Rikki Jai

What’s Next For Our Creative Sector?

By JOSANNE LEONARD

It’s now three months since the controversial CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was signed in Bridgetown, Barbados. It was back in October that the agreement was signed even as debate raged across the region about the broader implications of the EPA and our state of readiness for benefiting from potential opportunities. In the case of T&T, government officials had declared this country “ready to sign” several months before. Whatever the merits and demerits of the EPA, the die is now cast. The region  enters 2009 with the ink dry on the deal and fully wedded to the EPA.  So what now?
While by no means exhaustive, this article attempts to highlight some of the EPA text on the Protocol on Cultural Cooperation, with a focus on the implications for the region’s Cultural Industries and Entertainment Sectors.
By way of brief background however, it is important to note that historically the Europeans have not allowed market access commitments into their audio-visual sector (television, film etc) in any trade agreement. This is a jealously guarded sector, integral to their sense of culture and identity and which is supported by a range of cross-cutting policies, incentives and institutional mechanisms designed to buttress and support it  while strengthening their competitiveness. For example, over the past sixteen years Europe’s MEDIA Programme has supported the development and distribution of thousands of EU-produced films and audio-visual works as well as training activities, festivals and promotion projects.
Between 2001-2006 more than half a billion Euros were injected into 8,000 projects from over 30 countries. Its successor programme, MEDIA 2007 which runs until 2013, provides 755 million Euros to Europe’s audio-visual industry. MEDIA 2007 has some clearly defined objectives which seek to do the following:
1. Take account of both the importance of the creative process in the European audiovisual sector and the cultural value of Europe’s cinematographic and audiovisual heritage.
2. Strengthen the production structures of small businesses to make the European audiovisual sector more competitive, as they constitute its core. This will mean contributing to the spread of a business culture for the sector and facilitating private investment.
3. Reduce imbalances between European countries with a high audiovisual production capacity and countries with low production capacity or a restricted linguistic area. This priority responds to the need to preserve and enhance cultural diversity and inter-cultural dialogue in Europe. It will foster transparency and competition on the single market, and thereby potential economic growth for the whole union.
The EU has also placed a new and strategic focus in its MEDIA 2007 programme on the digital revolution and how the EU should adapt to remain competitive. These are but some of the markers on the other side of the Atlantic.
To emphasise, the EU has never permitted market access commitments in the audio-visual sector and the EPA is no different. What the EPA does provide, according to the officials at the CRNM (Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery), is a legal right to market access involving commercial enterprises in the entertainment sector except audio-visual. What has been agreed is a special Protocol on Cultural Cooperation which was seen as an opportunity to extract some development assistance. The CRNM says that in terms of objectives, “the Protocol aims to improve the conditions governing the exchanges of cultural activities, goods and services and redressing the structural imbalances and asymmetrical patterns which may exist in trade in these, between CARIFORUM states and the EU. The Protocol’s starting point is the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.”
The Protocol on Cultural Cooperation is meant to “provide ample room for collaboration to allow access for Caribbean audio-visual material through special mechanisms which broadly defined include the following:
1. Co-produced audiovisual products and services involving European and Caribbean creative teams (80-20 percent formula for the production budget) will qualify as domestic productions and meet the audiovisual content rules in all EU states and in the Caribbean.
2. Co-production treaties when completed between individual EU states and Caribbean states or region, will make it possible for Caribbean audiovisual producers to access funding for creative projects.
3. Artists and other cultural practitioners (who are not involved in commercial activities in the EU) will be able to enter the EU to collaborate on projects, get training, learn new techniques, engage in production, etc.  They will be allowed to stay in any EU state for periods up to 90 days in any 12-month period.
4. Technical assistance through different measures, such as training, exchange of information, expertise and experiences, and counselling in elaboration of policies and legislation as well as in usage and transfer of technologies and know-how. This support will include co-operation between private companies, non-governmental organisations as well as public-private partnerships.”
The Protocol text therefore needs to be reviewed and discussed with those in the creative sectors to determine what strategies are needed to understand the full implications of its provisions. It means, too, that we have to set our house in order or lose the chance to realise tangible benefits for our creative sectors and audio-visual in particular.

Machel Montano

This should begin with a proper assessment of how to use the Protocol. For example, we have to get a snapshot of what Caribbean producers and originators of audio-visual content will require in order to gain better market access to distribution platforms in the EU; find out if there are existing collaborations with EU firms and/or producers; identify possible threats and opportunities for Caribbean producers and distributors; and identify possible areas of collaboration (technical co-operation, co-financing etc).
Several things are needed if the creative sector is to realise any benefit from the EPA
• Local Content. We have to recognize and admit that, for a variety of reasons,  we have developed very little content. If we have little or no output of local content, then we have little or nothing to market.

• Co-production Agreements. Apart from Jamaica which has an agreement with the UK, the region has no co-production agreements with EU countries. The experts say that even the Jamaica-UK agreement is not forward looking with one glaring omission being new media, animation etc.
• Financing. There are few financing instruments for the creative sectors and even less for audio-visuals. The Protocol suggests that Caribbean producers can access EU funds once bilateral agreements are concluded with the Europeans.
• Incentives. As with financial instruments, there is very little in the public policy space to encourage investment in the audio-visual sector. In T&T, a tax benefit to companies which support cultural/creative projects is yet to be implemented.
• Culture Policy. We need regional harmonised policies in the areas of culture, media and telecommunications.
In a recent briefing on the EPA and opportunities for the audio-visual sector, a CRNM official contended that the region has a two to five year window to get into the game.  We are way behind on the policy and regulatory fronts so if all these pronouncements about the competitive advantage of our creative sectors are to mean anything, then we have to move to put our collective houses in order.
Given the collapse of the traditional commodities and financial markets, there could be no better time to turn inward and support the creative sectors that are homegrown and which can provide new avenues for sustainable growth. Industry must now aggressively roll out discussions in conjunction with our culture, technology, investment and trade officials to figure out what we want to extract out of this done EPA deal.
On the policy front, this is the time for our politicos to champion medium and long term measures in support of the knowledge-based or creative economy. More importantly, they have to ensure that National Indicative Programmes of the region place creative industries at the centre of our development agenda.
If nothing else, the EPA has highlighted two things. One is the weakness of our domestic cultural policies and measures to support our creative sectors; the other is technology and the pace at which our trading partners are dominating the market with new generations of distribution models fraught with possibilities but also threats for the unwary and unprepared. We are presented now with an opportunity to correct these imbalances since hopefully we better understand the critical impact of trade agreements on content industries at the regional and global level.
The EPA may have been seen by some as a happy ever after fairy tale, to boost the fortunes of creators and creative enterprises (mainly micro and small) all with a desire to survive the corporate filter that has all but killed local content and creativity. But possibilities will remain exactly those…possibilities…if we do not move to decisive and strategic action.
With all the ‘sexiness’ around creative industries, this might just well also be the time for the region to recognise that our cultural sectors not only add value to our tourism sectors but may very well be the key to developing a new and sustainable brand of tourism product that protects our fragile island environments. Topic for another time!

Josanne Leonard is the director of Miribai Communications and a media and entertainment consultant. - miribai@tstt.net.tt

The following interview with Lincoln Lewis, General Secretary of the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) was first published in the Guyana Review of December 10, 2008.

From the standpoint of the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL)  what are the most important challenges confronting the regional labour movement today?
LL: Several things preoccupy us at this time. There is the challenge of creating a regional labour movement that is up to the challenges facing workers. It may surprise you to know that many of the problems facing labour are common across the region. There are organizational weaknesses, leadership deficiencies and in some cases, a lack of capacity to properly interpret and respond to the social, economic and political issues that challenge the region and, by extension, the workers of the region.
Our agenda has now gone far beyond the basic issues of the right to work and the conditions under which we work. There are new issues - issues like the environment, decent work, the changing nature of employer/employee relations, HIV/AIDS and, more recently, issues like the advent of the Caricom Single Market, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and the global economic crisis and its implications for the region. These issues comprise what I would describe as the new agenda.

What do you see as the critical implications of the Single Market for the regional labour movement?
LL: Simply put, we believe that the uninhibited movement of labour and capital from one country to another in the region is bound to have implications for the regional  labour movement as a whole. What is particularly obvious is that the Single Market creates similar kinds of challenges for employer/employee relations in all of the countries of the region that have signed on to the CSM.
We need to be concerned, for example, with the impact of the Single Market on the shift of jobs from one country to another and from one industry to another. We also need to be concerned about the impact of the movement of businesses from one country to another and the way in which that movement affects the survival of industries in the affected countries. What this means is that the various trade unions in the Caribbean must work more closely, among themselves as well as with employers and governments to develop common responses to those problems.

