Hi Folks
This is the ARCHIVE of the Open Discussion forum from August 17 2009 to February 3 2011.
NO FURTHER COMMENTS ARE ALLOWED HERE…
… as the page has over 1000 comments dating back almost two years and takes forever to load.
We’re leaving it up for reference as there are some excellent conversations and articles submitted by BFP readers over the years. You will still be able to read and link to these reader comments, but for current discussions please see the current “Open Discussion” page.
Thanks!
Barbados Free Press 
I’ll start it off.
Owen Arthur made a comeback appearance on the weekend. Does he want to be in charge again?
Firstly, I don’t like this new system, and can’t see further point in it.
Gone is all our chatter, and those of all who made the site worthwhile.
Today, I managed to find the new book by James Lovelock. ‘Revenge of Gaia’ . Here is the scinentist who wrote Gaia, in 1979. The new book should interest everybody who really cares about Earth, pollution, and the energy that we need to keep human life going. It is a book everybody should read, but wont.
It is certainly a book all those in power, who are supposed to look after the well being of their citizens, should take into account, but likewise ,…won’t.
It won’t be taken into account because it is far easier not to listen to, or concern oursleves about such things, though what Lovelock wrote in 1979, and what Sir Fred Hoyle wrote in his book of 1977, ‘Energy or Extinction’ now haunts us face to face, in the respect of world energy depleaton, pollution, upset weather patterns, draught, melting ice caps, drastically rising world population , depleation of fish stocks, water, over taxed agricultural land, stripped forests, etc.
I’d written five pages on the Colonial Empire, and what Professors spout against it, and why they can drive around in BMW’s now. But who would read it that ?
Bfp,what do you think.This Newspaper regards the content and manner of Henery phone call as a threat to our right to report matters in a way that we see fit,a fundamental right of the press.This is part of an article in today sun.does a news paper has the right to report the news as it see fit or to report the news as it is,fairly and unbiased.Mr gladston must be turning in his grave.
Just watched Barbadian star jockey Patrick Husbands ride another winner at woodbine in Toronto.
The horse,Marchfield, is owned by Melnyk stables which names most of its horses after places in Barbados.
Melnyk Stable colours are blue and gold.
Patrick is the leading Jockey at Woodbine this year and one of the best “Canadian” jockeys ever.
BTA marketing machine…get to work!
Mr. Beadon, I had suggested a little housecleaning of the “submissions” section which dated back to late 2006 and as a result, it was taking forever to load. I had no idea the entire thing would be wiped out. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
OK… we’ve still got it. Lets see if we can restore the most recent posts. How far back should we keep do you think? Or… should we leave the old one up in its entirety but cut off new posts ?
Let us know guys. We’re happy to work with our readers.
Jack, if a handshake can be felt through a PC monitor, I am extending mine to you. The objective has been achieved and they are suitably chastened. Warning issued to all. Marvelous, I love it.
BFP,
Could we go back to begining of 2008? Or you think that may still be too much ? I’ll agree it was taking so long to download, especially on
‘ About us and submissions.’ Some of us have old computers too, besides dial up.
We’ve been so wishing for the inter island Ferry system to start. One wonders if it really will, since the local air carriers and all those, including island governments, will be very much against such a service, for reasons that don’t need detailing.
But a Ferry is the way to get inter- Island tourism and trade, going again, if it can be properly and safely run. It might even help drop fruit and vegetable prices here in Barbados, the fruit and vegetables that the old schooners used to bring in.
There were once, very fine schooner captains in our islands, but that was more than thirty years ago now.
The new Ferry Service from Port of Spain, to San Fernando, I’m told, is one service in Trinidad, highly praised by all those no longer having to take the daily ‘heavy jamming’ and the waste of time, in traffic to South and back, or visa versa. And the Ferry, from POS to Tobago, along the North Coast of Trinidad, is a scenic joy in most weathers, as will be seeing our other more mountainous islands, from offshore, late at evening, or better still, in the dawn.
So we will hold our breaths, for the Ferries.
David over at Bajan Underground is calling on readers to boycott the Nation Newspaper over the reporting of Hartley Henry’s threat against one of its editors.
I find this action appalling as the story seems to be saying that the Nation is either lying or wrong to report the threat.
BU has over the years wrapped itself in the cloak of champion of freedom of expression many times, it would now appear that he’s just a champion of freedom of expression once it’s expression that he agrees with.
This is a terrible day for the blogs.
Unfortunately, Barbados Underground long ago surrendered editorial content to the DLP government and the comments section to people who believe that murdered white tourists are “white trash” and “white pests”.
David at BU continues to enable racists and provides a forum for the spread of hatred by a few sick individuals.
Barbados Underground’s call for integrity and change ceased the moment their party was elected, thus revealing their partisan reason for existence.
Barbados Free Press, however, continues to be a thorn in the foot of both the BLP and the DLP.
Our love for Barbados comes way before any political loyalties. And frankly, we have no political loyalties. We believe that there is zero difference between the DLP and the BLP in policy or agenda. Just two rival gangs fighting a turf war while the citizens suffer.
Couldn’t agree with you more BFP. Keep up the good fight.
Why is the Living in Barbados blog not on your blog roll?
Look under “Bajan Blogs and Chats”
I went to Chubbies Sheraton to purchase some movie for a friend that i have told him about which were selling for $ 8.00,there were no copies left so i went to another branch only to be told the same movie will cost me $11.50 each.When ask why the sales rep said there were new movies so the office said to sell them at $11.50, how come one store have one price and the other store have a different price.
I’m doing my best not to write about what I think of Barbados attempting to get on the World Heritage list, classifying with The Great Wall and The Barrier Reef, the Taj, the Pyramids, Notre Dame and the Vatican.
Might one point out that the Central bank building, in the middle of Bridgetown, the one that sticks out like a sore thumb, and the blaspheme vested on Lord Nelson’s statue, with a certain intellect of citizenry wanting it dumped into the deep sea somewhere, would hardly add weight to those who
who consider the granting of Bridgetown, and the Garrison, to any prestigous list.
But you just never know these days. A mass killer, after just eight years, was given his freedom, having cost the lives of an aircraft full of passengers, the death and destruction, of part of a town, and millions in a long
drawn out and complicated judicial procedure lasting several years.
Sparrow’s new tune, ‘This is Madness’, puts the modern world nicely in perspective.
Still, one must admire the gall of those who hope to advocate Barbados addition to the prestigous World Heritage list, and wish them success. After all, Ryan striking Gold, should add weight that should help. That, and the fact, that Barbados is still one of the only true democracies in the world. Perhaps we rightly deserve such a listing ?
Hartley Henry today admitted on BU that he did threaten the Nation Editor. This is really slimy.
HH said…..
“There was no threat to anyone! There was an appeal for fairness and professionalism. There was the assurance that if such was absent on this particular occasion, the world would be sensitized to a chronology of events that point to the aforementioned connection being the source and the cause of unprofessionalism. The exact words were “the whole of Barbados will come to understand how it is that”, a particular individual “can have unfettered access to” a known publication. Little did one know that the entire world, it would appear, was already appraised of the sordid details of the three way connection that has brought a most noble profession to shame.”
Who running Barbados Now ?
Direct TV cut off the BBC and CNN from our screen. Two days we were without both these major news station.
We started calling Direct TV here in Barbados on the phone. Guess what, if you didn’t already know! It took one and a half hours of dialing and listening to recorded ‘Tatter’, until by chance, we get a soft Trini voice.
“It this Direct TV ? ” I ask.
” Yes,” comes the short, far away sounding, reply.
” Can you tell me why the BBC and CNN is cut off ? ”
” Just a minute please,” . There’s some mumbling in the backround.
” Can you give us your Customer Number ? ” I’m asked.
” Sure, ” I said, and comply. ” But where are you anyhow ? ”
” I in Trinidad, ” comes the soft Trini voice.
I wait, perplexed, a few minutes, and then comes back her voice.
” Try it now and see. ”
” You mean try and see if the channels are on ? “, I ask, incredulous.
“Yes,” she breaths softly.
So I tell her hang on, go to the vision and check the two channels to find they have now been put back on.
So it looks like Trinidad is running Barbados now, in more ways than one, and if you don’t get the channels you are paying for, call Trinidad Direct, and don’t wast your time calling locally, hearing ” Your call is important to us “, and other such zombi tatter, meaning nothing, and getting you nowhere.
Anyhow, I told the girl it was so nice to hear a real Trini voice. She sounded pleased about that. Does not matter what age you are, you gotta make points.
Colin,
”So it looks like Trinidad is running Barbados now, in more ways than one”
No surprise there, how about BS&T, Sagicor, Clico, RBTT, BNB, Wibisco etc etc….
”Does not matter what age you are, you gotta make points”
True. Sounds like the girl made an impression, it IS nice to hear a soft voice.
Peace
Would you say the same about St Lucia, given LIME’s policy, or whatever country is relevant for the location of call centers?
More and more BU commentators are saying ‘this blog is for Barbadians only’. Is such exclusion possible on the Internet. Which commentator can be known or shown to be a Bajan?
Not exactly. Certainly, it is questionable whether the St.Lucia call centre can satisfy customer complaints in a satisfactory manner.
But, the ownership issue is applicable specifically to T&T, which now owns many large Barbados entities.
Now, begs the question why the previous administration was so hell bent on selling BNB?
Peace
Ricky George, David of BU has surrendered control of his blog to an individual who no longer lives in Barbados and hasn’t visited Barbados in 16 years. His de facto henchman controls the content and flow of the discussions and then bullies and defames those who do not hang on his every word.
Sir Roy, I cannot support your proposed possible action against LIME. When you properly conclude the Royal Shop and Sandy Lane issues, I may reconsider my position. In my opinion, you seem willing to go after certain companies, while you cower at the thought of confronting others. Unlike Sandy Lane and Royal Shop, Cable & Wireless (LIME) is a publicly traded company, in which many Barbadians have invested their money via the various mutual funds, (possibly) pension funds and directly. If LIME hurts, many Barbadians hurt. The termination of employment is never a wanted event; however, when it does occur, fair compensation is most important. If you want to work in the interest of Barbadian workers, you should: lobby the Government for severance payments to be returned to fair levels; lobby the Government for the 2004 pension legislation to be brought into effect; lobby the Government for strong legislation against discrimination (especially racial) in the workplace; and lobby the Government for proper oversight of the issuing of work permits, with a minimum requirement for Immigration to discuss the reasonableness of the work permit application with a cross-section of the then current employees of the relevant company and, where applicable, the employee being displaced. If companies do not have the flexibility to fairly restructure when it is considered desirable to do so, companies may be reluctant to increase staff when opportunities arise. Sir Roy, I suggest that you focus on fair severance payments for the terminated workers.
While the service is good, it is not well utilised and this has to do with the fact that you still have to find your way across south quay, which floods, to get to the ferry port.
Meanwhile crops have been washed away and we have people living either in pools or literally stranded in their houses when rain comes.
Get priorities straight. Bring in the Dutch, get some dykes built.
We have another three months of this, then no water in taps for six months.
If I had to form a party I would do so on one theme.
Water management. Nothing else.
Because study after study from PAHO and everyone else saids it is the one thing that has the ability to improve our quality of life and health.
Can create work, get the steel plant up and running, and leave a legacy for the grandchildren.
Any takers.
Highrise? Hell !!!
Do Barbadians really need to be subjected to having to live in high rise apartments ?
It is difficult to think of a more degrading form of living, as has been shown in too many countries who thought ‘High Rise’ was the way to go, until they eventually understood they had created very expensive, dirty, dangerous subhuman ghetos, that became infernos when there was a fire, and tombs where there’s an earthquake.
Humans, nor fowls, are supposed to live in fowl cages like that, one on top of another, several stories high.
Physcologically, the High Rise, for all but for the very rich, are little better than the incubators for the creation of mad people.
Will people lash me, or back me up on what I have written on high rise living ? Seen it in New York and Caracas. Horror, and horror, and more horror.
Thywill,
Agreed. We had broached this topic before the last election, on the basis of just what you have said.
Shockingly, since then the current Ministers have announced a continuance of the intention to create these ‘things’.
Why put high-rise monstrosities in place, for locals to live in virtual cages, and allow a multiplicity of golf courses and massive landholdings that are non-agricultural, to proliferate?
Economic and social advancement are not only achieveable together, but actually must exist together, to be sustainable.
‘Sustainable’.
There are some over-used words, but that is not one.
Peace
Small is Beautiful, again !
Thanks for backup Rumple.
It is well known that politicians insist on hatching out projects to spend the most money possible, the true value of the project being secondary, often of dubious benifit, often an affront to nature and esthetic equalibrum.
Little villages in Africa, in need of electricity, have had mega power stations build beside them, though the nearest town or closest villages, were many many miles away. This is the sort of thing politicans do, much to the pleasure of engineers and construction companies.
Naturally, one could ask, if it would not have been much more sustainable, and much more to energy conservation,… and far far cheaper, to give each village home, a solar panel system ,wire, and quality batteries, and let them run their own unit, for free.
But Oh No ! Where there is big money flowing, there are many tricksters with itching fingers,… and tax payers to end up with the bills.
No wonder we are made to face recessions, not only the fault of banks, ponzi schemes, and board walks that will wash away in the next mal tiempo.
And so it goes on.
Thywill Beadon wrote “Physcologically, the High Rise, for all but for the very rich, are little better than the incubators for the creation of mad people.”
True, true, true.
The trouble is that human beings need a certain amount of space in which to roam. But we (ie. spineless town planners, wealthy developers, greedy politicians) refuse to acknowledge this.
If we were building a zoo, we would give the elephants and the tigers enough room to roam.
But we want to build high rises without enough playing/roaming space for children and teenagers and then we complain that the youth in the high rise slums (without adequate playing/roaming space) behave in subhuman ways.
Put the wealthiest, children to grow up in the same circumstances and you’ll get the same result.
We CANNOT over-ride Mother Nature.
Remember Michael Jackson tried to fall into deep sleep in the mid-morning and died in the effort.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to fall into a deep sleep mid-morning.
At mid-morning the sun is in the sky and when the sun rises, we must too, or we put ourselves in mortal danger. We CANNOT over-ride Mother Nature. Too late Jackson’s family/friends/enablers discovered that they COULD NOT over-ride Mother Nature.
Too late we discover that if we over crowd growing children that we will SURELY get anti-social behavior.
Too late we discovered that when we over-crowded Glendairy that we got anti-social behavior.
Too late we discovered that the inmates would rather burn down the place than live like that.
I have previously posted on this blog about “High Rise apartments in Barbados.
You are correct. The rich should be the ones living in High rise condos.
The average person cannot afford the added cost of running and maintaining Elevators and Laundry facilities.There is also the cost of “sweeping the yard” which you can’t do for yourself.
The Apartment manager has to hire people to do that and the tenants pay.
Then there is the kitchen garden ???
I hope everything is well with the folks at BFP. I am concerned.
BFP folks getting so much traffic on the race issue and the war with BU that they can afford to take a rest.
I agree that BU/David seems to have lost control, and it may be ‘sharing’ rather than ‘losing’, and it may be with more than one. If one reads the threads even at random you can see their are near fiefdoms based around topics.
Names matter, so please note Rickey (not Ricky, who may yet appear). 🙂
Rumplestiltskin, economic control changes over time, though Barbados has a strong core of white families whose control has remained strong for decades. You need to ask why Bajans were not interested in owning major companies in the past. Did they have the means but not the will or interest? Did they not have the resources? Whatever answer you give you need to ask what has changed. Does it matter that it is T/T? What if it were Jamaican or British or Chinese? All of which could become important with time.
I think you want to draw attention to political decisions not matching popular needs. But, what you said cannot happen: ‘Little villages in Africa, in need of electricity, have had mega power stations build beside them, though the nearest town or closest villages, were many many miles away. This is the sort of thing politicans do, much to the pleasure of engineers and construction companies.’ A mega project may be located near a small village, but no country has (by definition) many mega projects. In fact, many villages may have small generators serving their needs (or nothing). The mega power station will be providing power for a bigger population, including the nearby village.
Concerned about what and for what?
Nothing has happened to the people on BFP, unless they are too drunk (again) to man their site.
Do you really believe the BFP people who like to make the world believe that they are an abused and oppresses minority?
Take my work for it either they are drunk (agian) or they are have a boyfriend/girlfriend spat (again) probably caused by alcohol (again)
Boy, where ever they have these crystal balls on sale J, I want one. I have my own personal reasons for having been momentarily concerned abut certain BFP staff. Those reasons will remain with me.
Hi PP,
I don’t know who J is or you are but it is true that clive is missing in action for 2 days. Knowing our friend the reason for his absence has less to do with alcohol and more to do with another pretty girl.
Don’t worry. He’ll turn up sooner or later. How he keeps his day job I’ll never know.
The New Tiber oil well, drilled by BP, Petrobras and Conoco Phillips in the gulf of Mexico, 250 miles East of Houston in 4,132 feet of water ( the well TD, (total depth) at 35,055 feet ), is expected to flow at 6000 barrels per Day, at least ( about the flow rate of Saudi wells). The Tiber, is one of the deepest wells in the world.
The drilling, and then the completion of such a well, oozes into costing billions of dollars; and so it is doubtful BP will be opening any valves on that well, till the oil price climbs significantly, though, they insist , they won’t be ready to produce for a handful of years yet, (probably, I’m hedging, when oil reaches $150, or much higher ).
By that time, we’ll probably be well within the second recession of our era, and most of us will be much more concerned about what we will be seeing taking place,… due to global warming.
Que mas podria decir ?
Rickey G.
What you say is feasable, if you are looking through the eyes of a politician, an engineer, a building contractor, except for the several millions needed to build, to maintain, and above all to power such a station, keep it running, and stop theives stealing its miles of wires.
It is in the paying of power bills, and the fluctuation of energy prices, that wide-spaced rural villagers fall down and become trapped.
Would you begrudge that each African village home, with its own solar powered system, given to it free, would not be better than a power station requiring daily fuel, water for its cooling, and adding generally to the carbon story world wide ?
Solarvoltic panels last for years. My own is 23 years old now, nothing but the sun,… is needed.
@Thywill Beadon
When I was based in Guinea I saw a range of small scale electricity generation schemes used, such as diesel generators, or solar panels. Nothing is free: someone has to pay, but maybe not directly. Running costs for the small systems can be heavy. The other risk that I saw often acted out was that someone(s) stole the power source, and that destroyed the opportunities of many for the greed of a few. (Similar to people stealing copper wire for telephone/electricity lines). Then the villages are really stuck and those who had adjusted to life WITH electricity are back to life without–not an easy switch. It’s often not politicians who destroy things but other craven individuals.
Rickey G,
When a power station is built, the tax payer pays for that, and then has to pay for the use of that power whose operational cost, including maintenance and Union problems, depends on the whims of the world energy markets, unless , you have a gas or an oil well in your own back yard, or a water fall that won’t dry up.
Think of solar in our climes, it arrives free on your roof, you don’t need power lines and expensive power poles, and transformers. The whole solar operation,… is almost a gift in comparison. More so today, and why people in Barbaods are beginning to go that way.
Yes, there are great politicans, if you know where to find them, and supposing they are responsible enough to keep tabs on what is going on, which most of them are not, because, they never have to pay the piper for any ill dilligence.
@BFP and ALL
Several commentators have touched on the issue of names and what the blog or blogs are about. To his credit, David/BU introduced a topic to review how comments were going in part due to an issue relating to me and my sense of being defamed (not insulted) and matters of credibility sometimes require that a clean slate be kept clean. Moving on.
Chris Halsall recently made the point that he always uses his own name everywhere. So let’s start there. CH is of course rare, but not unique. He can feel at ease doing that, as I can too. I choose to use a ‘handle’ as it relates to my bog and is familiar now. But, my own name (Dennis Jones) can be used no problem, and it is when I write to the press: I am one and the same.
Multiple names may or may not be a problem; some well known authors use several names for different styles of books. One could be trying to have several personas for several issues, so like voice tone it can change. Sometimes, one senses that a messenger is of more interest than a message. I found that with BU and it was interesting to have people post points over several days that seemed similar to those I would make and watch the reaction. We did not decide the text but we knew the issue and general argument and we are similarly educated and have some work experiences that put us in front of very varied audiences. So we write in a certain ‘bureaucratic’ style. Invariably, the response was anti-LIB and the point was not considered much. Shoot the messenger.
I posted a few comments on BU with a different handle to test a theory, which I had mentioned on my blog and had made by e-mail to its administrator. That was that IP addresses were being shared; and the result seems conclusive: they are. Now, that may be sinister or not. The moderator may be working with others to manage the blog; he has other work to do. So, several ‘administrators’ may also be commentators, so they may have rights to see IP addresses. If his ‘household’ is that way then we can interpret threads several ways. I will let others ponder the ways as they are many. Another possibility is that IP addresses are being shared with a select few, and we may figure who quite easily, but we do not know why. The ‘dialogue’ between moderator and certain commentators is quite different than with others.
When I used a different handle it was astonishing how quickly came back the notion ‘this is LIB’. Good guess? Hmmm.
But then things got silly and another commentator, Jack Bowman, got leveled with the ‘you are LIB’ claim, by Chris Halsall. We have each tried to disabuse CH of that notion and he may yet acknowledge it but has not so far. Chris seems well versed in things to do with this area of technology, and mentioned the notion of ‘astroturfing’ so I presume he has been observing what he feels fits for some time. I have to say on this one he’s wrong.
Bottom line: multiple handles are not necessarily bad/evil. It depends why they are being used. Some use them to regain access (Adrian Hinds/Tall_Boy or Bimbro/199 are clear examples). They may be a problem if their use is to suggest that a wider audience is involved. But otherwise, I would think they are no worse than a nickname. If the substance is good then fine; yes the balance of debate may change but not much over time. If someone is using static IP addresses the moderator/administrator(s) can see and deal with it on a WordPress blog (not so on Blogspot.com).
Finally, about the BU moderator. Whether he makes utterances or not IS IMPORTANT. He sets the tone and feel. If he tolerates certain things they become the norms. He is capable of re-establishing balance: if 1 dissenter is among 9 supporters the debate should not be about numbers or volume but about substance. If the 9 yell and scream and insult and the 1 departs the idea left behind, if good, is still good. BU is bizarre. I have made points that were called ‘garbage’ only for the person writing that to then put forward arguments that made my point stronger! The moderator can say “OK folks, point A by 1 is good and we should note. Points B…L from 2 to 9 are also good but we have no agreement.” Instead, the baying goes on and people with good thoughts but not those supported by others get yelled off stage. They still may ‘win’ the day as time will deliver the results.
Because BFP and BU have developed as expanded ‘discussion forrums’ or ‘chat rooms’ that sort of balance can be useful to let participants understand what rules of the game really matter.
My general approach is to think through a topic and if I have a view to express it. But where and when matters too. I have my own blog and I talk to people and write to the papers too. The popular blogs (BU and BFP) are not THE forum. I would say that many do not pay them much regard at all. Decision makers and people in general form and discuss their opinions in many other places. However, the blogs could become a place where discussion does not go on, because discussion means ‘speaking’ as well as ‘listening’. If people are not listening, then why bother speaking?
WordPress make a point in their policies that blogs that are offensive often end up on the scrap heap. Quality will win out, as they say in many fields.
Enjoy the weekend.
For Colin: check this out. Bet you’ll like it.
“We’re using up the Earth. It’s almost gone. You can’t live with such fears and keep on whistling. The waiting builds up in you like a tide. You start wanting it to be done with. You find yourself saying to the sky, Just do it. Do your worst. Get it over with. She could feel the coming tremor of it running through her spine, asleep or awake. It never went away, even among the Gardeners. Especially – as time wore on – among the Gardeners.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/were-using-up-the-earth/article1276475/
Fantastic thoughts. Agreed, but always reflect on this when considering the political aspects of the blogs:
LIB, thanks for confirming what I had also suspected for a while now. I always had the feeling that there was considerable e-mailing going on between David and certain posters at BU and that the information being shared, possibly included the IPs and country of origin of ISPs .
@PiedPiper, I’m only making some simple deductions. The how and why may be issues. If the BU “family” were explicit then dialogue would be clearer. I do not know BFP bloggers but the various adninistrators may also be commentators. That’s internal structure and is of note if the idea being given is that administrators are outdie the threads not inside. To me it’s more about integrity and playing with cards clearly seen. I’ve no time for games or any need to puff points. My interest is in understanding issues. I’ve lived enough with governments who manipulate gigger things like national budgets or their resereves to worry much about some possible blog subterfuge. Those who need to can speculate about the ‘why’. As I said, in the end quality will win the day and quality means substance not fluff. Barbados is supposed to be highly literate so why try to fool all the people all the time?
Throckmorton Sprague,
( Have you read ‘ The revenge of Gaia,’ by James Lovelock ? 2006)
Thanks for that site. It is much like a mirror image of how I often feel.
This morning I was thinking of the slaughter of the wind creatures in Africa going on today on a horrifying scale, driven by human hunger, drought, wars, and because there has been a recent demand proliferated for wild and exotic meat, and because certain nations still insist on dealing with snake oil medicines, though there is no scientic proof that they work.
So the Rhino loses his horn, the tiger his bones and testicals, the elephants their tusks, the sharks their fins.
It is then I think to myself, Oh God, let them all die off as soon as possible, so the bullits will no longer destroy them, the snares no longer starve them to death or force them to naw away a limb, the sharks unable to swim, stifle, drown, because they must move to breath water.
All islands in the world have beaches littered with our plastic trash, which in many cases has caused the death of sea creatures and birds.
We cut down the trees and the rivers run dry, and the land becomes like the dust bowls of middle Americans, who thought they would feed the rest of the Earth with their corn and grain. The Grand Canyon, is going dry, just like so many rivers and lakes in Africa, Egypt, in Russia, for all the same reasons. The Japanese are slaughtering the whales and the porpoises by the thousands, recent film footage is showing this. Fishing fleets are rotting and rusting, with no fish to
be found.
What is not turning to draught, is flooding and causing landslides engulfing villages, for the exact same reasons, deforestation on a huge scale, unthwarted, across the Amazon and elswhere where once,…. forests flourished .
We are not as we were supposed to be, guardians of the Earth.
We are Earth’s destroyers,… in every way.
And we worry about the Recession, huh, huh, understanding little or nothing about the true status of Mother Earth now, and why no amount of Recovery,… will do the Earth less than,…. more harm.
BFP. Sorry if this is a lot long. And I’d much rather use my full name again, May I ?
Colin L:
Thywill be done.
Revert
Sure Colin… we don’t know why you changed it in the first place. (?)
BFP, Thanks ! And the Australian offshore oil spill.
I changed name because you had sent out a petition requesting we should not use our own names, when you ‘tanked’ the Random site.
The Australian offshore oil spill, now bleeding, needs our focus. This is really serious, since the well is spewing condensate and gas, and the gas is hydrogen sulfide which is really dangers and accounts for why the rig had to be abandoned.
A relief well will have to be drilled with another rig, which is nowhere near bye to start doing it. That could take some months. Meanwhile the oil and gas will spill, with detrimental short term havoc on all living creatures and organisms in the area, and should the spill reach shore, another Exxon Valdez situation.
Just Google up. ‘Australian offshore oil spill. ‘ There are several sites about it. The situation, though far away, does matter to all of us.
Colin…
What petition you talking about regarding the name issue? I am unaware of what you mean.
Clive
This is interesting.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, September 4, 2009 – The Guyana government has defended its decision to send 50 missionaries belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints back home to the United States.
It said the real reason was that the Mormons had overstayed their time in the country. The ministry said the missionaries also did not possess valid work permits for various periods since November 2004.
Dear Hants:
Maybe Guyana still remembers Jonestown.
Wasn’t the Rev. Jim Jones a Christian missionary also.
BFP, I understand that The Advocate had an item about the Barbados blogosphere within the past couple of days. I can’t find it, are you aware of it?
J maybe they remember Jonestown and they can also use the argument that the missionaries are not Caricom citizens.
I have other thoughts about this but I will post them later.
Colin B
Goodevening
We have thought about environmental issues separately- you probably more than most- including me. Haven’t read the book, but just scanned a couple of reviews about it. Thank you for drawing attention to it.
Many of us enjoy your posts, but I worry about you Colin. I really do. You seem real. Don’t know why, because we have never met.
Many of us agree (I do) that we humans on Earth may be on an irreversible course to extinction, maybe unable to prevent the oncoming holocaust of all humankind regardless of our beliefs or locations and the extinction of living things that link to her.
I cannot but agree that we are comitting holocaust upon the species and numbers of the world. These are valid points, they are true and irrefutable. While we fiddle with politics and bank accounts, making babies and houses, with huge consumption ‘footprints’ of carbon and garbage, the world is burning, the flames are making us hot gases, the numbers of animals and plants decrease, except for humanity.
If I plant a new species in my garden, will it be invasive? Will it be more successful than what is there? Is it ethical to existing plants? Most people won’t be able to internalise this- it is a nonthought. But not for you.
Very alarmingly, if we study numbers vs time graphs of any population’s irruptions and growth (any animal or plant doesn’t matter), we willoften note that there comes a time when exponential growth gives way to a leveling, and usually in animals or higher food chain species, very alarmingly, after leveling there comes a massive drop of population to say, 10% of peak, due to a sudden scarcity or some other factor.
Colin, we are on that graph, and whether it be hunger, war, temperature, water; or whatever that factor is – it is probably almost certainly ‘on the cards’- because we are no different. We only think we are- it’s a nonthought too. Till it happens suddenly.
Barbados knew another ‘Colin’ once upon a time. He never let the prognosis of life’s imminent death prevent him from conveying the important messages. The messages weren’t patently his, he only lived to try to pass them on, similar to what you do. That message, is/was “Treading lightly”, was “Future Centre Trust”, was “Sustainable environmental development”, was grassroots and down to earth. Was above class and race, wealth, politics; and all the pretentious things.
The Future Centre still exists. In fact the disciples of Colin H. are presently attempting to bring the message to the people and are rebuilding the Future Centre along with its message.
I would like you to join the Future Centre, Colin B. and be a fellow, Join a group who continues to try to tell people in Barbados about smallscale home food production to reduce the bills and making clean uncontaminated food, about water filters to protect their families, and most importantly about making each and every one of our individual Barbados ‘footprints smaller’. You will find many like yourself. Call Nicole Garafino at 425-2020 (Future Centre).
At the end of the day, Colin, it is true we may not be able to stop our collective suicide (or the extinction) of humankind along with humankind’s selfish destruction of its fellow species… but perhaps we can help to keep Earth going a while longer? A few years, decades or centuries?
It is a path of good. Join please Colin, and please tonight be of good cheer, because by what you have done you have bought time, and by what you do, and continue to do, you will continue to buy some fragments of time for something, somewhere and help it/themto be able to continue to live.
For the love of life
Throckmorton
BFP, Clive,
When bfp did away with Random
you set a few pointers. One was that we should no longer use our true names.
I read this over three times, though I can no longer find it now.
And so, right under Red Lake Lassie, I wrote the second entry to the new site, and complied with the request ( at least moderately, I thought) and though I didn’t like it, did away with my own name
I must have read it wrong, three times, not so ?
**************
BFP say
Hi Colin
I think you misunderstood or we didn’t write clearly enough. We said that no one has to use their correct name, but commenters have to choose a name and stick with it so people can follow a conversation. If everyone is “anonymous” it makes it difficult.
Clive
Throckmorton,
Thanks for your most gracious letter, and invitation. I’ll call. C
Dear BFP folks,
I give up on you.
If you can’t process posts on a fascinating and fast-moving story of real domestic and international consequence within six hours, perhaps you should completely abandon the idea of an interactive blog.
See you in another life, folks. Thanks for the good work so far. And take it easy.
Best wishes,
Jack
*******************
BFP says,
Best wishes to you too, Jack, but it looks like the spread between this message and the previous message that was held for moderation was one hour and sixteen minutes.
Not that it matters because sometimes it is six or eight hours until one of us looks after the spam. But like they say, hey… you get what you paid for!
You can always go to WordPress.com and start your own blog and post right away. That way you won’t have to wait at all!
Dear BFP folks,
That was rude of you, and uncalled for. It was more than a little glib and more than unduly arrogant.
I have admired your efforts for years and have told you so.
That was a mistake on your part.
But best wishes to you. Take it easy.
Jack
******************
BFP says,
In the real world Jack, when you express dissatisfaction with the service, “I give up on you” and then say “see you in another life”, it means that you can expect the same attitude back.
Have a nice day, Jack! 😉
BFP ,don’ worry wid peoples like Jack Bowman, dey only shooting blank shafts at we. What did he says that was so important anyhow. I cyan’t fin’ it no where ?
Night’s late night Parvane.
The birds, said the trees, are not available to eat and carry our seeds.
The bees, are not buzzing about in our pollen-honey – laden gift to them, so how will our fruit spread and bloom new sucklings ?
The elephant said, our numbers are dwindeled, through greed for our ivory. How then can we endure to clear tracks through the forrests for all other animals to reach new feeding grounds?
The Hippos, baft, in their underwater -baffing ways, letting out detrius, fish food gathered from their grass eatings during the cool of nights.
They said, how can we keep the rivers and streams unobstructed with the help of our tractor-like huge bulk, how can we keep the river fish fed, the tree trunk debris cleared, the water weeds in check, if our numbers fall to the hunters gun ?
And so, in every way and in every country, those of nature who we
take into little c0nsideration, are really the Lords and Gods of perpetual life.
And we, who dream of dollar- millions, yachts, trips to far flung paradise, BMW’s and fountains of perpetual youth, are blind,….inchoate, like creatures of another world would be who lived on star beams, black holes, higgs bosons, or swan- songs in vaccum sauce.
There has been a lot of talk about the recent ATV accident. Rumour has it that the Transport Board bus was on the wrong side of the road after overtaking a car parked in the corner..
Maybe someone should be brought to justice for the lives of the two drivers
@Jack Bowman
The time taken for items to release can be frustrating, given that a good point that is delayed seems to be a point that may be lost. But I would suggest a little tolerance. I think that even the most important of points are not so earth moving that they will lose their value in a day.
Taking the BFP comment in the sense meant, your own blog would deal with any delay and the wisdom can be launched at your timing. You can also copy and send to same to whichever other blog or media you want. The real advantage can be that you develop your own argument. You can also link your comments on BFP back to your blog too.
Trying to see the bigger picture, man.
Is this site for real, King is one of our Civil Society leaders why are you all doing this? I know him thru BYDC. pls answer these ?s – Is this a white run site, Is COW involved, is Mia involved? are you all against BU? Looking forward to reply.
Youth.
To “Me”
What do you think of King’s destroying emails and photographs that could have been used to find the 14 year old girls forced into prostitution?
Doesn’t that upset you? Do you think that is proper for a Civil Society leader?
Looking forward to you growing up and discovering integrity, values and character.
Rickey G,
Agreed, fully. Oh,… that the big picture was not obscured to the eyes of so many of us, as though we had been sleeping a million years.
Let us look into the new Hubble photographs of outer space, for instance. Don’t we feel the majestic difference ?
Are we unable to suspect,… anything more ?
Why are Barbadians so afraid of frogs ?
They will never bite you, about the worst they can do is fall on you. If you find one in the home, just place your fingers firmly across his back, and take him outside.
Frogs are important for all life on Earth. If the frogs go, we humans may be next.
BFP:
What ever has become of the Nation story about the ‘threats’ that was published a few Sundays ago.
Has the paper issued a retraction, has the person alleged to make those threats acknowledged, or is the matter sub-judice. The Barbados public, has a RIGHT TO KNOW any way that it stands. It is a serious allegation that now needs to be publicly cleared, due to the positions of the parties involved. What is the outcome?
Like other nations, the Chinese are under the suffrage of population explosion. Yet back in their history they have not attempted forms of world expansion or domination before, though their autonomous regions, in recent years, have focused Chinese attention on ‘Roping In’, ( like Tibet, Taiwan, and the one they are having trouble with right now ).
But the Chinese ‘Ball Game’, may be changing surreptitiously, as the front page of the Advocate
Saturday 12 September 2009, suggests. Perhaps we’d benefit greatly by learning the Chinese work ethic, which is about as un-West Indian as you could possibly
Imagine, as is there propensity for not dumping their garbage across the face of the Earth where ever they walk, drive, or work.
The Chinese are a very old and venerated civilization.
There is much from them we could learn. Please note the word,… Could !
Hi Colin,
Good to see you keeping the light going. Yes, there is much that we can learn from the Chinese and other civilisations too.
To focus on the positive, the good things can be embraced with earnestness, the things that would bring strife, left alone.
As a nation we accept so much negative from other cultures e.g. the baggy pants falling below the thigh etc.
We should learn to discern and to look for the positive.
Therein lies and answer, as you suggest.
Keep well, seer.
Peace
We’d say, we’d better all start learning Chinese.
If we want to keep tabs on our possible offshore oil, our airlines, and business in general, the teaching of Chinese better start,…. right away in our schools, and in our newspapers.
Or to use an expression in Trini Chinese, we are going to end up with ‘Macafushait’ ,…. meaning ,…. ‘Leftovers’.
@Colin, a lot of students (~100) are already on scholarships to learn Chinese (Mandarin), I understand from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That’s a big number relative to the total national and student population. It still begs the question about whether focus on China makes much/more sense than tapping the large and close markets in Latin America and the USA.
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Living in Barbados.
Island like ours are being offered so much freeness by the Chinese, it would be difficult to decide if ‘Sense’ comes into the picture at all.
One thing that bothers me, is that everything you pick up seems to be made in China, when, there were other countries that made often better quality products,… at the same price. That bothers me, though I remember the standard of Japanese products when they first started to take over the world.
It is not fair, or wise, to become holden to any one, and only fools would allow themselves caught in such a Plato’s cave.
@Colin L. Beadon
Nothing is ever really free; the prices may not be evident or clear. China’s investments do not come with conditions in terms of economic performance or political change but they are rarely without conditions. These may be claims on exports (say with mining). For a country like Barbados, that has little to offer China in terms of natural resources or large market. What is at stake? One thing is political favour: ie, deal with the Republic but do not deal with Taiwan. I understand that Barbados is trying to stand by some high principles in its dealing with China, but many would say that China does not deal with the same high principles.
The quality of Chinese goods is improving but that does not get past issues such as standards and how/if they are applied. (We have seen the many product recalls in the US market.) But for small (non manufacturing) countries like Barbados, there is an important trade off between affordability and quality. Again, given size, it’s hard for small countries not be ‘stuck’ with anyone: for a long time it has been the UK; that may be changing so it’s time to roll out the map and see who can really be a good partner.
Living in Barbados,
You’re right on, except for one major point.
Barbados is one of the world’s true democracies. Perhaps, like the Flea to an Elephant, we can teach China something there ?
@Colin L Beadon, we could have a discussion on what makes for a true democracy, but I will accept that Barbados is more democratic than China. But, like the flea on the elephant I do not think that Barbados’ stand/principles will make much of a bite on China.
LIB,
Niether do I, yet micro organisms keep us alive, as well as can cause our deaths. And then there is a butterfly flapping its wings, e.c.t.
Meanwhile I’m back reading Adrian Sobers attempting to bash Evolution again, in Letters-Advocate, and then I need to read more on the Reimann Hypothesis and wonder who will collect the $Million to the person who proves it, which, nobody has managed since the mid 1800.
Check out ‘The Reimann Hypothesis in a Nut Shell’ on Google.
If we can learn Chinese, surely somebody in our islands can issue from the woodwork and go advanced math too, higgs bosons, quarks and virtual particles, what ? We had, for a time, Chinese on the rig with us here in Barbados. The language was the only
problem.
BFP I would have liked to see a post congratulating the Barbadian World champion hurdler Ryan Brathwaite and welcoming him home today.
We should all be proud of this young Barbadian.
Hants,
We’re sure Barbadians are proud of Ryan, and what he has so far accomplished. Yet we in the West Indes, seem to over fete our early heros these days, and too many have fallen by the eddoes because of it.
Now Suki King deserves every last scrap of hero worship he gets. He has never got very much after years of ‘tanking’ (love that new word) the rest of the world. How many times has he arrived home covered with honor, and nobody met him at the airport ?
@Colin. Just a linguistic quibble. In US English, ‘tAnking’ is like sinking without trace (ie failure). In UK English, ‘tOnking’ is to give a beating (ie success if you give a tonking. Is usage in Bim of ‘tAnking’ really positive?
@Colin, I’m not maths whiz. I can barely understand the Reimann hypothesis. I’m more comfortable with the idea of microrganisms/butterfly wings and their effect. There are Chinese speakers in Barbados, but will they find themselves used to interact with Chinese on behalf of Barbados. I worked with a Mandarin scholar once at the IMF who over some 20 years had never been asked to use her extensive knowledge, not even to work on Asian countries.
Perhaps the Chinese speakers in Bim need to take control of their own interactions and see what that creates.
A Thought speculation, due to our worldly ability to get tied up in our own knotts,…. and see little else.
Perhaps the speed of light is a restriction impossed upon us to keep us from the life in the rest of the Universe,…. for now.
It is so highly improbable, once you appreciate the vastness of space, and the billions upon billions of stars out there like our sun, each with their own collection of planets,…..
One hardly need say more.
Living in Barbados.
I’m a math dumby, though I just wish I could fathome it, as it drives me to find everything I can find on such wizards. It’s rather like attempting to understand every note and quaver in a Bach Ovation( since I’m listening to the oboe piece in the Adagio, the Easter Oratorium BWV 249 ). You don’t have to understand everything, to fall into appreciation, or spellbinding.
That brings us back to the Chinese and Barbados. Will we appreciate each other, though so vast our differences in size, and personalities ?
BFP. I wrote some of this before, but it vanished. Take you pick, should it turn up.
Hi Colin,
If you wrote something before on China it will be in the “Open Discussion Archives” tab at the top. We’ll see if we can find a few of your pieces or if you can suggest some we’ll put them up as articles.
We all appreciate your contributions.
Robert & friends.
Living in Barbados.
‘ To Tank’, I’m hoping, means to ‘Do away with, sink, bury, put an end to, or just ,…shut down. ‘
Like,… I hope we’ve tanked the idea of over -passes and high rises in this island. My car ‘tanked’ a couple days ago, but rectification was possible with some tender love.
Oh yes, animals and mechanical systems, respond to tender love. But people, just a few, would’nt be seen attempting it.
Ryan Brathwaite has done Barbados proud . No one can deny that ,BUT and there is a big BUT.
Correct me if I am wrong but nowhere have I sen the good gentleman thanking God for his talent and what he has achieved.
What a difference between he and Obadele Thompson.
It is a pity that in this time of great celebration that he has forgotten the entity who has allowed him to achieve.
He is already boasting about medalling in 2011 &2012,but it is one thing to have confidence but we need to know who to put our confidence in.
I pray that he will give thanks where thanks is due very soon,because if we rely on ourselves we will fall just as quickly
@ rasta man
I heard him thank God and the whole of Barbados during his speech at the Airport yesterday.
You probably didn’t hear the word Jah or you were worshiping and the Jahholy herb affected your hearing.
@Colin…. you fuget yuh bajan? the term is “falling through de eddoes”.
Suki King is a world champion and deserves better recognition for his acheivements but Draughts Tournaments are “to the best of my knowledge” never televised and hardly ever reported.
World Champions like Brathwaite and Bolt deserves the superstar treatment they are getting at home.
Thanks BFP for putting Ryan at the top of the page just like your BUds did 2 days ago.
I think most would feel that the achievements of Ryan Brathwaite merit accolades, and the list shown in the Advocate, p. 5, is impressive. A few issues though.
As mentioned for ‘heroes’ like Suki King, is it too late to show national recognition? I would argue no. But will it be done?
Is the bar now set for successful performers (arts, sports, academic, etc.)? Admitted, Barbados is not flooded yet with such across all fields. But, as Usain Bolt noted when getting his latest help from Digicel, they were helping him from 2004, and it’s costly. Barbadian businesses and government now seem to realise that it’s the development years for young athletes that need lots of support. Will good support be forthcoming only AFTER performers are proven–if they make it that far? Will there be real foresight and funding (private-public) to bring along the young performers?
Views may differ on accolades such as “Ambassador” (or in Bolt’s case the very presitigious Order of Jamaica). Again, will those who merit such treatment also get it.
Finally, will the government ensure that CBC never again lets down the country by not buying rights to televise such games whether or not there is national interest? At the very least to inspire others to greatness.
BFP page 35 of today’s Advocate is worth a look.
*********************
BFP george say
What is it, Hants?
The Chinese let me down, this time.!
Today I needed to change the battery in a large display calculator, marked: Aurex Prestige. EDC-8308. It is also marked as a Dual Power 8 digit in the area where the solar cell is on the right top corner, a little below the screen you can tilt up as you want.
So the calculator has good useful features besides
large finger pads, and numerals that show 5/8ths of an
inch on the display. I liked this calculator so much I got
one later for my wife too, since we ‘ ain’t filled
wid yout ‘ no more, and these calculators are great to
use and see.
But ours, after some months, both stopped working,
un-usual for dual power calculators that will usually still carry on well, once their battery is low, or dead, and they are in sun light. I’m talking about Japanese models we were once able to buy in Barbados. .
Anyhow, to cut a long story, inspection of both these EDC-8308 units, showed the solar panel was false, and did not have any wires from it.
So they are most certainly not dual power, though they are certainly marked as ‘Hecho en China’ Fabrique en Chine. There ! I didn’t write it in English, at least. And I won’t embarrass myself by telling you what buying two ‘ Cat in bag’, cost.
But I’ll ask the question: Do we really need to take everything from China apart, before we buy it ?
That should be the job of the Import Standards Bureau, not so ?
Hants,
A little caution on our new world champions. Remember Crawford? The Trinie, yes TRINIE, named an airliner after him, and feted him into posterity. One gold race, and he was done !
Colin, if the consumer watchdog association really works/is effective, then this will be one to throw into their lap. Did you show the ‘device’ to the retailer and if so, what? Did he/she offer a refund? Truth in advertising? If you’ve not tested the consumer protection system, then what?
A lot of people talk about ‘name and shame’, and in many countries the last thing someone wants is to see their name up in dark lights. But sometimes that what it takes to protect others/us all.
We are what we allow ourselves to be.
@Colin, on Crawford. Haysley was injury prone. Not an excuse, but a fact. After the 1976 Oympic gold (remember it was inches over Don Quarrie), he got a Commonwealth bronze in 1978. He did also participate in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics—the most participations for an Olympian of Trinidad and Tobago—but didn’t reach to a final again.
He never promised more. It is right to have honoured him, but the world does not stand still, so let’s not detract from what he did :-). He inspired all track athletes in Trinidad and many in the Caribbean with his exploits.
Likewise with Ryan Brathwaite. It’s a long way to 2012: he’s young and he can do all he can to improve, but others will also be using him as their standard to beat. It’s rare for a champion to repeat in track and field, especially in the sprint events. That’s one of the spectacular aspects of Bolt (helped by their being just a year between his successes). But, his achievement should not be forgotten and if another “Inniss” or “Parris” comes up to challenge and beat Brathwaite, more power to them and to development of talent in Bim.
s/b …helped by THERE…
Living in Barbados.
