experiencing too much water and in other parts of the country, too little water. This is Climate Change 101. If only, there would be some equalizing between “the feast and the famine” with water.

This was the point/comment of one viewer of the CBS News Video:

Why are we not building a WATER PIPELINE from these flood prone areas to the parched West and South?!?!? If we can afford an OIL pipeline all the way to the southern gulf, we can definitely build a desperately needed pipeline for water! – By: uberengineer – June 24, 2014

This comment was spot on! According to the book Go Lean … Caribbean, pipelines can be strategic, tactical and operationally efficient. They can mitigate challenges of Mother Nature, create jobs and grow the economy at the same time.

The Go Lean book identifies that there are “agents-of-change” that our world have to now contend with. Proactively managing the cause-and-effect of these agents can yield great benefits and alleviate much suffering. The agents-of-change for the Caribbean are identified as follows:

Technology
Aging Diaspora
Climate Change
Globalization

If the suggestion of above commentator Uber Engineer is to be seriously considered in the US, this would fall under the scope of the US federal government as two states California and Minnesota are involved – neither state has jurisdiction over the other. Plus, the many states in between (Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah and Nevada) where a pipeline would traverse would also have to be factored into the equation. Under US law this approach is called an Interstate Compact. Uber Engineer is right! This pipeline strategy is already being deployed for oil in the US with the TransCanada Keystone [a] Pipeline project, running from southern Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico; (see route map in the photo).

The question is: who can contemplate such a solution for the Caribbean marketplace? The Go Lean book posits that Climate Change is wreaking havoc on Caribbean life as well and that Caribbean stakeholders must proactively consider the benefits of pipeline deployments in the region. This book purports that a new technology-enhanced industrial revolution is emerging, in which there is more efficiency gleaned from installing, monitoring and maintaining pipelines. Caribbean society must participate, not just spectate the developments in this revolution. This point is pronounced early in the book with this Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11 &14), with the opening and subsequent statements:

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

xxvi.       Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of … pipelines …

xxvii.     Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

This book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate society of the 30 Caribbean member-states. This agency will assume jurisdiction for the Caribbean Sea, the 1,063,000 square-mile international waters under the guise of an Exclusive Economic Zone. This approach allows for cooperation and equalization between the feast-and-famine conditions in the region. This is a real solution to real problems! In fact the CU/Go Lean roadmap has 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 to support these engines.

The Go Lean book details the economic principles and community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to forge Research & Development with pipelines and industrial growth in Caribbean communities:

Economic Principles – People Choose because Resources are Limited Page 21
Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs Page 21
Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth Page 21
Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Job   Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI) Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Anecdote – Pipeline Transport – Strategies, Tactics &   Implementations Page 43
Strategy – Vision – Confederating 30 Member-states in a Union Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Growing Economy – New High Multiplier Industries Page 68
Separation of Powers – Interstate   Commerce Administration Page 79
Separation of Powers – Interior Department – Exclusive Economic Zone Page 82
Implementation – Assemble – Pipeline as a Focused   Activity Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Benefits from the Exclusive Economic Zone Page 104
Implementation – Ways to Develop a Pipeline Industry Page 107
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Pipeline Projects Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract – Infrastructure Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Ways to Impact Public Works – Ideal for Pipelines Page 175
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Natural Resources – Water   Resources Page 183
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Extractions – Pipeline Strategy   Alignment Page 195
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Ways to Improve Monopolies – Foster   Cooperatives Page 202
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation – Pipeline Options Page 205
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Rural Living – Minimize Irrigation   Downsides Page 235
Appendix – Interstate Compacts Page 278
Appendix – Pipeline Maintenance Robots Page 283
Appendix – North Dakota Example – Oil Drilling Economic-Societal   Effects Page 334

Historically, pipelines are cheaper than alternative modes of transport for liquid materials like oil, natural gas and water. Plus the cost of water in all aspects of modern society is no longer negligible. Just conduct an acid test at a friendly neighborhood Gas Station; while a gallon of gas may be high, the equivalent pricing for cool drinking water is within the same range.

Water is only free in our society when it is raining; for all other times, there are costs associated with storage and distribution.

Thusly, the economic principles of pipelines are sound.

CU Blog - Floods in Minnesota, Drought in California - Why Not Share - Photo 2

Pipelines can be above ground, underground and/or underwater. (See Trans-Alaska Pipeline photo). There is a role for many schemes of pipeline deployments in the vision for the reboot of the Caribbean homeland. The roadmap Go Lean … Caribbean identifies pipelines as strategic, tactical and operationally mandatory for any chance at success in making the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix – Referenced Source:

a.     Keystone Pipeline (Retrieved June 27, 2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline):

The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the United States in Steele City, Nebraska; Wood River and Patoka, Illinois; and the Gulf Coast of Texas. In addition to the synthetic crude oil (syncrude) and diluted bitumen (dilbit) from the oil sands of Canada, it also carries light crude oil from the Williston Basin (Bakken) region in Montana and North Dakota.

CU Blog - Floods in Minnesota, Drought in California - Why Not Share - Photo 1Three phases of the project are in operation, and the fourth is awaiting U.S. government approval. Upon completion, the Keystone Pipeline System would consist of the completed 2,151-mile (3,462 km) Keystone Pipeline (Phases I and II), Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion (Phase III), and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline Project (Phase IV). Phase I, delivering oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Wood River, and Patoka, was completed in the summer of 2010. Phase II, the Keystone-Cushing extension, was completed in February 2011 with the pipeline from Steele City to storage and distribution facilities at Cushing, Oklahoma. These two phases have the capacity to deliver up to 590,000 barrels per day (94,000 m3/d) of oil into the Mid-West refineries. Phase III, the Gulf Coast Extension, which was opened in January 2014, has capacity up to 700,000 barrels per day (110,000 m3/d). The proposed Phase IV, would begin in Hardisty, Alberta, and extend to Steele City, essentially replacing the existing phase I pipeline.

The Keystone XL proposal faced criticism from environmentalists and some members of the United States Congress. In January 2012, President Barack Obama rejected the application amid protests about the pipeline’s impact on Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region. TransCanada Corporation changed the original proposed route of Keystone XL to minimize “disturbance of land, water resources and special areas”; the new route was approved by Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman in January 2013. On April 18, 2014 the Obama administration announced that the review of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline has been extended indefinitely, until at least after the November 4, 2014 mid-term United States elections.

 

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Juneteenth 2021 – Now it’s real – Encore

Hooray for progress!

President Biden signed a Bill on Thursday June 17, 2021 to make “Juneteenth” an official Federal holiday; it will be the Law of the Land

… effective immediately.

We were anticipating this … last year! We planned for it and advocated for the immediate adoption of the Juneteenth tradition to be recognized, accepted and celebrated by all Americans. See here, how relevant this is for the State of California – normally, a non-Slave State in history:

VIDEO – How California history fits into Juneteenth celebrations – https://youtu.be/ae3jZi6hO7M

Sacramento Bee
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration marking the end of slavery in the United States. It was originally celebrated June 19, 1865. Here’s what to know about the event, and where California fits in.

More from The Sacramento Bee:

So, it is only apropos to Encore our blog-commentary from last year (2020). See that post here/now:

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Go Lean CommentaryHappy Juneteenth

Happy Juneteenth!

It’s an American thing, yet you in the Caribbean will still understand, resonate and empathize with this sentiment. This is true, based on the historicity that “Happy Juneteenth” is actually Happy Emancipation Day.

Despite the different legal history, all of the New World have the same social demographic history: same previous reality of an enslaved population of African people.

Most of these New World countries and territories endured abolition of their slavery institutions and have some form of an Emancipation Day to commemorate the “Sea Change”. These dates were identified in a previous commentary  from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. See this excerpt here:

Chronology of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean Basin

First abolition Final abolition of slavery Date of independence
Haiti 1793 1804
Dominican Republic  1801 1822 1844
Costa Rica 1824 1821
El Salvador 1824 1821
Guatemala 1824 1821
Honduras 1824 1821
Mexico 1829 1810
British West Indies
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Cayman Islands
Dominica
Grenada
Guyana
Virgin Islands
Jamaica
Montserrat
Turks and Caicos Islands
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
St. Vincent and Grenadines
Trinidad and Tobago
1833-1838
1833-1834
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1834
1833-1838
1981
1973
1966
1978
1974
1962
1979
1979
1962
Nicaragua 1838 1821
Danish Virgin Islands
Saint John
Saint Thomas
Saint Croix
1846-1848
1846-1848
1846-1848
Swedish Antilles
Saint Barthelemy
1847
French Antilles
Guaealoupe
Guiana
Martinique
Saint Martín (French zone)
1794 1848
1848
1848
1848
Colombia 1814 1851 1810
Panama 1851 1903
Venezuela 1816 1854 1811
Netherlands Antilles
Aruba
Curacao
Bonaire
Saba
Saint Eustatius
Suriname
St. Martin (Netherlands zone)
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1975
United States 1863-1865 1776
Puerto Rico 1873
Cuba 1880-1886 1898

Source: Retrieved August 28, 2019 from: http://atlas-caraibe.certic.unicaen.fr/en/page-117.html

———–

Let’s dive deeper in the American experience. So what date actually signified the abolition of slavery in the US? In a different previous commentary, these key dates were presented:

The cruel, inhumane institution of slavery finally ended in the United States … on which date?

This was not meant to be a multiple choice! But rather, these answers demonstrate the continuous flow of racist oppression that had befallen the African-American experience, despite these identifiable dates ending the practices and legacy of America’s Original Sin.

Doubling-down on the Juneteenth details, let’s consider this encyclopedic reference:

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth;[2] also known as Freedom Day,[3] Jubilee Day,[4] and Liberation Day[5]) is an unofficial American holiday and an official Texas state holiday, celebrated annually on the 19th of June in the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free.[6] Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two and a half years earlier and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.[6]

A common misconception is that this day marks the end of slavery in the United States. Although this day marks the emancipation of all slaves in the Confederacy, the institution of slavery was still legal and existed in the Union border states after June 19, 1865.[7][8] Slavery in the United States did not officially end until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States on December 6, 1865, which abolished slavery entirely in all of the U.S. states and territories.[9]

Celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. It spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, it was eclipsed by the struggle for postwar civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African American freedom and arts.[10] By the 21st century, Juneteenth was celebrated in most major cities across the United States. Activists are campaigning for the United States Congress to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday. Juneteenth is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in 49 of the 50 U.S. states.

Modern observance is primarily in local celebrations. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing“, and reading of works by noted African-American writers such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou. Celebrations include rodeos, street fairscookoutsfamily reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, and Miss Juneteenth contests. The Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles, of CoahuilaMexico, also celebrate Juneteenth. – Wikipedia, retrieved June 19, 2020.

There is the need to reflect and remember the bad history of slavery and its abolition in the Americas.  There is also the need for a few other action verbs, all starting with  the letter “R”. Consider:

  • Reconcile
  • Repent

There is a lot of work to be done, in the US, throughout the Caribbean Basin, the New World and the whole world for that matter. Racial disharmony has been the world’s most troubling condition since the end of the Middle Ages. This was the consideration in many previous Encore productions. See these excerpts here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18421 Title: Refuse to Lose – Introducing Formal Reconciliations

The practice of U.S. cities eschewing Columbus Day – because of the bad history associated with the Spanish Explorer’s atrocities – to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day began in 1992”. [This is a form of] an informal reconciliation; it is time to pursue a formal reconciliation. (We have Indigenous People and oppressed people in the Caribbean too).

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18096 Title: 400 Years of Slavery – Emancipation Day: Hardly ‘Free At Last’

America was forged on the blatant hypocrisy of a legal premise that “All men are created equal”, and yet the African-American population was never treated equally, fairly or justly. In fact, by some analysis, America is still not equal-fair-just for African-Americans. In fact, just naming a street after Martin Luther King creates friction in American communities even today, 56 years after that iconic speech.

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18093 Title: 400 Years of Slavery – International Day of Rememberance

There is the need to reconcile the UGLY history of Slavery and the Slave Trade.

Reconciliation and remembrance are the motives of this series of blog-commentaries …. With a documented start date in America of August 23, 1619, today [(August 23, 2019)] marks 400 years exactly. [So] this August 2019 series focuses on this 400 Year History of Slavery – past, present and future.

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6022 Title: Music Role Model ‘Ya Tafari’ – Happy Emancipation Day

All of these [Bristish Commenwealth] countries memorialize the abolition of slavery in the British Empire on August 1, 1834 with a National Holiday on the First Monday of August. (This holiday is commonly referred to as August Monday). The focus of this commemoration is not slavery, but rather a celebration of Caribbean culture – accentuating the positive.

For those in the Caribbean Diaspora (US, Canada and the United Kingdom), the holiday does not go un-recognized … nor uncelebrated.

