50th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs: Eisenhower tramples right to travel to Cuba

• Granma International is publishing a series of articles on the events leading up to the April, 1961 battle of the Bay of Pigs.  As we approach the 50th Anniversary of this heroic feat, we will attempt to recreate chronologically the developments which occurred during this period and ultimately led to the invasion.  The series will be a kind of comparative history, relating what was taking place more or less simultaneously in revolutionary Cuba, in the United States, in Latin America, within the socialist camp and in other places in some way connected to the history of these first years of the Cuban Revolution

By Gabriel Molina

• THE unprecedented prohibition of January 17, 1961 – three days before the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy – was an attempt to close off a source of income to the island and force its surrender through hunger.  The plan to launch an invasion during the 1960 electoral campaign so that Vice President Nixon could take advantage of the result was postponed when it was realized it needed to be further developed.  Up until that point there was confidence that a repetition of the successful 1954 CIA operation against President Arbenz of Guatemala would be enough for Nixon to beat the charismatic Senator Kennedy.

But Kennedy’s victory in November 1960 made it more urgent to activate the operation before Cuba’s rapid military strengthening progressed any farther.  Hence the measure breaking off diplomatic relations signed by Eisenhower on January 3, 1961, less than three weeks before his presidential term ended.

A meeting at CIA headquarters attended by Tracy Barnes, assistant deputy director for plans under Richard Bissell, and J.C. King, chief of the Latin America Division, had approved the idea of infiltrating an agent into Havana’s military leadership to provoke an accident leading to the death of Raúl Castro, the second leader of the Revolution.  According to the U.S. Senate Church Committee, the order was given in a cable datelined July 21, 1960 to the CIA center in Cuba. (2)

The attack on freedom of movement represented by the travel ban was concealed under the pretext that normal security services could not be provided to U.S. citizens after the breaking off of diplomatic relations.  Prior to this a series of measures, both secret and public had led to virtually eliminating U.S. tourism to Cuba.  But the government feared visits by groups traveling to the island despite the adverse propaganda.

Having seen that Cuban realities were did not match what was being said in the United States, these groups of liberal and progressive Americans condemned the anti-Cuban campaigns and made statements of solidarity with Cuba.

Meanwhile, it was announced that U.S. National Airlines was suspending flights to Cuba.

Fidel clarified the underlying reason for the measure: the Revolution constituted an example, not only for the peoples of Latin America, but also for the U.S. people.

When the measure came into effect, The New York Times published a letter on the ban from Alice Hussey Balassa, an American citizen who had returned to her country after a short vacation in Cuba.  Her letter referred to signs of material progress among the many benefits achieved by the population: ending extreme poverty in the barrios, reducing illiteracy, increasing housing for workers and campesinos and building schools and campesino cooperatives.

Official documents declassified by the National Security Archive revealed that on December 12, 1963, less than one month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, still U.S. Attorney General at the time, sent a communiqué to Secretary of State Dean Rusk urging him to withdraw the regulations on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba.  On that occasion, Robert Kennedy described the limitations on travel to the island as a violation of American liberties.  In those same documents, found in the Congressional library and in that of President John F. Kennedy and declassified June 29, 2005, the Attorney General added that it was impractical to arrest, bring charges and commit to prosecutions in bad taste against citizens wishing to travel to Cuba.

Kennedy’s initiative was supported by McGeorge Bundy, National Security adviser, who also described them in another memo as inconsistent with traditional American liberties.

However, on December 13, 1963, the day after Robert Kennedy’s appeal, George Ball, under secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, discounted any relaxation in the restrictions.  The decree was maintained by President Lyndon Johnson, who alleged that a decision on Cuba during the 1964 elections would hurt him.  Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his assassination, also rejected subsequent action by the Attorney General to normalize relations.

A meeting about the measures did not include any representative of Robert Kennedy, although he had initiated the proposal to withdraw them.  Instead, Ball proposed to warn people considering a trip to the island that, if they did so, their passports would be invalidated and they could face prosecution.

Despite Robert Kennedy’s continuing attempts to rescind them, the measures were upheld by President Johnson, until they were left without effect by James Carter during his 1976-80 presidential term.  But the restrictions were re-imposed by President Reagan, who succeeded Carter in January 1981.  At the beginning of his second term in office (1996-2000), Clinton allowed travel endorsed by licenses for religious, academic and other purposes.  After that, Bush Jr. reinstituted the ban during the 2004 electoral campaign.  This year, the Obama administration reversed the measures returning to the situation established by Clinton in the context of his Track II policy: granting licenses for person to person contact.  In essence, they make no dent whatsoever in the blockade.

On the same afternoon following the assassination of the President, Robert Kennedy asked John McCone, who replaced Allen Dulles as CIA director, if the agency was responsible for the crime against his brother.  Robert knew that the CIA was controlled by Richard Helms, an intelligence professional appointed as its Deputy Director and Director of Plans, who always regarded Robert’s activities with scorn.

In the following months, still as Attorney General in the Johnson administration, Robert was quietly investigating groups of CIA officers and Cuban gangs, whom he got to know and to suspect of involvement in his brother’s death.

Five years later, at the point of contesting the presidency against Richard Nixon, he was even more convinced that attempts to blame Cuba for the assassination were part of a CIA-Cuban gang conspiracy.

When Robert stated for the first time during an electoral meeting, in response to a question on the issue, that if he won the presidency he would reopen an investigation into the assassination, he was endangering the CIA’s well-guarded secret.

The conclusions of the Congressional Special Committee which investigated the assassination of the president from 1976-1978 included a demand that the Justice Department reopen the investigation.  But the CIA refused to open the files on the case, which it concealed from the House Select Committee chaired by Democrat Louis Stokes.

In the spring of 2007 it was announced that members of a group of CIA officers suspected of having participated in the assassination of the President, including George Joannides, chief of Psychological Warfare at the JM/WAVE station, were present, outside of their functions, in the hotel where Robert Kennedy was assassinated, after his bid for the presidency was secured.  Since then, new evidence revealed by investigators points to reopening the case, but the CIA has remitted files on the tragic events to a period of 50 years before they can be opened.

According to the book Brothers… by researcher David Talbot, diplomat and journalist William Attwood, a participant in the negotiations authorized by the President a few days before the assassination and some close friends of Robert Kennedy, revealed that "Helms put an intercept on [eminent journalist] Lisa Howard’s telephones."  (3) For this reason, the Attorney General also suspected that the CIA group and the Cuban mafiosi with whom they were working in relation to conspiracies against Fidel, were also conspiring to perpetrate the assassination.

Given that Robert was John’s right-hand man and the actor of his ideas and actions, "some close Democrat friends of the Attorney General nicknamed Bobby ‘Raúl’ (4) joking about a certain similarity to Fidel and Raúl in his missions. •

(1)Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI (Cuba)

(2) Church Committee Report. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. B-Cuba, Pp 71.

(3) David Talbot. Brothers. The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. Simon & Schuster. 2007, P. 233.

(4) Ibid. Pp. 92.

Havana. February 10 , 2011

granma.cu

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal

There is another major respect in which the West Indies, in not being West Indian in the Marryshow manner, is not being true to itself.   We are failing to fulfill the promise we once held out of being a light in the darkness of the developing world.  Small as we are, our regionalism, our West Indian synonymy, inspired many in the South who also aspired to strength through unity.   Solidarity has been lost not only amongst ourselves, but also collectively with the developing world.

And, perhaps, therein lies the ‘rub’.  Were we making a reality of our own regional unity we would not be false to ourselves and we would have inspired others who, in the past, had looked to us as a beacon of a worthy future.   Instead, we are losing our way both at home and abroad.

Have we forgotten the days when as West Indians we were the first to daringly bring the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ to the Western Hemisphere, when we pioneered rejection of the ‘two China’ policy at the United Nations and recognized the People’s Republic; when, together, we broke the Western diplomatic embargo of Cuba; when we forced withdrawal of the Kissinger plan for a ‘Community of the Western Hemisphere’; when we were in the front rank (both intellectual and diplomatic) of the effort for a New International Economic Order; when from this region, bending iron wills, we gave leadership in the struggle against ‘apartheid’ in Southern Africa; when we inspired the creation of the ACP and kept the fallacy of ‘reciprocity’ in trade at bay for 25 years; when we forced grudging acceptance in the United Nations and in the Commonwealth that ‘small states’ required special and differential treatment?   In all this, and more, for all our size we stood tall; we commanded respect, if not always endearment.   We were West Indians being West Indian.