Usually I’ve phoned The Chinese embassy about products not reaching the mark , but the culculator batteries did last a few months, in this case. As for Carib beer arriving flat, a more serious issue, I phone them and speak to a manager direct, at Champs Fleurs, Eastern Main Road. I do my duty, in those respects, to God and the Queen and Barbados. Not So ?
@Colin, I think it’s good to tackle the sources as you have but I would also put the retailers and government agencies on better notice. It may be an innocent problem from the importers/retailers end, or it could be a connivance on their part (expecting little reaction from locals). If it’s the latter then it needs to be treated differently than if it’s the former problem.
I think we would be taking a stronger attitude if this involved fake medicines (as has been the case in several countries), and lives were at risk.
Dear, Living In Barbados.
Please don’t start me off on snake oils and tiger bladders, rhino horn and bwabwandey, and all the thousands of shelves of such things, or their equivalents, we see in certain places for sale in Barbados.
@Colin
“That should be the job of the Import Standards Bureau, not so ?”
This seems to me to be a simple business matter. Take it back to the store where you bought it. You say you bought it just a few months ago. Give them the opportunity to give you your money back.
If the won’t let them know you will contact the Fair Trading Commission and do so if you do not get satisfaction.
Whether it’s worth the time and effort is another matter but if it’s the principle then go for it.
Mostradamus,
Certainly, it is what the Import Standards Bureau should manage, but who there at the bureau, is going to take a calculator apart to see if the solar cell is a fake ? It’s not like it was a washing machine or a stove.
Please don’t think we only make noise about bad products. Products we enjoy, or find most useful, hear from us too, provided you can find an email address on them, or a Maker’s mark of some kind. But there are products being sold without either, not even a country of origin, and one would do best to stay away from such products.
We do tend to get second rate products sent our way in these islands, some with good brand names, but made, ‘You know where’.
@Colin, I’m not sure the size of the device should matter, if it’s claimed to be defective. If it were a mobile phone with a solar cell, one could little distinction with the calculator. It’s a matter of business ethics and what we as consumers are prepared to tolerate of retailers and so-called ‘watch dogs’. Give them the job to do and hold them to the fire if they do not make the test. It will come back to haunt them, if someone’s health is put at risk by their or a retailers laxness, and then we will hear the wails and see the tears.
If the general claim of second rate goods is true then that too is an issue–about what ‘quality’ of Bajan life means. The line between development and developed is made clearer by society’s tolerance of things and what we feel we can do about them through institutions. We should not let shoddiness become the norm.
“The death of the greatest human being who ever lived”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/andrew-steele/the-greatest-human-is-dead/article1293395/
Hi. Never heard of this human being, but it is a most inspiring story. Is this true?
Who and What, Really Matters ?
It takes about two hours, switching channels on television, to get a good enough handle to what is happening across the Earth.
You spot the major Earth problems, like flooding, draught, deforestation, raging fires, melting poles and glaciers, you can’t help spotting the pollution, and the huge use of energy in all its forms, smoke, garbage, the night- world filled with brilliant light over every town and city area, the hum and haze of traffic and industrial pollution.
So you see all that quickly enough, if it has never struck you forcibly enough before. Various channels deal with it, some exclusively.
Then you see the faces of millions of starving people with their children, in tent and box- wood camps, sitting, or prone in extreme heat, the dessert sun boiling them away into utter exhaustion. A few relief food and medical agencies, doing their best to cope, scattered here and there amongst these millions; and on the perimeter of the camps, like vultures ready to swoop on the weak and unprotected, the brigands on camel or riding stolen army vehicles bristling with guns.
Few of us will have ever experience just what it is really like, to move around in such a camp, first hand, hear the cough, groan, of man and child, smell the stench of such conditions, look deeply into the glazing eyes of children drawing their last breaths, quite often their dogs huddled, dieing too beside them. Such people, even on point of near death retain remarkable compassion for their faithful animals.
And then the screen shows us the sights of the other side of the world, which I won’t have pleasure in defaming, and which won’t bring me many friends by so doing.
I’m writing about the affluence, the billions spent in yacht, car, and horse racing, billions spent, billions to evolve, machine, test, breed, re-draw, retool, and then race, and pick up the pieces, change the sails, masts, tyres, fix carbon hulls, ship horses back and forth, et al.
The billions spent in building the huge stadiums, and all the energy that goes into the roadways, raceways and everything else that leads to, or deals with them. Taken across the world, it is billions, in any currency you wish to call. Don’t doubt it. Then there is the opulence of the huge buildings going up all over the world, the billions flowing into those. Then there is the film industry, the betting industry, tourism and the monster ocean liners. All these consume huge volumes of un-replaceable energy, to build and to operate.
We shall never be told the cost of the Birds Nest stadium in China, ( we watched the documentary on its building ) for instance, and how many lives those same billions spent, could have saved in parts of hungry China, Somalia, Haiti, or how much food could have been shipped to help stop the wild animal slaughter by hungry people across Africa.
Or how much better it would have been to place some of those billions on re-forestry, to fend off the carbon problem, or stop the march of the desserts, or help those in countries, rebuild and rejuvenate their economies, so they don’t need to become faceless refugees, drifting in leaking boats, or suffocating in containers, or leaving their bones in arid deserts or on mountainsides impossible for half- starved people to cross.
It is one thing to be macho enough to race a car, or a yacht, costing billions to make it a world beater. It is another, to be brave enough, to look into the eye or smell the breath, in the face of a child, dieing from lack of food and water,… and just a few paces away your waiting chopper, waiting, with its prop singing, waiting to take just you, far away, far away,… from a world of such grief.
The price of your chopper would have fed those thousands sitting in the sun, waiting for what usually comes far too late. The price paid for the Chopper would have fed them for several weeks, maybe months
This is what is wrong with our world, and why (what we like to call ) civilization,… unchangeable as it is, will be hard pressed to survive much longer.
The bird of time is on the wing, and the Gods or our imaginations,… are deaf.
The people of the civilized world could pull back from the brink, perhaps, if we became selfless, somehow, at last, and paid full attention to: Who and what really matters. But isn’t that just a dream from another world, floating in the darkness of deep space ?
Paz, y tranquilidad, pues!
Throckmorton,
Just dial Norman Borlaug into Google. He reminds me of the scientist Robert Hooke, who came up with many ‘ideas’, though I’m not certain I should use the word ‘ideas’, that were unfairly attributed, or snatched, by Newton.
But such souls are beyond and unmindful or fame. They are like living, or once living Gods, and the world is far too short of them.
To have been in Borlaug’s position, to have seen the need for it, and to have fortuitously (or maybe even ingeniously) discovered a method to revolutionise the food yields must have been really fulfilling.
In Barbados the food is getting too expensive.
Making ends meet is driving many citizens too hard, especially the unemployed and the elderly. We need to have cheaper food. The only way to get it is to make it ourselves and to make it more abundantly, so that it can cost less.
But then perhaps the farmer doesn’t want to because at the level he or she does it, maybe the money is not enough if it is abundant.
Strange days we live in?
Will check out via the search now.
Throw pumpkin seeds in de yard and vines will grow.
Throw passion fruit seeds by de palin sorry guard wall and vines will grow.
Seasoning,thyme and carrots grow like weeds.
Bajans can feed themselves but they will have to get their hands dirty.
Hants, hear, hear !
Throw the black spinnage seeds beside any fence, and you’ll soon have its leaves and tender vine ends, all you can use.
Scrape up the leaves and soil- wash trapped inside road curbs, lay it into beds on rock, if you must, and set in some sweet potatoe slips, and wow !
Don’t ‘fraid the wiggleworms, leave them be. don’t ‘fraid the frogs, for they will eat the butterflies, crickets and catapillars. Don’t ‘fraid earth under your nails. You are made of earth, and so you will eventually be. But in the meantime, growing your own food will keep you healthy, more satisfied, and less broke too.
Colin
Thanks. This one was very good on Borlaug, as it is an interview rather than a biography. He really thought for himself, and best of all he did it for a motivation that was positive, rather than negative.
Billions Served: Norman Borlaug interviewed by Ronald Bailey:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/27665.html
We spend too much time on negative things. We need to be more cooperative and helpful to one another, rather than full of hate and violence.
Throck,
To be full of hate and violence, is, above all, self destructive. It destroys ever aspect of our intellects, and comes under the natural laws of Karma, or Cause and Effect, which teachers don’t teach in schools, and professors don’t teach in Universities.
Throck,
Google, Joseph Campbell.
See if he hooks you like he hooked me several years ago. His ‘ Power of Myth’ got me first.
‘ Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning is what you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.’
‘The Goal is to live
With Godlike composure
On the full rush of energy
Like Dionysus riding the
Leopard,
Without being torn to
to Pieces. ‘
Sad story about bullying at school.
Nation today “The former Princess Margaret Secondary School first-form student was struck by a car on Sunbury Road, St Philip, last Friday after reportedly trying to flee a number of boys who were pursuing him.”
Hants,
Yes. I actually came on to post a message about this very incident.
Awful, I feel for the poor father and family.
Worse still, that the father went the official route and complained to school and Police officials and not enough was done, to save his son from bullying and his life.
This could be any one of us.
Will it take a ‘Barbados Columbine’ to address the matter of bullying in schools?
After all, this father and son went about things the official way, being law-abiding.
Supposing the son was a bit older, raised different, with a different frame of mind i.e. someone else and reacted differently?
Would we be reading about 25 students dead? And saying, how could this be?
It COULD be, if we do not act against bullying, by legislation and enforcement.
Stricter action by teachers etc. A tribunal to hear cases of bullying, to give the students a fair hearing and if necessary, to punish wrongdoers?
Bullying can be physical, mental and is unproductive, leads to dimished results in learning, hinders class cohesion and teamwork and in this case, death.
What more do we need? Maybe also a fund set up in this boys name, to assist in social and physcological assistance for those being bullied, to assist their coping as well as assist in legal costs, where necessary?
Teasing, violence all are part of bullying.
We even see workplace bullies, those who have learnt that it works to get them ahead, or use their position against others.
It is unacceptable.
Anyway, that is my bit. There is not much more to be said, especially as this incident may very well have some legal implications.
Advice to youngsters reading this. Treat others how you wish to be treated, with respect and dignity. Always be polite. Walk away from trouble.
Not only will it contribute to personal enrichment, it will get you places, trust me.
Peace
United Nations, the Good, the Bile, the Madness,… And can we blame the exit of Gods ?
A resort to Doomsday Bombs would be one way to level the Earth’s problem with the human population explosion, which, after the dust had cleared, would also reduce global warming in a number of obvious ways, and allow the trees, animals and fish, to regenerate.
But would those humans ( assuming a few will be left) have learned anything worthwhile, and could those left, manage to survive in any cohesive way, bereaved of the structure of all they had been used to ?
Like putting Humpty-dumpty together again, it would take a very long time for mankind to recover, if, just 100 part of the atomic weaponry available were used. Wikipedia shows 8,200 active warheads spread around in a number of countries.
In such a war, the whole human structure of most of the world, would ‘ Fall Through’. Those left would become nomadic drifters, slowly picking up the pieces, attempting, like ants, to put some sort of liveable semblance together again, against stupendous odds, and no law and order, except a Darwinian, animal-like. survival of the fittest.
But when we listened to one or two of those speakers at the United Nations these last few days, and hear the bile and near- madness coming from certain lips, we can be assured no modern country that has any sense of self preservation, would seriously consider decommissioning its atomic stockpile, even though atomic war would mean,… the end, or near end,…. Of Civilization.
And so the Sword of Damocles’, hangs, by an ever- rotting thread, and few birds sing, and the Gods remain deaf, or they’ve gone off to find more congenial civilizations to watch over, way out in the Milky Way, or in our nearest galaxy Andromeda M31. Who can really blame them ?
Negativity:
While both major local blogs find time to criticise Rihanna, Barbadians are being treated to imported negativity, in the form of ‘gun lyrics’, at an impending show.
While obviously promoters etc are free to exercise their right to make money, the material is simply offensive and negative, at a time when we need positive reinforcement.
Neither blog has found time to highlight this matter, although the ‘dead tree’ paper did.
Unfortunate that something that goes to the root of our developmental problems in behaviour, is being allowed to go forward without objection.
Peace
Rumple,
It is just amazing those who should be sifting carefully, the crud being allowed to come in from outside Barbados, in the form of entertainment, are obviously not doing the job (quality controle) they are paid to do with taxpayers money.
What is going on ? Who is responsible? Or has the fully liberal view pervading Barbados from elsewhere, swept away all semblence of decency ? And so everything goes !
Surely, taxpayers are paying for the infidelity of quality controllers slumped- asleep over their desks, or never at their desks, at all ?
I’m sorry. I’ve written too much lately. Perhaps ‘Writing’ is a sickness like alcohol, smoking, drugs, or falling in love too often.
Yes Colin,
Truly food for thought. One of the ‘reasons’ allegedly given by the promoter’s rep to the reporter, was that the entertainer is a ‘Caricom’ entertainer.
Should that matter? I think not.
Then people wonder why the gun culture and ‘gangsta’ culture is so pervasive?
The entertainer is allegedly known as a ‘Gangsta for life’.
What trash indeed.
Then, all lawnessness is blamed on Police?
Peace
Rumple,
We can only warn Barbados to be well aware. Slackness,… can turn this venerated island, into just another Trinidad, Jamaica, or Haiti. It is much simpler to do this, than retain semblence to the island so many people love, and venerate, both those who have navel string attatched, and those who don’t.
It is frightening to think that this “gangsta” will likely fill a venue with Barbadian adults who will rejoice in his smutty violent lyrics.
Just collateral damage in a modern capitalist society.
BFP read page 9 of the Sunday Advocate.
Hants, read it. Interesting the point on malice.
Neverthless, I think the main issue on this subject to remember, is that facts can be stated and relied upon, but conjecture which brings someone’s reputation on the line should be avoided.
As I said however, facts can be stated and the breath of comment allowed can be wide, IF one sticks to facts and phrases oneself appropriately.
If for example, one uses an inflammatory and unprovable title, for an article, that can cause an issue.
In such a case, a title that correctly reflects and restates the facts, cannot cause the article to be questioned.
Peace
So Hants.
Example, if I see you leaving a rumshop one Sunday afternoon;
– if I paste a headline that ‘Hants is an alcoholic’, certainly that is inflammatory, maybe even true but probably not and certainly unprovable- unless my article goes on to provide proof of the claim
– if I paste a headline that ‘Hants seen leaving rumshop’, it is certainly true and provable.
The first is directly inflammatory and rightly can be interpreted as malicious. Especially if Hants has a responsible position, this will bring his reputation into disrepute.
The second, is merely stating a fact, albeit it possibly achieves the point of bringing to light Hants’s visiting rumshops, without making any incorrect statement that may be perceived as causing harm to Hants’s reputation i.e. I cannot further sully that which you yourself have done.
So, the difference in the two statements is fact.
Now, I can go on in the article under the second statement title, to state that a person of Hants’s position should not be seen near a rumshop, that it is bad image etc etc.
I can thus achieve my intent of ensuring Hants is now under the microscope, without making any unjustified or unprovable claims.
Much cleaner, much easier.
Indeed, Hants may have just been meeting his uncle at the shop, to deliver a package. But, in the imagined article, I would not say he was drinking, unless I could prove it.
Peace
For personal reasons, I am not going to grind my axe TODAY on this snippet from Barbados Underground (see, Inexcusable Disrespect: A National Ceremony Vulgarised And Diminished Into A DLP Affair Paid For With State Funds), but it is thought provoking:
‘The BU household does not have a paid staff to hammer out blogs like a factory would manufacture widgets. As it stands BU has set a standard where we generate at least one blog a day, occasionally two. As far as we are aware there is no Bajan blog publishing with that frequency.’
Awareness and perceptions are funny things, now.
Hello LIB,
I can think of six or seven Bajan blogs that publish at least one article a day. How about you?
In the last 7 days, Barbados Free Press published 18 posts, but I guess BU doesn’t read BFP anymore.
Or Ian Bourne, or Living In Barbados…
“A NEWBORN BABY who was found inside a tied plastic bag, with the umbilical cord still attached, on Fitts Village Beach, St James, yesterday evening is alive and doing fine.
The baby girl was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) by ambulance where she was admitted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit for observation.
Police described the baby as Caucasian with blue eyes.”
Hope the mother is found and counselled to take back her baby.
Temporary insanity? Post partum disorder?
***************
BFP says,
It happens with greater frequency than we might imagine, Hants. Most every country has infanticide laws that recognize this happens with new mothers, so if they abandon or murder their babies shortly after birth, they are not charged with murder, but a lesser offence.
Moderating in effect.
White baby found in plastic bag on beach in Fitts Village.
Police investigating.
****************
BFP says,
Hi Hants, it was the word “Caucasian” that caused the computer to grab your comment. I’ve freed it now. That was on the list from a year ago when we were receiving 500 or so threats a day.
@ BFP September 27, 2009 at 12:46 pm: “I can think of six or seven Bajan blogs that publish at least one article a day. How about you?”
I can certainly cite three. I really do not survey all the local blogs daily, but I know what I write. The contentious statement on BU should not be based on what is read, either, but what is published. I will be interested how the ‘facts’ unfold on the comment, if they unfold at all.
One can also treat it as a non issue as none of the blogs is claiming to be a daily publication so should not be faulted, implicitly or explicitly. My blog refers to ‘journal’ so strictly I should blog daily, and I try…
As ‘Expose The Hypocrisy’ noted recently on Blog Policies, some ‘definitions’ on BU vary from day to day.
A loaded and serious question ?
‘Barbadian, what would you do on this island, to help stop global warming?’
It is no longer a matter of just slowing global warming. Look at the news reports across the globe. Check what is happening to the glaciers in the Alps, the Poles, the Andes and the Himalayas.
The glaciers sustain the rivers and lakes. Without the slow steady yearly glacier melt and reform, lakes and rivers become dry during the seasons without rain. Without rain, there is dreadful draught, and trees, and much vegetation, fish, animals, and humans, die by the thousands. Deserts spread across the lands
The dust storms, usually averaging about eight a year across Baghdad, are now at thirty. The Tigris and the Euphrates are way below levels seen before, due to two years of draught in that area. Manila, right now, is suffering as bad a deluge as did New Orleans under her hurricane. Dial it up and take a look at the horror on a weather channel. California’s fruit and vegetable basket in the San Joaquin valley, that usually helps feed areas of the world in crisis, is now facing draught itself. Those places not in flood or draught are raging in flames like parts of Australia, Europe, and California.
All this is due to the global rise in Temperature. There is hardly a land mass, a river, inland sea or lake, not suffering in some way. The higher the world temperature goes, the more extreme will become the world’s weather. We are lucky not to have seen ourselves, anything yet.
The more we know about all this, the more we may appreciate the question at the head of the page, unless, of course, we do not feel small islands need be blamed, or that small islands can have draughts, or become inundated as sea levels rise.
Every human being in every way possible, needs to do their part. So we hope we will take time to consider and answer the question at the page heading. Let’s all blog about it, and raise some fruitful ideas. It is time to start acting now !
It will be interesting to see what we can come up with, other than stick our heads in the white Barbadian sand, and hold meetings going nowhere. There are very obvious steps we should take, if enough of us are willing to spit them out, and if enough of us in position, should show the way and start acting out what we must and will do. No ! It is not going to win any votes.
Better Global warming than Freeze, perhaps !
While nobody wants to take me up on any slack about Global warming, I’ve gone into a sulk, and gone back into Quantum Physics, finding it much more intruiging and down to earth than attempting to fathom the modern world, and modern man and his fixation on getting as rich as simply as he can, with the least amount of work possible, and as quick as he can; and to hell with the Earth, and everybody else in it.
The new site I asked Google for, in despiration, was: ‘Basic Quantum Theory’, since I have a friend interested in it, and wanted to lead her there jently.
The site is called : ‘Basic Quantum Theory ( a Non-Math troduction)’. Should you too want to leave the ungainly world for a little, and steep yourself in something not that really much further out than a ‘Grass’ trip into the wierd and wonderful. Then take a look at the site, and persevere, ‘waylay’ a little with it. It is the best site, so far, I have found dealing in a simple way, with a subject that to most, probably seems, too way out to contemplate.
The BBC.
We seem to have been vindicated today, by the BBC, those few of us deeply concerned with what we see happening due to global warming across the globe, and the part Man plays in it.
The concensus amongst scientists, warns at last, and backs us fully. BBC today, 2nd Oct/2009.
Get the book by James Lovelock:
‘ The Revenge of Gaia, ‘ for a fuller understanding, though you won’t find it a happy reading experience, we’re sure !
Colin:
Much as I love your contributions, please check the data rather than the MSM.
You are being manipulated, my friend,
Refer to the data source and reconsider.
Straight talk.
Straight talk,
Much as I cherish your love of my contributions and look forward to reading yours, you seem to insist I doubt the very evidence I catch with my own eyes. My opinions are not mainly based on what I read, but what I see throughout much of the globe, unless you are suggesting that televisions images are also mainly manipulated, and what I see around me where I live, is largely a figment of my own imagination ?
I wish, when it comes to climate change and the very apparant speed of the global warming you seem content to refute, that I could find my own observations, entirely wrong, in every respect.
By the way, you were supposed to come meet me, long ago, or was this too, just a figment ?
Offshore Australian Leak !
The well, oozing oil at 400 barrels a day into the sea, 250 km off the far North Kimberly coast, Australia, is now 43 days leaking.
The rig called in to drill the relief well, is expected to accomplish that task, within a short time ( we’re told), if everything goes according to plan, and the weather stays calm enough.
Luckily, the short term damage and death to sea creatures cause by floating oil, lasts only as long as it takes the natural elements ( the Sun mainly ) to convert the oil into an algae-like fertilizer. Slowly the floating oil turns a light grey, then into dark green clumps which deaden the sound of a crew launch going through it at speed.
Having worked a number of years on Lake Maracibo, where there has always been a certain amount of escaping oil, both naturally and by the misjudgements of men, I have commonly, daily, seen floating oil, gradually, through a number of days, become a thick, dark green, pea soup-like algae.
Recently, in the USA, they have found algae can be converted into a clear fluid pure enough to run a car on successfully.
CLB:
What I see with my own eyes is that the entire increase in global warming for the last 60 years has been 0.1deg.C, a full half a degree reduction in the last two years alone.
If I were Al Gore I would resign my directorship of his carbon credit trading company, and get into the fur coat business.
Sunspot cycle 23 having just ended 4 years later than average tends to indicate, according to solar climatologists, a period of cooling bottoming out in 2040.
You pays yer money and takes yer choice who to believe.
Me? G8 governments are desperate for increased tax revenue are pushing cap and trade, contrary to all recent data.
BFP Marcus and Cliverton.
Read page 9 of the Sunday Advocate
Hermano ST,
I’m not sure what you are looking at for your 0.1 deg C temp rise, but take a look at NASA Goddard Institute for space studies, GISS World Surface Global Temperature Analysis.
Tell me what you see there ?
Ice sheets and glaciers, don’t just melt away for no sure reason. Their melting stops the deflection of sunlight back up into space, which further warms the Earth. With too fast a warming Earth, deserts spread, reefs die, many cultivated areas become dust bowls as the rivers, once fed by the steady slow, year ebb and rebuild of the glaciers, are no longer fed from the mountains. And so the lakes dry up too, as have the inland seas already in some countries. But that is only a little part of what is happeneing.
Mon brave, Colin.
To study the climate data without political agendas interfering and distorting is as interesting as it is instructive.
Why are they doing this to us, particularly in these lean times?
Some unbiased info you may like to consider is here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/03/uah-global-temperature-anomaly-for-june-09-zero/
The graphs on the right sidebar are self-explanatory,
you’ll be eager to check the Arctic temperature with 40 years of data.
Let me know your conclusions.
St
Scientific Opinion On Climate Change. Wikipedia.Org.
Straight Talk,
I’ve enjoyed reading much of the day, the site you gave on climate change yesterday, except, that it is biased all one way, and hardly truly scientific.
I have no political or business agendas, in any way. None. I don’t really have a pro- humanity agenda either, my true aim being the attempt to conserve the life of the Earth, as much as I am able. That is my absorbing positive interest, these last several years, though the Earth system and what is happening to it, has never been far from my mind as far back as I can remember.
As much as my Pro Earth stance obviously implicates humanity, and an Earth we can hardly live without, I hope you will cut me some slack should you find me antisocial in respects to what I perceive as man’s arcane ability to destroy the natural world as though man could happily live without it.
So, like a knight in badly dented armour, having absorbed your site, I went to Google and requested:
‘ Scientific Consensus On Climate Change’ . Up comes: Wikipedia.Org. Scientific Opinion On Climate Change. The story on global warming on that site, is altered from yours, somewhat, as you’ll find.
One question: Why would NASA, in your opinion, be politically motivated? Is it that you feel, for space shots, NASA needs,…. pollution clear air?
Now, this moment, I’m watching the BBC on the draught in Kenya. The Animals are now dying. Guess who dies next, and why, there in Kenya, tribes are attacking one another? I’m hoping, what I’m seeing, is just a figment of my imagination.
Tomorrow will be 33 years that the tragedy of Cubana Airlines unfolded and yet Posada Carriles still remains a free man in Florida. George W Bush after 9 / 11 said that America would hunt the terrorist down regardless of where they are but yet one remains free right under the nose of the US goverment. Why is this allowed, why isn’t this raised at the UN General Assembly. Yet we Bajans hurry off to Miami and spend our dollars and perhaps walk right next to him in some Mall. A killer is allowed to remain free by the same nation who condems the actions of all terrorist as murder. I had hoped that change would happen under the leadership of Mr Obama but I see none.
Ah Rumboy, caught, in the new
world of which we had so hoped, hear an ancient poet, khayyam, spout:
‘The worldly Hope men set their hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour, or two– is gone.
You may want to read the blogging-related story in today’s NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/business/media/06adco.html?hp
So very true but I can’t get this feeling of disappointment to go away.
Zero point one degree climate change, and Polar Bears !
If zero point one degree climate change is responsible for the ice melt at North and South pole, and, the glacier melt on all the major mountain chains on Earth, including the Swiss Alps. If zero point one degree is also responsible for the first opening of the sea passages in Alaska and Siberia, and the sea rise seen in some of the very low laying islands in the Pacific, then God help us should we see a Global warming of zero point five degrees. Much worse still, should the warming become, ONE Full Degree.
It is already critically difficult for polar bears, attempting to live on shrinking North Polar sea ice. Perhaps, with too many of us beyond ‘catching’ or appreciating the whole picture, polar bear demise is just,…. ‘Small Cost’?
As a public service to your overseas Bajan brethren, BFP can you publish the “Dress Code” for the Courts and Court offices in Barbados.
I just heard ladies complaining on VOB that they were not admitted to the hallowed office of the Registrar.
They were wearing “slippers” which in North America would be ladies dress shoes.
One was dressed like Michelle Obama in a sleeveless polo neck blouse and white pants.
Overseas bajans who come home to do business will need clarification so we can bring our winter clothes.”my pathetic attempt at humor”.
Moderation in effect?
BFP even though we have ITAL here in Canada,
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/10/07/ehealth-auditor.html
Thanks BFP
@Hants, it’s not really “even though…” but more “because…”. I read that the Health Minister resigned due to the report. THAT is accountability. The poor governance needs to have consequences: improved decision making; politicians or civil servants or corporate executives realising where the buck stops. In Barbados, who has seen fit to relinquish their position because of any adverse reports, etc.? It’s not really about legislation but about simple ethics.
LIB
I will give you a pass because you don’t know the back story. The minister previously refused to resign despite much hectoring by the Opposition over untendered contracts put out by the former Head of EHealth. The hectoring forced the Premier to appoint the Auditor General to investigate and when it was obvious that the report would be calamitous the Minister had no choice but to resign
@Sargeant,
Thanks for the pass and the fuller story. But I would still stay with the general point, because we have in the region many egregious examples of the body being dragged so far that we cannot believe that resignation will not follow, but it rarely does. If the Japanese with hari-kari/sepuka are at one extreme, then in the Caribbean ‘survival at all cost’ is close to the norm/other extreme.
@LIB
The folks up here try to hang on too, but at the first sign of impropriety or scandal the Press is on a feeding frenzy like sharks when they smell blood in the water. The politicians generally go before it gets worse or the Premier or PM decides to cut their losses and jettison them. One of the major differences for politicians here and there is the “Access to information law” where the Press has the means and time to request information that may never see the light of day otherwise. The Press by contrast in the Caribbean (particularly Barbados) is timid and don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I can’t say I blame them because comparatively speaking Thompson et al have more power over public and private institutions in the Caribbean than the Premier of Ontario or the PM of Canada.
I don’t think that there are any “Access to Information” laws in the English speaking Caribbean.
And here is another.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/10/07/cancer-care-ontario.html
LIB,
Come to think of it, perhaps we could persuade somebody to suggest Hari-Kari to Mugabe, with his Hitlerian moustache, and his admitted adoration of the Fuhrer. After all, the Fuhrer took what could be considered the decent way out, in the end. He saved thousands, perhaps millions in the cost of a long trial, anyhow.
There is no doubt Zimbabwe would be a million percent better off without Mugabe, too.
Strange though, how the African Union does not see Mugabe as a millstone to the progress of that country. Such a head of state can’t encourage business and trade, or tourism, for that matter.
@Sargeant, as of 2005, access to information legislation has been passed in Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago. Draft legislation exists in several other English-speaking Caribbean countries, including Barbados. Caricom’s Draft Provisions for the Protection of Caribbean Human Rights implicitly included the expectation that those countries which do not yet have national access legislation will be encouraged to develop their own laws compatible with regional provisions. I was not able to find clear information for more recent periods.
@Colin L Beadon, I do not believe that the AU does not see Mugage as a millstone, but they have never been keen to go against elected leaders, notwithstanding how they may be viewed (and often oppose regimes that come from coups). They have not been alone in being helpless, as can be seen from the record of the UK especially, who had a lead role as the former colonial rulers.
@Hants
Re Dress Code in Courts:
Last year when the Missus and I went down we decided to get new Birth Certificates because the old ones were missing the official seal. When the wife examined hers she noticed that one letter was different from the way she always spelled her middle name so she decided to get it changed. Well in order to change it she had to see the Deputy Registrar and who tell she to wear a blouse with spaghetti straps? She got a bit of chewing out but they explained why it couldn’t be changed (unless you were able to obtain the original church baptism record) and in the end it was just too much trouble.
Fast forward to this year I had to take my mother there for more official business and dropped her off by the gate to the compound while I parked the car on the lot across the street. When I made my way back to the gate in my walking shorts, the Security guard asked where I was going dressed like that (at the gate mind you) while the other yutes were sauntering past in three quarter length pants and Basket ball jerseys. After a little discussion I was allowed to go in and assist my mother.
Friends later told me that there is a dress code for visitors to all Gov’t departments, so I may have to invest in a few Shirt Jacs during my next visit.
LIB
Thanks for the update re Access to Information laws. Is there a timeline when these laws are expected to be enacted? Are there any journalists taking advantage of this “Access” in the countries where the laws are on the books? It would be interesting to know what road blocks they face in trying to obtain information.
@Sargeant, I was working from a quick online search, so you could fine more with a little more diligence than me. Judging by what I read and hear in Jamaica, I’d imagine journalists there are using the laws.
Nasa is now going to ‘bomb’ the moon with a rocket, to see if there is water, that to be found by a following rocket, which will send info back to scientists of the debris samples.
Yup, we’re ‘Moving on Up’, we be bombing space.
Hopefully they don’t hit anyone up there, we might get a surprise.
Happens tomorrow, live on Nasa.gov apparently
Peace
BFP
Since one or two of you have interests in things aeronautical I thought that this story would be of interest to you (and maybe some other readers)
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/10/air-india-pilots-crew-scuffle-leaving-cockpit-unmanned.html
Hi Sargeant,
I saw that, don’t know if Robert has but he’s been gone for a few weeks on one of his “don’t ask” trips. He can be a miserable so and so when he doesn’t want to go but they pay him too much money so he does!
Marcus
@ Sargeant
Prehaps they want us to wear winter clothes.
All jokes aside, rules like this should be published and broadcast and the High commissions and BTA offices overseas should circulate this information.
No one would expect that you have to dress in church clothes to collect a document.
Anyway Sargeant when you go to Barbados you have to stay focused. Likker, food and de beach.
Barbados Free Press:
This is what you stated on October 8th, 2009, when replying to someone you say is Hartley Henry: “It is the policy of BFP that you adopt one name and one name only.”
You, BFP, are an unmitigated liar and fraud. It is about time someone has the guts to expose you because the sheeple who post comments on here are gutless.
You don’t recognise my IP because I do not post comments on your blog, but I couldn’t let you get away with such an outright lie., I(f you had stated that “one name and one name only” must be associated with an IP, that would be more accepta ble (although that in itself is not true either). You took a turn in Hartley Henry for purely personal reasons because you hate both he and his ‘boss’, David Thompson. That fact is plainly obvious to all and sundry.
But … you allow that schizo Bajan-Canadian fool to post comments on this blog under SEVERAL different names. One minute he is charming rats with his flute; next minute he is yelling at soldiers; then he is Nameless; then he is a green animal; then he illuminates; then Alice in
Wonderland is chasing him down a hole; and now his latest – a tropical fruit which he can’t even spell correctly. Your excuse is, you have no evidence to suggest that he is just ONE person, because of the different IP’s used for different names. Oh, PLEASE! You can’t be that stupid, Desmond and Ian, can you?? (I hope Allard pays you well).
You are both well known for your dabble in Creative Arts, and you have been able to fool people (well, some people) from the outset with the characters in your Play – Cliverton (name of a house in Strathclyde), Robert, Shona, Aunty Moses et al. Your financier shows himself up from time to time by using non-Bajan words and phrases, and this has already been spotted by one of your bloggers.
Anyone with a certain amount of intelligence can tell that even YOU – BFP – post comments under different names, so don’t go telling such whopping lies about bloggers being allowed one name and one name only. You always pick on those bloggers you personally don’t like and let others get away with blue, bloody murder. Your picking on Hartley Henry showed up your well-known spiteful, vindictive style. (We are familiar with that style in The Nation newspaper). You can fool some of the people …” I’m sure you know the rest.
Hi Lies, Damned Lies
Your comment is interesting because it contains a very unusual phrase that has only been used on this blog 6 times in 4 years, including your latest rendition of it. (We can search that out in the comments bin. So can you.)
Now you have us as Nation News reporters hating Hartley and David Thompson.
But wait… didn’t BFP slam the BLP and get David Thompson elected? Wasn’t it only after we discovered that Thompson had lied about ITAL that we turned against him? You don’t seem to make much sense…
Paul… Still smoking a bit of the herb here and there, are we?
Obama, Obama, bear up the extra burden.
There are those of us whom from the start, wished you’d win the presidency of the USA. And you did, magnificently, though you are saddled like a mule, with much more than you should bear.
Now you are encumbered further, with a Nobel, which, from your speech about it, makes you feel the weight of further burden.
We too, wish they had bestowed this on you, a little further along the line, when you had had more chance to breath.
Never mind. There are so many of us for you. So take it light !
Golf and rugby now Olympic sports?
Surely cricket has much more worldwide players and playing nations than rugby?
I guess however, this will help Britain, Australia, or South Africa win a few more medals.
As for golf, the few elite who play it could potentially contribute dollars to the Olympics and attract the other elite who persist in watching such an exciting game on TV, thus television rights might be worth something.
Here is an example of Jamaican journalists using ‘access to information’, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20091011/lead/lead1.html. Nice little expose on the cost of refurbishing a Minister’s office and who got the business.
LIB,
Freedom of information is critical. Not only legislation, but in action.
In Barbados there are entities that have not filed the requisite financial information, as required by law.
But where is the accountability that censures this inaction?
We need not only the legislation to ensure that information on tenders, expenses, financial information, is openly available at GIS, even for a small fee to cover costs, but we need the requisite accountability to ensure that those who do not file, whatever Gov’t dept, is censured.
Declaration of assets by Ministers etc is hogwash unless the relevant freedom of information and action follows.
In my opinion, we can learn more by openly available information, than declaration of assets anyway.
Information on tenders, financial information etc are all verifiable by investigation.
Financial information on Ministers never will be. Any declarations will be doubtful, as I noted before, money for ‘unofficial services’ can be channeled and deposited elsewhere with the relevant contacts.
The point is, money for work done always comes back to a quesiton of the value for the work, again verifiable, IF all financial information is forthcoming.
Peace
@Rumplestiltskin,
Fully agree. I beat a drum for a narrowing of the ‘should’ and ‘do’. Many sign onto initiatives and then do nothing more to make it real: that goes for countries, institutions and individual people. But one needs a certain view of ‘acceptable’ social and economic behaviour.
Broadening the discussion, why should CBC not offer the facility to follow the BL&P hearings live, if not on TV, then on radio, or even on the Internet? It shows a lot about what official views are on information sharing and helping the population understand.
@Crusoe, you should also look at those ‘elite’ sports like sailing, or equestrianism…For a long while, cricket was really the sport of the former British Commonwealth, and even then never featured in the Commonwealth Games. Its game length was one issue, but the shortened formats helped make it more popular.
I need to check, but I thought the Olympics were going for 7-a-side rugby, which opens up the medals race a lot, for the likes of Fiji and Samoa.
LIB,
Your point is a good one. Although such as myself will be unable to watch, due to work committments, there are those who would enjoy the arguments as televised.
Relying on new reporting, while it may indicate pertinent discussion point, could also lose one or two and will could dilute the various messages, for example, emphasis or various points and nuances in discussion will be lost.
At the moment, it is a ‘case’ between the utility company and the ‘intervenors’, not the general public, although the same intervenors are acting on their behalf.
Likewise then, how much more should the Parliamentary proceedings be accessable, by a separate channel or something?
Can I say then that we have an ‘hierarchal democracy’, by the way in which business is conducted?
Peace
To clarify ‘At the moment, it is a ‘case’ between the utility company and the ‘intervenors’, not the general public, although the same intervenors are acting on their behalf’
By this I mean that it is coming across as such and seen to be such.
@Rumplestiltskin, I understand your personal plight, but it should be about making information available. You can decide for youself if and when you draw on it, say at night. I understand that transcripts will be available from tomorrow. There are many who would not be able to deal with the matters in real time, including those overseas who have real interests, not just news agencies. It’s a way of thinking. Why no C-SPAN equivalent? Is it budgetary constraint? It is why we need to look at the decisions to not televise the Olympics and World Championships. Put the material out then let the public express its interest.
I made a conscious decision NOT to attend.
Whatever the democracy’s ‘hierarchy’ if it has to deal with a badly informed public its policies will ALWAYS have a harder time being implemented.
Barbados would fit well being described as ‘patronal’ or even ‘patronising’, in that ‘we know best’ way. But clearly, ‘they’ do not know best.
Different focus, but same issue. Today’s Brass Tacks discussion on regional integration. How we are ‘intimately aware’ of who and what we can see on US TV, yet are extremely unaware of our own national and regional whos and whats.
Read page 18 of the Sunday Advocate.Divorce or seperation?
Duh had enough an want we to look afta we own self.
Another look at access to information: Treasury Secretary Geithner’s contacts with Chancellor Darling during the financial crisis earlier this year, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/11/darling-geithner-financial-crisis-contact
At this time when a major Middle East war is slowly but surely dragged towards us, it may be time to pnder two quotes, for Monday October 12, 2009:
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.
John F. Kennedy
————————
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
Dwight Eisenhower
—————————
May the Almighty treat us kindly. For mankind have not respected life, has not respected creation.
Peace
Yeh, Rumple,
A Trini friend, living in Houston, just sent me 100 photos of the dreadful, chilling wars during the last century. A few of the photos, you may have seen and remembered well, but all brought tears to my eyes for so many reasons, and all persons should see and ponder them, so that they may fully appreciate the true nature of war.
Wish I could send then on to BPF, Is there an email address I could use ?
Perhaps, really, this is what the givers of the Nobel for Peace, implied ?
Colin, you can always reach us at barbadosfreepress@yahoo.com
Our Planet Earth has some serious man made problems.
Water and food, energy, population, those that have and those that don’t, religious intolerance, migration, crime, political mis-management and frivolous waste. We are stuck with an abysmal teaching and preaching, that the Earth is not finite, and that if everybody is good, everything can be shared, and there is plenty to go around, ad infinitum.
Perhaps we are programmed to believe and accept this so that automatically, over time, we reach the point of self – destruction, and then go through a period of self-renewal. The 1963 book by John.W.Gardner ( once required university reading), it still as astute today as it ever was. ‘Self Renewal ( a small 160 pages),’ The Individual and the Innovative Society,’ And why restrictive organizations, dogmatic religions, and tyrannical dictators, all fall eventually in on themselves, like stars that have run out of their hydrogen, or old men that have run out of yout’ .
Hi Colin
We received a bunch of military photos yesterday. Very interesting and I’ll have to post them so you and the others can enjoy them too.
Yes BFP,
I sent you the military photos yesterday, unless somebody else also sent you some. C
Reverting back to climate change:
How come Barbados has received no rain? Why no hurricanes? The first two weeks on October are inevitably torrential in Barbados.
But not this time.
Is it because we have turned our backs on the Lord and she has shut up the heavens; or is it global warming?
Or both?
Throckmorton,
One would tend to think along those lines, if one had not kept their own rainfall figures (in my case since 1996 where we’ve lived).
We have already had three record rainfall months this year, since 1996 April, July and August, each month beating the previous years by three inches or over. September was a little above average last month.
It is still early enough in October
but the upper level wind shears have been really busy breaking up the rain systems trying to make it across the big ditch. But last year was a record year, by just over an inch. 68.66 inches total in 2005. 69.77 total in 2008. See what we mean ?
Hi Colin
Thanks. The wind shears are normal for after the new year, but to have them now, pushing all the clouds up north is highly unusual. Earlier this year we had a rainy dry season. Now a dry rainy season. Early october has been 5-10″ for the last 40 years, but not this year. That’s an unusual abberation IMO. It has affected my mangoes and avacadoes.
Throckm,
With the termite flying ants being upset and not getting their usual rains and thick cloggy weather, the frogs are very thin now. They are not happy.
But low, and behold, as I speak, a spitting of rain. There was herringbone in the sky last night, a good sign usually, for coming weather and rain. But no doubt we’ll hear the guns barking on the swamps, as the cross continent migrating birds seek shelter.
Those with keen interest in climate change should note that the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) is having a blog action day on the subject, see http://blogs.dfid.gov.uk/. I’m checking with a contact in the Barbados office if there are any particular entries planned for Barbados.
GOVERNMENT’S NEW IMMIGRATION POLICY, announced in a ministerial statement by Prime Minister David Thompson, is now online.
The full text of the statement, made in parliament last Tuesday, can be found on four websites: barbados parliament.com; gisbarbados.gov.bb, investbarbados.org and foreign.gov.bb
The public is invited to share their views on the Green Paper: A Comprehensive Review Of Immigration Policy And Proposals For Legislative Reform by emailing gapplewhaite@ barbados.gov.bb
LIB,
Did go to the site you gave, and entered comment to Simone.
My comment is along the lines that there is a plentitude of lip service, about climate change, but few drive like I have for a number of years, for instance, a VS3CHB-1000CC . That is, A very Small three cylinder Hatchback less that 1000CC .
Land and Lawyers.
Why are there so many disputes about land in Barbados?
http://www.nationnews.com/news/local/payne-land-dispute-copy-for-web
Maybe because there needs to be full and proper registration of landholdings in Barbados, lot by lot.
Due to all of the concerns, there also needs to be a land tribunal, with the power to investigate holdings, with right of appeal to the High Court.
This overall land issue is another topic where transparency and accountability is necessary.
crusoe
crusoe forone the government owns a lot of the land and I don’t think the would want to expose their hand.
@ac, what ‘hand’ would the government be exposing? If government owns land it is NOT private property, but the property of the nation. Of all the land whose ownership that should be owned it is government owned land. It’s ours/yours.
If all the land that had once been sugar cane fields, had been planted with Teak and Mahogany, (we’d suggested all this long ago) we would have some of our own timber by now, and, we would have been doing our bit towards the reasons why world climate experts are insisting every nation needs to grow more trees. We won’t go into the importance for forests again, since that seems to fall on deaf ears, except to say that:
‘Apart from their supreme beauty and earth-cooling effects, plus their rain- inducing and water retention, forests are the lungs of the Earth.’
There is so much land that used to grow good sugar cane, here in Barbados, now a number of years later, strewn in nothing more than scrub .
Well scrub, true, is better biodiversity than dust bowls, like places once very productive in the USA have been allowed to become. There is a lot of lip service out there, with far too many organisations, governmental and otherwise, messing about doing little or nothing,… but lipping.
The little actual good we humans are doing to the Earth, allows sensitive and perceptive individuals to feel
justified in feeling we are actually not that far off from,…. just digging our own giant grave.
Paz y Esperanza, pues !
Dennis Get real ; Yes as a nation collectively the land the goverment owns belongs to the people .But as an individual to prove that any land which the goverment holds belong to me personally would not be and easy task.Get it
Don’t you too, get the feeling sometimes, we are in Plato’s cave, watching the world unfold on his screen. And we can’t reach out and do much about it, except, wish and hope for the best for all of us inclusive, no matter for our sins, greed, and inabilites ?
Who made us so, anyway, and for what rhyme or reason ?
At Bajan Global Report;-
“Father Killed 22-year old Daughter In Honour Killing
Star_and_Crescent_svgA Jordanian man was charged on Sunday with premeditated murder after allegedly stabbing to death his 22-year-old daughter because she became pregnant outside wedlock, police said.
“The father and his brother took the girl on Saturday to a doctor because she suffered stomach pains, and everybody was surprised to learn that she was six months pregnant,” a police spokesman said.
“On their way home, the father stabbed the girl with a sword 25 times in her stomach, killing her immediately as well as her unborn baby boy.” Keep reading →
“
Ian Bourne,
Perhaps, most of us would prefer, people following the Islamic faith stay in their country where they are sanctified, apparently, in the name of that faith, to carry out the slaughter of a daughter, or wife, through an adventure out of wedlock.
I can’t see why we would cherish such people here, or a religion that has, in recent years, been so badly maligned and mauled by so many of its present day generation of cleric.
The Australian offshore oil leak.
Since 21 August, the oil leak in the west Timor sea is still pouring. Two attempts have been made to stop it. They were saying the flow was 400 barrels a day, now they are not telling us. For more detail, google ‘Australian Timor sea oil leak’.
Damn right, such leaks are very worrying, very expensive, and not easy to stop ! Meanwhile the oil will do its damage, and reach beach somewhere.
well i like rihanna alot and her music as well but my problem is more and more i watch her in tv her carribean image is fading she is acting like an born american girls these dayz. and we as carribean people dont like it she should stay true to who she is. like sean kingston, sean paul, etc.
@ Anonymous
Rihanna is now an international star performing for international audiences and her roots are only relevant to herself.
She is now an American pop artiste and will make another 10 million with her new “edgy” album.
Alison Hinds,TC,Donella and Destra Garcia are our caribbean stars.
rihanna Whatever |can’t you thinkof a more interesting topic to talk about.How about the voilence in Barbados.