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695 Title: Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
How does a community repent, forgive and reconcile from such a bad legacy? Easier said than done!For starters, do not proceed as if the events never happened. This is the lesson now being learned in modern day Spain …There is a need to reconcile a lot of bad episodes in Caribbean history.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971 Title: A Lesson in History – Royal Charters: Truth & Consequence

An earlier Papal Bull that sealed the fate and would prejudice the African Diaspora for 500 years. The African Slave Trade and institution of “Slavery” was legally predicated on a Papal Bull from Pope Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cybo) in 1491; just months before Christopher Columbus’s historic first voyage.

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2222 Title: Sports Role Model – Playing For Pride … And More

The calendar of Black America includes several specific holidays. Juneteenth, celebrated every June 19, honors the day the Union Army liberated slaves in Texas following the end of the Civil War. Kwanzaa, beginning on Dec. 26, is a seven-day festival of African heritage. On Dec. 31, which is called watch night, churches hold worship services to commemorate the way their forebears had stayed up all night awaiting the issuance of the ­Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

We need the New World territories to do a better job of reconciling their bad racial history. This is the issue for America, yes, and for the Caribbean homeland too.

Should America make Juneteenth a National Holiday? See VIDEO here.

VIDEOJuneteenth recognized by more states, companies as a holidayhttps://abcn.ws/2YgZrXO

Posted June 19, 2020 – In the wake of the nationwide outcry over the killing of George Floyd, bipartisan calls have amplified to name Juneteenth — June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery — a federal holiday.

A group of Senate Democrats announced Friday that they would introduce the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, legislation to designate the day, and if passed, would make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Day was recognized in 1983.

While this is an American issue and outside our scope of the advocacy for Caribbean reformation, we do recommend such a focus for America to finally become a more just and equal society.

Will a Juneteenth commemoration accomplish that? Maybe not, but it’s a good move in the right direction. This country have had to contend with many atrocities to Black-and-Brown people. Just recently there have been a proliferation of protests and civil unrests due to an exhaustion of recent blatant incidences.

If advocates and activists are able to succeed with efforts for formal Juneteenth commemorations, then we recommend that they make festivities about more than just slavery. Rather it should be a celebration of African-American culture – as we attempt to do with our Caribbean Emancipation Celebrations, as related here-in.

But no doubt, all people need to remember, reflect, reconcile and repent for the bad racial history. And while our Caribbean activists may not be able to facilitate these action-verbs in the US, we can-must facilitate them here in the Caribbean.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap and to this advocacy to celebrate Juneteenth. This is how we can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

———–

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

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

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

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

———

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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St Patrick’s Day 2021 – Does It Really Matter? – ENCORE

Does St. Patrick’s Day matter to us here in the Caribbean?

Yes, it does!
Or … Yes it should!

You see, despite the fact this is a cultural and religious celebration – held every 17th day of March – commemorating the foremost patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick’s Day recognition is really a recognition of Irish people.

This is a BIG Deal

… not just to acknowledge the 6.5 million people on that island, but rather to acknowledge the 80 million people worldwide that herald some form of Irish heritage.

So to Ireland and Irish people the world over, we hereby declare:

We see you!

This was the declaration of a previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean. (We even have our own “Ireland of the Antilles”, a moniker for the Eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat). It is only apropos to Encore that previous submission from March 17, 2015 here-now:

===================

Go Lean Commentary – The ‘Luck of the Irish’ – Past, Present and Future

Today (March 17) is Saint Patrick’s Day. Why do people wear green?

It’s a move of solidarity for Irish people and culture.

This is a big deal considering the real history.

This subject also has relevance for the Caribbean as Saint Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in the British Caribbean Territory of Montserrat, in addition to the Republic of Ireland,[10] Northern Ireland,[11] and the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. While not a holiday elsewhere, this day is venerated by the Irish Diaspora around the world, especially in Great Britain, Canada, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. See a tribute here from an American job site:

Title: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Southfield, Michigan – We hope you are showing your Irish spirit by wearing green!

Here are 5 fun facts about St. Patrick’s Day:

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 2

1. Of course with St. Patrick’s Day comes the massive appearance of shamrocks. Shamrocks have definitely become a central symbol for this day. In the olden days in Ireland, the shamrock was seen as sacred. The four leaves of the clover represent faith, love, hope, and of course, luck.

2. Good luck finding a four-leaf clover. The odds of finding a four-leafer on your first try are 1 in 10,000.

3. St. Patrick’s Day was traditionally a dry holiday. Irish law between 1903 and 1970 made St. Patrick’s Day a religious holiday for the entire country, which meant pubs were closed for the day. Today, St. Patrick’s Day is arguably one of the largest drinking holidays with an estimated $245 million spent on beer for March 17.

4. Green or Blue? Though green is a very popular color on St. Patrick’s Day, the original color that was very popular and often related back to St. Patrick was not green, but blue. In Irish folklore, green is known as being worn by immortals, and often signified new life and crop growth.

5. The Irish flag. The flag representing Ireland is green, white and orange. The green symbolizes the people of the south, and orange, the people of the north. White represents the peace that brings them together as a nation.

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 5

Source: Credit Acceptance Internal Staff Intranet site; retrieved March 17, 2015.

This subject also provides a case study for the Caribbean, as the Irish Diaspora is one of the most pronounced in the world. This is the model of what we, in the Caribbean, do not want to become.

According to information retrieved from Wikipedia, since 1700 between 9 and 10 million people born in Ireland have emigrated, including those that went to Great Britain. This is more than the population of Ireland at its historical peak in the 1830s of 8.5 million. From 1830 to 1914, almost 5 million went to the United States alone.

After 1840, emigration from Ireland became a massive, relentless, and efficiently managed national enterprise.[1] In 1890 40% of Irish-born people were living abroad. By the 21st century, an estimated 80 million people worldwide claimed some Irish descent; which includes more than 36 million Americans who claim Irish as their primary ethnicity. [2]

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 1

The city of Chicago, Illinois dyes the river green in tribute for St. Patrick’s Day

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 4

The White House in full St. Patrick Day tribute mode

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 3

London; on the Thames River

The Diaspora, broadly interpreted, contains all those known to have Irish ancestors, i.e., over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland, which was about 6.4 million in 2011.

In July 2014, the Irish Government appointed Jimmy Deenihan as Minister of State for the Diaspora.[3]

Why this history?

In 1801 Ireland acceded to the United Kingdom (UK).

The Irish Parliament, charged with the heavy burden of directing Ireland’s destiny, was abolished in 1801 in the wake of the Republican United Irishmen Rebellion and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. Without the power to direct their own affairs, the island found itself victimized by fate and bad fortune.

The Great Famine of Ireland during the 1840s saw a significant number of people flee from the island to all over the world. Between 1841 and 1851 as a result of death and mass emigration (mainly to Great Britain and North America) Ireland’s population fell by over 2 million. In the western province of Connacht alone, the population fell by almost 30%.

The Go Lean … Caribbean book relates that this is also the current disposition of so many of the Caribbean Diaspora; (10 million abroad compared to 42 million in the region). These ones love their country and culture, but live abroad; they want conditions to be different (better) in their homelands to consider any repatriation. The book details where in Puerto Rico, their on-island population in 2010 was 3,725,789, but Puerto Ricans living abroad in the US mainland was 4,623,716; (Page 303).

In a previous blog/commentary, a review of a book highlighted some strong lessons from Ireland’s past that are illustrative for the Caribbean’s future. The book is by Professor Richard S. Grossman entitled: Wrong: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them. The following excerpt is extracted from the book review by the London School of Economics:

As an example, we can take a closer look at the chapter on the Irish Famine, (1 of the 9 lessons), which took place from 1845-1852. Grossman not only describes what happened, but puts it into the perspective of  other famines, starting from the BCE period. In terms of absolute numbers, the Great Hunger in Ireland was not the worst famine recorded but it did tragically lead to the death of twelve per cent of Irish population, forcing many others to emigrate. The author details how the potato – which originated in the Americas – arrived to a fertile Ireland, and that the poorest third of the Irish population consumed up to twelve pounds of potatoes per day (per capita). Only after this introduction the economic policy is mentioned. Grossman compares the responses of two Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom to the famine: Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell. Russell was so committed to the limited government intervention that he refused to buy food for the starving masses in order not to disturb the free formation of prices in the market. Similarly, he refused to increase the scale of public works that would give jobs to Irish workers so as not to disturb the free labour market. The paradox is that when the Great Famine occurred, Ireland was not a poor country. The Famine would not have been so ‘great’ if it were not for the free market ideology followed by the policymakers at that time. As it turns out, leaving things to the invisible hand of market is not always an optimal solution.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/governing engines of the 30 member Caribbean states. The quest is to provide a better direct stewardship, applying lessons-learned from case studies like Ireland in the 1800’s.

Ireland has fared better since those dire days of the potato famine, but still its people, the Diaspora, endured a lot of misery, resistance and discrimination in their foreign homes. As reported in this previous commentary, the usual path for new immigrants is one of eventual celebration, but only after a “long train of abuses”: rejection, anger, protest, bargaining, toleration and eventual acceptance. Wearing green today – or any other March 17th’s – is a statement of acceptance and celebration of the Irish; as a proud heritage for what they have endured and accomplished.

The island of Ireland today is comprised of 2 countries: the independent Republic of Ireland and the territory of Northern Ireland, a member-state in the United Kingdom, with England, Wales and Scotland; (last year Scotland conducted a referendum in consideration of seceding from the UK; the referendum failed).

The Republic of Ireland ranks among the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita.[11] After joining the European Union, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth. The country achieved considerable prosperity from 1995 to 2007, during which it became known as the Celtic Tiger. This was halted by an unprecedented financial crisis that began in 2008, in conjunction with the concurrent global economic crash.[12][13] Today, the primary source of tourism to Ireland – a primary economic driver – is from their Diaspora; see VIDEO in the Appendix below.

There are a lot of lessons in this issue for the Caribbean. Ireland did need better societal engines, economic-security-governance; this was accomplished with their assimilation into the EU. If only that option was available in the past.

This is the exact option being proposed now by the Go Lean roadmap, to emulate and model the successes of the European Union with the establishment of the Caribbean Union. It was not independence that brought success to Ireland, but rather interdependence with their neighboring countries “in the same boat”. This is the underlying theme behind the Go Lean movement, to “appoint new guards” to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. This Declaration of Interdependence is pronounced at the outset of the Go Lean book (Pages 11 & 13):

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

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.

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 Federation and of the member-states.

The Go Lean movement declares solidarity with the culture and the people of Ireland.

We too have endured a lot of misery in our foreign abodes. We would rather prosper where we were planted at home in our homeland, but due to economic, security and governing dysfunctions have had to emigrate.

The Go Lean book details a roadmap with turn-by-turn directions for transforming our homeland. The following is a sample of the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean region for this turnaround:

Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home Page 46
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy Page 67
Tactical – Separation of Powers Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean Page 118
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence – Interdependence Page 120
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – A Single Market in the G-20 Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image – Not as Unwanted Aliens Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the British Territories Page 245

The Go Lean book posits (Page 3) that the Caribbean islands are among the greatest addresses in the world. But instead of the world “beating a path” to these doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out; despite the absence of any famine, or war for that matter. This abandonment must stop … now!

May we learned from the history of Ireland in our quest to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. And may we have the luck of the Irish, as conveyed in this Classic Irish Blessing:

May you always have…
Walls for the winds
A roof for the rain
Tea beside the fire
Laughter to cheer you
Those you love near you
And all your heart might desire.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

——–

Appendix- VIDEO: Happy St Patrick’s Day from Discover Ireland – https://youtu.be/J680_aKF5zc

Uploaded on Mar 8, 2011 – This short film is an ode to Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day (which means we used a little bit of poetic licence!). Hope you all enjoy it. Happy St Patrick’s day!
http://www.discoverireland.com/

 

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“Black British” Reality Exposed – Encore

This has gotten heated…

Q: How dare Black People accuse British institutions of being racists. You can’t be serious?!?
A: Are you serious?! Just walk in our shoes!

This is a fitting summary of the global dialogue the last few days – after the bombshell March 7, 2021 interview on American TV with Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle. Yes, they went there and named, blamed and shamed Buckingham Palace of blatant racist thoughts, feelings, words and actions. See this portrayed in this short exchange here – this Twitter excerpt:

VIDEO – Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan vs Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamim –  https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1368831131764858881

————-

So Black people in Britain are NOT valued as equal citizens?!?! MMMmmmm?!?!

This assertion seems so familiar!

We had previously discussed the actuality of the Caribbean Diaspora who had fled to Great Britain. These ones had learned the harsh lessons that the “welcome mat” that were extended to their immigration did not include respect, hospitality, warmth nor love.  🙁

It is only apropos to Encore that April 21, 2017 commentary again here-now:

————-

Go Lean Commentary‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’

Truth be told, a Black person speaking with a British accent gets more respect than a Black person speaking with a Caribbean slang or a ‘Hip-hop’ /‘Jive’ dialect.

cu-blog-10-things-we-from-the-uk-photo-1It is what it is! Notice this portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO where many Afro-Caribbean citizens in Britain, seem to self-identify more as British than their Caribbean heritage;  (POINT 5).

Does this mean that the Black British person is better off on the world stage? Sadly no! The actuality of Blackness still means “Less Than“.

