By LLOYD TAYLOR

Trader Joseph Masters watches the boards on the floor of the the New York Stock Exchange last year. —Photo: AP

On April Fools Day 2009 the banks and financial institutions got a significant upward bounce in the value of their stocks.
This increase is a direct result of an accounting rule-change made by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) details of  which can be viewed at http://www.fasb.org/pdf/fsp_fas157-4.pdf.
Im essence, it allows bankers to shift from entering the book value of their assets on the basis of market values—what is known as “…mark to market” to a method of entering the book values of their stocks based on bankers’ own reckoning of the book value of their assets based on prices in a normal market.
After two years of widely divergent volatility pointing mainly downwards, the FASB decision helped to sustain a stock rally among banks (BOA, Citi Group, Wells Fargo), commodities (oil futures, copper and wheat) on one day -April 1st. The day’s snapshot showed that the Dow industrial averages closed at 7,978.08, S&P 500 closed at 834.8 and NASDAQ at 1602 for respective increases of 2.79%, 2.87% and 3.3%.
The FASB ruling on close examination has left many questions unanswered. What factors would be used to ascertain fair market value of an asset when there is no market activity? How could we discern value without the prospect of gain or loss underscored by effective and active demand? How much quantitative decline from the last historical value will constitute a disorderly transaction? How would we get an orderly or any transaction when the market for an asset is inactive?
Two examples may highlight the confusions in the FASB’s text. Were I the owner of a piece of machinery that no one wants to buy, despite widespread public promotion that it exists for sale, I should assume that means that the market is inactive. I should enter the historical book value of the equipment, not one that is infinitesimally positive. By FASB’s reckoning, it is reasonable to presume that I can pawn the asset or borrow money against it because the book value determined on the basis of an orderly transaction, would make it bankable. We all know that it is insane, not just irrational, to expect a bank to lend money on that basis. If the rational thing to do is to dump the asset as garbage that has only salvage value, why then would an investment bank want to rig the value of toxic assets above what a mark to market valuation suggests it should bear?
Alternatively, assume the asset is a financial instrument such as a collateralized debt obligation (CDO), leveraged at $30 to $1 of real physical asset value. If the price falls to a ratio of $10 to $1 of physical asset value upon which it leveraged, it may be safe and sane to consider that I did not lose $20 of asset value. The significant reality is that I possess the asset, and can exercise the option prospectively to re-value the CDO at a price it would fetch in an orderly transaction.
The ruling comes dangerously close to saying that in financial asset valuation we should accept that an inactive market only means that buyers have postponed interest only temporarily, however indefinitely! And that the de-leveraging of the asset will have limited impact on value. Also that an orderly transaction takes place when I buy my brother’s worthless painting in cahoots for $200,000.00 and that the transaction not only sets the floor price for the new market value, but sustains it, however long the market stays inactive thereafter. The valuation rule change actually allows banks to value assets at values higher than what people are willing to pay for them. It is not significantly consequential that the rule must not be applied retroactively, and that any resulting change in asset valuation must be disclosed.

The issue of convenience is important because it is investment bankers world-wide who started the speculations in derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that crashed the global financial system. Those speculations went way beyond the role of banks to service the financial demands for physical economic growth. Speculation in collateralized financial instruments became an end in itself. The darkness at the center of financial thought was the idea that money made more money, not by expanding output to match demand in the physical economy for goods and services, but by piling collateralized debt obligations (CDO) one on top the other in an endless spiral of upward value that dwarfed to meaningless proportions the slice of the value of the pool of real asset lying at the base.
The risks were compounded by adding the credit default swap (CDS) to protect investors, in say, credit mortgage obligations and bonds from losses arising from default. In a swap contract, a buyer makes periodic premium payments to a seller. In the contract the reference insurer holds the debt and undertakes to pay it. If the insurer defaults on its debt obligations the investor is paid a one-off payment from the other counterparty to the contract. The CDS is then terminated. That is the wrecking ball that leveled Lehman Brothers, sank AIG and led to shockwaves on Wall Street. These hot financial instruments allow investors to place bets on the success or failure on just about any aspect of a selected entity’s economic fortunes. This is the definition of gambling.
Under conditions of regulation the insurance coverage of the risk of default of the CDS should be enough guarantee that losses from a default can be paid. Except that with no regulation in the CDS market, the grave consequence is there is no way of knowing that any buyer has the means to cover losses when the financial product defaults, as it is traded from investor to investor.
The erasure of mark to market valuation is designed to restore partially what are gamblers’ losses from bets in a legitimate, but immoral Ponzi-scheme containing investments in quadrillions of derivatives within America and European Union countries. The problem of determining the price of banks assets in abnormal market conditions was raised by James K Galbraith, economist and Professor of Government, University of Texas in a piece appropriately entitled: No Return To Normal.  He argues thus: “The only price at which assets could be disposed of, protecting the tax-payer, was … the market price.” Adding that: “… In the collapse of the market for mortgaged-back securities and their associated credit default swaps, this price was too low to save the banks. But any higher price was too high, would have amounted to a gift of public funds, justifiable only if the assets might recover value when normal conditions return.”
The change from mark to market accounting valuation sought to address the bankers’ toxic asset dilemma. The alternative would be for the US Treasury Secretary to put the banks under bankruptcy proceedings, place the worthless assets in a special corporation and restore a healthier balance sheet to the banks. That is the procedure banks apply to failed businesses and households, almost without exception. In this economic climate banks have been thrice blessed. Their creation of the financial crisis has been rewarded with a $700 billion USD tax-payer bailout, the avoidance of bankruptcy proceedings, and now an accounting rule. Investment bankers on Wall Street now have the authority to restore book value of assets, without reference to market-based valuation of their assets in collateralized securities.
The accounting rule change forced the FASB into a compromising position. It included insistent complaints from banks that housing values plummeted as a result of distressed sales. There was pressure from congressional republicans and democrats for the FASB to act. Well the five members, previously resisting the appeals from banks to alter mark-to- market accounting valuation methodology, capitulated in what in retrospect would be seen as an historic volte-face for the guardians of accounting measuring standards in America.
One FASB member, Lawrence E. Smith, confirmed the difficulty an independent standards setting Board faces to not ignore the conditions of the operating economic environment. In response to investor criticism the FASB required banks to expand disclosure of the housing-based assets in question.
After the rule change, Edward Yingling, the President of the American Bankers Association praised the FASB. That compliment should surprise no one. The bankers want to have their cake and eat it. Among the world’s most powerful lobbies they make rules and break them as effortlessly as they bend most politicians to do their bidding.
The FSAB’s vote was condemned by the Investors Working Group led by two former SEC chairmen, William H. Donaldson and Arthur Levitt, Jr., as a distortion of reality. The IWG said that “ …FASB proposals will reduce the free-flow of  reliable and transparent information, undermine investor interest and weaken their ability to make sound financial decisions.”