Can you give us a personal perspective as to how that challenge has to be met?
LL: I believe that labour has to begin to think outside of the box - so to speak. In the first instance we need to strengthen our capacity to make a meaningful contribution to the region-wide response to the challenges facing the Caribbean. Capacity-building is one of the preoccupations of the CCL at this time. What we are seeking to do is to strengthen the capacity of the various unions in the region to pursue their own internal agendas and to engage the other stakeholders on those issues that comprise what I have described as the new agenda. Additionally, I am personally quite excited about the idea of building bridges among regional trade unions in specific areas. For example, I had a discussion with a group of colleagues recently about the idea of creating single federations of unions with similar interests across the region so that we would have a Federation of Teachers’ Unions, for example; or a federation of unions in the energy sector or in the mining sector.
The idea behind this is to realize a pooling of intellectual and other resources and a coordination of policies. If this can be achieved it would obviously mean that the various categories of workers in the region would have greater collective clout in the region as a whole. I should say that this is very much an initial idea and that a great deal more work would have to be done to determine how, if at all, it can be actualized and what mechanisms we would need to put in place given the fact that we are talking about transnational structures. Interestingly, the idea of transnational mergers of unions is not entirely dissimilar to the tendency towards international mergers within the trade union fraternity.

What about the role of labour in responding to the current economic crisis in the region?
LL: The creeping economic crisis that is beginning to affect the region is at the top of the CCL’s agenda. The writing is already on the wall in terms of job losses in the tourism sector, particularly. I gave an interview to the Stabroek News recently in which I said that Caribbean governments were partly to blame for the situation.
There were things that we ought to have done three decades ago to try to protect our economies against just such an eventuality by reducing our dependence on markets in first world countries and stepping up our food security. Although none of the politicians in the region have had the presence of mind to say it, the fact is that we failed to do those things. Regional leaders in their assessment of the crisis talk about the meltdown in the financial institutions in the United States and the global economic crisis. Those are not the only reasons for the crisis.
The problem is that Caribbean Heads of Government do not want to be seen to have to take any of the responsibility for the crisis. Our societies are still not open to placing the blame where it belongs, particularly when it comes to our politicians. I believe, however, that the challenge lies in finding solutions here in the region. Obviously, food security is a critical issue, not only from the standpoint of feeding ourselves but also in terms of job-creation in the agricultural sector; not just salaried jobs but also in terms of more people being self-employed. I believe, however, that the process has to start with a common understanding among the stakeholders - governments, labour, the private sector and others - regarding the way forward. The challenge here lies in the fact that some governments are less committed to the idea of a stakeholder partnership than others. That has to change if we are to find a way out of this crisis. Governments cannot think that they can do this alone when there are other stakeholder interests at stake.

Is labour equipped to play its role as a partner in this process?
LL: Frankly, I am not sure. The situation varies from one country to another. In Guyana, for example, labour is weak and divided and the highly touted stakeholder arrangement of a few years ago has collapsed completely.
The government pays no attention to the Guyana Trades Union Congress. In fact, one of the things that I find particularly distressing is the misleading cliché about consulting with labour, that is used here in Guyana. Pretensions to consultations with the labour movement on the part of the government of Guyana are a farce.  What we seeing is a relationship with a handful of unions that do not represent even a quarter of the workers of this country.
That is a terrible misrepresentation of the reality of relations between government and labour in Guyana. On the other hand it has to be said that in some respects the leadership of the trade union movement in Guyana has, in many respects, failed its constituency and must therefore take some measure of responsibility for the crisis…
The trade union movement also suffers from a scarcity of leadership skills, and what appears to be an inability to properly interpret the changing climate and understand the changing agenda. In some cases, there is simply a   preoccupation with power by leaders who are self-centred and are not even capable of using their occupation of office to improve the lot of the workers that they purport to represent.
I believe that what is at stake compels the labour movement  to recognize the need for change. We need a new generation of trade union leaders who need to be more sensitive to workers’ issues, more aware of the current agenda and, I daresay, more focussed on carrying through with that  agenda.

Are you suggesting the current crop of labour leaders have outlived their usefulness?
LL: What I am saying is that the decline in the membership of the labour movement … and the seeming loss of faith in organized labour may well speak to the need for comprehensive change with the labour movement and that that change may, in some instances, include a change in leadership. We need to be frank about this. The contemporary workers’ agenda of 2008 is a far more complex agenda than that of thirty years ago. It is not just a question of putting together a Collective Labout Agreement. What I am saying, therefore, is that leadership in the context of contemporary labour is much more challenging. If some of the current leaders are to be honest they will admit that their skills are far too limited to cope with the demands of the current agenda.
The problem here, of course, is that leadership of trade unions is not as appealing a vocation as it was in the past. In addition to this many of the younger generation of workers across the region have complained that their efforts to rise to leadership positions have been stymied by the current crop of leaders. In sum I wish to say - and we must make no mistake about this - that if the movement is to effectively serve its purpose then we can no longer afford to sweep our own deficiencies under the carpet and simply point to deficiencies elsewhere.
Deficient leadership is one of the problems facing the movement and we cannot wish that away. What I may add - and we need to take cognizance of this is that informed thinkers in the Caribbean are also raising questions about the quality of leadership being provided by political leaders in the region in terms of their capacity to adopt and implement policies that respond to the aspirations of the people of the region. I was in Antigua a few months ago for the opening of the Conference of Heads of CARICOM.
That forum was addressed by the Barbadian novelist George Lamming who told the assembled group of Heads that it was quite likely that people in the region were not paying the slightest attention to the fact that their political leaders were meeting in Antigua at that time.
I believe that what Lamming was saying in effect was that Caribbean Heads may well be rendering themselves irrelevant to the concerns of the people they are elected to govern since, in some cases, their promises of development were taking the region nowhere. I still recall the hush that fell over the gathering when Lamming made that pronouncement. It seemed to me that amidst the fanfare associated with the opening ceremony for the Conference of Caribbean Heads Lamming had touched on a reality which the assembled Heads and other officials found discomfiting.

Is the challenge of leadership deficiencies in the labour movement not another challenge for the CCL?
LL: It is, in the first instance, a challenge for the individual trade unions in the region. It is the workers themselves who must agitate for change. It is they who must demand accountability; it is they who must ensure that their unions adhere to democratic practices. There is a role here for the CCL. We can support training initiatives by working through the respective umbrella labour organizations. Where new leaders are identified we can help prepare them for leadership. But in the final analysis it is the workers themselves who must agitate for change.
Sometimes we tend to forget that unions are the property of the workers. I believe that there are two reasons for that loss of memory. The first reason, in my opinion, has to do with the indifference of the workers themselves. That indifference, in a sense, leads to the second reason and that is, the hijacking of unions in some cases by leaders who are not really concerned with the objectives of labour and are merely taking advantage of the lack of vigilance on the part of the workers. The experience of the past tells me that if the labour movement is to grow and to serve its purpose workers need to be more vigilant about holding their leaders to account and about ensuring that the structures of their unions are democratic, transparent and that they allow for worker control.

How has the current agenda affected the relationship between employer and employee?
LL: That is an interesting question. On the one hand the essence of the employer/employee relationship has really not changed at all. What has happened, however, is that a number of new issues have come on the agenda and these issues have definitely impacted on the way in which they relate to each other. I will give you two examples. The first is the environment. Before issues of the environment assumed prominence on the global agenda, issues of health and safety were, in the main, matters that were confined to the Collective Labour Agreement. Today the environment embraces, among other things, issues of health and safety. What this means is that health and safety is no longer strictly an employer/employee matter.
Those aspects of health and safety that have a bearing on the environment are, in many instances, matters of national and global concern, What this means is that both employer and employee have identical goals. Good health and safety practices are not just a matter of adhering to the conditions set out in the Collective Labour Agreement. It is, in many instances, a matter of complying with national laws.
The second example is HIV/AIDS. As you are aware the International Labour Organization (ILO) is playing a prominent role in addressing HIV/AIDS as a workplace problem. What we have seen in recent years is a tremendous increase in the level of employer/employee collaboration in terms of establishing HIV/AIDS Workplace Committees and taking other initiatives to respond to the problem. I believe that these are two excellent examples of a convergence of employer/employee interests that have helped to strengthen relations between trade unions and workplaces.

Is the CCL comfortable with its relations with the regional private sector.?
LL: Words like ‘comfortable’ cannot be applied in situations that are fluid. What I would say is that the CCL has engaged some of large business houses in the region and organizations like the Caribbean Association of Industry of Commerce (CAIC)and we have found what in some instances has been a refreshingly enlightened view on industrial relations among    private sector representatives.
I think that what we are finding in many instances is that there is a convergence of interests between the trade union movement and employers and I have explained some of the reasons for that convergence of interests.
The private sector community is an enlightened and pragmatic community and when you engage some private sector businessmen you very quickly discover that. Certainly, I would say that it is very much in the interest of regional labour relations that we continue to build bridges with the private sector that are based on mutual respect and a mutual regard for each other’s interests.