The problem is not the Blackness, but rather Whiteness, the proliferation of White Supremacy … throughout the world.

This is the assertion of the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, in consideration of reasons why the Diaspora should repatriate back to the Caribbean homeland and why the Caribbean youth should not even depart their homelands in the first place. This thesis was presented in a 9-part series, with these submissions:

  1. Time to Go: Spot-on for Protest
  2. Time to Go: No Respect for our Hair
  3. Time to Go: Logic of Senior Immigration
  4. Time to Go: Marginalizing Our Vote
  5. Time to Go: American Vices; Don’t Follow
  6. Time to Go: Public Schools for Black-and-Brown
  7. Stay Home! Remembering ‘High Noon’ and the Propensity for Bad American Societal Defects
  8. Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US
  9. Stay Home! Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure

All of these prior commentaries related to the disposition of the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States; now we take a look at England, Britain or the United Kingdom. There is a difference … supposedly.

“Britain has done a great job as painting itself as the humanitarian, with the US being the torturer. But that shit ain’t true.” – Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The purpose of this commentary – considering these source materials below – is to relate the following 5 strong points of contention; (these labels are shown throughout this commentary where applicable):

  • POINT 1 – The world is not fair, equal or just; and if you are of the Black-and-Brown races, the injustice is even more pronounced.
  • POINT 2 – Charity begins at home! There is a need to reform and transform society wherever you are. No one else will reform your homeland; you must!
  • POINT 3 – Leaving home, hurts home.
  • POINT 4 – The children of the Diaspora identify more with their current home, than their parent’s ancestral home.
  • POINT 5 – When the children do not want to identify with your land of heritage, it is Time to Go, to take them back home.

See this interview here relating Black British reality, with VICE News (UK Desk), the provocative media outlet that exposes the harsh realities of daily life in the Third World and the “First World”; (find more on VICE in Appendix A):

Title: We Spoke to the Activist Behind #BlackLivesMatter About Racism in Britain and America
By: Michael Segalov

… Patrisse Cullors is co-founder of Black Lives Matter — the movement and oft-trending hashtag. Based in LA ([Los Angeles]), she’s been on the front line at uprisings across the US in response to a wave of high-profile deaths of black people in police custody.

CU Blog - Black British and 'Less Than' - Photo 1

[While] on a speaking tour of the UK and Ireland, heading to communities, universities, and holding meetings in Parliament. VICE caught up with Patrisse on the train from Brighton to London in the midst of a hectic schedule. VICE chatted [with her] about how she’s spreading the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe, what’s happening in the States at the moment, and why that’s relevant to the UK.

VICE: Tell us about the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Patrisse Cullors:
 After George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin, back in July 2013, myself and two friends came up with the hashtag. My friend Alicia had written a love letter to folks, saying, “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

I put a hashtag in front—within days people were using it across the world. We’re talking about all black lives; we weren’t just talking about black men dying in the hands of the police. We’re talking about black women, black trans people, black queer people. We want to show that under the current system of white supremacy, anti-blackness has major consequences. Inside the US, and around the world, anti-black racism has global consequences. Black Lives Matter is a call to action—it’s a mantra, a testimony.

How did you end up at the heart of it?
I’ve been organizing since I was 16. I came out as queer, and was kicked out of home. Along with a bunch of other young queer women of color, we raised each other. We also dealt with poverty, being black and brown in the USA, and trying to figure out how to live our daily lives. My brother was incarcerated in LA county jails at 19, and he was almost killed by the sheriffs. They beat him. They tortured him and brutalized him. This was my awakening, seeing how far the state will go, and how they treat our families.

Most disturbing was the lack of support and absolute neglect that my brother and my family faced after he was brutalized. Part of my upbringing was a feeling of rage, but I also knew I could do something about it. With my mentors, and a civil rights organization, I learned my craft over 11 years. I focused on the school-to-prison pipeline [where young people go straight from school into the juvenile criminal justice system], environmental justice, and police violence.

You’ve been in the UK for a week, how has it been, and how does the situation here relate to the USA?

In theory the UK has a significant amount of structures to allow for accountability, of law enforcement in particular. That’s the theory. But in the US we don’t really have these structures to allow for accountability. There aren’t really independent investigators; its just very rare for prosecutions for law enforcement. And so, being here, I’ve realized, there are some systems in place that might actually be good for the US. It just seems those systems don’t work.

Then there are the similarities, the ways in which black people are treated—it’s outright racism. From Christopher Alder being brutalized on tape, hearing the officers calling him racist slurs, to the G4S guards who killed Jimmy Mubenga with racist texts on their phones. You have that same hatred, these white supremacist ideologies coming out of both of our countries. And here too, justice is not being served. We have Mike Brown, no justice. We have Eric Garner, no justice. Here we see the same: Mark Duggan, Sean Rigg. The list is vast.

Is this stuff talked about in the States, like how in the UK we’re aware over here about what’s going on in Ferguson?
Here’s the thing, black people in the US don’t know what’s happening here in the UK. I’m well read, well educated, and coming here and learning these stories I’m like, “Why don’t I know about this? Why haven’t we heard?” The US is very insular. The UK has an image of being better, a humane society in which there isn’t the same level of racism. But now I have a very different perspective that I’m going to take home and talk about. Britain has done a great job as painting itself as the humanitarian, with the US being the torturer. But that shit ain’t true.

Here in the UK there’ve been solidarity actions. People shut down the streets in London and Westfield shopping center too. What’s the impact of these things for people on the ground? Do you notice?
Yes, it was noticed. We’ve seen all the work folks are doing on the ground. From here, where you guys shut down Westfield, to Spain and Brazil. In Israel, African refugees are using the Black Lives Matter mantra to talk about law enforcement violence by the Israeli police. We see it, and we’re in awe. We wanted and needed it to go global.

Where is this going? What happens next?
There are 23 Black Lives Matter chapters right now, in the US, Canada, and Ghana. We need to uplift the local struggles across the country, as well as pushing for greater accountability for law enforcement.

We want legislation that will see divestment from law enforcement and investing in poor communities. We want to build a national project linking families who have been impacted by state violence, with a national database that looks at individual law enforcement officers and agencies. We also want to look at how to develop a system of independent investigation. We want to figure out a victim’s bill of rights, to counter the police bill of rights. Until then, we’re gonna shut shit down.
Source: VICE (UK) News; Posted February 2 2015; retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/patrisse-cullors-interview-michael-segalov-188?utm_source=vicetwitterus

See related VIDEO’s here on Britain’s Black History; (POINT 1 and POINT 4):

For Caribbean people, the world thinks of us as “Less Than”, whether we are in the Caribbean or in the Diaspora in the UK, Europe or North America. We take the “Less Than” brand with us wherever we go. This is a crisis! The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean seeks to use this crisis, to elevate the Caribbean brand …. globally.

Why is the Caribbean brand perceived as “Less Than”?

Yes, first there is the reality check of being Black-and-Brown in a White world. But also due to our own mis-management of our homeland. It is the greatest address on the planet, and yet our people beat down the doors to get out. Already we have lost 70 percent of our professional classes. So we send this subtle message to the world that “we would foul up the ground wherever we stand”; (POINT 1).

We – the Caribbean region as a collective – must do better; be better! We can reboot, reform and transform from this bad history and bad image; (POINT 2). How?

While easier said than done, this is the comprehensive action plan of the Go Lean book. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to optimize Caribbean society in the homeland – though there are many benefits to the Diaspora as well – through economic, security and governing optimizations. Therefore the 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 ensure public safety and protect the economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance – including empowerments for image promotion – to support these engines.

Reforming or transforming the UK, Britain or England is not within scope of the Go Lean/CU effort, notwithstanding the impact on our Diaspora there. But the subject of “Image” is inseparable from any discussion of elevating the Caribbean brand. So this commentary is on image, the facts and fiction of being a minority in a majority world or being an immigrant to a foreign country. This applies to any consideration of the Caribbean Diaspora in the British Isles, where their numbers have been reported between 4 and 5 percent of the population;  (POINT 4). Consider these encyclopedic details:

British African Caribbean (or Afro-Caribbean) people are residents of the United Kingdom who are of West Indian background and whose ancestors were primarily natives or indigenous to Africa. As immigration to the United Kingdom from Africa increased in the 1990s, the term has sometimes been used to include UK residents solely of African origin, or as a term to define all Black British residents, though the phrase “African and Caribbean” has more often been used to cover such a broader grouping. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents’ continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the United Kingdom.

CU Blog - Black British and 'Less Than' - Photo 2A majority of the African-Caribbean population in the UK is of Jamaican origin; other notable representation is from Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana (which although located on the South American mainland is culturally similar to the Caribbean and was historically considered to be part of the British West Indies), and Belize.

African-Caribbean people are present throughout the United Kingdom with by far the largest concentrations in London and Birmingham.[1]  Significant communities also exist in other population centres, notably Manchester, Bradford, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Slough, Leicester, Bristol, Gloucester, Leeds, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Liverpool and Cardiff. In these cities, the community is traditionally associated with a particular area, such as Brixton, Harlesden, Stonebridge, Dalston, Lewisham, Tottenham, Peckham in London, West Bowling and Heaton in Bradford, Chapeltown in Leeds,[2] St. Pauls in Bristol,[3] or Handsworth and Aston in Birmingham or Moss Side in Manchester. According to the 2011 census, the largest number of African-Caribbean people are found in Croydon, south London.
Source: Retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people

There are a number of insights to glean looking at the demographics of the Afro-Caribbean population in the UK. (See Appendix B below). All in all, the Afro-Caribbean populations in the UK prefer to identify themselves more as British than as Caribbean;  (POINT 4).

See this portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO below.

Despite the 60 years of futility, our Caribbean people continue to leave, abandoning our homeland; (POINT 3). This is bad; bad for the people and bad for the homeland. Our people “jump from the frying pan to the fire”:

  • Distress continues …
  • Oppression persists …
  • Image: “Less Than”!

This commentary asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than emigrating to foreign countries, like the UK. The reasons for the emigration in the first place have been identified as “push and pull”. “Push” refers to the societal defects in the Caribbean that drive people to move away (POINT 2); and “pull” factors refer to the impressions and perceptions that life abroad, as in England, is better. More details apply regarding these elusive “pull” factors:

  • The UK is NOT the #1 destination for the English-speaking Caribbean Diaspora, not anymore; that distinction is now towards the US. Today’s trending is for more and more new immigration to the US as opposed to the UK; Canada is Number 2.
  • While the “pull” factor had been compelling in the past, the decision-making of Caribbean emigrants – looking to flee – now needs a reality check! (POINT 1)
  • “Pull” is further exacerbated by the “push” factors; all of these  continue to imperil Caribbean life; we push our citizens out. Then the resultant effect is a brain drain and even more endangerment to our society: less skilled workers; less entrepreneurs; less law-abiding citizens; less capable public servants – we lose our best and leave the communities with the rest. This creates even more of a crisis; (POINT 2).

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the entire Caribbean is in crisis now (POINT 3); so many of our citizens have fled for refuge in the UK and other countries, but the refuge is a mirage. The “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. Life in the UK is not optimized for Caribbean people. It is easier to fix the Caribbean than to fix the British eco-system. For our Diaspora there: it is Time to Go! For our populations in the Caribbean, looking to depart: Stay! Our people can more easily prosper where planted in the Caribbean … with the identified mitigations and remediation here-in.

The Go Lean book posits that Caribbean stakeholders made many flawed decisions in the past, both individually and community-wise;  (POINT 2). But now, the Go Lean/CU roadmap is new (and improved). This is a vision of the CU as a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of championing better nation-building policies,  to reboot the region’s economic-security-governing engines. For one, there is the structure of a separation-of-powers between CU agencies and the individual member-states. So there are “two pies”, so citizens get to benefit from both their member-states’ efforts and that of the CU Trade Federation.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to reform the society as a whole. This roadmap admits that because the Caribbean is in crisis, this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”. As a planning tool, the roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the approach of regional integration (Page 10 – 14) as a viable solution to elevate the regional engines:

Preamble: And while our rights to exercise good governance and promote a more perfect society are the natural assumptions among the powers of the earth, no one other than ourselves can be held accountable for our failure to succeed if we do not try to promote the opportunities that a democratic society fosters.
As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny.

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.

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

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

The Go Lean book details the community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the eco-systems in the Caribbean region.

The book provides these recommendations in regards to the dynamics of Diaspora living:

  • Encourage the Caribbean Diaspora to repatriate back to their ancestral homeland – (10 Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean – Page 118).
  • Dissuade the high emigration rates of Caribbean citizens to foreign stories – (10 Ways to Make the Caribbean Better – Page 131).