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites
‘ In these hard times, you want to save endless money and advertise across Barbados and the world, for Free ? Why not go to Craiglist. Read about it first and make your own decision, like other Barbadians are already doing. That is what I’m doing anyhow. You can buy anything, sell anything, and not have to pay a red cent for advertising. It’s up to you, brother. Drink a grog, and let Craiglist do the work for you, for Freeeeeee. ‘
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites
just go to the Caribbean section, find your
category go to post on right and place add
you can also upload your photos.
David
Hi bajan /canadian/USA folks…have anybody in Barbados every thought to themselves ..How comes native Indians in Canada and USA get STATUS cards !!!They only have to be 1/5 part Indian/native and they get Tax exemptions and a cheque every month from the Government !! How Comes black and white people who are the descendants of slaves in Barbados and USA DON”T GET NUTTING !! These First nations as they are called in Canada get land money and more from the government !! White and Mostly Black children of slaves in Barbados have never been compensated!!! Think about it !!!
folks VOTE independent!!!!
@black taylor with the axe, Canada’s native populations (and I apologize for not knowing the right term now, but let me use Inuits) are very different to slaves. They were indiginous and there before any European settlers, so they represent ‘dispossessed’ peoples, whether of just land or more assets. Slaves were uprooted and transplanted. You could argue that to correct the ‘harm’ to the offspring of slaves there is some reparation due, but it would never be the same as for Canada’s or the US’s or Australia’s aboriginal peoples.
LIB
And despite the benefit that the Canadian Gov’t provides for the First Nations of Canada I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Many of the Reserves are poverty stricken and many teenagers fall prey to drugs, glue/gasoline sniffing is endemic. Many natives who venture into the big cities succumb to drugs, alcohol and prostitution. Recently after an outbreak of Swine flu in one of the Reserves the Federal Gov’t sent in supplies which included an overabundance of body bags.
The phrase “benign neglect” applies to Canada’s treatment of its native population, perhaps the same applies to Australia’s treatment of the “Aborigines”
A little research on the Web would supply multiple horror stories
BTW the term for Canada’s indigenous population is First Nations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Nations
@Sargeant, thanks for getting me politically straight :-).
Thanks also for addressing a topic that I did not want to go into too much, which is that the attempts by governments to ‘give back’ to aboriginal populations has been fraught with many social, economic and political problems.
I would be interested if anyone has any information on how Caribs or Arawaks have fared in the Caribbean, where they still exist. I know there are communities in Dominica. We also have the aboriginal peoples of Central and South America, who are contesting land in places like Guyana, but also Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico,.etc.
AC said ‘October 22, 2009 at 9:10 pm
rihanna Whatever |can’t you thinkof a more interesting topic to talk about.How about the voilence in Barbados’
Or the violence in USA, or Afghanistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Trinidad, Columbia, worse still, Mexico!!!
ac@Johnson.
I hope you are not waiting tor the voilence in bim to reach the levels of the countries of the countries mentioned before you say sometime .it only takes a ripple to make a wave.
Barefoot, Illiterate, and Light. Small Is Beautiful.
Chota Singh is a solar engineer who decided he would teach barefoot and illiterate Indian woman how to stop inadvertently burning their homes down due to spilled kerosene lamps ( a too common occurrence in small villages across the illiterate world), stop the unhealthy fumes that pervade their home nightly, and, put an end to them having to spend another Rupee to buy ‘keropoison’ (my own word).
So he took on several village ladies who could not read or write, and probably did not have shoes either, (Hence, the name , Barefoot College ) and in a few months in Telonia, where the Barefoot College sprang its roots, turned these ladies into really efficient Solar Engineers. The status of these ladies, has zoomed.
In other words, he taught them how to build their own solar equipment, how to set it up, and, how to provide a flood of light in the darkness of their homes.
Chota had so much success with these ladies he went to Ethiopia, selected illiterate women from a few villages in that country, flew them for a few months training to Tilonia in India, and sent them back to Ethiopia with their own hand- built equipment, plus other equipment to build more units.
Next, Chota says, he will be going to South America.
I can’t quite express my own feeling on this project, except to say that, perhaps, the Earth has a chance, and E.F. Schumacher, over thirty years ago, is still very definitely right. ‘Small is Beautiful.’
Observing the strange loop weather patterns, it seems we are being evaded by the rain clouds, though near islands and everywhere else, seems to be getting some.
Hum, Hum, perhaps it is too much hot air from all the Barbados roads, all the wall to wall transport on the roads and the rising carbon monoxide, lack of trees, and all the hot air we tend to blow ourselves, one way or another yo incluyo.
Hi Colin
On the bright side, maybe we’ll get some dunks. Trees haven’t given sufficient to satisfy for a decade but I always did love them. Either it’s the lack of bees or maybe the weather- or both- they now have on a few.
ThrockM,
With the dry spell we have had for most of October, the stress on the fruit trees, which they need, should flower well if the rains pick up.
But this year we have taken much more than average rainfall already. We have beaten the total yearly limits of seven of the last 13 years, here in St John.
Bereft of agenda, dried out due to circumstances that might, any day now dictate, absolute change to location of 13 years of home, the longest home either of us, wife and myself, have even known, I’ve sunk back in time, to write this.
Back as a young seaman on a British merchant cargo ship, we’d stopped in Port Sulphur, to pick up, I suppose sulphur, but can’t remember. Port Sulphur is up the Mississippi, on the way to New Orleans. There, you have to watch out, during daylight hours, for really huge black horse flies, doing their best to get a taste of your blood while you work on deck. There is not much other in the way of attraction, except mangrove and swamp as far as you can see, and the swirl of monster catfish in the river.
Once the sun goes down, things get a lot worse. It becomes mosquito time, by hungry unfrightenable billions. You want to go on deck to get at the ice water tap, you better wear bad weather gear, and boots and souwester, , and anything that will do as a mask to cover your face. You need your cabin port locked down tight, if you don’t have a screen.
To face an assault by so many mad -hungry mosquitoes, after your blood, can turn out a nightmare you’d not want to have.
We had been given the story of two seaman who had gone ashore to taste the delights of the small Port Sulpher town, comprising a rum shop and a botakin , (botakin I’ll leave to your imagination, though those of us who have worked in Venezuela, are well aquinted with the term) but had passed out in ditches, on their way back their ship. The mosquitos, which I can testify, are as violent and ravenously hungry- persistent, as dogs owned by certain Barbadians who don’t feed them, made short thrift of the two ‘Foreign Meats’ while they slept in drunken stupor. The mosquitoes sucked them,… blood dry.
Well,… when juices run dry, one has to fall back on other memories, not so ?
Well I’m looking for garbage dumpers up here in St John. I’m going to sit quietly and hunt them, with a digital camera, so that I get their faces, and their truck numbers. They won’t see me, but I’ll get them on record.
But what use wil it be, a slap on the wrist in the courts, some bloody lawyer attempting to make out my photo work is fake ?
So let’s just go on filling the countryside and the ravines, with old iron, and fridges, washing machines, and unwanted mattresses, and beds,
televisons and rejected old building material, yesterday’s living room suites , all sorts of trash thrown from dark- glassed air-contioned SUV’s and high powered vehicles, busses, and minivans, … when we suddenly understand we have sold off the very best old Barbadian magogany pieces, locally build by hands of those who can have claimed were the sons of slaves, to people from overseas, for a dim, like Jean and Dina, round the corner posing.
And then, when we all suddenly fully undestand, what we have done to this once prestine island, and begin to fully appreciate it never deserved such as us, we can cry crocadile tears, if perhaps, we ever do understand fully, what we have done, or remember how to cry.
Colin,
Sorry to hear that you may move home, I take it, outside of this island?
Please do, when you move, stay in touch on this blog.
My best wishes that wherever you may go, you and your wife will be very happy.
Peace
I read the attached story in the Nation with some amazement. The guide noticed that all of the animals had died and said “I am not seeing any of the sea anemones. They had huge pink ones and then they got killed off, then they just had the small brown ones and you could take a little twig or touch them with your finger and they would pull back in, but they don’t seem to have anymore in here. I don’t know why. Maybe they all died out,” .
Hello….. perhaps they all “died out” due to the repeated poking of sticks and twigs over the years. These animals lived in a pristine environment for hundreds of years without human contact and suddenly all and sundry hike into the cave without any direction or control. Repeated disturbance of animals natural habitat tends to affect them permanently. Later in the same story we read of tourists stripping and jumping into a pool, need I say more?
http://www.nationnews.com/news/local/cave-storyANIMAL-FLOWER-CAVE-copy-for-web
Here’s a nice ‘power of blogs’ story from the UK, “Councillors resign en masse after criticism by blogger”, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/30/councillors-resign-en-masse-blogger. Interesting that part of this stemmed from attempts to thwart FOI access.
No, Rumple !
Not moving from the island. It is the home, its location, its trees, the trees we have planted and watered, the lawns we have forced back to full glory when we found them over -grown and holed, and used as old tractor and iron dump, the old house we saved from dereliction, the walks across canefields edged by sea views, the dark, lightfree nights filled with stars, the birds, bees, frogs. lizards, we have fed and watered, and loved. The close friendships of those families who live nearby. The freedom our cats and dogs have enjoyed.
There are lots more reasons, but those are the most unsettling, heart- breaking, and sleep distructive reasons such a home -leaving will cause. The place we call ‘Home’ though we have done all painting and repairs of every kind, was, sadly, never ours.
St Lawrence Gap tree desecration.
This is a strange island. On the one hand people are doing their best to plant and grow more trees, on the other , go and take a look at the absurd desecration to the trees in the St Lawrence Gap, just when we are in dry spell, and Christmas is coming in. The trees have been horribly mutilated.
BFP:
Now an example of WHY integrity legislation alone will not work, why there needs to be published reporting of project contracts and expenditures, with schedules of work done and payments.
The new Supreme Court complex leaking internally, with obvious problems in waste disposal indicates severe problems in contractors work, in management of the project and in whatever sign-offs were given by architects.
Town Planning cannot be blamed, as they would rely on plans authorised and then to be completed by contracts and architects and sign off by architects.
No doubt that this building was needed, but the execution has been another fiasco obviously.
No doubt also, that extensive remedial work will now have to be done, re-routing waste pipes etc, drilling walls etc.
More public funds down the drain.
Who will be accountable, the contractor? The architects? Both?
Unfortunate is a kind word for this.
I think they got the name wrong. It wasn’t Lorenzo, it is Lazarus
http://www.nationnews.com/news/local/News-DEAD-MAN-WALKING-FRONT-PAGE-LEAD
How come Marva Clarke is never available for comment? She was unavailable during the recent complaints about dress code for clients of the Registration Dept. and now she is unavailable to speak about the conditions at the new office. I don’t think Ms Clarke has anything to fear because if this problem surfaces this early it must be an issue with plumbing/construction. Does anyone know who had the plumbing contract?
Tax payers of Barbados take note, The Hilton was demolished because the roof was leaking.
http://www.nationnews.com/news/local/court-leaks-FRONT-PAGE-OTHER
@ Sargeant,
The lawyers in Barbados are so full of shhh that they caused the “overflow”.
We await an explanation for this plumbing failure.
Colin, where have the trees been desecrated in St. Lawrence Gap?
Hants
Good one
Nostradamus,
All along the sides of the road where you come in from the police station till just before you get to the playing field. It is possible they have not finished the job yet, and will go on through the length of the gap, since they were hacking away when I saw it happening on Friday morning.
They have savaged the small palm trees giving shade along the side of the road, worst of all. Better they had cut them down.
@Colin, maybe you could offer a few pictures to help those who do not know the area to show what has happened.
Dennis,
Wish I’d had digital with me when I saw it happening, the actual infliction being done to the trees in the Gap, I guess in the name of ‘Debushing’.
I doubt, very much, tourists , and not a few Barbadians these days, would approve of such barbarity, certainly not, in this new age of Green.
If you want to see a big system forming ominously to our North, take a look at the 8km loop on the Central American and Caribbean Water Vapor.
‘Ramsdis On Line’, satellite.
It looks like is should really be with the other Typhoons ‘cross tuther side of the world. Anyway, it is hopefully far enough North of us, though some island might get creamed by it . Check it on NOAA too.
Real openness with the public is still not a comfortable position for many decision makers in the Caribbean, private or public sector. I’ve been very interested to see how many Ministers and politicians have blogs or use Facebook or Twitter, as an example of some out of the ordinary thinking. Here is an extract from Britain’s Foreign Secretary (Minister), http://ow.ly/yUSc. Not Earth shattering, but symbolic.
The British flight tax.
The added tax the British want to jam on flights to the West Indies, could be lessened our side quite easily for British tourists and all others. Just cut back Barbados departure tax to what it was, when it was reasonable.
Doing this would make things less costly (especially for families and people living in other islands), for all people coming and leaving Barbados. The airport has made enough millions already, out of the hike they impossed. They can’t have it all their own way.
GAIA, as it is now, we dread having to go near. There is always some confussion or other, usually with the inability to keep the parking swing gates stocked with tickets, or working.
Oh, oh, oh, for the old days, when there was a nice face to let you in or out, and a pretty hand to touch with your coin.
@Colin, while a person available to deal with mechanical problems would help if these are regular, I would draw back from the notion of a ‘nice face’ and ‘a pretty hand’ to deal with. If my experiences at car parks in Bridgetown are any guide, there is a lot that would need to change before you got to that stage.
Maybe I express a more cheerful face, or I’m better looking than you are, dear D J. True, I do my best not to venture into Bridgetown, but when I have to, I seem to find good parking attendents to pass the time of day with, as I drift deeply in their lovely eyes.
@Colin, I’ve a pretty cheerful face especially when I first meet people. Just two instances at the car park adjacent to Carlisle House:
1. I ventured 3 times to greet the attendant with “Good morning.” Each time she looked down at her pad and pushed the ticket toward me. When I said that after 3 attempts I could only conclude that she was not paying me any attention, or could not hear, or was being deliberately rude, she told me that her job was not to be nice to people but to hand them tickets. I pulled off and parked. I came back and asked if she thought that there was no role for just being civil. She told me she was not paid enough for that.
2. I arrived at the booth and as I opened my window I could see that the attendant was enjoying her music via headphones. To my “Good morning” I got “Booya!” I said to her that clearly she did not hear me as well as she heard the music. She replied “How you expect me to do my job if I dont have my music?” I wont go into the rest of the dialogue.
I too do not go into town that often but I am often intrigued by the way people perceive what they do and the impact that has on those they encounter. Not saying these incidents are definitive but to me they are indicative.
Dear DJ,
Across the whole world, there are always the 2% AHs. Probably, at times, we have each been one of them, not so ?
@Colin, that average number could hide a much larger incidence in some places 🙂 But, I have a view that would love to see the whole population (or most of it) buying into the idea that the PM now calls “Team Barbados”, ie selling the Barbados ‘experience’. We presume that to be a positive, but for many it is not. As a letter writer points out in today’s papers what image do you have of yourself, and if it is not a good one how can you possibly expect things to be good or improve?
Yes, DJ. Our own lives are up to each one of us.
The natural Law of Karma, or Cause and Effect.
We create our own lives by the way we allow ourselves to think. There is only one thing we can have complete control over. Complete control over if we desire it. That is each our own minds. Nothing else. Our own minds and how we allow ourselves to think, and what we allow ourselves to think.
So yes, we can certainly all become ‘Team Barbados’, each adding whatever we can in our own way.
I just wish somebody would tell the people who throw garbage out of their cars all over the island, dumping it in the canefields, and on the beaches, instead of taking it home to their own garbage bins, that,… that does not help Barbados in any way.
Dumping garbage everywhere, seems to have become part of the culture. That is what actually dictates culture, for those who don’t understand what culture really is.
@Colin, there is an amazing amount of complaceny evident, and a tendency to ‘socialize’ problems (ie ‘government will fix it’), which people use to be inactive. We know the many examples and you cite wanton attitudes to the environment, with which I would not disagree. But look at other everyday ‘carelessness’, just from today (about 2pm): a yellow minibus stops just at the exit of the roundabout near Purity Bakery, heading from River Road, because a man was waving to stop. The bus stop was another 80 yards further ahead. There was nearly a serious accident on the roundabout as all the following vehicles had to suddenly halt on the roundabout. I have the bus number and will send it the Ministry of Transport. But what we tolerate is what we will become.
Good point DJ,
What we tolerate is what we become. So kick hell about what disgusts you, and to hell with the consequences of your action. I using my own name like you, ain’t I ?
Yesterday, late evening, I saw a parrot flying on one wing. Perhaps he had been too near the swamps, and they mistook him for a Yellowlegs, or a Plover, in the rain.
Anyhow, now, at last, I know the sound of ‘One hand clapping’ .
@Colin, “I using my own name like you, ain’t I ?” I do think that being prepared to stand up and be seen is part of it, rather than hiding behind the easy excuses such as ‘reprisals’ (or whatever). We should not be intimidated from doing what is right.
If you can, take a lesson from Pres. Obama on CNN talking this evening about setting the bar high in the (his) home so that children can work at excelling from a base that stresses that is what one should aim to do.
I championed Obama from the very start, but now fear for him.
Hush girl, for now ! If you find me I’ll give you a flute, and like Pan, show you how to play it. So that, when sometimes things get too hectic, or too much, and you need respite, you just need pick it up and play it, and wait a little for you strength to replenish,… to go again, renewed, indominatable.
There is a worse tax now that the APD. the airlines out of the uk are charging extra if you want to take more than 1 suitcase. this will affect the duty free sales in barbados dramatically since visitors may not want to pay the additional cost to take back items of interest
I’ve just had a dreadful report from a whole family who went to stay in a Mayaro beach house, ( East coast of Trinidad ), where they had stayed for holidays, many years.
I know Mayaro beach well, since as I young driller, I lived there in close proximity to the Guayagauayare oilfield where I worked.
Mayaro is a very long beach, stretching miles of sand and coconut trees. It was a hypnotic place, in the moon light, as enchanted as ‘err beneath a waining moon was heard, woman wailing for her demon lover’ (borrowed from the poem by Coleridge , ‘ Kubla Khan’. ) My brother’s name is Coleridge, because of connection with the poet back to my great ‘Gran fadder’ , but this is not what prompts this letter.
The family was attacked by an armed group, and went through a bad time which I won’t detail.
Once, there was a good police force in Trinidad, and then, when the colonial force was retired, came Bourroughs and his swat squad. (He later became Police COP). They shot, in Mayaro, in one year, 21 criminal, which put a simple end to violent crime, for a number of years.
But they, Trinidad, don’t have police lik Bourroughs around any more, or police like the motorcycle cop nicknamed ‘ Spice Masher ‘ who kept the roads running safe.
Will Barbados kindly insist, though we had a tendency to copy everything Trinidad does, will Barbados kindly insist, we never sink to such degeneration, and criminal authoritarian rule ?
“Draft of secret copyright treaty should give you chills”
http: etc bit.ly slash 1v6TTK
“[The draft proposal] would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators, and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation. The chapter also completely prohibits DRM workarounds, even for archiving or retrieving one’s own work. … As it stands, the leaks suggest Internet users around the world are headed for a new regime of IP enforcement — a culture of invasive searches, minimal privacy, guilt until innocence is proven, and measures that would kill our normative behaviors of file-sharing, free software, media downloading, creative remixing, and even certain civil liberties.”
Welcome to murder of Internet as we know it, if allowed…
BFP, pls release my suggestion, you need to read it too!
@Ian Bourne, this is a draft by whom and for where? Your tiny URL would not open.
Is this really happening to the “mother country” ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/6510223/No-respect-no-morals-no-trust—welcome-to-modern-Britain.html
As the world turns.
British Airways lost $400 million.
Cutting 3000 jobs
AirCanada made $277 million.
WestJet fares to Barbados $293cad return from TO.
Barbados hot. Mullins Beach looks great. Add some MountGay or Esaf and life is as it should be.
Here is some reference information about crime in Barbados that could be useful.
Crime & Justice Bulletin 1: Recorded Crime in Barbados 1980-1999.
Click to access bulleten_1.pdf
Crime & Justice Bulletin 6: A Study of Homicide in Barbados
Click to access Bulleten_6.pdf
Summary of murders — Tourists murdered in Barbados, 1989 to 2009:
2009 (murder): Canadian tourist Terry Schwarzfeld. Schwarzfeld, 60, was walking along a secluded section of Barbados’s Long Beach when she and her daughter-in-law, Luana Cotsman of Guelph, Ont., were mugged on Feb. 28. Barbadian police said the two women were beaten with a piece of wood and knocked unconscious. Cotsman was treated in hospital and released, but Schwarzfeld never recovered. She was flown back to Ottawa where she died in a hospital on March 18. She was described as a respected charity worker and leader in Ottawa’s Jewish community. Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/03/26/ot-090326-barbados.html
2009 (near murder): Suffolk, England, barrister Andrew Thompson and his wife Isobel were walking back to Sandy Lane Resort after dinner on June 4 when they were held up by two men who had to dodge through busy traffic to reach them. Mr. Thompson was shot almost immediately after one robber demanded his wallet and the other snatched his wife’s purse. The shot ripped through his lower leg and caused major damage. Mr. & Mrs. Thompson are veteran Barbados vacationers, visiting the island some 20 times and staying at Sandy Lane 10 times. They say they’ll be back – but they wish that someone had warned them and their fellow Brits that gunpoint robberies and shootings of tourists happen. They also complain that none of the other Sandy Lane visitors heard about it in the days afterward and so might have been at risk themselves while walking in the same area after Mr. Thompson had been shot and robbed. Source: https://barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/british-tourist-shot-near-sandy-lane-resort-barbados-on-june-4-2009-cover-up-by-bajan-press/
2008-2004: No tourists’ murders found.
2005 (murder): Police in July detained three suspects in the slaying of a British tourist who was shot and killed as he struggled with a gunman during an apparent robbery. A July holiday in Barbados turned into a tragedy as a British couple watched their only child shot to death by armed thugs who had broken into the family’s villa. Daniel May was 19 years old when he went to help his father who was being beaten. He was shot twice in the chest and died. The British papers say that Daniel May was the first British tourist to be murdered on Barbados. (May or may not be true?) Source: https://barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/daniel-may-holiday-murder-in-barbados-family-in-pain-as-killer-is-sentenced/
2004-1994: No tourists’ murders found.
1993-1989: No tourist murdered on Barbados. Source: http://www.popcenter.org/problems/crimes_against_tourists/PDFs/deAlbuquerque_McElroy_1999.pdf
1988: According to the Barbados government report Crime & Justice Bulletin 3: Crimes Against Visitors to Barbados 1980-2000, there was one visitor homicide in 1988.
The Royal Barbados Police website does not post this data online (too bad): http://www.barbadospolice.gov.bb/: The Royal Barbados Police Force prepares monthly summary reports on crimes against tourists. These reports are quite detailed and include the nature of the offense, the location where it was committed, the time of day, the number of victims byage, gender and nationality, the number of assailants, weapons usedif any, estimated dollar value of what was stolen, and mode of entry into an apartment or hotel room.
Dennis Jones (aka Living in Barbados)
Wha’ you doin’ cross hey..? You change colour all of a sudden?
@PFBFAB, I comment on subjects as they interest me, where ever that may be. I did not know there was a comment line, and that it has a colour aspect–however one wishes to interpret that. Where are its boundaries and who drew them? But should I hold a mirror up to these comments and wonder if erom yna tnemmoc dluohs Sennid Senoj?
Dennis I see dat yah could spell backwards den..! Its more fun when yah stan’ pun yah head…LOL! Listen you better not let dese people cross hey know wha’ colour you is…!
On the matter of how much time MPs should devote to Parliamentary duties, a Tory Mp, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, has reportedly said (reported by Jim Knight MP on Twitter this morning) in a public meeting that he will devote 2 days a week to Parliament and 3 days to his other work, as a ‘gentleman farmer’. I find this interesting as I believe that his direct descendents built Drax Hall.
@PFBFAB, I’ve never really been bothered by my colour: I’ve had it all my life. If it’s an issue for others it’s their problem not mine.
The need to see things from all angles is less necessary if one tries just being oneself, rather than turning yourself around to suit an audience. The ability to see things from many angles, and upside down and back to front (which may be genetic as my kids have it too), means that solving problems is easier. It’s been a great way to see when people are not telling the whole truth, so I try to not divulge it too readily 🙂
Puppets and note burning.
This desk is littered with note- scribbled bits of paper. Under all the notes are notepads crammed with notes going back years. Years of notes, observations, and leftover- forgotten moods.
When Jacob Bronowski wrote in his book, page 58, (The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination ),
‘There are no events anywhere in the Universe which are not tied to every other event in the universe.’ Something clicked in my head. Vividly I understood what he meant, but can’t explain , since it is rather a metaphysical statement like,… the koan, ‘The sound of one hand clapping’.
Yesterday, on Wikipedia, I was looking at the ‘Art Of Painting, by Jan Vermeer. It is a famous 1666 painting, and many people have tried to unravel its secrets. After all, it is just a painting of an artist painting and looking at his girl model, who is carrying a trumpet in one hand, and a large book in the other. She is wearing a dark blue dress and hat, all very 1666 modestly. There is an impressions of a smile on her face as though the artist who is in the painting himself, had said something suggestive she found amusing. But there is so much more in and about the painting than just that.
And so if, you too find yourself captivated like so many artists and critics have been since the 1666s over the painting, and never manage to arrive at a satisfactory, or even lucid decision about it, you can join the club.
It’s all rather like so much of world events, beyond reason of any kind, difficult to pin down; and yet, deeply connected by invisible threads. And we are much like puppets, just dangling on strings.
Perhaps we just need to take life day by day, and stop attempting to reach for the unimaginable, tying ourselves in knots, even as we search.
Sometimes answers come surreptitiously, on a walk in the silent darkness of night under trees. I’ve been thinking it is about note- burning- time, too.
There was a terrible accident in Hastings on Friday, with two elderly tourists hit by a speeding ZR overtaking (I understand) a car that had stopped to let them cross the road. They are both in Hospital with the gentleman reportedly in a serious condition.
I want to get in contact with Dennis Jones the economist and Dr Robert Lucas the Biotechnologist.
I want to get in contact with Dennis Jones the economist and Dr Robert Lucas the Biotechnologist. Please contact me at 249-9100
Kammie, you can contact Dennis Jones at his blog ‘Living in Barbados’
Dennis Jones,
I blame myself for having been, inchoate. Please forgive me . Friends spelled ‘Denis’, I know as men.
Certainly sorry for my giant Booboo, but you could still get a flute, if you want, and I could still show you how to play it, if you want. I make simple flutes capable of playing anything you want on, classics included, if you want. Economics, does not really come into it though, I must warn you.
@Colin L Beadon, it passed me by so clearly no offence. The flute idea is intriguing. I taught myself the piano when I came to Bim a couple of years ago to help with music if and when my littlest one started. Now she’s started violin and I was looking for one to practice with her. Flute had not come into my thinking but if it is guaranteed to play what I want, then only a fool would throw away that offer.
Sundowner,
Sorry to hear about the accident, do you mean that speeding ZR’s still exist, after all this time, no one has done anything about them?
Really, I have seen the same, ‘years ago’ behaviour very obvious recently, by a few of these vagabonds.
But, they rule the road, no one has authority over them, see?
Next time you get a ticket, ask a ZR driver or owner to intervene for you.
That way you can do as you like, pay a little fine and keep driving, no bad how you drive or what you do, they are the authority on the roads.
DJ,
Thankgoodness. !
The true classical flute I tried to learn recently, was too much for me at my age, though I used to play piccolo and clarinet, centuries ago, besides guitar, accordian, mouthorgan, some piano, and sang like a lark before my voice broke.
The classical flute I found here in Barbados, used up too much breath, but the flutes I make, just six hole true flutes,( unlike a recorder which is more a form of whistle with note holes) needs very less breath; and you soon find out how to blow across the tube
( like blowing on an empty beer bottle ), to get a soft flute tone.
Anybody can make these flutes, if they go to the net and learn how. Once you have the few tools and the correct size drill bits, the flutes take about 20 minutes to make. Hot water 3/4 pvc pipe is the simple material.
I can assure you, you really can play any class of music you want on them. Two octaves, all the flats and sharps. 423-0477. Call. Colin.
Crusoe,
Like we need import some Texan traffic cops here for a while. Dem B’s don’t take no ‘S’ from anybody. I like the sign stuck up on many roads in Houston though. It reads, simply,….
‘ Drive Friendly.’ And you better had, if you don’t want one ‘o’ dem big Texan jumbies breathing down your neck, while you’re looking in the very big bore handgun, and smelling the gun oil.
It’s not that difficult to control traffic, if you are mean enough to get it done.
The same old ‘ol talk. Nothing new.
You could read the papers all you want, about Global warming. Most what you glean is local politicians wanting to start begging for big money aid. They talking in Billions US, now, though exactly how they arrive at such figures, suggest they have the advanced perspective of Gods, or are highly intelligent scientists, who have been to all the right colleges where they have spent the best part of their young years; or, they are just very wistful in their thinking.
But nobody is detailing what needs to be done, or what could be done, in Island Barbados itself. Like they all ‘fraid, the politicians, to lose votes, eh ? Like nobody wanted to suggest anything when I sketched out
the question a few weeks ago on BFP.
Well I’ve got my list of things we need to do, and there are some who really, honestly, impetuously, avidly, would write a similar list. But most people, including all politicians, would not want to hear, or contemplate such measures, in any form.
So,…lo que sera, sera. No hay nada mas de decir
Since nobody else is adding , at this time, demensions in- appropiate to what had always seemed nornal to local comment, I’ll add this:
How come, in the recent surfing competitions, the winning men win 1000, while the winning ladies only win 400. ?
Is this still the age of West Indian Chauvanism,… un-repentant , despite all the Global and local tripe about ‘Time for The New Order’. Why must I feel so often, the need to puke ?
Hallo ? Anybody out there? Or has BFP been shut down, for some ignonimouse reason? Or has everybody scooted off for a free lunch, where, we hope, local pork ( the best in the world) in the main dish.
Hallo Colin,
I’m here (Clive).
Wat’s up?
Read page 5 of the Advocate.
The CZMU is proposing a 1km boardwalk from Sunset crest to Heron Bay.
Are they replacing beaches with boardwalks?
Are boardwalks the only solution to the beach erosion problem?
I have a burning question as to whether our Personnel Administration Department also tows the line and show support for class consciousness? It is known that a very close friend of a priest who works within the department and was privy to a dispute that involved the said priest and a layperson has been for years allowed to spitefully play monopoly with the livelihood of persons.
How can we explain why persons are strategically assigned to departments where their qualifications are deemed by the PAD to be irrelevant to the duties but are required to do the same type of work as workers whose qualifications are relevant, while receiving less payment – almost $500.00 per month.
Also, if in 2000 you sent an employee to work in a higher salary scale (Z16-11) after being stuck at Z24 for 12 years, what sense would there be in assigning that employee to a post in the Z23-17 scale three years later in 2003? Have you not sent them back to a financial position similar to, or worst than that which they had come from in 2000? Simply because that employee was not “appointed” in the particular post to which they had been assigned in the Z16-11 scale?
This scenario represents not only a form of corruption but also an erosion of the employee’s dignity. Take warning, those of you who have been in support of this injustice on this employee, the Cosmic will reward you according to your deed very soon.
Hants,
Not only that. What is appaling is the Million that now has to be spent, to work over the existing broadwalk, already. What ? Are Broadwalks going to save us against Global warming ? Shouldn’t we be conserving finance for Global warming, or are we expecting the world bank to bale us out when we, and the rest of the third world, really need it ?
Barbados is not third world any more. Those who think we are, need to get around and find out. It is time we begin to except our own responsibilites. Building and spending vaste sums of money on broadwalks, is not what accepting responsibility is about. There are much more important issues.
We shall not accept rebuke of our spelling, except, should somebody pledge we a brain transplant not effecting our relish for Barbados pork, Trini humour, St Lucian Piton, Bequian
fishpot stew, St Vincent Airie, the view from the hilltop in Mustique, looking south down the islands to Carriacou on a clear early morning just before sunrise, with fish jumping in the channels, and frigatebirds and terns fretting overhead.
It’s nothing to do with boardwalks, or broadwalks either. Why spoil islands with them ? What a waste of money, good timber and concrete, to be swept away at the first real Mal Tiempo.
And that’s a memo !
The Debate on the Catholic Church.
We’re assuming, since nobody has broached the subject on BFP, few people saw the debate with the motion:
“ Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world ?” Sunday 8th November 2009. BBC.
It was truly, a most interesting debate, though the Catholic Church got trounced so badly. 1876 votes against, 268 for. If you Google it up, look for the ‘comments’ section, varied, sometimes amusing, and highly interesting, we can assure you.
Of Youth !
I remember her, from years ago, when she was very beautiful and every young boy my age, wanted her, dreamed of her , searched for her in every fete, along every beach.
Was it just something with the way her hair swept your face when you danced, or the quick look she gave with her un-naturaly dark eyes telling of many bloods, or the light touch of her lips on your blood- flooded cheeks, or the perfume she insisted upon, you could follow like a bloodhound through her people’s home when you were looking for her.
It was the old days, very long ago now, it seems, though still- startling in intensity, as if, just yesterday, the moon had risen on Mayaro, and the dynamic energy of youth, flitted in the chords of the guitar in your hands, and love promised,… eternity, if you could wait for it, and if you could sleep at night,… with the moon flooding your face, spasmodically, through coconut trees.
Colin, are the cracks are beginning to appear?
Today’s Telegraph:
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 20th, 2009
237 Comments Comment on this article
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)
When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.
One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:
“In an odd way this is cheering news.”
But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.
Here are a few tasters. (So far, we can only refer to them as alleged emails because – though Hadley CRU’s director Phil Jones has confirmed the break-in to Ian Wishart at the Briefing Room – he has yet to fess up to any specific contents.) But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:
Manipulation of evidence:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:
Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted.
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….
And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”
Hadley CRU has form in this regard. In September – I wrote the story up here as “How the global warming industry is based on a massive lie” – Hadley CRU’s researchers were exposed as having “cherry-picked” data in order to support their untrue claim that global temperatures had risen higher at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the last millenium. Hadley CRU was also the organisation which – in contravention of all acceptable behaviour in the international scientific community – spent years withholding data from researchers it deemed unhelpful to its cause. This matters because Hadley CRU, established in 1990 by the Met Office, is a government-funded body which is supposed to be a model of rectitude. Its HadCrut record is one of the four official sources of global temperature data used by the IPCC.
I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Anthropenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an aeroplane.
The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.
Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.
But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true,it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.
Straight Talk,
However, this does not mean that alternative energy is not necessary.
Unless one also discounts the theory of ‘peak oil’.
We do need alternate energy, the way oil is being consumed.
Straight Talk,
I’ll get back to you on that one.
I’ve written it, but need to comb throught it. Wish I could agree with you though.
There can hardly not be Global Warming. We humans are burning way too much carbon, in drastically ever- growing volumes in every form, for what ever we attempt to do, mainly because of the result of population explosion, that drives our insatiable need.
Just a taster from the CRU emails describing how they produce the data which the world’s governments are relying on to introduce Cap and Trade.
Apologies for the length, but if you persevere you will be able to judge for yourself the quality of the science, and scientists, of the Climate Research Unit, which is driving the IPCC agenda.
Hope you’re sitting down!
Data horribilia: the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file
Posted by Devil’s Kitchen at 11/23/2009 03:56:00 AM
With the CRU emails having been examined, it seems that some people—mainly techies—are really starting to dig into the data files. These files are, as far as we can tell, temperature data, modelling results and other such useful files, i.e. these are the files produced and worked on by the CRU teams, as well as considerable amounts of information on—and code from—the actual computer modelling programmes themselves.
In other words, these are the guts of CRU’s actual computer models—the data, the code and the applications.
And they are, by all accounts, a total bloody mess.
So, come with me on a wonderful journey as the CRU team realise that not only have they lost great chunks of data but also that their application suites and algorithms are total crap; join your humble Devil and Asimov as we dive into the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file and follow the trials and tribulations of programmer Ian “Harry” Harris as he tries to recreate the published data because he has nothing else to go on!
Thrill as he “glosses over” anomalies; let your heart sing as he gets some results to within 0.5 degrees; rejoice as Harry points out that everything is undocumented and that, generally speaking, he hasn’t got the first clue as to what’s going on with the data!
Chuckle as one of CRU’s own admits that much of the centre’s data and applications are undocumented, bug-ridden, riddled with holes, missing, uncatalogued and, in short, utterly worthless.
And wonder as you realise that this was v2.10 and that, after this utter fiasco, CRU used the synthetic data and wonky algorithms to produce v3.0!
You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You won’t wonder why CRU never wanted to release the data!
You will wonder why we are even contemplating restructuring the world economy and wasting trillions of dollars on the say-so of data this bad.
The hacked e-mails were damning, but the problems they had handling their own data at CRU are a dagger to the heart of the global warming “theory.” There is a large file of comments by a programmer at CRU called HARRY_READ_ME documenting that their data processing and modeling functions were completely out of control.
They fudged so much that NOTHING that came out of CRU can have ANY believability. If the word can be gotten out on this and understood it is the end of the global warming myth. This much bigger than the e-mails.
To base a re-making of the global economy (i.e. cap-and-trade) on disastrously and hopelessly messed up data like this would be insanity.
The main issues being that the techies at CRU don’t seem to have been able to tell what the hell was going on with the code, let alone anything else.
I shall quote user Asimov to give you a flavour of the confusion that seems to have been rife at CRU.
There’s a very disturbing HARRY_READ_ME.txt” file in documents that APPEARS to be somebody trying to fit existing results to data and much of it is about the code that’s here. I think there’s something very very wrong here…
This file is 15,000 lines of comments, much of it copy/pastes of code or output by somebody (who’s harry?) trying to make sense of it all….
Here’s two particularly interesting bits, one from early in the file and one from way down:
Programmer- ” 7. Removed 4-line header from a couple of .glo files and loaded them into Matlab. Reshaped to 360r x 720c and plotted; looks OK for global temp (anomalies) data. Deduce that .glo files, after the header, contain data taken row-by-row starting with the Northernmost, and presented as ‘8E12.4’. The grid is from -180 to +180 rather than 0 to 360.
This should allow us to deduce the meaning of the co-ordinate pairs used to describe each cell in a .grim file (we know the first number is the lon or column, the second the lat or row – but which way up are the latitudes? And where do the longitudes break?
There is another problem: the values are anomalies, wheras the ‘public’ .grim files are actual values. So Tim’s explanations (in _READ_ME.txt) are incorrect…
8. Had a hunt and found an identically-named temperature database file which did include normals lines at the start of every station. How handy – naming two different files with exactly the same name and relying on their location to differentiate! Aaarrgghh!! Re-ran anomdtb:”
Uhm… So they don’t even KNOW WHAT THE ****ING DATA MEANS?!?!?!?!
What dumbass names **** that way?!
Talk about cluster****. This whole file is a HUGE ASS example of it. If they deal with data this way, there’s no ****ing wonder they’ve lost **** along the way. This is just unbelievable.
And it’s not just one instance of not knowing what the hell is going on either:
Programmer- The deduction so far is that the DTR-derived CLD is waaay off. The DTR looks OK, well OK in the sense that it doesn;t have prominent bands! So it’s either the factors and offsets from the regression, or the way they’ve been applied in dtr2cld.
Well, dtr2cld is not the world’s most complicated program. Wheras cloudreg is, and I immediately found a mistake! Scanning forward to 1951 was done with a loop that, for completely unfathomable reasons, didn’t include months! So we read 50 grids instead of 600!!! That may have had something to do with it. I also noticed, as I was correcting THAT, that I reopened the DTR and CLD data files when I should have been opening the bloody station files!! I can only assume that I was being interrupted continually when I was writing this thing. Running with those bits fixed improved matters somewhat, though now there’s a problem in that one 5-degree band (10S to 5S) has no stations! This will be due to low station counts in that region, plus removal of duplicate values.”
I’ve only actually read about 1000 lines of this, but started skipping through it to see if it was all like that when I found that second quote above somewhere way down in the file….
CLUSTER…. ****. This isn’t science, it’s gradeschool for people with big data sets.
Now, I’m no climate modeller or even a professional coder, but it does seem to me that there is just a teeny weeny bit of confusion evidenced in the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file. I mean “teeny weeny” in the sense that whoever wrote this file obviously hadn’t got a fucking clue what was going on—and not for want of trying.
But there’s more—here’s another taster, a few posts down from the one above, from Asimov’s analysis of the HARRY_READ_ME.txt (I’m trying to give you a hint about what’s going on: the paydirt’s coming soon!).
Christ. It gets better.
Programmer- “So.. we don’t have the coefficients files (just .eps plots of something). But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless.. take the above example, the filenames in the _mon and _ann directories are identical, but the contents are not. And the only difference is that one directory is apparently ‘monthly’ and the other ‘annual’ – yet both contain monthly files.”
Lets ignore the smoking gun in a legal sense, and think about the scientific method for just a moment….
I do believe this is more than one gun and there’s some opaque mist coming from the “fun” end. I won’t claim it’s smoke, but holy ****, this is incredible.
I think that we are all starting to get an impression of what is going on here, right? Piles and piles of undocumented and inconsistent datasets and the techies in CRU utterly baffled by al of it.
But what are they actually trying to do—what is this HARRY_READ_ME.txt all about…? Yep, it’s over to Asimov, a few posts down again (what can I say: I like the man’s style!)…
I’m just absolutely STUNNED by this ****. **** the legal stuff. RIGHT HERE is the fraud.
Programmer- ” These are very promising. The vast majority in both cases are within 0.5 degrees of the published data. However, there are still plenty of values more than a degree out.”
He’s trying to fit the results of his programs and data to PREVIOUS results.
Yup, somewhere along the way, some stuff has got lost or corrupted. Badly.
This programmer—Ian “Harry” Harris—is attempting to recreate… What? The data? The applications and algorithms that ran the original data? It seems to be the latter, because Harry carries on.
Programmer- ” TMP has a comforting 95%+ within half a degree, though one still wonders why it isn’t 100% spot on..
…
DTR fares perhaps even better, over half are spot-on, though about 7.5% are outside a half.
The percentages below is the percentage of accuracy
However, it’s not such good news for precip (PRE):
…
Percentages: 13.93 25.65 11.23 49.20
21. A little experimentation goes a short way..
I tried using the ‘stn’ option of anomdtb.for. Not completely sure what it’s supposed to do, but no matter as it didn’t work:”
Oh yea, don’t forget. He’s getting 0.5 and 1 degree differences in results… while they are predicting temperatures to a supposed accuracy of tenths…
Needless to say, worse is to come…
Ok, one last bit to finish that last one off:
Programmer- ” ..knowing how long it takes to debug this suite – the experiment endeth here. The option (like all the anomdtb options) is totally undocumented so we’ll never know what we lost.
22. Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of Tim’s labyrinthine software
suites – let’s have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing to do that will be the definitive failure of the entire project..”
You’d think that where data was coming from would be important to them… You know, the whole accuracy thing..
The IDL gridding program calculates whether or not a station contributes to a cell, using.. graphics. Yes, it plots the station sphere of influence then checks for the colour white in the output. So there is no guarantee that the station number files, which are produced *independently* by anomdtb, will reflect what actually happened!!
Programmer- ” Well I’ve just spent 24 hours trying to get Great Circle Distance calculations working in Fortran, with precisely no success. I’ve tried the simple method (as used in Tim O’s geodist.pro, and the more complex and accurate method found elsewhere (wiki and other places). Neither give me results that are anything near reality. FFS.
Worked out an algorithm from scratch. It seems to give better answers than the others, so we’ll go with that.
…
The problem is, really, the huge numbers of cells potentially involved in one station, particularly at high latitudes.
…
out of malicious interest, I dumped the first station’s coverage to a text file and counted up how many cells it ‘influenced’. The station was at 10.6E, 61.0N.
The total number of cells covered was a staggering 476!”
Keep in mind how climate models work. They split the world up into cells and treat each cell as a single object… (Complexity thing, only way to get any results at all in reasonable times, even with supercomputers.)
Seriously, this really isn’t good.
Bit more to add to the last, then off to bed, so I’ll stop spamming. 😛
Programmer- ” Back to the gridding. I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation – apparently linear as well.
As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless.
It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective – since we’re using an off-the-shelf product that isn’t documented sufficiently to say that.
Why this wasn’t coded up in Fortran I don’t know – time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn’t enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it’s too late for me to fix it too. Meh.0″
“too late for me to fix it”
I guess it doesn’t matter that we’re talking about data that’s basically determining the way the WHOLE ****ING HUMAN RACE IS GOING TO LIVE for the next few CENTURIES?
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Programmer- “The problem is that the synthetics are incorporated at 2.5-degrees, NO IDEA why, so saying they affect particular 0.5-degree cells is harder than it should be. So we’ll just gloss over that entirely ;0)
ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently – I have no memory of this at all – we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?
OH **** THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”
Let me just repeat that final line:
“There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”
And I will just sign off with another comment from Asimov…
The data itself is a HUGE unknown, even to the researchers themselves as they attempt to decode what’s gone before.
Sure, the emails indicate the possibility (and certainty in some cases) of fraud. That one file PROVES HOW UNRELIABLE THE DATA ITSELF IS!!
They “lost” the original data?? I believe it now. v2.10 was run with a ****ton of code that was undocumented, made no sense and was FULL of bugs. Is v3.0 better when half the data from 1980 on is SYNTHETIC?!? Or when it used the output from the buggy 2.10 version (which is all they had) to produce NEW data?!?!
What the hell has been going on over at CRU…? No wonder they didn’t want to release their data…
I shall try to find some time to make a more succinct posting at some point over the next few days but, believe me, the main upshot is that none of the CRU data is worth a single shiny penny.
ST: And the fate of the world depends on the quality of this data, Lord come for us.
I shall try to find some time to make a more succinct posting at some point over the next few days but, believe me, the main upshot is that none of the CRU data is worth a single shiny penny.
I want to go to Cuba for a hoilday , my family live in canada and they will be going too what i really want to find out if they could booked me from over their to go with them or do i have to go in here in Guyana for my own visa .
You should obtain your own travel documents from the consulate closest to you.
Dear BFP,
Should I assume that my every comment has to be moderated and then never printed that this is your way of saying that I am not welcomed. Sad so farewell.
Straight Talk, A Reply.
The world population is exploding.
More oil and coal is being used, more energy of every kind is being burned in one way or another. More cars, trucks, trains, aircraft, ships, are being built and coming into use daily, more homes and businesses are burning all sorts of energy in so many ways, all coming back to more carbon use in their construction. All this amounts, in all cases, to the use of fossil or carbon fuels of every kind. Look at the night glow of little Barbados at night now, and then check out what it was like in 1980, when the nights were mainly dark, or lit by stars, or moon light. Then check the lighting of the huge world cities. Some, are doing their best to cut back on this, but not Barbados.
If you want to insist all this extra carbon usage around the Earth, is not contributing to global warming despite what satellites are showing us, what flooding and ice cap and glacier melting is showing us, what is happening on the major mountains chains across the Earth, including minor ones like the swiss alps, then that is your prerogative.