Here we see a predisposition of major economic players to insist on regulatory changes to ameliorate the impact on collateralized debt obligations of the 29 % fall in the market values of single- family homes. The rule change helps them to manage adverse price and valuation caused by supply and demand forces.
This is in sharp contrast to households. Unlike banks, the balance sheets of households enjoy no similar relief. The ruthless application of mark to market standards for measuring personal credit worthiness is the norm. Everywhere ordinary citizens still face the harsh reality of lower income, job losses, shrinking housing asset value, declining equity and rising household debt for mortgage, education and consumer loans. The sub-prime mortgage debacle that triggered, not caused, the financial crisis is used as the excuse to increase the points required for individuals to qualify for credit. It could be argued that the consequence is the adoption of a far too restrictive approach to evaluating credit worthiness that dampens aggregate demand and weighs down the economy further.
Banks and bankers have been at the cosmic eye of the storm that has sent the American economy and the economies of the world’s sovereign nations in a tail-spin. The rule change may suggest that they are willing to close their eyes to the reality of true market values.
It’s worth noting that the accounting rule change coincided with the staging of the G-20  Nations Summit in London, UK, this April 2009.  Not only was the change widely expected, but the Financial Crisis Advisory Group - creature of the International Accounting Standards Board and FASB- wrote UK’s PM Gordon Brown to advise “…that the group was considering how improvements to financial reporting may enhance investor confidence in financial markets.” The Summit’s determination to regulate hedge funds and off-shore banks is still only expressions of good intent, if governments’ accommodation to an accounting valuation rule change to assess fair market value, is any measure of the capacity to resist the international banker’s lobby.
The reign of the international financial oligarchy’s influence continues undiminished, after hundreds of years and the world’s worst financial debacle in anyone’s living memory. Some professional guardians of social-science objectivity across disciplines and major political leaders seem ready to surrender their responsibility to civil society. With the financial crisis far from over, the world’s populations have an opportunity to change the balance of power between global corporate imperialism and national sovereignty.  The outcome is still an unanswered question.

By IAN McDONALD

Too many of my good friends are overwhelmed with work which prevents them living more peaceful, varied, interesting and fulfilled lives. For them, and as a reminder to myself, let me spend a moment questioning priorities and imperatives taken for granted in a world increasingly devoted to non-stop busyness and oppressive deadlines.
Our lives of such infinite value come and go in a whirl of work. We hasten and hustle in an endless hubbub and there is never enough time and always too much information. The hours trip over themselves as they pass into eternity. You will never have them back so regret every one not spent as you would really wish them to be spent.
Life increasingly is an unrelenting rush of activity and chores, appointments and commitments, all demons of the deadline. “Things that have to be done at once” dominate the day to such an extent that there is hardly a moment, or no moments whatsoever, for the far more important things that do not need to be done at all. There are more and more reports to be reported on. What spare hours there might be are spent dealing with the overflow from workdays cluttered with obligations which lead inexorably into other obligations.
The trouble is that human beings now aspire too fiercely to simultaneity and omniscience. Perhaps it is an ancient wish come true to be like God who said “Let there be light!” and at once there was light. We want to be where we only have to open our mouths to make a world happen and open our eyes to have a world appear. So we surf the Internet for access to all knowledge immediately, we press a button for instant cash, and the countless pieces of paper we generate at home and office simultaneously yield countless pieces of paper in every sort of elsewhere and vice versa until all the time we have is consumed in dealing with all that stuff we ourselves have helped create. We are constantly dealing desperately with overflow.
Now it is possible to carry an office inside a brief-case: a laptop, a fax modem, a phone. Or the office will even fit in the palm of your hand. Convenient they call it: the roots of the word convenient are “with” and “come”. So now everything can come with you, into your car, into your bedroom, onto your wind-filled veranda, onto your holiday beach or into your forest hideaway. Every moment must be fully productive and cost-effective - nothing left for the kind of time that is vanishing in our lives, a time completely free of usefulness, a time zone of wonder, a time when we leave aside the habits of achievement and are startled into appreciating the rewards of a completely unplanned and uncommitted day.

The yearning after more and more speed - speed of exchanged communications, immediate access to information, concept instantly converted into conception - is destroying an important part of our lives. We are losing the art of waiting awhile.
Consider the joy of writing and receiving letters. Delay is an essential ingredient in the pleasure of correspondence. “Must do” turns into the relished achievement of “just done” and then you have the added pleasure of anticipating a reply. “The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future,” Iris Murdoch wrote. But that old magic has been completely destroyed by the e-mail. Now letter-writing, and all too many pleasurably drawn-out exchanges between human beings, are carried out in a frenzy of instant messages instantly sent and almost simultaneously returned. No space is left for valuable periods of meditation and review when those second and third thoughts come which are often best.
There is a poem by James Wright, one of my great favourites, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”, which I like to read when life presses too hard on one’s precious time. I move it forward between the leaves of my diary so that I am reminded regularly what is, and what is not, important in life.

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

The poem itself confirms the irony of its last line. It is not this experience of a world where nothing is lost, where tranquil beauty is contained in each passing moment, where dung blazes up like gold, it is not such an experience which is a waste of life. It is rather that in such an experience one realizes that a lifetime only of dutiful, anxious, unrelieved effort is utterly foolish, a waste in truth.
The novelist Kurt Vonnegut, not long before he died, once spoke in an interview about technology and himself. He worked at home and he said he could, if he wanted, have a computer by his bed and never have to leave it. But instead he used an old typewriter and afterwards marked up the pages with a pencil and went down to the local post office to mail the pages to a good typist he knew. And in the line at the post office and later in the line at the corner store where he bought pencils and newspapers and sweets he got to talk to any number of people - a birdwatcher desperately eager to get back to tracking blue-birds in the woods, a girl he fell half in love with, an off-duty cop full of stories - and he lazed around noticing the way shadows fall and the intricate lace of an old woman’s shawl. And then he would walk home slowly. “And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, as much as anything we are here on Earth to fart around and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
Well, yes, I suppose that is one way of expressing what I’ve been trying to say. But in considering how to live well, and not end up harassed and disillusioned and regretful, keep another poem close at hand always - Derek Walcott’s great poem:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger
who was your self.
Give wine, give bread, give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love-letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

—Derek Walcott

Entering the Labyrinth of History

By Cary Fraser

On March 15, 2009 the former American Vice President, Dick Cheney, launched a very pointed attack on the Obama administration for its abandonment of policies that had been pursued by the Bush-Cheney administration in the course of its “War on Terror.” The criticisms, coming less than two months after the inauguration of Barack Obama as President, marked the end of the “Cold Peace” between the former Vice President and the new administration that had prevailed over the transition period following Obama’s victory in November 2008. Cheney’s remarks followed upon the decision by the Obama administration to close the Guantánamo detention camp and other secret prisons, to ban the use of torture, and to end the use of the term “enemy combatant” to describe the detainees held in Cuba and to treat them in accordance with principles of international law.
Cheney advanced his view on March 15 that the Obama administration was “making some choices that in my mind will raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” In his justification of the detention policies adopted by the Bush administration, Cheney asserted that they had been “absolutely essential to the success we enjoy, of being able to collect the intelligence that led us to defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think it’s a great success story. It was done legally, it was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles.”
In defense of the Obama administration’s decisions, the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, offered a sarcastic rejoinder to Cheney’s criticisms - “Well, I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy, so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal…” - in a jab at the intellectual disarray that has overtaken the Republican party after the drubbing it received in the 2008 election. The current White House has assiduously used the bombastic style and incendiary right-wing rhetoric of the radio-talk-show host, Rush Limbaugh, who seeks to influence debate within the Republican Party, to portray the Republican Party as a hostage to extremist currents in American life. It is a campaign that has left the Republican leaders in a quandary since Limbaugh has built a strong following among various Republican constituencies and several of those leaders are wary of appearing to be hostile to Limbaugh. Cheney’s appearance on national television may have been designed to show that the traditional party leadership had not been muted either by Obama’s popularity or Limbaugh’s rhetorical excesses. However, in response to Cheney’s remarks, Obama was even more pointed in his repudiation of the former Vice President - “I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can’t reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don’t torture, with our national security interests. I think he’s drawing the wrong lesson from history.”
Cheney’s criticisms and Obama’s response highlighted the stark divide that has emerged in American politics between the Republicans and Democrats. For Cheney and his supporters within the Republican Party, the War on Terror had provided an opportunity to expand the power of the Executive branch at the expense of the other branches of government - the Legislature and the Judiciary. The Bush-Cheney administration had sought to elevate the Presidency to a position that would allow it to escape its accountability to the other branches of the federal government that is a key tenet in the balance of power envisioned by the Constitution. It was also this vision of the unfettered power of the American President that emerged in the rush to war in Iraq - the Bush administration would not be constrained by either the United Nations or by international law and/or international public opinion. The justification of this expansionist vision of Executive authority and governance during the Bush-Cheney era was articulated in a series of legal memoranda prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. These memoranda argued essentially that the attacks on September 11, 2001 required the Executive Branch to undertake all necessary measures to protect the United States, including the expansion of the President’s use of military power to confront challenges emanating from within the United States.
Following the attacks upon the United States by Al Qaeda, the Office of Legal Counsel in a memorandum - Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States - of October 23, 2001 advanced the argument that:
“The text and history of the Constitution, supported by the interpretations of past administrations, the courts, and Congress, show that the President has the independent, non-statutory power to take military actions, domestic as well as foreign, if he determines such action to be necessary to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001 and before.”
It was an extraordinary assertion of the power of the Presidency in American political life and this reading of American constitutional history and law would inform  the workings of the Bush administration until October 6, 2008 when the Office of Legal Counsel, under new leadership, repudiated the 2001 memorandum. The 2008 opinion - Re: October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities - indicated that:
“…the 10/23/01 Memorandum did not address specific and concrete policy proposals; rather it addressed in general terms the broad contours of hypothetical scenarios involving possible domestic military contingencies that senior policymakers feared might become a reality in the uncertain wake of the catastrophic terrorist attacks of 9/11. Thus, the 10/23/01 Memorandum represents a departure, although perhaps for understandable reasons, from the preferred practice of OLC to render formal opinions only with respect to specific and concrete policy proposals and not to undertake a general survey of a broad area of the law or to address general or amorphous hypothetical scenarios that implicate difficult questions of law.