These subjects (Repatriation and Diaspora) have been frequently commented on in other Go Lean blogs  (POINT 4); as sampled here with these entries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11244 ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ or London …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9485 10 Things We Don’t Want from the UK
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099 Caribbean Image: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151 The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683 British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’

The book also relates the significance of image/brand management, as with this advocacy: “10 Ways to Better Manage Image” (Page 133):

The Bottom Line on Martin, Malcolm, Mandela, Muhammad and Marley
The majority of the Caribbean population descends from an African ancestry – a legacy of slavery from previous centuries. Despite the differences in nationality, culture and language, the image of the African Diaspora is all linked hand-in-hand. And thus, when Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley impacted the world with their contributions, the reverberations were felt globally, not just in their homelands. It is hard for one segment of the black world to advance when other segments have a negative global image. This is exemplified with the election of Barack Obama as US President; his election was viewed as an ascent for the entire Black race.

Overall, we must elevate the Caribbean brand. There are active movements now to accentuate the  image/brand; consider:

Proclaim ‘International Caribbean Day’

The African Renaissance Monument

Declared “Best in the World”

Accentuate Caribbean Image Tied to the Dreadlocks Hairstyles

Underlying to the Go Lean/CU prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland better, to reform and transform our society. If we can do this, we will dissuade the high emigration rate for our young people. But saying that it is “Time to Go“, must mean that we are ready to receive our Caribbean Diaspora from London and other British cities. Are we?

We are not! But this Go Lean roadmap gets us started. This is the intent of the book Go Lean … Caribbean.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap asserts that Britain should not be presented as the panacea for Caribbean ills – we must reform and transform our own society. While Britain or the UK does some things well, that country does not always act justly towards Black-and-Brown people of Caribbean descent;  (POINT 5). We must do this ourselves (POINT 2); our region needs the empowerments here-in (jobs, economic growth and brand/image enhancement).

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is the roadmap to elevate the Caribbean; to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

———–

Appendix A – Vice News

Vice News (stylized as VICE News) is Vice Media, Inc.‘s current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of “under-reported stories”.[1] Vice News was created in December 2013 and is based in New York City, though it has bureaus worldwide.

Background
In December 2013, Vice Media expanded its international news division into an independent division dedicated to news exclusively and created Vice News. Vice Media put $50 million into its news division, setting up 34 bureaus worldwide and drawing praise for its in-depth coverage of international news.[2] Vice News has primarily targeted a younger audience comprised predominantly of millennials, the same audience to which its parent company appeals.[3]

History
Before Vice News was founded, Vice published news documentaries and news reports from around the world through its YouTube channel alongside other programs. Vice had reported on events such as crime in Venezuela, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, protests in Turkey, the North Korean regime, and the Syrian Civil War through their own YouTube channel and website. After the creation of Vice News as a separate division, its reporting greatly increased with worldwide coverage starting immediately with videos published on YouTube and articles on its website daily.[5]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_News

———–

Appendix B – British Afro-Caribbean Demographics

Based on a variety of official sources and extrapolating from figures for England alone, the estimates for the number of people in Britain born in the West Indies grew from 15,000 in 1951, to 172,000 in 1961 and 304,000 in 1971, and then fell slightly to 295,000 in 1981. The estimates for the population of ethnic West Indian in 1981 were between 500,000 and 550,000.[26]

In the UK Census of 2001, 565,876 people classified themselves in the category ‘Black Caribbean’, amounting to around 1 percent of the total population.[38] Of the “minority ethnic” population, which amounted to 7.9 percent of the total UK population, Black Caribbean people accounted for 12.2 percent.[38] In addition, 14.6 percent of the minority ethnic population (equivalent to 1.2 per cent of the total population) identified as mixed race, of whom around one third stated that they were of mixed Black Caribbean and White descent.[38]

In the latest, the 2011 Census of England and Wales, 594,825 individuals specified their ethnicity as “Caribbean” under the “Black/African/Caribbean/Black British” heading, and 426,715 as “White and Black Caribbean” under the “Mixed/multiple ethnic group” heading.[35] In Scotland, 3,430 people classified themselves as “Caribbean, Caribbean Scottish or Caribbean British” and 730 as “Other Caribbean or Black” under the broader “Caribbean or Black” heading.[36] In Northern Ireland, 372 people specified their ethnicity as “Caribbean”.[37] The published results for the “Mixed” category are not broken down into sub-categories for Scotland and Northern Ireland as they are for England and Wales.[36][37] The greatest concentration of Black Caribbean people is found in London, where 344,597 residents classified themselves as Black Caribbean in the 2011 Census, accounting for 4.2 per cent of the city’s population.[35]

The UK Census records respondents’ countries of birth and the 2001 Census recorded 146,401 people born in Jamaica, 21,601 from Barbados, 21,283 from Trinidad and Tobago, 20,872 from Guyana, 9,783 from Grenada, 8,265 from Saint Lucia, 7,983 from Montserrat, 7,091 from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 6,739 from Dominica, 6,519 from Saint Kitts and Nevis, 3,891 from Antigua and Barbuda and 498 from Anguilla.[39]

Detailed country-of-birth data from the 2011 Census is published separately for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England and Wales, 160,095 residents reported their country of birth as Jamaica, 22,872 Trinidad and Tobago, 18,672 Barbados, 9,274 Grenada, 9,096 St Lucia, 7,390 St Vincent and the Grenadines, 7,270 Montserrat, 6,359 Dominica, 5,629 St Kitts and Nevis, 3,697 Antigua and Barbuda, 2,355 Cuba, 1,812 The Bahamas and 1,303 Dominican Republic. 8,301 people reported being born elsewhere in the Caribbean, bringing the total Caribbean-born population of England and Wales to 264,125. Of this number, 262,092 were resident in England and 2,033 in Wales.[40] In Scotland, 2,054 Caribbean-born residents were recorded,[41] and in Northern Ireland 314.[42]Guyana is categorised as part of South America in the Census results, which show that 21,417 residents of England and Wales, 350 of Scotland and 56 of Northern Ireland were born in Guyana. Belize is categorised as part of Central America. 1,252 people born in Belize were recorded living in England and Wales, 79 in Scotland and 22 in Northern Ireland.[41][42][40]
Source: Retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#Demography

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Appendix VIDEO – Do you call yourself Black British? – https://youtu.be/i3dgzdsAZug

Published on Oct 21, 2016

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Women’s Day – Today and Everyday – Helping Them Change the World – Encore


Today – March 8 – is International Women’s Day.

Today, the International community – i.e. the United Nations – and societal stewards have set aside this day to recognize the fine contributions that women make to society.

This is completely unnecessary! When is International Men’s Day?!

Women have been contributing to society from the beginning, ancient times and modern ones. Yet, the formal Orthodoxy in the world – religion and politics – many times ignore the role of women.

The problem there is with the Orthodoxy, not the women. Women has been forging change, fighting against Bad Orthodoxy for a good while now. To that we say:

Go Girl Go!

We need the women in our society – the current ones and more – to keep on fighting against the many facets of Bad Orthodoxy; they have succeeded in the past … and we need them to succeed again.

This assertion seems so familiar!

We had previously discussed the actuality of Women fighting for change in a previous blog-commentary from April 14, 2018. It is only apropos to Encore that commentary again here-now:

————

Go Lean CommentaryNature or Nurture: Women Have Nurtured Change

Here is valuable advice to young people … hoping to partner with a soul-mate:

Take time to know him/her … give it a full cycle of seasons: Summer and Winter.

There is the person’s Nature and also their Nurture-ing that must be taken to account:

Nature – Genetics determine behavior; personality traits and abilities are in “nature”

Nurture – Environment, upbringing and life experiences determine behavior. Humans are “nurtured” to behave in certain ways.

So prospective marriage mates need to ascertain the Nature and Nurture of a potential partner.

If the potential mate does not measure up, my advice: do not bond, take your leave. Just do so BEFORE the wedding rehearsal – i.e. Runaway Brides – do not abandon all the stakeholders high-and-dry (“at the altar”), after they may have invested in catering, banquet halls, clothes, travel, etc.. Such a failure would just be pathetic!

This advice applies to individuals, yes, but not so much for communities, or societies. For the group dynamic, we simply have no choice; we must work to transform the attitudes, traits and practices in a community. The book Go Lean…Caribbean identified this subject as “community ethos”, with this definition:

… the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. – Page 20

If/When the community ethos is unbecoming for a society, citizens do not bond; they abandon! This is so pathetic, as the community too may have invested hugely in the individuals – think education, scholarships and student loans. The community is “left at the altar“.

But change is possible! Communities have forged change and been transformed .. in the past, in the present and I guarantee future communities will also forge change.

How is this possible? How to Nurture change despite “bad” Nature? Let’s consider a sample-example from the history of the UK; this is actually the history of the Caribbean as well, as it features the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire in the year 1833 – the date that the measure passed the British Parliament.

There were a lot of advocates and activists that led the fight against … first the Slave Trade and then eventually the institution of Slavery itself; think William Wilberforce and Charles Spurgeon who argued for the abolition of slavery and advocated for women to have rights equal to that of men. Slavery and Women’s Rights became locked-in-step – see Appendix VIDEO. So a lot of the Nurturing for the abolition advocacy came from women of the British Empire. See this portrayed in the article here:

Title: Ending Slavery

For much of the 18th century few European or American people questioned slavery. Gradually on both sides of the Atlantic a few enlightened individuals, some of them Quakers, began to oppose it.

From the 1760s activists in London challenged the morality and legality of the slave trade. They included former slaves, like Olaudah Equiano and the abolitionist campaigners Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce.

Women who opposed slavery took the lead in boycotts of slave-grown produce, particularly sugar. Slavery abolitionists used badges and iconic images to publicise their views, like the sugar bowl above made by Wedgewood. Enormous petitions opposing the slave trade were delivered to the House of Commons.

Women Against Slavery

It is only relatively recently that historians have explored the activities of women abolitionists. When looking at local provincial sources, autobiographies, historical objects and sites it becomes clear that women played a significant and, at times, pivotal role in the campaign to abolish slavery.

These women came from a range of backgrounds. The tactics they used – boycotting slave-produced sugar and other goods, organising mass petitions and addressing public meetings – proved highly effective.

Hannah Moore

Hannah Moore (from 1745 to 1833) was an educator, writer and social reformer. Born in Bristol, she was strongly opposed to slavery throughout her life. She encouraged women to join the anti-slavery movement.

In 1787 she met John Newton and members of the Clapham Sect, including William Wilberforce with whom she formed a strong and lasting friendship. Moore was an active member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Her writings reflected her opposition to slavery and “Slavery, a Poem” which she published in 1788 is regarded as one of the most important slavery poems of the period.

Ill health prevented Moore from taking an active role in the 1807 campaign to end the slave trade but she continued to write to Wilberforce and other campaigners.

She lived just long enough to see the act abolishing slavery passed. She died in September 1833 and is buried with her sisters in the south-east corner of All Saints’ Churchyard, Station Road, Wrington, Bristol, BS40.

Mary Prince

Mary Prince (from 1788 to around 1833) was the first black woman to publish her account of being an enslaved woman. She was born in Bermuda in 1788 and endured a life of violence and abuse through a succession of slave-owners.

Her owners, the Woods, brought Mary to England. To escape their cruelty she ran away to the Moravian Church in London’s Hatton Gardens. Members of the Anti-Slavery Society took up her case and they encouraged her to write her life story.

Published in 1831 as “The History of Mary Prince”, this extraordinary story describing ill treatment and survival was a rallying cry for emancipation. The book provoked two libel actions and had three editions in its year of publication.

In 2007 Camden Council and the Nubian Jak Community Trust placed a plaque near to the site where she lived at Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (from 1806 to 1861) is commemorated with two plaques in Marylebone, London. A brown Society of Arts plaque is at the site of her former home at 50 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8SQ. There is a bronze plaque at 99, Gloucester Road, London W1U 6JG.

Barrett Browning’s father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett (from 1785 to 1857), inherited 10,000 acres of sugar plantations in Jamaica, with an annual income of £50,000. Her maternal grandfather John Graham-Clarke (from 1736 to 1818) was a Newcastle merchant who owned sugar plantations, trading ships and many more businesses associated with slavery. At his death his assets were equivalent to around £20 million today.

Barrett Browning was aware of the source of her family’s wealth:

  • I belong to a family of West Indian slave-owners and if I believe in curses, I should be afraid. – Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to John Ruskin in 1855.

In 1849 she published an anti-slavery poem “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point”. It portrayed a slave woman cursing her oppressor after she had been whipped, raped and impregnated.

Elizabeth Jesser Reid

A social reformer and philanthropist, Elizabeth Jesser Reid (from 1789 to 1866) is best known for founding Bedford College for Women in London in 1849. The College is now part of Royal Holloway, University of London.

Jesser Reid was also an anti-slavery activist and she attended the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 and was a member of the Garrisonian London Emancipation Committee. A green plaque has been placed at her former home, 48 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DR to commemorate Reid and the first site of the college.

While living at 48 Bedford Square, Reid entertained Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853. She also shared her house with the African American abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond whilst she studied at the College between 1859 and 1861.

Sarah Parker Remond

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Sarah Parker Remond (from 1826 to 1894) came from a family that was deeply involved in the abolitionist campaign in the United States. Her brother Charles Lenox Remond was the first black lecturer in the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Parker Remond was such an impressive speaker and fund-raiser for the abolitionist movement that she was invited to take the anti-slavery message to Britain. Soon after arriving here in 1859 she embarked upon a nationwide lecture tour. In 1866 she left London to study medicine in Italy. She practised as a doctor in Florence, where she settled.