For what do we stand today, united and respected as one West Indies?   We break ranks among ourselves (Grenada, I acknowledge, no longer) so that some can bask in Japanese favour for helping to exterminate endangered species of the world’s whales.   We eviscerate any common foreign policy in CARICOM when some of us cohabit with Taiwan.   Deserting our African and Pacific partners, we yield to Europe -- and take pride in being first to roll over.

What do these inglorious lapses do for our honor and standing in the world?   How do they square with our earlier record of small states standing for principles that commanded respect and buttressed self-esteem?   The answers are all negative.   And, inevitably, what they do in due measure is require us to disown each other and display our discordance to the world.   This is where ‘local control’ has led us in the 21st Century.   We call it now ‘sovereignty’.   In reality, it is sovereignty we deploy principally against each other; because against most others that sovereignty is a hollow vessel.

It is easy, perhaps natural, for us as West Indian people to shift blame to our governments; and governments, of course, are not blameless.   But, in our democracies, governments do what we allow them to do: they themselves say: ‘we are doing what our people want us to do’.   It is not always true; but who can deny it, when we accept their excesses with equanimity, certainly in silence.

No!   There is fault within us also.   We have each been touched with the glow of ‘local control’; each moved by the siren song of ‘sovereignty’; have each allowed the stigma of otherness, even foreignness, to degrade our West Indian kinship.   The fault lies not only in our political stars but also in ourselves that we are what and where we are; and what and where we will be in a global society that demands of us the very best we can be.   When the West Indies is not West Indian, it is we, at least in part, who let it be so.   And what irony: Marryshow and his peers demanded that we be West Indian to be free together.   We were; but in our freedom we are ceasing to be West Indian and in the process are foregoing the strengths that togetherness brings.

When are we at our best?   Surely, when the West Indies is West Indian; when we are as one; with one identity; acting with the strength and courage that oneness gives us.   Does anyone doubt that whatever we undertake, we do it better when we do it together?

Thirty-five years ago, in 1975, on the shores of Montego Bay, as I took leave of Caribbean leaders before assuming new roles at the Commonwealth, my parting message was a plea TO CARE FOR CARICOM. Among the things I said then was this:

Each generation of West Indians has an obligation to advance the process of regional development and the evolution of an ethos of unity.   Ours is endeavoring to do so; but we shall fail utterly if we ignore these fundamental attributes of our West Indian condition and, assuming without warrant the inevitability of our oneness, become casual, neglectful, indifferent or undisciplined in sustaining that process and that evolution.

The burden of my message is that we have become ‘casual, neglectful, indifferent and undisciplined’ in sustaining and advancing Caribbean integration: that we have failed to ensure that the West indies is West Indian, and are falling into a state of disunity, which by now we should have made unnatural.   The process will occasion a slow and gradual descent – from which a passing wind may offer occasional respite; but, ineluctably, it will produce an ending.

In Derek Walcott’s recently published collection of poems, White Egrets-- for which he has just won the prestigious T.S. Elliot Prize -- there are some lines which conjure up that image of slow passing:

With the leisure of a leaf falling in the forest,
Pale yellow spinning against green – my ending.

This must not be a regional epitaph.   But, if CARICOM is not to end like a leaf falling in the forest, prevailing apathy and unconcern must cease; reversal from unity must end. The old cult of ‘local control’ must not extinguish hope of regional rescue through collective effort; must not allow a narcissist insularity to deny us larger vision and ennobling roles.   We must escape the mental prison of narrow domestic walls and build a West Indies that is West Indian. We must cherish our local identities; but they must enrich the mosaic of regionalism, not withhold from it their separate splendours.

In some ways, it must be allowed; our integration slippage is less evident among the smallest of us.   The OECS islands have set out a course for more ambitious and deeper economic integration among themselves, which would be worthy of all, if it could subsist for all.   The Treaty establishing the OECS Economic Union is now in force.   But, it is early days; it remains to be seen at the level of action, at the level of implementation, whether, even for them, the earlier ‘agony’ (of which Sir Arthur Lewis wrote so ruefully in 1962) lingers still.   Meanwhile, however, congratulations are in order, and I extend them heartily.

In moving closer to ‘freedom of movement’ among the OECS countries they have set a vital example to the rest of CARICOM.   The OECS West Indies is being West Indian.   May it translate into an ethos among them, and in time infuse the wider Community with an end to ‘foreignness’ among all West Indians.   The OECS islands have taken the first steps in a long journey whose ultimate goal must be a larger union.

Collectively, we must recover our resolve to survive as one West Indies -- as one people, one region, one whole region. Imbued by such resolve there is a future that can be better than the best we have ever had.   Neither complacency nor resignation nor empty words will suffice.   What we need is rescue – by ourselves, from ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot be careless with our oneness, which is our lifeline.   As it was in St Georges in 1915, so it is now: The West Indies must be Westindian!

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 10, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

caribbeannewsnow

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal

Nothing speaks louder of CARICOM’s current debilitation than our substantial denial of the Caribbean Court of Justice.   The Bar Association of Grenada is host to this Lecture Series, which is a memorial to a great West Indian lawyer.   It is poignant that the Inaugural Lecture in this series delivered in 1996 was entitled: Essentials for a West Indies Supreme Court to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the final Appellate Court for Commonwealth Caribbean States and Territories.   Fifteen years later, it is still apposite that I address this issue when we talk of being West Indian.

In 2001, twelve CARICOM countries decided they would abolish appeals to the Privy Council and establish their own Caribbean Court of Justice, serving all the countries of the Caribbean Community with both original jurisdiction in regional integration matters and appellate jurisdiction as the final court of appeal for individual CARICOM countries.   As of now, only Guyana (which had abolished appeals to the Privy Council on independence, believing it to be a natural incident of ‘sovereignty’), Barbados and now Belize have conferred on the CCJ that appellate jurisdiction.

Constitutional amendment is required for the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council.   In practical terms, this means bipartisan political support for the CCJ.   In Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (where the Court has its much sought after location) that political consensus does not exist – because the political party now in office in each of those two major regional jurisdictions has turned its back on its regional court.   In St Vincent and the Grenadines, a referendum last year rejected the transference of appeals to the CCJ.

The situation has been complicated by the issue of the death penalty, on which the Privy Council, reflecting contemporary English (and EU) mores and jurisprudence, has been rigorous in upholding Caribbean appeals in death sentence cases.   Someday, the Caribbean as a whole must accept abolition of the death penalty; I believe we should have done so already; but, in a situation of heightened crime in the region, popular sentiment has induced political reticence.  Even so, however, the Privy Council’s anachronistic jurisdiction persists; and the Caribbean Court of Justice remains hobbled in pursuing its enlightened role in Caribbean legal reform.

It is almost axiomatic that the Caribbean Community should have its own final Court of Appeal in all matters – that the West Indies at the highest level of jurisprudence should be West Indian.   A century-old tradition of erudition and excellence in the legal profession of the region leaves no room for hesitancy.   As a West Indian I despair, as a West Indian lawyer I am ashamed, that the West Indies should be a major reason for the unwelcome retention of the Privy Council’s jurisdiction within the halls of the new Supreme Court in England.   Having created our own Caribbean Court of Justice it is an act of abysmal contrariety that we have so substantially withheld its appellate jurisdiction in favour of that of the Privy Council – we who have sent judges to the International Court of Justice, to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court for the former Yugoslavia, to the Presidency of the United Nations Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (from Grenada); we from whose Caribbean shores have sprung in lineal descent the former and current attorneys general of Britain and the United States respectively.

As I recall this register of West Indian legal erudition, let me pause to pay tribute to the memory of Prof Ralph Carnegie who left us last month – a veritable icon of learning in the law and of service to it – and always a West Indian.   As CCJ Judge Winston Anderson acknowledged at his funeral service, he died sadly without attainment of his vision of a fully functioning Caribbean Court of Justice, and fearful of the prospects for the legal monument he strove so hard to build.   We owe him a more lasting memorial.