Do you believe that the current agenda requires a shift in labour’s approach to addressing the problems of workers’ in the region?
LL: Labour is not only about addressing problems. It is also about contributing to solutions; solutions for the countries of the region, the region as a whole and the workers of the region. It is evident, for example, that labour has an interest in contributing to economic stability and progress in the region since those goals are consistent with the welfare of the workers who are represented by the various trade unions.
I believe that it is necessary that we embrace the institutions through which those goals are met and that we work with those institutions; and here I include governments, regional institutions like CARICOM, the private sector and the international trade union movement.
The approach requires different sets of skills and the training that we provide must include training in those skills. We often hear it said that the trade union movement is about struggle. Unfortunately, some people tend to place struggle in a physical context.
That is a misrepresentation of what labour is all about. Of course struggle is about tough negotiations and about industrial action when that becomes necessary, Struggle, however, is also the sum total of all that we do—whether on the picket line or in collaborative discourses with other  institutions.
At the end of the day every effort that we make, in whatever way that we make that effort, is part of that struggle.

Kari Polanyi-Levitt at the book launch.

A large and distinguished audience turned up at the Manuel Galich Hall in the Casa de las Americas head offices in Havana on Thursday December 4 to witness what was described as a rare cultural event. The occasion was the launch of the new Spanish-language edition of essays titled A Theory of Plantation Economy by Lloyd A. Best (founder of the Trinidad and Tobago Review) and Kari Polanyi-Levitt. The launch of the book, published by the Casa de las Américas Editorial Desk, was hailed as significant for several reasons.
Firstly, it served as a salute from Cuba’s prestigious publishing house—soon to celebrate its golden anniversary—as Cuba  hosted the Third Cuba-Caricom Summit  in Santiago de Cuba on December 8 and 9.
More importantly perhaps—was the fact that it marked the resumption of publication of the respected Estudios Series of Casa de las Americas’ Nuestros Países collection. This series has featured the work of noted Caribbean authors such as Elsa Gouveia, James Millette, Rupert Lewis, Suzy Castor, Richard Hart, Cornelio Ch. Goslinga and Jean-Pierre Gerard, to name a few.
Casa de las Américas revelled in the honour of having produced the first Spanish-language edition of A Theory of Plantation Economy; the English language edition is due to be launched early in the new year by UWI Press.
This work makes its appearance fully four decades after Lloyd Best first made public his theory on plantation economy in Social and Economic Studies under the title “The Mechanism of Plantation-type Economies: An Outline of a General Theory of Caribbean Economy.” Its publication in Cuba occurs almost ten years since Best himself paid a historic visit to Casa.
The launch of A Theory of Plantation Economy was part of the celebration of the Third International Conference of the Department of Caribbean Studies of the University of Havana which took place from December 3 to 6. The conference theme was “Fifty years of the Revolution and its impact on the Caribbean.” Conference participants came from Jamaica, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, El Salvador, Columbia and Puerto Rico and as from far away as France and Spain. At the launch they rubbed shoulders with their Cuban colleagues and prominent Cuban university personalities including Dr Digna Castañeda, head of the Department. Also present were well-known cultural personalities such as Nancy Morejón, the poet who is President of the Writers’ Guild and the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.
Also present was another renowned Cuban poet and essayist, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, who is the head of Casa, Roberto Zurbano, Director of the editorial arm, and Graciela Chailloux, who was responsible for co-ordinating the production and, in collaboration with Silvia Odriozola, the translation of the new volume. High-profile Caribbean academics and intellectuals also graced the occasion, among them were co-author Dr Kari Polanyi-Levitt, Professor Emeritus of Mc Gill University, and the publishing house’s guest of honour, UWI Professor Dr Norman Girvan, Honorary Professor at the University of Havana and Dr Pedro Rivera, Professor of the University of Puerto Rico who wrote the foreword with Graciela Chailloux. Among the key support staff in attendance were Zaida Gonzalez, who joined the Editorial Desk team in the last three months of production and whose contribution was described as “critical” to the book’s eventually seeing the light of day and Ricardo Rafael Villares, who designed the book’s cover.

Casa’s Editorial Desk came in for high praise and thanks for their sensitivity and understanding of the production process. Tribute was likewise paid to the authors for their generosity in granting the publication rights to Casa de las Américas and Cuba. Indeed, Dr Levitt commented that Cuba was the only country in the world in which a book such as this one could have been published in so short a space of time.
Full backing for the book project came from both the Trinidad-based Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies and the Atlantea Programme of the University of Puerto Rico.
For those involved in the publication of A Theory of Plantation Economy, the launch was the realization of a dream. Graciela Chailloux, one of the translators, said it satisfied her intense desire to make a real contribution by helping to bring within reach of the public the legacy and the cultural tradition of the Caribbean region which seems so fragmented but which is so manifestly one entity.
In her remarks, Dr Levitt said she was thrilled with the Casa edition, adding that Lloyd Best, who passed away last year, would have been particularly pleased that the book had appeared first in a Spanish-language edition and in Cuba.
Levitt recounted how,  in the 1960s, she and Best had come together to do the work which presents the plantation as the proper analytical model for understanding the Caribbean reality. Dr Levitt explained how she and Best were economists working in Canada and Guyana respectively. However, finding himself uncomfortable with the prevailing economic models in the Caribbean, Best began to publish a series of essays. This led eventually to the formation of the New World Group, a movement focused on the Caribbean as a post-colonial society and which undertook studies of Caribbean society using economics as their point of departure, guided always by an analysis of the region’s history.
Levitt said Best’s essays emphasised the need to find a new economic model for the Caribbean. She secured a grant from her university in Canada and flew to Trinidad to be a part of the new line of research being explored by Best. Together, the pair traversed the country finding similarities, for example, between the sugar cane plantations and the oilfields. This ultimately led to their conclusion that the social and economic relationships that existed in the systems of production were more critical in analysing the region’s economic situation than was establishing what was produced.
This work allowed Best and Levitt to function not just as economists but as historians and they set about studying the plantation through the structural elements that characterised it, such as external control, imported technology and cheap local labour. That, said Levitt,  was why A Theory of Plantation Economy can be said to be the fruit of studies and approaches which sought to offer a new framework for understanding and studying the Caribbean using concepts spawned by its own reality.
In his turn at the podium, Dr Norman Girvan emphasized that the book was not a merely text of relevance to the Spanish-speaking Caribbean but to the entire region. He argued that it was not simply its treatment of history that made it important but that it was a bold, timely book which helps Caribbean people understand their current reality. He noted that it was no mere coincidence that the essays in this volume had their roots in the same decade of the Cuban Revolution and the   independence of the  from Britain.
Dr Girvan called on to the youth and students present to be proud of their country and of its long freedom-loving cultural tradition. He urged them to become researchers in the mould of Best and Levitt, imbued with the same critical and creative spirit. For those who were present in 1999 when Lloyd Best delivered a lecture during his visit to Casa de las Américas, Girvan’s call to the young people brought to mind an exchange between Best and a young student who wanted to know how he could become a Caribbean man. Without hesitation, Best replied that all the young man needed to do was to be as Cuban as he could be since Cuba was an integral part of the Caribbean.
Pedro Rivera, representing the Atlantea Programme of the University of Puerto Rico and ex-president of the Association of Caribbean Economists  spoke of the importance of plantation theory in providing a clear understanding of the past, present and future realities of the Caribbean as a whole, including the Spanish-speaking part of the region. The publication of a Spanish edition, he said, helped to break the language barrier that has blocked access to the intellectual output from across the region. In so doing, he said, the publication was a valiant effort to solidify and reinforce a pan-Caribbean identity.
Rivera said the region was being asked to respond to an urgent need to be creative, to develop an authentic thought in blazing a trail towards genuine transformation based on its unique experience. In this regard, he said, it was important that everyone, especially the youth, view the world through Caribbean eyes in the way that A Theory of Plantation Economy has and not through the lenses bequeathed by the colonial intellectual tradition.

Professor Stephen G. Rabe’s book offers a compelling account of the CIA’s 13 years of  covert operations in British Guiana which were designed to  block the elected
government of Cheddi Jagan through
systematic destabilization which ultimately  paved the way for the rise and reign of the Forbes Burnham dictatorship.

Stephen G. Rabe,
U.S. Intervention in British Guiana,
Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina Press,  2005
ISBN 976-637-231-4 (pkp)
First published by Ian Randle Publishers Limited in Jamaica. 2005.

