The Colonial Mentality Throughout the Caribbean Diaspora - has Created a System of Political Clientelism

Emancipated Day!  "But today we are Mentally and Economically - Slaves"

The colonial mentality throughout the Caribbean diaspora, has created a system of political clientelism.  In other words,  an “all for me baby”syndrome

By Dr Kevin Alcena

Nassau, The Bahamas
  

Happy Emancipation Day to all Africans in the Caribbean — It is indeed a culturally mixed dichotomy  in regards to freedom.  The colonial mentality throughout the Caribbean diaspora, has created a system of political clientelism.  In other words,  an “all for me baby”syndrome.

When we look around, all we see is failure, from Haiti, Jamaican, Trinidad, Guyana, The Bahamas and the list goes on.  We inherited a system after the emancipation, called democracy by default, that is orchestrated and manipulated by an elite black class who has a colonial mentality that is worse than the slave masters.

We have somehow lost the social contract to the common man and woman.  A good example- a number of young Bahamian men trying to make an honest living selling guinep and coconuts being arrested by police.  Since when did you need a license to sell guinep and coconut water?

Are you going to deprive these children of their opportunities?  Most of the children are wearing masks but the state sees fit to harass them, and this is what we call, “the people’s time”?

Not so long ago the Prime Minister of the Bahamas Hubert Alexander Ingram, used to walk to school barefoot.  And, if I’m correct, he used to shine shoes—did he have a license to be a shoe shine boy?

Civil society in this country is laughable, they have no clear understanding in terms of our history and where we’re going.  Our national debt—I don’t even know if it’s even manageable at this point.

And whilst we are experiencing an increase in the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of Bahamians are going to bed very hungry, unable to find jobs, can’t pay their light bills, or even their landlords.

There is no thinking system, whilst the elite benefit.  What we have inherited on this incredible Emancipation Day is a form of economic and mental slavery.

There’s a form of application for the common man and woman that is unprecedented at this time.  There is no care of the church to the politicians.

I must compliment one man who is doing a remarkable job in feeding thousands of Bahamian people, Philip Smith and other individuals who are taking matters into their own hands.

What is remarkable about this country is that we are small; it is easy to fix our problems.  Every Bahamian should be tested for Covid-19 so we can nip this in the bud.

We don’t have millions of people.  Why is not every Bahamian being tested?

We have the data to deal with this crisis.  Emancipation means responsibility and our government has abdicated their responsibility.

They are governed by ego and emasculation “I’m in charge, I am the boss”.  This is a very symbolic emancipation, we need the Marcus Garvey’s, the Sir Lynden’s we need the Michael Manly’s to count the chains that hold us, and to remind us that it was only yesterday that our great grandparents were slaves.

Happy Emancipation Day Bahamas.

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MOODY’s DOWNGRADE OF BAHAMAS SETS A MOOD!

By Professor Gilbert Morris

I have condemned the ratings agencies as corrupt and unfair:

I won’t change tune now!

The rating agencies aided in the near destruction of the global financial system in 2008; and shew themselves interested in money rather than clear crisp accurate analysis of the credit statuses for which they claimed expertise.

I have argued that we should rate ourselves according to the same mathematical and statistical benchmarks, determining for ourselves our financial and economic health and our prospects.

Alas, in the Caribbean and Africa we have no credibility on this front:

When Moody’s or the S&P gives us a favourable rating, we treat it like its  front-room flowers.

When they call us frowsy, we say we know ourselves better with no evidence.

The fact is our situation is frowsy at the moment and has been so for sometime...that is because:

1. Our governments mistake government’s finances for the economy, and speak of the health of the fiscal state without due regard to the economic realities; particularly the ‘misery index’.

2. We have failed to innovate away from our one-legged plantation economic model, which requires hardly even a pulse to fashion or manage and is susceptible to even mild exogenous shocks, toward 21st century decentralised systems.

3. We seem clueless about the economics of the PEG, and are prioritising  constantly away from the PEG and so away from the more efficient means of feeding the PEG - so the National Reserves - which is the ONLY means to broaden the capacity for economic growth. I emphasise: IT IS THE ONLY MEANS TO BROADEN THE CAPACITY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH!

4. Our government’s focus has been constantly lusting after an even larger share of GDP through further regressive taxation; despite failing to collect taxes currently on the books!

5. We have failed to innovate toward a system in which investing in and through Bahamians becomes a driver of economic expansion.