This absurd and unworthy paradox of heritage and hesitancy must be resolved by action.   In law, as in ourselves, the West Indies must be West Indian.  Those countries still hesitant must find the will and the way to end this anomaly, and perhaps it will be easier if they act as one.  The truth is that the alternative to such action is too self-destructive to contemplate.   The demise of the Court itself is not an improbable danger when in both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago the creation of a local final Court of Appeal is being canvassed.   Loss of the CCJ will almost certainly frustrate progress on a Single Market and Economy -- the vision of Grand Anse.   We will have begun tearing up the Treaty of Chaguaramas, whose Preamble recites “that the original jurisdiction of the CCJ is essential to the successful operation of the CSME”.   If West Indian lawyers, in particular, remain complacent about this absurdity much longer – and I am afraid some are -- we will begin to make a virtue of it, and in the end dismantle more than the Court.

So grave and present is this danger that in August last, five West Indians to whom the region has given its highest honour, the Order of the Caribbean Community, took the unprecedented step of warning publicly “with one voice of the threat being posed to the Caribbean Court of Justice and the Community’s goals more generally”.   I was among them.   “We warn against these developments” we wrote, “which, as in an earlier era, could bring down the structures for advancing the interests of the people of CARICOM … carefully constructed and nurtured over many decades by sons and daughters of all CARICOM countries”.   We were warning of the mire of despond we would stumble into if in this matter the West Indies ceased to be West Indian.

But let me add what we all know, though seldom say: to give confidence to our publics in their adoption of the CCJ as the ultimate repository of justice in the West Indies, our governments must be assiduous in demonstrating respect for all independent West Indian constitutional bodies (like the Director of Public Prosecutions) lest by transference, governments are not trusted to keep their hands off the CCJ.   And Courts themselves, at every level, must be manifestly free from political influence and be seen to be sturdy custodians of that freedom.   In the end, the independence of West Indian judiciaries must rest on a broad culture of respect for the authority and independence of all constitutional office holders – for the Rule of Law.

We must not forget that the structure of the CCJ goes further than does that of any court in the region, and most courts in the Commonwealth, in securing independence from political influence, much less political control.   It is at least as free of such local control as is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and freer than any national or sub-regional Court.   West Indian people who want such a Court that is beyond the reach of politics must understand – and must be helped to understand – that they have it in the CCJ.

The question, therefore, cannot be avoided: is a regional political leadership that conjures with rejecting the CCJ doing so because it is beyond political reach?   I cannot believe that; but, in my own judgment, with the Privy Council no longer a realistic option, the CCJ is the most reliable custodian that West Indians could have of the Rule of Law in the region.   Despite this, will we once more, with the gains of oneness in our grasp, forego being West Indian?

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 9, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

caribbeannewsnow

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal

It was here in St George’s 95 years ago that T.A. Marryshow flew from the masthead of his pioneering newspaper The West Indian the banner: The West Indies Must Be Westindian.   And on that banner Westindian was symbolically one joined-up word – from the very first issue on 1 January 1915.   In the slogan was a double entendre.   To be West Indian was both the goal of self-determination attained and the strategy of unity for reaching and sustaining it.

Of course the goal of freedom kept changing its form as the world changed: internal self-government in the pre-war years; formal independence in the post-war years; the reality of freedom in the era of globalization; overcoming smallness in a world of giants.   But the strategy of regional unity, the strategy of oneness, would not change, at least not nominally: we called it by different names and pursued it by different forms -- always with variable success: federation; integration, the OECS, CARIFTA, CARICOM, the CSME, the CCJ.   It is that ‘variable success’ that today begs the question: Is The West Indies West Indian? Nearly 100 years after Marryshow asserted that we must be, are we yet?   Worse still, are we less so than we once were?

Times changed in the nineteen twenties and thirties – between the ‘world wars’.   The external economic and political environments changed; and the internal environments changed – social, political and most of all demographic.   Local control began to pass to the hands of local creoles, mainly professionals, later trade unionists, and for a while the new political class saw value in a strategy of regional unity.   Maryshow’s slogan ‘the West Indies must be West Indian’ was evocative of it; and for two generations, West Indian ‘unity’ was a progressive political credo.

It was a strategy that was to reach its apogee in the Federation of The West Indies: due to become independent in mid-1962.   It is often forgotten that the ‘the’ in the name of the new nation was consciously spelt with a capital ‘T’ – The West Indies - an insistence on the oneness of the federated region. But, by then, that was verbal insistence against a contrary reality, already re-emerging. The new political elites for whom ‘unity’ offered a pathway to political power through ‘independence’ had found by the 1960s that that pathway was opening up regardless.

In the event, regional unity was no longer a pre-condition to ‘local control’.   Hence, Norman Manley’s deal with McLeod and the referendum in Jamaica; and Eric Williams’ self-indulgent arithmetic that ‘1’ from ‘10’ left ‘0’; even ‘the agony of the eight’ that ended the dream.   Despite the rhetorical passion that had characterized the latter years of the ‘federal movement’ the imperishable impulse for ‘local control’ had revived, and the separatist instincts of a controlling social and political elite had prevailed.   Within four months of the dispersion of the Federation (on the same day in May 1962 that it was to become a single independent member state of the Commonwealth) Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became so separately.   We can act with speed when we really want to!

But objective realities are not blown away by winds of narrow ambition, Independence on a separate basis had secured ‘local control’; but the old nemesis of colonialism was replaced by the new suzerainty of globalization.   Independence, particularly for Caribbean micro states, was not enough to deliver Elysium.   ‘Unity’ no sooner discarded was back in vogue; but less a matter of the heart than of the head.

In an interdependent world which in the name of liberalization made no distinctions between rich and poor, big and small, regional unity was compulsive. West Indian states -- for all their new flags and anthems -- needed each other for survival; ‘unity’ was the only protective kit they could afford.   Only three years after the rending ‘referendum’ came the first tentative steps to ‘unity’ in 1965 with CARIFTA; ‘tentative’, because the old obsession with ‘local control’ continued to trump oneness – certainly in Cabinet Rooms; but in some privileged drawing rooms too; though less so in village markets and urban street corners.

Despite the new external compulsions, therefore, the pursuit of even economic unity, which publics largely accepted, has been a passage of attrition.   It has taken us from 1965 to 2010 -- 45 years -- to crawl through CARIFTA and CARICOM, through the fractured promises of Chaguaramas and Grand Anse, and through innumerable pious Declarations and Affirmations and Commitments.   The roll call of unfulfilled pledges and promises and unimplemented decisions is so staggering that in 2011 a cul de sac looms.

At Grand Anse in 1989, West Indian political leaders declared that “inspired by the spirit of co-operation and solidarity among us (we) are moved by the need to work expeditiously together to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all of its dimensions” They agreed a specific work programme ‘to be implemented over the next four years’ with primacy given “towards the establishment, in the shortest possible time of a single market and economy”.  That was 22 years ago.   The West Indian Commission (also established at Grand Anse) confidently charted the way, declaring it a ‘Time for Action’. West Indian technicians took their leaders to the brink with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.   But there was no action – no political action, no political will to act. In twenty-two years, nothing decisive has happened to fulfill the dream of Grand Anse.   Over those two decades the West Indies has drawn steadily away from being West Indian.

Not surprisingly, when Heads of Government meet in Grenada later this month it will be at a moment of widespread public disbelief that the professed goal of a ‘Single Market and Economy’ will ever be attained, or even that their political leaders are any longer “inspired by the spirit of co-operation and solidarity” or “moved by the need to work expeditiously together to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all its dimensions” - as they proclaimed at Grand Anse in 1989.

Words alone are never enough, except to deceive.  As Paul Southwell used to remind us in Shakespearian allusion: “Words, words, words; promises, promises, promises; tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. Nothing’s changed.  In the acknowledged quest for survival (including political survival) the old urge for ‘local control’ by those in control has not matured to provide real space for the ‘unity’ we say we need. Like 19th century colonists we strive to keep our rocks in our pockets – despite the enhanced logic of pooling our resources, and the enlarged danger of ‘state capture’ by unelected groups and external forces while we dally.

The West Indies cannot be West Indian if West Indian affairs, regional matters, are not the unwritten premise of every Government’s agenda; not occasionally, but always; not as ad hoc problems, but as the basic environment of policy.  It is not so now.  How many Caribbean leaders have mentioned CARICOM in their New Year messages this year?  Only the Prime Minister of Grenada in his capacity as the new Chairman of CARICOM.   For most West Indian Governments Caribbean integration is a thing apart, not a vital organ of national life.