American intervention in British Guiana (now Guyana), during the 1950s and 60s, has been known for a long time. But its details only came to light after declassification of official documents in the 1990s, and publication of studies either by independent scholars or individuals involved in the intervention itself.  U.S. Intervention in British Guiana by Stephen G. Rabe, a professor of history at the University of Dallas, Texas, presents both details from these previously unavailable documents and a picture of the intervention that is much clearer than what we had before.
The intervention was provoked by the Cold War which began shortly after the end of World War Two, when two super powers – the US and USSR – each playing sheriff  in a Western film, dared the other to make a false move as they touted their favoured political ideology, American Capitalism on the one hand, and Soviet Communism on the other. Against this background, when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, won an historic political victory in Guyana in 1953, the Jagan administration lasted only four months and a bit before it was  thrown out of office by British Governor Sir Alfred Savage with the help of British troops.
American collusion in this debacle is discounted by Professor Rabe who suggests, that the invasion was mounted by arch imperialist, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttleton who suspected Dr. Jagan and his party of Communism.  Alas, as we shall see, whether their suspicion was justified or not, the Communist taint would stick like glue to Dr. Jagan, virtually until his death in 1997.
Following a four-year period of administration in Guyana by a government of unelected appointees, fresh elections were held in 1957 although, by then, the original PPP had split into two factions, one led by the Indian-Guyanese Dr. Jagan, and the other by the African-Guyanese Forbes Burnham, former education minister in the short-lived 1953 PPP Government. That was bad enough since it meant that Guyanese politics became a personal contest between the alleged communist Dr. Jagan and the Social Democrat Mr Burnham whose party was renamed The People’s National Congress (PNC).  Worse still, the contest was seen as one between each leader’s racial group, Indian-Guyanese for Dr. Jagan, and African-Guyanese for Mr. Burnham.
While racial confrontation still remains the worst evil in Guyanese politics, Professor Rabe shows  that it was not entirely the result of historical factors but was also deliberately fostered partly by manipulation of external (British and American) agencies which wanted to keep the alleged communist Dr. Jagan out of power, and partly by the willing collusion of local leaders like Forbes Burnham who ”coveted power and acting on a global stage.” (p.53) and Labour leaders like the disgruntled Richard of the day.
Although, after 1953, the policy of a ruling British Conservative Government was to “destroy the PPP and convince Guyanese to join other political parties.” (p. 48) Dr. Jagan’s party not only won elections again in 1957, but created the impression, at least among some observers, that he was neither communist nor interested in advancing International Communism.  This, for instance, was the verdict of all the British Governors who observed him at first hand in Guyana: “Governors Savage, Renison, Grey and Luyt consistently rejected U.S. claims that Jagan and the PPP secretly worked with Communists.” (p.177) Some colonial officials too, for example, Ian Macleod, at one time, the British Foreign Secretary, frankly admitted that if he had to make a choice “between Jagan and Burnham as head of my country, I would choose Jagan any day of the week.” (p.94)
But after Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution in 1959 the Americans dug their heels in so far as Guyana and the PPP were concerned. Castro’s success with what they considered an alien and hateful Communist ideology, so close to their borders, inflamed their fear of Communism to unprecedented heights of paranoia. But Dr. Jagan and the PPP won elections yet again in 1961, and as the possibility of Guyanese Independence loomed with the PPP in power, it pushed American paranoia to breaking point and induced the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to join forces with American Labour unions AFL – CIO in a disguised and deadly effort to disempower Dr. Jagan and his party.  Professor Rabe writes: “U.S. officials and private citizens incited murder, arson, bombings and fear and loathing in British Guiana.” (p. 75)
Thus, following strikes engineered and supported by the CIA and the AFL-CIO in 1962 and 1963, and imposition of a new electoral system – proportional representation - in elections, in 1964, a new government led by Forbes Burnham was finally installed.
Professor Rabe documents both the devious and desperate efforts by the U.S. to bring Burnham to power in 1964, and the lavish financial aid given to him afterwards, including support for his dishonest practices in rigging elections and retaining power in 1968. All this in spite of large-scale theft and corruption during Burnham’s administration: “In 1967 Peter D’Aguiar discovered that approximately $58,000 had been illegally spent on a highway and that the director of audits could not account for another $11.7 million in government spending.” (p.152) Such frank exposure and meticulous documentation illustrate the historical value of Professor Rabe’s book. Equally important, his book  identifies an underlying contradiction in American foreign policy between eloquent denunciation of oppression and colonialism by US officials and their consistent support for oppressive dictators, throughout the twentieth century, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean. This contradiction may explain- although it cannot justify- either US intervention in Guyana or its support for the Burnham PNC dictatorship from 1964 to 1992.

Denesh Ramdin

EARL BEST takes aim at feckless administrators

Good fast bowlers hunt, the old adage goes, in pairs. And led by the pair of fast bowlers Jerome Taylor and Fidel Edwards, Chris Gayle’s troops battled to earn a quite honourable draw in the two-Test series in New Zealand.
It is beyond dispute that the West Indies gave a good enough account of themselves in both encounters to convince their detractors that they deserve to be ranked at number seven among the eight Test-playing countries. But if the system also ranked administrators, one feels that not even the staunchest defenders of the West Indies Cricket Board would dare argue that those in whose hands the fate of West Indies off-the-field cricket affairs currently lie should be placed quite as high as the players.
Everywhere you look, every time you look, the picture is the same. Disarray. Ineptitude. Inefficiency. Controversy. Bungling. Cock-ups. Good fast bowlers hunt, the old adage goes, in pairs. But there is as yet no adage that tells us what, if they could get their hands on them, good fast bowlers would do with WICB big sawatees Julian Hunte and Donald Pierre.
One recent example of the mishandling that has become chronic in the WICB had to do with the securing of travel documents for all members of the team that went from Abu Dhabi to New Zealand. Information coming out of the Board has been very scarce but we now know enough to say that as the touring party prepared to leave for Dunedin it was discovered that several members of the team were without the requisite visas. One might say that that oversight is to be laid squarely on the doorstep of the team manager but surely there is someone at Board level responsible for checking that these basics are not overlooked.
If there is indeed someone at board level taking responsibility for ensuring that all these little things get attended to, it would be hard to escape the conclusion that he is being very delinquent. How, for instance, did we manage to so mishandle things that Ramnaresh Sarwan’s lack of interest in the vice-captaincy became public knowledge? Surely that is a matter that should have been settled long before the team arrived in New Zealand. Yet, it was only after their arrival that the news broke about Denesh Ramdin’s promotion to the position.
The wisdom of choosing Ramdin for this promotion at a time when he is really struggling with his batting is something that needs to be discussed but let us for the moment not focus on the fact of who was chosen and give our full attention to the way in which the matter was handled.
Did not anyone in an official capacity think before the team’s departure to get the former skipper’s opinion on how he felt about being vice-captain to Gayle in New Zealand? Why should the issue of the choice of Gayle’s deputy become a matter for public debate if it is not to be settled by some democratic process? Has not the Board always simply named the person who will lead the side and the person who is to be the second in command? Why wait until you are in “enemy” territory with the focus needing to be sharply on the battle ahead, to settle leadership issues?
Now to the subject of Ramdin’s selection as vice-captain. Much has been said and written about the young wicketkeeper’s continuing travails with the bat. The powers-that-be seem to have concluded a year or so ago that the problem was overwork and opted to give the 24-year-old a rest, spelling him first with Patrick Brown and then with Carlton Baugh. But nothing that we saw happen in New Zealand suggests that the problem is nearer solution than it was a year ago.

Julian Hunte

Ramdin, a more than competent batsman when he first came onto the senior team in Sri Lanka three years ago, still seemed barely able to lay bat on ball, his three innings in the two Tests yielding a mere 17 runs.
It is unlikely that the cares of vice-captaincy had an adverse effect on his batting, Gayle having remained in charge throughout both matches. The question, though, is this: Did those who voted to elevate him to the deputy post consider that the burdens that come with this position might have a positive effect on his performance at the crease?
Were they of the view that his ongoing struggles may be caused by a lack of application?  Does that mean they think his focus has been in the wrong place? Whatever the explanation, it is in my view a questionable decision at best to heap new responsibilities onto the plate of a man who is not coping with the ones he already has before him. Particularly when that player is as young as is Ramdin.
Who can forget how long ago Sir Vivian Richards thought he saw leadership material in the Preysal glove man and fingered him for the captaincy or the vice-captaincy? Nobody made so bold as to gainsay Richards then as far as the existence of the requisite qualities goes but as I remember it, his idea got no endorsement even from the often partisan commentators in Trinidad and Tobago.
Which brings us to the next issue that must detain us here. Since Deryck Murray and his “Friends of Cricket” grouping put Alloy Lequay out to pasture and took control of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board nearly four years ago, things have gone swimmingly for the sport locally. Daren Ganga’s side has enjoyed unprecedented success at regional level, winning both one-day and four-day titles as well as the rich Twenty/20 contests sponsored by Sir Allen Stanford.
That success has apparently gone to the head of the local administrators. I was appalled to learn that my good friend, TTCB Secretary and CEO Forbes Persaud, had made a public call for more Trinidadians to be selected on the West Indies team. Ironically, the call came mere months after WICB authorities had given a ringing endorsement to the work being done by Murray and Persaud as the people responsible for the TTCB. Without looking too closely at the substance of Persaud’s statement, one has to wonder whether it is proper for someone holding his office to make such a call.
I know that on the not-so-rare occasions when Lequay let his passionate support of the T&T cause take the form of some invidiously insular statement, Persaud, then chief cook and bottler washer of the Secondary Schools’ Cricket League, never approved. On the contrary. So, committed as I know Persaud is to the West Indian cause, I do not think he has changed his stance. How then to explain this completely uncharacteristic bit of insularity coming from his mouth? One might speculate that it is an indirect attack on Messrs Hunt and Pierre designed, perhaps, to start a debate. Such a debate could well end with the pair out of office.