6. Our government systems are sclerotic and nations that arose from nothing 20-years AFTER our independence, surpassed us 20 years ago from nothing to world leaders; as we make the same excuses we made 40 years ago.

I am on reactors on January 20th 2020, here in in other spaces Zoom Conference and the like, in urging government to borrow large...because the crisis would extend beyond 2020.

We did not follow that proscription!

At the moment, the Bahamas are at a precipice...and whilst Dorian and Covid 19 have driven economic prospects to some degree, our current situation arises from our own failures to have been proper stewards of the largess of these islands.

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ABJECT FOLLY: CARICOM NEED NOT ENGAGE THE EU

By Gilbert Morris


Since 1998, I worked with Pierre Darier directly (as Chairman of Darier Hentsch...now Lombard Odier; and at the Swiss Private Banker’s Association), with a notable Swiss industrialist. My role: to provide the intellectual counter-narrative to the OECD/EU’s wilful demonisation of IFCs; culminating in convincing US Secretary of Treasury, Hon. Paul O’Neill (together with others) to REJECT the OECD’s “Harmful Tax Competition Initiative; which he did did May 2001, and he and I explained the rationale in joint articles in Tax Notes International journal that same month.

In years intervening IFCs have grown punch-drunk from the OECD/EU’s goalpost moving fiats, constantly exempting their members; most notably the US (which has 7 actual tax havens) for the reason (which Prof. Jason Sharman detailed in writing) that the US pays the lion’s share of the OECD’s bill.

Let’s speak plainly: The OECD is NOT an international organisation recognised in international law; the FATF LESS SO. They have no legitimacy to call on sovereign states or constitutional territories.

The EU has acted OUTSIDE the multilateral system issuing fiats of no validity or legitimacy under the Vienna Convention on Treaties 1969.

Reject their Blacklist WITHOUT engagement!

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Covid 19 will be with us forever

COVID 19 HAS EVOLVED AND NOW CHILDREN ARE DYING IN ITALY!

There are new spikes in cases with children!

COVID 19 WILL BE WITH US FOREVER!

“A pandemic is not about ideas or even medicine. Speculative approaches won’t do: Every habit of hubris, decision-stupidity or presumption ends in tragedy.

The best national responses have been Taiwan, New Zealand, Senegal, South Korea, Iceland, Japan, Dubai, Estonia and Singapore. Their approaches confirmed the need for mathematical skills, a game theoretical sensibility and empathy.

A pandemic is about interstitial demographics; dynamics of cascading, data gathering and analytics; exponentiality statistics and avoiding utilitarian triage.

Bubonic plague rose in 1347. We know now it was just the Justinian Plague of the 5th century AD. It killed 50% of known civilisation, wrecked the feudal system and invented the “Job” (yes I mean employment.  So many people died, peasants were able to bargain for compensation).

The pestilence terrorised Europe for 200 years, evolving into the “Black Death”.

There were 1000 Bubonic Plague cases in the 20th century - that we know of - nearly 700 years later. There were 3 Bubonic deaths in the US in 2019!

Covid 19 will be with us forever.” -

Professor Gilbert Morris on ZNS TV Bahamas

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The Politics of Pandemics

THIS HEADLINE IS FALSE! 

By Gilbert Morris:

There will be no reckoning: the idea of reckoning is not the arrival of catastrophe.

The calamity is here and deepening absolutely. But this pandemic will not produce any sort of systemic or structural reckoning as a correction for past failures in the political sense.

Governments across the world have adopted an authoritarian stance - from America, to Philippines, to Austria, Italy, Poland and Brazil - in which they assume the citizen-voter’s perspective means nothing!

We ourselves in the Caribbean have known this political authoritarian - know-it-all - stance since independence. Most winning political parties don’t bother about with policy substance, campaigning by merely maligning their opponents.

The Hon. Mia Mottley MP in Barbados - a heroine for her humanity in this Covid 19 era - is potentially the only leader whom citizens voted for rather than against the outgoing administration.

So, there will be no reckoning: governments in the places named will wreck their citizens lives through haphazard policies at a time when 20% of jobs will vanish and 80% of what’s left will pay 50% of pre-Covid 19 wages levels.
There will be no reforms for three cardinal reasons:

1. In crisis cronyocracies seek to protect cronies, not citizens. Lackeys and government form an unimpeachable cabal - as is to be witnessed now in the US - and they claim all must be done to save businesses, premised not on innovation, growth or fair broad prosperity, but rather whatever is needed to maintain chokeholds on their patronised economic sectors!