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Related Posts

Listen to our podcasts about women’s involvement in the abolition movement:

Source: Retrieved April 13, 2018 from: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-trade-and-abolition/sites-of-memory/ending-slavery/

Women applied pressure to all aspects of society – the engines of economics, security and governance – for the end of the Slave Trade; then they continued the pressure for the Abolition of Slavery itself. The Nurturing worked! It was not immediate, but eventual and evolutionary:

  • They impacted the economic cycles – boycotts & embargos. See the notes on the Anti-Saccharrittes in Appendix A.
  • They compelled the Security engines – The Royal Navy was engaged to enforce the ban on the Slave Trade after 1807. (Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans.[5]) See Appendix B below.
  • They engaged the related governance by entreating the political supporters, every year, to introduce and re-introduce the Abolition Bill.

Though the abolition of Slavery went against the Nature of the New World, these women and their Nurturing did not stop.  They persisted! This commentary concludes the 4-part series on Nature or Nurture for community ethos. This entry is 4 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of the Nurturing by the mothers (women) of England who finally forge change in the British Empire.. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Nature or Nurture: Black Marchers see gun violence differently
  2. Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings – Embedded in America’s DNA; Whites Yawn
  3. Nature or Nurture: UK City of Bristol still paying off Slavery Debt
  4. Nature or Nurture: Nurturing came from women to impact Abolition of Slavery

In the first submission to this series, the history of the Psychological battle between Nature and Nurture was introduced, which quoted:

One of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology is the Nature vs Nurture debate. Each of these sides have good points that it’s really hard to decide whether a person’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or a majority of it is influenced by this life experiences and his environment. – https://explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards – including empowered women – for a new Caribbean can assuage societal defects despite the default Nature. Here-in, this example from England is a great role model for the Caribbean region. We too, need our women!

How about the Caribbean today? What bad Nature can women help to Nurture out of Caribbean society?

There are many!

The Lord giveth the word: The women that publish the tidings are a great host. – Psalms 68:11 American Standard Version

Our region is riddled with societal defects. In fact, the subject of societal defects is a familiar theme for this commentary, from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book asserts that the British colonial masters for the Caribbean – 18 of the 30 member-states share this legacy – did not endow this region with the organizational dynamics (attitudes or structures) that would lead to societal success. The former slave populations became the majority in all these lands; when majority rule was compelled on the New World – post-World War II restructuring – the people were not ready. Looking at the dispositions in the region today, these are nearing Failed-State status – it is that bad!

The theme of Failing States has been detailed in previous blog-commentaries by the movement behind the Go Lean book. Consider this sample previous blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13749 Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Region’s Organizations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746 Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744 Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391 After Maria, Puerto Rico Failed-State: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996 After Irma, Many Caribbean Failed-States: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12098 Inaction: A Recipe for ‘Failed-State’ Status
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10657 Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547 Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure

There is the need for the Caribbean member-states to reform and transform. We have some bad community ethos; we need “all hands on deck” to mitigate and remediate them. The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all 30 member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for effecting change in our society:

  • 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 same as the British Empire needed a “large host” of women to Nurture societal values, priorities, practices and laws to supplant the bad Nature of the British Slave economy, a “large host” of women will be needed to forge change in the British Caribbean and the full Caribbean – American, Dutch, French and Spanish legacies. This subject too, has been a consistent theme from the movement behind the Go Lean book. Consider this sample from these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14541 One Woman Made a Difference – Role Model: Viola Desmond
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14482 International Women’s Day – Protecting Rural Women
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13063 Getting Gender Equity without a ‘Battle of the Sexes’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12035 Lean-in for ‘Wonder Woman Day’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10124 The ‘Hidden Figures’ of Women Building-up Society – Art Imitating Life
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8306 Women Get Ready for New “Lean-In” Campaign
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6937 Women in Politics – Yes, They Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6836 Role Model – #FatGirlsCan
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5648 One Woman – Taylor Swift – Changing Streaming Music Industry
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490 One Woman Entrepreneur Rallied and Change Her Whole Community

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to Nurture a better Caribbean society. It details the new community ethos that needs to be adopted so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society – economics, security and governance. We want the women to help empower Caribbean society and so we want to empower women. In fact, the book (Page 226) details the bad community ethos that permeated the “Imperial” world during the times of Caribbean colonization. The advocacy entitled 10 Ways to Empower Women presented this encyclopedic reference on the Natural Law philosophy as follows:

The Bottom Line on Natural Law and Women’s Rights

17th century natural law philosophers in Britain and America, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, developed the theory of natural rights in reference to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and the Christian theologist Aquinas. Like the ancient philosophers, 17th century natural law philosophers defended slavery and an inferior status of women in law.

Relying on ancient Greek philosophers, natural law philosophers argued that natural rights where not derived from god, but were “universal, self-evident, and intuitive”, a law that could be found in nature. They believed that natural rights were self-evident to “civilized man” who lives “in the highest form of society”. Natural rights derived from human nature, a concept first established by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium in Concerning Human Nature.

Zenon argued that each rational and civilized male Greek citizen had a “divine spark” or “soul” within him that existed independent of the body. Zeno founded the Stoic philosophy and the idea of a human nature was adopted by other Greek philosophers, and later natural law philosophers and western humanists. Aristotle developed the widely adopted idea of rationality, arguing that man was a “rational animal” and as such a natural power of reason.

Concepts of human nature in ancient Greece depended on gender, ethnic, and other qualifications and 17th century natural law philosophers came to regard women along with children, slaves and non-whites, as neither “rational” nor “civilized”. Natural law philosophers claimed the inferior status of women was “common sense” and a matter of “nature”. They believed that women could not be treated as equal due to their “inner nature”. The views of 17th century natural law philosophers were opposed in the 18th and 19th century by Evangelical natural theology philosophers such as William Wilberforce and Charles Spurgeon, who argued for the abolition of slavery and advocated for women to have rights equal to that of men. Modern natural law theorists, and advocates of natural rights, claimed that all people have a human nature, regardless of gender, ethnicity or other qualifications; therefore all people have natural rights.

These thoughts on Natural Law and Women’s Rights persist to this day, despite how archaic they may seem.

This flawed Natural Law philosophy accounts for the Nature of the Caribbean – this was inherited from the Imperial Europe (1600’s) – and never fully uprooted. This was the heavy-lifting that the foregoing women helped to Nurture out of Europe, and what we need continued help for today’s women to uproot.

In addition to the ethos discussion, the book presents the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute change in the Caribbean region. This is how to Nurture a bad community (ethos) into a good community (ethos).

Yes, we can elevate our societal engines. We can do more than just study impactful women from the past, we can foster our own brand of impactful women. We need them!

We need all hands on deck to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix A – Anti-Saccharrittes … in England


In 1791, … the abolitionist William Fox published his anti-sugar pamphlet, which called for a boycott of sugar grown by slaves working in inhuman conditions in the British-governed West Indies. “In every pound of sugar used, we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh,” wrote Fox. So powerful was his appeal that close to 400,000 Britons gave up sugar.

The sugar boycott squarely affected that most beloved of English rituals: afternoon tea. As The Salt [Magazine] has reported, sugar was an integral reason why tea became an engrained habit of the British in the 1700s. But with the sugar boycott, offering or not offering sugar with tea became a highly political act.

Soon, grocers stopped selling West Indies sugar and began to sell “East Indies sugar” from India. Those who bought this sugar were careful to broadcast their virtue by serving it in bowls imprinted with the words “not made by slave labor,” in much the same way that coffee today is advertised as fair-trade, or eggs as free-range.

Source: Posted August 4, 2015; retrieved April 14, 2018 from: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/04/429363868/how-percy-shelley-stirred-his-politics-into-his-tea-cup

————

Appendix B – Rare ‘slave freeing’ photos on show

A set of rare photographs showing African slaves being freed by the Royal Navy have gone on show for the first time. They are part of an exhibition marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.

A set of rare photographs showing African slaves being freed by the Royal Navy have gone on show for the first time.
Published April 28, 2007.
The photographs, on display at the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Hants, show a sailor removing the manacle from a newly-freed slave as well as the ship’s marines escorting captured slavers.

———-

East African slaves aboard the HMS Daphne, a British Royal Navy vessel involved in anti-slave trade activities in the Indian Ocean,

Samuel Chidwick, 74, has donated the photographs taken by his father Able Seaman Joseph Chidwick, born in 1881, on board HMS Sphinx off the East African coast in about 1907.

The photographs, on display at the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Hants, show a sailor removing the manacle from a newly-freed slave as well as the ship’s marines escorting captured slavers.

Mr Chidwick, of Dover, Kent, said: “The pictures were taken by my father who was serving aboard HMS Sphinx while on armed patrol off the Zanzibar and Mozambique coast.

“They caught quite a few slavers and those particular slaves that are in the pictures happened while he was on watch. “That night a dhow sailed by and the slaves were all chained together. He raised the alarm and they got them on to the ship and got the chains knocked off them.

“They then questioned them and sent a party of marines ashore to try to track the slave traders down.

“They caught two of them and I believe they were of Arabic origin.

“My father thought the slave trade was a despicable thing that was going on, the slaves were treated very badly so when they got the slavers they didn’t give them a very nice time.”

Jacquie Shaw, spokeswoman for the Royal Naval Museum, said: “The museum and the Royal Navy are delighted to announce the donation of a nationally important collection of unique photographs taken by Able Seaman Joseph John Chidwick during his service on the Persian Gulf Station where the crew of HMS Sphinx were engaged in subduing the slave trade.

“The collection comprises a fascinating and important snapshot of life on anti-slavery duties off the coast of Africa.”

The exhibition, ‘Chasing Freedom -The Royal Navy and the suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, is being held until January next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

The House of Commons passed a bill in 1805 making it unlawful for any British subject to capture and transport slaves but the measure was blocked by the House of Lords and did not come into force until March 25, 1807.

Mrs Shaw said that since the exhibition opened, members of the public had brought forward several historically-important items. She said: “As well as these amazing images, members of the public have brought many other unheard stories of the Royal Navy and the trade in enslaved Africans to the museum’s attention including the original ship’s log of the famed HMS Black Joke of the West Coast of Africa Station.”

Source: Posted 29 Apr 2007; retrieved April 14, 2018 from: http://metro.co.uk/2007/04/29/rare-slave-freeing-photos-on-show-331626/

————

Appendix C VIDEO – Abolition to Suffrage – https://youtu.be/WbLVp27cqZ8

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Zero Sum: Fixing Inequality with Offense and Defense

Go Lean Commentary

Enquiring minds want to know:

How do “we” fix Inequality?

After a long period of study – observing-and-reporting on the American societal defects – we find that we have to use Offense and Defense.

Yes, this is strenuous heavy-lifting …

… if “Inequality” was a candle that we needed to consume, then we would have to burn it at both ends. Our discussion on “Inequality” obviously refers to Income Inequality, yes but also other inequalities like:

  • Racial
  • Gender
  • Trade
  • Geographic Locations – Urban / Rural – and others

While observing-and-reporting on the America eco-system, we notice that racism was not the only societal defect  that the Caribbean needs to be concerned about. That country is equally infested with Crony-Capitalism, an exploitation of the Public Trust for private gain; (there are so many examples, i.e. Big Pharma, Big OilBig DefenseBig Tobacco, Big Banks, etc.). This problem in America results in more Income Inequality; more “Us vs Them”; “Us” as in a rich minority (Oligarchy) versus “Them”, as in the Middle Class (or poor) masses. This is another reflection of a defective Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society.

Crony-Capitalism is manifested when the rich in society is permitted (cuddled and protected) to get more-and-more while pushing back against the Middle Class, forcing them to end up with less-and-less.

This is the continuation (and conclusion) of the February 2021 Teaching Series on Zero Sum Thinking; this is a fallacy that for one person to gain wealth, another person must lose. We find the opposite is the truth, that our New World Order is one of Non-Zero Sum, where Win-Win is actually possible; no need to re-distribute the pie’s slices, but rather grow a bigger pie for all to share … and/or introduce new pies that were not possible before.

This is all about the bad Community Ethos that persists in America … and here in Caribbean. We have a problem with Income Inequality too. To remediate and mitigate this problem, we must start with reforming and transforming our Community Ethos and then execute new strategies, tactics and implementation in our economic, security or  governing engines.

This February 2021 Teaching Series, from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean, is lamenting how the structures have crumbled that support the Middle Class; rather, the rich (Oligarchy) is getting richer while the poor is getting poorer.

This is not just an American problem. Think of Caribbean tourism:

There used to be a time, when tourists arriving by airplane at the airport would need to contract with an independent Service Provider – Taxi Driver – to get from Point A to Point B. But now, most of those tourists are arriving via cruise ships, right into the Downtown Ports, so there is no need for individual transportation. The economic activity therefore has shrunk, replaced with corporate-own Tour Bus Drivers, who is only earning the minimum wage or close to it.