Perhaps equally surprising is the absence of a public response from the WICB. There are, of course, those who hold the view that once you start responding to public statements directed at you, you may well find yourself continually putting out bushfires. It is a valid view and I do not know if the WICB incumbents subscribe to it. However, it seems to me that there are some bushfires that need more attention than others and Persaud’s statements constitute one such.
The flames of insularity are easily fanned at any time but never quite so easily as when the team is doing badly. And the honourable draw in the Test series notwithstanding, if Gayle and his men are beaten out of sight in the five ODIs and the two Twenty/20 encounters, we are most likely to continue hearing all the hogwash about the Kiwis being too good for the JamaicIndies all the way to February.
That is why, in my view, the Board should have publicly reprimanded Persaud for his inopportune comments and reaffirmed its complete confidence in the competence and impartiality of the selection panel. This was particularly necessary as one member of the panel is former Trinidad and West Indies spinner Raphick Jumadeen.
Poor Jumas must be hoping that Ganga, Lendl Simmons, Keiron Pollard and the other T&T players thought to be in line for a place on the regional senior team do little to strengthen their case between now and the England tour in February. What impression are people likely to get if the squad to oppose England “suddenly” includes four or five Trinidadians along with Ramdin?
But nowhere was the Board’s incompetence made more manifest than in its handling of the Stanford Super series issue. To be fair to Hunte and Pierre, the problem lies in the essential inadequacy of the contract signed with Digicel, a signing that pre-dates the accession to office of both the President and the CEO.
Even before Stanford dangled his alluring millions before the WICB, its members must have been aware that they had sold the cricketers’ birthright to the Irish communications giant for a mess of pottage, a paltry $5m per year.  Unable to get out of an onerous contract and unwilling to slam the door in the face of a would-be benefactor, the Board sought to get cute. They endorsed the Stanford venture but refused to acknowledge it as an endorsement. In the end, that game cost them, much, much more than they had calculated.
Like Australia’s Kerry Packer before him, Stanford may well be innovator and philanthropist but he is first and foremost hard-nosed businessman. And with his plans to corner the Twenty/20 market derailed by the adverse publicity spawned by the dispute with Digicel, he quietly shut up shop in the region in so far as cricket goes. While unequivocally reaffirming his commitment to doing business with the English Cricket Board, he announced that he is taking some time to “review” his involvement in West Indies cricket. End of the line for Legends, Twenty/20 competition, development funding for individual territorial boards, Superseries, etc., etc. Au revoir or adieu? Either way, the move spelled trouble for the WICB.
Already stretched very thin owing to scarce resources, it would have to find its own funding to continue at least one of these programmes. Or find another benefactor who would not rub Digicel the wrong way.
In a release that sounded as though it might not have been entirely free of pique, Hunte responded to the explicit and implicit questions being posed. The President revealed in his release that the Board “does not depend on Mr Stanford for its financial well-being.” It is prepared, he said, to fund cricket in the region through means other than with money received from the Texan billionaire.
“The facts are,” the release said, “that to date the WICB has received only US$2million from the Stanford Group as licence fees for the first two years of a five-year agreement for the group to host the domestic Stanford 20/20 Tournament.” And still according to the release, the “packed Future Tours Programme (…) over the next three years and beyond” will generate revenues that are adequate to meet the Board’s commitments.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Gayle and company battled successfully to remain ahead of their cellar-placed hosts in the International Cricket Council’s Test ratings. Back at home, the fans were going into rapture over the performance of their representatives.
Indeed, so excited are we that there are already thousands of queries about when the tickets for the England tour are going to go on sale. If you listen to the gospel according to Hunte, all over the cricketing world, the crowds now can’t wait to get a look at the all-conquering Caribbean Cavaliers.
And like in the days when Clive Lloyd’s and Vivian Richards’ men were beating all comers, wherever the current West Indian outfit is about to play over the next three years the patrons will be hunting for tickets and rushing through the turnstiles, perhaps in pairs…

American Foreign Policy in the 21st Century

By CARY FRASER

Panic in Mumbai after terrorist attack. —Photo: AP

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States is scheduled for January 20, 2009, a date that will stand as a watershed in American history. Like Canada, which appointed Michaelle Jean, a woman of colour, and of Haitian origin, as the Governor General in 2005, the United States is moving into a new era in which it will redefine its self-image and its political identity. A nation born of the anti-colonial struggle in the Americas against the European powers in the late 18th  and early 19th centuries, the United States was soon followed by Haiti, and later, by the Spanish colonies on the American mainland.
At the moment of its creation, the United States was in the vanguard of the Revolutionary era which shattered the control of the European imperial states in the New World. However, even as it served as a catalyst for the anti-colonial struggle during that era, the United States was deeply ambivalent about the creation of an independent Haiti by way of a revolution led by free people of colour and slaves determined to shed their shackles.
Given the American commitment to the maintenance of slavery in the American Republic, Haiti was both a repudiation of the American commitment to slavery and an uncomfortable reminder of other possibilities for people of color in the Americas. Further, given the centrality of Protestant Christianity in the shaping of the American self-image as a refuge from the iniquities of Roman Catholicism in Europe, the shrinkage of the French and Spanish imperial presence in the Americas was a reassurance that European power in the Americas was in retreat. However, the Roman Catholic presence in these societies, as well as the language differences did little to stimulate a shared sense of history or identity between the United States and these former colonies of the Catholic empires even though they had all been part of a broader struggle to end European imperial rule in the Americas.
Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the emergence of the United States as an expansionist and imperial power in its own right helped to exacerbate the sense of intrinsic difference between the American experience and that of its hemispheric neighbours. As part of its expansionist vision, American leaders from President James Monroe - the champion of the Monroe Doctrine warning against the expansion of European influence in the Americas – to the present, embraced the idea that America was the “natural” leader of the hemisphere and have sought to limit the autonomy of  the other American states by using a variety of strategies including military intervention, economic leverage, and subversion against governments deemed a “threat” to American security.
In effect, American exceptionalism in the context of American relations with other states in the Western Hemisphere has been rooted in its transformation from a former colony of Britain into a colonial power in its own right- both within the Americas and at the level of the wider international system. It is the only state in the Americas which has pursued an explicit imperialist agenda following the model of the European imperial states and which has repudiated its roots in the anti-colonial struggle against the European powers of yore. It has also evolved into a counter-revolutionary power which has shown itself consistently opposed to the emergence of revolutionary regimes in the international system – another clear break with  its own origins in the 18th century era of Atlantic Revolutions.
The election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency has demonstrated the American willingness to rise above its long history of denying citizenship rights to its black population which was central to its creation in 1787. Obama’s election, in effect, provided further evidence of the American ability to redefine itself over the course of its history—from oligarchy based upon the votes of the propertied classes and the practice of slavery to popular democracy based upon universal human suffrage; from revolutionary regime to counter-revolutionary state; from anti-colonial champion to imperial power; and from white supremacist regime to multi-cultural democracy.

However, Obama will be facing the task of redefining American foreign policy priorities in an era shaped by the strategic and military blunders, the financial profligacy, and a profound crisis of credibility in American leadership across the international system triggered by the Bush administration. He will also be confronted by the need to redefine the American policies towards revolutionary regimes which emerged over the latter half of the 20th century - the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
For his predecessors, these regimes have been a major constraint upon American efforts to consolidate and/or extend its influence in the non-European world. In effect, Obama will be called upon to reposition American foreign policy in dealing with societies that have been the targets of American imperial strategies and which have, as revolutionary regimes, challenged American influence in the “world of color.”
Thus, as part of the broader redefinition of American foreign policy strategy after the misadventures of the Bush administration, the Obama administration will have to rethink the reflexive American hostility to revolutionary regimes that have survived American efforts to isolate and overthrow them. In the case of China which embarked upon a strategy of industrial modernization over the past three decades that has now transformed it into the industrial workshop of the world and a key player in the World Trade Organization, the restructuring of the international political economy and the future of the international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank cannot be effective without an enlarged role for China. As the largest investor in American securities and with the largest foreign reserves in the world, China’s financial weight will be a critical determinant of the limits of American influence in the international financial institutions and, ultimately, in the role and value of the dollar as a currency in international trade and payments. In effect, China, by dint of its enormous productive capacity and its foreign reserves has become an indispensable partner in the Bretton Woods system that has underpinned American economic leadership of the world economy since 1945. In the context of the current global economic crisis and the evidence of failed American leadership under the Bush administration, China is in a position to play an increasingly important role in restructuring the international economy and the rules of the game therein.
On the other hand, the United States is confronting the challenge posed by the paralysis of its financial and industrial sectors that followed the cumulative unraveling of the domestic mortgage market, the liquidity crisis within the banking sector, and the threat of financial collapse of the automobile industry over the course of 2007 and 2008. The severity of these economic shocks had already focused the attention of the incoming Obama administration upon the need for serious economic reform at home. However, the recent arrest of Bernard Madoff for his role in creating, perhaps, the biggest investment swindle in the history of Wall Street - while the Securities and Exchange Commission charged with overseeing the financial services industry was asleep at the wheel - has provoked further questioning of the capacity and competence of the American government to provide a safe and stable environment for foreign investment.