It seems that only when it is fatally damaged or withers away will Cabinet agendas change.

But let us remember, a civilization cannot survive save on a curve that goes upward, whatever the blips in between; to go downward, whatever the occasional glimpses of glory, is to end ingloriously.   Caribbean civilization is not an exception.   It is now as it was 95 years ago with Marryshow: The West Indies must be West Indian.

As current Chairman of CARICOM Prime Minister Tillman Thomas has rightly called for the West Indian people to be better informed and more intimately engaged in the regional project.   CARICOM is essentially about people; about West Indian people; but, in truth, they have been too remote from its being.   They are its heartbeat; but in the small states that we all are Governments tend to occupy the entire space of governance.   They control the bloodstream of the integration process and when anemia threatens, as it does now, it is an infusion of people power that is needed to resuscitate CARICOM.

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 8, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

caribbeannewsnow

Where is our future Bahamas?

Democracy, independence and complacency
thenassauguardian editorial



The images and news stories that have dominated the international news media for the past week or so in Egypt are a telling story on the importance of the basic concept of democracy, a concept that is spoken about often, but a concept often not fully appreciated. The benefits that are gained from a properly functioning democracy are too often taken for granted.

The beauty of a democracy is that we, the people, get to elect the leaders of our own choosing through a formal process of narrowing down the candidates and casting a vote.

Another key aspect of that electoral process is that there is a time frame in which those elections must come around again. If we the people are not happy with our leaders, we have the opportunity to elect a new leader, thus holding our leaders to a certain degree of accountability.

The equation is not complicated: Please the people or get voted out of office. The common demands from the people are basic: Provide security (from outside forces and crime at home), infrastructure, jobs, and a growing economy. In other words, provide results.

A true democracy also has a time frame in which there is change. In The Bahamas, the government must have an election every five years. In the United States, it is every two years (for House representatives and senators) and four years for the president. The ability to call for change on a consistent basis allows for stability.

In Egypt, there is no democracy. President Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 29 years. The people are now rioting in the streets and calling for change. Suppressing the voice of the masses acknowledges the ineptitude of a leader to provide for his people while hiding behind the shield of his power.

We must accept that rallies and protests are part of many democracies. The rallies against the Vietnam War in the United States or those here in The Bahamas against the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) sale are examples. But these generally don’t call for ousting a leader, just a change in the policy position currently held by the government in power.

But one aspect of a consistent election process that we do not follow is that of term limits.

Sir Lynden Pindling was in power from 1967 to 1992 (25 years). Our current prime minister has been in power from 1992 to 2002 and 2007 to the present (15 years). The interim period was held by Prime Minister Perry Christie (five years).

Over 44 years we have had three leaders. The United States over a similar period has had eight leaders, almost triple that of The Bahamas. The United Kingdom has had 12 leaders, quadruple that of The Bahamas.

The Bahamas has benefited enormously from the perseverance of these leaders for equality, prosperity and peace. The people of The Bahamas enjoy one of the highest per capita incomes in the region and access to clean water, power, and communication. We have so much to be thankful for.

But it is inevitable that change is upon us. In the coming years it will be time for a new generation to take governing responsibility for The Bahamas. We must take heed of the lessons provided by our leaders and understand that Independence was won with heart and vigor, not to be forgotten.

We have become complacent in our positions and surroundings, a comfort that shields us from the change happening around us. To be constantly challenged by our peers and countrymen sets forth a standard that cannot be undermined.

The children of Independence need to stand and prove that they too possess the skills to govern a country in the 21st century. We know that the prime ministers past and present can do it, but where is our future? It lies in the hands of those born during the Independence era.

2/7/2011

thenassauguardian editorial

Bahamas Blog

May the good people of the world align themselves with the people of Haiti to facilitate the birthing of this true era of democracy!

Have no fear, 2011 will be a great year for Haiti and for the world!

By Jean H Charles

On November 1, 2009, I attended for the second time (the first one being at the Brooklyn Museum in New York) a voodoo ceremony celebrating the guedes (the good and bad angels).  The voodoo mambo or priestess made the prediction that 2010 will be an excellent year for Haiti and for the world.

In fact, 2010 was the worst year in Haitian history and in the rest of the world.

In Haiti, a devastating earthquake killed 300,000 people, while leaving 1.5 million homeless.  A cholera epidemic brought into the country by the United Nations has killed 5,000 people; it might go to 10,000 before leveling off.

Throughout the world, according to a study made by the Center for the Study of Catastrophes of the United Nations, 2010 has been one of the most costly and deadly for decades.  With 373 catastrophes, 200 million people without homes, 400,000 dead and $110 billion economic losses in the US, $18 billion in China and $4.5 billion in Pakistan, the year has wrought calamities beyond recorded observation.  Haiti has rung the alarm bell but it was repeated in Chile, Russia, China and Pakistan.

The prediction that 2010 would be a great year for Haiti and for the world was indeed a voodoo prediction, filled with holes and spurious expectation!

Based on the natural principle, after the bad weather is the good one, after the rain is sunshine, have no fear!  God has promised He will not bring about the deluge twice to mankind; I am predicting that 2011 will be a good year for Haiti and for the world.

The signals are already there. Tunisia that lives under a dictatorship for the past thirty years has booted out its dictator at the beginning of the month of January.  The people want nothing more than true and real democracy.  Egypt is on the verge of packing up Mr Mubarak, who ruled as a dictator for the past thirty years.  Yemen and maybe some more of the repressed Muslim or Gentiles countries will be taken the lead of Tunis to tell the dictators they have no clothes, they should let the people go!

2011 will be a determining year for Haiti to find, at last, solace after experiencing with dictatorship, militarism and anarchism as a tool of governance.  In reviewing the literature on Haitian history, I was surprised to find this gallant nation has been suffering for the past not 50 but 500 years the ignominy of humiliation, repression and plain disregard of their human dignity.  For three hundred years during slavery it was the de jure bondage, right after the independence during the next two hundred years it was the de facto enslavement.

Throughout this long history, the ruling nationals intertwined with the international sector have always conspired to keep the masses at bay, ignorant, poor and not in control of their destiny.  This February 7, 2011, Rene Preval, sustained by a sector of the international community, at the end of his mandate will either succeed in having the upper hand to continue the culture of squalor in Haiti or he will be butted out by the people power to yield the scene to enlightened governance that puts the needs and the aspirations of the people on the front line.

I am observing in Haiti a global waste of international resources with no significant impact for the population.  The United Nations, with a purse in Haiti of $865 million per year, is the biggest culprit.  Encircled with a total wall of silence, the 42 nations that comprise the personnel of MINUSTHA are engaged in a scam of diligence and make believe when they know that we know they are completely useless.

The only harm endured by the UN military in Haiti is the wearing of a heavy helmet under constant 90 degrees Fahrenheit weather.  For all the propaganda of a violent population, the Haitian people are peaceful, resilient, and going about doing their daily business of survival with a saintly resignation and a shrug that necessitates a personal and collective overhaul.

The thousand of NGOs that took up residence in Haiti after the earthquake are maneuvering like chickens without heads.  Without direction, coordination and vision they are spending the international funds mostly on their own needs first, on the needs of the Haitian people maybe or after.

The Preval government, using words instead of action, is busy bilking the NGOs and the international institutions instead of helping them to help his people. In a perverse symbiotic relationship that feeds each other, the government and the international institutions are comfortable with each other, afraid of standing up on the side of the Haitian people.

In the flawed election, planned and coordinated by the Preval government, with the logistic support of the UN and OAS, the people of Haiti have misled the prognosticators and the polls to keep their candidate close to their cards.

When the discredited Electoral Board pushed the government candidate for a second run, putting aside the candidate who carried the popular vote, all hell broke loose.  There was rioting all over the country, in particular in Les Cayes (the southern part of Haiti).  OAS/CARICOM, an incubator of the criminal conspiracy, was called again by the same Haitian government to correct its wrong.

This time, it has no other choice but to reverse the results and put the popular candidate Michel Martelly in the second round, setting aside the government candidate Jude Celestin.