I prefer to heed, and hedge, the distinct possibility Mankind is responsible for Global warming, and that we should act with diligence and forbearance.
If the motion is correct, that GW is taking place due to Man made overbearance, then in our acting, we place ourselves ahead of the game. Should we not act, and it turns out in due course, to be the true case, then we shall have missed the bus, and an apocalyptic die-off shall be our lot whether it is Global warming, or, as you insist, Global cooling. It does not make much difference which way it goes,… the huge amounts of energy needed to service the every- surging human demand, goes up exponentially with the growing world population.
Have you ever lightly over-fed fish in a fish tank ? It is a worthwhile occupation. One should take note of what happens as the fish population starts to expand, and what happens to the chemical and biological quality of the water. The Earth too, like a fish tank, is finite.
Rumboy,
Give dem at BFP, a chance nah. Don’t be so impetious. You make great contributions, and they are published, we’re sure.
I will sir.
Our new, great local fortune. 72.1 FM
All our life we’ve been avid listeners to world shortwave radio. It started off with very old plug in coil type, warm-glowing tube- type radios. They needed three batteries. 2 volt wet cell, a lantern- type 9 volt dry cell, and a much larger 90 volt dry cell.
Such radios had a particularly pleasant sound on their speakers, and very large dials for their tuning. You needed a long- stretching outside antenna.
The problem with short wave radio today, is that there is far too much electrical interference, especially in Barbados from leaking power lines and transformers. When we have a power cut, shortwave listening becomes once more,… a great joy here.
Anyhow, now, we have at last, somebody in CBC who has recognised the BBC on a local FM station, would do a great deal for the whole image of Barbados,…. since, few young people read any more, if they can possibly help it.
Perhaps now, some youth will tune into 72.1 F.M, and begin to appreciate there is a whole world out there with so many interesting things going on, besides fully saturating island music of dubious quality, plugged in full time jamming their ears,…. and their brains.
Former Chief Immigration Officer gunned down few months ago.
Now Former Asst Commissioner of Police murdered and tied up a few weeks ago.
Have the two been linked?
What did they know.
Immigration is the entry and exit out of Barbados.
Police work is the work against crime.
Was there someone who entered Barbados in their tenure, a criminal, who is still here?
Would have to be a big one. Maybe operating under a false name?
It would be good to examine records of all North American and European immigrants during their tenure, people who satyed here and check the legitimacy of their identities.
What else could it be?
BFP: You need a “submissions” thread. I wonder if you might find this interesting? http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/730878–commonwealth-shame
BFP I hope that you have prepared a major Barbados Independance post allowing us to write about all the good things that we like about our country.
A day of “sweeties an comferts” would be a welcome break from the doom and gloom on this blog.
Did anyone else hear when that ignorant idiot, Olutoye Waldron, who was commentating on CBC-TV at the Independence Parade last night, referered to the GG as “Sir Clifford Husbands-Straughan”? What low depths we have reached when a supposed-to-be-educated journalist can’t get such an important name right on a public broadcast? The Military Parade was of its usual high standard, but the entertainment was utterly piss-poor, except for the Barbados Youth Orchestra and the Merrymen, who, incidentally, were distracted by the lousy sound system and Emile even told the audience he hoped they could hear the Band, because they couldn’t even hear themselves! Not good enough.
Hants,
What is truly good about Barbados, is what resides in the hearts of its people.
With that inherant goodness, not much more is needed to be said, except,….
Happy Independence Day to all, and keep safe on the beaches, the sea, and the roads.
Well said Mr Beadon, we as a nation have so much to be proud of and I think that we spend far too much time looking at the bad side. I love this country, my country and I am so very proud to be known as a Bajan. Just the other day I was having a drink in a pub in London and was told in no uncertain terms that Barbados is the most beautiful country in the world and by strangers who instantly had recognized my accent.
How dreadful, the coming death of the beauty and serenity of Six Mens. How dreadful. How very dreadful, that an island should give away part of its very soul, for a few dollars more.
Sad is right but what intrigues me is that at no time can the average Bajan enter. Its like they are all fashioned on the old Yacht Club table and yet they are allowed.
Rumboy,
It is the very inherent goodness of the Barbadian heart, that allows the island, piece by piece, to be stripped away, out of bounds.
The ‘stripping away’ is called progress. My own term for it, would be unprintable. I’m sure Bath too, is soon on the list, the only unspoiled safe bathing spot of beauty and tranquility, left for the Barbadian on the East coast.
TALK ABOUT CLASS DISCRIMINATION IN BARBADOS!!
There seems to be a small group of psychologists here in Barbados, who, because they had the privilege to go overseas and study, seems to be successful in influencing and participating on behalf of the MOH to determine who gets to be registered as a psychologists. They have to remember that they were the persons WHO REGISTERED SOMEONE AS A “COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGIST” IN 2007 WHO HAS NEVER EVER CONSULTED A DSM-IV, WHO NEVER DID AS MUCH AS ONE (1) HOUR IN CLIENT-CONTACT, WHO HAS NO REAL COUNSELLING SKILLS AND WHO CANNOT SUPERVISE STUDENTS FROM U.W.I. I have bona fide proof of this incident. I believe the person may have gone to Cawmere school with a few of them who were on the council. Talk about class! We heard that they had been planning for the students of the particular programme at UWI. They warned the students but I believe that the students did not believe they were going to carry out their threat of disallowing anyone from the programme to be registered as a psychologists. Some of them cannot even write a psychological report of substance.
Al Gore and his cronies are going down.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_evidence_of_climate_fraud.html
Well the Global Warming summit at Copenhagen is coming off Dec 9th I think and Obama is expected to sign a document which states that USA is responsible for CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) which we all breath out and they will be paying monies to third world countries for their participation. This is nothing but a fraud. Third World Countries will sign expecting that they will get money but in the end we will end up paying a Carbon Tax which will come out of our pay cheque. This of course will be hard on the third World Nations which want to bur coal for energy and may want to do farming etc. Will have to pay a tax for flatulence. Watch this video you will see what I mean. Freepress I really hope you will allow this email to go through so that others will see the fraud. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40
Annette Williams,
Bravo! The inherent goodness of the Barbadian heart, needs to reach its limits and speak out against such travesty.
It is such a travesty that leads a society, slowly, to disintergration on a grand scale, cutting away, strand by strand, at everything that made this society better than most others,… across the world.
The Japanese, and their fishingnets, are suffering from giant jellyfish plugging their nets on a grand scale.
Since the Japanese insist, dispite world disgust, on decimating whales, dolphin and porpoise, in large numbers which feed partially on jellyfish, then need we cry for the Japanese, or feel sorry for them?
On our new FM Station, for
BBC and Caribbean news, I see I wrote
72.1 FM instead if 92.1 FM. Hope I didn’t lead anybody astray. Sorry if I did.
It is a great, informative and interesting addition to our airwaves, better than BBC television these days, with all its constant time- consuming, irritating- long time broadcast- boring, jingles they don’t seem to know how to change.
( And this is from more than a half century of BBC shortwave and TV using, aficionado. )
Wonderful, wonderful
Copenhagen. Remember the tune ?
Scientists seem to have been able to perfectly work out what happened during Big Bang, and right through to the uncoupling of the primordial soup, into the creation of particles that gave us suns and planets, goats, flying fish and dumplings, and drove scientists into quantum physics.
All this great science dealing with the Universe at large, its billions of light years, all of this being discovered from the late 1800- 1950’s, and much of that science having been actually put to valid use.
But the scientists of the modern age, with all the technologies and satellites available to them now, don’t seem able to come up with a consensus about global warming on the Earth.
It seems obvious to me, with the Earth mountain chains, losing their ice caps right across the globe, and the broken ice shelves bumping into New Zealand as they melt,, and the carbon count mounting exponentially with the world human population growth.
0.7 degrees, they now say, is the Earth’s mean temperature rise. The anti-warming clan had been scoffing it was only 0.5. But if that small rise is enough to melt glaciers and set so many forest fires across the Earth, then,…. What happens should we see a full 1. degree ?
Copenhagen will be interesting, but small islands won’t junk their SUVs or restrain new vehicle importation, or cut back on their street lighting, or give away free energy saving bulbs, or stop building great high energy intensive air conditioned hotels, or really get serious about a continuous planting of many more trees, or stop people leaving their cars running with the air conditioning on while they go into a restaurant or a supermarket ( I saw, a prime but bad example, a Barbados Light and Power SUV , doing just this outside a restaurant on the South coast. )
And so it goes !
You may be interested in the story in today’s UK Guardian on the Four Seasons project, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/06/barbados-counts-cost-credit-crunch? I also add a to it on my blog, http://livinginbarbados.blogspot.com/2009/12/four-seasons-project-british-press.html
The State of the Earth.
This, I have taken from the book by James Lovelock, ‘ The Revenge of Gaia’, after listening all day to the Copanhaven Global Warming debates.
Page 7. …….it is much too late for sustainable development; what we need is a sustainable retreat !
Who will listen , does not come into the picture . What ever happens, we’ll just have to live with, for there is no other way most of us could ever comprehend, or ever attempt to understand.
This is taken from ‘ Basic Energy Facts Part 11. Google.
‘ In 2001, the industrialized countries used 4.7 tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) per capita. Sub-Saharan region used 0.6. The world average was TOE 1.7 tonnes per capita.’
There are interesting graphs on the seven pages. TOE per capita is carefully explained.
Canadian Farm Workers not getting they Home Savings on time!
As a hard working Canadian farm labour, I join with the other workers how year after year finds it offensive and disgusting after working for 8 months in Canada and agreeing to the 25% deduction for home savings, but after the program has ended and you return, find it difficult when it’s time to receive your funds so you can live and support your family for the 4 months you’re here before returning to Canada.
We’re really concerned with the length of time it takes before you can receive your hard earn funds, and think the Labour office should take their hands off the workers money and let them do their independent saving of such, if after they return home they have to consistently call and ask for they hard earn funds as if they were begging for it.
I’m not sure if the liaison officers and the workers in the labour office truly know how hard we have to work for our living, and the harsh conditions we have to undergo sometimes in the cold! I personally blame it all on the expressive and endless tardiness of the various government departments, which needs to be aggressively reformed and shake up.
These people sit back in the comfort of their offices and seemingly drag their feet on critical issues, merely because they aren’t any real systems in place which ensures checks and balances in the various government sectors, everyone seems to be a law unto themselves as a result, and I think the country and all its citizens deserves better if it’s to move forward in progress.
I personally hope the labour department will find a more speedy form of depositing the home savings (funds) of the hard working Canadian farm workers, so it will be at their disposal after they return home and not have to be hassled for its.
Canadian Farm Worker
Canadian Farm Worker
So why won’t you get all your fellow workers together, then swamp the office responsible, for a peaceful SITOUT,…. till you get paid. Carry a couple signs so they know why you are all there.
That is the sort of thing people do elsewhere. What is wrong with doing that in Barbados ?
@Colin L Beadon
We don’t do sitouts. De rain might come down an we en wanna get wet and besides, de sun does be too hot.
We gine wait.
Thanks for your interesting suggestion Colin, but Barbadians aren’t known as a people of protesting, and it’s almost useless having 1 or 2 persons protesting… Bajans would rather criticize and fight agains each other first, before forming coalesces to fight the festering issues plaguing our Country…
Hants, exactly ! So we decide to bawl and lament, nash we ‘teedth’, bite we pillow, like Sparrow nashing he ‘teedth’ for,… ‘Sandra, where are you tonight I wonder ‘. Ain’t so ?
The above aside,…Bet you didn’t know Hants, Sandra was a carnival beauty queen in Trinidad, but, but, but, she was, and is, a Bajan.
Canadian Farm Worker.
You mean, fight the issues like water up to our necks with Global warming ,while we wait patiently for the billions expected from Masa Day Done. You see,… Masa day ain’t done. He holding the purse strings, and causing most of Global Warming.
But no Master worth his salt, respects a body who just sits down bleeting, and takes all that comes to him, without making true waves in the attempt to get what he deserves. Bleeting is bad Karma.
Please Excuse.
I’ve suddenly got the most dreadful feeling that the new- coming Copenhagen protocol will so overheat the ‘The Third World with its $$$Billions gift’, it may easily spell the end of the third world,… and the West.
Then What ?
The gift certainly won’t stop Global Warming, or the rising carbon problem. If anything, it will make it a great deal worse.
@Colin L Beadon
‘Hants, Sandra was a carnival beauty queen in Trinidad, but, but, but, she was, and is, a Bajan.”
If it is who I think it is, I think Sparrow skin nHer.
Her name was not Sandra though so I could be mistaken.
What’s gone wrong with the office which processes the Police Certificate of Character (adjacent to the central bank?)… Now after waiting outside of this office on Wednesday, 25 November, 2009, from 6:20 am. to 9:25 am., along with scores of persons not know what was going on, was then quickly told after three hours of waiting, that the office won’t be opening…
My question is, What’s going on in Barbados? How can you close this vital office of government without giving us an alternative so we can have our Police Certificate of Character process…?
Now it’s clear to all who’re not naive, that this country is in utter chaos, without any real sound leadership, if truth be told. We have an administration while in the opposition, which fought for the reins of leadership, but now it’s in their hands, can’t seem to manage running the affairs of this country. And with a high unemployment rate and not having a Police Certificate of Character which is ordinarily a prerequisite for getting hired in Barbados, what is this government really saying to the people of this country? Especially those who’re in need of employment such as myself but can’t get it because we can’t produce this piece of document? It’s truly disgraceful, and I think that we’ve jump clear out of the frying pan right into the fire, when we gave this new administration the reigns of power almost 2 years ago now.
May God help us all!
The Seven members of the ALBA trade block, are all Socialists countries, or would be Socialistic states, their Strong Men hell bent on passing laws allowing themselves lifetime occupancy, and tightly jailed or dead competition, if possible.
Nothing wrong with that, once you appreciate that few socialistic states ending up being run by dictators,
amount to little more than a horror story,… for those citizens trapped within in their boarders.
Ah, I’ve just found one of my notes written some months ago. It reads, ‘Socialism, in most cases, is dictatorship in a thin veneer of disguise.’ Open my eyes, if you think I’m wrong.
With the tread of Christmas on our doorstep, and the hedgehog of wonderful Copenhagen remaining undetermined, I’ve switched to playing Handle’s Messaih very loudly on large borrowed speakers. If Sparrow of Kitch, or Red Plastic Bag, had come up with an equal Christmas glorification, I’d be playing that too.
The music is more uplifting than listening to Wonderful Copenhagan, or Un-wonderful Afghanistan, or third world countries moaning for all the funds they expect from the West who have already,… way advanced Third world life, far beyond what it would have been like if they, ( The Third world) had been left to their own devices.
I’d relish to hear, if you think I’m wrong. And I’d relish to know just what the Third World would intend to do with such funds, should their gift be bestowed to combat the adversities of Global warming ?
Nobody in our Islands, seems to have managed to come up with a steadfast plan forward, though frivalites obviously ,……can be dreamed in profusion.
What non industrial Countries, don’t want to Hear !
It seems moronic that countries, not industrialized, should blame those who are, for Global warming. After all, everybody flies in Aircraft, drives in cars, sails in ships, uses micowave ovens, cookers, washing machines, computers, earth moving equipment, giant cranes, tractors, et al, etc. Everybody uses petrolium products, gas, wood, plastics, for all we are worth. So we are all, all, all, responsible for global warming.
One does not see any island, or counrty, now saying they will cut out the use of any of all this . So what is the blame game for, exept,…
I won’t need to finish that sentence
Anyhow. It is not a new story, this Global warming thing. James Lovelock and the famous physicist Sir Fred Hoyle, wrote about the carbon problem over thirty years ago. I’m sure there were others who saw it coming, and warned too. But who has read all the books ?
And who will stop all the air, sea, and land traffic, and stop the importation from highly industrialized countries, which, if those countries so concerned with the industrialized ones, wanted to put their acts where their mouths and lips pout, could do. All they need is stop importing, aint’ so ? Then they could sit back and play their cards and slap down their dominoes, with what may, or may not be left, while everything, including their own GNP, goes zooming down the drain.
So what are we blaming the Industrialized Countries for ? They didn’t plan it that way, and obviously didn’t want any part of mutual destruction either.
I must be on another planet. Where is Straight Talk, where
Rumplestiltskin. Where somebody to shed some licks on me ?
Or is my work not worth rebuke, or answering, or should I die without fuss, with this old year’s going ?
Hey Colin I’m still on this planet, watching in amazement as these latterday Canute’s act our their delusions in Copenhagen.
AGW is a busted flush, as will be proved by the release yesterday of the true Russian data, the manipulation of which is at the core of this latest tax wheeze.
A brilliant scheme if they could have held it together for just another six months, but common sense, true scientists and Mother Nature intervened in the nick of time to save us from this tyranny.
If their discredited IPCC reports CO2 is up. we need more money to fight it.
Should the level decrease…. ah, see it’s working. Let’s spend more to continue the good work.
Carbon taxation to mask the reality of an oil downslope after last year’s peak production.
The absorption of heat by atmospheric CO2 has been shown to be logarithmic in scale, i.e. if we halved our present production it would have a miniscule impact on the greenhouse effect, conversely if we doubled our consumption of fossil fuels, even less effect.
The distinct lack of solar activity these last few years is much more worrying.
No solar wind to shield us from the cloud seeding cosmic rays, and we get cooling, not warming.
This is a much more likely scenario say the sunspot watchers.
Records of which go back hundreds of years, unlike those of average global temperature.
The recent quiescence is similar to a period prior to the Maunder minimum which brought about the 200 year long Little Ice Age.
But whatever, the planet will do what she wants to do, and no amount of political posturing or computer modelling will make the slightest difference.
Good to hear from you, ST, but I’ve just winessed a mass die-off.
It only seems to have effected the several years keeping of Talapia, and not in the least the Guppies who live with them. The fish all live aimable in an ancient 13000 gallon stone rainwater tank, their main purpose in life being to consume any mosquito hatchlings, ( but I do help suppliment the survival of the fish with a slice or two of bread ).
Anyhow, suddenly, I’ve witnessed a mass die-off of Talapia, fifteen croaked-floating -dead. Having never witnessed this before, except the occassional one, I’ve been strung out for a reason. Perhaps it is Global warming, or the Christmas cooling, do you think ? But I doubt that.
What is much more likely was me cutting Oleanda boughs that were meshed and hanging over the top of the tank, and twisted into part the BRC cover, so that I could not remove all the boughs I’d cut. And then, you see, the leaves dried and fell.
Oleanda, like Alamanda, is very poisonous, and should be kept away from munching age children, pets, and obviously fish too.
Interesting perspective In today’s Nationnews.com
Canada and the racial divide.
Hey Hants,
I saw that and like everything there’s probably some truth in what the prof. says. The other truth is that he’s probably making $100k+ a year as a black man teaching at the University saying how unfaired he is. 🙂
I hear him about “poverty” in Canada and no chances etc, but I don’t hear him saying about how crippling it is to young men when 80% or something like that in North American black communities have no fathers to speak of. And that has nothing to do with racism, it has everything to do with single motherhood as a government subsidised career. Probably the most destruct thing to ever happen to black families with the exception of the values promoted by BET Black Entertainment Television.
Nice try BFP.
The Professor is telling the truth about the reality of Canada.
I Hants have seen first hand the problems Black people and others of colour face in Toronto.
I have also seen the efforts being made to give Black youth opportunities to succeed and there are a lot of success stories.
I will not comment further except to say that all my life in Canada I have been told “you’re not really black” by well meaning Canadians.
To a red nigga bastard like me ( yes I am illegitimate ) that meant “we find your light skin tolerable but your really black family..not so much.
A lot of us have had a good life in Canada for varying reasons but we are well aware of the plight of less fortunate Blacks.
A lot of “Canadian whites” are open minded and reasonable.
A lot are racist. Sorta like Bajan whites.
“OTTAWA — A 42-year-old Ottawa woman returned home from her grandmother’s funeral to be handcuffed, strip-searched and accused of drug-smuggling by Canadian customs agents at the Ottawa airport Tuesday night.”
If this had happened in Barbados BFP would on pun it in a flash but I live up hey an see it pon TV so uh no fuh sure it happen up hey.
Doan mine me BFP.
Only in Canader eh!
Hants,
You ‘soundin’ like me, little bit on de other side of a Christmas Spirit, or two, or three, not so ???
You ‘tec’ care up in Snowbird Country, ya hear ?
Colin,
Hi there Sir. Apologies not answering you sooner, I will ponder on your posts.
Touching music truly that you mention. I like a variety also.
From young, I heard much from classical to calypso, as music was enjoyed by the larger family.
Actually, Xmas is not complete without the Merrymen’s music, brings back memories of childhood.
Of course, three classics that must be heard each Christmas are Nat King Cole on The Christmas Song, Bing Crosby on White Christmas and Burt Ives, Holly Jolly Christmas.
For more recent fare how about Sarah Mclaughlin, truly sings the season lovely. Check Youtube for this.
Would be remiss not to mention Singing Francine belting out ‘Hurray, Hurray’, also on Youtube.
Methinks this special music reflects the hope we all carry, that the world shall have a better day.
Hope, joy, love and peace.
What more could we ask to dream for?
Peace, Best Wishes to yourself and your wife and family, for a Merry Xmas and Healthy and Happy 2010 and beyond.
R.
@ Colin L Beadon
Starting today I will be freeing my mind of the troubles of the world and focus on good will and the Christmas Spirits which are waiting to be released from de likka cabinet.
Up here I still have a “Bajan” Christmas and even though it cold outside it is very tropical inside.
Merry christmas to you and all the bloggers.
Hants, Rumple,
Erther Kit sang, long ago, ‘Baby it’s cold outside.’ Who could forget Nat’s contributions to Christmas, Bing’s, or Bert’s ? or even the Trini, Pat Castani’s ‘Kiss me for Christmas’, that went world wide too.
Recordando a Dios, todos los errores son purificados.
Felix Navidades, pues! Hombres, Amigos y Paisanos.
Wonderful, Un-wonderful Copenhagen, short-changed from a pole position centred on issues to save Mother Earth, sidetracked into a bickering match about who is responsible, as though there are countries who don’t use petroleum or all the world’s products, including fertilizer, tourism and food, manufactured and/or shipped using energy produced through petroleum’s use.
One might just as well ponder, futile, how much more carbon tonnage the weeks of Copenhagen produced.
There’s nobody writing.
So I guess one should do something. Population Restraints, ‘Expired’ dates, and, raining swords of Damocles.
With century after century of inter-religious friction, bloodshed, mayhem, going back since the dawn of storytelling, it makes one wonder if religious belief is not a nature-induced mechanism evolved to assure Mankind never desists from war.
There was a time, if you chance to go way back into the history of homo sapiens, when Yahweh, Allah, Jah, God, and Sol Evictus, where not known, nor indeed existed, nor Tammuz, if you go back far enough beyond the Ancient Sumerians.
You’d still have to step back more than 30,000 years though, (some say much further) to leave the Hindu Rishi, and his oldest world- recognised religion far behind.
So when you research and can find no more than a few Sun, Moon, Mountain or Animal worshipers, you’ve then got to about the end of the line as far as Gods are concerned. Back in those days population control forced by draught or famine, seems to have taken place by selecting some of your own kith and kin, and offering their ripped out hearts to the Sun, the Moon, a Mountain, or the Animals you hunted. That system solved some of the problem of population control, though perhaps the blood- incensed Incas, Aztecs and Maya, took it a little too far, and so unwittingly reduced their own numbers, it hastened their demise.
There is no doubt the advent of the more recent religions (and more modern weaponry), caused enough rivers- of- blood to control population growth a lot more conveniently, no matter how much “Love Thy Neighbouring,” was etched into their parchments, scripts, tablets, headstones, church fonts, or cried from their pulpits, or wailed / screeched, from their minarets.
The problem today is that our religions are tending to become more personal, except for one who wants to take over the whole Mother Earth, if it can. And it may indeed yet provoke the Mother of all wars,… as compensation by nature, for the recent apparent lack of a better population restraint method.
But for more sensible people, God is in the heart of the beholder, and no weapon is needed to make that point, and nature may have to look for another alternative, like real global warming or freezing, or a much more potent and virulent disease, or a sizeable meteor strike, to partially quell the intensity of our ardour.
Failing this, and due to our most voracious appetites, the prognosis for Mankind’s continual reign here on Earth, steadily approaches the flagstones trod by the Dodo, while species and diversities,… pass their ‘Expired’ dates, left and right about us,… as though it t’were raining,… Swords of Damocles .
And so Mother Earth goes! Or she doesn’t!
The ASS, and raising sugar prices.
It is said that ‘What goes around comes around.’ And so we will be seeing sugar prices rising as the crop failure in Brazil and India burns its swathe.
We, in our islands, can blame our local contingent of the ASS, Anti Sugar (cultivating) Society, all those who said sugar cultivation was a dead duck, and building businesses, hotels, houses, polo and golf courses on sugar producing land, was the way to go, ‘And to hell with sugar’.
True, far less sugar in our diet and drink, would certainly reduce much of the medical and dentistry profession’s wealth, but sugar cultivation kept our islands beautiful, and a moderate flock of people in work, and like Sea Island Cotton, helped keep the nose of our foreign exchange levels above water. The reason being– we really knew, once, how to grow sugar well.
All that is about to change. Like India, we’ll be buying imported sugar shortly, if we can find and afford it. And we can blame the ASS for that.
Colin, Well written on the nature of Earth and Life.
Yes, time goes on and nature will too. Despite civilisation, man still destroys man, even moreso than nature.
So, it is only a matter of…time.
For the New Year, Very Best Wishes to You and Yours.
Peace
Sir David Simmons steps down and you all are hungover except George? http etc www dot nationnews dot com slash news/ local/ sir-david-FRONT-PAGE-LEAD
Extract;-
Thanks Ian, we were on it already, but yes we’re moving a little slowly this morning for some reason.
Headline “Barbados Labour Party Loses Control of Supreme Court”
Your headline should read ” First woman tipped to be Barbados Chief Justice”.
That should be more pleasing to Shona and Auntie Moses.
Barbados is making progress. We could also have a “Double First” female Prime Minister” if MIA and the DLP wins an election.
Is Sandra Mason a valid replacement? All Sunday Sun is doing is looking at Bermuda’s Justice with locks… Would Christopher Birch be too young?
correction
“MIA and the BLP”
@Ian Bourne
Prehaps it is you who is looking at Bermuda’s Justice with locks.
I will confess to admiring the locks a whole lot.
I have never seen Court of Appeal judge Justice Sandra Mason and know nothing about her qualifications and potential to be the CJ of Barbados.
Ian can you tell us the reason Christopher Birch would make a better CJ?
Sandra tends to be brutal regardless of circumstances, I know when her own son was rude to a teacher at school she humiliated him on Speech Day and when I said to her you’d have to give me lashes (within reason) or take away privileges she looked at me like I was from another dimension…
Birch I know from school days, if you stole from a store and it is to feed your family he may be lenient the first time demanding community service or make the miscreant find a job….
If you appear again and you did nothing to redress your circumstances? It is only then he would throw the book at you, he takes no crap yet shows compassion in appropriate proportions based on what is before him.
The Left Hand of Creation, written by two eminent astronomers, John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk discussing the fields of particle physics and cosmology to provide theories to expand our knowledge of the Universe and how it started, etc.
Most will find it tough reading, if you’ve not read much on the two subjects before. But you don’t have to understand everything, to get a finger- hold on what it going on.
Here is a cut from Chapter six, ‘Conclusions and Conundrums’, which more or less cuts us as much slack as we can expect, even if the subject is somewhat known by any of us.
‘Our answer to the request for information about the universe before the “big bang” should strike the reader as necessarily a little evasive. We are limited to answering questions about the universe only in terms of things we now know and understand, but yet we are still far from understanding all of physics. We might even wonder whether a complete knowledge of physics is sufficient to understand and explain what the universe is. Conversely, we may inquire whether the observable universe contains enough evidence for us to uncover the underlying laws and principles that govern its existence.’
Our language and our minds are Earth-limited, still, we seem to have gone a long way in unfolding some of the mystery. The book is a joy, provided the Universe intrigues you, and if you read it a little at a time, and don’t get bogged down in the middle, and so miss out the final couple chapters.
Colin:
Just a little reassurance for you from the University of Illinois, the official recorders of total ice mass.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=09&fy=1980&sm=01&sd=09&sy=2009
Thank You 118.
‘ The Earth and the Apocalypse, plastic and motocycles. ‘
That is reassuring, 118, except we seem to be facing snowfalls like I remember in England during the Second World War, when we didn’t have the heating they have today, or the warm thermal clothes, socks, gloves,
boots, hats, or duvets to go on your bed. And food was short too.
Judging much of the snowed- in, or snowed- up world today, perhaps we’re facing a swing the other way. We’ll have to wait and see what summer brings.
But it does not matter what anybody says, we can’t go on pouring CO 2 into the Earth system like we are doing, or cutting down trees, or breeding like rabbits, or covering so much of the Earth will roads and concrete structures.
‘Apocalypse’ was D.H. Lawrence last book. It was a blast against materialism and intellectual modern man. Man! Lawrence wasn’t seeing nothing yet !
The beach at Bath here in Barbados, is full of plastics, of many many sorts.
Why are motocycles allowed to have exhausts that make an ear- splitting racket as they cut in and out of traffic. Don’t we have traffic police? Where have all the new police motorcyles gone ? Trashed already ?
Why is Chili such a success? Is there something the rest of Latin America and the West Indies can learn ? Chili has no oil or gas ( found so far). There is something to be learned about Chili, and its economics, and obviously its politicians.
OOOPHS. Chile, not Chili. Sorry.
@ Colin L Beadon
January 11, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Why is Chili such a success?
Chile has been a hot [;-)] topic amongst economists for decades, sometimes viewed as a ‘miracle’ in the way they managed to generate high economic growth during the 1980s-2000s, and a vindication of a particular branch of economic thought and policy (as expounded by the so-called Chicago School–essentially a monetarist and free trade driven set of policies).
Chile has copper and its management over the decades is also an interesting study.
Thanks Dennis,
I went to the web on Chile later. It is an interesting country. Seems they have gold and other minerals too. But copper and gold don’t account for Chilean success. All the oil, has not helped Venezuela, Nigeria, or Trinidad. There is something endemic in the people of Chile, allowing that success.
@Colin, the ‘curse of riches’ is well known, and in economic terms it is often called ‘Dutch disease’, where mineral wealth has the effect of displacing other economic activities (especially manufacturing). Chile has had its share of economic failure, so that argues against there being something (positively) endemic, as you call it. Do not forget the Pinochet years, which laid the base for the ‘miracle’. Not many countries would want to go through that, whatever the outcomes.
The economic policies Chle pursued have been rare (not least for their consistent application over several decades), and they seem to have worked well for them. The countries you cite have had anything but good economic policies, even though they have all been following very different paths.
Haiti and Trinidad.
We must all do whatever we can for Haiti. We can start by praying for them. It has never been easy there in that Island, now it seems an apocalypse has fallen upon them, and the four horses have trampled through.
What is just as distressing: the Swiss Report on Trinidad and Tobago. WP8-gangs-guns-governance-Trinidad-Tobago. pdf. 55 pages. The report on T&T, is just like a really dreadful earthquake taking place in slow motion.
Can’t think of any other way to explain it.
‘ To have, and to have not.’
If you look back at Haiti in the distant past, it made its own decisions and has had to live by them. Other islands, also French ones, were not so impetious. In recent times up to a couple days ago, nature has taken a frightful toll on the people of Haiti.
Their past, and recent, has made Haitians tough, undefeatable, undauntable. They deserve every ounce of our respect, and help, and all our tears.
The people of Trinidad, on the other hand, have spawned their own problems, and turned , through the years, what should have been a paradise,… into an oil-filled hell hole.
What Trinidad once was, is now an unbelievable memory, whose telling,…. few of younger age would believe. As Sparrow’s recent song capsulates, singing on Trinidad today, “This Is Madness.”
And Trinidad never had a hurricane, though just a few ground trembles. We’ll leave out its civil wars.
As a Caribbean citizen, I thank the United States of America and the international aid agencies, for their efforts in Haiti earthquake relief.
Respect earned and good deeds will be rewarded.
Are you aware Roy Morris plans to start a Newspaper with old Nation staff? Will he have sections on rape or sexual harassment?
This was in last night’s Biz report on CBC (Morris)
Could you please inform me if it is against your “rules” to submit a comment under “anonymouse.org”? I have done this numerous times and my comment NEVER appears. I do not use vulgar language, nor do I indulge in racism and other issues which are banned on BFP. Yet you seem to object to persons submitting comments under “anonymouse org.” Or is is just ME that you object to?
Hi Enquiry
Many folks use Anonymouse.org, hidemyass and other services to post comments. No problem here as long as you pick a handle and stick with it.
Don’t know why some comments don’t post. Anonymouse sometimes gets flagged for possible spam, but we mostly find them soon and free them like we just did with yours.
BFP I have a comment in moderation.
With the deep dreadful plight of Haitians, how can anybody think of anything else ?
My friend who already put in over 30 years in the government service borrowed some money from the Student Revolving Loan Fund sometime in 2008. She had to borrow the money because after pleading with her Ministry to assist her in paying for the course, and after getting a letter from her boss with the promise to pay for the course, she started the course but 9 months later she was told that she could not be assisted. She was to begin paying it back the loan in 2009. She did a masters degree and was sure that she would find a part-time job where she would make some money and pay back the money without any problems.
The first problem she faced was that: she applied to the Paramedical Council to get registered and them tell she that she degree did not give she sufficient training. They even tell she that if she try to do any part-time work that she would be fined or imprisoned. She write the Student Revolving Loan people and explain to them what she position is in terms of paying back now. She even ask them to turn it into a grant and they tell she no, and then send the deduction form down to the same Ministry that refused to give she help. Truth be told, my friend get reduced to a beggar and a borrower since 2002. Every month, she does got to ask for help to buy food. I know this for a fact. She send information to the Student Fund to show them how she disposable income is spent and they ignore all the information and send the deduction form to the Ministry. I feel they trying to send the girl down to the mental hospital. Y
ou know what it is to pay a mortgage, a car loan, a consolidated loan, car insurance for 8 months, buy special food, buy medication because the medication that she gets for asthma and diabetes dont work. They make her body retain water and she would complain that her feet feel like rubber. Where is the humanitarian element in the people at the student revolving loan? It is unfair. That girl in all the 30 years she was working, never ask the government for a cent to puruse no studies. Now that she is over 50 and do not have any financial help, she cannot even get a credit card. She financial situation is very bad. You imagine that wid a masters, people with first degrees working for more than she and they are senior to her? That girl get nothing but unfair treatment in the Public Service. My Gopd, now that she want help and she put she cards on the table, they ignore she and send to the Ministry of Home Affairs to get she money garnished with the Loan Fund premium when they can at least grant she even a part of her request?
Governor of the Central Bank.
MARVELOUS. At last we’ve somebody surfacing with some weight. Dr Delisle Worrel has risen to the occasion of Barbados Sugar and Agriculture.
( Business Monday 18th Jan 2010. Advocate. )
Can those of us who have been pointing all this out for years, now sigh with relief, or should we draw further into the chasms of despondency while Barbados is stripped of its agricultural land, hectare by hectare, replaced, by everything except where sugar or crops could find root, livestock find grass, or trees spread their cooling rain – collecting shade ????
After the Earthquake in Haiti,
please raise your hand if you want to live in a highrise !
Not me, Mr. Beadon. The trouble is that lowrise of two or three stories is no good if the construction is no good.
Do you see the pictures from Haiti? Notice what is missing in every one of the pictures?
Rebar.
Small Money,
What I see missing in the photos of Haiti, is stability, of every kind. Stability that has been missing for a great many years. Their very unfortunate earthquake, was just the bottom line.
Who can not admire Haitian resilience ? Who won’t give a helping hand and wish them well with our all prayers ? As for the remote possibility of new, radical change, such hope stills the heart, unless, dare I use the words, a long drawn out ‘ administrating occuption’ of sorts, is considered ?
There was a biased article published in Fridays Nation newspaper, on a predicament about 60 Dover households are currently being faced with.
Should 1 poor man (he drives a Lexus SUV) be allowed to destroy an existing residential neighborhood (of over 40 years). By opening a bar & restaurant at the beginning of their gap.
He has no liquor license, very little parking and plays his music loud enough for even the Grahame Hall residents to hear.
Don’t the residents of any neighborhood have the “right” to object to the issuing of a “new” liquor license for their area?
I would be interested in hearing your comments and suggestions
The newspaper today had an alarming piece today, on Bartenders here especially at a specific nightclub, slipping date rape drugs into young girls drinks. Is this true? It is surely extremely disturbing.
If I had a daughter and this happened to her, somebody would have to run.
Like hell.
Please inform me of what the African Nations are doing to help Haiti. I think I must have missed it in the news. Thanks.
@Flytrap,
Did you try to find out what African countries are reported to have done? If so, what did you find? I knew that Senegal had offered land to Haiti for settlement, and a quick search on the Internet (10 seconds) unearthed a report on what other African countries have done so far–mainly offers of cash and support for relief efforts, see http://www.modernghana.com/news/260681/1/african-nations-join-world-community-to-help-haiti.html.
However, remember that what is reported in media you may read or hear or see is not the whole story, and many offers of help may go unreported.
cool. thanks for that
Listen Ah went to the meeting but left before it started. Choir,Performances,Opening Remarks,Prayers,PM Address,Featured Address by Chris Sinckler and Constituency Report John Boyce and Question & Answer was too much for me an EAGER BEAVER. Ah left when I realise it was a Constituency Conference and the Agenda format. The verbose Patrick Gollop was wicked in the young people parlance. Guess who I was told behaved like they where drunk as hell? Tickle me I may tell you.
Fear can incapitate or motivate a person, thus the Fight or Flight doctrine. Recently we heard of confrontations between the media and overzealous police officers. This overzealous behaviour is mostly common in animals who hunt in packs like wolves thus the Pack Syndrome. Rational thinking person becomes irrational due to the collective of personalties.
I must say I was apprehensive in my decision to comment on this troubling behaviour of Law Enforcement Officers behaving like they are the Law. But as a supporter of Law and Order and the Police I must be fair in my social commentaries. When asked if I am not afraid I will be profiled and end up having an unfortunate accident or incident. My retort was my fear is much greater for not speaking out as remaining silent will only seek to encourage unruly behaviour. It seems if a Barbadian is fed his constitutional rights in a bowl of soup it will be drank in ignorance.
Mr Commissioner, Citizen Journalist can only assist the Royal Barbados Police Force in the solving of crimes and ensure there is no deviation from what is right and ethical in the execution of their duties. Thus the most recent incident in which photographer Mr Jimmy Gittens was held for over 90 minutes and then released without been charged must be strongly condemned. He reported to me he was asked to move his vehicle while filming an incident which he did. However he continued to videotape incident from afar only then to be detained. Are you telling me that not a Sargeant or Station Sargeant at the station felt it decent enough not to infringe the freedom of a law abiding citizen. How do people who do wrong sleep at night? We must remember the laws of physics unlike man made civil law cannot be defied .The Laws of Retribution are laws of the universe and cannot be altered.
It is even more vexing when the citizenry is so silent and the heirachy of the RBPF does not speak to this recent incident in an effort to maintain public confidence. We only need to look next door at our neighbours to see what happens when the public looses confidence in those who took the oath to Protect and Serve. This is our country be you black,brown,ugly,mustard,differently able,fisherman or vendor the Constitution guarantees you the rights to social justice and protection of your human rights.
This intimidation of Citizen Journalist by the Constabulary cannot continue if we are to preserve the rights of every person protected by the constitution of Barbados. Every member of the Royal Barbados Police Force must be reminded they are once a Police twice a Civllian. Each encounter with the public despite how difficult and stressful your job may be, must be a polite and reassuring experience unless faced with a forceul encounter.
Please Mr Commissioner,do remind your rank and file of the need to maintain the respect of the Royal Barbados Police Force in the eyes of the public. Congratulations to those who were recently promoted and especially Inspector Victor Forde and Sargeant Carlos Lindo do continue to be exemplary in your service. I appreciate your dedication and hardwork but will never stifle my beliefs because so many of are my associates.
Kammie Holder
Life in the Universe.
The new planets being found around other stars in the Milky Way, will hopefully, before I’m dust, spill our discovery of other life forms,.. in mutable profusion.
All we need to find, is another planet, about the size of ours, about the same distance from a sun about the size of ours, coupled with a moon about the size and same distance away from us, and a gravitational force about the same as ours, and an atmosphere with 21% oxygen, less than 2% carbon dioxide, a mean temperature that shadows ours, etc, etc, etc.
We could also add that such a planet would need a sea, clouds, rain, deep sea trenches, swamps, coral reefs, rivers, lakes, mountains, many insects birds and animals, plants, trees, warring religions, corrupt politicians, overpaid bankers and speculators, land developers, concrete pouring trucks, small armament manufacturers, bomb makers willing to blow themselves us, and so on, and so forth, et al.
If such a planet has all these things, then we might be able to understand the civilizations ( no, wrong word) the beings, that live on that planet.
Failing these similarities, then the prognosis that we might be able to recognise that such a planet has a life form of any description, remains just about dismal, and, we’d remain in our rights to continue insisting we are the only Beings in the Universe capable of appreciating there is such a thing as a Universe, though few of us ever look at it these days, or look at or see the moon, or the stars.
Ah Men ! Allah included, Brahmin and Edsu, Yahweh, Kali and Shiva, Odudua, Horus. Los demas sin fin.
A question of Flatulence !
James Lovelock ( the writer of Gaia and other books along those lines) when working for NASA, said, all you really need is a sample of the atmosphere on any planet, and you’d soon know if that planet had life on it without having to land there.
Steven Weinberg’s new book,
Cosmology, has destroyed me. In fact I’m distraught, beaten into a plowshear, or a traffic- flattened cat.
Here I was thinking I knew something about the Universe, only to be confronted by a morose of equations, with a few literal words here and there, straining above the math, like frogs in an ocean of plethora.
Not that Weinberg can’t write less obtusely, but this book of his was not meant for me, and probably not for most of us, unless your pie is really in the saturation of deep math equations.
At least, he shows you what all the little squigles mean, in his Glossary of Symbols, not that that will help most of us,…. Subscript donating baryonic plasma, gravitation polarization tensor,
subject indicating the time of matter-radiation equality, legendre polynominals, dimensionless photon intensity matrix, … I mean,… really, don’t say I didn’t warn you, but if this book hooks you, then good,… you know where it is all at, if you didn’t already.
The BBC and Obama.
I’m apprehensive about the apparent attack, advertised by the BBC- soon coming, mounting seemingly, against President Obama.
Will we all listen carefully, and judge, if the BBC is out-stepping its bounds in any way ? And if it is, assist and back me, in coming down on them like a million tons of basalt. For, the advertising, the pre-agenda of this coming event, seems sick, sick, sick. The BBC has no right to attack a voted president of The Major Power. White, on in this case Black, in that way.
So we must will listen carefully,… and judge.
Bengal tigers, we’re shown on the BBC, are being wiped out by the demand for their magnificent coats used in ceremonial Tibet dances.
I was wondering if this was not a Chinese prompt to the BBC, to hedge off some of the blame for Tiger attrition ? The Chinese, have been slaughtering tigers for years, for medicinal purposes, they say. Tigers, and Shark fins, by the thousands. Then there are whales of course, but we’re not blaming the Chinese for that ,…yet. I don’t suppose anybody in the West, would refuse Panda steak, as a way of getting back ? We could advertise Panda Steak as better than
oysters or viagra, not so ?
We suppose you did not hear about the involvment of the W.H.O in the pharmeticical industries world wide on the BBC Exposure. We’ve long suspected it,written on it, and long been rejected by editors.
Since we oursleves, don’t within reason, fall for 99.9 % of the medical
hype, we wish you too, didn’t either. There is no doubt that the world of modern medical business, it designed and built on fear and ignorance; we are extremely sorry to have to say this.
If you can’t sleep at night, instead of sucking a sleeping pill, take a long jog/walk, in a park, instead, and you’ll sleep like a log, we promise.
BFP, You don’t have to worry about printing what I wrote about the Bengal tigers, the whales, the Tibetans who I admire, and the Chinese, who I would greatly not have to just tollerate but admire too. . My full name is below what I write. I stand by that. Colin.
Dementia, and very old Hat.
When you’ve lived a little too many years, you hear things that keep cropping up again, and again, as though they had been newly discovered.
And so some bright sparks in England have now, re-discovered that Dementia can be curtailed by keeping really fit, eating and drinking the right things, praying to the right Gods, staying slim enough, and not beating your old grandmother or grandfather, or your dogs, or your wife, so that you don’t unduly raise your blood pressure. ( We put in that last one, the wife part, as a means of self preservation ).
Anyhow, over fifty years ago, when we were a young seaman, we read copious books on the benefits of learning all there was to know about the various virtues and dimensions of Yoga.
Hatha Yoga, deals with the Body and the science of Breath. Ghani Yoga, deals with the Mind and the Overself, and Raja Yoga deals with what knowledge can be gleaned of Uncommon Wisdom, and what can be known of the Absolute Principle, which is the best term for God we know.
Hatha Yoga explained, perfectly, what you needed to do to retain the balance of your body. Ghani Yoga explained, perfectly, what you needed to do with preserving the balance of your mind. Raja Yoga takes a lot more explaining, so further explanation will be short-circuited, due to the inability of this writer to find words adequate to express anything worthwhile or worthy, in dealing with the ,… Inexpressible.
To cut a long story, all that has been recently said on the BBC concerning Dementia, has been copiously and adequately covered by those writers who had discovered the teaching of Yoga from writings going back more than two thousand years.
So now you can understand our fret at the repetition, and our vexation at those who tout ‘New Discovery’, when what they have discovered is actually just re-discovered, and really nothing more than ,…
re-disclosure of truly pertinent yet 2000 year,… Old Hat.
The problem is that people just don’t read much these days.
Oh God, where have all the BFP writers gone ? Gone to other blog sites, every one ? Am I, in some way responsible for this attrition of
BFP writers ? Let me know an I’ll stop.
Hi Colin
The big time commenters on the site were primarily DLP supporters looking to tear down the BLP government through a focus on ITAL. Once the DLP gained power the same commenters hung on here until it became obvious that their DLP government had no intention of implementing ITAL and the other promises about accountable government. After two years it became such an embarrassment that they ended up at BU where everything is talked about – except ITAL. The solid core of 20 people having conversations hasn’t changed much – it just moved to a DLP-friendly website where the government and specific government officials are not criticized for the lies they told to get elected.
It’s a simple truth.
Meanwhile at BFP the visitor statistics from all over continue along at between 5 and 8 thousand on a normal day to several times that when an item of interest is posted. Our busiest day ever was last year when USA Today picked up one of our corruption articles and we experienced 44,087 visitors in a 24 hour period.
@Colin,
A blog post need not generate any or much response, especially if it says most of what needs to be said. You often get commentary on arguments that are not well formed or leave a clearly contentious argument hanging. So, in response to much of what you write, I think you can feel proud that you have pressed most of the right buttons.