In effect, in its waning days, the Bush administration’s extraordinarily broad conception of Presidential authority was quietly shelved to open the way for the incoming Obama administration to articulate an alternative vision of Presidential authority. The legal opinions of October 2001 and October 2008 were thus bookends of the Bush administration strategy of unilaterally expanding its power both at home and abroad.
The Justice Department’s volte-face under the Bush administration followed upon the Republican Party’s loss of control over the House of Representatives in 2006 and the rise of an energized Democratic majority and a skilled leader in Nancy Pelosi therein. The administration was confronted by a Democratic party determined to reverse the Republican control over both the executive and legislative branches of government. Further, the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in the case contesting the Bush administration’s efforts to prevent Guantanamo detainees from seeking relief in US Courts - Boumedienne et al. v. Bush - had asserted that: To hold that political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.” Faced with a House of Congress determined to exercise its oversight over the Executive, and a Supreme Court majority determined to reverse the administration’s efforts to usurp the Court’s authority and role in constitutional governance, the administration retreated in its final months from its post-9/11 claim to expansive authority.
However, that claim to expansive authority has left a legacy which the Obama administration will have to address. Under the Bush administration, the United States embarked upon the use of torture - with the Department of Justice providing legal justification for such actions - in the detention camps in the “War on Terror” operated by the Department of Defense. The CIA was specifically authorized to engage in the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” including both mental and physical abuse of detainees. The administration has released the Justice Department documents that reveal both the legal reasoning for and the authorization of torture and which confirm previous reports of the practices used in the camps, including a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The President, Barack Obama, offered the assurance of immunity to the people who had engaged in torture “relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution,” but it is unclear whether the policymakers who devised the policies and authored the memoranda approving torture and abuse will enjoy similar immunity. However, Obama’s initial position has already shifted towards a willingness to accept prosecution as influential Congressional leaders have indicated their desire to investigate the policies of the Bush administration. Obama’s initial stance seemed to be shaped, in part, by his concern to avoid a hugely divisive political battle over the Bush administration’s legacy in the War on Terror. In his statement explaining the decision to release the memos on the authorization of torture, Obama said:  … at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.
Obama’s preference for “reflection, not retribution” in dealing with the revelations about the torture and abuse of detainees may reflect a pragmatic recognition that the entire Bush administration’s record is so badly tainted that it is better to invest his political capital in articulating a new vision of America. To expend such capital in pursuit of investigations and prosecution of Bush era officials would open another chapter in a bitterly divisive issue that - like the My Lai massacre which exposed the callous behaviour of American troops in Vietnam - could poison American politics for another generation and seriously cripple Obama’s ability to address the current economic crisis.
However, the release to the public of the memoranda authorizing torture and the efforts to claim extraordinary powers for the President has provided crucial evidence of the profoundly anti-democratic instincts of the Bush administration at its highest levels. Just as important, a prima facie case for the indictment of American government employees has emerged from the evidence of the abuse of detainees detailed in the documents and reports. In light of that evidence, it is clear that there is a growing desire across the political spectrum for a restoration of America’s reputation as a society governed by law. For the Bush administration, officials of the CIA and other agencies, and the Republican Party, the “War on Terror” has been a self-inflicted wound and a serious blow to the image of America. The recent attacks on the Obama administration by Dick Cheney have backfired as the release of the memoranda have, in fact, raised fundamental questions about the Bush administration’s disregard for the American constitution in the name of “national security” and the memoranda will remain a key statement of its historical legacy. The prosecution of Bush-era officials who facilitated or engaged in detainee abuse may provide one avenue for the refurbishment of America’s battered image. Just as important, more profound institutional change is now necessary to ensure a return to accountability in the operations of the American government given the legacy of the Bush administration.
Obama’s call for “reflection” suggests that it is perhaps time for the American public to recognize that the emergence of a culture of “permanent” war-preparedness within American life since 1945 constitutes a serious threat to American democracy - both as political theory and as institutions of governance.  The Iraq imbroglio has proven to be a strategic blunder of enormous magnitude but it also demonstrated the way in which a determined administration could manipulate the Congress and launch a foolhardy war which thoughtful citizens recognized would end badly. Of even greater significance was the fact that the most experienced military leader in the Bush Cabinet - Colin Powell - found himself isolated and eventually quiescent as his colleagues fanned the flames of war. Both the Executive and the Legislature demonstrated a serious lack of judgment and the prescient observation by the West Virginia Democratic Senator, Robert Byrd, during a speech on March 19, 2003 on the floor of the US Senate continues to haunt the American body politic six years later: -
After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America’s image around the globe.
The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.
Byrd’s admonition was rooted in the chastening experience of having previously supported a Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, who manipulated the Congress to secure passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to support his plans for a massive military escalation in Vietnam in 1965. As Obama moves ahead with his plans to withdraw American forces from Iraq and to escalate the war in Afghanistan which has already expanded into the frontier regions of Pakistan, he may need to be reminded of Byrd’s insight based upon historical experience. In effect, Obama’s call for reflection may serve as a point of departure for American citizens to begin a campaign to save America from the miscalculations and hubris of its political and military leadership. Such a campaign would go a long way towards revitalizing citizen participation in American politics and breaking with the culture of war that has been shaped by the enormous expansion of the influence of the “military-industrial” complex against which President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address in 1961: -
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
The Obama administration’s decision to release the legal memoranda prepared by the Bush administration’s Justice Department has opened the space to redefine the American political order in both domestic politics and foreign policy.  It is perhaps not insignificant that the torture memoranda were released as Obama was heading for the Summit of the Americas hosted by Trinidad and Tobago where Obama announced the American willingness to open a new era in Cuban-American relations. The use of the American military base at Guantanamo for torture of detainees in the War on Terror has been a major embarrassment for American policy in the Western Hemisphere. American criticism of the Cuban government’s human rights violations ring hollow when American practices at Guantanamo have constituted flagrant violations of the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Further, Guantanamo serves as a reminder of the American-backed military dictatorships in the region which engaged in torture and other human rights abuses against their own populations during the Cold War.
The release of the memoranda provided a signal that America - by acknowledging its use of torture - is serious about turning a new page in inter-American relations as well as in the treatment of the current detainees. However, it is not clear whether the reluctance to prosecute the perpetrators will provoke doubts among hemispheric leaders about the ability of the administration to adapt to the ideological pluralism that has increasingly shaped inter-American relations. In the 1960s and 1970s, a variety of military regimes in Latin America had used torture to enforce ideological conformity in domestic politics - often with “technical assistance” from the United States. It is a legacy that the Obama administration will have to overcome as it seeks to pursue a strategy of diplomatic and commercial engagement with other hemispheric governments.
In terms of domestic politics, the Obama administration has effectively exposed the excesses of the Bush administration. It is not a decision that will sit well with many people who served within the Bush administration. It would not be surprising if those angered by the exposure of the excesses should begin a campaign of retribution that would seek to damage Obama’s effort to secure a second term as President. However, Obama’s decision has to be seen in larger historical context - he has effectively offered an alternative vision of Presidential power which seeks to educate and engage the American people. It is a marked departure from the efforts to centralize power within the Executive Branch that defined the Bush administration.