The drama is not over because Jude Celestin is pulling the patriotic bell to generate national sentiment in his favour.  Jean Claude Duvalier, with his surprise visit, is shuffling the cards. Jean Bertrand Arisitide has a expressed strong interest in returning into the country, putting the weight of his popularity in the mix. Rene Preval, in spite of his mediocre leadership standing, wants to remain the broker par excellence of the Haitian political transition.

Haiti will necessitate cesarean section to give birth to a new nation hospitable to all.  I am confident the political skills of the people have reached a mature level to handle the birthing of true democracy without too much pain and suffering. .

Closer to home, P.J. Patterson, the Haiti CARICOM Representative, has called for helping Haiti to become the driving force of the Caribbean.  He will need the credibility of his long years of service to face the Colin Granderson force embedded with the discredited Haitian government and a corrupt sector of the Haitian elite bent on keeping Haiti in bondage forever.

February 7, 2011, a day of reckoning, will be like the birth of Christ in the world, the day that will force the dawn of a new beginning in Haiti.  May the good people of the world align themselves with the people of Haiti to facilitate the birthing of this true era of democracy!

February 5, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

The Bahamian political directorate has chosen Haitians for their most favoured political prostitutes...

Time to stop prostituting Haitians

NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net

Haitians have been migrating to The Bahamas for centuries.  For race-based reasons, it was a problem in the early 19th century.  While the racial legacy formed itself in the post-colonial psyche of African and non-African Bahamians, the modern problem is driven by other issues, like erratic fear, selfish politics and lackluster leadership.

One day, hopefully, Bahamians will wake up and realise, as sure as a man cannot cheat death, no number of raids, repatriations or immigration policies will solve the problems we presently have.

The political directorate know this, but they have chosen Haitians for their most favoured political prostitutes: to use and abuse to stoke fears and hoodwink the masses.

The reality is, neither the Department of Immigration, the Defence Force nor the entire might of the state have the power to ease the plight of all people in despair.

For centuries, migration has been the answer to populations seeking a better life, according to Leonard Archer, former CARICOM Ambassador.  This is the story of Europe, Asia, Africa, everywhere in the world.  When people experience scarcity, drought, famine, hardship, or persecution in one area, they move to another.

"If you interview the Haitian people who are coming, a number of them have been deported two, three, four times.  People are desperate.  The reality is desperate people will always move and we can't afford to put a wall around the country," said Mr Archer.

"We have been deporting people to Haiti since the 1970s.  Has it helped?   Has it worked?" he asked. People should know: we have no ally in the Haitian government or the Haitian people where the immigration problem is concerned.  In a country of 10 million, the hundreds of people who migrate to The Bahamas, whether legally or illegally, is not a problem on the minds of most.

Plus, Haiti, like Jamaica, relies on remittances from its Diaspora population.  When countries realised that the side effect of the brain drain was a supply of cold hard cash from the Diaspora, suddenly the migration of nationals did not seem so bad. On the contrary, migration was encouraged and remittances became a primary source of foreign exchange.

In The Bahamas, we are banging our heads against the wall with our hysteria over the illegals.  All the banging is just giving us a headache.

We desperately need a new approach to the so-called immigration problem and we need a new vision of Haiti.

We should never forget: when the African world needed a sign that its certain fate would not be decided by the interests of slave masters and colonial rulers, it was a group of disparate Africans on the island of Hispanola, with the backing of their ancestors and the divine spirits, who rose to the occasion.  Empowered by a collective will, they planted the seed in the African consciousness that we are more than they say we are; we deserve more than what they want for us.

Two hundred years later, Haiti that gave us hope, appears to face a hopeless fate.  All we see of its people is what seems to be their worst.  The eyes of the world take an interest only when the story line is one of strife and scandal; when the images fit the narrative of poor, desolate, pagan and black.  And in the minds of most Bahamians and many Haitians, the light that is Haiti has faded.

Experience tells us that in our darkest hours it often takes a light, whether shone by an external source or a spark in our own spirits, to help us overcome.  In an Avatarish way that light speaks to us and says: 'I see you'.

In an African way that light says, ubuntu, 'I am what I am because of who we all are'.  In the language of psychotherapy, the light says, 'tap into the greatness that lies within and live it'.  And from our queen mothers it says, 'I love you'.

Africans across the globe need to care enough to be more informed.  Bahamians need to rise above the malcontent, so our people and the entire world knows, Haiti is more and Haiti deserves more.

It is more than what the international media depicts. It is more than the actions of its political directorate.  It is more than the folly that befalls it, and it is more than what our eyes see.  In this season of great frustration, Haiti needs neither our disdain or pity, nor our charity; it needs our great expectations, and with our collective consciousness, we will call out its greatness.  Haiti has much work to do, but I wonder if we will start to play our part from where we stand.  Certainly, in the history of our relationship with Haiti, the Bahamas has missed countless opportunities.  That is largely because of our singular focus on immigration.

If we date the start of diplomatic relations to 1971, when the Bahamas signed the first of three bilateral treaties, then we can claim the 40-year prize of missed opportunities in building a meaningful relationship.

With newly acquired rights of self governance, and a dispatch from the UK's Foreign Common Law Office giving it limited authority to conduct external affairs, the Bahamian government negotiated its first bilateral agreement in 1971.  Haiti was the foreign partner.

That agreement envisaged a broad range of relationships, including commercial trade and technical co-operation, education exchanges and cultural linkages - understandably so, because for two decades prior, Haitian labour had been growing in importance in The Bahamas. From the 1950s, Bahamians were working to establish modern commercial farming and Haitians provided a source of cheap agricultural labour from then.  Mr Archer said Haitian farm workers employed in Marsh Harbour, Abaco, in the late 1950s, were not "perceived as a threat".

Owens-Illinois, an American company operating in Abaco, was known to recruit Haitian labour in the late 1960s, recalls Joshua Sears, director general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Owens-Illinois originally had a timber cutting license to operate in The Bahamas, but when cutting rights were transferred from Abaco to Andros, the company switched its operations and opened a 20,000 acre sugar cane estate in Marsh Harbour.  Suffice to say, the population of Abaco and the available supply of Bahamian labour at the time would have given rise to a demand for Haitian workers.

Unfortunately, whatever promise the 1971 agreement may have embodied was short lived because it was "never really actualised", according to Mr Sears.

This is evidenced in the subsequent agreements - 1985 and 1995 - for which immigration was the central issue.

To this day, the almost singular focus of our foreign interest in Haiti is immigration.  Dr Eugene Newry, former Bahamas ambassador to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, said in the modern world, countries establish diplomatic ties to look after economic interests. He said the Bahamas is the anomaly.  Its interest in Haiti is solely to keep the Haitians out.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture might disagree, pointing to regional security initiatives and mediation efforts in Haiti in which the Bahamas has played central roles, or recent exploratory projects.  But as valid as those efforts are, anyone would be hard pressed to contradict Dr Newry's overall assessment.

What makes our efforts so laughable is that given our efforts over 60 plus years, the solution to the immigration problem remains elusive.

This is so, notwithstanding the notoriously draconian efforts of the much loved Progressive Liberal Party Minister of Immigration Lofters Roker, whose administration was said to raid schools, churches and even hospitals to round up "illegals".

History has shown us we are inextricably linked to Haiti.  Today is no different.  Waves of immigrants are seen any time public confidence in Haiti wanes, during economic crises, at the mere threat of political instability, and at times of natural disaster, to which Haiti is no stranger.  So unless the Bahamas has control over Haitian politics, the Haitian economy, and acts of God, things will not be looking up anytime soon.

Short of Haiti being restored as the light of the world, and probably even after, migration will be a Haitian reality, and the Bahamas, less than 200 miles off the coast, will suffer the consequences.

All is not lost, for there is a solution to the problem.  It requires less money, less resources and fewer headaches, but it is infinitely more difficult than anything we have ever tried before.

A new approach to the Haitian problem is not incongruent with a clear understanding of the Bahamas' national interests. Illegal immigration strains national resources; Bahamian sovereignty is a national imperative, as is the security of our people.  These are the interests that motivate Bahamians to call on the government time and time again to crack down on the immigration problem.

But in the interest of national development, and to play our part in history, someone needs to start being honest with our people and stop paying the pimps to prostitute the Haitians.  There is a better way.  The Bahamas has unexplored and underdeveloped interests in Haiti.

Let's look at our economic interests and the question of labour, because if we are honest, we would acknowledge that Bahamian and Haitian interests are aligned in many ways.