Now, if you in particular want to hear from commentators just for the sake of it you may need to move your arguments from ‘open discussion’ (where many people may not head, especially if new to the site) to a particular thread or maybe BFP gives you a regular slot–‘Beadon’s Beef’?.
In general, I also find that a certain saturation point gets reached, where/when a group of commentators have said most of their piece (and it’s often the same argument despite the topic). Finally, I find that most commentators are comfortable with generalisations, and are less comfortable arguing from a basis of facts, so as with the preceding, that tends to lead to fizzle.
Any, keep on expressing yourself and let others do what they are comfortable doing.
BFP, Thanks for the fill above.
Colin.
Hey Colin,
Dennis has a point about discussion. It is also true that some of our most popular and visited posts receive very few comments, perhaps because folks are a bit shy of commenting on very specific issues associated with the guvment.
How about writing a blog post or two about a few things. We’ll feature a few as articles starting with the dementia one if that’s ok with you. (as an aside I remember something about aluminum pots being a factor. I’ll have to look that up IF I remember to! ) 😉
BFP? Alzheimer’s has been linked to aluminum, not only from pots but sandwiches wrapped in foil and use of aluminum chloride based deodorants! Go into Google (we know how you love them, but still) and type in “aluminum, alzheimer’s” and the results are astounding!
BFP wrote,
“The big time commenters on the site were primarily DLP supporters looking to tear down the BLP government through a focus on ITAL.”
I am in that group except that I comment on both blogs and will continue to do so until I get banned.Next election and will be in the defensive mode and will be taking nuff licks on this BFP BLP
blog.
However, I do read Colin L Beadon but his comments are more educational than politically provocative.
Colin I am sure a lot of people read your comments.
We look forward to more of your writings.
Hants,
Thank you very much for cheering me on. We’re not hearing too much for you either, these days.
For my own part, I stay away from politics, finding it a quagmaire like inter- religious wrangling. Does not matter what is said, nobody changes their mind, as nothing like that is based on scientific justification or math. I’m sure you know what I mean.
BFP,
Please use the dementia script of mine, if you want to. Colin.
Ian Bourne,
That finding on Aluminum has wrung a bell. Last month I was sent a few pages about the benefits of cucumbers. One was to place some slices on aluminum dishes or wrappings, and leave them amongst your growing vegetables as a deterant against garden pests. I did this, and it did work for me, though my plot was just a large tub.
It seems there is a definite reaction between the aluminum and the cucumber slices. If this is so, then the artical you allude to , is even more potently sinister. We must all follow up on it, or, ‘What was going to say ? “
Hants you can hardly call BFP a “BLP” blog as they were the leaders in attacking the BLP and agitating for change. BFP reluctantly supported the DLP at the last minute based on Thompy’s promised ITAL.
BFP is not BLP or DLP they are Pro Barbados Ital. I wish they were a party because I don’t know who I’d vote for next time. There’s really no difference between BLP and DLP. They are different power clubs with similar methods and an aversion to integrity legislation and transparency.
@Jason,
I was hoping to get a response from Cliverton or Marcus to my “mischievous BFP BLP” comment but you beat them to it.
ITAL is coming to Barbados and so am I.
Not sure when but we both are.
BFP and Dennis,
Re-reading again, what you had both written me, suggests to me that I seem to want reaction to what I write, and are disturbed when I get no responses.
No ! I never meant such a complaint in any way. I was just really missing all those who also used to frequently write, and becoming concerned myself about seeming to hog ‘Open Discussion’ as though the site were mine alone.
Hi Colin,
Your stuff makes us think, and we’re sorry we haven’t featured more of it. I didn’t know you were at sea at one time. Merchant or Navy? And which one?
I’m writing up a story now on a Barbados merchant vessel that was rescued yesterday from pirates off the coast of Africa.
Clive
@Colin,
Thanks for clarifying your intent. Like BFP, I find much of what you write thought provoking. But, as a blog host myself, I wondered if people were missing those thoughts because of where you were posting them: most readers may not go to the open discussion rather than a specific topic thread. So, it seemed that your messages may find an audience better if they were tackled as topics. Just an idea.
DJ,
I’m not finding a Topic heading to go to on BFP. Or, I’m not fully understanding you. Could you find chance to elaborate for me ? I’m inclined to be a lot dense, on some of this modernity.
@Colin, your comments here tend to be topic specific (eg environment), so my suggestion was in the direction of doing a piece and entitling it, rather than just a string of comments. Your call.
BFP,
Yep, I was at sea, sailed ‘before the mast’ ( the old expression used if you were not of the officer class, meaning your lived in the foc’sal or the poop deck).
Merchant vessels, passengers liners and heavy lift cargo boats.
Started off by being sent to the National Sea Training school in Sharpness Glos, first. Got all my badges and tickets, and was never knocked out in the ring there, thanks to Trinidad food, and life, and hot sauce. Just three joyous years at sea, was enough.
I saw some of the same places over again, from the oil industry,… later. And there were always books with me, a few I still have. A leather bound copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, for one.
Thanks DJ. I get you now.
I must remember to ‘Head Up ‘, as a hook, like used as you begin a short story. Thank you for pointing that out.
‘Cyclist who lost his brakes. ”
Brommage had not used his cycle for a number of years, and it was a very fine, cool, sunny day that enticed him.
He untangled it from his over- stuffed garden shed, unwinding wires and strings, a ph0tograph of Sir Galbers head, a police superintendents hat, the strap stuck in the brake handle, and he wheeled the machine out, the chain growling a little, to the side of the hill.
With resolve, he hopped into the saddle, placed one foot on the peddle, took a deep breath like a bird about to take wing, and cast himself off down the slope.
In a brief second, he wished he had had second thoughts. Within the next second he tried to apply brakes. In the third second he knew he was going too fast to make the turn at the bottom of the hill.
In the last two seconds his front wheel hit a low wall, and he flew through a thick prickly hedge and landed on a young lady sunbathing, not-modestly dressed.
Her 5000 watt scream woke every gentleman from Sunday afternoon snooze within a mile radius.
Somebody else is entitled to finish this story, but, did the Hook work ?
http://www.nationnews.com/news/local/sinckler-on-const–councils-copy-for-web
Does anyone know why or how the constituency councils have already spent 2.5 to 3 million dollars before they have even become official??
David Ellis has resigned from Starcom, may be starting new project on his own?
>> Her 5000 watt scream woke every gentleman from Sunday afternoon snooze within a mile radius.
If I may, following….
>He looked directly into her widened eyes, recognising the same warm deep brown that he had first seen, days before in his new position at the legal firm of Skeete & Cave.
Horrifying, that he had landed on the daughter of the Managing Partner of the firm, after only one week into the job and two weeks back home, after his long years of study abroad in the ‘mother country’, as it was called.
Thoughts of years of late nights of study, penny-pinching, which he was still doing, to make something of himself, raced through his mind as he wished to be anywhere at this instant, but here.
Could his dreams be dashed in one moment of rash wish for the joy of his youth, had he made all efforts to nought.
Then amazingly, those brown eyes softened, followed by a slight upturn at the corners of her mouth.
Then, a gently giggle, followed by a ladylike but hearty laugh, indicating her sudden amusement at the scenario and at his own horrified expression.
‘You are John, aren’t you? The new attorney at my dad’s firm?’
And on…….
Just I,
Very good continuation to the story. We couldn’t have hardly had her scream for the police. I’d have turned it into a romance too. After her initial fright, she sees his bleeding badly scratched face, arms, and legs, her womanly- mothering instinct kick in, etc. She helps him limp out of the harsh sun, into her home, waving away men peeping over her fence wondering what the hell all the noise was about.
Yep, it would make a good short story, if we can dream up a really satisfactory end, that draws you up like a noose, or one that is not too much of a relapse, after the satisfaction or rabid urges, and sublime,….
But the hook, the name of the story needs changing a little. You can do things like that, as the story unfolds by itself, and you find tweeking is needed here and there. Usually a better name, presents itself, in early morning, after sleeping some nights on the story, and not allowing it to be
thought about. Do you find that, Just I ?
I’ve got several pages written on how I got myself to write short stories that sold, but I don’t think you need them.
Watch that Critical Mass !
‘Veiled Hyprocrisy’ by Adrian Sobers in the Advocate, letters. 7th Feb/2010.
I was about to attempt to write along his same lines and subject, but he has done it so much better than I ever could. I tried to congratulate him on the script, but telephone book numbers don’t find him, alas!
My script would not have been so pleasant, and I admire his hard- hitting
points. My only edition would be to add that the free world needs to watch
that our majority does not shrink, or many of us might be stoned to death for infidelnesss, and our women covered under sack cloth for the rest of their lives; and for most of us, no more feting, good local grog, or pork.
LIME (C&W) layoffs, outsourcing and still price increases, lots to think about.
So why aren’t Pricesmart collecting for Haiti anymore?
Finite Earth’s Biggest Problem.
What do you think is really the Earth’s biggest problem ? Energy, food, water, housing, global warming, pollution, Jobs ?
It is not one of those, mainly because we can do things about them, at the moment.
The real insurmountable problem, is coming at us like an express train with no braking system. Google: mwillet.org/politics/big prob1.htm.
I found this site today, having worried and written on the subject a couple times. I’m convinced it is Mankind’s most serious problem, by far. Perhaps, being fully aware of it, we may come up with some way to apply the brakes that we all can agree on. But we’re going to have to be very optimistic, and fully understanding.
‘ 200,ooo more people alive today than yesterday. Tomorrow there will be 200,000 more.’
Print and read the seven pages on the site, please.
Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 2:13 PM
Subject: Failing refusal to broach the subject,….
BBC HaveyourSay.
If we refuse to broach the subject of Human Population Growth, in any way, it being the reason for so much of our ills today, already, then we will be rightly guilty of Genocide and the destruction of Earth, because we did nothing, in the remotest, about the problem. We have to tackle it, discuss it, and attempt to find a way out. 200,000 more people arrived on Earth,… today !!!
Is it that we really don’t care what happens to our great great grandchildren, as long as we can buy a new car today ????
Colin Leslie Beadon. Barbados. W.I.
Hi Colin, I have a confession and apology that ‘Just I is I’.
I posted under the different handle, as it were but an amateur effort, plus I had not been posting here for a while. But after I posted, I was to get back here, to ensure that I did not mislead you. Apologies again.
Continuing…” itself, and you find tweeking is needed here and there. Usually a better name, presents itself, in early morning, after sleeping some nights on the story, and not allowing it to be
thought about. Do you find that, Just I ?
I’ve got several pages written on how I got myself to write short stories that sold, but I don’t think you need them.’
I think anything, usually, comes with a more thorough understanding after some thought and ‘sleeping on’. In terms of published stories, you know by now that I have not published, in addition you give me too much credit re that I do not need advice.
That said, here goes…(hopefully the continuing plot not making the story too long)..
They go into the house, his new friend cleaning him up…. then wealthy fiance turns up….
Fiance, ostensibly well educated, silver spoon…
Our hero leaves regretfully, with much thanks…
To the local watering hole that evening, where he spends much time debating life, with a couple of friends, including an old friend of his father.
As it draws late, on hearing his day story, old friend draws him aside and warns him…to stay clear. but refuses to answer on details, except one cryptic reference to the fiance’s family ‘they get what they want, your father (Police Superintendent…remember the hat in the shed?) would have known, it has happened before’. And immediately leaves with parting words ‘..ironic that you should go flying off a slope like that….with a girl involved, not the first time it has happened, even if with a different result..’ then leaves with a rueful laugh.
Our puzzled hero, curiosity raised, then goes into investigation mode…
We uncover life, mystery, murder…..
Danger, love….
What about it? Is that plot too long?
As for ‘hook’, ‘Cliff’s Edge’ too obvious or too ‘regular’?
Peace.
Rumple,
Good, really quite good. For a short story it may be a little too involved, if you are interested in investigating the short story more fully.
You could easily find short stories are right up your street, and they come easily to you, and for you.
My own way was to write them as though they could be fully true,
probably why I admire the short story work of D.H.Lawrence, H.E Bates, Steinback, Hemingway, F.Scott& Zelda Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, and a few West Indian writers, like John Wickham, Samuel Selvon. But that was just my way.
It is a good idea to start reading short stories in a big way, if you want to get a better idea. These days, very easy on Google. You can find hundreds by people who are winning competitions on their work today. Luckily, after a number of years dearth, the short story is coming back into its own.
If you want my several pages, on the way I went about the short story, phone me. There is only one Beadon in the phone book in Barbados.
I’m very glad to hear from you again, now though. Colin.
Colin,
Thank you for your kind offer, may I hold it in thought? Thanks.
Samuel Selvon’s ‘Ways of Sunlight’ we did as part of our school curriculum.
I still encountering some Caribbean specific references there, for such as ‘soucouyant’ and ‘La Diablesse’.
His story, I actually cannot remember the title right now, on two ‘foes’, one Ma Lambee and I am trying to remember the other, was hilarious if not a bit scary.
He did an interesting piece, both romantic but superstitious as well, presented early in the book.
I must get it again……definitely would be a great re-read.
I actually have always enjoyed short stories. I did write one story at school, I thinks second form, that my then teacher encouraged me to put in the school paper.
She was actually very pleased with it. That is my ONE claim to literary fame. Lol.
Rumple,
The hill high speed incident was
based on factual. I decided to try on my son’s roller skates, having not been on such things for a number of years. This is about 1976, in St Jospeh’s Village, San Fernando, were we lived before we went to Western Venezuela.
We had a fast hill running down the road outside the house. I’d come home off an offshore rig not having had much sleep for a few days. It gives you a sort of high (sleep deprivation), and so I got home and decided to strap on the skates, and down the hill I went.
Skates, don’t have brakes, and I
picked up so much speed in a few seconds, I could not make the corner at the hill bottom, and ended up with all the skin and clothing, down one side of my body, spread like a sandwedge paste on the road.
It was not as exhilarating as landing on a young girl sunbathing in half nude, but it was thrilling enough to be dabbed with iodine and have pieces of gravel dug out of me for half an hour by my chuckling wife. ‘ Dad,’ my sons said, ‘You should have seen yourself flying low like Superman. ‘
I guess you’ve got to try things you’ve never done before, though they may be a little mad sometimes . How else can you can write about them later ?
Colin,
Real life can be more wild than fiction sometimes…
That was hilarious….sorry…..ouch!
But, it obviously had immediate ‘hero effect’ on your sons and gave your wife a chuckle too, so was worth it.
Now you can look back and say ‘I did it’.
Brave even if driven partly by overreaching cognitive thought.
Yes, experiences are to remember and reflect on, with whatever emotion is relevant.
I am surely not as experienced nor as well read as yourself, but do appreciate your point, even from mine.
Now, it dawns on me that there is so much in simple things to enjoy, to a great level, without being attracted by various destructive distractions.
I try to impress on my own young, to stay away from bad influences, as those who would lead one astray (if one is willing to lead you astray, they cannot be a friend), drugs, drink etc….
Understood that one has to experience for oneself, thus we need to let our children learn from experience also, but when one becomes a parent, as you would know, it places different responsibilities and teaching processes on oneself, including explaining dangers etc. Bit of a balance to strike.
Summing up, I see it as one of those responsibilities to point to the enjoyment of the simple things, which will ultimately give more ‘real’ enjoyment than many others, if that sounds right.
Have a great Sunday.
Hermano Rumple,
So much we have lost, and will further loose.
You are so right. Too many of us have lost the ability to enjoy the most simple everyday things. If your mother or father or somebody close to you, never sat out under the stars on a dark night, and pointed up at the wonderous glow of the Universe, and perhaps showed you the Plough, or red Alderbaren, or the upside down W of Cassiopia, Orion’s Beltaguise, Bellatrix, Rigal and Saiph and the three bright stars of his belt; nobody showed you M31 in Andromida, how are you going to ever enjoy looking up at a night sky, supposing you can see anything these days, with all the human -induced collateral Earth glow.
And it is like that with so many other aspects of life that live on our doorsteps, yet our minds, cloud- blocked, drugged with trivia, cell phones, DVD’s, the blast of sounds touted as modern music, the shattering exhausts of modern motocycles, the ever- growing almost impossibility of finding anything other than the perpetual clattering of jack hammers, growl of earthmovers.
No longer, no longer, lies a quiet field with sheltered corner of trees, the murmur – tinkling of a stream, and the soft tread of cows mulching the green grass.
Rumple,
If you want my pages on the short story, give me an email address. Leave the message on my phone, if you don’t get me direct. Remember, I’d promised you a flute. Still stands, should flute playing make you so inclined.
I’d anwered your last letter, but I see it is held for moderation. Wait till they see my new script on the 85 million spend on the Caves.
Hello Colin,
I’ve been thinking about the caves too. How many visitors at how much per head to amortize even the interest on that money – nevermind the repay?
We’re looking forward to your piece.
Marcus
‘No longer, no longer, lies a quiet field with sheltered corner of trees, the murmur – tinkling of a stream, and the soft tread of cows mulching the green grass.’
Elegant paragraph, the whole post was well written.
Trees? Yes, it seems we have little respect for trees, yet they are so necessary, then so wondrous too. In Lord of The Rings, trees are surely recognised for their importance, even if symbolically?
Legislation should ensure that a tree of a certain size is planted for every house built.
I do not live on a large property, but sometimes wish I could afford a large one, that I may plant ample trees, but fruit and other.
Our national parks should be continually planted, such that young grow in the midst of old, to ensure continuity.
I had actually thought that I would go out into the country randomly and plant trees, never have done, but it is still in my mind.
If one is planted every month, that is sixty in five years.
Maybe mahogany, breadfruit, neem, mango?
85 Million dollars!!! Is this figure correct?
Just what does 85,000,000 dollars have to do with reality ?
Well, Well well. If one just takes into account the entrance fee, 60 dollars, and forgets such things as salary for the administrators, cave guides, guards, gardeners, maintenance crews and any other running costs, Barbadians will still be paying back for a very long time.
85mil/ 60= 1416666.6 people have to pass through the Cave gates. That means, 56,666.66 people per year for the next 25 years. Or, on average, 156 people, every single day arriving at the caves, for the next 25 years.
We have never been told what the original work on the caves cost, or seen anything on the cost breakdowns of these new multimillions.
What about all those who still hardly have running water ? Was The Caves, really, the very best way to spend such money?
I hope, somebody will tell me I am an absolute fool, and explain why I am so. But it seems to me, Barbadians are in for a very rough ride. I sincerely hope I am wrong.
Chinese products.
I tell you what I am going to do. I’m going to post both these belts to the Chinese embassy. Both belts are printed as leather. One lasted wearing six time, the second, just twice, before the ‘so called’ leather started to strip off in the area of the buckles.
I’ve had enough of Chinese products, including boots, shoes, shirts and tools. We, in these islands, are being ripped off. Such trash,… should not be imported, at all.
The problem is that all those places that exported well made products into our islands, are no longer imported. Somebody needs to be held to account for this. Pick who you think responsible. I just want to be able to buy things that last, like we used to be able to buy before the Chinese came along.
Yes, BFP, I can imagin you holding my last post about Chinese products.
Print it ! It is time somebody stood up !
Somebody I met recently at a party, told me I was a Rational Conspiracy Theorist. She was an attractive women, so how could I ever not naturally fall what what she said. I’ll wear it with honor.
Rumple,
You forgot Chutein, Pommerac,
Mumaseedport, Balata, all fruit trees, and the beautifully flowering Lignum Vitea. All you actually need are the seeds, and a cattapelt/slingshot. You drive around and shoot the seeds everywhere, once the rains have started.
Shoots the seeds into all those places where once, magnificent sugar cane grew, and now only garbage and scrub now sprouts, and where even the mongoose has now deserted.
Oye. Adonde se ven, los todos que escriben en BFP ?
Hi Colin,
If you search on “China” or “Chinese” in our little box at the top you’ll see that we are not fans at all of Chinese (cough cough) “quality” standards.
I did not know all of those! Lignum Vitae….that sounds so familiar??? Is there a colloquial name?
Thanks for the method of dispersal…lol..Have slingshot….must obtain seeds….and wait for rain.
Have to shoot the seeds where seems potentially able to avoid lawn tractors, bulldozers for a number of years.
On the Chinese products, as you know ‘product dumping’ does exist, as a strategy from various ‘developed’ nations.
On the translation, I am no linguist, but my guess is, ‘where are all those who used to write / post on BFP’?
On the caves, it does seem that projects are conceived without long-term thought, nor accounting or accountability.
Mind-boggling does not begin to describe it.
Such results seem to be caused by the wrong people in the wrong positions, as it is hoped that rational people would make rational decisions.
That said, when one has a project with no public and transparent accounting, it makes it possible to have all kind of …..’results’ is the diplomatic word.
On The Caves, continued:
Rumple,
And the public have to pick up the tab, with al’ kin’ of extra taxes, as though we don’t have enough new tax raises,…. already. There is a lot more could be written on this subject, but it makes one so bitter it is best not to waste the time. At least, nobody is pointing out where we’ve got it all wrong on the issue. And if nobody seems to mind, then God Bless Barbados, and hope he’ll see her through,… one way or another.
The Magnificent Lignum Vitea.
Rumple,
When the rains come and my Lignum Vitea, the one I planted as a seed, flowers in all her cherry-flowering like glory, her branches full of bees, hummingbirds, yellow breast, sparrows and grackles, I’ll call you. She will flower after every few week dry spell, sometimes three or four times a year, and then fill with small bright orange seed pods, that, when at last falling, will shoot new seedlings below in her shade.
Lignum Vitea wood makes amazing slow speed bearings, used on prop shafts on inter- island schooners, and cane carts. It is a decorative wood too, like ebony, which is not seen any more these days. The LV used to be quite common in Barbados.
CHILD MAINTENANCE
As someone using the justice system for the first time, I am appalled by the incompetence and inefficiency in the family court( Located on Next to Lionel C. Hill. These are further magnified by what I can only describe as a rather hostile attitude displayed by the presiding magistrate, turning victims into villains. Little wonder that the poor and vulnerable are least likely to use the system.
I am a single mother, reasonably well educated, with a full time job as a secondary school teacher. My crime was to try to use the justice system in order to secure maintenance for my two children from their father. That’s where the fun starts. I found the whole system is cumbersome, inefficient and time consuming.
My first application was made in October and I was given a hearing in November. I attend court on the given date but when the case was called, I was informed that a summons was not served on my ex partner as he could not be and the case was adjourned. Unbelievably, I was told that I had to make a new application and was given a new date of February 18. as the presiding magistrate was ill.
I attended court in time for a 10 o’clock hearing and was called at 11:30. It is my understanding, that the relative informality of these hearings, was designed to put those unfamiliar with and unaccustomed to the formality of the court, at their ease. My experience was did not bear this out. I was asked by the magistrate to confirm my name and was then told by her that “man was not served with the papers” and did the man still lived at the same address. I confirmed that as far as I knew he still did so. At which point, she, the magistrate, became visibly annoyed and told me “If I ask you a question answer me yes or no”.
At this point the whole point the whole proceedings took on a surreal appearance as I thought it was appropriate for me to explain my knowledge of the “man’s” address, apparently an error in her court. She then tossed the papers aside and in a rather angry and dismissive tone said “I done wid dat” and called the next case. At this point I was feeling rather confused and was finally asked by the clerk to wait outside. He later came out and informed me that there was not a Marshall working for District C station. This I find rather strange in a country where there are so many young men and women are out of work.
I was then offered another date in May for court attendance. When I queried the length of the delay, I was told that the 11th March was available, and I can come and waste my time as the court would not have enough time to serve a summons. My question at this point is what do my children do in the meantime.
This whole experience has brought me to tears and I at my wits end as to where to go from here. It seems to me that we construct great edifices, strut about in our wigs and tails and spout fine words about the fine quality of our justice. The reality however, is that justice seems available only to those who have the money or the connections. For the vast majority of us, justice is just another illusion. My question is “where do I go from here?”
Lisa,
You have written a fine but pathetic account of your court encounters. It is almost unbelievable to think this should go on in Barbados, today. Make sure you send your account to both Newspapers. It would have helped if you could have added the name of the majestrate too. She should not be allowed to get away with the way she dealt with you.
I’d be inclinded to go to your district political rep’s office, and speak to only him. You most certainly don’t deserve being dealt with in such a way.
You could go to the Ombudsman too.
Here I was world-touting Barbados as one of the only true democracies. Now I must have second thoughts.
Lisa,
Unfortunately the real quality, or not, of a person comes out when they are placed in a position of authority.
I would suggest writing a letter to the Chief Justice, noting all of the facts, copy this to your political representative and to the Ombudsman.
After all, those persons should not be angry with you for writing the letter, they are there to represent the nation and justice, not as lords over serfs.
Secondly, they should be glad that you are highlighting inefficiency and disregard in the justice system, as your action will serve to enable them to address these issues, rather than them be highlighted publicly by such statements as that by Sir Fred recently, making things much worse, rather than having them addressed.
I do hope you have the issue resolved.
Rumple,
Have you found and read Apocalypse yet, by D. H Lawrence ?
Here is another book, which I can’t find in Barbados yet, but have chastised bookers, for not booking in to the island.
It is a book of everything you needed to know in a fully undestandable way about science, easy reading, really well explained, funny, often really amusing. Just don’t read it sitting on a toilet, or your backside will become blood-locked, dead, and you’ll have to fight an exteme case of pins and needles.
So we want our young islanders to be come hooked on science ? If this ain’t the best book to hook them, then I’ll gladly eat it.
A Short History on Nearly Everything. ‘ By Bill Bryson.
About working on WordPress ?
I’ve got to go somewhere else. I can’t go on hogging local. I’m not sure about going on wordpress, or how to answer the questions they want. I don’t want to open a Pandoras box upon my email address.
But I’ve got to go, and need, somewhere else, for I must becoming boreing, with too much pouring out like an explosion, as though it were a poison within me, feeling like a supernovia, about to go up if I don’t release what wants to pour out. For what little it may be worth.
The sinking of the Concordia. A Barbadian flagged ship.
Flagged, as far as I know from my years at sea, means the ship was registered and insured in Barbados.
I hope I’m wrong about that in this case, or it means our taxes go up again. Do we have true marine survey experts here for such large vessels? I know we had one or two for smaller sailing yachts.
The Concordia Sinking.
The saving of all those on the Concordia, including the ‘watch’ that should have been sleeping below decks, the launch of the life boats, all in 20 seconds, is most truly a miracle needing investigation.
Twenty seconds is a very short time under the mass confusion and panic, that would have been taking place, with half the decks, and the sails, flooded with sea water, and cordage and wiring slopping all over the place.
ANNA SACRIFICED ON THE ALTER OF BARBADOS TOURISM
I see the murderer of Anna Druzhinina Jackson,is now being WHITEWASHED.
MANSLAUGHTER plea ACCEPTED!!!
Attorny Andrew Pilgrim states that it is
“CLEAR” that the murerer of this innocent schoolgirl.
As he ,the murderer,DIDNT intend to kill her and was sorry for his actions and that the murderer had considered suicice”.
Strange that!!
The murderers statement to the police contains words of his ;like how he asked the child:
“Why are you worried about how you are going to be killed”
as she was begging him for her life!!
After he had tried 4 times to get her balanced on the top of two 1 gallon paint cans that were stacked one on top of the other at the head of a stairwell, and he had lashed her hands and feet with wire so that it cut thro her flesh and she couldnt balance, so he pulled her up on a stair rafter with a wire noose , round her neck. Made from electric cable.
.Then after his exertion he went to the home refrigerator of the childs house and got himself a refreshing cold drink.
Telling the terrified begging child balancing literally for her life on the two cans.
“YOU ARE GOING TO DIE WHEN YOU FALL OFF”
He and his co torturer and murderer, then sat for a while on the front balcony and enjoyed a snack and a cold drink.
He says further in his statement to the police: SOME TIME LATER HE HEARD THE CANS GO OVER {how long did he torture ANNA for??}
He went and looked and reported to the other murderer that”SHE’S NOT DEAD YET!!
They decided to leave her for a while till she was.
When he could see she was dead, he took her down on his own ,and carried her body to her bedroom and dumped it across her bed.{all words from his police statement}
He felt so full of remorse and thoughts of suicide, that he searched her room and found the little girl
small silver necklace, a birthday present from her mother and father and 50 dollars she also had for her birthday and PUT THEM IN HIS POCKET.
He remorsefully also took her celphone and computer.
Then he and the co murderer, ate from the fridge and sat to wait for the childs parents to come home, he with an axe and the comurderer with a loaded speargun.
As he says in his police statement.
They saw the parents car enter the gap.
He carried ANNA’s lifeless body thro the house and placed it across the parents double bed.
The body was liberally doused in Gasoline and Deisel and a trail laid acroos the floor and out of the bedroom door onto the balcony.
He then stood with the axe and the co murderer behind the bedroom door with the loaded speargun.
As the father came up the front stairs of the house, the petrol to Anna’s body was lighted.
He saw the comurderer run away as the father entered the stairway to the upstairs of the house
{it transpired the spear gun malfunctioned}
So he too ran away.
BUT remembering to take what he had found in the childs room with him.
Leaving the child’s body and the house to burn.
We can see why MR PILGRIM a Lawyer and a father would conclude his CLIENT
DIDNT INTEND TO KILL THE CHILD and was REMORSEFUL.
WHAT WE CANNOT SEE AND UNDERSTAND IS WHY THE D.P.P. and THE PRIME MINISTER OF THIS COUNTRY should allow this to be put forward in a Court of Law and accepted.
They have access to all the facts and statements.
IF THIS PASSES FOR JUSTICE IN OUR COUNTY
GOD HELP US!!
ARE WE WILLING TO TOLERATE THIS
Barbados At Large.
What has been written above, by Barbados At Large, is so mind-stopping I’m having difficulty,…
Did this murder of a child and the following trial, happen in Zimbabwe, or Barbados ?
Colin,
No, I did not read it, but will order it from overseas.
Much of my early adult life was spent reading study volumes, rather than ‘for enjoyment’ per se.
Lol.
Thanks.
Barbados at large,
I agree that what you have described is a clear case of premeditation.
This is similar to the Terry Schwarzfeld case, where again, it would appear that the defense of lack of mens rea, has been incorrectly applied, to a layman such as myself, anyway.
If you are a family member or friend, I am truly sorry for your loss and your loss in this horrific fashion, then to be treated so lighly by the system.
I am disgusted that such a young life, not to mention any life, could was was snuffed out so, yet remain virtually unpunished.
It would appear to some that someone or a group has no idea what the terms of a manslaughter case are.
Nevertheless, I wish to let you know, that at the end of the day, the Almighty will determine the way forward, for all.
Peace to you and yours.
Rumple,
I did not know the people in the Child Slaughter case. I only found out yesterday, that they lived quite close to where I live, and who they were.
The Almighty, is rather here nor there. The Jews and the millions slaughtered in Africa, did’nt get any help, nor the people in the Twin Towers. And one of the world’s major religions, has Cleric would rather sleep with the boys. And so it goes !
I wonder with all the water woes if the BWA still raising those prices?, I mean their debt hasn’t dissapeared because the water has, would that put a small dent in their plans with the whole charge per cubic meter with some people not even getting that much in some places. Would a de-salination plant have been cheaper than a world cup party? would it have been cheaper to finance the BWA than to finance the now infamous “flyover” scammers?
Seriously I wanna know…
The Nickster,
And we were promised transparencey by this newer government. Perhaps that is why they put all that glass at the entrance to the 85 million renovation in the caves. But we’re not seeing where the money was spent. And won’t, I’d bet. The people who do the real work in the island, the slaves, pay through more taxation. Asi ,se va la vida !
Colin,
Point taken, but the ‘Almighty’ as I see it, does not favour any specific religion or creed, nor is represented by anyone in particular, no one or organisation has that exclusivity.
Neither do I believe that all man’s wrongs are countered ‘en masse’ per se, but that some are and that all ultimately will be.
I do not believe that here is it and only, but that we all, our souls, move onwards.
That is just my perspective however, I preach to no one.
But, from that perspective, I believe that the young girl has moved on and her soul will be well.
Peace
Look, we having a drought
Q: How do you fix a bunch of old burst mains?
A: One pipe at a time.
Q2: How do you write off an old debt?
A2: Borrow $167 Million dollars and spend it>
Yippee!!
Rumple, The Gods that are, or are not, figments of our imaginations.
Your perspective in my youth is what I have wished for. But age and experience has made me ambivalent. Sometimes my sight is clear, other times clouded with doubts, watching the ghosts of starved children, or acid blistered women, the march of corruption, injustice, the greed of already wealthy, or well paid, who think of little else than ‘More’.
Ah, to suggest everything will be settled in the hereafter, what pink clouds of high hopes you have, while, meanwhile, Mother Earth and all her nature, stinks with the death and injustice we bestow.
Ah, Hermano Rumple,
And this I know; whether the one true light,
Kindle to Love of Wrath—comsume me quite,
One glimpse of it within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
From Omar Khayyam, which everybody should read, but won’t, though it would give a measure of dimension and t’other perspective, doing little harm except expanding world view for those who have been restricted to tunnel vision.
Late night correction.
Kindle to Love, or wrath. consume me quite. etc.
Straight talk,
Are you around? What is your ‘take’, on the BBC today, on the release of the methane from the melting permafrost under the Siberian sea bed ?
We are at a 400,000 year high in methane release into the atmosphere. Scientist are now worrying, if the melt goes on, it will cause sudden dramatic climate change.
And so it goes !
My take, Colin, is the Carbon Trading cartel is becoming worried at the slow pace that their client government’s are moving towards taxing us out of recession.
As we have recently seen, data from terrestrial weather stations, Himalayan glacier melt, Amazonian forest reduction, & African farm yields are too easily verifiable to a true investigator.
So this U of Alaska paper fits their agenda quite nicely.
Unless Steve McIntyre (Climate Audit blog)
gets a boat, who’s gonna check our methane seep data in the East Siberian Sea?
So the paper says that this area produces greenhouse gas the equivalent of 7.7 billion tonnes of CO2 annually to be added to an equal amount from the rest of the world’s oceans.
Over 15 billion tons of a gas that is 25 times more potent than that other “pollutant” (LOL) CO2 produced naturally, and there is little we can do about it.
Coincidently, that amount is approximately the Co2 reduction this mad world is committing trillions of dollars to achieving by 2050.
You may mistakenly think I am a Global Warming sceptic, I really do believe that earth’s climate changes, it has done, is doing and will continue to do so whatever man in his arrogance believes he can tinker with.
What climate are they aiming for?
When they arrive there then what?
Do they order us re-pollute to prevent overshoot?
Craziness, and we will sit and watch staggering sums of money, which could have been more wisely used in adaptation to change, wasted to no effect, other than the mega-rich get enormously richer, and we poor sods pay.
I thought you as an ex oilman might see some opportunity in the Russkies drilling through a little ice to such an abundant source of Natural Gas, what say you?
ST,
Glad to hear you’re on the ball. I had read, several months ago and can’t now remember where, about the worry of the Siberian permafrost melt and the consequential release of the many billions of tons of methane retained there.
If there was a simple way to drill and untilize that methane, I’m sure the Russians would have been onto it long ago. You’d have to drill into the permafrost , and inject stream like we have used in areas of very dense high viscosity oil zones that won’t flow unless superheated. I suggest that could be done, but know nothing of the permability or porosity of permafrost to accept steam in very high volume.
There is an ongoing survey on the permafrost melt, and It would be well worthwhile remaining concerned until we know a lot more about it. Siberia is a vast area indeed. Thousands of square miles. Any disruption to such an area, should not, possibly, be taken lightly.
It does not really matter who is responsible or what is to blame, the melting of the permafrost will have exstreme concequencies for a number of reasons.
We keep being reminded of the catastrophic disasters which will occur if we don’t unplug the TV at night, but there must be an upside should this thawing occur.
As you say Siberia is massive, and so is Arctic Canada, so you have to accept that the ability to farm and populate these extra millions of square miles by two first world countries will bring enormous benefits.
Just looking at the other side of the coin.
As I’ve said before I think things are going to cool down for the next thirty years or so and cooling is much more of a challenge than warming.
Let’s get back to true science and not the shameful hype of Gore, Brown, Obama and his Chicago Exchange buddies.
You like a good story don’t you Colin?
Check out Maurice Strong’s life on Youtube, after watching this creep’s involvement in this scam you may see things in a different light.
PS The Siberian Gas is trapped under the Laptev Sea
Anon,
Hummmm. The greening of the North frozen zones of Canada and Russia, and the huge spread and explosion of populations, and all they will take with them,….. adding, magnificently, to the problems we already face on the Earth today. Wow,….How dreadful, how awful.
The Earth, and all her wild nature, won’t stand a chance ! And don’t tell me you don’t know who will suspire too.
Wrong Colin,
The earth will find her own way of coping with abuse, at least until our Sun dwarfs itself.
It is man who must adapt to changing conditions,
not nature.
How possibly can we change nature?
Only our elected leaders are that stupid.
ST,
Must be you read me wrong! Where am I wanting Nature to change? It is most definitely Man must change if Earth stands the slightest chance. Population spread and explosion, into the Northern regions, can only cause more of the problems we already face.
More energy usage, more food and water needed, more cars trucks buses, factories, aircraft, shipping, more housing, more stoves, refridgeration, more highly expensive stadiums, more crime, more police stations, more hospitals, more inter religious strife, more territorial disputes, more arms, gun crime, people out of work, more trash in every way. I could go on and on, but if you don’t get what I’m implying, then let’s blog about something else, like recently, they found, beer increases bone mas due to its hops and malt.
Nature cannot adapt fast enough, to any sudden climate change. And it is only a few certain people who might possibly be able to survive a fast climate flip. The News today, again, pegs man as being the chief inducer to climatic change.
Reply to 5, on Maurice Strong.
The first person to come up in Google connected to Maurice Strong, was the world renowned biologist Rene Dubos. We have his 1968 Pulitzer prize winning book ‘So Human An Animal’, and have re-read it several times through the years. It is an impressive book, and dutifully and beautifully points out that Mankind, because of his natural inclinations and intelligence, needs to take careful stock of the way he treats the natural world.
Maurice Strong, on the other hand,
tends to give me the feelings, or shades, or another Allen Sandford. Both seem to have reached very far places, and ‘taken in’ a lot of intelligent people.
Or, did they really take them in. And if they did, how did they manage it so superbly. Maurice Strong has a huge list of world- covering awards, Sandford was Knighted, and perhaps should have taken off for China, like Maurice Strong seems to have done.
They both, Strong and Sandford, seem to have started off with the best of intentions, but we all know what happens when power comes under the hands of most people, and one can look back through history at the far too frequent result.
Still, there are genuine people, like Rene Dubos, E.F.Schumacher, and James Lovelock, who have worried and warned about our treatment of the Earth, and about the human condition. Whether we wish to take heed of such soothsayers, seems to depend on the aides of March, as so few of us have much desire, or inclination,… to listen.
Opps, another blooper.
Should read above :
‘The Ides Of March.’
Demise of the Dinosaurs, again ???
You do see what I mean, don’t you ? It’s like the new batch of world scientists are not reading what their grand ‘fadders’ fathomed out long ago.
The KT boundry debris including its iridium tell tail around the Earth, marked out the 7.5 mile wide astoroid strike on the Yucatan 65 millions years ago.
The asteroid, provoked, with its strike, the equivalent blast of one billion Hiroshima bombs, and, the demise of the Dinosaurs.
Much else of nature expired at the same time, unable to live with the debris in the atmosphere that blocked out sunlight and clean air, and lowered the ambient world temperature a number of degrees. Try living submerged in a very cold thick pea soup, if you don’t belive that.
Anyhow, I wan’t to know where are all the new up and coming scientist on the scale of Einstein, and Feynman,
Planck, and Ramanujan, Darwin and Sagan, Gell-Mann and Heisenberg, Godel and Guth, Fermi, a new Galileo or two. Any number could play, but we want something new. God, let we have something new and profound.
The hypocrisy of conservation.
You listen to the so called ‘conservationists’. You listen to those modern day correspondence asking the questions. Only then do you fully understand why nature does not stand a chance. Nobody today, seems to have fully read, fully felt personally or fully understood animals or nature, and what they mean for the continuation of Human life on Earth.
We will deserve the apocalypse we are self- instigating. For all our intelligence, we seem beyond understanding our own numbers are fast-becoming too predominant,… on a finite Earth.
Consequentially, we talk of equality, and the stoppage of wars, toleration of all religions and races, as though these things were the chief cause.
How much more stupid can we get ?
With the long freezing temperatures that miami Fla. has experience most of the iguana species was killed.
AC, The Iguanas in Miami ! They probably don’t eat them there either. Hopefully the locals have plenty in warm captivity, since Iguana make friendly pets. Some will escape, or be let loose, and re-invent the natural world in the Miami area, hopefully.
I don’t know why we don’t have Iguana in Barbados. You’d think they’d love the huge ficus trees and their berries, which brings the fruit bat, the sparrow and ramier.
But the Trinie would soon teach the Bajan how to eat Iguana, like the Trinie have done to the ‘Swampi’ ( blue crab ); and so now swampi should be on the endangered list with the sea egg, swamp bird, and the west and south coast windows to the sea.
As for the Miami iguanas, they’ll probably head south. They are great travels, indeed. They love traveling in shipped oil field tubular pipe, and they come, as do mongoose, to live on offshore rigs with us that way.
The greatest unanswered question in geological sciences, it has been called.
Why and when does the Earth switch its poles ?
According to ‘A short History of Nearly Everything’ by Bill Bryson, a book we have recommended be imported in volume into Barbados, if we really want ‘Yout’ to come under the spell of an almost divine book on general science, easy to read and understand, yet vibrant enough to hook even those like myself, who have spent years lugging books on science and re- reading them, akin to devote Muslims or Christins, who read and bow in homage to their respective beliefs and effigies, and feel they know ‘nough’ about their fixation.
Forgive this slight digression. The subject was the Earth poles.
They reverse every 500,000 years, or so, though the average hides a huge degree of unpredictability. The last reversal was 750,000 years ago, but it had reversed in as little as 20,000 years. So we can ‘fraid ‘ earthquake, tsuami, meteor strike, sun flare, or stockmarket crash. Take your pick. I could add a lot more, if non of those worry you. But let’s not run out of sugar, good rum, or world- best local Bajan pork. A little rain- drenching would help.
Hello Colin: None of this is on topic and this is probably way off on protocol, but what the heck!!It’s been a long time. I’ve just been reading through your posts and I can just picture you speaking them now. I hope that you are well….anyway I really have a question for Rumplestilskin… One day a long time ago…when I was about 14 I knew a fellow that was riding his bicycle down Rendezvous hill without any brakes!! He was using his foot (and burning up his tennis shoe) by pushing it down on the front wheel to try to slow himself down and avoid breaking his neck as he was going down the hill. Anyway, at the bottom of the hill was a policeman, who promptly pulled this fellow over and when he asked the boy what his name was the answer that he got was “Rumplestilskin”!….so Rumple, are you that same crazy boy? Just trying to figure out who you are….If so, I’m glad to catch up with you here.
Good God, Greg,
It’s been a very long time. Quite by chance on Monday the first, this month, a lady introduced herself to me as a Cuke, and so I said, ‘Oh, we know a Cuke, etc. ‘
If you’re in Barbados, look in the book. There is only one Beadon number. We’d like to catch up.
Colin
Faith,… in deep trouble.
The more you hear about Faith, these days, any Faith, take your pick; the more you get a sinking feeling.
Anyhow, in our own case, and through many years of interests in Faiths, in general, I think we’ll hang onto the only one that seems worthwhile: That is, a forlorn Hope, and Faith, in the Divine Ground we actually stand on.
Instead of worrying about ‘That ‘ which we cannot even remotely visualize in any form other than an ineffable and inchoate hearsay, we’d all of us, be much better off, however you want to look at it, if we pay 100 % more attention to the natural world we live in, and what we are doing to it, daily, now.
For we, in the face of our beloved young, are fast- burning our bridges behind us.
Barbados speed limits.
The island speed limits need reducing, for two obvious reason. Any sensible government who cared about its citizens would do this, and ridgedly get the lower limits enforced.
There are too many vehicles now on the roads, and too many inexperienced drivers, who passed their driving exams by examiners who know little about safe driving themselves.
Reducing speed limits
would save lives, gasolene and high insurance costs. It is just that simple.
Being that simple, here in this island where so many drivers are often tourist, won’t make lowering speed limits enter the heads of those who profess to have public interest at heart. And so, the slaughter will continue.
@ Colin L Beadon, March 18, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Enforcement is at least as much of a problem than actual speeding. Tell me when was the last time you saw anyway doing a speed check on any road. I’m not even aware of whether the equipment exists as part of the police force enforcement. Limits do not matter if they are not policed.
Driver skills is another problem. Many drivers clearly do not know about highway driving but they now have to do it routinely. Part of the speeding I see is to deal with inappropriate road use, eg, heavy vehicles (including buses) hogging the outside lane, or ordinary cars sitting blissly in the outside lane, and their being overtaken from the inside.
In the past week, I’ve noted a clear reduction in volume but that may be do with some peculiar one-off things (but schools are still in, though NAPSAC and BSSAC championships were running :-)).
The detrimental effect of foreign investment to the local economy.
As an occasional visitor to Barbados over the last 10 years, I’ve noticed the changes happening to the Bajan economy are much like the transformation the major European economies underwent over the past 30 years. I’m thinking of the retail sector in particular. If you look down the High Streets of many European towns and cities, the shops will all be very familiar; large multinational or nationwide stores, and an almost complete absence of small, independent traders. Everytime a large supermarket wants to set up business in a town, they make the same argument that they will be good for the economy and will create jobs, but the effect is usually the opposite, with small traders unable to compete.
The concensus of opinion is now changing, and there is a greater awareness of the damage the larger retail outlets have done to local economies. Profits are not remaining in the local economy, products are increasingly sourced from overseas in preference to local produce, jobs are often given to non-locals, and vital skills are lost when smaller traders go out of business.
Politicians give incentives to these often foreign investors, pandering to the consumer demand for cheap prices and “competition,” and bending over backwards to attract foreign investment. The net effect of this “investment” is often the opposite, with profits disappearing overseas, and the fragile local economy undermined. I saw a perfect example of this on my last couple of visits to Barbados, when I visited a large store in Blackrock. The owner was a British businessman, most of the produce seemed to be sourced from cheap overseas suppliers, and there was not a Bajan seen to be working in the store. By any reckoning, there is very little evidence that such a business can be seen as a net contributor to the local economy. Sadly, politicians will always support such businesses, and totally disregard the needs of the small independent trader.
The Barbados economy does not have a large manufacturing base, or a wealth of natural resources, or a large financial sector to prop it up, so is disproportionately reliant on the health of it’s small businesses. As such, politicians should look to learn from the mistakes made abroad.
Dennis Jones,
Enforcement is most certainly the major problem. There does not seem to be such a thing as: A police traffic squad. One would guess police don’t want to hang around in the sun where many of us have had to work a great deal of our lives.
But this still comes back to those who are responsible for the safety of the citizens who voted them in. It is still, at the top, a government responsibility. The government is responsible for making sure the island is governed and regulated in a safe way.