This is not Win-Win. Instead, imagine the same economic activity but …

… with a Cooperative of Independently-owned, but collective-bargained Tour Bus Operators.

This is how Non-Zero Sum cooperation, collaboration, collusion, collective-bargaining and community-building is manifested. This is the advocacy of this Teaching Series. This is the final entry, 6-of-6. See here, how this consideration supplements the full catalog of discussions this month:

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

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at economic principles – the “Gold Standard” – now we conclude with a return to the economic perspective. We want to fix Income Inequality by “raising the tide for all boats in the harbor’; this way everyone gets to enjoy economic growth, a bigger pie, or even a 2nd pie, as in the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

How do we accomplish Non-Zero Sum for societal wealth, and ensure an equitable distribution – a strong Middle Class?

Before answering, we must acknowledge that there is a difference between wealth and power. See the Robert Reich commentary in the  Appendix VIDEO below, where he posits that:

Power is a Zero Sum game; for one person to get it, they have to take it from others.

To prevent all the wealth (and power) from consolidating in the hands of just a small minority – Oligarchy – there is the need to employ Offense and Defense strategies. These strategies allow us to proactively engage Best Practices to grow the economy while strenuously protecting the economic engines from abuse. We get to guard against the “Barbarians at the Gate“.

Yes, this subject is a grave issue for stakeholders in society to consider. This should be the quest for all societal stewards: to actively grow the Caribbean economy, while being “On Guard” for the negative influences that undermines universal opportunity or causes Income Inequality.

There is an Art & Science to fostering a healthy Middle Class. There is no need to research this topic anew. We have already addressed this in the pages of this Go Lean commentary. It is only apropos to Encore and Excerpt samples and examples of these previous postings – see 4 Offenses and 4 Defenses here:


>>> Offense #1 <<<

Two Pies: Economic Plan for a new Caribbean – February 23, 2017 –

There are a lot of money issues to contend with – but no one person’s hands are in another person’s pockets. So all the money issues for CU are exclusive to the CU. This is true of money-economics and other facets of Caribbean life: security and governance. …

In order to reboot the societal engines there must be these Two Pies. The CU Trade Federation is designed to lead, fund and facilitate regional empowerment plans. But the plan is NOT for the individual member-states to write checks to the CU so as to share one state’s treasuries with another state. Rather, the CU Trade Federation creates its own funding – from regionalized services – and then encumbers the funds for each member-state to deliver the economic, security and governing  mandates. This is analogized as Two Pies:

  • One ‘pie‘ to represent the existing budgets of the member-states and how they distribute their government funding between government services (education, healthcare, etc.), security measures (Police, Coast Guards)
  • One ‘pie‘ to represent the CU funding from exclusive activities (Spectrum Auctions, Lottery, Exploration Rights, Licenses, Foreign-Aid, etc.).

>> Defense #1 <<<

‘Mitigating Income Inequality’ – a Book Review’ – Sep 17, 2015 

Income Inequality = the rich becoming richer while the middle classes shrink. …

The desire to eliminate or reduce Income Inequality is a practical argument for social cohesion and to reduce social unrest; as such eruptions can weaken society. Income Inequality has a slippery slope that can lead to down to Failed-State status. Now after waging global conflicts of World War I, World War II plus countless regional conflicts and sectarian violence, it is important for societies to be “on guard” for encroachments in this regard. …

[Some politicians] opined … that an “upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country. …

Economic researchers John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research) point to economic liberalism and the reduction of business regulation along with the decline of union membership as one of the causes of economic inequality. In an analysis of the effects of intensive Anglo-American liberal policies in comparison to continental European liberalism, where unions have remained strong, they concluded “The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of Income Inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. At the same time, the available evidence provides little support for the view that U.S.-style labor-market flexibility dramatically improves labor-market outcomes. Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic mobility than all the continental European countries for which data is available.”[68] …

Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development at Cambridge University, has written a fascinating book on capitalism’s failings. … Chang takes on the free-marketers’ dogmas and proposes ideas like – there is no such thing as a free market; the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has; we do not live in a post-industrial age; globalisation isn’t making the world richer; governments can pick winners; some rules are good for business; US (and British) CEOs are overpaid; more education does not make a country richer; and equality of opportunity, on its own, is unfair.


>> Offense #2 <<<

Mineral Extraction 101 – Commerce of the [Caribbean] Seas – January 25, 2021 –

Opportunity is awaiting the Caribbean … for mineral extraction and oil exploration. …

Beaches are gravely important for the American East Coast. (They are important to Caribbean communities as well). So many communities depend on beach vacation and traffic during the spring/summer months (think Spring Break and the commercial summer season of Memorial Day to Labor Day). So when oil spills or predictable storms endanger beach sand, it becomes an urgent imperative for communities to assuage the crisis, even replace the sand …

Everyone has a price! So if the price goes up high enough, there may be interested parties among Caribbean member-states to take the money for allowing mineral/oil extraction in their offshore vicinity. There is a need to be alarmed at such proposals, as dredging sand or drilling for oil may endanger protected reefs or other underwater marine features.

With greater demand – imagine post hurricanes – the Laws of Supply-and-Demand will mandate that the prices for extracted minerals will only increase.

It will get more and more tempting!

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean wants to add other types of economic activities to the Caribbean landscape; we urgently want to use the sea as an industrial zone. This is because the Caribbean region is badly in need of jobs. The book urges communities to empower the economic engines of the Caribbean Sea, as in mineral & oil extraction.

The region’s economic driver is tourism. Tourism and “mineral extraction or oil exploration” are incompatible activities. Thus there is the need for the cautions in this commentary. The challenge is to embrace the commerce of mineral extraction for the positives, while avoiding the negatives.

Challenge accepted!


>>> Defense #2 <<<

Unequal Justice: Envy and the Seven Deadly Sins –  September 29, 2019 –

All the talk of economic inequality – the rich getting richer; the poor getting poorer; the middle-class shrinking – is really a discussion on justice & injustice.

After thousands of years of human history, we have come to an indisputable conclusion:

Inequality is never tolerated for long. Eventually the “Have-Nots” demand what the “Have’s” have!…

The Cardinal Sin of Envy forces the hand of the stakeholders in society to conform with programs that abate and mitigate Income Inequality.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean have addressed Income Inequality on many occasions; the book introduced the roadmap for the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to reboot the economic engines in the region so as to create more opportunities (job-and-entrepreneurial) for everybody in the Caribbean region – men, woman, Black-Brown-and-White in all 30 member-states. This quest is designed to grow the Middle Class.


>>> Offense #3 <<<

BHAG – Infrastructure Spending … finally funding Toll Roads – March 16, 2020 –

Is it so “pie in the sky” to think that our Caribbean communities can organize, plan and execute infrastructure projects so that people can safely travel by road, mitigating traffic congestion, and get to their destinations to live, work and play?

“Pie in the sky” or just “sky” is the key reference here. This commentary asserts that some of the congested streets in the Caribbean member-states can find relief by building “skyways” and overpasses; and they can be Toll Roads.

This vision was always part of the roadmap, as described in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. This roadmap introduces the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a super-national entity with Port Authority functionalities, to build highways, bridges, tunnels, docks and other Public Works (infrastructure) to facilitate the societal engines (economics, security and governance) of the Caribbean region. The book describes that transportation solutions must be embedded into any plan to elevate Caribbean society. …

The subject of Infrastructure is a Big Deal for the consideration of reforming or transforming the Caribbean region. The premise of the Go Lean roadmap is that the leverage of the 30 member-states and 42 million people will allow for Public Works initiatives that are bigger and better than any single (one) member-state alone. “Toll Roads” is one such example, though only a subset of the planned Union Atlantic Turnpike. The plan is for the Turnpike Authority to design and facilitate one North-South and one East-West highway as applicable in each island or coastal-state.

Yes, the highways will be Toll Roads; that charges fees for each ride. The “small pennies add up to millions” over time. This funding mechanism of the Turnpike Authority allows present infrastructure investments based on those future revenues; think bonds and loans.


>>> Defense #3 <<<

Taking from the Poor to Give to the Rich – December 20, 2017  –

The US Congress and White House have done it, they have successfully passed their Tax Reform bill that effectively “takes from the poor and gives to the rich”…

The Tax Reform strategy here double-downs on the concept of Supply-side economics. The hope is that corporate entities and wealthy people will receive tax breaks and then use the “wind fall” to re-invest in the community, thereafter creating jobs and economic growth. The Republicans in Washington (Congress and the White House) are betting on the success of this strategy even though there has been utter failures with this approach; for example just recently in the US State of Kansas.

Whether that re-investment occurs or not is the unknown. What is known is that the Rich will undoubtedly get the tax breaks. The Rich will win, at the expense of the Poor.


>>> Offense #4 <<<

Welcoming the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’ – September 14, 2014 –

It is not nice to be called a plutocracy, it’s almost considered a derogatory term. It simply refers to the undue influence that a super-rich minority group can have on a nation.

The dread of plutocracies is not new, societies have contended with them since the dawn of civilization (Ancient Greece and Rome). Many countries in the Caribbean had de facto plutocracies during their colonial years (Montserrat, Belize and the Bahamas’s Bay Street Boys come to mind), just as a natural off-shoot from a mono-industrial economy (sugar, coffee, tobacco planters). Considering existing plutocracies today, like the City of London and Wall Street, we see that an appropriate strategy can allow a society to “bottle the plutocratic concept” and use it for good. …

The idea of “bottling” plutocratic institutions for the Greater Good is a “big idea” in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. How exactly is this envisioned? The answer provided in the book is that of Self-Governing Entities (SGE).

The Go Lean book delves into this approach of inviting the super-rich to establish industrial parks, corporate campuses and research parks in bordered territories in the Caribbean. These entities would be governed solely by the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU and SGE’s.

The approach of the Go Lean roadmap is not to punish the super-rich for their success nor cower to any special interests group at the expense of the greater population.


>>> Defense #4 <<<

Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest – January 30, 2020 –

The best offense is a good defense.

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

Who exactly are our competition or opposition? What do we know of their motives or designs? How can we overcome their hindrance?

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

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

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

How can we overcome the hindrance of the Opposition?

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


The book Go Lean … Caribbean posits that America’s history (and present) has been plagued with Crony-Capitalism (and the other defect of Institutional Racism). This should not the role model the Caribbean would want to emulate, where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Rather, the book advocates for a Non-Zero Sum climate, to where we would NOT punish rich people, but still empower the Middle Class for more success.

In their homeland, the American Dream is now in jeopardy. How about in the Caribbean; is there a Caribbean Dream?

Yes, indeed. It is the quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

The Go Lean book stressed that there must be opportunities to fulfill the Caribbean Dream. To get an education, and a job, and a home, and good healthcare options and the preservation of our culture. This can be summarized as “prosper where planted” for our citizens … and our children and grandchildren too.

Yes, we can …

In addition to the above references, this commentary has submitted other posts related to Income Inequality, monitoring it, mitigating it and managing it. Consider this sample of other blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19813 Good Leadership: Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19572 MasterClass: Economics and Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18371 Student Loans Could Dictate Justice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11598 Plea to Philanthropic Rich: Give us your Time, Talent and Treasuries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10043 Integration Plan for Greater Caribbean Prosperity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669 Lesson from Detroit’s Action Plan: Make Community College Tuition-free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8370 A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Austerity: Dangerous Idea?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7789 An Ode to Detroit – Lessons on Trade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5559 Economic Principle: Profit – When ‘Greed is Good’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5597 Economic Principle: Wages – Market Forces -vs- Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5542 Economic Principle: Rent – Bad Ethos of Rent-Seeking

Zero Sum versus Non-Zero Sum

… this is an important consideration. Let’s go Non-Zero Sum. We need our people and institutions in the Caribbean region to cooperate, not compete; working together. There is opportunity for all of us, every citizen and resident in the 30 member-states of the region – “our pie will just grow, not splice”. This urging even corresponds with the Bible’s exhortation against competition – considering the actuality of the professed Christianity in the region:

“Let us not become egotistical, stirring up competition with one another, envying one another.”​— Galatians 5:26 NWT .

All persons in the Caribbean are hereby urged to lean-in for this Go Lean roadmap to cooperate, confederate, collaborate, collude, collective-bargain and community-build.

Now’s the time for these empowerments in our Caribbean homeland. Let’s build a better society. We now know how, by employing the strategies, tactics and implementations presented in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. These are conceivable, believable and achievable.

Yes, we can … 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Appendix VIDEO – The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It | Robert Reich – https://youtu.be/Y_sjfchNsiM

Robert Reich
Published March 24, 2020 –
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich presents the reader’s digest of his latest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. He explores the system of power in America that bails out corporations instead of people, even in times of crisis, and breaks down how we have socialism for corporations and the rich, and harsh capitalism for everybody else.

As power has concentrated in the hands of corporations and the wealthy few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains — and political power — for themselves.

Meanwhile, workers have been shafted.

This isn’t a democracy, where all power is shared. It’s an oligarchy, where those at the top have the power to grab everything for themselves.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing — which is happening before our very eyes as this crisis exacerbates — oligarchies become vulnerable.