Economic migrants flock to the Bahamas year after year, not political refugees.  That means Haitian people look to The Bahamas like we look to the United States - as a land of opportunity.  For Haitians, there is a lucrative labour market in the Bahamas and their skills are in high demand.  If there was no reason for optimism and they did not find employment in the Bahamas, they would not come.

Yes, unemployment in the Bahamas is high. The government has a responsibility to create jobs and to stimulate the economy, and the private sector has an interest in creating jobs where there are lucrative business opportunities.

Most Haitian labourers are employed by the private sector. For better or worse, Bahamian businesses are empowered by the law to employ foreign labour.  Just look at the financial and tourism sectors, although they are not necessarily models to emulate.

In fact, the employment of foreign labour in these sectors is not scrutinised nearly enough.  While Bahamians have their eyes on Haitians, predominantly white foreigners in finance and tourism are holding a virtual monopoly on well paying jobs that would otherwise give Bahamians an opportunity to create wealth and better the nation.  Foreigners in these sectors gain employment on a so-called temporary basis, with a provision to train Bahamians, but in most cases they never leave and they don't truly empower Bahamians.  They find it easy to get naturalised, and permanently secure the senior job ranks for Bahamians like themselves.  This system proves that Bahamians do not have an entitlement to employment although many believe they do. Perhaps we should, because this is our country.  But perhaps not, because we live in a global village.  That argument is another debate altogether.

For now, clear eyes would see, Haitian labour is not the antithesis to Bahamian unemployment.  That is our own problem.  Haitians are simply the most favoured scapegoat.  It is like a scorned wife blaming a prostitute for her husband's infidelity.

If we were to round up every Bahamian who has at one point engaged in the practice of employing Haitian nationals, they would probably outnumber the Haitians themselves.

If Bahamians were genuine about wanting to exorcise Haitian people, that would require draconian measures like strict penalties for Bahamians hiring undocumented workers.  The sacrifice would be a culture where people would spy on neighbours and employees would spy on their employers.

Let us stop kidding ourselves.  Most of the nationalist outcry is just rhetoric.  It does not reflect the desires of the private sector, the practice of our people, and it does not reflect our true economic interests.  The government can vouch for that.  The trade in foreign labour in The Bahamas is a lucrative business.  The government's coffers are kept fat by the millions paid annually for work permits.

Sixty years ago, pioneers in the agriculture sector knew we could not thrive without foreign labour.  There was a reason why.  The Bahamas has 326,000 acres of arable land.  According to Dr Newry, it would require two workers per acre to fully exploit this resource commercially.  That translates to every single Bahamian in the country needing to take an interest in agriculture, supplemented by an abnormally high birthrate, and steroid aided child development.

Our opposition to Haitian labour is simply coming from our hurt pride.  The notion that we might need Haitian labour is not an indictment on Bahamian labour.  It is just a reality.  People who accept this do not fear or scorn the idea of an organised temporary worker programme like the South Florida work scheme Bahamians participated in during the 1950s.

For people like Mr Archer, who does not agree with talk about the massive farming potential of the Bahamas because of our "poor soil quality" and questionable water supply, there are economic interests for the Bahamas in Haiti itself.  "Let us be practical.  If there is going to be a farming industry in The Bahamas it has to be driven by private capital and private enterprise.  If the government has to engineer it then it will be a make-work scheme rather than an agriculture scheme.  The reason we don't have a farming industry is those persons who tried it didn't succeed.  We don't have the natural kind of conditions for a successful farming industry," said Mr Archer.

There are many who would disagree, pointing to success stories of the past and present, like the famous story of Edison Key.  But a fair question would be, what about longevity?

Mr Archer does not deny some success. After all, the seaside mango farm of the Maillis family is evidence of such.  But he argues, if the farming potential were really so abundant, the private sector would have already found a way to exploit it fully.  So here is another notion to consider.  Haitian mangos sell for 99 cents or less in New York City.  The same mango costs $2.50 - $3 locally, according to Mr Archer.  His point: Bahamians could invest in Haiti, as farming there is a lucrative business proposition.  It would have consumer benefits at home and produce employment benefits for the distribution and marketing of farmed goods.  Again, it is our hurt pride that makes us scorn the idea. Many Bahamians would surely say, we need to invest in our people. We have done enough for Haiti.

"You have to make up your mind what you want.  If by investing in Haiti you would create the conditions where they wouldn't need to come, surely that is a useful solution.  There are people who just want the problem to disappear.  Unfortunately problems do not just disappear," said Mr Archer.  He agrees that a work programme is one way, but it is not enough, he said.

"We have to ensure there is economic growth in Haiti. When (Jean-Bertrand) Aristide became president a number of Haitians left the Bahamas and went back to Haiti because they thought things would get better.

"The source of the problem is Haiti itself not Haitians in The Bahamas," said Mr Archer.

February 03, 2011

tribune242

Why Jamaica should take note of Egypt

jamaica-gleaner editorial

IT WOULD be easy for our Government, and Jamaicans generally, to assume that there are no parallels between the violent uprising in Egypt against the long-serving President Hosni Mubarak, or the revolt in Tunisia that chucked out the dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Nor might we see a congruence between anything in Jamaica and the events in Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh is under pressure from demonstrators; nor Algeria, where Abdelaziz Bouteflika has announced that a 20-year-old state of emergency is to be lifted.

Nor would Jamaica expect to be classified with Jordan, with its limited constitutional rule and where real power rests with King Abdullah III.

After all, Jamaica, its social malaise notwithstanding, is a functional democracy with high levels of individual freedom and the right of people to elect their government at intervals, although the process sometimes gets rather messy.

This newspaper, however, believes that as Jamaica watches the deepening unrest in North Africa and the Arab world, it is serious cause for concern.   For while the proximate cause of the uprisings - Ben Ali, Mubarak and Co - may be to throw off repression in favour of democracy, the underlying issues are much deeper.

disenchanted young people

They are as much social and economic as political, and have been driven, primarily, by disenchanted young people. And therein lies our parallel.

Ben Ali, for instance, found it relatively easy to maintain social stability when his country's economy was in reasonably decent health.   Things, however, have gone sour, and domestic economic problems have been aggravated by the global crisis.   Political discontent has been exacerbated by high levels of joblessness and underemployment, particularly among young people.

In essence, the crises faced by youth in the North African and Arab states are not dissimilar to those highlighted by social anthropologist Professor Don Robotham in last Sunday's edition of this newspaper, and upon which we commented in the same issue.

urgent and robust attention

There are some harrowing facts worth recalling: nearly 400,000 people in the 15-29 age group - 59 per cent of the cohort - are either unemployed or out of the labour force.   Of this group, 83 per cent have stopped looking for work, most likely because they believe that there are no jobs to be found.

Fixing problems such as these is never easy, but they always demand urgent and robust attention, which Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his Jamaica Labour Party promised would be the case when they came to office more than three years ago.

We have, however, neither felt nor seen the urgency of an administration that is driving hard for economic growth and giving substance to its promise of job creation.   It has mostly pursued a predictable economic orthodoxy of the recent past, with little embrace of a real partnership with the private sector to jump-start and rev the economy.

Early in its tenure, this newspaper suggested to the administration the need for something akin to a job council, similar to the one US President Barack Obama appointed recently with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt at the helm.   We recommitted to the idea at the time of Mr Immelt's appointment and do so again.

We don't assume that Mr Obama has greater insight than our prime minister, unless the US president has a better grasp of Middle East matters.


The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.   To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.

February 4, 2011

jamaica-gleaner editorial

How can CARICOM countries decrease the upswing of criminality?

By Ian Francis

Every day, the Caribbean region’s population, through the various and diverse media organs of print and radio resources, is bombarded with news of crime ranging from homicide, armed robberies, rape and other violent crimes against innocent citizens, who are later described as victims, after facing the trauma of being attacked and victimized by these misfits in our community.

As an exiled Caribbean person in North America, I understand the individual pains felt by victims and the lacking inadequacy of our law enforcement agencies to apprehend and bring many of these offenders to justice.  Although, some of these alleged offenders are apprehended and brought to justice, the growing inadequacy of the justice system further compounds the situation by apparent backlogs, timid Crown prosecutors and lawless legal lawyers, who show very little respect for the judicial system by constantly plotting and finding schemes and alibis on circumventing the justice system.