The Bush II era opened with the collapse of the energy trading company, ENRON, amidst evidence of widespread financial irregularities and it is now closing with the saga of Madoff at the epicenter of what appears to be a global swindle which has ensnared investors. In effect, both Wall Street and the American government’s regulatory regime have shown themselves to be inept, at best; without serious reform, foreign direct and indirect investment in the United States may be adversely affected.  The lack of American credibility that has defined life under the Bush administration remains a serious constraint upon American efforts to exercise leadership at an international level. In this context, the necessity for deeper strategic engagement with China and other major players has become critical to America’s standing in the wider world and to its own domestic economic well-being. Such strategic engagement implies that the American resort to unilateralist policies will be severely constrained and that there will be a fundamental reorientation of American foreign policies as it comes to terms with the realities of the limits of its influence around the world.
China, for its part, has been systematically pursuing a strategy of increasing its international influence by diplomatic and commercial means rather than through the projection of military power that has defined American policy. The Chinese strategy has proven to be very effective in redefining the context within which American foreign policy is pursued. In the case of the six–party talks on the North Korean nuclear program, China has shown a willingness to pursue the resolution of international tensions within a multilateral framework and the Bush administration has been constrained to follow suit. The European Union has demonstrated its willingness to serve as a mediator between the United States and Russia following the Georgia-Russia conflict in mid-2008, and it has become increasingly active in breaking the logjam that has resulted from the Bush administration’s diplomatic failures in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, Germany, France, Britain, Turkey, Russia and China will play an increasingly important role in the broader Middle East and the creation of new security architecture in the region.

The Bush administration’s policies, including the invasion of Iraq, have brought an end to American strategic pre-eminence in the Middle East and any new regional security arrangements, including the issue of the development of nuclear power, will be shaped within a multilateral framework in which China will play an influential role. In effect, the acceptance of a multilateral approach to the management of the international system will be central to American efforts to rise above the legacies of the Bush II administration. The American approach to the Afghan imbroglio – given the resurgence of the Taliban within that country, and the growing evidence that an Afghan settlement will require the participation of China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Russia – will also lead to a fundamental reorientation of American policy away from its focus under the Bush administration upon the containment of Russia and China through the projection of military force into the region.
In the case of Cuba, Fidel Castro’s decision to resign as President of Cuba, passing the torch to his brother, Raul, has opened the way for a restructuring of Cuban-American relations. America’s use of the Guantanamo prison/naval base on Cuban soil has inflicted serious damage upon America’s image in the wider world, and the closure of the prison camp will also be a factor in any new era in Cuban-American relations. The closure of the prison camp will signal an American willingness to abide by international norms and treaties that have governed the detention and treatment of prisoners of war. It is not inconceivable that the return of the base to Cuba - as part of broader negotiations over the normalization of US-Cuban relations - could be used to signal that the United States is prepared to turn the page of America’s relationship with the Latin American states by respecting their sovereignty. Just as important, an end to the American economic blockade of Cuba onward will create a new context in which the United States can engage with other states in the region. The Latin American states are increasingly looking at the explosive growth of the Asian economies for new opportunities to limit their dependence upon the United States which has shaped the region’s development for most of the 20th century. These states are looking to follow the Cuban government strategy since the 1960s of using its ties with the Soviet Union, Europe, and, more recently, China to circumvent American efforts to limit the ability of Latin American states to diversify their economic and political relations with the wider world. Cuba was determined to assert its sovereignty after the overthrow of the Batista regime in order to bring an end to the quasi-colonial relationship with the United States which had defined its existence since 1898. A new era in Cuban-American relations will end the illogic of a continuing Cold War in the Caribbean and create an opportunity for US-Latin American relations to be restructured beyond the shadow of American imperialism in the region.
Finally, the American relationship with Iran stands at the heart of its relations with the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, with its NATO partners, with its emerging strategic relationship with India, and with China and the USSR. In 1953, the United States and the United Kingdom mounted a successful covert intervention to restore Reza Pahlavi to the throne in Iran. That intervention opened the way for greater American involvement in Iran’s politics and its support for the autocratic regime of the Shah that was eventually overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The overthrow of the Shah, following upon the oil crisis of 1973-74 which arose out of the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, marked a serious reversal for American influence in the region. Like the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, the new Iranian regime after 1979 was determined to pursue a policy that made the country independent of the United States – a policy that has continued to the present day. The Iranians have pursued a larger role in the politics of Islam and have actively sought to ensure that the country’s weight in the region should not be discounted by other regional actors like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Its strategy of building its military power and its cultivation of closer relations with Russia and China has provided it with room to enhance its autonomy vis-à-vis the United States. Its support for Syria, for the Palestinian national movement, and for Hezbollah in Lebanon has allowed Iran to become a major influence upon the Arab states and that strategy has also allowed it to maintain pressure upon Israel – the main American ally in the region.
In the three decades since 1979, the Iranian quest for greater regional and international influence has made it an increasingly assertive participant in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and a key strategic partner for both Russia and China in both the politics of energy and as a source of leverage for these states in dealing with American efforts to establish an exclusive zone of influence in the region. The Iranian quest of mastery of nuclear energy, with support from Russia through the construction of a nuclear power station, has also raised the spectre of Iran of joining the nuclear club and becoming a major threat to Israel – the only other Middle Eastern state widely acknowledged to be a nuclear power. Thus, Iran’s geopolitical importance, its influence as a major producer of both petroleum and natural gas, its growing military and technological capabilities, and its strategic entente with China and Russia have made it a key factor in the security of the Middle East and Persian Gulf, the Caspian and Central Asia, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
For the United States – trapped by unintended consequences of its two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan – coming to terms with the reality of Iran will provide the diplomatic space to rethink the folly of the “War on Terror” pursued by the Bush administration. It will also allow the United States to become a constructive participant in the multilateral efforts to reshape the security environment in the Middle East and South Asia. The failure to engage Iran effectively since the success of the 1979 revolution has been damaging for American foreign policy – in both regional and global terms.

The effort to compensate for that failure by (1) backing the Saddam Hussein regime under the Reagan administration; (2) establishing military bases in Saudi Arabia in the Bush I and Clinton years; and, (3) occupying Iraq under Bush II; have all failed to reverse the decline of American influence. The American hostility to the Iranian Revolution since 1979 has expanded into an estrangement between the United States and the Islamic world – with consequences that are becoming increasingly global in scope. The recent assault on the Indian city of Mumbai by Islamic militants, and the deliberate targeting of areas frequented by Westerners and a Jewish center in the city, cannot be divorced from the growing strategic entanglement between India and the United States – and the perception that India, with a population of over 100 million Muslims, has been willing to follow the Bush administration in its “War on Terror”.
The Obama administration has an opportunity to recast American foreign policy by coming to terms with the reality that the Chinese, Cuban, and Iranian revolutions have redefined the terms of American engagement with the non-European world. It would be a tragedy for American foreign policy if the Obama administration were to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors in failing to come to terms with revolutions in the non-European world after 1945. The American embrace of imperialism as a competitor and successor of the European imperial states over the course of the 20th century discounted its own history as a product of the anti-colonial struggle. It has also led to imperial policies that have failed in Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and, more recently, in Georgia – a less than inspiring record that needs no duplication.

By IAN McDONALD

Richard Thompson winning the silver. —Photo: AFP

I wonder what it would be like to exclude sport completely from one’s life for, say, one year? No playing sport, no watching it, no reading about it, no discussing, no thinking about it even.
It would certainly be very strange. Ever since I can remember I’ve been fascinated by sport in all its guises. Games are in my bloodstream. My father played first-class hockey, tennis, cricket and football in Trinidad. A great-uncle on mother’s side captained Trinidad and played for the West Indies at cricket. An uncle of my father’s side represented Great Britain in the 1948 Olympics. I was trying out leg breaks in the back garden and hitting tennis balls against a wall before I was 10 years old. I’ve spent more happy hours than I can possibly count playing games and watching every sport under the sun.
But still, despite all that, think of the time that would open up for other things if one excluded sport utterly from one’s life. After all I’ve met persons of fascinating character and wide range of interests who have known literally nothing about sport, absolutely nothing - people who stare blankly at you if you mention Pele or Lara or Michael Jordan or Muhammed Ali or Tiger Woods, people who haven’t the slightest idea what an over is or who ran the first four-minute mile or who won the last year’s World Cup in cricket or football.
Do not mock such people or throw stones at them for being heretics beyond the pale. They have a point of view that deserves respect. After all, is sport really of much importance compared, for instance, with politics or religion or good literature? When John Arlott was asked once whether cricket was important he unhesitatingly and emphatically replied—”No.” If Arlott can say that about the greatest of all games it makes you wonder what verdict should be given on all those other lesser games.
It is certainly true that these days there are a great number of things that seem to be going wrong in sport which make it less and less appealing: too much emphasis on frantic rather than Test cricket; too much foul play in football; too much hooliganism in the spectator stands; too much calculated professionalism and too little love of the game for the game’s sake; too much money-grubbing everywhere; too much politics.
I remember once reading what George Orwell had to say about sport:

Usain Bolt breaking the world record. —Photo: AFP

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting.