Order Reich’s new book today: https://bit.ly/thesystemrbreich

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

Go Lean Commentary

White America had it all wrong!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See the full Book Review here:

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

Review by: Jennifer Szalai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Jennifer Szalai on Twitter: @jenszalai.

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

America has some reconciliations to do.

Their Good Old Days weren’t all so good 

Racism is embedded in the country’s DNA 

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

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

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

“Us vs Them” …

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

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

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

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

Yes, we can …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Zero Sum: Regional Tourism should not be a competition – Encore

Just recently in the Caribbean, we have had to contend with some superlative challenges to our regional tourism product. Consider:

The Clear and Present Dangers of doing business in the Caribbean have been “clear” and “present”.

There is the need for Non-Zero-Sum Thinking. For far too long, Caribbean member-states have been thinking Zero Sum – for one to gain, another one must lose – just trying to outshine each other, with no consideration as to how well or badly the other places fare:

I got mine; I don’t care if you get yours!

Your loss is my gain!

This reflects competition, when really what we need is cooperation, collaboration, convention, collective-bargaining, collusion, consensus-building, confederation …

The requested change is for a new cooperative Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society – that we should adopt to coordinate our economic engine on a regional basis.

This is the continuation of the February 2021 Teaching Series for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. (Every month, we present a series relevant to Caribbean life, culture and economics). For this month, we are looking at the subject of Zero Sum Thinking and lamenting how cooperation would be so much more preferred to competition. This fourth entry, 4-of-6, encores a previous blog-commentary that addressed this subject thoroughly; this aligned with the full treatment of this subject. Consider the full catalog of this series, as it is being presented:

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

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at the economic principle that since we are no longer on a “Gold Standard”, any view of “haves versus have-nots” is no longer an issue. We, the full 30 Caribbean member-states, can now all win, gain and grow. Since we have been here and said this before, it is only apropos that we reconsider that previous blog-commentary from June 16 2018, as it relates this assertion.

———————-

Go Lean Commentary – Regional Tourism Coordination – No Longer Optional

No one can hide anymore!

There are 30 different member-states, with 5 different colonial legacies and 4 different languages, and yet people around the world only considers our region as One Caribbean:

Event Consequence to Perception
Devastating hurricane Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially
Devastating earthquake Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially
Emergence of a pandemic Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially

All of the Caribbean member-states are in this “same boat”, so this is a matter of image and geographic misconceptions, more so than it is about disasters.

So, good or bad, the fate of one Caribbean member-state is tied to the other member-states, when it comes to tourism. See this point conveyed in this news article here:

Title: Geographic misconceptions hurting Caribbean economies
By Sarah Peter

Nassau, Bahamas – The mistaken perception among many travelers of the complete devastation of the Caribbean in the wake of the 2017 hurricane season caused further economic destruction to the region’s economy.

That’s according to the Chair of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), Joy Jibrilu. She raised the concern amid staggering losses among countries which were not impacted by the 2017 Hurricane season.

Jibrilu says following the devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria to some islands in the region, many travelers called and canceled for countries who were not impacted by the storm.

This resulted in a significant drop in hotel room demand across the entire Caribbean. In light of that another disaster, an economic storm, was created which resulted in great losses in tourism revenue and a challenge for tourism officials.

“All our travel partners, all of them without exception called and said that we have heard the Caribbean  is closed.”

She further added that  Caribbean islands irrespective of if they were not actually impacted by the storm were economically  affected.

We all lost when people were not sure if or when to book if they canceled. You saw a dip in bookings because people thought that the islands which were not impacted were. We must quantify the figures of lost business so we can share the story with the world to tell them how serious it is. “

The chair of the CTO says that over one billion US dollars in tourism revenue was lost in the wake of last year’s hurricane season, the costliest hurricane season on record.

Jibrilu, who is also the Director of Tourism for the island of Barbados says the region’s reconstruction and recovery effort has been estimated at close to  6 billion dollars.

“Tourism is the region’s greatest driver of foreign exchange tax revenue and reliable vehicle of poverty reduction and human capital development for the region’s small island developing states. The tragedy is that the dampening of demand occurred even among islands that were not in the path of the storm.  This contributes to  an economic disaster as tourism visitation dropped of resulting in significant losses in revenue.”

Jilbrilu blamed the international media for the problem. She says their reports describes the region as if it was one country as opposed to several different islands. The chairman of the CTO says this inaccurate reporting is costing a region millions and negatively impacting lives in the region.

“First of all if we look at international news reporters when they talk about a hurricane they say the “Caribbean” has been impacted. They generalize and say the entire Caribbean. As a result, people look at the Caribbean as a whole unit as oppose to all these different countries, thousands of miles away from each other. To put it in context the Bahamas alone from north to south covers one hundred thousand square miles that is further than the distance of  Toronto to New York.  So if a storm happens in New York no one would say I am not going to Toronto. They just would not, it just does not make sense but when people lump the Caribbean  together as just one region ( as if it was just one country ) it  is negative.”

Jilbrilu says the region’s economy and people lives depend on accurate reporting and think making the international media more aware of this matter is a matter of economic prosperity or suffering for the region’s people.

“What we have done is to educate people of the geography of the Caribbean, that the same time it takes to travel from the Bahamas to Barbados is the same as traveling from London in the UK to Rome, Italy. So what happens to the Bahamas does not impact Barbados and vice versa.  We really  want to get that message out.”

Jilbrilu made the disclosure at the 2018 annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup in the Bahamas. Dubbed as the Caribbean region’s largest aviation conference the annual event brings together major players from the aviation and tourism industries aimed at tackling problems faced by the  World and the Caribbean’s Tourism and Aviation industries.
Source: Posted and retrieved June 15, 2018 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/06/15/geographic-misconceptions-hurting-caribbean-economies/

As related in the foregoing, the whole world knew of the 2017 devastation from Hurricanes Irma and Maria. But the affected (wiped-out) islands were only Barbuda, Grenada and Puerto Rico. And yet:

… following the devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria to some islands in the region, many travelers called and canceled for countries who were not impacted.

Again, this is a matter of image and geographic misconceptions, more so than it is about disasters or even tourism. The world is telling the Caribbean: Better band together to assuage your challenges. We are united in affliction, we might as well be united in solutions. Yes, it is no longer optional for our region to confederate as a Single Market. This, we must do!

Confederation is not a bad thing! In a previous blog-commentary, it was asserted that our Caribbean member-states all suffer from the same inadequate image, and thusly we can all benefit from a regional elevation. Yes, the effect of regional integration could be an Increased Caribbean Tourism Market Share. That commentary quoted:

It’s time to take inventory of Caribbean tourism:

It has been weighed in the balance; it has been measured …
It has been found wanting!

Tourism is the current dominant industry; the goal is to “stand on the shoulders” of previous accomplishments, add infrastructure not possible by just one member-state alone and then reap the benefits. Imagine this manifestation in just this one new strategy: inter-island ferries that connect all islands for people, cars and goods.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to reboot the economic engines of the Caribbean member-states. So while tourism is the region’s primary economic driver, it is inadequate for providing the needs of the people in the region, and inadequate for dealing with the crisis of natural disasters. We must do better!

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to be a technocratic intergovernmental entity that shepherds economic growth for the Caribbean region and mitigate against all security-disaster challenges. The goal is to reboot and optimize the region’s economic, security and governing engines with a regional focus.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with 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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines. This includes a professional disaster planning and response organization.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies, as in Self-Governing Entities.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to elevate Caribbean image in good times and bad. One advocacy seeks to optimize the Caribbean tourism brand throughout the world; consider some specific plans, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 133 entitled:

10 Ways to Better Manage Image

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market
This will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, with a GDP of $800 Billion (according to 2010 figures). In addition, the treaty calls for collective bargaining with foreign countries and industry representatives for causes of significance to the Caribbean community. There are many times when the media portray a “negative” depiction of Caribbean life, culture and people. The CU will have the scale to effectuate negotiations to better manage the region’s image, and the means by which to enforce the tenets.
2 Media Industrial Complex
The Caribbean Central Bank will settle electronic payments transactions; this will allow electronic commerce to flourish in the region. With the payment mechanisms in place, music, movies, TV shows and other media (domestic and foreign) can be paid for and downloaded legally. For a population base of 42 million, this brings a huge economic clout.
3 Respect for Intellectual Property
4 Sentinel in Hollywood
5 Anti-Defamation League
This Pro-Jewish organization provides a great model for marshalling against negative stereotypes that can belittle a race. The CU will study, copy, and model a lot of the successes of the Anti-Defamation League. This organization can also be consulted with to coach the CU’s efforts. (Consider the example of Uptown Yardies Rasta Gang in the game Grand Theft Auto [206]).
6 Power of the Boycott
The CU is an economic negotiating bloc. The power to ban, boycott and censure trade in intellectual property is a powerful deterrent for producers to be balanced in their media portrayals. A CU federal agency will assume the role to rate pending moves, as performed by MPAA in the US. While the content may not be banned outright, placing a Rated R, NC-17 or X label to a film will affect the economic results from the box office. This is the “power of the purse”.
7 Freedom of the Press
8 Libel and Slander Litigation and Enforcement
9 Public Relations and Press Releases
To facilitate effective communications, the CU’s agencies will embrace the role of “Press Secretaries” to disseminateaccurate records, news and portrayals of Caribbean life. This role is Offensive rather than the above Defensive tactics.
10 Image Award Medals and Recognition
Following the model of the NAACP Image Awards, the CU will recognize and give accolades for individual and institutions that portray a positive “image” of Caribbean life and CU initiatives. This would be similar to the Presidential Medal of … / Congressional Medal of …

The likelihood of more hurricanes in the Caribbean is undeniable. This is further exacerbated with the reality of Climate Change. Our Caribbean region must be prepared to Rinse & Repeat. It is no longer an option to maybe manage our image on a regional level. The world must know that we are bigger than just whatever island has been recently impacted by a natural disaster. This challenge is heavy-lifting because, as a region, we rarely muster an adequate response to our natural disasters.

The Go Lean book explains further that the Caribbean region must install a security apparatus with the directive to prepare and respond to natural disasters. The efficiency and effectiveness of a Caribbean Emergency Management Agency must be streamlined to ensure the world of the business continuity of our systems of commerce. This quotation is derived from the book at Page 184:

Modeled after FEMA in the US, this agency will be charged with the preparation, response and reconstruction for the regions for the eventual manifestations of hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and other declared disasters, natural and man-made like medical epidemic, drought, pollution, oil spills, terrorism, etc.

This is what it means to be a technocracy, to promote the best delivery arts and sciences, in this case for Professional Emergency Management; as explained further at Page 64:

The CU treaty calls for a collective security agreement for the Caribbean member-states to prepare-respond to natural disasters, emergency incidents and assuage against systemic threats against the homeland. The CU employs the professional arts and sciences of Emergency Management to spread the costs and risks across the entire region. Outside of hurricanes or earthquakes, the emergency scope includes medical trauma, pandemic incidents and industrial accidents (i.e. oil or chemical spills) – any scenario that can impact the continuity of the economic engines and/or community.

This above scenario describes the dynamics of regional tourism promotion and protection. Yes, managing regional tourism means optimizing the planning and response for natural disasters. This is no longer optional for this homeland. We are compelled to invest in this integration and collaboration. We must have the leverage to spread the costs, risks and premium base across the entire region. Only then will the rest of the world know that any hurricane in the Caribbean does not mean a shutdown of the entire Caribbean region. Our image will then be:

Be our guests … in rain and shine.

Consider this Hawaiian example; yes this problem of promoting tourism while contending with natural disasters is not just an issue for the Caribbean. Rather, the US State of Hawaii is contending with the same thing right now, with the active Kīlauea volcano. See related news VIDEO in the Appendix below.

There is the need for better stewardship of the economic engines on touristic islands, be it Hawaii or the Caribbean. It is what it is! And our situations will worsen; things will get worse before they get worst. This is due to the reality and eventuality of Climate Change. This need to assuage against the threats and realities of Climate Change was an original intent of the Go Lean roadmap. The opening Declaration of Interdependence stresses this (Page 11) in the first of many pronouncements:

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

The Go Lean movement has previously detailed many related issues and advocacies for disaster awareness and abatement. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15012 In Life or Death: No Love for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14925 ‘Climate Change’ Reality!? Numbers Don’t Lie
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14832 Example of Manifesting Environmental Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391 After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996 After Irma, Failed State Indicators: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12977 After Irma, Barbuda Becomes a ‘Ghost Town’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12900 The Logistics of Disaster Relief
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12879 Disaster Preparation: ‘Rinse and Repeat’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11858 Looking and Learning from the Cautionary Tale of Kiribati
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455 Fix ‘Climate Change’ – Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7103 COP21 – ‘Climate Change’ Acknowledged
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893 A Meteorologist’s View On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4673 Climate Change‘ Merchants of Doubt … to Preserve Profits!!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465 Book: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276 Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1883 Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1817 Caribbean grapples with intense cycles of flooding & drought

In summary, the issues in this commentary relate more to image and geographic misconceptions than they do tourism and natural disasters. Do we have the global reputation to “take a punch and stand back up”.