Obama’s admonition that torture is neither compatible with core American values, nor should it be seen an instrument of national security, reflects his training as a constitutional lawyer and Cheney’s criticisms have helped Obama to emphasize his commitment to working within the constitutional framework of American governance. The effectiveness of Obama’s advocacy of deference to the constitution and the validity of his critique of Cheney’s views were both anticipated by the Supreme Court  Justice, Hugo Black who wrote the Supreme Court’s decision Chambers v. Florida U.S. 227 (1940). Black’s opinion was a powerful argument against the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” by police to extract “confessions” from African Americans in the American South. In Black’s view:
We are not impressed by the argument that law enforcement methods such as those under review are necessary to uphold our laws. [n15] The Constitution proscribes [p*241] such lawless means irrespective of the end. And this argument flouts the basic principle that all people must stand on equality before the bar of justice in every American court. Today, as in ages past, we are not without tragic proof that the exalted power of some governments to punish manufactured crime dictatorially is the handmaid of tyranny. Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are nonconforming victims of prejudice and public excitement. Due process of law, preserved for all by our Constitution, commands that no such practice as that disclosed by this record shall send any accused to his death. No higher duty, no more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution — of whatever race, creed or persuasion. [p*242]
The turn to torture by the Bush administration has damaged the image of the United States as a democratic society and revived memories of the dark recesses of American history. The Obama administration’s willingness to bring these memoranda, and the policies that they justified, into the open for public discussion signals its commitment to move beyond the anti-democratic currents in American life. Democracy cannot be pursued in tandem with torture.

By FRANK BIRBALSINGH

Krishna Sarbadhikary Surviving the Fracture: Writers of the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora New Delhi, Creative Books, 2007, pp.289 ISBN 81-8043-047-2

Krishna Sarbadhikary is a former university teacher who now works as an independent researcher and scholar.  Surviving the Fracture: Writers of the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora is not only a full-length study of Indo-Caribbean writing but a rather specialised one that deals only with Indo-Caribbean writing in Canada. Coming from India, the author’s  use of the term “Fracture” in her title suggests she sees Indo-Caribbean writing or culture more as a fragment of Indian culture, rather than as an independent unit with Indian origins. This, indeed, is a central issue in her book.
Ms. Sarbadhikary opens her treatise with a well-researched Introduction, twenty-five pages long, which fills in essential details of the settlement of people from India in the Caribbean. These Indian immigrants came largely as agricultural workers, under a system of indenture, between 1838 and 1917,and settled mainly in Guyana and Trinidad, so far as English-speaking Caribbean territories are concerned. The author then devotes one chapter of critical analysis to each of eight Indo-Caribbean writers now living in Canada, except for Guyanese Sasenarine Persaud, who lived briefly in Canada in the 1980s and 90s before re-migrating to the US.
The first chapter of Surviving the Fracture, on Cyril Dabydeen from Guyana, is entitled “I Come to you with Crossings in my Mind” a quotation from one of Dabydeen’s poems that recalls not only the restless crossings  of Indians, firstly from India to the Caribbean, then from the Caribbean to Canada, but also the anxiety and trauma involved. As the author of nearly twenty volumes of fiction and poetry, Dabydeen is the most prolific of all Indo-Caribbean-Canadian writers, his first Canadian work having been published as long ago as 1977. But, as Ms. Sarbadhikary reveals, despite dealing with subjects involving anxiety, trauma or pain: “Dabydeen’s protagonists have learnt that the way to survive cultural uprooting a second time is to find a dual voice.” (p.64) In other words, Dabydeen’s approach is non-confrontational: he seeks accommodation rather than redress.
This is not at all the case with the next writer Arnold Itwaru, another Guyanese, whose chapter title “The Anguish of Otherness” betrays anger and an altogether darker vision. An academic, Itwaru, like Dabydeen, writes fiction and poetry that consider themes such as twisted education under a colonial system, problems of identity and insecurity, and the perennial problem facing Indo-Caribbeans: that of finding a place that they can truly call “home”.
The next chapter “In Pursuit of Ancestral Inheritance” considers the fiction and poetry of Sasenarine Persaud who exhibits an obsessive preoccupation with his Indianness or Hinduness, and strong interest in Indian aesthetics.  In Ms. Sarbadhikary’s words, Persaud’s Indian Hindu identity helps him to “resist the reality of fracture [from India, and to] re-instate the elusive dream of an unbroken continuity with the Hindu past.” (p.124) No wonder that Persaud regards his writing as “Indic” rather than Caribbean or South Asian.
The clear contrast between Dabydeen’s non-confrontation and Itwaru’s polemics matches the difference between Persaud, who asserts his cultural continuity with India, and both Dabydeen and Itwaru who acknowledge some degree of disconnection from India. Similarly, Neil Bissoondath, the first Trinidadian considered in Surviving the Fracture, has little sympathy with Persaud if the title of his chapter “Denying the Ancestral” is anything to go by.  In the end, whether these writers totally accept or deny their cultural continuity with India their writing confirms the intensity of Indo-Caribbean agonising over the issue. Although Neil Bissoondath’s two volumes of stories, five novels and non-fiction writing scarcely match the productivity of Cyril Dabydeen, Ms. Sarbadhikary observes that Bissoondath’s work has attracted more attention from the white Canadian mainstream than that of any other Indo-Caribbean-Canadian writer. Bissoondath’s themes of colonialism, displacement, immigration and the quest for identity coincide with those of other Indo-Caribbean writers, except that, in Ms. Sarbadhikary’s words, he dispenses with “notions of ethnic identity, the ancestral past and his Trinidadian [Caribbean] connections. “ (p.162)
As the author of three novels and three volumes of short stories, Rabindranath Maharaj, another Trinidadian, has made a name for himself in Canada. His blend of tragic-comic humour invites comparison with V.S. Naipaul, Harold Sonny Ladoo and Samuel Selvon according to Ms. Sarbadhikary, while his treatment of the journey motif or the displacement of self and place is recognisably Indo-Caribbean.