Many of these legal misfits can be found throughout the regional court circuit and are very well known by sitting judges and magistrates.  Unfortunately, the legislative disciplinary mechanism is still in draft or review in many regional states so these misfits enjoy disciplinary immunity.

So, a careful analysis of the crime upswing in the region should not be only attributed to the senseless hardcore criminals.  Therefore, when the question of crime and criminality is posed to the ordinary citizen on the street, the usual response is “all ah dem in crime”.

Getting such comments, it became necessary for me to delve further into these damaging comments and the outcomes were as follows, with both victims and potential victims identifying group and individual contributions to this untenable situation in the region.  Based on my frank and open discussions, it is fair to conclude that crime escalation in the region cannot be blamed only on hardcore criminals.  There are many other accomplices, which include:

-- Crooked, lawless and unethical lawyers versed in running red short around the judicial system;
-- Rogue cops who wear the uniform but act as the ears and eyes to inform criminals and their accomplices of planned police operations against them;
-- The revisionist habitual criminal offenders and their known accomplices who have no respect for law and order and invasion of individual rights
-- Public servants who live above their means and in order to maintain the lifestyle, they have no alternative but to divert to corrupt practices, which often go undetected
-- Corrupted elected and appointed parliamentarians who see a niche where they can advance themselves by amassing wealth through money laundering and other corrupt practices
-- Corporate and small business owners who manipulate the customs, excise and tax systems.

These strong perceptions and feelings by the population cannot be ignored anymore.  Respective Caribbean governments need to take immediate action.

The situation is very gloomy throughout the region.  It was only a few days ago that Trinidad’s National Security Minister accused crooked law enforcement officers of renting their weapons to criminals to commit serious crimes.  With this and other allegations emerging from around the region, there should be no doubt or uncertainty in the mind of decision makers that “it is time for house cleaning”.

Yes, there are strong possibilities that many will be caught and, of course, there might be embarrassment; however, if CARICOM governments are committed to disrupting the criminal elements in their states, action and cleansing is needed on all fronts.  These are some of the critical elements of transparency, accountability and good governance.  Criminality is in our midst and it must be flushed out with vigilance and aggression.

CARICOM governments have from time to time talked about assets declaration.  Rather than lamenting whether elected and appointed officials should make the necessary declaration, it is incumbent on respective governments to move swiftly with such legislation.  In my view, all public servants in the employ of central governments and statutory bodies should make a declaration on what they own?  How was it acquired?  Current value and plans for future economic activities.

To put it bluntly, a police corporal with no relatives abroad, no significant local inheritance, no previously known and published financial accomplishments in his or current position is the owner of several houses, fishing boats and “one mores”.  A careful examination and monitoring of this individual life style shows minimal activities in an existing financial institution.  However, at the end of the day, he or she boasts assets to the tune of millions.  Well, as a Jamaican friend would say, “da en sound right”.

This is the reality of criminal and unethical conduct in the CARICOM region.  Rather than thinking that the criminal troublemakers are only deportees, it is ample time to dig deeper and identify other perpetrators.  They are amongst us and detection is reasonably possible.

There are so many examples of public servant misconduct and alleged corruption in the region that the time has come when it cannot be ignored.  Take a simple look at Stanford’s behaviour in Antigua, where he controlled a key staffer in the financial regulation department.  Certainly, it occurred in Antigua but it will be very silly to think that there are no other misfits within the region.

Criminal lawlessness is not only amongst the poor. Let’s take a holistic approach and the results will be very surprising.

Ian Francis resides in Toronto. He writes frequently on Caribbean Commonwealth Affairs.  He is a former Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Grenada and can be reached at info@vismincommunications.org

February 3, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Obama's trip to South America: Not before time

By David Roberts

We all know US diplomats, or any other diplomats for that matter, don't say what they mean when they speak in public - we never needed WikiLeaks to show us that - and in recent days we've been subject to yet another insult to our intelligence in the form of various officials from the US and elsewhere claiming that President Barack Obama's forthcoming tour of Latin America, announced recently in the State of the Union address, is proof of Washington's high degree of interest in the region and of Latin America's importance to the administration.   In fact, the exact opposite is true.

The fact that Obama's first visit as president to South America - the March trip will encompass Brazil and Chile, while El Salvador is the other country on the itinerary - is scheduled to take place more than two years after he took office, shows Washington's lack of interest in the region and how low a priority Latin America is for US foreign policy.   Obama will have visited nearly every other region of the world before he finally sets foot in the southern part of "America's backyard," although he did make previous trips to Mexico and Trinidad & Tobago.

Nevertheless, the countries he has chosen to visit "to forge new alliances across the Americas," as he puts it, should take advantage of the honor.   Details of the trip are still sketchy but Brazil as the region's economic powerhouse was an absolute must for Obama, and the visit is long overdue.   While in Brazil, which under President Lula experienced at times tense relations with the US, especially over Iran, Obama will meet with new President Dilma Rousseff and the two are expected to discuss issues such as clean energy, the Haiti situation and the sale of fighter jets, among others.   But the important thing as that Rousseff sets her own agenda, and uses the occasion to help Brazil take its rightful place on the world stage.

In Chile, Obama is expected to discuss with President Sebastián Piñera topics such as nuclear security, clean energy and crisis management, in the wake of last February's earthquake.   Piñera needs to take advantage of the visit to get the almost forgotten topic of free trade in the Americas firmly back on the political and international agenda.

El Salvador is at first sight a curious choice to include on the tour, but issues such as immigration to the US will undoubtedly be featured in talks between Obama and President Mauricio Funes.   Indeed, the need to win back the votes of many Latinos in the US may well be the prime motive for the El Salvador visit.

Perhaps equally interesting are the countries in the region not included in the tour.   The omission of Venezuela was no surprise to anyone, given its leftist leader, but not including Colombia, where the US has some unfinished business in the form of ratifying the free trade deal between the two countries, and Argentina, and perhaps Peru too, may be seen as a snub.   Some have said Obama did not want to be seen to be meddling in the upcoming elections in those latter two countries, but even so, he will probably never make it to those important and friendly nations, at least not unless he wins a second term in office, and that is another indication of Washington's - and not just this administration's, the same thing has been true under several previous presidents - lack of interest in the region.

bnamericas

Why is Hugo Chávez called a Dictator?

By John E. Jones - Venezuelanalysis.com

Hugo Chavez is the most controversial head of state in the world and also the most maligned.   I believe that a man should be judged for what he does, or attempts to do, not by what he says, or what others say about him.   All leaders make promises in order to get elected, few ever do what they promised, and many don’t even make the attempt.   If we are ignorant enough to use Thomas Jefferson’s definition of democracy, and reverse the real meaning of the word, then we could call Hugo Chavez the undemocratic leader of a mob.   Hugo Chavez was born the son of working class parents, and grew up in poverty living with his grandmother; he was first elected by middle class working people, and won with a huge majority.

It seems unlikely that a would be dictator’s first major undertaking after being elected would be to have the people rewrite the constitution, replacing one written by elites that like most constitutions was for their personal benefit.   It also seems odd that he got rid of the presidential limo and donated his princely presidential salary to benefit the poor.   Most dictators only travel in armoured limousines and flaunt their wealth.   The photos we see of Chavez show him driving a jeep, riding on the back of trucks with the people, or mingling with people on the street; strange behaviour for a dictator, or even a president.

Hugo Chavez’s election promise was to work for the benefit of the working poor majority who were living in poverty.   Venezuela was a wealthy country due to natural resources, mainly oil, but the wealth was all going into the coffers of the elites, and multi national oil, and mining companies.   By nationalizing oil Hugo Chavez has been able to erradicate illiteracy, provide free health care, education, pensions, and numerous other social programs.   Venezuela is also the refuge of four and a half million Colombian refugees, acknowledged by the UN as the largest refugee problem in the world, who are supported by the government of Hugo Chavez.   Colombian refugees are still entering Venezuela in the hundreds every day, and coming from the drug producing capital of the Americas that poses the problem of weeding out smugglers, drug dealers, and other criminals from Colombia that he is accused of harbouring.   Nationalization of natural resources has definitely made him a dictator in the opinions of the corporate elites, but a hero to his people and most of the Colombians who have found refuge in Venezuela.