Unfortunately, no!

So we must reform and transform the Caribbean’s societal engines so as to assuage the dangers of Climate Change and natural disasters; pandemics too. This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap, and this is not just a pipe dream; it is conceivable, believable and achievable for our regional stakeholders to do better and be better.

All Caribbean stakeholders – residents and tourists alike – are urged to lean-in to this roadmap for change … and empowerment. Yes, we can make the region a better place to live work and play. 🙂

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

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – Hawaii tourism hit hard by Kilauea volcano eruption – https://youtu.be/89ppKLS5ufI

CBS Evening News
Published on Jun 2, 2018 – As molten lava destroys more homes in Hawaii, police have been ordered to arrest people who refuse to evacuate. Thousands have already been forced to flee to safety. Now, dramatic images broadcast around the world are having another impact — on tourism. CBS News correspondent Carter Evans reports.

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Zero Sum: ICT as a tool, the “Great Equalizer”

Go Lean Commentary

Not all countries are at the same level of modernity; in some places, people ride bullet trains while in other countries, people still use horses, camels and mules. This salient point was related in the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean on Page 69:

The idea of convergence in economics (also sometimes known as the catch-up effect) is the hypothesis that poorer economies’ per capita incomes will tend to grow at faster rates than richer economies. As a result, all economies should eventually converge in terms of per capita income. Developing countries have the potential to grow at a faster rate than developed countries because diminishing returns (in particular, to capital) are not as strong as in capital-rich countries. Furthermore, poorer countries can replicate the production methods, technologies, and institutions of developed ones.

There are many examples of countries which have converged with developed countries which validate the catch-up theory. In the 1960s and 1970s the East Asian Tigers rapidly converged with developed economies. These include Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan – all of which are today considered developed countries or cities. In the postwar period (1945–1960) examples include West Germany, France and Japan, which were able to quickly regain their pre-war status.

The “catch-up” principle also applies to Internet Communications Technology (ICT). It is clearly evident that for one country to update their technology footprint, no other country have to lose theirs. Nope! ICT is naturally Non-Zero Sum.

There is another related concept: leapfrog. If you were operating at 1970’s technology, and then decide to upgrade, you do not move to 1980’s, then 1990’s, then 2000’s, then 2010’s. Nope, you jump straight to 2020’s technology. Leap-frog, not Catch-up.

In fact, migrating straight to the cutting-edge could be advantageous in other ways: there is no historic or intermediate baggage; there is nothing to unlearn.

The subject of technology adoption refers to strategy, tactics and implementation. The related issues were thoroughly defined in the Go Lean book, which serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). That roadmap asserted that in a short 5-year period, all Caribbean member-states could update their technology investment and infrastructure. See this excerpt from Page 74 here:

From the outset, (Year 1 of the 5-year roadmap), the CU will build data centers and server farms across the regions, erect contact centers and harness the efficiencies of the internet for delivery of government products and services. Rather than looking backwards, there is the opportunity to apply “leap-frog” strategies and jump right to where data center trends are moving, like utilizing alternative energy sources such as Hydrogen Fuel Cells to ensure power in the case of downtime or natural disaster emergencies.

Here is the appeal of the Go Lean/CU roadmap, we get to leverage the whole region and deploy a technological solution not possible for any one member-state alone. This is the Way Forward for competing with the rest of the world in this new globalized footprint. Since the “world is now flat”, we must be better equipped to compete with other stakeholders; we cannot beat “them”, so we have to join together to compete with them.

This is Non-Zero-Sum Thinking

… this is the needed Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society – that we must adopt before we can consider any strategy, tactic or implementation for deploying ICT in the Caribbean region as a great equalizer.

This is the continuation of the February 2021 Teaching Series for the movement behind the Go Lean book. For this month, we are looking at the subject of Zero Sum Thinking and trying to model good examples from the world of ICT so as to elevate Caribbean society. This third entry, 3-of-6, asserts that we can look, listen, learn from other institutions (enterprises, governments and institutions) and see that the problem for the Caribbean is bigger than just the Caribbean. Consider the full catalog of this series, has it is being presented:

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

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at the economic principle drawn from the “Gold Standard”. Now, that we realize that the quantity of gold is inconsequential, we can now strategize to use ICT to level the “playing field” with the rest of the world, small or large countries, rich or poor. This is the mitigation plan for Globalization, as related in the Go Lean book:

The CU will level the playing field of global trade by fully deploying Internet & Communications Technology (ICT). The embrace of e-Delivery, e-Commerce and e-Payments systems allow firms and institutions in the Caribbean region an able-bodied chance of competing head-to-head with anyone in North America, Europe and Asia. – Page 119

We have addressed this issue before, many times over in assessing the needs of ICT in the Caribbean elevation plan. Our conscientizing efforts started in the 2013 book, and then continued in many related blog-commentaries. Consider this advocacy (headlines, summaries and excerpts) from the book’s Page 197, entitled:

10 Ways to Foster Technology

1 Lean-in for the Single Market treaty for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)

This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people, across 30 member-states and an economic impact for a GDP of over $800 Billion (circa 2010). The CU will lead the industry efforts to create economies-of-scale to deploy technological investments, (such as Libraries and other Community Technology Centers), and generate justifiable benefits. The CU governance also provides the intellectual property protections such as patents and copyrights, and ensures their enforcement both locally and abroad. The technology initiatives are designed to include everyone in the region: the technically-savvy and the technically-ignorant. In addition to the CU providing community education services like the CTC’s, the CU incentivizes Not-For-Profit agencies, NGOs and Foundations to help the community efforts.

2 e-Learning Facilities and Industries

Though the CU is a Trade Federation with an economic empowering charter, it is accepted that education is vital to

growing the economy through technology endeavors. As such, the CU will foster public libraries, and partner with private and public schools to encourage and incentivize academic courses, training and continuing education via e-Learning channels. This effort will not only focus on the young or educated, but also on ubiquitous acceptance from the public.

3 STEM Charter Schools and STEM Teacher Recognitions
4 e-Government Services

The CU Trade Federation will provide government services. Where ever possible, these services will be delivered with the embrace of Internet and Communications Technologies (ICT). Therefore, Caribbean citizens can request and interact with CU government services via web & phone portals (contact centers), and when personal visits are mandated, service level agreements (SLA) will be implemented to set expectations for quality and timely response.

5 Public Access Wi-Fi
6 Incubators, Venture Capitalists Funds and IPO’s
7 Tax Credits for Technological Investments
8 Technology Expositions
9 Centers of Excellence

Quality assurance arts and sciences are important cultural influence within an economy, (think Swiss watches). Quality measurements like ISO-9000, CMM, and Six Sigma would be encouraged and incentivized thru the CU Trade Federation. The best-of-the-best in these endeavors should be recognized, elevated and rewarded.

10 Whistleblower Protections

Wile the Go Lean book has provided 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new Community Ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to accomplish this goal, this commentary has highlighted many real world manifestations of technology efforts leveling the industrial and commercial playing field. Consider these 3 scenarios:

  1. e-Commerce – Changing how we transact business.

Uber: A Better ‘Mousetrap’ – March 13, 2019
We are learning that car-ride-sharing solutions – like Uber or Lyft – are actually working successfully. They are faster, better and cheaper than other transportation options, like taxi’s …

… it might be argued that local governments can simply ban ride-sharing companies like Uber, Lyft, etc..

Alas, the “genie is out-of-the-bottle”; ICT or Internet Communications Technologies (and smart-phones) make messaging and electronic commerce seamless and effortless. This is likened to holding back the tides. Resistance is futile! …

The [Go Lean] book asserts that no one Caribbean member-state can tackle any of these challenges alone; there is an urgent need – a Clear and Present Danger – to convene, collaborate, consolidate and confederate the response to these modern challenges – we need the economies-of-scale.

  1. e-Learning – Still learning despite no travelling

Keep the Change: Making e-Learning Work – April 24, 2020
In the Caribbean, this was always our BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal – that we would terminate the strategy of sending our children off to college to only then watch them “never come back”. …

Thanks to the Coronavirus – COVID-19 crisis, the world is coming to the e-Learning party. It is April 2020 and the world is locked-down, sheltering-in-place. The majority of people in society have avoided gathering and all but essential contact for people – other than their immediate household – in order to “flatten the curve”. Schools are not essential: not primary, not secondary and not tertiary schools.

Education is essential; school (building, library, administration, etc.) is not.

We can only say that now … that e-Learning options [ i.e. Zoom] – are real and viable. …

The Go Lean book had originally asserted that e-Learning may be the answer for all the ills in the Caribbean education landscape. The book further states (Page 127) that “electronic commerce industries – Internet Communications Technology (ICT) – can be a great equalizer in economic battles of global trade [179]”. This is how and why we Keep the Change!

  1. e-Government – Bigger deliveries despite smaller footprint

e-Government 3.0 – June 20, 2018
What if we had the chance to “start all over again”, with the knowledge, wisdom and experience that we have now? Could we do “it” faster, stronger, better? Can we do more with less?

Absolutely! Yes, we can!

We will therefore be [are] in a position to “start all over again” and create an administrative regime that can make the Caribbean homeland faster, stronger, better as places to live, work and play. This regime can be dubbed: e-Government 3.0.

e-Government 1.0 refers to just the facilitation of government services via some electronic mode, the first attempt to embrace an online presence and processing; 2.0 refers to the quest for greater citizen participation in the governing/policy-making process, “putting government in the hands of citizens”.[54] This 3.0 brand however, refers to the penultimate e-Delivery, processing and optimization of ICT (Internet & Communications Technologies) among all the different roles and responsibilities. Imagine digital interactions …

  • between a citizen and their government (C2G)
  • between governments and other government agencies (G2G)
  • between government and citizens (G2C)
  • between government and employees (G2E), and …
  • between government and businesses/commercial entities (G2B).

If this sounds fantastical, just know that there are successful role model countries doing this e-Government 3.0 right now. For example, the Baltic Republic country of Estonia is widely recognized as e-Estonia, as a reference to its tech-savvy government and society.[98] [See the related VIDEO here].

VIDEO – Estonia Built the Society of the Future from Scratch – https://youtu.be/cHkIfiTGmzo



Beme News

Published on Jan 10, 2018 – A tech revolution is going down in Estonia…of all places. The tiny Baltic nation has built a futuristic, digital-first society. Lou explains how it works, why it works, and if it will work elsewhere.

Sources & Further Reading:
E-Estonia’ official website – https://e-estonia.com/
Estonia the Digital Republic – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20…
Is This Tiny European Nation a Preview of Our Tech Future? – http://fortune.com/2017/04/27/estonia…
How long it takes to file taxes in Estonia – http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-met…
How long it takes to file taxes in the U.S. – https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/…
Why Americans didn’t vote in 2016 – http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/…

In addition to these above 3 examples of “leveling the playing field” with technology, we have published many other previous blog-commentaries on the related subjects of technology adoption and assimilation. Consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18524 One Step Closer to an e-World: e-Money Solutions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16364 5 Year Technology Review: All the Caribbean now fully ready for ICT
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15923 Industrial Reboot – Payment Cards 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15875 Amazon: ‘What I want to be when I grow up’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14224 How are the Youth are Consuming Media Today? Hint, all ICT!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13999 First Steps – Deputize the CU for “Lean Operations” and SLA’s.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12532 Where the Jobs Are – Artificial Intelligence: Subtraction, not Addition
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11314 Creating Addiction to Smartphones – One way to Forge Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184 Model: Wow, JPMorganChase spent $10 billion on ‘Fintech’ in 1 year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9839 Alibaba Cloud teaches how to reach the world with new Data Centers

Don’t get it twisted, Zero Sum thinking is still a reality in a lot of facets of modern life, but it does not have to be when it comes to ICT. The online (streaming) media industry is all based on the premise of Write Once Read Many (WORM), so it does NOT matter if 50 people consume a production or 500 million. The effort goes into the production, not the distribution. This means that Small Market productions can finally rival Big Market productions. Boom! That’s a  “level playing field” with equal opportunity for all competitors – small or large. See the related assertion in the Appendix VIDEO below.

The expression the “world is flat” does not only refer to globalization, but also to the emergence of communication technologies, in that across the planet can now interact with us as if they are next door. ICT flattens the round world.

“Get ready, here it comes’.

Oops, too late! If we are only now planning to address this actuality then we are already behind – playing catch-up. Let’s finally catch-up with a leap-frog approach.

Let’s get busy …

… let’s do the work to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – high tech, low tech or no tech – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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

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

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

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxx.   Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

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

——————–

Appendix VIDEO – SMW ’18: JD Fox Talks Making Small-Market Sports Streaming Look Big Leaguehttps://youtu.be/wq5x_0e3wDM

Posted Dec 12, 2018 – Streaming Media’s Tim Siglin interviews JD Fox, Director of Partnerships and Product Management at PrestoSports, at Sports Streaming Summit and Streaming Media West 2018.

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