The final three writers considered in the volume are all Trinidadian and female, beginning with Ramabai Espinet who is both an academic and the author of fiction, poetry, essays and editor of an anthology of Caribbean women’s poetry.   Her chapter “Contesting Identities: Claiming spaces” announces both her Indo-Caribbean credentials and, like Arnold Itwaru, the somewhat polemical tone of her writing. In Ms. Sarbadhikary’s view, Espinet presents new myths that “foreground the working classes, incorporating a warrior-woman, an angry, avenging Kali, or a cutlass-wielding cane-cutting woman, capable of warding off a white overseer or a drunken abusive husband.” (P.209) Stirring stuff!
Ms. Sarbadhikary’s chapter “Imaginary Landscape: Permeable Borders” introduces her seventh writer Shani Mootoo and the idea of crossing borders not only of geography but gender: “trying to define self in flux”. As a painter and writer Mootoo also crosses borders of genre. And, because she is from India, it is interesting for Ms. Sarbadhikary to acknowledge Mootoo’s “ironic  look at the linguistic and cultural superiority displayed by Indians vis`a vis Indo-Caribbeans.” (p.243)
While most Indo-Caribbean-Canadian writers are based in Toronto Mootoo lives in Vancouver, Bissoondath in Quebec city, and the final (eighth) writer Madeleine Coopsammy in Winnipeg. Coopsammy stands out as the only Indo-Caribbean-Canadian writer who did her university studies in India before coming to Canada. Her stories consider typical Indo-Caribbean issues of race, colour, rootlessness and the ancestral past, all of which are superbly analysed  in Ms. Sarbadhikary’s informed and balanced study of the Indo- Caribbean-Canadian search for new identity, and their continuing struggle both to cope with their Indian inheritance, and discover strategies for surviving exile in new lands such as Canada.

Editorial Opinion of the Stabroek News, Guyana

We have already noted the amount of controversy characterizing the Summit of the Americas to its very end. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago itself has received much criticism from within. The Government of Cuba, particularly through former President Fidel Castro, kept up a running commentary on the conference, even making some critical cum sarcastic remarks about Prime Minister Manning’s handling of the conference and the preparation of the communiqué.  And Caricom itself gave the appearance of a split when the Dominican Government joined other members of Alba in signing what might be called a counter-communiqué.

Leadership line-up at the Summit photo call. —Photo: AP

It is true that Caricom heads had the opportunity to meet, for a short while, with President Obama. And it is also true that even though Trinidad & Tobago was host to the summit, we should not have necessarily expected undue or extra-favourable attention to Caricom’s specific concerns. But we do not have the impression, as Caricom joined others in their insistence on President Obama dealing with the issue of Cuba’s prolonged absence from the inter-American family and the United States’ extended embargo on that country, that the opportunity was taken to do something else. This, it seems to us, was to seek to locate itself, as the smallest of the small, in the wider context of the non-US hemisphere, and to indicate our concern not only with the historic imbalance between the US and other countries of the hemisphere, but with issues that we have, and are likely to have in the future, with those other hemispheric countries.
Specifically, the WTO process has created a situation in which many countries of Latin America have vehemently opposed the extensive arrangements that the European Union and the ACP countries have tried to make, in order to find a reasonable solution on the issue of the export of bananas to Europe. Much damage has been done, and much distress felt by the populations of Caricom - few as some hemispheric countries might think we are - over the years since the mid-1990s.
Might we not have taken the opportunity to ask and to continue asking, even to the annoyance of some and in the presence of the United States President, whether this prolonged pressure and unwillingness to settle until the last pip is squeezed from us, is good for balanced development in our hemisphere and for good relations in the area? For one thing, the protracted nature of this issue, originally coming up during the presidency of the last Democrat sitting in the White House, is in part due to the pressure of the American banana businesses which, it is no secret, exert a substantial influence in the politics of that country.
A similar concern might relate to the region’s sugar industry. As our neighbour Brazil has, with other emerging states, gained victories in the WTO system in their pressure to force concessions from the United States, President Lula himself has conceded the collateral damage that can be done to the Caribbean sugar industry.
And it is also true that he has sought to encourage Guyana and Jamaica in particular, to move to manufactures (ethanol) as derivatives of sugar, as well as arranging infrastructural assistance for Guyana. But does this end the matter? It is surely not enough, as even some Caricom leaders seem to say, that we must meekly accept that the era of protection is over, and that there is no sense in insisting on special and differential treatment although we notice the United States taking all kinds of actions to protect its own cotton and ethanol industries.

Opponents of this diplomatic approach of continuous pressure seem to equate it, as the Jamaican Prime Minister has tended to say, with a stance based on a mentality of continuing dependency and inclination to beg.  But the point of the line of argument which we are putting here is really to suggest that, just as we accept that there is an apparent change in the balance power within the hemisphere that can influence United States behaviour in the medium term, we are entitled to go further. That is, we are entitled to initiate more active diplomatic movement among other Latin American states to gradually build up an acceptable sentiment that alternative arrangements and interventions in the developing process in the hemisphere have to be found, by seeking to reinforce the view that the differences in endowments and capabilities among states will not disappear by waving a WTO wand and then doing nothing.
It is important that the summit has paid attention to increasing resources available to the Inter American Development Bank (and by extension the Caribbean Development Bank). But this can only be complementary to an understanding that the processes of development in the hemisphere cannot be identical as between large and small.
The argument which Caricom makes today for increased security assistance in a situation where the limited resources of Caricom states cannot cope with the severity of the security issue in this hemisphere, must apply to the development issue as well. After all, no one says that we are in a dependency mode when we ask, as we are doing now with increasing force, for increased security assistance to make up for our limitations of size and capability.
We take the view that the changing global and hemispheric environments necessitate a new emphasis on, and consequently a new approach to what we can call a regional integration approach to Caricom countries’ development. The major Latin American states themselves, led by Brazil, have increasingly been emphasizing what they call an “infrastructural integration” approach to development among neighbours in a world of economic giants.
Guyana is increasingly aware of this orientation, and Belize is indeed increasingly drawn to the possibilities of a degree of integration led by its major neighbor, Mexico, even as that country grapples with its own serious difficulties. And further afield we see the successful Singapore, whose economy has benefited substantially from international integration, leaning today towards its regional neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia  in pursuit of the creation of new integrated economic platforms directed to new bases for economic growth.
We must take every opportunity to raise this and related issues with our hemispheric neighbours. It is obvious that the United States’ 1994 solution of a Free Trade Area of the Americas is making no progress. And it is also true, though some may not like it to be said, that Caricom countries in their relations with Venezuela are in an asking mode in situations of economic emergency, rather than in a pro-active mode of themselves suggesting regional integration development strategies that will enhance their prospects of growth with national autonomy as against dependency.

Caricom heads of government should spend some time at their July meeting in dealing with these issues: issues of placing ourselves within the hemisphere from a perspective of our long-term location as small countries wanting to maintain their autonomy while pursuing viable economic growth. It sometimes sounded in this summit as if we were no more than advance guards for Cuba’s reintegration (important as that is for us and the hemisphere generally), or for the anti-imperialist stances of Nicaragua and Bolivia. We must, as we did in our relations with the African and Pacific states in 1973 and after when the end of Commonwealth protection began to dawn, show our sense of self-assertion, pride of autonomous place among the large states, and a secure sense of the direction of economic growth and development that we wish to take.
And to do that, our heads of government must begin to tell us what they are going to do about the Development Vision Report which they contracted from Professor Norman Girvan as the basis of the new integration of the CSME , which they seemed to accept in their conference of 2007, and which they now seem to have forgotten.