Orwell was an honest and perceptive man and these days there seem to be more and more truth in what he said and wrote. But Orwell was not a sportswriter. Yet even Neville Cardus, one of the best writers on sport that ever lived, had this to say about his attitude to sports and games:

I have never been interested in sports as such; I am not appealed to by the excitement andspeculation of games… My love of cricket has little to do the sportsman’s instincts; as a fact, I am bored by most indoor and open-air games and by those who play them. Card-players I have found usually to be actual or potential bores. Tennis cannot possibly be a great game because women have been known to attain proficiency at it.
Golf is really a middle aged and sedentary occupation; and though football has the greatness which comes from any activity that exposes a man to physical hurt, it is for me too actively combative, with none of the lazy irrelevance of cricket.

So perhaps, after all, one should consider taking leave of absence from sport for a while, a sabbatical from cricket, tennis, squash, athletics, football, boxing and all the rest. Think of the things one could do with all the time that would then become available. I could re-read Marcel Proust’s great novel “Remembrance of Things Past” or Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” I could learn to cook. I could learn to fly a small plane. I could explore every gleaming inch of the Essequibo, most beautiful river in the world.
The incredible thought occurs to me that I might even take a shot at understanding computers! Perhaps I could tackle the collected works of Karl Marx and find out once and for all what the fuss everyone used to make about him is all about, I could learn a language or to write in script. I could collect the bright wings of butterflies and make a great collection. Giving up sport would make space for so much that I have left undone.
Yet in my heart of hearts I know it is all a dream—or more like a sort of nightmare. No sport in one’s life?—it would be like giving up salt in food or the sweetness of friendship and love! One would feel lonely, deprived, underprivileged and lost. Escape the siren call of sport—impossible! And thank goodness for that!

By GREGORY McGUIRE

“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out”.

Patrick Manning

Warren Buffet’s famous statement has been gaining currency in recent times not only with respect to Wall Street but to our own economy as well. More than anything else, the global financial and economic crisis has exposed the weak quality of macro economic management in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly over the last five years. While the money flowed, it was easy to plaster the sores, create employment, expand social programmes, pursue accelerated development etc. Suddenly, after less than a full quarter of declining commodity prices, the alarm bells are pealing out a warning that the recession wolf is at the door.
The year 2008 may well be remembered as the year of boom and bust for commodity prices.  In the first half of the year Trinidad and Tobago enjoyed record prices of all major commodity markets. The buoyant markets triggered rising expectations of a bountiful future among the population and Government alike. In the case of the latter, this was reflected in the decision to peg the 2008-09 budgets at an oil price of  US$70 per barrel and US$4 /MMbtu for gas, in both cases the highest on record. Fortunately—for those outraged by squandermania—or unfortunately—for the squanderers—the bubble burst in October in the wake of the crash in the US financial system. Within two short months, oil has lost more than 50 per cent of its value; while,  LNG, ammonia methanol and steel have plummeted from their record peaks in equally dramatic fashion forcing a belated concession by Government that its price—and therefore revenue—projections were now unrealistic and necessitated expenditure cuts. With all the world’s major economies going through the worst downturn in the post war era, there is now widespread fear that the situation could get worse and lead to serious economic consequences.  But should it?
For the second time in the post independence period we are at that juncture where gloom seems likely to follow boom. How did we get here? What are the prospects for the short to medium term.?  It is easy to cast blame on the global and economic crisis for the gloomy economic prospects facing the country. While there can be no doubt that prevailing conditions have impacted negatively on the value of our major commodity exports, the sudden wails of despair about T&T’s economic future  cannot be explained  away simply by the fall in commodity prices.

The facts are that what we have witnessed over the last three months has been a return to normalcy in most, if not all, of our primary exports. Consider the following. Although crude oil prices peaked at US$ 147/bbl in July 2008, and although the Government premised the 2009 Budget at a price of US$ 70/bbl, this country has never had the opportunity to fund expenditure with revenue derived from such prices.  In the case of the former, the rules of the HSF would have forced Government to save a minimum of 60% of excess revenue derived in the 2007-08 fiscal year.  In the case of the latter, revisions were made less than one month after the initial presentation of the Budget.  Further, citizens should recall that as recent as fiscal year 2005-06 and again in 2006-07, the affairs of the country were run at a budgeted oil price of US $45/bbl.  In the case of natural gas, in particular LNG, current prices (US$5.60/mmbtu,) is nearly 100% above those envisaged at the start of the LNG business ($2.50/mmbtu).  So despite the apprehension, prices of our major exports remain relatively strong.  Price volatility is one of the important features of a natural resource-based economy. In that context prudent fiscal management requires savings of windfall surpluses so that its benefits could be spread over a longer period.
Over the last four years however, we have witnessed a rapid ramping up of Government expenditure in line with increased revenue growth. Between 2004 and 2008 Government revenue moved from $TT 20.6 billion in 2004 to $TT 46.5 billion in 2008, an increase of 125%. The growth in revenue reflects increases in both price and volumes in the energy sector, particularly oil and LNG.  Current expenditure climbed by 103% over the same period from TT$17.4 billion to TT$35.6 billion. The close tracking of revenue means that the government has spent, systematically and deliberately, most of the additional revenue earned through output growth and price increases. In so doing, the government has not distinguished its base revenue from fortuitous windfall revenue due to temporary price spikes.  It has, instead, proceeded as if the new price levels were permanent..
As a result, the economy has suffered from the worse consequences of an expansionist fiscal policy in a resource boom.  These include inflation, loss of competitiveness, social imbalance, and crime.   It seems clear that the government did not strike the right balance between savings and expenditure. When revenue falls current expenditure tends to be sticky downwards. It is not surprising therefore that panic has set in at the very first reversal in price trends. If indeed the economic crisis worsens over the next year or two it would be due in part to the government’s inadequate balance between savings and expenditures.
The short to medium term outlook for the economy is uncertainty at best. The financial system crisis, the conditions on Wall Street, renewed hostilities in the Middle East, tensions within OPEC and the ascendency of Barack Obama to the US Presidency are just a sampling of the many imponderables that make forecasting  a precarious exercise at this time.  Under such conditions it is advisable that scenario planning should become an important tool in the policy formulation process. Two broad but contrasting scenarios may be considered.  First, it is quite possible for the major economies to respond quickly to fiscal stimulus; lower oil prices causes demand to rebound and prices to stabilize around US$ 45-50/bbl. Under this scenario, the Government’s challenge would be to revert to a level of spending incurred in 2005. Alternatively, the economic recession may be prolonged, oil prices slip further to less than $30/bbl., and Government is challenged to finance a growing fiscal deficit. Under either scenario, the Government will be swimming in uncharted waters. How well the Manning administration copes will depend in part on the extent to which the Government is prepared to engage subject matter experts and John Public in meaningful discussion and sharing of information.

By JOHN  MAXWELL

The following column was published in the Jamaica Observer of May 3, 2003 but is re-printed as the writer’s current commentary on Castro’s Cuba.