If the police should be found faulted, then it is the elected government who must act, instead of turning their heads every other way.
Surely the heads of state, have eyes enough to see what is happening on our roads. Surely they see and hear the wrecks, the ambulences, and hear the tears ? Or perhaps they can’t see these things through darkened windows while they chat on cell phones and their chauffers drive.
Unbelievable! But what do you expect!
March 18th, 2010 – during debate on the Head – “Culture,” Leader of Government Business in the House made a statement, which was immediately challenged by the Leader of the Opposition of Barbados. In response, Minister Sinckler denied using the word: “NONE,” while Chairman of Committee – James Paul said he did not hear Minister Sinckler use the word: “NONE”
Is “Somebody” telling lies?
If so, it is definitely not the Leader of the Opposition of Barbados – The Hon. Mia Amor Mottley, Q.C., M.P., Two persons shouted the word: “NONE!” Perhaps the Attorney General of Barbados – Mr. Stuart – can say who the other person is?
Miss Mottley called for a transcript – but it was not brought. Why??? So much for good governance, accountability and freedom of information.
Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tZ9PX56cHM
My friends in Miami say it still cold there and the forecast is for more cold .This is supposed to be spring and people are still wearing sweaters. Could this be because of global warming.This time of the year the children are flying kites and it is very breezy.
What about singing groups from jails ?
Listening to the BBC, we hear about the very recent success of singing Cornish Fishermen; and now, convent groups of Nuns being encouraed to form choirs. It has been a long time recorded, the chants of cloistered Monks, and their CD’s have become world popular.
So why not singing from jails? There could be competitions across the world, from jails. It would certainly lift the spirits of those behind bars, and who knows, from where might come another Pavorotti, Carreras, Domingo, Paul Robeson ? There could be such voices locked away, who once their time is done, could lift off into a great new life with their voices.
Anybody listening ? Anybody back us up on this Idea ? I’ve already tagged this morning, the ‘BBC and Have your say’, about it.
So why not
“Duguid, who will present a constituency report at the 4:30 p.m. meeting, is QUITTING elective politics after the current five-year period constitutionally ends in 2013.”
Willie D can now use BFP to continue his service to Barbados.
World population behind bars.
1o.65 million people are behind bars as of 2008. Bet you there are some great singing voices there, both male anbd female, going to waste.
Forming groups, or choirs, would be a great way to shrug through the hell of imprisonment. World inmate singing competitions could be judged world wide on the net. Decent prize money could be awarded. Who knows where good voices could take them ?
@Colin Beadon
I am for what ever would make society a safer place to live. However how is this choir or duet going to work from the jail.This might present an additional security problem as well as financially it won’t be affordable. .
@Colin Beadon
How is it that people eat iguanas. Disgusting!
Am I the only one who does not understand why Barbados needs to build a new hospital?
Personally, I find the reasons or should I say, lame excuses derisory.
The Q E’s reputation was and still is exemplary to an extent.
I’m not blind or deaf to the grumblings of it’s recent decline in standards, availability/quality of treatments and service.
The Q E has been allowed to deteriorate through lack of crucial funding and employing substandard
professionals due to budgets being cut.
Bluntly the Q E is caught in a ‘catch 22’ situation.
An inevitable quandary when auditors and accountants are calling the shots.
These book keepers are handsomely paid, blinkered pariahs, blatantly ignoring the progress and advancement of medical science/treatments that once was a mantle of Q E.
Undoubtedly, this attitude adversely affects public opinion which is one of no confidence.
2 years on. one would think, new government, new strategy.
Not so.
New government, same old blah, blah, blah.
The Minister of Health, Donville Inniss, should be utilising his time with improvements at Q E, not debating new sites especially when he is at a total loss for ideas for the Q E site if this plan comes to fruition.
Yes, more blah, blah, blah.
I’m sure the opera ‘Madame Butterfly’ has some significance here!
But to be fair to Mr Inniss, he has stated that the Q E is ‘making upgrades’ where necessary.
Notably, the cafeteria, (first mentioned).
Is Jasmine tea on the menu?
Sorry, I did not leave a heading for my comment.
‘Why Does the Q E Need A New Site’?
AC. Iguanas, and those behind bars.
The Iguana is eaten through much of Latin America. People who eat it, will tell you it tastes like chicken. Iguanas are mostly leaf and fruit eaters, but they do eat insects, mice, young birds and birds eggs, as will chickens. Perhaps you’ve never seen chicken eating centipedes they catch in their pens?
Along the sides of the road in Venezuela, you find young boys selling strings of large Iguanas to passing motorists. The young boys shoot the iguanas with slingshots, out of the trees, alive somehow. The young deep bush countryside-living boys, are really deadly slingshot artists. They use car inner tube and a forked stick, to make their version.
On the question of ‘choires behind bars.’ Singing voices from jails, can be recorded these days. Just because a few people might sing, should hardly constitute a security risk. On the other hand it may help stop those in jail, going insane. Singing and listening to good music, has a very long- known theraputic effect. Ask any shrink.
Sandra,
We got Yorkshire tea here. It is very strong, and fortifying, but then you could get Assam too, lightly weaker.
I am of the impression that politicians no longer have the citizens of Barbados interest at heart. Imagine election after election they come with a lot of dry talk in a manifesto and live up to none of their promises. A housewife would do a better job of running this country forward and not use “recession” as an excuse. Who do I trust? They all spend Government’s money badly and tell a heap of liesssss. Come out and speak the truth in respect to Barbados’ whether B or D.
Well Audrey, your idea of who should run this country…….certainly disqualifies Mia Mottley !
Ha Ha….!!!
Interesting.
Greg,
Lol, nice story on the downhill escapade. Youth, huh?
But alas, I am not that young fellow. As for who I am…..just an average citizen, who prefers to remain ‘nameless’, so that I may speak ‘freely’.
Even though my words are chosen to be within legal bounds, thus that does not worry me, you know as well as I that some may try backdoor methods to hit at a person.
Colin,
‘One glimpse of it within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.’
Interesting and poignant, that.
Beauty in the eye of the beholder, or enlightenment can come in many forms?
On my ‘pink clouds’, lol.
Maybe, but why not? Maybe that IS my ‘problem’, that I hope for too much and am too ‘simple’?
Rumple,
I wish I were simple. Perhaps this could be my problem, that I am really, deeply simple, and so attempt essequamvideri as a cover up !
Hey! we’re really glad it looks Obama is winning through. We find it difficult to imagin there are those who could vote against such a bill involving the lives of so many underpriveleged people.
No, we don’t really find it difficult to imagin. There are far to many people who think only of their own bank balances, and nothing else. And that is a failure in not being able to recognize the inter-connection,….of everything.
Sandra, Politicans and accomplishment.
You know as well as I know the reason why Polos want to start a new hospital site. There’s much more money floating around in hand’s reach.
It is a world wide ‘politician outreach’ problem. I think I heard it called, somewhere, ‘The Political Imperative.’
Politicans don’t work for the good of the citizen any longer. It is the other way around, and the citizen has now reverted to the slave again, where much of the taxes paid by the slave, is reverted to frivalty by the politican.
Of course, not all polos are that irresponsible, we hope. But they are daily getting bad press on a world scale, mainly because they are stepping into business shoes.
If they were good business men, they would hardly have become politicans, not so ? Or maybe they didn’t want to work that hard, and have found it easier to do what they feel, working behind the back of sweating business people.
This is not a political statement. It is, however, a statement about politicians, and how little they really manage to contribute these days.
Rumple,
Good. So you have read Khayyam !
Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented Manuscript should close !
The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and wither flown again, who knows !
That’s my boy Omar Khayyam.
The science of Miracles.
This is a 7 part dimension well worth viewing on Youtube, by Gregg Braden. It is most certainly, another path in,… Uncommon Wisdom.
Uncommon Wisdom. The Science of Miracles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?=6nKSq2tV1KE.
Hope I’ve got this site right for Gregg Braden.
Science of Miracles site.
Try this address :
Youtube witch 6nksq2tvike.
For Gregg Braden
The Longbeach distruction.
The suggestion that now Long Beach be turned into a five story hotel, makes me so disgusted I don’t want to think about it.
If Barbadians are so stupid to allow it, then, Que mas hay que decir ? (What more needs to be said ).
@ Colin L Beadon,
Bajans are not stupid. They are apathetic and undereducated where environmental issues are concerned.
As I have said before, a swamp is considered a “place with nasty stinking water dat yuh should stay far from”.
Barbados could become a concrete jungle.
@Hants
Given your explanation of “swamp” then they would have been no Fla. because Fla is “swamp ”
land.
Hants,
Sure. Swamps only become stink holes when garbage is thrown into
them, and the swamp cannot breath with the sea.
One has to wonder what the environmental and coastal brigades are using up tax money on, besides driving around in expensive mobiles.
@Colin Beadon
It seems to me that Barbadians are not well educated about enviromental issues .The government also doesn’t seem to careless.
Throwing garbage into swamp area only compound the issue especially in matters of health.
@ ac
There actually are some Barbadians who are concerned about environmental issues.
Unfortunately, they are the exeption to the rule.
Sandy Beach Hotel once was a respectable establishment. Then it became Sandy Bay Beach Club. The renovation was done in a hurry to be able to open to the first guest arrivals.
The once white beach sand was now littered with building debris. Beach chairs and lounges were placed on the sand outside the hotel compound.
Not only were they using up all the space where people used to walk, now having to manouver between the chairs, but also garbage from these guests was left on the beach. The management should have advised the guests no to leave their litter on the beach or they could have and should have their personnel picking up the garbage,
The hotel also never placed a garbage can on the beach or near their gate.
Some of the LOCALS who worked along Sandy Beach, tried to pick up as much of the garbage as possible.
Needless to say, they were disgusted with the hotel management as well as the ignorant tourists.
If you walk along Sandy Beach now, please note that from Crystal Waters Beach Bar and just beyond The Carib Beach Bar, LOCALS are providing a place for refuse and try to keep the beach, or what’s left of the beach, clean of garbage.
Crystal Waters Beach Bar is also asking to sign a petition.
The petition is to save the beach and trees behind Crystal Waters
Sandy Beach
Worthing
@Not Bajan
Doesn’t goverment have a pivotol role to play in combating these enviromental issues? Pray tell me how outsiders can litter our prestine coastline and the owners or management of these hotels are not fined.
@ ac
I don’t know what government would do or should have done. It would also take a number of people to launch a complaint which I don’t think was done.
As far as I know, Sandy Bay Beach Hotel is now closed. Left behind is only the pieces of mortar in the sand.
Let’s hope that goverment, whatever branch is responsible in these matters, will take action to preserve the rest of the beach and the trees before it’s all gone.
AC,
I remember, much of ‘Beach Cleanup ‘ in the past had to be done by crews off naval ships, or visiting sports teams.
It used to make me cringe, thinking, ‘ So Barbadians can’t even clean their own beaches ? ‘
So AC, I’m really glad to have you tell me now Barbadians have begun to recognise such a travesty.
I wish they would recognise it all along country roads, and in the fields too. Why just the beaches, pues ?
@colin beadon
i think you response was intended for Not bajan.
However i take it in the spirit it was intended.
@not bajan
To me the enviroment is a continuous problem which is taken very lightly in Barbados.Look at the problem in Mullins Bay. This matter has been talk about for years and nobody seems to care to do much of anything about it.
People should not think that were are all here by ourselves . The enviroment is also an everday part of our existence and we need to take care of it in order for us to exist
Just completed another tour of the island. River Bay, not really a tourist spot, has litter and garbage in the dry part of the river bed. There was a garbage can which was filled to the top and then some.
Further on, we had to stop for a car letting off a passenger. The driver threw his garbage out the car window before driving off. I could go on with garbage bags at the side of the road.
One area I remember as being kept clean is Husbands. I checked it again a couple of weeks ago and was most happy to see it still neat and tidy.
Start teaching the school children, from kindergarten on how important the environment is for now and for their future.
On the Garbage subject.
Fifteen years ago, we hammered two large schools, talking to the head teacher on the phone, about the dreadful garbage spread all outside schools gates, and on the playing fields. One of these schools is beside the ABC highway, as you come from the airport.
We must say the playing field is spotless these days, but one wonders if the young drivers that school must have produced by now, take their garbage home, or throw it outside the car window like far too many people do in Barbados.
A Policeman will give you a ticket for that, in some countries these days. And that is how it should be, if you have any pride in your island, or care about the environment which naturaly (believe it or not), does its best to regulate your own health.
AMEN
@Not Bajan
River Bay was one of my favourite places for picnics.
It saddens me to hear of the way it is being kept.As a country which have to depend on tourism for it survival . One would think that the upkeep of these areas would be of most concernto the government.
I hope the government would do something to correct these problems as it is a negative reflection on our country If you ask people to come and visit the country at least it should be clean.
Some countrie are so clean.Why ?
If you go to Singapore, or Hongkong, people just don’t throw trash all over the place, like you see in Barbados, or Venezuela. Texas, you can travel along highways, and hardly see a single piece of paper or old tin for miles and miles, unless it has changed since I was last there. How can such a huge country be so clean, and why ?
My last visit to England, too, didn’t impress on me there was any garbage. Why is it that certain peoples throw their trash everywhere, and others are very aware that nature needs to be pristine ?
Anyhow, never mind Barbados, the worst I’ve ever seen was Venezuela, the highways in some areas, with garbage stretching strewn twenty yards each side of the road, as far as anybody could have thrown it from a truck or car, going at speed.
Virgin Manager Flouting Immigration Rules – No work permit yet working over 6 months in Barbados!
How is it that certain companies and certain ethnicities can behave how they want in Barbados and get away from it?
Virgin Atlantic, a company with a traditionally healthy respect for the ways of the Caribbean, has chosen to send down a new Regional Manager without a work permit first being issued!
What makes it worse is that this new regional manager, Nick Parker, appears to suffer from a considerable “Massa” complex and has been openly abusive and condescending to his, primarily black, staff.
So much so that many who had not previously done so are rushing to join the union in order to stop his bullying.
What I wonder is….had he been a Guyanese or Nigerian how fast would he have been thrown out?
Apparently the situation has been reported to the Immigration Department but it appears that there are some rules for you and I and others for the Massa Whiteman from Virgin…
Apparently he has reduced some of his staff to tears daily and many are considering leaving the company even in this difficult economic climate.
Can we get the Immigration Department to correct this bad situation? I doubt it.
What is Culture ?
Culture deals with man’s behavior and specifically with the ways in which human beings carry out the activities involved in daily living. ( Taken from, World Book).
In Barbados, apparently, pelting garbage everywhere but in litter bins, has sadly become part of the new culture.
The barbados culture is rum and they do that very well. Never mind the enviroment The very thing we need for our existence.As one person here alluded to the fact that swamp land should remain stinky and left alone. Never mind the animal and plant life that make it their habitat.
The Bajan culture is rum and the enviroment is secondary on their to do list. As one person comment that swamland should remain stinky and left alone . Never mind the plant and animal life that use it for their natural habitat.
How long does it take for bfp to moderate a comment?
Hi ac
It depends on whether or not everybody shows up for their moderating duties and SOMEONE said she would and did not but she has a good reason and we forgive her.
Clive
To Straight Talk, if around, and for others interested in science in any way.
There is a really good chapter in the book by Bill Bryson on the reasons we get climate changes. I can’t stop pushing the book, and how amazingly informative and interesting it is.
‘ A short History Of Nearly Everything.’
Such a book should be in every house and certainly in every school, if we really want to encourage young scientists.
There is so much of the Earth alone, and its nature, that remains utterly unknown, unexplored. In space, there are millions of near Earth objects, untracked, that pass through Earth’s path, daily. As for vulcanology, the most dangerous volcano on Earth, is Yellowstone. It is a supervolcano. Its last eruption 600,000 years ago plus, caused an almost complete extinction world wide.
I’m about two thirds through Bill Bryson’s book Down Under. Have also read A Walk in the Woods.
Now I am looking forward to getting A Short History Of Nearly Everything and hoping that Bryson’s wicked sense of humour will get me interested in reading history and science.
Notbajan,
I’m certainly looking forward when I find them, for Bill Bryson’s other books. He has a great writing flow, amusing, often a little frightening, and really digs for his facts. What he uncovers for me, is a continual wonder in this Universe, Earth, my own body, and the billions of tiny systems and organisms that I share will all living things. So very much is still unknown, so much un-accounted, un-raveled, to the point we seem to have just begun.
it doesn’t take a road scholar to know that humans plants and animals are all connected in some way. The only difference is that humans are supposed to be superior in our thinking , but so far we haven’t shown it .The animals seem to be alot smarter Look at the way they plan for the seasons.
AC
Only Christians have been drilled about their superiority over nature. I have not found it in other religions.
The more I get to know people the more I like my dog.
There are enough people walking this earth thinking of themselves as being superior, poor fools.
Notbajan,
Ever watched a spider, by himself, spinning his own web. Ever watched a hummingbird collecting the fine gossimer moss for her nest, or Frigate birds, far out to sea, searching for the dark carpets of swarming bait. Or the quick- pointed wingtip flight of falcons hovering mouse or rabbit savannas.
Or a humming bird skimming down a banana leaf coated with dew- jewels, and showering them off his wings in early morning ablution.
Yeh, there are those of us who prefer our dogs, and wild places, except, you are not supposed to admit it.
A friend was saying that with Haiti having vast wasteland .The country would do best to invest in Farming.
Viva Haiti !
The Haitians, provided they are not destroyed with too much ‘Freeness’ coupled with advice that won’t suit their way of life, and provided another such Papa Doc is not permitted to start another such tyranny, will find their own way, and raise again.
It is doubtful it will be recognised as Western democracy, but then,… so what ???? To each nation, time and place,… its own way.
Nature in all its splendour. The Grand Canyon. Inspiring , awesome . A work of Art.
Most of the debris in Haiti is being recycled and is going to use to build bridges ,and roads.
AC,
The Haitians are putting the debris to good purpose. Wish much of the debris in Barbados was placed in garbage bins, and not thrown every which way including the countryside, the ravines and beaches.
1. What has happened to the ‘Poop & Scoop Plan’? Horses and dogs just in Bajan parlance – shiteing everywhere and the riding of horses through the district as though we are in the Wild, Wild North.
2. What has happened to the law that use to be during crop season no burning of stuff or no burning before 6.00 a.m. and after 6.00 p.m.?
3. What has happened to the no wearing of camouflage yet still persons are all over Bridgetown in same?
4. What has happened to the noise pollution group? Vehicles passing through the neighbour and shaking every piece of furnitures in the house.
5. What has happened to the Stand Pipe Cleaners?
6. What has happened to sidewalks in the country?
7. What has happened to police allowing Moon Town to block the roadside because it belongs to a MP?
8. What has happened to police patrols at night and passing the burning spliffs?
9. Where is my tax money going?
10. Has Barbados simply gone stark raving mad?
Ouch, not a good advertisement for Barbados.
Just a quick word about the Barbados airport. We flew through from JFK on to St. Vincent. So “in transit”. You have to fill out all their forms and clear their customs and then check in again for your ongoing flight. You will be given a piece of paper the size of a post it that you must FILL OUT and present when clearing security again. Nobody tells you this, there are no signs or instructions. We found it all very unuser friendly and the majority of the airport staff grumpy, unhelpful and with a sort of attitude. Barbados may be a way point to other islands and they make it clear they arent interested in being helpful. And that included the airline counter staff. It was a buzz kill on the way in and the way out.
@Anonymous
Ican only answer question 10. The answer is YES
True story. On my way out of miami international airport. A lady with her dog on a leash was popping inside the terminal. By the way the police never said a word .Only the people on the way to catch
their flight kept stepping in it. Must have been a long flight if you sat next to one of those person
with sh..t allover their shoes
is bfp moderator on strike? comments taking forever to be moderated.
Hi ac,
Robert here. Not on strike but late for my scheduled time.
Sorry to all.
Barbados immigration is abusing their authority and their decisions are somewhat prejudiced.
I am jamaican and is just coming back from Barbados were I was hassled terribly by the immigration supervisor Mr. Roy Grinage. I was unable to understand some of his questions because of his accent so I would keep asking him to repeat. He started getting angrier and angrier and I simply could not understand what was happening so I said ” I’m sorry I don’t understand but is there a problem”
It was quite amazing the amount of anger that developed from this question. I watched him slam and the book on the desk and started telling me he is finished with me and he is going to refuse me entry. I asked “on what grounds” then he started shouting and saying he is the person in authority so he can do whatever he wanted and this is his final decision. I was therefore refused without plausible reasons.
Now I share this to warn people of Barbados immigration especially one called Roy Grinage. They abuse their authority and tend to be very aggressive when asked questions. From my experience it seems they are also prejudiced against persons from Jamaica, St. Vincent and Guyana as I was there watching the persons that came under scrutiny and they were all from those islands…. However, when a woman from Britain came in about to overstay on her passport he was very willing to be lenient and allowed her to do so giving her more time than she initially had. So be very alert and careful. Safe travel.
@jamician
.
There is two sides to every story. At this time thereis only one side given.
There is so much these days, does not seem to make any sense.
All we hear is,… ‘we’re coming out of the recession’. And yet the price of oil is rising, which will drive the price of everything up. Perhaps somebody could possibly find a way to explain how we manage a rise in the price of everything, and yet, we’re told, we are coming out of a recession ?
It may be the usual 21% oxygen content of the air is falling, or rising, and thus we are suffering delusions common to divers, climbers, and those who sup drug induced perturbations leading to grandeur, well being, and glimpses of heaven, or misadventure,… leading to death.
It is all a very fine knife- edge, with an abysmal chasm each side, a sort of adrenalin rush that leads to energy bankruptsy and depleation, and one by one we are laid back in the dark closet of ten billion years,… awaiting, hoping perhaps,… for a signal to come on stage again.
Colin:
Good to see you pointing out the contradictory connections that some of us have been prophesying for the longest while.
You cannot increase GDP without increasing energy consumption.
Energy producers are at maximum output now just meeting our current reduced needs.
Therefore any attempt to grow out of recession will be hobbled by sharp oil price increases.
There’s a lot more pain to come before any signs of recovery become apparent.
Straight talk,
‘ Return to simplicity?
Perhaps the recent-past memories of the world we knew and hoped would last forever, will never truly return for long, if at all.
The sure- coming energy crisis, coupled with the growing shortage of just about everything needed for life, coupled again with the huge world population explosion, makes ‘Recovery’ a shimera vanishing before us even as we drive into the desert.
Those who have lived or experienced the simplicity of desert- like life, will understand.
Our only real chance is to drop down several steps, and start living on far simple means. We simply cannot go on taxing the Earth like we are trying to do.
The more we refuse to accept this, the more we will have to live with the steadily increasing consequencies we see around us and hear daily, on local or world news.
Sadly, really sadly, by our own insurmountable refusal, that is how like a herd of cattle,…. we are being inexorably driven
‘ Horrorflying. Horrorflying.’
There is a site on Utube, which I sent to BFP on email, showing all the aircraft flights taking place across the world ( Barbados included ) on a 24 hour basis speeded up to a couple minutes. It is staggering, and horrorflying(my own word).
A 747 uses 6.5 gallons of aviation fuel per mile. It carries over 57,000 gallons, or 194 tons on a long trip, like to the UK from Barbados.
So now we see where the real pollution is going, up into the higher atmosphere, since so many aircraft fly every 24 hours day and night around the globe.
Naturally, we can’t, or won’t, do anything about it, till we start running out of such energy.
‘Ah fill the cup, what boots it to
Repeat,
How time is slipping beneath
our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and
dead yesterday,
Why fret about them if
today be sweet!
O.Khayyam.
Possible treatment for MS sufferers.
Interesting how Patients and Doctors are using the Internet to push for quick results.
Story on the ctv.ca website.
@Colin Beadon
With all the pollution going in the atmosphere . It makes Mother Nature job a lot harder. No wonder that the Hurricanes and Tornadoes are so volatile.What goes up must come down . And so it goes.
Serious earthquakes and atomic warfare.
Haiti’s major earthquake and the disability of the rest of the world to do very much on a steady basis to get that island back on its feet, ought to make us stop and think.
If destruction on Haiti’s scale causes such a problem to rectify, what happens when a rough state or terrorist organization, gets management of an atomic weapon and decides to strike with their new toy on a major city, anywhere in the world ?
‘More things are wrought by prayers than this world dreams of,….etc’ Alf Tennyson
True Colin. I worry about Iran mostly because their stated intention is to wipe Israel off the map. They are religiously motivated and cannot be reasoned with or bought off.
cq8,
The mainstay of the Iran population has attempted to overthrow the pernicious jerks who rule that country. We cannot wish that intelligent mainstay obliteration, should the jerks attempt a strike against Isreal or anybody else. Obliteration would follow. How sad the jerks are not intelligent enough to appreciate that.
Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. They make you fully aware the Earth, in its own way, is as alive as we are, and has its own agendas. Those agendas are not ours, and so we get in the way, and many of us perish.
Then, not understanding, we can bawl, and ask the Gods why ? But all we’ll see is the sunrise and set, and the graves of those we loved who were unlucky.
The stupendous Culture of Cuba.
Having just watched another documentary on Cuba. BBC. 17 April
I have to ask, once more, why did our TV channels take off Cuba, when there were other worthless channels they could have trashed instead ?
Was the Cuban channel trashed because Cuban culture and life, pose such questions as: How does an Island and its amazing culture , manage on so little ?
(sung to “arm de police” by Gabby)
hearing talk talk talk talk talk all day
all de talking aint gettin no where
dey talk about housing, talk about chicken
tell me what is happening to de administration
they complaining
it aint’ working
they complaining
bout de talkin’
people running, from de blogging
MPs duckin’, cause dey lying
Arm de MPs (pow pow)
Arm de MPs (pow pow)
Arm de MPs (pow pow)
all de talk will cease (repeats)
Estwick an he gun at work all day
somebody tell he “you en nuh man bout hey”
so estwick show ‘e’, that he would “blow” ‘e’
now they asking he for his resignation
they complaining
bout de gunning
they complaining
bout de hiding
MPs talking, bout they starving
now they duckin, cause they lying
Arm de MPs (pow pow)
Arm de MPs (pow pow)
Arm de MPs (pow pow)
all de talk will cease (repeats)
Yuh all Listenup!
Mother Nature is talking loud and clear . Dont say she didn’t warn us. This only the beginning . The worst is yet to come. Eventually we will be having longer winters and less summers. Behold the Ice Age Cometh.
@ Colin “How does an Island and its amazing culture , manage on so little ?”
Because they learned how to use insects to control crop pest while we by peticides and spray our crops?
They use oxen to pull ploughs while we use gas guzzling tractors which help to make oil companies rich?
If we look past the politics we will find that the Cubans have been done a lot that is good for the environment.
One thing they did was grow food where people live and that reduced transportation costs.
Barbados could learn from the Cubans and our very own “Lowdown” Hoad.
Timbuktu .
700,ooo ancient West African manuscripts, some dated back to the 13th century, recently being dug out and placed back in Timbuktu libraries. This is a BBC documentary, 17th April 2010, well worth watching. It should interest those who, today, might just want to get to the bottom of the slave trade.
Hants,
Thank you. I was interested to know if anybody knew what they should know about Cuba. Thank God you do. So that makes two of us, anyhow.
“how does a country {Cuba} managed with so little”
Does it? It’s people flee that country to find a better way of life. Many of them living in the USA.’
@BFP
Whose idea was that of having the picture of the man with the gun.It is so annoying that every time i come to this bolg i have to see aman pointing a gun in my face.Couldn’t the point of the article be made a different way.
Yah AC,
So do people from all our islands too. La hierba es siempre mas profunda, no es verdad ?
I agree with you AC,
Gun-pointing is a sign of weakness or fear, used by somebody who can’t get his own way, usually.
@Colin Beadon
It depends on what kinda pesticide they using on the grass! Politics has a way of turning beauty into ugly.
This is great Ukelele playing, the best I’ve ever heard. The man must be the world number one.
BFP if you are going to show a gun at least show a Tech 9 or a Glock instead of the ugly revolver.
I suppose you are giving equal opportunity to the Dees after showing Owin an he ESAF bottle.
For the record I think homeowners should invest in good guard dogs.
Guns are dangerous and only Police and the Military should have them.
Hi Hants
If Mr. Estwick wants to tell us what model of handgun he did or did not “brandish” in Marshall’s face, we’d be happy to change the photo!
As far as guns go, we’ll have to agree to disagree with your position that the best way of dealing with criminals who use guns is to disarm all potential victims. Criminals will always obtain guns and other weapons and don’t care about licenses and permits and that sort of thing so society will never be able to disarm the criminals – only the good citizens. That’s IMHO.
BFP,
The UTube I sent on the Ukelele player, was only supposed to come as the site listing. I don’t know how it actually changed the way it came.
I’m sorry about that. C
My fadder was a police all he life.
He tell me, “Son, if you going to own a hand gun, you has to donate you life to it. It must always live beside you or on you. If you not prepare to do dis, then don’ have one. A tief will either shoot you with your own gun, or somebody in your house go dead ’cause you lef’ it aroung’. ”
He might have added there are many cases where normal people, caught off guard or actually faced with a predicament, freeze up, afraid to actually use their own gun.
The Icelandic Volcano.
Major hub of the Western world upset by volcano spume. All sorts of people vex. The airlines most vex of all.
Yet, stop, think a little bit. We are lucky it is just a medium rate volcano and not a supervolcano like Yellowstone, or a meteor strike, or ,…..atomic war.
What then ? Think. Ponder ! How lucky we really are this time. How lucky we are when the rains come lightly, first.
Hants always gets it right.
On the showing of the handgun, it looks like a 4.5 revolver. They are really difficult to hit anything with, at more than ten feet. A 9.5mm Luger, is a very fine well balanced weopen, except for its overhead rejectory, and an Ingram M110, would give you a spread like a shotgun, whether you could shoot or not.
But you are better off not owning such things from personel experience. Too many of my own friends who lived with guns in Venezuela, still ended up gunshot, and dead.
@Colin Beadon
I wonder how many friends that might have been.I hope they wern’t more than one. I shudder at the thought if they were more.Gee!
@BFP
Is this the smoking gun.? The man in the picture seems to think it is funny with that smile on his face.
AC,
Five friends. Three of them Trini. Two, Americanos.
Racism, well for the nine years that I have spent living in Toronto I have seen more Racism in Barbados than in Canada. Those yard fowl politicians would allow a non nationals to own the beaches in Barbados . I would never forget bull frog JACK DEAR
when he wanted the politicians to ban bajans from the beaches.
When I was about fourteen years old I walked across a cane ground as a short cut , while walking across a car pull up , the guy looked at me and asked me what am I doing walking across his ground , it was a sunday morning , he was all dressed up I thought he was going to church , but he said to me IF HE HAD HIS GUN HE WOULD OF SHOOT ME FOR WALKING ACROSS HIS LAND SEON Mc GEARY, Shermans ,St.PETER (1972).
Imaging some one wanted to shoot you for walking across cane trash , the shooter would on his way to brother Ford`s church in Shermans ,St.PETER
Morce,
Those who church all their lives, are often the worst humans one could ever meet. Perhaps that is why they church, though it does them no good. They have not heard the words, or the voices of the choir. They just dressed up and went to church, and make,……
as if.
Rare video footage of the local newsmedia coverage of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (Murrah Federak Building). Watch it here:
For once, good news from Haiti.
From World Vision, the child I sponsor, as well as none of the sponsored children have been reported harmed by this earthquake. World Vision Haiti staff have informed us that no Canadian supported communities have been affected.
10.918 Haitian children are supported through World Vision’s work.
Guns in the hands of Hotheads.
Having read the newspapers, perhaps everybody going into parliament should wear a BP vest too. Sooner or later there will be an accident, or a shoot out.
I love to look at trees. Today I was looking at a variety of palm trees and in someway they structure is similar to people. That is some of their trunks are large .medium and small.
AC,
If you really love trees, plant some and carry the water in the dry season, a couple gallon will do, and watch them grow and flower and perhaps bare fruit. And then that tree is yours, if you are lucky, for the rest of your life, and you can watch the birds nest in it.
I hope you will never have to see such trees of yours, burned or cut down, to feel the deeply sad etch its going causes in your heart.
For trees have spirits, like we do. And they are as sentient as we are too.
The oil well that ‘Got Away’ this last week.
Right now, there is 1000 barrels of oil a day, leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from just one well. That is about what all the near 200 oil wells in Barbados make in one day, if they are lucky.
The Horizon oil rig was working in 5000 feet of water. She had just cased and cemented the production casing at 18,000 feet. The problem happened at night, of course. It always seems to happen at night, usually around or near ‘The bewitching hour’.
A huge ‘thud’, shook the whole rig. This is a huge rig, like a small city. You could not fit it into a stadium.
The next few minutes there was a tremendous blast followed by raging fire that few people could visualize or imagine, and slowly, the Horizon rig started to literally melt down into a pile of junk, her mast crashing into the sea, her hull listing until she went over.
Long before this finality, all except twelve of her work force, had followed their daily drills, and got into lifeboats, or jumped into the sea where they were later picked up.
So there went an operation costing $1,000,000 US a day, if you include helicopter services, supply vessels, and service companies.
The cost of the submersible services now attempting to close off the flowing oil from somewhere near the sea bed,, is anybodies guess, as is the amount of oil and what damage it will cause, that gets into the sea for the next,….weeks, months ?
So now you might have a clearer picture why no offshore drilling in our deep Barbados waters, has started yet, and why we may have to wait a long time. This is the second bad case in deep Earth oceans, we have seen this year.
The rig that sank this week.
Louisianna. 5000 barrels , they say now, is escaping in the sea off Louisianna. That is enough oil to fill three Olympic size swimming pools, daily.
There are no words to convey the coming crisis, unless this oil leak can be plugged in a hurry, which is hardly possible. Such leaks do sometimes
‘ Bridge Off ‘ partially at least.
It will be ‘sidetrack time’, with another rig, if one is near enough and available.
If the well does not ‘bridge off’,
we could be looking at a number of weeks till it can be stopped, unless there’s an act of,…. great luck, or God .
@colin Beadon
my wish is to come back as a tree . They contribute
so much to the enviroment. I do have trees planted
on my premises. Most of them I planted myself.
AC,
There is an alternitive to being a tree, if you want to hang around several hundred years longer than trees do.
We could become a moss. Mosses live in really way out places, like on mountaintops, and deep in caves, and tropical forrests high in trees. All we’d need is a little moisture once in a while, like every few years. We wouldn’t do much, of course, or worry about politics or recession, atomic weopons or tax, or where our next meal will come from, or if it will rain in the next year. We’d just moss happily around, and probably spread spores if there is any wind. Most moses are very old indeed, some thousands of years old.
So if you want to hang around, think of a moss next life. You could chose from over ten thousand known species, and obviously find some to name as your own. Nobody knows how many species there are, like we don’t know how many animal or plant species exist.
@Colin Beadon
Moss is a good idea if you have a lot of enemies and
whenever they step on moss , they bust they butt.
Question: What is the purpose of moss to the enviroment.
AC,
That is a good question, come to think of it. But the same could be said about flies, mosquitos, rats, even humans.
Humans, could not be said to add anything to the environment, in any way, except extreme detriment. So what little a Moss may add or not, seems of micronic inconsequence.
@Colin Beadon
Flies mosquitoes ,rats all play a very important role in keeping the enviroment clean. The very microscopic bacteria which humans dispose of on a daily basis they eat. They also control they poulation by eating each other.Humans role seems to be that of self destruction. Shows very little respect for the enviroment. Moss also does it part in
helping with the enviroment it survives on bacteria that is harmful to man and it feeds many types of plants and insects.Maybe in the future a biochemist
would find that moss might be a missing link in curing some illness.
AC, And something on economics.
Good. You’ve delved into Moss. It lives under strict economy of energy too. Its carbon foot print, practically zero.
In todays paper there seems to have been an International Economist here in Barbados.
I’m wondering what a man like that is paid, to come to Barbados and tell us nothing more than we should start exporting Road Tennis ?
Economists are not scientist, though they like to call themselves that.
Economics is really just politics in disguise. Read: Hazel Henderson.
@Colin,
The ‘international economist’ does not get paid to come here; he lives here already. I got a free lunch. I said a few more things than about road tennis (which was an example of how innovation can include doing existing things but for a new audience and therefore increase its value), and the text is available on my blog, http://livinginbarbados.blogspot.com/2010/04/in-any-economy-innovation-is-part-of.html.
@Colin Beadon
To Quote a well known economist””Liars can figure and figures can lie
I think the idea of international road tennis is a good one for Barbados. If jamaica can have bobsled with no snow . So why can’t we be innovative and have road tennis.Do i hear applause!
AC,
Applause, Certainly. Now let’s see the exportation of Road Tennis happen, like Trinidad has done with steel pan and Calypso, and Carnival, except it is called ‘Cropover ‘ here, though its real boost is a copy( quite a good copy there days, and getting steadily better,) of Trinidad Carnival.
Dennis Jones. Good to hear you again, letting me appreciate more about you at the same time. I went to your site, having appreciated your statement of ‘ Just a a Free lunch’.
About your site: I tend to have problems with absorbing large amounts of flowering academical sentences that are obviously very understandable to ivory tower fraternity, but beyond my own apprehension, unless I spend a few hours pondering just what is being actually said.
It seems a problem between working and business people, and acadamia and political buffs, to get a standard of English across all can appreciate.
But I will read your site over several times, and see if I can manage to get a cleared image into my inchoate mind, that would have certainly been improved by university, instead of seamanship and oil rigs.
@Colin,
In between your reading my blog you may wish to indulge your concern for nature by adding a appropriate entry to the NY Times ‘Moment in time’ project, http://submit.nytimes.com/moment, which asks for images as at 11am EST.
@Colin
Oh the wonders of moss doing all it can at this present time to suck up as much oil as it can . It’s way of protecting plant and animal lives at sea.
AC, Nature deals with oil spills.
There has always existed, in Lake Maracibo, an organism that converts oil spills to a thick pea soup.
Lake Maracaibo, long before drilling ever started there, suffered natural oil seeps.
You can tell when you are traveling in a fast crew launch through an oil slick in the process of alteration. Instead of the crisp slap of lake water against the slicing hull, you hear the dull slop of thick dark green soup. It does not smell all that nice, either.
The process of alteration, seems to take several days. The oil ends up big globs of a green cake, and eventualy seem to disperce or sink.
Anyhow, the natural life of Lake Maracaibo, the birds, fish, dolphin, turtles, seem unperturbed. It is the lightening and thunder storms in the year’s later months, turning the night to day, every few seconds, that tend to be nerve-wracking till you get used to them. You actually hear, like ripping silk, the lightening strikes zipping down through the air. If you hear it, you wont die, if that is any consolation.
Those late months are also the
season for water spouts on the lake. They are early morning while your launch takes you out to work. The Captain will alter course to avoid them. I’ve counted up to seven some mornings, but the Frigate birds and the Pelicans seem to take them in their stride. Meanwhile, the aoemba munches the floating oil.
Hi Colin
I think you are spot on about the power of the earth to cleanse itself of much of the man-made pollution and “natural” pollution in moderate amounts. If you speak to some of the old people they remember that there was no “beach tar” prior to world war two. The beach tar (which is really oil) started when so many ships were sunk and it persisted (according to my grandfather) into the early 1950’s but then it went away only to return in the early 1970’s with a vengeance. There was that clear period of maybe 15 years when there was no or little “beach tar”. The ocean took care of the World War Two spills, but became overwhelmed in the 1970s and it’s been downhill ever since. So my grandfather use to say to me.
The big plastic floating dumps in the Pacific and Atlantic are growing and the ocean doesn’t seem able to cope with all the plastic. I worry about that more than the oil because I think that you are correct that the oil is “natural” and the earth and the oceans can deal with it if given half a chance.
Another non-natural persistent pollutant that the earth can’t deal with (I think) is the pollution from spent depleted uranium munitions (anti-tank weapons). That stuff goes to dust and gets into lungs like asbestos: it won’t kill you tomorrow, but if it gets into your lungs you have a death sentence in so many years.
Robert
BFP
There was a BBC report back a few years about the British Channel, and how all the tankers sunk by the Germans ( Britian has non of its own oil in those days) had destroyed fishing and much other sea life.
But investigations done on the channel shores, showed very little damage two years after the war had ended. Shipping went up dramatically after the war end, and many ships started using thick bunker oil instead of coal, and tankers used to flush their tanks into the sea, when changing oil cargos to gasolene or other
lighter oils.
This flushing of tanker tanks, and huge passenger and cargo vessels flushing their bilges into the sea after the war, caused a lot of polution until it was stopped internationaly. That is where even in the West Indies, one could see beaches with globs or thick black tare that turned almost to stone, slowly. The tar, in the sand, got on your feet and was really hard to get off.
I’ll fully agree with you though. Plastic is another story, and I worry for the Albatross, among other creatures of the sea who swallow, or get caught in plastic netting and balls of fishingline.
Humans, in our vast and fast-growing numbers, sadly, don’t help the Earth in any way.
@Bfp
I am tickled pink at your response concerning the
enviroment.If my memory serves me right i remember your referencing waste lands as “Stinky water” any how I am proud of your concern about the oil problem.
It amazes me how the BLP government talking about saving job so I want to know how could Ian Edghill who is running for a seat on the BLP ticket send home three workers from the Tamarind Cove Hotel after working 24yrs 20yrs and 18yrs termination their contracts without any reason with one month and vacation pay and dont intend to give them one red cent oh I forget too tell you that these three person are supporters of the DLP shame on you Ian
ref previous comment at bfp. it was meant to be address to another blogger
Interesting that Barbados is indeed promoting road tennis at the Shanghai Trade Show, see Barbados Today reports, http://www.barbadostoday.bb/launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=7j0ZeS41B80b&PBID=87ad6005-1972-4d63-92b0-8927eda53c7a&skip=
Well Done, Dennis Jones, about the Road Tennis. Now how about Spouge ?
Why hasn’t Spouge gone a lot further I’ll never fathom. There is so much to be said for it, it’s very lilting beat. It has never been fully utilized as it should have been. I think I’d add a cowbell in the rythme section, like used in Reggie and many other Latin beats. Perhaps it needs a little more stimulation like that, just a touch.
On the still- spilling Gulf Oil.
We’ve been ‘leaked’ what actually took place on the Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. It was, close enough, what we’d been able to piece together in our own minds, before the story came out.
It’s detailed, and wouldn’t make much sense unless you’d lived on rigs offshore involved with such work for some time. But that does not make it, or what has happened, any less of a tragedy.
There will be some big money spent, and made, and many sleepless nights yet to come, before the sea and coasts, will revive.
Question
When is freedom of speech not free?
AC,
Speech is never free. You always pay for it, in one way or another, good or bad.
In the old Colonial days, people were, in themselves, a lot more free than they are today. Independence changed that Freeness. We gave it up when crime and corruption took over.
Now many of us live behind bars in our homes, and we’re afraid to walk alone, or with our love, across the land and on beaches in too many of our islands now.
@ Colin Beadon
So then what’s the purpose of calling something that isn’t? isn’t that a lie? Either it is or it isn’t
AC.
Brahma says,
” I am everthing that is, and everything that is not. “
best web page just for you
In it something is. Thanks for the help in this question, I too consider, that the easier the better …
Before connection
@Colin
Karma says
What goes around comes around.
Onthe subject of the oil spill. I read that they are going to use debris to cap the oil that has been spilling.
AC,
Yes. We use mica flakes, saw dust, coconut husk, old cement sacks, cane trash, and just about everything you can trash easily like old tyres and inner tubes mashed up like chicken feed, old clothing, pieces of a superintendent’s hat, your neighbour’s panties, photographs of Sir Galber’s head, etc. You mix it all up with drilling fluid and pump it into the well with cement behind it. It stops circulation loss and leaks.
You can use it in wheel barrow and motor-mowers tyres, cycles, even cars. But don’t pump cement behind it then, use acrylic paint instead.
Besides, where is Rumple, and Straightalk ???
Parace han desaparecido con las flores de ayer, y solo AC, y Hants a veces, y yo mismo, escalonar sobre como el ultimo de los caballeros de la Mesa Redonda. Que fue, pues ?
I’m still here, Colin.
Don’t know if you’ve heard this, an engineer’s eyewitness account of the blowout.
http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1790422&spid=32364
Appears to be a combination of failures – The BOP itself and Halliburton’s nitrogen foam cement bottom plug.
Straightalk,
Yes, we got that dispatch in from Houston eight odd days ago. What I can’t decide is why the BOP was opened without testing the pressure below it first for a number of hours. It was obvious the cement job very probably did not go off as planned, due to erratic pressure zones they had seen during the actual drilling. Circulation loss and cement misplacement, must have been obvious.
The recent up- grading of the excaping oil from five thousand to 26 thousand barrels a day, also raises question. The 7 inch production casing was hung off, with a hanger packer, inside 9 5/8 inch casing. It is unlikely, you could get 26 thousand barrels a day past that hanger, unless the escape is also coming up from the inside of the 7 inch casing also, or, up the outside of the well casings outside the well, entirely.
So we hang around waiting for the true story.
Mind Control Theories and Techniques used by Mass Media
Apr 28th, 2010 | By Vigilant | Category: Vigilant Reports
Mass media is the most powerful tool used by the ruling class to manipulate the masses. It shapes and molds opinions and attitudes and defines what is normal and acceptable. This article looks at the workings of mass media through the theories of its major thinkers, its power structure and the techniques it uses, in order to understand its true role in society.
Most of the articles on this site discuss occult symbolism found in objects of popular culture. From these articles arise many legitimate questions relating to the purpose of those symbols and the motivations of those who place them there, but it is impossible for me to provide satisfactory answers to these questions without mentioning many other concepts and facts. I’ve therefore decided to write this article to supply the theoretical and methodological background of the analyzes presented on this site as well as introducing the main scholars of the field of mass communications. Some people read my articles and think I’m saying “Lady Gaga wants to control our minds”. That is not the case. She is simply a small part of the huge system that is the mass media.
Mass media are media forms designed to reach the largest audience possible. They include television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, records, video games and the internet. Many studies have been conducted in the past century to measure the effects of mass media on the population in order to discover the best techniques to influence it. From those studies emerged the science of Communications, which is used in marketing, public relations and politics. Mass communication is a necessary tool the insure the functionality of a large democracy; it is also a necessary tool for a dictatorship. It all depends on its usage.
In the 1958 preface for A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley paints a rather grim portrait of society. He believes it is controlled by an “impersonal force”, a ruling elite, which manipulates the population using various methods.
“Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.”
– Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World
His bleak outlook is not a simple hypothesis or a paranoid delusion. It is a documented fact, present in the world’s most important studies on mass media. Here are some of them:
snip
The notion of escapism is even more relevant today with advent of online video games, 3D movies and home theaters. The masses, constantly seeking state-of-the-art entertainment, will resort to high-budget products that can only be produced by the biggest media corporations of the world. These products contain carefully calculated messages and symbols which are nothing more and nothing less than entertaining propaganda. The public have been trained to LOVE its propaganda to the extent that it spends its hard-earned money to be exposed to it. Propaganda (used in both political, cultural and commercial sense) is no longer the coercive or authoritative communication form found in dictatorships: it has become the synonym of entertainment and pleasure.