By JULIAN KENNY

At the recent function observing the re-constitution of the Board of the Environmental Management Authority the Honourable Minister of Planning, Housing and the Environment is reported to have stated that “In the national draft strategic plan an entire pillar is focused on the area of environmental sustainability and responsibility”. My first reaction to the reported statement was to ask the question - is the minister aware of the two indexes “Environmental Sustainability Index” (ESI) and the “Environmental Performance Index” (EPI). And if she is not aware of them perhaps the several environmental “specialists” in her ministry advising her have their task cut out for them. But more important, is she aware of the reality of the position of this country in its ranking vis a vis the rest of the world? Also, given that one of the themes of the April Summit of the Americas was environmental sustainability it might be well to consider the relative positions of many of the states that participated in the summit. The data is not available for all, especially the Caribbean microstates.
Perhaps the best course is to examine, first, the meaning of the term environmental sustainability and the nature of the ESI. Environmental sustainability is essentially a general wish or goal as to how a country relates to its environment, and an index of it has been developed by planners in the run up to the millennium rituals. The ESI, developed by a consortium led by Yale University, seeks to assess individual countries using 76 comparable data sets that track natural resources, historical pollution levels, environmental management initiatives etc. These are converted into 21 indicators of environmental sustainability, allowing country by country comparisons in the five general categories of environmental systems, environmental stresses, human vulnerability to the stresses, the country’s capacity to respond to environmental challenges and role in global stewardship. These are then scored and combined into a single number or index that permits comparisons between countries regarding the paths they follow.  It is all very relative. The scores vary from country to country and one country may score well in one category and poorly in another. This is all very much like judging carnival and steel bands where the judges assign marks, sometimes a single mark separating first and second.
But it is not only the minister who is enamoured of environmental sustainability. The thrust of the Summit of the Americas was to focus on the themes of securing citizens’ future by promoting human prosperity, energy security and environmental sustainability. Just look at the table of indices of 22 of the states attending the summit plus Cuba. The United States delegation, which numbered some 1000 persons we are told, has according to the 2005 Yale study an ESI of 52.9 and is ranked 45 amongst 146 countries. It is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world having recently been overtaken by China.
Venezuela with a delegation numbering 200 has an ESI of 48.1 and is ranked 82 amongst 146 countries. How will either the US or Venezuela go about promoting environmental sustainability, the former the great consumer and polluter and the latter almost entirely dependent on exploitation of fossil energy resources. And what about us, the host, marginally above Haiti? We have an ESI of 36.3 and ranked worldwide 139 of 146 countries!

And the 2005 ESI begat the 2008 EPI that is a refinement of the ESI process, again developed by the Yale consortium. It essentially tries to relate quantitatively the relationship between a country’s stated policies and achievements. As in the case of the ESI the higher the EPI index the better the grading. As may be expected, a country may have a high ESI but a low EPI. Putting it another way, a country’s policies may be much talk and little or no action.

The picture involving the 2008 EPI as shown in the table below appears essentially the same- although as I noted there are a few anomalies. The Yale study reports on 26 countries in the Americas, all except Cuba attending the summit. Many of the smaller islands and dependencies, including some such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the Virgin Islands, are reported in the Yale study, all of them scoring significantly higher than one might imagine. Possibly this may be due to their dependency on tourism that demands a clean environment.  Costa Rica tops the list with an EPI of 90.5 while T&T scored 70.4 and ranked 23 of 26 countries, above Guyana, Bolivia and Haiti. The anomaly is created in the case of Guyana and Bolivia, which countries are well endowed with resources but are measured to have performed poorly in management of their environment. Our dismal score may have been because of the gap between the officially stated National Environmental Policy and the visible reality of what we have done to our environment, so tarted up for the summit.
On the issue of environmental sustainability, or environmental performance, what could the United States have said, or offered, to the top ranking states in the Americas such as Costa Rica, Colombia Canada, Ecuador, Chile or Panama? Given our ranking near the bottom of the heap, exactly what could Trinidad and Tobago have said to any state in the Americas about environmental sustainability or performance?  My guess is that the summit having created an immense carbon footprint over the three days, as well as massive disruption in the country, was just a case of talk and talk and talk, agree on resolutions after which all the delegations would have returned to their respective countries to continue to seek their national interests as usual. Having spent a few hundred millions we will now quickly forget about environmental sustainability and return to the path we have followed for the past few decades. But our problems will remain because the vision remains unchanged. The path that we follow is one of heavy industrialization with commodity production for export.
But I am certain of one thing about the summit, notwithstanding its theme of ensuring human prosperity. Today the issue continues to be anthropogenic climate change and no one will venture to raise the issue of population growth and consumption that drive the world economy. There will, of course, be talk of alternative energy and securing it as an option. But if climate change is driven by humanity what are the alternatives? Yes- there is a place for alternative energy and there is a strong argument for managing carbon emissions by all means possible. On the other hand if humanity’s consumption habits cause the problem of climate change surely we must at least face up to the fact that there are far too many people on the planet. I rather doubt however that any delegation will even mention the issue, as they protect their political interests.

Twice As Much, For Half As Much

As the point person for cabinet oversight of the Fifth Summit of the Americas, one expects Minister Mariano Browne to be, both, held accountable and to demand straight answers to the tough questions about why so much had gone so horribly wrong in its execution. As we came down to the end, it looked like we were playing mas in jacket and tie amid the usual Carnival bacchanal and last-minute confusion of horrors and hurrahs.

Mariano Browne

As he surveys the detritus of unfulfilled ambition, the Prime Minister, above all, needs to be willing to conduct a rigorously honest critique of the recent Summit planning, implementation and execution exercise. For, as Carnival demonstrates without fail every year, lessons taught are not necessarily lessons learnt as we keep doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes.
There is, of course, the chance that Ken Gordon’s call to pull out of hosting the Commonwealth Summit in November might yet gain momentum and succeed. For now, though, the indications suggest that the government is going full speed ahead to the next Summit stop.
One can only hope that the Prime Minister knows better when he hails our hosting of Summit of the Americas as a success and that he, more than anyone else, feels the sharpness of our many failures. If indeed he is not aware, then we are indeed in deep, deep trouble, possibly of the psychological kind.
Hopefully, in private, the rose-tinted glasses come off and he sees how much of an opportunity lost the April summit has been.
Of dubious value from the start, Trinidad and Tobago nonetheless managed to miss every chance to eke out something from playing host to some of the world’s highest profile leaders.
Where was our tourism and branding pitch when Trinidad and Tobago hit the stage on every major television network in the world?
What use did our investment and promotional agencies make of the opportunity of having thousands of media people and visitors who arrived armed with the will to report to audiences back home?  On the evidence, it would seem that when it came to harnessing the international media, a small group of Beetham residents outperformed all the Summit’s high-priced marketing executives combined.
Why did we fail so signally to harness the energies of our various communities in a single co-ordinated effort deliver a national show-stopping event that would have proved without doubt that yes, indeed, T&T is next! Imagine the use that, say, Barbados might have made of an opportunity like this. All this and we have not yet even begun to ask about the state of preparation and management for the summit itself.
In the months leading up to April, the air around the Summit Secretariat was thick with talk about the crippling state of unreadiness for what was intended to be one of our greatest shows. With its back against the wall, the Summit Secretariat eventually bit some poison bullets and swallowed hard.

Ken Gordon

One imagines that a financial mind as rigorous as Minister Browne’s would be anxious to find out- down to the last penny- how much taxpayer money had been wasted as we threw caution to the wind and  spent twice as much for half as much in the last-minute rush to save face. One would certainly not expect him to be party to the easy acceptance of the Fifth Summit of the Americas as a multi-million dry run exercise for the Commonwealth Summit  in six months time.
The question, though, is why should we expect November to be any different from April when the fundamental reason for the fiasco will remain the same? Centralization of authority, arbitrary decision-making, disrespect for expertise and process…  these are the symptoms and expressions of the management style derived from the phenomenon described as Doctor Politics which is practised, not only in the corridors of political power, but which has come to define management in every area of the land.
Now here’s something we could indeed talk about when our colonial cousins come calling in November as we all gather to discuss the real common wealth and common welts under the sceptre of no less than a personage than England’s Queen.