Western capitalism is haunted by the spectre of Cuba, terrified by the possibility that this small, poor, third world nation in the Caribbean may succeed in proving that socialism can work.
The Trotskyists describe Cuba as an example of what they call “petty bourgeois nationalism” which leads one to wonder why American administrations since Eisenhower have been at war with Cuba for 44 years.
Petty bourgeois nationalism shouldn’t worry the US.  The Cubans are un-worried by the taunts of fundamentalists  right or left.  They have defied invasion, infiltration,  technological and ordinary  terrorism from hijacking of passenger planes to the blowing up of hotels, from over 200 plots on the lives of Fidel Castro and other leaders to biological warfare against their major crops, sugar cane, tobacco and citrus. Sometimes I wonder if some of the strange new plant diseases that spring up sporadically in Florida and Jamaica are not offshoots of some American experiment gone wrong in Cuba.
Now that the Americans have ‘conquered’ Iraq, their sights are being re-calibrated: France is no longer ‘relevant’, according to a state department official quoted by TIME  magazine, or perhaps it’s just too big, Iran  may set the entire Middle East ablaze, as Iraq still seems likely to do and North Korea has nuclear weapons and is just too dangerous to meddle with.
That more or less leaves Cuba, which remains a target no matter what happens in the rest of the world.
I am personally an admirer of Cuba - an unabashed admirer. There are two kinds  of journalists :  the ‘objective’ ones who hate Cuba and the others, like me, who are clearly either willing dupes of the Cubans or just plain stupid.
Problems with Enemies
The United States, by the admission of its own pollsters and journalists, has since September 11, 2001, alienated many of its friends and turned some into enemies. In the case of France, now deemed irrelevant, the problem, of course, may be that much to Mr Bush’s disgust, they speak French. This is not as crazy as it may sound. American foreign policy is as racist as it was in 1915 when Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was horrified at the idea of “Niggers speaking French” in Haiti.
The same ‘know-nothing’ fundamentalism drives US foreign policy today, manufactured in right-wing think tanks and homogenized and pasteurized  by the newsmagazines without the slightest protest from those Americans who know, or should know better. In foreign policy, as in domestic policy, the US is still a gated democracy, with some hundreds of thousands inside the gates and millions outside. In the state of Illinois for instance, one of the richest and most advanced in the United States and home to its third largest city,  the state spends 75% as much on imprisoning people as it spends on higher education.  According to sociologist Paul Street, the cost of incarcerating one adult is equal to more than four and a half times the state’s legally mandated public education “foundation level” of $4,560 - the minimum expenditure determined to be required to meet the educational needs of a single child.
“One finding really knocked me out, Dr. Street said,  “As of June 2001, I calculated, there were nearly 20,000 more black males in the Illinois state prison system than the number of black males enrolled in the state’s public universities. There were more black males in the state’s correctional facilities just on drug charges than the total number of black males enrolled as undergraduates in state universities.”
Seven times as many blacks are likely to be released from prison on drug charges in any year as the number released from university with a bachelor’s degree. Statistics whichh make the United State’ worldwide  campaign to demonstrate that Cuba denies human rights to its people seem a little bizarre .
How Cuba treats children
I haven’t been to Cuba for several years, but there used to be a sign on the road from Jose Marti airport to Havana which said:
” Last night, all over the world 5 million children slept on the streets. Not one of them was Cuban”

Beginning with the triumph of the revolution in 1959, Cuba has placed priority attention on its children and on education. Today, Cuba has more doctors per capita than any other country in the world. After January 1, 1959 when there was a mass exodus of professionals from the country, Cuba probably had fewer doctors per capita than many third world countries. Nevertheless, it was a rule when I first landed in Cuba in 1960, that all pregnant women were to be seen at least three times during their pregnancies by some medically qualified person. Milk for schoolchildren was then and still is free. And there have been no illiterates in Cuba for years
In Cuba, over 99% of children between kindergarten and grade 9 are in school.  Cuban primary school students rank first in the world in mathematics . Cuba also ranks first in the world in the number of teachers per capita and the lowest number of children per classroom.
Which might help account for the minimal crime rate in Cuba.
All physically and mentally challenged Cuban children are in special schools, and when I was last there, there were something like sixteen Intensive Care units dedicated to children with asthma.
I am writing about Cuba today while there is a conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre which is scheduled, among other things, to condemn Cuba’s lack of a free press. I am writing this because our western press is so free that most people outside of Cuba have not the slightest idea of what life in Cuba is really like. It’s time they began to know.
Much of what I write today is taken from the May Day speech of Fidel Castro who said on Wednesday, “for the first time in the world, all young people between the age of 17 and 30, who were previously neither in school nor employed, have been given the opportunity to resume their studies while receiving an allowance. All citizens have the opportunity of undertaking studies from kindergarten to a doctoral degree in any discipline, without spending a penny.”
What? No Free Press?
Cuba is busy building universities in every municipality, so that a university education is not much further away than a short walk or ride. The country now has 30 times  the number of university graduates, intellectuals and artists as it had forty years ago - an almost incredible achievement, paralleled nowhere else in the world.
Infant mortality, for me, the key index of how a country treats its people, fluctuates between 6 and 6.5 - the lowest in the hemisphere, lower than Canada, the United States and Chile. In Argentina, a first world country when the Cuban revolution entered Havana, the World Bank, the IMF and the world’s financiers  watch, helpless and dismissive as children starve to death and the country seeks another financial bailout.
In Cuba, the designated enemy of the mightiest nation in the history of mankind, starvation is unknown. It is unknown even after all the efforts of the saboteurs, the mercenaries and the terrorists, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after forty years of an economic embargo which was calculated to bring the revolution to its knees
Cuba today has twice as many doctors per capita as any other country in the world and while Fidel does not yet claim the best healthcare system in the world, it must be pretty close, Health and social security are both free. Old people will not worry about being ill.
In Cuba, 85% of the people own their own homes while the remaining 15% pay a symbolic rent of 10% of their salary. There is no property tax.
Cuba is obviously unlike any other country in the world. When Elian Gonzales’ father was offered millions of dollars and other inducements to remain in the United States  a few years ago, few people outside Cuba expected that he would be able to refuse. But he returned to his job and his life as a security guard in Cuba.
In speaking about Cuba this week, I have not even touched on some of the most noteworthy achievements of the revolution - its assistance to other countries, some richer than itself.  Its successes for instance, in stopping and smashing Apartheid, its restoration of medical services in Haiti, its huge number of doctors fighting HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is forgotten that on September 11, 2001, the Cubans were the first to offer their condolences to the US and to offer landing grounds in Cuba for any planes which the Americans chose to land there when  its airports were closed.

Yet, Cuba has been chosen anew by the US as a target.  The recent execution of four hijackers was justified under international law and particularly justified because it signalled the beginning of a new and dangerous campaign which would endanger the lives of thousands of innocent people. Instead, as Fidel said, the events of ” 9/11″ served instead as a pretext for the implementation of a “neo-fascist policy … carefully conceived and developed” before the terrorist event. Cuba denounced this as the “blueprint for the idea of a global military dictatorship imposed through brute force, outside of international laws and institutions of any kind”
In a speech last June, Fidel went further: “The power and prerogatives of that country’s president are so extensive, and the economic, technological and military power network in that nation so pervasive that due to circumstances that fully escape the will of the American people, the world is coming under the rule of Nazi concepts and methods.”
In a world with a free press we should have been able to hear that warning and been able, if we wanted, to evaluate  it, to denounce it or agree with it;  to  be able to decide  for ourselves whether the speaker was simply raving or had some reason to say what he said. It was an important statement, whether true or false. We should have known about it.
We never heard those words, never had an opportunity to debate them, accept or reject them.
Outside of Cuba, obviously,  the world’s press is largely and enthusiastically free.
That, at any rate, is what  we are told.
And of course, never forget: Free and open debate is the essence of democracy.

Review by Dr. Shivananda Nayak

Medicinal and Edible Plants
Used by East Indians of Trinidad and Tobago
By Kumar Mahabir, Ph.D.
New edition 2008.
xx +167 pp.  ISBN 976-8001-73-9
Illustrations by S. K. Ragbir. Foreword by
Dr. Greg Barclay
5½ x 8½ inches. Paperback. Glossary, index.

The publication of this book, Medicinal and Edible Plants (2008 ed.), is a welcome addition to the corpus of knowledge available to research students and faculty members who are involved in research on medicinal plants.  The author has made a sincere effort to give the botanical names, descriptions, origins and chemical composition of the plants available in Trinidad used almost exclusively by the East Indian community. It is very important not only for the community but also for the researchers to be aware of the brief history of the medicinal plants before they select any plant material for study or use. Therefore, it is a very timely, well-documented tool that meets an important need.
The vincamine and vincristine of periwinkle are useful in memory-enhancing action and cancer treatment respectively.  In the same way that the papaya fruit and leaves are used to treat cut wounds and are also known to have antimicrobial activities. Naturally accruing avocado fruit is known to contain unsaturated fatty acids and consuming this fruit may lower bad cholesterol and slow collagen degradation to prevent aging. The fermented fruit juice of Morinda citrifolia is used to lower blood glucose. Identifying the therapeutic actions of phytoconstituents of various plants is only possible when one is aware of the plant’s history, including its origin, botanical and common names.
There are few books which explain the medicinal importance of plants grown all over the world. Many people may not be aware of the plants available in Trinidad and Tobago and their medicinal uses. Dr. Mahabir has put his sincere effort  to update information on the plants available in Trinidad and Tobago which are used by either researchers or the community for a variety of reasons. Topics discussed in the book are highly relevant to researchers who play a key role in evaluating the medicinal importance of plants. The entries are concise, well-written, and the contents are easy to understand.
Medicinal and Edible Plants is available for TT$60 from major bookstores in Trinidad, and from Chakra Publishing House.

Dr Shivananda Nayak is attached to the Biochemistry Unit, Department of Preclinical Sciences, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies,
Trinidad and Tobago.