“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
– Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World
A single piece of media often does not have a lasting effect on the human psyche. Mass media, however, by its omnipresent nature, creates a living environment we evolve in on a daily basis. It defines the norm and excludes the undesirable. The same way carriage horses wear blinders so they can only see what is right in front of them, the masses can only see where they are supposed to go.
Green Monkey,
You got it, just about all of it. Far too many people have given up their well being, for instance, to the medical profession. Instead of keeping themselves heathly in obvious ways, they take drugs, by the bottle full, and spend vaste sums in a specialist’s office, for any little pain or swelling.
And so the world goes, drugged and dragged by the status quo and gimmicks you attach to your ears so you don’t miss a word of the new impossed order, or ever dare think for yourself.
Propagandized in America- the chains of illusion
Part of the reason we are in this mess, and the main reason why the American people don’t even know what is happening to them, is that the illusion machine (television) has removed the American population tragically far from reality. The gap between the news we see on TV, and what is actually happening in the world today, is the most severe it has ever been. We have been bred to be completely removed from reality. As famed American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey once said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”
The American people need to understand that creating, manipulating and controlling public opinion through mass media propaganda is a science. As social psychologist Kelton Rhoads wrote in his study, Universal Persuasion, Everyday Influence:
“Make no mistake. There are legions of influence agents operating in our society. They thrive — they exist at the pinnacles of power — by getting you to think things and to do things they want you to think and do… Most people are either unaware of these influences, or when they are, vastly overestimate the amount of freedom they have to make up their own minds. But the successful influence agent knows that if he can manage the situation and choose the correct technique, your response to his technique will be as reliable as the springing of a mousetrap.”
People with power have used this science to divide and conquer the United States. In 1923, Edward Bernays, the Godfather of propaganda wrote: “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” William Blum in Rogue State wrote: “Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” Harold Lasswell in 1927 declared: “The new antidote to willfulness is propaganda. If the mass will be free of chains of iron, it must accept its chains of silver. If it will not love, honor, and obey, it must not expect to escape seduction.”
snip
Other than to create and control popular opinion and keep us politically passive, the mainstream media exists to keep people consuming and spending their hard-earned money. That is the bottom line.
GM:
Do you live in Bim?
I think you must do, witness how you skate around the biggest crimes ever perpetrated by a government in its own people.
Once the populace really understands the level of slavery they happily live under, in the name of freedom, is the day democracy will reign.
By outlining all the seemingly small infringements of the popular concensus you are helping the broader thinkers to understand the underlying threat to democracy.
Once realised there will be no need for a third party, there will be a myriad of parties, and even single candidates who embrace the groundswell borne from the basic common good of humanity.
It may take years, but with the coming permanent recession it will arrive.
That is my prediction as the old order collapses.
In the meantime let us keep exposing the corruption , not just of individuals , but of the system itself.
More power to your elbow.
Where are the naysayers?
Straight talk and GM,
( Tracking the above scripts by you both )
Did you find and read Apocalypse by D.H.Lawrence. You must, must, must get it, and read it. It was his last book before he died.
He saw what was happening, far ahead of his time. He was like a divine soothsayer, so well did he understand the mind of men, and women. And no wonder his novels and short stories , still found in books shops all around the globe, entrap us in another world, still, today, as freshly as though we had never fully forgotton the pagan within us, and were still driven by gut feelings and emotions of childhood ,…while we laised in the shade of forest pools.
Cricket by the ladies, was great. Both teams, WI and NZ played for all they were worth. The West Indian girls bat (should I say it ?) better than our men.
Do hope we shall see much more cricket played by strong willed women.
Slavery, and Long Life.
I’m reading: ‘Advocate 13th 2010, back page. The Afro-Caribbean ethnic group stands a higher chance of developing hypertension due to turmoil of the slave trade.’ This devulged by a Cave Hill University lecturer, a doctor in pharmacology.
Once supposes, with more imagination, we could go on blaming the slavers for another two hundred or more years. But wait nah !
How come so many Afro- Barbadians despite this same slavery, manage to live past 100 years ? Perhaps the learned doctor lecturer, needs to do a more detailed study to arrive at a reason for that.
Of ‘ Going Astray ‘.
So many people in the world seem so unhappy. Most of these people live in the so called ‘Modern, up with everything world’ where wealth and possessions, they have been forceably impressed,… are King.
Fools, to have listened to this soul destroying abstraction, the advocators of multi-national business and sustainable developement. What unhealthy trash, spreading dis-ease across the face of God’s Earth.
Don’t ask me for the answers, for you know them as well as I do. Listen, listen, to the blood- stroke in your own head and heart.
All answers come from within you, if you will but ‘ Still’, and truly listen, or wander out into the dark night and look up at stars, if you can find them.
‘ Baredos ‘ .
Barbados will shortly need a name change.
I’m watching a cane field, just cut, where now surveyers are planting steel marker stakes with red ribbons dribbling in the wind. It is such a sickly site, so sickening, hard to contemplate that the walks we’ve know for twenty years, will be paved in asphalt and concrete, and then the houses will come up, and then the street lights will fill the softness of the night sky with glaring light.
All the trash about saving agricultural land, all the trash about ecosystems and food sustainablity. Now we need to rename this island, Baredos, for all her ever – expanding concrete.
For we are being swallowed whole, by those who like mosquitos, would sap our very blood, and the real beauty of this island countryside, will have gone for ever, as though a volcano has swept her clean.
My ¾ century just pass. Not cricket. You must forgive me for remembering people were a lot happier in the past, when the West Indian Islands had the best cricketers in the world, and nobody could beat us, and the traffic used to be slowed, by horses and carts. And by 7.30p.m there was hardly a car on the roads during the week, and the nights were pitch dark unless the moon was showing her face, and the island was green with cane in every direction, and the fishing boats went out and caught plenty fish, and nobody packed a gun, and there was no drug addiction, and predial larceny was not yet
invented, and the blacksmith beat his red hot iron, and the cobblers pulled on their sole- shoe stitching twine.
And students behaved, and the docks were filled with full rigged schooners with white tipped top masts, and the smell of island spices were everywhere. And Sparrow was singing ‘Jean and Dina’, and Kitch was singing ‘Kitch, come scratch mah head’. And every village has its own school, and own shops, and almost everywhere you looked along the coasts, you could see the sea.
So forgive me, my ¾ century, and things I bicker about ‘ Today’ . For you too will bicker like I do,… when your time comes, and you can can’t see the sea for concrete and high rise hotels, and hopefully there will still be agricultural ground enough, to fill a pot.
Dear Colin,
I have always had high regard for your Mental Prowess,, especially in the realm of Quantum theoretics if ever there is such a word,,,, I however would like to remind you of the over abused utterings from the Rubiyat of Omar Khyam…”The moving finger writes and having writ moves on,nor all your piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line,nor all your tears wash out a word of it”……….
Whistling Frog,
I have scant mental prowess, cleaned here and there in more than just a few places across the world.
I don’t see the world like most do, but Khayyam spoke direct to me many years ago, when I was seventeen and at sea, as a deck boy on merchant ships, heaving high across the world’s oceans, with sometimes albatross, close to my left hand, sailing themselves on the wind lifting off the left wing of the bridge.
For me, there has always been more virtual truth in the simple words of Khayyam, than in
anything else I have ever read.
Nor would I lure anything back he wrote, to cancel half a line.
hi
wondered if you might be able to help, a few years ago their was a Programme on BBC about Barbados and I always remember the guy who lived on the west coast I think just outside of Holetown and how his house was worth 6million at that time but he refused to sell. He showed you round the house and I always remember how lovely he was and down to earth. Does anybody know what happened did he sell or is he still living their. I think we used to see the house when we were on the bus from almond village to holetown, but last year we never did the west coast so don’t know if its still there. The reason I am asking is I have a Barbados website and wanted to write a story on true bajans that won’t sell out to the big boys.
If anybody has any stories I would be grateful
since I want people living in the uk to know what a beautiful Island it is and not just for the rich
regards
sandra
ps if anybody knows the guy say hi
What happen Whistling Frog ? Swallow your whistle ?
Ah, the worldly hope men set their hearts upon.
Turns ashes—- or they prosper; and anon,
Like Snow upon the desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little Hour or two — is gone!
OM Khayyam.
Ah, life before Sapiens !
Neanderthals lived 130,000 years ago, till about 30,000. That was a very long run, much longer than Homosapiens will ever survive. Neanderthals were very robust, much stronger, and had larger brains than H.Sapiens. They lived through a deep ice age too, when Earth’s moderate climates were Siberian in ferocity.
It is not entirely clear why Neanderthal died out, but thought’s brows H.Sapiens probably infected them with small pox, like the Spanish did to the Incas. Yet there does not seem to have been warfare between the two species, and there might have been some hanky panky, and gene switching, why not ?
In those days neither species would have looked a great deal different. Sapiens would have been dressed in animal skins too, and the Gillette razor, had not yet been invented, nor the scissors, nor Ipods and SUV.s for that matter, nor assault rifles and concrete.
It was a wild lovely often tree filled world, though with a harsh unforgiving environment. The seas, lakes and rivers, were crammed with fish, and the stars and the moon, in the clear air, were bright at night, and you lived in caves, with a fire to keep dangerous animals off your doorstep. But only the strong survived, to live perhaps to 30 years at the most.
Yet there was art, of sorts, and probably music, of a kind, and you mourned your dead, and hunted your food.
Think how great,… not to have had politicians, or taxes, high rises, or the babble of cleric warning of hell. You didn’t have to worry about land being owned so you couldn’t hunt on it, or where you got your arrow heads. Disease took away the sick and infirm, only the really strong survived, so you didn’t have to concern yourself with over population, or cutting down too many trees, or parking problems. Youth, had to pass rigid often painful rituals, to be permitted membership of the clan. Youth, young boys, understood, when they had become men. Girls never needed to be told they had become women.
Gods, were Pagan Earth Gods, of the trees and lightening, and the higher animals, the sun, or the moon, and the rain, and the eagle. You hunted, when you needed food, and the forest provided your simple pharmaceuticals, and the hunt provided your adrenaline rush, your vigour and endurance, and the blood stroke of your heart. And often, in the firelight of the glowing cave, with the stillness of night cloaked about you like a thick blanket, you fell in love.
Your fellows, with deep respect, buried you, back in the deep maw of the cave, where anthropologists thousands of years later, lovingly found you,… and pondered.
‘ The Clouds of Unknowning.’
I love it. This is four pages out of The Economist, March 20th 2010. ‘The clouds of Unknowing’ dealing with climate science. You get some graphs, and a explanatory diagram detailing with solar reflection radiation, incoming solar radiation, out going longwave radiation, greenhouse gases, thermals, evapotranspiration, latent head, surface radiation, etc.
So read the four pages, taking your time, and see if at the end, you have managed to grasp a certification of what is in actuality happening dealing with climate change, and if we should be packing bags to get ready to move to another planet, in another galaxy.
‘What ever thoughts doubters on climate change might have, and they are right that climate change science, is rife with uncertainties. They are wrong when they present that as a reason for inaction’.
There must be many of us who would, should, go along with that, we hope, if for no other reason than that of self preservation!!!
After the big corporations are donedestroying the earth Surelythey would quickly jet off to outerspace as they have already planned. Wasnt it recently were the Russians were planning flights to outer space.
We hope, and seriously suggest, readers will look at the ‘Clouds of Unknowing’, in The Economist, and plow through the 15 or so readers comments on the article. Google will find all this for you, just by placing in the words : ‘ The Clouds of Unknowing ‘ ‘The Economist’ . Nothing more is needed except that politicians should be forced to take note, as much as for the articles straight- forward easily readable style.
AC,
You’re right on.
Should BP be unable to blot-stop the Gulf Oil Leak, the saturation effects of the oil may well spread over oceans.
It seems difficult to decide which human caused- effects will be the worst. Oil spill, tree removal, over population, or over fishing. You decide, but kindly leave me out of the equation.
Let us Will and Pray for our team today in Port Of Spain.
Change is in the air in Trinidad and Tobago.
Can St. Kitt & Nevis afford this super expensive consulate in Canada?
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Uplands+home+Caribbean+consulate/3101577/story.html
@colin beadon
Pray can work miracles i amtold. However this team needs a serious attitude adjustment.A bunch of spoil brats.
AC,
The West Indian Team, is really not that far behind. We can’t say they did not involve us in near heart attacks, so close were they to winning, or losing, their last two matches. The girls, bouncing in the stands, were beautiful though. What more do we have a right to ask.
The West Indies can’t go on, just losing by a hair’s breath. They must be able to breach that infitismal gap.
Don’t really giva a damn about most of this crap posted on her but when I a Barbadian of European descent goes to buy a second hand fridge at TONY’S near Eagle hall Postoffice and is told ‘what a white man want with a second hand fridge?’ WOW ! Racist! Is it ?!Imagine if it was the other way around it would be on CNN eh!
So this means that cause a man white he got money or he did not come from slavery ,, ck your HISTORY oF BARBADOS and It will tell U that Bondeed servants (white Slaves) came her FIRST from Scottland and Ireland,, andf not all de white people came from England who originally were from East anglia a place in GERMANY !! WHAT IDIOTS some of these BLACK Bajans are!!!!!
how a bout when a white barbadian who lost his father at the young age of 12 years and his mother being so niave sold out everything cheap and m,oved to canada and cut off his ways and means of being WHITE in his own Country !@!! Now he has to rent from Black people who charge him EXTRA!!! I deal with Tourist and I let all of them know these things YA HEarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
@Equalizer
Poor thing!
Hi Colin,
Still around, just busy with life, family, work etc.
Hope you and yours are well.
Peace
Colin,
Belated Happy 75th Birthday.
Oye, Rumble, Hace mucho tiempo. Necesito su ayudar ,de vez en quando, para ayudar a crear el flujo de ideas.
Hope you’ll find time to come back more often.
Equalizer.
Your stance on life, is self-defeating. It causes you much more pain and damage than you deserve. It is much like insisting on hitting your own head with a hammer.
An attitude change, can make the most amazing difference , as though you had been blind and suddenly got your sight back.
@colin Beadon
After 75years on this earth . It would be interesting to hear some of your most captivated and interesting moments. Keep it clean.
Hi Colin’
Why are intelligent people not making such systems for themselves?
It is a matter of development, industry, education and piorities.
40-50 years ago Barbados’ uneducated masses planted their own food; every home had a
kitchen garden which fed the family and neighbours. A bartering system was established
where neighbours traded crops and livestock. Roadside hedges were made from pea
trees, grass, medicinal herbs, and other edible plants; the grass was food for livestock.
Neighbours assisted each other in the construction of homes. In effect, communities were
self-sufficient intact organisations with little need of outside help. Wages were extremely
low but common people were resourceful, they recycled. Plantations and farms used free
energy to drive windmills which pumped water and powered machinery.
Remember these folk had no opportunties for grandeur and wealth.
Today, there is an inversion. The pattern has changed. Successful tertiary education, better salaries,
nice housing developments, good public transport system, concrete yards, beautiful lawns and
flower gardens, home electronic entertainment systems, and sadly- a slavish dependence on
corporate Barbados to provide our basic needs. This is the lavish livestyle of our communities,
against a backdrop of growing negatives.
There is no need to invent when Government and Corporate polices set the curve of development.
When developments cannot grow their own food (livestock or vegetation), people spend most
of their salaries on the imported foods from supermarket chains. Shareholders and Government
reap the real profits. Communities live an illusion – huge mortgages and conveyances that stipulate
the expulsion of animals (Livestock) from backyards, because communities no longer wish to smell
what they eat. They prefer to buy the same food now packaged, spiced, with ordour eliminated
at high prices. One thing suffers: our self-sufficiencies, just taxes, bills.
Our once intelligent people are now academically qualified to do nothing. Of course they can make such
systems for themselves if they were hungry and in some sort of desperation or need. But every
need is already fixed and comes well packaged and priced. Intelligence Is Sleeping.
Who sets the curve for development – none other but government and corporations. A perfect marriage.
Why are certain inventions funded and others ridiculed and silenced?
Who killed these inventions? Watch it on Google.
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-7365305906535911834
Steven
—————————————————————
( This was my question to Steven, a dark Barbadian who I have known several years and shared scientific discourse with; and his reply above. This is the calibr, luckily, of people we have embedded in Barbados. He has permitted me to use what he has written above.
Steven,
Indeed, very interesting. But there are many intelligent every day people who could make such systems for themselves. Why don’t we hear about them doing such, even in Barbados ?
If such people could make their own energy, don’t you think they would be doing it ?
AC,
I must think over what you ask, since most of the really captivating, spine -chilling moments took place on rigs, usually at night, or on ships, or yachts, in seaways which made you ask what you were doing out there in the first place.
Hey Colin
Now we have something in common.
Sailing at night, miles from land.
Surging bow waves under the bright stripe of the Milky Way.
Starcast shadows deep, so black, pounding through the ocean, severing its ultramarine skin to reveal the white foamy flesh, how come this is never revealed to the thousands living on this rock unless they travel seaways.
Oh bliss, pure bliss,,,,,and then you arrive!
Inter island trade can be the salvation of our region, if only to feed ourselves, just get the protectionist regulations abandoned and the anti-democratic promoters brought to justice.
Of course this cannot be allowed to happen
as it will not ha;;em
T
@colin Beadon
What were you doing out there in the first place?
BFP, Could you scratch my last dispatch above?
It somehow sent itself before it was finished.
AC,
Usually, out in yachts, often at night.
I was going places, between islands. You get a steady soft breeze at night, cool, away from the glare of the sun. Often the heavens are filled with starlight bright enough to see the compass, or check your chart from.
Flyingfish, have a habit of flopping on board. A couple times they have hit me in the back, when I was on the helm, in half snooze, as a good yacht will sail herself when you set her up right.
And then the porpoise puff and huff as they breach alongside, and their wake fills with florescent trails, and they seem to enjoy your company.
Sometimes, when sailing,
the sea and the breeze, and the motion the yacht makes as she strides in quick- glidding prances, and the sails flatten, and winches and cordage groan, you arrive when everything blends and becomes one with the universe, as though time and motion stops with everything that is. And that is it.
I am trying to help a Bajan friend of mine who has been set up by the Credit Union. We have tried all sorts of things but everyone seems to be involved even the judge. How do you go about appealing a case in Barbados and is there any way to ensure that the truth comes out. I has witnessed judges, police and other official people all influenced by how much money they can get off people, and therefore the hardworking honest Bajan suffers for their greed. Can any suggest anything that we can try or do you know of any other cases with the Credit Union being involved.
Thank you
@Ronnie
Unless you have the precision of David ,it is hard to defeat Big Corporations.David only had to use a
sling shot. In your case you might have to seek the advice of an attorney. Good Luck.
The Death of Mandela’s Granddaughter.
What a tragedy, for old Africa, and what a mis-timing of fate in the midst of such a time of joy. What a beautiful child she seemed. We can all cry in our own ways,…. and carry thoughts for her, and her grandfather’s tears.
The easiest way to navigate Barbados roads, I tell lost tourists, is with a good roadmap and a compass. It is much easier than try to make out direction given by willing locals, like ‘above and below’, and
‘look for a donkey tied to a breadfruit tree on your lef
side, then turn right past the third mango tree. ‘
@Colin Beadon
I remember asking a local for direction. The local told me “just down dey” I should have known better.
@AC and Colin …yeh yeh yeh if de shoe was on de other foot , ya think it easy nah… Whatever WHO CARES anyway , this world has got to change soon !!!
some of de white bajn are real idiots too , not @ anyone in particular ya hearrrrrrrrrrrr
Equalizer,
Any place you does go in dis worl’
they does have two percent you does wish you ain’t met. Not so ?
Well that two percent does have a reason. They does make you cherish all the res’ of people you does meet,… much more.
The two percent come in many shades and colours, and sizes, and shapes. Some does be fat, and some tin like sardine or a noodle.
Some has dark eye, some green or blue, of hard eye, or mal cosa ojos. Some missing teedt, some wid scar cross dey face like dey badjohn, udders you could tell by de way dey does shif der gaze and won’t look at you. Most does lie, like there ain’ no heaven, nor even hell.
But some of dey, can even become your fren’ if you listen careful to what dey does say. And so it does tek all kine’ to mek a worl’. Ain’ so ? And it does be the only worl’ we can be sure about. So live Brudder, live, for the bird of time has but a little way to fly. An lo! De bird is on de wing.
Que mas puedo decirte ?
@Equalizer
“This world gotta change soon”
Yeah and it can begin with you . So drop de other shoe yuh wearing it must be awfully heavy.
@ colin have you ever noticed that palm trees has similiar built to people in that there structure are of varying sizes. Large (FAT) medium , small, and skinny like me. I can’t help to noticethecomparsion
AC,
Shoes ? Who said anything about wearing shoes ? Shoe-less, with my home-made sling shot, I’m like the one priest who had to guard the Golden Bough, and could never sleep. But in this case it is monkeys at my own hand-planted two precious julie mango trees, who decided to make some fruit this year.
I don’t mind the sparrows and yellow breasts, since they don’t willfully destroy.
@Colin
I also have a mango tree and this year it has a somewhat more mangoes this year .Thank God I don’t have squirells because they would just eat all them.
AC.
They does eat squirrel in Texas and Louisiana.
So why can’t squirrel eat mango? Squirrel eat coconut in Trinidad, but Trini prefer lapp, iguana, agouti, tatoo. That last one got you, eh ? Well tatoo is called catchicamu in Venezuela, and eaten as a delicacy, like it is called armadilla in Texas, but only eaten by Mexicans there, as far as I could determine.
It is armadillo, but Texans pronounce it armadilla, and you see huge ones killed on Texan highways that in Trinidad a car would stop and hand reach out and snatch up. Maybe Mexicans snatch them off the road too, in Texas, but I never saw it.
So the true eating habits of all and sundry, animal or human inclusive, remain undetermined.
Once, in Trinidad, I did eat curried tatoo at a fete, and it was good, probably enticed more by the intensity of my grog- induced hunger, and the fact I had arrived late off an offshore rig, and they had run out of chicken and pork.
And so goes la vida.
The modernised destruction of an Island.
Once, the place was a beautiful old fashioned drugstore, in what once had been a beautiful and attractive home near to one of our best beaches. In its place, they are building one of the most ugly and puke- sick, out- of- place buildings you could think of .
And so the old Barbados is quickly becoming destroyed, and rebuilt, to look like no other of our islands in the Caribbean. I’ll be looking for another drugstore, if I ever need one.
No wonder tourist will go to Cuba, or other islands where the Caribbean is still the Caribbean, and go to Miami, when they want ultra- mod and everything plus flights are far cheaper.
I’m not the only one saying this, over and over, and over. But who is we nah ? And why does ‘Town Planning’ behave as though they don’t care, and not get off their over- fed fat backsides,…. and stop the desecration and destruction of this
island ?
@ Colin
And to think that all them concrete buildings is preventing the ocean breeze from cooling the land. Just think what the electric bill would be when the island gets hotter and people are forced to have airconditioners for cooling their homes like miami. Does anybody care? We vote for these people thinking they might have a brain with some good judgement !I give up!
AC,
That is a good point too, AC. All the new buildings along the coast, as you say, block the sea breezes and the view. But they had to cut down all the trees to do so, so that also stops the natural cooling system and forces up the energy consumption. Then there are all the added lights, which also force up the energy consumption we all have to pay for by extra tax, or on our own rising bills.
Yeh, the new breed or engineers and politicians, don’t care a mango (fig) for the environment or aesthetics. All they want to do is ugly up an island, and use up as much energy as possible.
Tourists don’t need to go to Spain. They can tourist their way at much higher costs to Barbados, and find is just as ugly as the highly built up coasts of Spain.
On my recent visit I noticed all the building going on in Holetown which is such a nice place I am sure those new buildings (are they going to be Night Clubs?) are just spoiling the look of the place. The traffic is so bad there already, it would be a shame to keep building and have it look like any other tourist destination. Keep Barbados Bajan I say.
@ronnie
with more traffic comes more pollution. People will get sick a lot easier. Then they will need a more state of the art hospitalof which the tax payers would haveto foot the bill. see what i mean.
More questions than answers.
Over the years I have written ‘Letters to the Editor’ and sent both major newspapers in Barbados – The Advocate and The Nation – a copy.
Sometimes I have had full coverage (or content) published from both, some none at all probably due to my directness, but I have also noticed that the Nation will be the one to do major editing – to the point that I cannot identify with my own letter/contribution.
The latest of such was as follows, please take the time to read both versions of my letter – the Advocate’s being the WHOLE letter, with maybe very slight and more so grammatical corrections …
*********************************************
Nation – Tuesday, June 15, 2010 …
Why late debate on torn down Carmen?
I DO NOT want to get too embroiled in the debate regarding the demolishing of the building in Rockley called Carmen which used to house the Lewis Drug Mart and other business until recent times.
But to those persons who have been writing to the press complaining about its demolition: Why have you waited until after the building was torn down to start your public debate of condemnation on the subject?
Was there not a large sign showing an artist’s impression of the proposed new building at the front of the property for several months prior to its demolition?
Clearly it was obvious for even a blind man on a trotting horse to see that the old building would have to come down. Could you not have sought to find out more about the proposed development, and the pros and cons, prior to the demolition, or were you just lying in wait so you could make a big deal out of the whole issue?
It is this sort of thing that I have issues with. We are a reactionary society and not proactive. We habitually wait until the horse is out of the barn and running away before we think about closing the door.
****************************************
Advocate – Sunday, June 13, 2010
Too little too late! Will we ever learn?
I do not want to get too embroiled in the debate regarding the demolishing of the building in Rockley called “Carmen” which used to house the Lewis Drug Mart and other business until recent times, except to say the following:
I have grown up and lived in Rockley virtually all my near 50 years and more so my father of nearly 80 years who was born in the area, and yes, we would have to say that we are saddened by the fact that it had to be demolished, as it one of few original houses left in the district. However, I/we have accepted that not much could be done for the building as a commercial going-concern.
Maybe as a dwelling house one could have persevered and restored it, spending lots of money to along the way in upkeep and repairs, but what value would that be along that length of Highway 7 when you look half-mile in either direction? Hardly anyone lives along there anymore and – let’s face facts – no one has lived in “Carmen” for many years.
Now having said that, so that you know my general position on the subject, aspects of which could be debated further, granted, I would like to ask what I consider to be a very important question with regard to ones who have been writing in the newspapers, etc. condemning the demolishing of said building.
Why have you waited until after the building was torn down to start your public debate of condemnation on the subject? Was there not a large sign showing an artist’s impression of the new proposed building at the front of the property for several months prior to demolition?
Clearly it was obvious for even a blind man on a trotting horse to see that the old building would have to come down. Could you not have sought to find out more about the proposed development, and the pros and cons, prior to the demolition, or were you just lying in wait just so you could come out and make a big deal out of the whole issue?
It is this sort of thing that I have issues with. We are a reactionary society and not proactive; we habitually wait until the horse is out of the barn and running away before we think about closing the door.
What does this teach our children? Is it no wonder that we are raising a generation of reactionaries or continuing to do so? Teach them to wait and watch when things are happening and after the cat is out the bag, start complaining. I would have expected better of some of the people who have weighed in on this issue.
World War II was long before my time as were the events that lead up to it, but I was made very aware of why it ended up that way by my parents and reading on the subject, and the main issue was complacency and not wanting to face the facts of what was happening long before the war started.
We have a boiling pot of human rights issues and democracy being trampled on happening practically on our door step, and I am not referring to the recent problems in a few of our fellow Caribbean islands – which is bad enough and probably suffered from the same thing – but in South America, and we, including our governments, are saying nothing about it. I hope it is not history repeating itself. Exactly what are we waiting for?
The sign is there and has been for years, but do we wait until it’s too late? I guess we need another Winston Churchill to come along before it is too late!
************************************
Now tell me, should I sue for misrepresentation?
One paper – mind you, the more conservative of the two – (Advocate) prints my whole letter, but the other (Nation) prints LESS than half of my letter which was intended to be read as a whole for its full intent and what was printed painted me in a narrow minded way.
There are far too many people in Barbados, who don’t give one hoot about old Barbados. All they are able to see is the bottom line in their month end bank account, and to hell with the island, since, when things start to get tough here, they will have quite enough money to buy themselves elsewhere, and leave.
When that times comes, Barbados will be a very ugly and expensive place, so who could blame them for leaving ?
@Colin Beadon
How about the Empire theatre ,Even the pigeolove it there . They have made it their place of abode> I wonder who is the landlord.
AC, A reason can be developed for the destruction of anything, but that does not mean it is valid, sensible, aesthetically or actually truly the economical way to go. The bottom line really depends on who you can impress most amongst those gifted with the protection of ancient sites or buildings, and how you impress them to decide something of old valuable vintage should now be trashed. In most cases it cost much less to renovate, than destroy, cart away, and build from scratch,… today. But that is not what you will hear.
Perhaps we should destroy Big Ben, or The Eiffel Tower, or Abu Simbel, or Neslon’s statue (both of them), or the Inca and Aztec pyramids, and the Taj Mahal, and turn all those ground into real-estate, and build high rise apartments to satisfy engineers and those who reap havoc with insurances and mortgages on people who don’t know any better.
I am certain we could find the right sort of people to go along with that sort of destruction too., once you spill the right spin, and supply the right grease to get it signed. There are always people around, in position, who don’t know the difference between a building of beauty and a brick outhouse (Outhouse,… not being the term I would have preferred to use).
Anyone seen the picture of the HARD WORKING female Customs officer at GAIA???
Ponderings on life, death, and infinity.
You’re on a mountaintop, pondering, your gaze swept away with the view, till you’re not sure if you are actually not part of that view; and should you leave and go home, if the view itself would remain there without you to look at it.
With no answer, you ponder what life is going to be like after death, without a body or senses, and how could it be nothing else but
boring ?
Next you get struck by the question ‘ What is the reason for life in the first place, other than have a good time, catch your ass, or both ? ‘ But still answer evades you.
And so you go back to the view in silence, because the answers are there, and you know them. Yet they remain beyond words,…. so that you cannot misinterpret them.
Clouds gets water from rivers , lakes etc. Now with all the oil being vomitted into the ocean. Would it be a possibilty that the rain water in that part of the country might be highly contaminated. I think a research should be done to find out the possibilty of oil particles being dispense in the rainfall.
AC,
That is a very potently interesting question. It is also highly possible oil floating on water, stops the evaporation. So now you’ve given me a quest to find out what happens. Thanks !
AC,
Tanks, water, and oil.
In the oil fields we always leave un-used steel rig tanks, full of water with oil floating on top. Two reasons. The first, because it stops the inside of the tank from rusting, even filling the tank full of water will stop that. Second, because the oil floating on the top, stops the breeding of mosquitoes, and to a large part, also evaporation. Some very slow evaporation, does take place, but rain usually takes care of that and keeps the tank filled.
Of course, you can keep guppies and other fresh water fish in the tank, to take care of mosquitoes, but leave off the oil.
As to whether any form of oil particle could evaporate and become part of our rain, is as interesting as the Higgs bosun.
Ask the question under Science, on Google, like I did.
Straight Talk,
Are you sure the Earth is not, heating up ?
I don’t believe in air conditioning, though we lived for years on the edge of Lake Maracaibo in Las Morochas, where day or night you could not live, or sleep without flooding the bed with sweat if you didn’t have AC.
But now, the still nights high in St John, are making us dream of AC again.
CLB:
I don’t know if it is or isn’t, there is that much conflicting evidence about, nobody knows.
One thing I do know though is that spending trillions of dollars to combat “anthropogenic global warming” is both futile and potentially suicidal.
But we’ll probably go along with it if there’s a handout and a freebie conference in a tropical paradise.
BTW. Has our own meteorological service supplied
us with year on year data to support the IPCC?
Thought not.
What strange weather patterns. The systems coming across low, from Africa and creeping across the Main ( Venezuela ), are then being blown up to the North, and then back South East across us, as though we are being served macafushet, a Trini – Chinee term for ‘ Leftovers’ . Por los menos, tenemos algunos lluvia, no es verdad ?
Anonymous,
Thanks, but there must be those of us, including yours truly, who don’t manage to digest BTW and IPCC. They are not short cuts that mean anything to the inchoate and the ancient, like we.
Perhaps it is best to just ‘Float’. Not worry about anything. Perhaps the ‘Ultimate Being’ has everything under control, and all t’will be well. But many will ‘ketch de ass’, however you look at it, and the few will see plain sailing.
Yet even those, who seem to have been gifted by and with perfection, feel the hard- leaden weight of travesty, sooner or later, somewhere along the line.
Unfortunately the horse is already out of the the barn. The more the “ultimate being” tries to catch him. the faster he runs. Then in the end we give up and we wonder “was it all worth it” . Thinking of life.Why do we chase things that are out of our control?
AC,
If we didn’t chase the impossible, we’d never find it. Or maybe we are just allowed to think we’ve found it, and that keeps us happy for a time, and then, wow, we’re off on another quest, once are eyes are open and our minds never locked into dogmatic sterility.
Dear BFP,
For several months I have been getting more and more concerned.
Our Prime Minister is obviosly very ill but yet we have been told nothing.
The “Grapevine” talks about pancreatic cancer, a known killer. and that David has 3-6 months to live.
This is terrible, both for his family and our country.
Please tell me it is not so…It affects us all at this crucial time, not just his family, as without his leadership I am not sure where we are headed as a country.
Why is he not issuing a statement? I fear the worst!
I have the diagram showing the two relief wells, depths,casing sizes set, etc, being drilled to intersect and contain and kill the Discovery Enterprise Drill ship well spewing oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico.
Anybody interested, give me an email address. I could send the diagram to this same ‘Open Discussion’ too, if wanted ? Who knows, we could run into something like this, offshore Barbados, one day.
CLB:
Are they aiming to intersect below the original defective casing?
ST,
Usually they will drill into the actual casing. But this well, due to the bad cement job, may be flowing up the outside of the 7 inch casing and into the 9 7/8 where it should have been bridged off by cement, and a hanger- packer higher up on top of the 7 inch inside the 9 7/8.
If the well is also flowing up inside the 7 inch, they will probably have to drill into that too, and it would imply the 7 inch had parted, since the cement job should have left cement in a few of the bottom joints, if the job was conventionally designed. We’re not told everything.
I can post the side tracks and the original well from the diagram I’ve been sent. It should paste, without trouble, I’d think.
ST,
The GOM relief Well diagram won’t paste.
You’d need to give me an email address. I know it works to those.
I have a question, though I’m not of that persuasion: How could the Catholic religion have got themselves into such a position, when even the Pope has to face headlines in ‘News Week’, such as :
The Holy Father seems to have been lenient with criminals (pedophiles) while reserving his severity for those who complained about them ?
The relief well diagram, for the Gulf of Mexico leak.
BFP,
I have sent the Relief well diagram operation on the Gulf Of Mexico blowout to BFP email address, having been unable to ‘past’ it to Open Discussion.
‘ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society’ .
I’m reading a wonderfully intriguing book about another, much smaller Island I know. Guernsey. It is much smaller than Barbados, just about 7 miles long by 5 wide. But it also has a lot of amazing and innovative people. There are areas that remind one of Barbados.
The book is a novel by Americans Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, called ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’.
It is a book about writers, and readers, in the time of the German occupation of Guernsey in world war two, and afterwards. (Potato peel and beetroot pie, was a delicacy concocted by the absence of anything else available to serve at society meetings, due to deep-cutting rationing and utter lack. Even German troops were eating gathered Hemlock, dangerously poisonous, unknown to them, and loosing their lives from it.
The book seems to have become an International best seller, strange, you may think, when it is all,… just: Letters, written by and sent to, one another of the society.
But start reading on any page, and see if the book does not hook you into reading it all , from scratch. And read what The Times, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Telegraph wrote about the book, and also Joanna Lumley, who saved the valor of the Gurkha forces who had protected the old British Empire from a wide range of infidels.
If your reading of any few pages of the book leaves you cold, like yesterday’s leftovers, or the music of most modern articulates, then, I’m sorry to have disturbed you. For you could have never been a writer, or an avid reader of anything other than mediocrity, street signs, the labels on bottles, or what politicians wrote in their times of need.
For Coli B
Great site with a world view on conservation and climate change:
http://www.aroundtheamericas.org/
There are three victims in the Sheraton Car park murder case.
The first is the deceased, Greg Taylor, whose family have not been given justice. His attacker is still out there.
The second is Julian Worrell, who was attacked not once but twice by the same gang, robbed and then fitted up by the police and the justice system.
The third is the justice system in Barbados. We have a vindictive and devious deputy director of public prosecutions and a jury who did not take notice of any of the presiding judge’s guidelines on evidence.
Many of you know the real truth about this fiasco – please speak up about it and get this injustice corrected.
47.
AroundtheAmericas.org What a great site.
Thank you 47, I shall be reading all of it.
What a pity such a site can’t be programmed into all of us on Earth, so that it becomes part of our very deep seated mind-being, and we all, at last, become aware that we are living on a Divine Ground, and not the garbage dump we are making of it,… in every way that we can.
I know in my heart that the Sheraton Car Park murder trial was unfair. That last person should have been let go as he did not have to do anything with it. This man is innocent and should not have served time and to begin with!
Regarding the Sheraton Car Park murder trial, if you know anything about the police investigation, or lack of more likely; the gang members who were terrorising people in 2006 and 2007 or anything about Shem Parris who lied to the court please tell your friends and neighbours and call the Police Chief and Director of Public prosecution to tell them about it.
I know Julian, he is a decent, hardworking, responsible young man. I will keep fighting to ensure that Julian is able to pursue his goals and will not be defeated.
Shem Parris lied under oath to the court about the police. The Police only had four (4) persons in the ‘line up’ yet the police said that this is not true, they have more than twelve (12) persons in the ‘line up’. And the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions (DDPP) let him get away with it. Is this justice? Knowing that is was a lie on the Crown.
Can anyone tell me whether a fight between two people can last 6 to 7 minutes?
How can Shem Parris pick out someone who wasn’t there? Is he a ghost?
****************
Note from BFP Editor to the person making these multiple posts under different names: Stop using multiple names to pretend you are having a discussion. You have zero credibility.
As I recall, Julian was there. Shem Parris picked him out only because they went to same school together. First, Shem had said that he only knows Julian from seeing him at school then later on, he said that they were friends!
John, I do not know how long a fight can last.
Julian is the type of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. I know this man very well. He graduated and was also working before all of this happened.
He is also the most honest guy and a very good guy.
He does not deserve any of this. I continue to fight for him and will keep doing so.
47. ‘Collapse of Societies’
Check out this book too. ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond. Look it up on Google. This is a most important book for small islands, specifically, though not in any way, small islands only.
The book deals with the crucial link between human societies and their environments, and how and why societies, through history have self destructed due to the way they mis- behaved in looking after land and environment. .
Checking with local booksellers, I was not able to find the book, although one did say they had had it.
However, Google goes into the book in some depth, though it is doubtful it is the sort of book people would want to take seriously here in Barbados, where there is so much sand ( besides all the concrete ), to bury heads in,… instead.
Hi Colin,
I’ve read all Mr. Diamond’s works starting with Guns, Germs and Steel. His work is occasionally ponderous to wade through but very much worth the time and trouble of a few pages written on bad days. I love the question that starts one of his works (can’t remember which – perhaps it was G,G&S) where the New Guinean tribesman says to him “Why do you have all the cargo?” and the answer turns out to be something like “because seeds were brought from China to Europe a few thousand years ago.”
Fascinating stuff.
Cliverton
No disrespect or anything but it’s possible that there are more than one person in the same household using the computer – they can even share a discussion.
***
I still believe in Julian F. Worrell. This young innocent man should not have been put in prison in the first place.
Hi A.N.
Possible and probable are worlds apart.
Cliverton,
I’ve got to get the book. Collapse.
Did you read Bill Bryson’s ‘A short history of nearly everything’ . If that is not a book to stoke young scientist, there will never be one. It should be in every science class, to open young minds to all science. The book is so highly interesting, you forget you are reading science.
If one searches ‘Jared Diamond collapse’ there are a couple of youtube videos on sustainabiity and collapsing societies. Really very interesting indeed.
Here’s one from 2003 for you, Colin. Enjoy, and thank you vey much for that lead. Here is someone who looks at sustainability not as a circle drawn around the self, but rather as a 3D globe.
Hi, BFP..
In the same household, there may be one or two computers, so of course more than one persons would want to share the discussion. They can show the website and each can take turn commenting.
I actually know the family and it isn’t one person. So I thought when you were calling them out, it may be a bit offensive. I hope you understand.
Ah 47.
How after my own heart is Jared. How I wish, you and I could take every politician, businessman, and engineer, by their ear holes, and force them to study what Jared Diamond, amongst others, are warning.
Like me, you seem to have consciously understood a perspective Mankind will face, too soon enough. The bird is way too far on the wing.
Is Mankind up to the task of fully appreciated his coming predicament, and that now is the time he must adjust his sails, and change course ?
No. No. No. I doubt it. We are too far divorced from nature, already, to appreciate that.
BFP,
Is there any way to save what we find or write on Barbados Free Press ?
How can I file/save, a letter, any letter, or a You Tube document?
Colin.
Hi Colin
There are a couple of ways that I know of. From Firefox or IE you can save a web page with all its pieces and photos in a folder. The second way is to “print” a webpage on paper or as a PDF and that gets the photos too. The third way would be to mark, copy and paste text into a word document or something. The fourth way is to do a ‘screen save’ with various programmes, but that only gets what you see on the screen, not the whole thing.
That’s what I know.
Robert
CLB:
Hope this hint doesn’t get moderated as my last reply to you.
Check out Zotero, a Firefox plug in, it’s free, powerful and very versatile.
With this running in the background, you can easily save not just comments, but any snippet of interest can be captured, catalogued and tagged for future use by the click of a button.
Check a tutorial here:
http://academictechnology.colorado.edu/humanities/tutorials/zotero/
Thank you Robert and Straight Talk, I’ll try each way.
Dumpers should be made to pay for use of recognized dumping sites ?????
It appears the President of the Chamber of Commerce, never gets around the countryside of Barbados. Advocate 1st July. 2010
If he did, he would be the last person to suggest people be made to pay for the use of tipping/dumping in government recognized landfill sites. If anything, dumpers should be paid to dump in those sites. That would almost insure that they did dump where they should dump.
As it is, far too much illegal dumping is being carried out, and all the President of the chamber of commerce is encouraging, is whole-hearted dumping everywhere.
This is the problem with the business minded, who find it hard to see further than a dollar in front of their faces. Forget the ecology, the environment ,and everything else that goes with it.
It is amazing how the socalled intellectuals always find a way to create problems, somehow they are the only ones who can find logic in the illogical!
AC,
Oh, you’re more than right. There’s lots of logic in the illogical, once you are illogical and tunnel visioned, and don’t wish to understand what logic is, in the first place.
I’ve taken some photographs or very recent dumping, this evening. It is not difficult to pin point where the trash came from. Hydraulic hoses, tractor pieces, large air filters, a five ton hydraulic jack, fire extinguishers, and so forth., and a sign that reads:
Potatoes, Yams, Casavas, On Sale.
One would have thought that people, who work land, would have thought twice about dumping junk on it. But when you have people like the President of the Chamber of Commerce, ….
I don’t need to finish the sentence.
Now now Colin. You just have to believe that the President of the Chamber of Commerce means well- he is not a bad man- he is well meaning.
It is true though, what you say, people who already dump on agricultural land because it is closer, as opposed to the ‘tip’ which is further, just don’t care. So if a fee were charged it could well turn out to be an even dirtier affair.
Speaking of possible dirty affairs, do you think there will be a Return on investment for the $400 Million smackeroonies that the loonies will spend on the incinerator?
Holy Cow, we’re going to get burnt!!
Poor Prime Minister Thompson, he looks so poorly. May we please wish him an ease to his suffering, may the Lord bless him with a return to health.
And now, as his Ministers see his back, the fun starts before his image even recedes, while his voice still echoes in our ears.
I do not believe that we (Barbados) will be shown how there is to be a return on this Investment. Nor do I believe that we will SEE a return on that $$$$400 million buckeroonie investment.
If I sin, Lord, please forgive me.
Re sustainability, we must speak about this more, Sir Colin. And perhaps we must try to apply our learnings to our land, Barbados.
We do not see the end of our sustainability coming, unless we change oour style, adjust trim to our sails as you say, but that can be for another time. It wasn’t only so today.
As David T, our Leader said today, “May God bless Barbados.”
So let us pray,
“May God in turn bless David T.”
A couple cameras mounted strategically in thoseareas where illegal dumping is occuring would do the trick along with charging a fee to the culprits.In the long ran the government would benefit financially and Barbados would become a cleaner place. Those cameras can take a picture of the license plate of the vehicle during the time of the dumping. People only understand when it hurts in the pocket book
But ac, Environment Minister Lowe announced last year that the government would be immediately placing hidden video cameras as you suggest.
Gosh, do you think it ever happened? (guffaw)
Mine was just a reminder lol. Maybe the Minister forgot LOL.
On the Illegal Tipping,Dumping.
Let me see if I can send you one of the photos I took yesterday evening. I’ve already sent it on to the Advocate, this moment.
BFP,
I’ve no luck sending ‘garbage pile’ by paste, so I’ve sent it to BFP email address, instead.
You all need to learn me some of these fine points. Colin.
For David T,
More things are wrought by prayer, than this world dreams of. So let thy voice rise like a fountain ( for D.T. ) day and night. For what are men better than sheep or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if knowing God, they lift not their hands to prayer, both for themselves and for those
who call them friend ?
Alfred Tennyson.
@Colin Beadon
google william wordworthand there is apoeom called daffodils. very interesting words if only it can be said in the future
AC, Daffodiles !!!
Thanks for reminding me of a poem I’ve known and loved most of my life. I have daydreamed in the shade of trees, in fields of dancing daffodiles. And so I know how they touched Wordsworth, and how they still flash upon my own inward eye.
They are part of the fast- disappearing natural world, that is gradually being coated with concrete and multi-story ugliness, even here in Barbados.
Oxalis Debilis, is a little three- clover- like leafed, pink bunched wild flower of Barbados. It is so infrequent, shy , few people have ever seen or appreciated it. Yet it responds well to care, and will flower almost the whole year, and spread its delicate charm in bowls, or in the grass near or under shade.
I guess I cherish it so much because it reminds me of English spring wild flowers, like primroses, tulips, white garlic, bluebells and daffodils.
@Colin
When wordsworth wrote that poem it was a time when nature was untouched by polution and the different chemicals that has done it harm. Anyhow this poem is a good remainder of the way nature used to be pure.I am so glad he wrote it as it is a good look into the enviroment of yesteryear.
Something we can cherish.
AC,
Sure, something we can cherish, but only as a distant memory of a bygone long past age, never to be able to revive again,… unless,…but,… que mal cosa, mankind cannot change back the clock, the laws of the Universe do not allow reverse time. We can only go forward, fending off apocalypse as best we can.