A Crime Solving Toolkit: Forensics in the Caribbean, edited by Archaeologist Dr Basil Reid, examines diverse perspectives on forensics within the Caribbean such as shoe-print identification, suicide hangings, disaster-victim identification protocols, forensic anthropology, computer forensics and forensic linguistics.   Spiralling crime rates in the Caribbean have captured the attention of Caribbean policymakers, and forensics could prove to be one critical piece of the region’s criminological puzzle.
Although forensic sciences have been applied in the Caribbean for decades, the vast majority of forensic publications have focused on North America and Europe. This volume provides prescriptive formulas to mitigate the rising crime in this region and is therefore of particular interest to Caribbean policymakers, lawyers, police officers, anthropologists, computer specialists and interested members of the public.
The volume is truly representative of the Caribbean, as there are case studies from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Guatemala. There is even a chapter on a case of suicide hanging in Sweden, which is related to the Caribbean.
Contributors to the volume include Cheryl A. Corbin, Sheau-Dong Lang, Nazir Alladin, Parris Lyew-Ayee, Trevor Modeste, Godfrey A. Steele and Calle Winskog.
Ben Bowling, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at King’s College, London, says: “This book makes significant contributions to this rapidly developing field. Its practical approach will be of great value in developing crime-scene investigation and forensic science analysis within the Caribbean region and beyond.”
Copies of the book will soon be available at UWI Bookshop.

By TONY DEYAL

An Indian is an Indian is an...........?

My son George was about six years old when we went to live in Couva in Central Trinidad. I had left my job at the Public Relations Division of the Prime Minister’s Office to become the Public Relations Manager of Caroni (1975) Ltd., the national sugar company.  George had to change schools—moving from Fatima RC, a public elementary school, to the company-maintained Sevilla private school.  Within the first few days of our moving to Sevilla, someone told George that he was an “Indian”.  This upset him greatly.  “I am not an Indian,” he maintained. “I don’t have no feather.”  When he came home and angrily told us about the incident, he continued to insist that he was not an Indian because the only Indians he knew were on television and had feathers.
Almost 19 years later the same thing happened to my son, Zubin.  In the first few days of his attending kindergarten one of his classmates referred to him as an “Indian”.  Zubin, who was born in Barbados, was very upset and corrected the other kid, “I am not an Indian, I am a Barbadian.”  After he returned home from school, he sought reassurance, “I am not an Indian, am I mummy?  I am a Barbadian.”
What if someone had called them, or told them, they were “coolies”?  What if their classmates had sing-songed mockingly “Coolie, coolie come for roti/ All the roti done”.  Maybe, knowing Trinidad, it happened but they didn’t know what “coolie” meant and would have ignored it thinking the person was not talking to them.
My experience was, and continues to be, much different and yet I struggle to retain the same attitude as George and Zubin without the same naiveté.  At times, I have found it difficult.  Even though I have not lived in Trinidad for the past six years, and was living in Barbados for seven years (1992 - 1998), every time I come to Trinidad I find that it is increasingly polarised along racial lines.
I grew up in Carapichaima which, on the face of it, you would think would be parochially Indian.  It was not.  I went to the Anglican school there and my closest friends were people like Hanziman Griffith, Bernard Weston, Roosevelt Williams, Lenny Valley, Arthur Forde and the “Flag Man”, Ramjohn Ali. In the neighbourhood, there were the Roberts’ children, the sons of Sadoo (who found enough time between building the temple in the sea and running a rice mill and rum shop), the Esack boys and Mrs. Robinson’s brood across the road.  We had a lot of good times together, playing cricket, “hoop” and “stick-em-up”.  Next door to us lived Owen Ali who was not of Indian descent but was the best Indian dancer in the Caribbean.
The fact that he was notoriously homosexual was something we all took in stride.  Everybody knew that if they called him any names, his tongue was so sharp (“stink” as we used to say) that you teased or troubled him at your peril and the onlookers’ pleasure.  The kids playing outside in the late evening would add to the “Ring a Ring a Roses” the occasional “De Coolie man house on fire, de Coolie Man run away…” but that was no big thing.  There was no black equivalent but it was not a matter of concern at the time.
What we also took in stride was that under pressure or during elections the détente collapsed and the relationship degenerated into racial slurs, some of it good natured.  However, with the advent of party politics and the identification of some of our neighbours and school-friends with the PNM, it took on a different, more extreme tone. By that time I was going to Picadilly E.C. School and then Presentation College in San Fernando.  I went to Picadilly E.C. because the Anglican Board transferred the Carapichaima E.C. Headmaster, P.A. Forde, to that school. Based on the fact that having given me forty-two lashes for not doing homework and following it up with forty-two more for laughing after the first forty-two, my father thought Mr. Forde was the best person to look after my intellectual and other assets.
My father also made the Carapichaima barber give me as low a haircut as one could get without actually having one’s head shaven.  The boys at Picadilly were tough.  During my sojourn there they beat up and robbed Jan Bahadur Singh, the magician, during the half time break of his magic show and assaulted a teacher, Mr. Gordon, who had left the Boys Reform School because he could not deal with the violence.
Unlike the mosquito in the nudist camp who knew what he had to do but not where to start, these boys knew what to do and started on my head.  For two days I took it and on the third started to fight back.  The “coolie” taunts did not get through to me, but the constant ringing in my ears from the “taps” signaled to me that it was a survival issue.
Presentation was interesting. It was where I realised that the Indian boys had to hide their roti or be taunted. It looked like they were eating brown paper. One day my mother had put some salmon in a fried roti for me and when I was out of the class the boys dragged my food around on the desk and ground.  These were Sixth Formers.  It was another lesson which I preferred not to learn.  I suppose the one that eventually got to me was when a University lecturer I know said that the issue of being considered Trinidadian was the question of on whose terms.

It is an interesting point of view that is still relevant.  When I sit in the departure lounge of the Piarco Airport and look at the images on display, I realise that we still have some distance to travel.  When people refer to me as an “Indo-Trinidadian” it puts the distance in light years.  Even though I insist that my great grand-father, my grandfather, my father and I, and all our relatives, black, white and brown have contributed to whatever Trinidad is, there is still the attempt to put me in somebody else’s box and to define the terms of my belonging to my homeland.  Fortunately, I have gone beyond that.
My wife is Guyanese, two of my children are Barbadian, and we have lived in Trinidad, Belize and Antigua while I have worked for the past 17 years in all the Caribbean countries. I am a CARICOM national first, a Trinidad citizen after, a professional, a parent, a husband, a practising Hindu, and somewhere low in my priorities is whether I am of East Indian descent or not.
It was, and still is, a mystery to me that while there were always strictures and condemnation of what is now called the “N” word, there was (and is) no problem with calling someone of Indian descent a “coolie”.  I remember while in the Sixth Form of Presentation College, San Fernando, having a long conversation with my history teacher, Stanley “Buggy” Noel, fresh from UWI, Mona, Jamaica out of Grenville, Grenada.  I am not sure how our tutorial on Renaissance History led to a discussion about race in Trinidad but we ended up trying to define a “coolie”.  We arrived at a working definition. “A coolie is an Indian with bad habits,” Buggy said in a mock-serious tone.  “That rules me out,” I immediately replied.  “That is not what rules you out,” Buggy responded.  “Your problem is that judging by your behaviour you are an ol’ nigger.”

*Tony Deyal was last seen complaining about our celebrating Valentine’s Day and not having a Ramadin Day.