The new Venezuelan constitution not only contains some eighteen clauses on peoples rights it also laid the groundwork for the development of the first real democratic government in the world since ancient Greece.   As a result recognition of the need for a new constitution spread to other countries and Bolivia soon followed Venezuela, rejecting the old political parties and electing a peoples’ native president.   Since then the people of Honduras were denied the right to a new constitution by a coup that was backed by the US and Canada.   The latest demands for new constitutions are coming from the people of Tunisia who just ran their dictator out of the country.   Yemenis, Egyptians, and Algerians are following the Tunisians lead demanding that their leaders step down.   Many peoples in the world are becoming aware of how they have been manipulated and kept down by ruling elites, oligarchs, and dictators; and that the only path to real democracy and freedom is through a new constitution, and real democracy.

The propaganda calling Hugo Chavez a dictator or even a would be dictator is coming from elites not just in Venezuela but many countries around the world with sham democracies that are terrified of being exposed and facing a revolution.   Most western countries, like the US, were never intended to be democratic.   The word democracy does not appear in the US constitution for very good reason; As Thomas Jefferson, the slave owning third president and co-writer of the US constitution said: “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

All depots, dictators, oligarchs, and elites fear of rule by the people.   The word democracy comes from ancient Greece and means: Rule by and for the people, directly, not through representatives, or political parties.   This is referred to as direct democracy as opposed to representative democracy.   There can be no rule by and for the people under representative electoral systems because local representatives seldom have any say in the running of the country.   Referendums are an example of direct democracy in action and are now used regularly in Venezuela to decide major issues.   The president of Venezuela is elected by a referendum, not as the leader of a political party and is subject to recall by referendum as are all elected representatives in Venezuela under the new constitution; these are real steps toward democracy where the people choose their representatives as individuals; not candidates selected by party elites.

Creating a real democracy can not be legislated it is something that the people have to learn and do themselves.   Hugo Chavez has been providing the people with the tools, education, and the support of his government.   The people have to take over the country from the bottom up and eliminate the bureaucracy as they advance.   Of course the bureaucrats are not willing to see their power and positions abolished so it is not an easy task for the people who have to learn as they go along, and there will be lots of trials and errors along the way.   This is the mob rule that Thomas Jefferson feared; government by and for the people.   The people form communal councils that decide on their priorities through consensus and are able to get funding directly from the national government.    Representatives are elected for two-year terms and can be recalled at any time.   Some of the communal councils formed have advanced to the city level, and must now go on to the state level.

The right wing extremists in the US who now claim that Hugo Chavez is the greatest threat in the world to the US interests are right in so far as his introduction of direct democracy is a threat to the US elites and the government but certainly no threat to the people of the US.

Eliminating Hugo Chavez or attacking and trying to occupy Venezuela would not stop the peoples’ movements throughout Latin America, North Africa, or the Middle East.   The age-old desire for real freedom and real democracy can never be stopped.   Considering Venezuela a military threat to any country is laughable.   The Venezuelan military is much smaller than that of several of its neighbours.   It is true that Hugo Chavez is training a huge militia but it is not being trained to support the regular military units, but is being trained for guerrilla warfare in the event of an invasion; he has also started training and arming peasant militias for self defence in the countryside where peasant leaders are still being murdered, and people intimidated by thugs hired by large property owners.   Arming the people doesn’t sound to me like anything a dictator would do; but it does sound like giving the people the means to defend their new freedoms and developing democracy.

Of course now that Venezuela has the largest certified oil reserves in the world the US hawks will be busier than ever promoting a war and Hugo’s peasant army, and militia may need all the training and weapons they can get.

Like most countries in Latin America, Venezuela was plagued with crime, and corruption that extended through the police and judicial system.   Removing and prosecuting corrupt judges has caused great controversy.   Building a federal police force that is ethical and humane just began two years ago, and is being trained in a new facility that teaches the constitution, peoples’ rights, and their duties.   This new police force had grown to 4,222 officers at the end of 2010, and had substantially reduced crime in the areas the officers were deployed.   The new police force like the army is being taught to protect the people not just the elites, and property.

Banks and businesses that were corrupt have been nationalized to protect the public, and many former owners have fled to the US to avoid criminal proceedings and find a safe haven for their ill-gotten gains.   These elite criminal elements all scream dictatorship and seek to overthrow the government.

I believe that in the future the 21st century will become known as the information age when many emperors lost their clothes.   I hope it also becomes known as the century that freedom and democracy returned to the earth.   The advancements in communications made possible through new technology since the turn of the century have already enabled people to stop coups in progress, coordinate resistance, bring down governments, and become informed free of corporate propaganda and control.

In Venezuela alone millions of people have gained access to computers and the world-wide-web.   Last year more than a million people were trained in computing in Venezuelan internet Infocentros. Domestic access to the internet increased by 242,993 homes last year, for a total of 1,351,269 connections, an increase of 22%.   A third of the population now have access to internet in their homes, compared to 3% before Chavez was elected.   The “Canaima” program that provides school children with mini laptops has supplied 875,000 computers to first and second grade students, and this year the government is projecting handing out 500,000 laptops to third grade students.   In the past year the government expanded the country’s satellite network, the first satellite in Latin America dedicated to public broadcasting, by installing 728 satellite antennas.   According to the latest information posted in Vheadline.com “Venezuela provides free education to more than four million students at the primary level, more than two millions in high school, and an equal number of university students, as well as those who benefit from the Sucre and Ribas educational programs”.   With a population of just over 28 million in 2008 eight million students is close to a thirty percent of the population.

Hugo Chavez could rightly be accused of being too humanitarian, or too generous for providing poor US citizens in the New England States and Alaska with cheap heating oil reduced in price by 40%, or providing subsidised fares to seniors using public transit in London England.   He is already widely criticized for selling oil at greatly reduced prices to sister countries in Latin America because this has caused a big loss of profits to major international oil companies.   He is also guilty of trading oil to other countries in trade for services or products instead of dollars.   All these acts are very damaging to corporate capitalist profits, and to add insult to injury Venezuela’s nationalized oil company contributes its’ profits to social programs in Venezuela; and it these profits that enable Venezuelans to enjoy free health care, education, and many other social programs.   The people in many countries would like their natural resources to be used the same way; no doubt the millions of people in the US with no health care would too.

When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans Hugo Chavez offered to send help but Bush refused Venezuelan aid and sent in the army instead.   Venezuela was one of the first countries to land aid and a rescue team in Haiti before the US army got there to shut down the airport and occupy the country.   During the disaster caused by heavy rains in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez opened up the presidential palace as well as many public buildings to provide shelter to victims who lost their homes.   Can you imagine such a thing happening in another country?   We don’t have to wonder why the people support Hugo Chavez, it is because he is one of them, and treats them as equals.

If all men/women are born equal as many people like to believe it stands to reason that all men/women in any country are entitled to an equal share of the natural resources in their country.   Hugo Chavez has been restoring these natural rights to his people, against the will of the elites who claimed to own most of the wealth. Venezuelan elites like their counterparts in most of the western “representative democracies” also own and control most of the media so it is easy to understand why we are being bombarded with their lies, and propaganda.

Whatever Hugo Chavez is he is greatly admired by millions of people around the world and his goal of restoring Bolivar’s goal of free republics united by their common bonds as an alternative to being subjected to domination by foreign powers appears to be inspiring peoples around the world to rebel against oppression and domination.   Arabs are asking why their leaders don’t have the cajones to nationalize their natural resources and do something for the people who they rightfully belong to.   How long before we will be hearing the same questions asked in Canada, the US, and other western “representative democracies” for corporations?

There are good reasons for elites, and leaders from around the world to hate and vilify Hugo Chavez; these parasites might have to start working for a living like the rest of us, although they are a tiny minority they are immensely wealthy and control most of the media.   Hugo Chavez is called a dictator because he is introducing real direct democracy into thw world, and that spells the beginning of the end of privileged elites.

Looking at what he has done for his people as well as poor people in other countries shows that Hugo Chavez is an exceptional politician, perhaps the only one in the world that has and continues to fulfill his election promises on behalf of working people.   Hugo Chavez is being judged and condemned by the elites, oligarchs, and dictators of the world and using their control of the mass media to spread their lies and distortions; any leader emerging in the world that attempts to serve his/her people to the detriment of corporations will experience the same vilification.

January 31st 2011

venezuelanalysis