2. Congenital imaginative laziness: cronyocracies induce creative avoidance and laziness. Ideas have no career in such places.

Our governments in this region will largely await the opening of the US and “wing it” on the hope that there are no explosions in Covid 19 infections.

That is because Cronyocracies cannot respond to crisis in any broad sense. First, because they do not possess or cultivate citizen trust.

Second, because they destory and so lack strategic verve or creative capacity!

3. Citizens who howl at crony government cabals are themselves to blame as well. We have the governments we deserve. Cronyocracies survive because each demented political tribe feeds off of collusive nexus, in hopes of some temporary crumbs from its table of feckless skullduggery!

We are our worst political enemies!

There will be no protests because governments now have the excuse of “Emergency Powers”; which means they can prevent citizens protesting against failures now crippling their lives, even though that failures have been expanding for decades.

This is how pandemics work politically!

Country defaults and company bankruptcies will cascade. Governments will never blame their cranial sclerosis for the carnage; even as they ignore, wilfully, basic sound policy options in preference for reactionary decisions that protect their lackeys...as we are now discovering with Trump and Boris Johnson in the UK!

They will have at the ready - galloping nonsense - excuses, stating the obvious that this - pandemic - has never happened before; despite the fact that the majority of their citizens have been living in Covid 19 conditions for decades.

For companies the only margins available will be those which digitisation brings...but that means not only 20% fewer jobs globally, it means at a time when nations have seen their incomes vanish, the social-safety-net/public assistance will face unprecedented demands.

And starvation level suffering will pervade the world, whilst overfed politicians make mumbling excuses. 

Mark my words!


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Cannibals in the Church of The Bahamas

Are Cannibals in the Church of The Bahamas?

By Huedley Moss:

During the 40s and 50s a reporter asked Mahatma Ghandhi his view on Christianity. He responded, I know of Jesus, but Christians are so unlike Jesus Christ!

Right he is. It seems, the Bible and Jesus as the head of church is inappropriate with all of its examples for us to learn from and follow; is no longer the golden standard for Christian stewardship!

Let’s faced it. Of the more than 9 billion people who have lived and living on earth, not one of us were perfect and without flaws! Not Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, Daniel Peter and Paul! Jesus Christ is our example!

If we modeled our lives after Mortals, we will most certainly not accomplish our primary goal, of entering His Kingdom!

So why are contemporary Christians cannibalizing each other in Satan’s Arena?

Samuel, David, Elijah, Nehemiah, Paul and Jesus never destroy a flawed brother publicly!

They never used Fleshly works to attack a brother! Cuz they realized we are all mortal corruptible beings!

Naturally Jesus Christ is the Only exception!

What we have seen on social media with one person claiming to be God’s Oracle viciously attacking the well loved Singing Bishop in a setting chaired by Satan himself, is the most outrageous attack I have ever seen one mortal Inflicted on another! To God be the Glory.

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Our United War on the Coronavirus

Dear friends and family around the World:

It is now certain that we are at the early start of an extraordinary pandemic of the new corona virus 19 - with at least two mutations: S being the original and L being the later one - which is much more fatal than the original.

In this period of great uncertainty none of us knows how future events will turn out - other than knowing that dealing with the virus is not a sprint but a long marathon that is to last probably at least two years.

We have to make a joint combined effort to overcome this global challenge, and each of us has much to contribute in the positive; even though such things may seem minor they will become monumental if done by as many of us as possible.

We are facing a war like scenario to combat, contain and become immune to this new virus. In the emergency situations our institutions will be put under unprecedented stress tests.

Like in any turmoil, some individuals will try to disregard our institutional framework and misuse the fog of first major biological war for their selfish aims.

Irrespective of the country you may be in, I appeal to you to preserve a social order and the type of constitutional democracy you live under.

Every challenge is also a great opportunity to make an historical contribution to a better society, and to be remembered for the positive and heroic deeds we are all capable of.

Both stability and progress toward a better society are essential.  Our joint efforts will greatly contribute to our humanity's survival - as we emerge in a better, healthier and more prosperous World for us and the future generations.

I wish you my very best, and remember that tough times do not last - but tough people do.

As challenging as it may seem, let’s unify the World to pursue greater and more ambitious goals then ever before.

Victor Kozeny