A REVIEW BY BRIDGET BRERETON Delivered at the book launch at Queen’s Hall on March 31st

Selwyn Ryan
Eric Williams: The Myth And The Man
UWI Press

In this important-and far from light-weight work–Ryan takes the biographical approach to the history of Trinidad & Tobago over the period 1956 to 1981 (he discusses some of the challenges that face biographers in his interesting Introduction). And, as the title tells us, he is concerned to separate the man from the myth, to deconstruct the heroic narrative of Williams’ life.
Inevitably, therefore, this work will be seen as a ‘debunking’ of Williams the Hero (whether we see him as a national or ‘tribal’hero), cutting down the more than life-size stature of the Father of the Nation. And some will wonder whether this should be done at all, or at least whether it should be done by Caribbean or Trinidadian scholars.
Just before I began Ryan’s book, I was reading a work on Caribbean intellectual history by the American based Dominican academic Silvio Torres-Saillant. He argued (and he was certainly not thinking specially of Williams) that ‘debunking’ Caribbean notables could be valuable if it teaches something about the problematic nature of heroes generally. To ‘unromanticise’ Fathers of Nations, he wrote, helps us grasp the real texture of human beings and historical events, the duality and contradictions of the lives and legacies of these leaders. This, as I understand it, is Ryan’s project in this book and I believe it is both appropriate and important that it should be done for Williams, of course always within the conventions of scholarship and balance.
And balance is, in my view, the salient characteristic of this book. Anyone expecting an uncritical, reverential re-telling of the Williams heroic narrative will be disappointed. Anyone expecting an unbalanced, polemical attack on Williams will be equally disappointed. It is clear that Ryan admires Williams, but he is properly sceptical about many of his actions and utterances, and strongly critical at times. At many points in the narrative of events, Ryan criticises Williams’ actions which, Ryan believes, had negative consequences for the society. Yet Williams is given full credit for his massive achievements, intellect and talents, and his often inspirational leadership, especially in the earlier years of his political career.

The author Selwyn Ryan (centre) with Patrick Watson and Bridget Brereton at the launch of Ryan’s opus magnum.

This is a political biography which has relatively little on Williams’ personal life, but inevitably public interest may focus on the sections where Ryan speculates that Williams’ death may have been ‘constructive suicide’ (he may have allowed himself to die because of despair and depression) and offers the ‘hypothesis’ (and note that is the term he uses) that Williams may have been mildly or even severely bi-polar. Fascinating though these speculations are, it would be a great pity if these chapters (43 and 45) are the only ones people read. For what we have here is a multi-faceted, well-researched, comprehensive narrative of Williams’ public career, and a careful assessment of his achievements and legacies.
Biographies require the narrative mode of writing-you are following a person’s career so a chronological format is called for-but Ryan frequently ‘pauses’ the narrative for analysis and assessment of Williams’ leadership. For example, he often compares Williams to contemporary anti-colonial leaders and to other Caribbean politicians of his time. He notes that at the height of the Cold War, in 1960-61, and despite his rhetoric over Chaguaramas, he managed to retain American and British confidence in his reliability-in striking contrast to Cheddi Jagan, whose indiscreet embrace of Castro and dogmatic Marxism caused his downfall. Later on, during the oil boom, his government built up a huge state sector, including the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy, yet without the strident rhetoric and socialist pronouncements which got Michael Manley into so much trouble in Jamaica.
In a nuanced discussion of Williams’ tendency to authoritarianism, especially in the aftermath of the Black Power Movement, Ryan points out that he clearly lacked the ruthlessness of a Burnham or a Gairy and that he was far more ‘reserved’ in the use of state force against dissidents (including army mutineers) than them, or than his contemporaries in Africa and Asia like Nkrumah and Lee Kuan Yew. Always a liberal democrat by intellectual conviction, Ryan concedes that Williams did compromise his convictions from time to time under the pressure of events, yet his governments were ‘economic in the use of force to contain dissidence’, certainly by international standards, and even by Caribbean standards of the day.

A section of the crowd at the recent book launch. —Photos: CURTIS CHASE

In several sections of the book, especially in chapters 9, 13, 20 and 22, Ryan considers Williams’ record in attempting to widen the appeal of his essentially Creole or African-Trinidadian party to embrace the ‘Others’, above all the Hindus. He is properly critical of Williams’ failures here, while acknowledging the structural obstacles to a genuine rapprochement. Williams did have a genuine intellectual commitment to multiracialism, Ryan believes, but once in power, his strict majoritarian position led him to underestimate minority fears and the ethnic gulf, thus in effect worsening it during his long tenure-during which no Hindu ever held a ministerial post. One of the great strengths of the book, in my view, is this kind of balanced and nuanced analysis. It is to be found especially in chapters 39 and 46 (which contains his overall assessment of Williams, one of the sections that was excerpted in the Express), but also all through the work, embedded in the biographical narrative.
Though Ryan has written a political biography, Williams’ domination of the national stage between 1956 and 1981 was so total that the book is also a general political history of Trinidad (less so of Tobago) during this period. Indeed, if I have a criticism, it is that at times the work veers away from the biographical focus and becomes a general narrative-one reason it’s so long. As Ryan himself admits, at times he incorporates material that appeared in his earlier books, especially Race and Nationalism in Trinidad & Tobago. (Please note that plagiarism from one’s own work is quite acceptable; Williams himself did it all the time). Yet despite its length, and its occasional loss of focus, its very comprehensiveness gives it great value as a national narrative of events up to 1981.
Nor does Ryan limit his coverage to domestic political events. There are several chapters on Williams’ economic ideas and policies, so this is also economic history, and an interesting chapter on his foreign and Caribbean policies (38). Added on to the general narrative are several chapters on particular themes, some of which are likely to be of special interest to readers: for instance, Chap. 25 on relations between Williams and his mentor CLR James, and 35 on Williams and the ‘mandarins’-which tells the story, in engaging and at times shocking detail, of the great man’s often outrageous behaviour to his circle of devoted and brilliant top civil servants and advisors. There are also chapters on Williams and education, culture, calypso, and corruption. This last chapter (42), which will no doubt interest many, offers a typically nuanced discussion of Williams’ culpability for the public misbehaviour of some of his ministers and cronies during the oil boom years especially.
Ryan concludes that there is no clear evidence that Williams ever asked for or received any kind of bribe, but overwhelming evidence that he covered up crookedness by O’Halloran, Prevatt and others close to him. He calls O’Halloran Williams’ Rasputin, and says we can only speculate on the hold he had over the great man-but asks the obvious question: could a person of genuine integrity have fallen into such a situation?
This is a comprehensive political biography which can also be read as a general history of Trinidad & Tobago from the mid-1950s to 1981. It is based on many decades of research into the kinds of primary sources typically used by political historians (and I consider this essentially a historical work even if Ryan is labelled a political scientist): unpublished materials in the Eric Williams Memorial Collection at St Augustine, Williams’ published works and speeches, government documents like Hansard, and newspapers. Ryan also makes excellent use of oral history interviews (such as one Margaret Rouse-Jones and I did with the late Dr Halsey MacShine, which was so frank that he requested that it should be closed until his death) and oral testimonies or reminiscences subsequently written down. This is a well-researched, mature scholarly work.
Moreover, despite its length, it is very readable. Partly this is because of the inherent fascination of the subject matter, but it is also due to Ryan’s clear and accessible style of writing, which is entirely free of impenetrable social scientific jargon, no doubt the result of his long service as a newspaper columnist.
I hope I’ve said enough to make it clear that I think this book is an important contribution to our understanding of the modern history of Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean, and a fascinating and readable biography of the man who dominated that history for 25 years. I’m especially delighted that the UWI Press is the publisher and I believe that Selwyn is to be congratulated and thanked for giving us this work.