@Colin
Remember in your previous post you said you have daydream of those yesterdays gone by. Thank God for our memories which can relieve such times. The apocalyse has already begun .Take a look at the waters of the gulf and the natural surroundings need i say more
Notes on Sustainability (i was in that dream)
It always seems strange that people hold economists up so high. They are like magicians, the illusionists of our times. “Your country has to grow, businesses have to grow, its OK to borrow because your income will also grow. It’s OK to run a % deficit of GDP (consume more than you produce), since future trends of growth will fix it. And while you’re at it, consume your way out of your deficits”
Is that true and factual, is it theoretic?
Consider for a moment how populations grow. Eventually the numbers of a species in expansion hits a plateau called the ‘carrying capacity’. If all the factors that support the carrying capacity at peak continue, it may remain at that stable level. Other times due to one or more factors changing it may deteriorate, sometimes rapidly.
Could it be that in our economy we might reach an apical plateau– and are we there yet?
How can we go on making more and more national product each year forever- is it a realistic view or a hypothetical dream? Like animal and plant populations stabilise at certain levels, so it seems to me does our economy. The question is, considering the lilies, what level may it drop to in order to become realistic or acceptable (if in fact we have any control whatsoever) to us. Isn’t even a 1% deficit of what we produce a threat to sustainability?
It may one day in the future have to become more modest for most of us. We have one of the highest population densities in the world. Should world economics, for example, a totally external factor over which we have no control, become (even temporarily) cataclysmic it would affect what we are able to put on the Bajan table.
Re grow some food: Many think that hunting/gathering is done by SUV on a trip to the supermarket, or at the bar and restaurant. It really isn’t. Suppose it got really hard economically, where would 280,000+ of us get things to eat?
‘ So all came Tumbling down. ‘
GOOD, Good, Good, 47, AC,
Hope you read the blight, yesterday’s Nation, of BNOCL. That is a perfect example of over- extension for over- extension’s sake, when the once slowly – growing balloon, has run out of air, started to shrink, shrivel,… and finally burst, as well production and gas, decline, when all the great brains thought it was a horn of plenty, and inexhaustible, like they think so little of our treasured, many thousand year old agricultural fields, that once could have been enough to feed us in times of dire consequence, but have allowed sprouted with concrete, more snatched off for concrete’s many purposes, day by day, by day, as though we can happily eat concrete, should we must.
And so went the inhabitants of Easter Island when they had cut down their last tree, paying ‘Finished’ to their fishing boat construction, and consequentially their main source of protein.
And so, over-taxed were the Inca , and Aztecs and through history so many other societies, for similar reasons, when their productions, constructions, and expansions through over population, or war, broke the back of their natural environmental systems, and,.. so behold,…like the hills above the mountain villages of nowadays China,…..all came tumbling down.
And so it goes.
Every thing is so chemicalized even the animal food and then we inturn eat the meat which is also contaminated by the amount of chemicals needed to preserve it for human consumption. Then there is agriculture in which chemicals is use to kill the bugs that would destroy the plants which would be used for human consumption . What are we doing to prevent big business that produce these chemicals from killing us . Where do we go from here?
AC,
Say after me, softly,
‘Our Father, which art in Heaven,…..
Possibly we could find an ancient undiscovered tribe to live with, who still follow the old Earth nature pagan laws of the sun and moon, Aldebaran, Antares and Circe, lakes and stream, mountains and the rain. They might accepts us, provided we don’t try to change them, or fish in their taboo fishing places, or cut down trees along the sides of their lakes and rivers, another taboo.
I just read the NCF”S Crop Over calender and could not believe my eyes.Pic-o-de -crop semifinals at the National Stadium. Only mad people could revert back there after the crowds did not come. If they want to use the Stadium they should put back the Finals and Cohobblepot.
I am also wating for the Bushy Park fiasco
On mathematicians and the economy:
New developments bring new money into Barbados. This money is lately spent on the current maintenance of Barbados, because we have a massive deficit in earnings related to regular running expenditure. Barbados is trying to start new income derived from project such as Four Seasons, Pickerings and others.
New income foreign inflow will be lodged within Barbados from outside if these projects proceed.
New money spent on maintaining an even keel for government expenditure is only buying Barbados time but not recovery. In the end, from the sustainability point of view, expenses must balance income from the economy on the ground- NOT the new project capital inflows.
New money must only be used to do new government projects or especially to service debt. This must be quantified and safeguarded in order to create a growing surplus.
Therefore, to mathematically balance this economy we construct the first equation:
New money = debt service payments + special projects (e.g. hospital upgrade – forget Dennis Lowe and the incinerator for a while, or let private sector take the $$$$400 bloody Million dollar project).
You can’t have sustainability unless your core economy income balances what it spends, or if there is a surplus. We have spent years frittering away all the new money. Some say a few baddies have even stolen it from ourselves and hidden it by doing unwise 3rd party transactions of all types.
But the core issue is to develop a sustainable economy where we first separate the new money and keep it AWAY FROM the basic running expenses and then balance the debt servicing and project expenditure with the new money.
It would be wise to do so judiciously and with integrity.
Expeditiously.
47,
Governments should not run businesses, period. That is not what they are voted in to do.
Hotels, airlines, airports, oil companies. No wonder the economy has a deep hole in it. , and what has been lost, is never to be recovered. Nobody has to pay, nobody, except,…. that is,… the tax payers.
Look at the mess, all through many years of West Indian governments. Start with Trinidad.
Barbados developed almost exponentially over 47 years- now we are reaching our levelling economic carrying capacity. Fewer new projects so now at almost peak capacity our current assets will generate the cash we spend. We could become more modest.
Even after we sell every bit of silver, after it is gone we still have to balance as above. After that windfall cash is gone, after every beach has a nice hotel or condo on it, after we sell out all we have, build on every field, throw it all away or use it all up, then sell bodies souls and minds simply to try to continue to develop a lifestyle that we can’t justify or support–it will on that day end up the same.
It’s a first-world love-story, but nowadays the third world is the new first. Small is the new big. Less is the new more.
47,
Perhaps Brazil will flood over us like a high tide, though, I really don’t see why they would want to, since they have all the beaches in the world, all the oil and gas now, all the agricultural land, thousands of miles of fish-filled rivers, just about every mineral one could name, including gemstones of every description, and ages of carefully preserved colonial history. Huge exciting fauna and flora, highly interesting tribal people, waterfalls, mountains up to the sky, grasslands and forests that even flying high in an aircraft, stretch much further than any eye can ever see.
There is really nothing left in Barbados, of the quaint, or original. Not even the Animal Flower cave has anything truthfully to see. Our traffic jams are just as bad as in Rio De Janeiro or Sao Paulo, and their Carnival calls in the whole world. Our music is much better though, now it is flooded with soca. Perhaps our music and art work, with bring Brazilians here, do you think ?
How one wishes that everything written was inspirational to advancement. But often , one who feels deeply, cannot, truthfully write like that.
How else could writing be of value ???
Only in the sound of one hand clapping, where no answer,… is truly the profound.
I’m a lot baffled by the script written with my name this date, but at 2.01 am, above .
True, it is like something I would or could write, same sort of phrasing, and word placing I use, including the ‘one hand clapping’.
True too, I did arrive home somewhat ‘salted down’. But I have lost all memory of having written the above, to be utterly truthful, though I had written an email to a new friend, a little earlier; and most certainly, I have arrived home, in the past, and never remembered anything about how I got home.
Anyhow, I hope I did write it, but if I didn’t , then, what can or should,… I say ? I’ll ponder that, for several hours, remembering I used to sleepwalk, when I was a teenager.
Hi Colin,
You must have been rather well salted old friend, because the comment indeed originated from the same IP as your other recent comments. Unless someone broke into your home and used your computer just as you arrived home? 😉
BFP,
Well thank you for confirming I did write it. At least, that is one problem off my chest. My nex’ problem is getting rid of this ‘rat^on’. (hangover).
Never have found a true way to do that, except, sufferance and time.
Ah,Ah, to be salted in late evening, laying under a mango tree with your love in your arms and her hair touching your cheeks in the wind. It is just the ant, trying to walk up your nose hole, is disconcerting.
@ColinBeadon
Ah, Ah, To besalted…………………Lol
is the above comment a dream. very sentimental. Your really have a good sense of humour, and what makes it funnier is your ability to make fun of your self.
AC, High Dives and vultures.
Once, I dived into an inner tube from a pool high diving board, and the tube somehow held me in a half Nelson, with my hands locked behind my back so I could not use them to swim, and my head was below the rim of the tyre, locked underwater.
It was a most extraordinary predicament. There were many people around the pool, but nobody took notice of my plight. For breath I had to kick hard with my feet, and do a spin to get a gulp of air.
Slowly, bum in mid air, I made my way to the side of the pool, spinning and gulping air as I could.
Nobody seemed the least perplexed, or understood I was in deep shit. And I would not call out for help, too embarrassed, I guess.
After about ten minutes, it seemed, I managed to get myself to the side of the pool, and hold on with one hand, and extracted myself from the half Nelson.
What got me most was that I had saved young people from drowning a number of times, from that same pool in Trinidad, and knew full well how easy it is to find yourself in difficulty, in water beyond your depth. But still, like a young fool, had insisted on trying to dive from a top board, into an inner tube, showing off to girls, no doubt !
I was, then ? About eighteen at the time, and had been to sea for a few years, where life can be lost much simpler, like on oil rigs, and without spectators to admire the way you might find yourself doing it.
So the object or moral, of this script, is to think before you leap or jump, or do anything stupid, like driving at high speed on roads that are busy.
If the road is empty, like the sides of a mountain you decide to climb, and you come to grief, then the vultures will find you soon enough, and they will redistribute you, in no time, far and wide. And nobody will remember you for long.
@Colin
O.K I”ll take your advice. However I have had my cuts and bruises on the highway called LIFE. .
An aeroplane flew on solar powered energy. How about that. Looks us if a lesson is being learnt from BP. The rush for electric cars are being more talk about with some urgency and finally the solar energy is being tested via aeroplane. Urgent indeed.
AC,
There are problems in that if more than four electric cars are being recharged from one transformer in a housing area, the power company have to put in a much larger transformer.
Solar powered aircraft is really something, except you saw the size of the aircraft needed to put one man in the air for over 24 hours. They’d have to come up with something much better than solar panels to buck Earth gravitation and get a passenger aircraft into the air.
Then of course, with the zooming world population, it might be much simpler to find a way to produce ant sized humans. Then we could train dragon flies, or house flies to fly us around, and grasshoppers for short hauls, and lizards for trips into town.
Think, if we were ant sized, how much less energy, water and food, we would need. One big Kingfish would feed the whole of Barbados for a couple weeks.
Yes, we really must find a way to produce ourselves in smaller and then smaller editions. It should end most of our coming world problems.
Mounting electricity bills ???
Using a new device spelled KILL A WATT, which is a simple Electricity Usage monitor costing $25 US in Miami, you can check every item, one by one in your house, and find out what each , TV, iron, stereo, electric kettle, computer, washing machine, etc, is using when in use, or just plugged in on so called, ‘Standby’.
Since your refrigerator, or air-conditioner, is one of the chief energy guzzlers, you can leave the Kill A Watt plugged in for a week, or month, and it will total the amount of watts that have been used in that time by that unit, and give you the amount of hours you have tested it. From that test you can work out what your fridge or air-conditioner makes you pay for its use at the end of a month.
The KILL A WATT can only be used on the local 115-125 AC voltage supply, and on equipment of up to 15 Amps maximum.
Depending on which button you press, you can select readings for voltage, amps, watts, VA, HZ, PF, Kilowatt hours, and the total of hours you have the indicator in use. It is a useful little pocket camera sized tool.
Check your desktop computer, for instance. Ours is using 110 – 120 watts when the hard drive is working, dropping to 77 watts on standby. The screen saver, which is a tank of fish swimming around, is using 115Watts, would you believe it?
We’ve changed that saver screen to a far more economical version, and cut off 38 watts of use.
The printer power supply is using 7 watts, day and night, if you leave it plugged in. Check with Kill A Watt, your cell phone charger when it is plugged in, but not charging your cell phone. How many of those chargers have you got, left plugged in , night and day in the home, not actually in charging use ?
All these little things are adding up your electricity bill, even your stereo and TV, when off but left plugged in.
Look on the net for a ‘KILL A WATT’. It could save you a wad of money when you know what and where you are using up energy at home, and where you can save some.
The dumping fiasco !!!
Anybody who has tried to draw attention to new illegal dumping, like myself ( though you have photographs and have called the correct ministry, and though they have phoned and promised to follow up, come up, and have you take them to the illegal dump ) knows full well this will never takes place. How many times have I tried, and now lost count ?
All that is ever done, is just a bunch of lip by people who are paid to protect the environment, and don’t do one S……. except use up tax payers money under false pretenses.
You won’t believe the excuses you get over this non action on the part of these people who went to university and are paid by government to do a specific job,… and do Jack S,…..
God Help Barbados !
Hi Colin
Yup. Got that right. We don’t do enforcement of laws very well. If this keeps up we’ll look as bad as Paris, a sh**hole of a city if I’ve ever seen one!
Robert.
OK, BFP,
Here is another for you. A backhoe is sent up to clear a piece of land close to us, supposedly to build a house. On the very edge, the perimeter of the land, are six avocado trees and two grapefruit trees.
Besides the backhoe pulling down the telephone lines to other houses, the eight fruit trees are taken down too.
Any one of the fruit trees could have made the new owner several hundred dollars a year, besides keeping him and his family in healthy fruit. The trees were not in the way of any house building construction.
As I have always said, Barbadians,
mostly , hate trees. God Bless Barbados.
@Colin Beadon
There was a time not so long ago when Barbadians had a passionate love for the land and agriculture, but my ! oh! my! how things have change. Just shows the power of the Almighty dollar.
@BFP, re: New Format – I do NOT like PB’s new look, but Mrs Shattuck-Hoyos’ site is WordPress powered, as is mine. Perhaps the time has come — ???
Hi Ian,
You don’t like “PB’s” new look? You mean “BFP’s” new look?
We’re open to suggestions (heck, we love suggestions!) but our problem is we must remain at WordPress.com because they are huge and have a real mission of defending free speech. The minute we put up our own server we’re grill fish!
We like the layout of your site immensely, but not the fonts. That could be something to do with us using Opera on Linux as a browser I suppose because we see differences on other sites too.
I wonder if we could achieve something like your layout or Jane’s at WordPress.com but I don’t see anything on the built-in themes. I don’t know if our current theme (Pressrow) or any of the others at WP.com could be tweaked to achieve multiple column settings on one page as you and Jane do.
Anybody able to assist?
Instantaneous particle signaling across the universe, and political blind eye.
‘Einstein couldn’t bear the notion that God could create a universe in which some things were forever unknowable. Moreover, the idea of action at a distance—that one particle could instantaneously influence another trillions of miles away– was a stark violation of the special theory of relativity.
This expressly decreed than nothing could outrace the speed of light, and yet here were physicists insisting that, somehow, at the subatomic level, information could. ( No one, incidentally, has ever explained how the particles achieve this feat. Scientists have dealt with this problem, according to the physicist Yakir
Aharanov,
” by not thinking about it.” ) ‘ . Borrowed from the book by Bill Bryson, ‘ A short history of nearly everything. ‘
Now think of all the problems politicians deal with that way, and you’ll understand where the physicists learned it.
New topic, Who used to own CCB and CL financial? and who was mariano Browne’s Employer? Just a thought
New West Indian Writers.
Very recently I was listening on the BBC, about the recognized bereft of West Indian writers during the last fifteen or more years.
The death of John Wickham, and BIM had a lot to do with that. Bim and John, seemed, in this part of the Caribbean, to be the only nosehold above water for writers of any description. I still have some copies of BIM, with my own work to prove it.
If Barbadian writers are to be inspired, they need some writer’s organization in the island to encourage them to write. There is supposedly one, but they have never replied to me, obviously perhaps, because I’am not a born Barbadian, or indeed a born West Indian, though I’ve lived in these islands nine seventy-fifths of my life.
If this fact, is anything to go by, then God help true new born and bred aspiring, West Indian writers.
All I could beseech them, like most West Indian writers have done in the past, ‘Go overseas man. You may starve a bit, which is good for the soul, but there is no other way to really get out. ‘
I do not dance to Mottley’s music and I am not likely to want to regurgitated her empty mouthings, we all know she can inflict a painful bite with her mouth.
Have you yourself looked around the other islands and realised that they are suffering badly from unemployment growing unemployment figures, declining tourism arrivals and we here in Barbados have maintained unemployment to around 10 % kept people working provided $ 25 Mil in a Tourism relief fund that people are singing the praises of, how it kept their bars and restaurants open in the slow season, one BLP hotelier raked in over $ 400,000.00 from that package, Tourism arrivals are up 3.1 % over the same period last year where else among these islands any of them can say of themselves this is what we have achieved, not one of them.
When I start to listen to a collection of crooks and criminals that raped Barbados for all that it was worth, that have NOT AN OUNCE OF CREDITABILITY I too should be sent The Dodds Residences.
To have built a prison that started out with locals providing a quote of US $ 67 Mill that was refused, to go to a known group of crooks in VECO with a final cost of US $ 288 Mill, then a road works project by a crook called Jonathan Danos who was introduced here by another known crook in Steven Hobson and Hallam Nicholls.
With COW Construction and Rayside doing all the Works but we have a payment of $ 47 Mil being paid to a Jonathon Danos for what we don’t know.
Then we have the likes of Tony Hoyos and Colin Brewer scampers that operate nearly every shop at GAIA and the Hoyos who was paying from taxpayers money the staff of one Hard Wood Housing he was paying an entertainment allowance from taxpayers monies only redeemable at his restaurant Aqua’s charming is it not ?
When I start listening to the BLP I should be shot and buried trust me, there is not an ounce of creditably in anything coming out of that camp.
The budget will come when it is ready to be delivered, Mia has to realise she lost the power she is so eager for, do you know that piece of shit was giving work permits for her own sexual satisfaction ? You should ask more or ask the woman from Guyana who was dropped of at Mottley’s house by man at 8.30 one Wednesday night before elections to provide Mottley with her evening’s pleasure, I have names of the driver and the woman, so as to provide services for her work permit and the woman fled the scene naked when she saw what it was that Mottley was planning to use on her, a nasty low life perverted bitch she is.
Would you want her as a leader to show direction to your daughters ?
I don’t, she has no moral fibre no decency.
I noticed that there is not a lot of talk on the Foreign Reserves I guess it does not serve her purpose to state that they are healthy and in a very good shape.
Don’t be too quick to sing from her song sheet, as she is not an honest person, ask her why it was when they were building the Coast Guard Station and found out it was a faulty design and they were advised that there was major problem, why was it not corrected so that the vessels could stay in port even with incoming swells ?
No the fix to this problem was costed at US $ 25 Mill something left for others to pay for and correct.
The old people would say God does not like evil and evil she and Owen both are.
My best advice to her is not to worry about the DLP but to worry about her own future as Owen digs his claws into her.
There is a lot of very positive stuff going never before has the offshore sector being so embraced, Invest Barbados is no longer a den of Mottley friends chilling out and collecting healthy salaries.
Now they meet regularly with the local bodies and recently set up an Immigration desk at Invest Barbados for assisting these business people with relocating and doing business in Barbados.
Have you not noticed a serious settling down of matters pertaining to the QEH Hospital?
Agriculture we have produced more food last year and this year than ever before.
With housing guess you have not noticed how many ordinary Barbadians are moving into their own homes, or have you noticed the quality of the roads and drainage recently, or the fact the Transport Board is being managed and despite the gloom and doom they continue to carry school children to school at no cost to parents.
Have you been hearing about issues at the Transport Board and their delivery of service ?
A thing of the past and not a single new bus provided for.
We are about 500% better off under this DLP team than we were under the BLP misfits and crooks.
I did not ever touch on the issue of the slot machines which Conde Ridley, Hallam Nicholls, Bob Johnson and Owen Arthur own brought thru the back door illegally ?
Mottley continues to blow hot air and from the size of her I am led to belief that is what she is constructed out of all hot air and crap
Great picture of glaciers today and in 1921.
Here today, gone tomorrow
47,
Been tracking for some time, the Glacier melt. Yet we still have those amongst us, who would refute Global warming.
But look at the offshore Cuban drilling to start, in deep water between Cuba and Miami.
There are those of us who had hoped, and written, that Mr Obama would settled the American/ Cuban nonsense. But he did not even attempt to broach that cyst.
So let those in Miami pray Repsol, a reputable oil company to begin work just 45 miles away from Miami’s tourist beaches, using a brand new Chinese rig, not let slip a brother or cousin to the recent nightmare; and fill the sea with oil.
again.
Knowing Chinese products, sold in Barbados, I ‘d prefer not to contemplate the ability of a Chinese rig, or a Chinese subsea blowout preventer.
@ Colin
Why don’t you get a website started for westindian writers who have ahard time getting responses from organisation who disregard your work because you are not west indian by birth
AC, (And, ‘Teach Us To Be Still’ ).
It’d be futile. How many of us are there ? Besides, I’m too old and hard- baked to write anything worthwhile now.
I’m trying to get the book called, ‘ Teach us to be Still ‘ by Tim Parks. It is basically about how so many of us, especially writers, are in constant inner turmoil, and find ourselves defeated by our own natures.
Hi Colin,
Inner tube story, goes to show also that when we ‘others’ are at the sea, to look for ‘inactivity’ not activity, not just flaining activity, as a sign of someone in trouble.
When someone is kicking, arms moving chances are they are okay, unless it is obviously ‘urgent’.
Inactivity, such as your half-nelson must have had your arms in, or simply not moving, is owrrying and such immediately be investigated, especially in children.
I know I am preaching to the converted, I am sure that you have much more sea experience than I, but it is worth mentioning to the ‘readers’.
On the trees, what can I say?
On the global warming, our sea surface temperature in the area for June is the hottest or second hottest on record.
A number of other cities (including areas of New York), just broke records also.
Places like Russia are having atrocious heatwaves.
Whether or not carbon emmission, even if a cycle, the Earth is warming.
Colin, I am not a meteorologist, but be prepared for at least one if not more, late August / September monster storm passing this area.
That does not mean that there will not be more before, but as you know, September is our hottest month and the old hurricane phrase ‘September remember’.
Over and out.
Peace
Rumple. Good to hear from you, and get your warning. We’ll stock the cellars with rum and corn beef, nough for an army, or a siege, and we’ll keep the helms and visors handy, together with Escaliber, and a spare suit of armor, with the helm plumes made of Barbados flag, to chase the zephyr far.
‘It’s a long long time from May to December, and the days go short when you meet September; and still a few precious days, I spend with you. These precious days, I spend with you.’ Don’t you know that old old song ?
But for YOU, I meaning life, meaning Barbados and life, breathing, swimming in the sea, sipping rum, the hurricanes glancing off right and left of us, while we sing ‘ For those in peril on the sea ‘, and hope there will be nough, pork, and that the island will still grow enough cane for rum.
To-day, outside the supermarket at Six Roads, chatting to local old timers ( my age ), about to drive off in their car, I bespoke words of wisdom. To quote. ‘A couple bajan rums a day, will keep the doctors away. ‘ And their chorus was as they moved off ‘Everything in moderation, Friend.’
Perhaps the hurricanes will hear that.
Lol. I see you were in a ‘light’ mood when you wrote the last response.
Certainly indeed Excalibur may succeed in chasing the threats, for there is more to these worlds than meets the eye, I truly believe this.
I have heard the phrase, if not the song, indeed there was a British sitcom with that title ‘May to December’, at one time. Involving ‘older man’ and ‘younger woman’, and their relationship.
Can probably see some clips on Youtube.
‘Still a few precious days’, strong words indeed. Implies some earnestness, passion yet regret that time is running nigh.
Alas, is that not the story for us all, as we seek life, risking limb, wanting fullness, yet aware that time runs not be be revisited?
As you say, enjoy the moments, the couple of ‘rums a day’, metaphorical as well as physical, although I speak to the converted and learned, more learned than I.
But then again, if we take life as destiny, by definition we accomplish what we are supposed to, nothing more nor less, so why worry.
As you say, rise to the challenge, with our very own Excalibur at the ready, to slay the dragons that accost our hopes and dreams, to reach our Valhalla.
Peace
Rumple. Great ! Great !
But have you found D.H. Lawrence’s
‘ Apocalypse’ yet? just 125 pages, but oh what a book. What a profound book, yet far too few might be pleased with it, specifically as Lawrence demonstrates how the Pagan world so highly steeped and drenched its influence on early Christianity. For instance, who bears the Bible in many Christian churches. The Pagan bird of Zeus, The Eagle, coming down into the field of space and time with ‘The Word,… and so forth.
Not yet, I shall check tomorrow and read for sure.
I take your point on how the view may not be accepted, as some do like like their perception changed.
That said, just because we are pagan, does not mean that we cannot believe in a great Creator.
Rituals etc after all, do focus on ‘devotion’ to greater things than us, even if we individually do not agree with the content?
Moreover, what we see as paganism, recognises that there exists things of which we cannot comprehend or comprehend somewhat, but are too scared to acknowledge?
Rumple, Pagans and new suns.
The Pagans were just not Christian or Jew, but they certainly had their own gods and beliefs. Almost as far back as you track Homo Sapiens, even back to Neanderthal, there appears some reverence or enthrall of a higher power, often the sun, sometimes a mountain range, as though mankind needed something actually seen, or often unseen, to give a mediating sustainability, or empathy, in a world where so much was, and still is, unknown, often unknowable.
A136A1, is a new sun found. It is 250 times the size of our own sun, and as far brighter as our sun is to our moon. Can you imagine a sun you could not dare look at for even a second, unless you wanted to lose your sight ?
It is such findings that inspire the naming of Gods.
Big US banks linked to laundering of billions in drug funds.
To Colin:
I detected a snipe from you as to my supposed denial of “global warming”.
This is how the AGW alarmist propoganda machine would like you to believe
.
I’ve got news for you if you haven’t been reading my posts closely.
There has been global warming happening for the last 400 years!
In actual fact ever since the last Ice Age, we are in an inter-glacial period, and its totally natural, and absolutely nothing to do with motor cars or incandescent light bulbs.
For a both sides of the argument expert debate of the latest science on CO2’s effect on our climate check out WUWT’s thread:
and then convince me the science is settled.
I still remain convinced that science has been hijacked to bring about recovery through carbon taxation.
Perhaps you have a different take?
World chemical and pharmaceutical companies profit from supplying chemicals to Afghan drug trade.
An Afghan MP in a Russia Today interview says world pharmaceutical suppliers are making big profits from the sales of chemicals used to turn raw opium into heroin. He concludes by saying also, “Money laundering and banks and all those issues should be dealt with seriously”. (Well see my July 21 post above on the “money laundering and the banks” aspect of the drug trade.”)
Starts at the 2:40 mark of the video:
See also this 2007 article in the Daily Mail by Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to neighbouring Uzbekistan: “Britain is Protecting the Biggest Heroin Crop of All Time.”
Straight talk, Critical Mass and Tipping Point.
My only agenda is based on what the actual truth is. I don’t give a ‘ditch’ about business, politics, or the hype fraternity. I do care about the Earth and what really is happening to it.
If the world population is zooming up, and cities and transport factories are filling up the agricultural ground, and the use of non reusable energy is steadily rising by the multi-tonnage, then we are responsible for placing huge extra amounts of Carbons into the Earth Atmosphere, rather like a volcano that is placing so much ash into the sky. (1918, I think it was) that Earth had several years bad harvests due to sunlight partial blockage.
If one volcano can do that, what can Mankind accomplish spread across the whole Earth, spewing exhausts from aircraft, road transport, shipping, rail, cook pot fumes, forest fires, and all the other ways Mankind finds to burn up energy and add to the multi million carbon tonnage that Earth has to find some way to transform or hide.
That is my concern, and the concern of many of us, scientists or people capable of fathoming the apparent, and the obvious.
If you have never watched too many fish in a fish tank, or too many foul in a hen coop,…..you might not appreciate the problems caused by the overburden of resources in finite space.
Do you really feel, for instance, that Barbados can really go on importing new transport at the rate it is doing, and never have to pay the Piper ?
I share all your stated concerns, Colin.
We should all strive to reduce pollution, whether chemical or population growth induced.
My beef is classing carbon dioxide as a pollutant, LOL, and the underhanded attempt to tax us for our production of it, using the bogus argument of out of control anthropogenic global warming.
Straight talk, And Human Activity.
The more transport a society has on its streets, the more potential deaths caused by and to, its citizens. I doubt there are many people who could doubt that, unless you have complete and utter gridlock, and nothing is moving.
The same thing goes for Anthropogenic pollution, which insists I beg the question of you, how come so many big cities in the world, have such extremes of dirty mist over them, if that is not Anthropologically caused ?
London once, was the worst, until they banned the human activity of coal and wood burning stoves, and ran many factories out of town.
Then we’ve now the problem of anthropologically caused pollution in the Gulf of Mexico, and these last two days, another huge spill in the sea off China caused by two ruptured pipelines. All this is human activity, nothing more ! As to whether human activity is an added cause to global warming, you know where I’d place my bets. Our activity is certainly not helping matters in any way.
recently i was watching a show about our planet.In it it showed how snow played an important role for animals who hibernate during the winter. Their food was kept well fresh as the snow refrigerate it for them during the winter.
AC,
Yeh, Snow and ice are very good at preservation.
Check out the Ancient hunter with his bow and shafts, and other equipment, found in the Alps in 1991. Otzi, (they named him) was dated at 5,300 years. They have found Mammoths too, older than that in Siberia. Wolves have been known to find partially thawed out Mammoths, and sup on steaks thousands of years old.
The speed limit needs to be reduced, and drastically policed. I’m one who impressed and wrote this long time ago.
That won’t happen, of course. So thou, and I, pardoners, need to hold on to vigilance like we holding on the head of a snake desiring to strike us.
Once false move, one slight lapse of attention, and you or I gone through.
There are too many on the roads who cannot drive, and too many who were never instructed how to drive and what to really look out for, and too many who spend their time tailgating up behind trucks, buses, cars, as though they ought to be stuck to them. They have just never been taught the stupidity of this, or the consequences.
Too many on cell phones, with darkened windows so you really don’t know if anybody actually driving, if they fell dead, or stepped out to take a leak and the vehicle got away from them on its own. You can’t signal somebody you can’t see, when somebody is backing out of a parking lot, or at a T cross road and you want to cross.
So take your chances, and trust to luck, because those organizations, government administration or otherwise, who should be ,….. Somebody else finished the sentence, I’m tired of such futility.
@Colin
I was wondering if you found the book “Teach us to be still” by Tim Parks. I found a book on Amazon.com UK call “Teach us to sit still by Tim Parks maybe you can go on the website and check www .amazon .co.uk/teach us to sit still/scepticsdp/ 1846553997
@Colin re There are too many on the roads who cannot drive,
Too true, that sums it up. Cars all over the road, no stopping distance. I have to avoid them all the time. Dont know if it is eyesight or drugs, but some seem drive as if roads are one-car one-way streets.
Don’t worry, it is not related to driving specifically, it is just a symptom of deteriorating standards generally.
Lol.
AC, On Very Small Islands.
I have that book ‘ Teach us to sit still’ covered, and should have it in hand in couple weeks. As for the book ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond— that, I’m finding a most intriguing book. I’m stuck, re-reading the chapter on Easter Island, and how the society allowed themselves,… forced themselves,… in a sort of blind ignorance, to so utterly overtax their natural ecology , that they might just as well have cut each others throats.
Like Haiti, they cut down all their trees, mainly, on Easter Island, to assist in the moving and erecting of their statues, till they could no longer build boats to go after their chief food, fish, or build any further houses. They had to resort to living in caves, and had no fuel to cook or keep them warm.
They had so denuded the island of trees and grasses, they suffered huge erosion of their soils.
The population sunk to 110, underfed and wretched souls, 2000 miles West from Peru, 500 miles East from their nearest Pitcairn.
It is a history worth bearing in mind by those of us who live on very small islands. And they too, probably thought it could never happen to them.
@Colin
And so on and so on. There is a generation of people living on this beautiful island of Barbados who have decided that is better to have concrete growing in the ground than to grow food, mind you these people are supposed to be our leaders.What I do I know!
In my haste, mistakes on Island distances, and a short treatise on Cannibalism.
Easter Island is 2300 miles West from Peru and 1300 miles East of the Pitcairn Islands. There are no other islands or land masses nearer, and in those days there were no cell phones, telephones, or smoke signals anybody could have seen.
So when the Easter Island inhabitants cut down their last tree, there was no further wood for homes, fishing vessels, or a ‘cookup’ on a cold rainy night, and so the population shrank, for many quite horrifying reasons, including hunger- induced cannibalism, from between a population that might have been between 6000 – 30,000 people, to just 110 when Europeans arrived on Easter Island,… and small pox killed off the rest.
But now we are into the chapters dealing with the Mayans, and what happened to that highly cultured civilization, in the book ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond. It is a book all islanders would do well to read, but won’t , till perhaps they find any such reading,…. is far too late.
Yes, cannibalism has become quite prevalent in societies, and expeditions, that get too hungry during a period that seems to be leading to the brink of their collapse. And in this huge swelling world population, we have not seen the last of it. Piece of human thigh, anybody ? Tigers and shrimp, seem to enjoy it.
I’m wondering if there should be a building code in Barbados that prevents the erection of some of these vulgar big a– houses and commercial buildings I’m seeing everywhere. There really should be a law…I’m being sarcastic of course but God help us all. What happened to our lovely, quaint buildings that were perfectly suited for a small island such as ours. Whoever allowed Cheffette to build that new monstrosity should be flogged.
Bird, You right on Man!
They started off with the destruction of Bridgetown when the Central bank building was built and way overshot the cathedral spire. Soon, no doubt, we will have minarets too, once the critical mass has been reached for those people who force their women to walk around dressed like zombies.
And so the old order ‘changeth’, and religious fervor is overtaken and swamped by commerce, and then another religion forces its foot in the door. I’m not quite sure of the hight of minarets, but the squawks that issue from their blaring speakers do not impress or amuse me. Church bells are more profound, and a bank building sticking up like a sore thumb just ‘uglies up’ what was once a perfect enough West Indian city, full of its own charm.
Colin,
This is not the discussion I envisioned having. The undertone of religious prejudice in your posting is repulsive. But since you brought it up, I actually find what you describe as “squawks” quite beautiful much in the way I find the singing of certain prayers in the Anglican service extremely meditative. I guess one man’s meat is really another man’s poison. You should take a look at some of the mosques around the world that are quite famous for their architecture. I am particularly intrigued by the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in Turkey.
As for your discussion of religion and religious iconography, Barbados is an extremely tolerant society. We have a number of small religious groups that live peacefully side by side with the more dominant Christian community: Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Rastafarians, African Traditional, Moslems, each with their own unique way of worshipping and places of worship. Among the Christians, we have a multitude of denominations: Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Seven Day Adventists, Quakers, Brethren, and so on. Let’s not forget the atheists and agnostics.
While some Moslem women may be forced to adopt the beliefs of their family’s religion, many do so willingly. In fact, I went to graduate school with a number of Moslem women who found that wearing the hijab and abaya freed them from the constraints — financial and otherwise — of every new fashion trend. Also, if you wish to speak about religion forcing its way through the door, think about Christianity and the Crusades. I also don’t believe Africans and other non-Christians in the New World originally welcomed Christianity but you would be hard-pressed not to find established Christian denominations in those South American and African countries that initially so fiercely rejected Christianity. Change is the way of the world, has always been and will always be.
I hope that the kind of zenophobic beliefs and myopia exhibited in your posting remain restricted to you and perhaps your extremely small community of like-minded friends. But let’s get back to the discussion of the UBAB (Ugly, Big-A—Buildings) everywhere on the island. Are the powers that be so shortsighted that they can’t see buildings in places like Speightstown and parts of Bridgetown are in desperate need of conservation? Why isn’t there an agency that provides tax breaks or simply encourages some of our commercial entities to invest in relocating to these abandoned structures, restore them to their original state and ensure that the charm and character of the island is retained? While I wholeheartedly support change, I also support change that is visionary and rooted in creativity and preservation of key aspects of cultural aesthetics.
Dear Birdie,
All religions are true, in their time and place, and I can assure you I respect and have read all of them, in detail, and have their books to prove it. I just don’t have a tee shirt yet.
So I’ll say again, all Religions are true, in their time, and place. The problem is that once they start getting transfered, to what the apostates of such religions consider more fertile ground, the blood- letting starts in earnest, sooner or later.
The religions of Barbados are predominantly of Christian context. Barbados is a Christian society, and that is the major strength of its durability and stability.
If you feel that Islam, today, is not going to attempt to take over all the world— if it can, then rest in peace, and live to watch what happens.
I’ve read the life of Mohammed, and know that what he wanted, and preached, is not the corruption the cleric on that religion desires today.
Christianity, for all its good, and bad, gave up burning witches a long time ago, though they still seem to have a problem with young boys, and female cleric. There are not, as far as I know, any female cleric in Islam, and stoning to death, in this age and time, is still practiced like a specter sport, in public view. Is that what you really cherish, should Islam fully invade Barbados ? Will you hang around to put a stop to such barbarity, once the critical mass has been reached, and those of us who are Christians, have to start looking the other way?
Well let me tell you something. I lived all over the world too, and gleaned what I’ve learned from having ‘Seen’. There are beautiful buildings in all religions, leading back to the Aztecs, and the Sumerians, but the buildings say nothing about their races ability to survive, their barbarity, or their ability to become civilized societies.
Lo siento Senor Pajaro, pero como podria decir mas, or menos ?
By the way Pajaro,
I don’t have, or need a community who agrees with what I write. You may notice, too, I use my full name, and don’t hide behind sudanombres (Venezuelan Spanish ) or an Apodo, more generally.
Perhaps we could meet, and discuss , talvez ?
Colin
@Colin
Looks like you have ruffled Pajaro feather. Never know he might heap fire and brimstone on your head. It seems that the religious zealots can wait to show their intolerance against people of differing views . So what if you don’t like “squawks.” Holy Cow!
Ac, Squawks and ruffled feathers.
‘Squawks’, was a little sever I suppose. Wail-lings, was probably a more just term. The volume of issue from a minaret is not too bad at a distance, provided you don’t have to hear it too often.With a little imagination you could compare it with wind generators. Guess they both serve purpose.
The view from a minaret must be quite satisfactory. Hemingway gave us it from a distance when he wrote :
‘ Minarets stuck up in the rain across the mudflats to Adrianople. ‘ Actually he didn’t write it quite like that, but that is how I remember it, and wish he had written it so.
Have you ever seen a falcon take a bird in full flight ? I saw a falcon fly upside down below a bird and raise in front of it so the bird literally flew into his talons. I think it was a skylark, and there were feathers, ruffled, drifting away in the gentle breeze.
Check out the winter pics from Brazil. If the BTA has its marketing act t0gether, maybe we can get GOL to put on a 2nd weekly flight to offer some relief to those frozen Brazilians. Sure it’s been raining a bit here in Bim recently, but at least it’s liquid rain, not ice.
http://www.metsul.com/blog/?cod_blog=1&cod_publicacao=140
‘Life is without meaning. You bring meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive ‘is’ the meaning’ . Joseph Campbell.
For some, blowing themselves up in a busy marketplace with woman and children around, seems to fit the bill, even in their own countries.
Fanatical religious coercion, is like being bitten by a rabid bat.
Colin:
Are you forgetting the fanaticism of Jim Jones in Guyana?
ST,
Certainly not. All such are in mind. We just don’t want or need it here in Bados, do we ?
Religion is a devisive, dangerous force causing most of the world;s problems.
Exactly why are we in the west forcibly occupyimg moslem countries, if not for their resources.
Al Qaeda rubbish.. even the CIA now admit the OBL tape was forged by them.
The bogeyman OBL is now proved to be a CIA asset.
Protected, not hunted by the allies.
No credible connection between NY attacks and Afghanistan, except the 173 times waterboarded
Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Another Vietnam, on the same slender pretext of
we are strong and you are weaker, and we must project our force to maintain our miltary-industrial complex because that is all we have left to offer. the rest already gone to China.
Green Monkey,
Looks like dem Brazilians havin’ a great time in all dat snow and ting. Perhaps we could ‘courage them to bring ice and drop it in our Eastern seaboard to keep ‘dong’ the temp below hurricane enticement ?
Brazilians, like Venezuelans, Colombians and Trinie, are great people. I found Brazilians, when working there, understood my poor Spanish, like after the second or third drink. Man! That is a huge country. If you added Barbados to it, you could not find us.
Straight talk,
Of course, one could suppose that Barbados, from the start, might have risen under Islam ?
Starting at pork, somebody might find the time to list the sort of life we would not be allowed here.
It is sad to see slavery still exist to day, This is the second time i went to Chubbies Video in Haggatt Hall and saw this white boy .I asked him if he was working there because he was behind the counter,he shook his head and said yes,I in return askes him if he could help me and he didn’t answer all he did was point at the young lady that was at the computer dealing with customers.What hurt the most was that they was a line of people either waiting to return movies or take movies and this lady had to deal with all of that while this young boy sat down on a stool with his hands fold,what is this wiorld coming too.it is a sad day coming.May be someone can tell me what is going on in this Country, if he continue to behave like that they will surly loose customers this youngster need someone talking to him letting him know that is not the way you treat people..
Sue, ‘Hope you weren’t on Candid Camera ?’
Maybe the young white boy was a consultant, or he had just come out of a university and didn’t know his head from his elbow, or he was dumb and knew you didn’t understand sign language. Perhaps there was just one computer, and you know what happens in stores these days— every transaction has to pass through that screen. Perhaps he was just working for that day, waiting for the girl to finish on the computer as he needed to alter a program.
Perhaps you allowed prejudice to cloud your better judgement, intelligence, and patience. Never mind,…in this new age, during daily frustrations, it happens more and more to all of us.
So we hope you smiled. You might have been on Candid Camera !
I am very sorry to see that you think that, there are two computers in that store check it out for yourself. As far as prejudice clouding my judgement that is further from the truth.So you are telling me that all the other customers was being prejudice also. So are we expected to walk into any business and see a consultant between the age of 12-15, well a very sad day is coming.As for working for the day other costomers who was also complaining said that he works there because have seen him putting out movies and assisting customers before.It is time we stop making excuses for the foolishness going on around us and speak out.Mr Beadon maybe you are the one who is being prejudice.Why don’t you try going to the video store and see for yourself.
Yes Mr Beadon i was smiled, sometime the things you see going on makes you smile.
@Sue
Did you bring this problem to the attention of a manager?If so what was his reponse?
At times what we see and think is not the reality!
Attacking Mr. Beadon is not the answer to incompetency. The answer lies with management.
Sue,
You think what happened to you in a video store, bad ? Well try calling any business on the phone, and see what happens these days in Barbados.
Mostly you get a recorded message giving you instructions what number you need to call. So you dial than number, and all you get is the phone ringing and ringing and ringing, and then after a certain time, it goes dead. Colour of skin, has nothing to do with it. It’s just the way the world is running these days, all screwed up in the pretense of modernization, so that when you ring a company it’s like a robot talking to you, and you think yourself lucky when you get through to a human, and his or her colour really does not matter at all, except in your own imagination.
14 million people. 14 million. It is beyond us to fully comprehend how many people that is, when our own population is less than 400, thousand.
But in Bangladesh, that is how many people have lost, in the most intense flooding they have ever seen, everything they own, their homes, their livestock, their land, and many their children and family members too.
This has to be the worst tragedy the world has seen in many thousands of years. 14 million people. How small are our difficulties, in comparison ? A video store line up, a phone call un-answered ? Those people can’t even find a dry bed or a morsel of wholesome food, and safe water to wash it down. Their children are crying, and the floods have swept everything they know, away.
Sue is not wrong about what she said,the youngster goes by the name of Nick , and it doesn’t make sence complaining because he is related to the owners. I first met him in Sheraton last year the lady who runs that store is his family and there were having a heated argument, so yes he can talk.this lady who runs Chubbies in Sheraton is the boss sister,I know because i work in Sheraton.She treat people very badly and tell you in no uncertain terms that the store belongs to her.She does not get along with much people, if customer want movies they will check to see who is in there first before they go ,if she is there ,they do not go.One morning i went to the store and there was a lady cleaning you could here from outside the boss mouth if you here how she was carrying on with the lady you would think shetalking to an animal and you don’t even treat animals that way.I was shock when i went to look for my friend Jackie and saw him in there.The family is like that. The lady that runs Sheraton make pigs look bad with the way way she carry along the Staff and Customers. Sue I understand , hats off to you for not losing your cool.
14 million flooded.
Here is a thought experiment to give us some idea of the 14 million people who have lost their homes and their land in Bangladesh.
If you were to sit down on a chair, and have every one of those people take just one second to walk past you, you would have to sit night and day in that chair, for over 162 days.
It is sad and very heartbreakingto see these kind of disasters.Bangladesh however is very susceptabile to floods and cyclones and additional disadvantage its marshy jungles and adjoining rivers all add up to a recipe for disaster.
Mother Nature herself must be heart broken.
AC, ‘The Earth Mother.
Yes Man ! The Earth Mother gives us so much, everything we need, except we make such extravagant demands, far beyond her ability. So she has deviancy, systems in place, like plagues and floods, earthquakes, volcanic actions, huge forest fires, drought, deep dreadful winters and heat waves, huge harvests that fail. She is the instigator of wars, and tears. She is,… Forever.
We are but a flea sucking on Gaia’s massive providence.
we, when out time comes, will be shaken off or Bopped, as surely as the dinosaurs considered themselves masters of this planet.
The arrogance to believe we hold the destiny of this blue planet in our hands will be our undoing.
We are but fortunate tenants and our lease may be nearing its end.
Meddling at the margins may fortify our supposed mastery, but we shall surely succumb as nature reveals herself as the true giver of life or death on this speck of dust, whirling unspectacularly through the universe.
Anyone who believes differently are welcome to their comforting delusions.
I fear for the furture of Tourism in Barbados. After yet another shooting of a young man in The Pine I wonder if the people on the cruise ships would want to stop over in Barbados if they knew what was really going on. With the internet and access to Bajan Newspapers etc it will not take long for tourists to get a real picture of what they think is a paradise Island. Local people getting shot near their own home over and over again. I hear of corupt Police Lawyers and court officials. Word spreads fast. I also feel that so many of the accommodation is being sold to very rich people that eventually your Island will not be a place where average people can visit as everything will be out of the price range. Surely the general tourist are the people you need to encourage to spend their money at local shops and business places, not the ultra rich who do not support the locals. I hope things can be sorted out in Barbados not only for us tourists that love to come but also for the normal hard working Bajan who needs protecting from the people who are taking the law into their own hands
IF tourists can go to Jamaica which has a
horrendous murder ratein comparision to Barbados minute rate. Ronnie you compare the two countries and see which one you would prefer to visit.
Straight Talk,
Glad to read you. You say ‘We are but a flea, sucking at Nature’s providence.’ Yet we are facing 8 billion of us, all with mouths to feed , needing everything all humans need. Our needs are derived from nature, who now with our growing billions, reels under human demand.
Did you read ‘ Collapse’ by Jared
Diamond ?
Everybody concerned about nature and human population growth, should read that book. The New Guinea Highlands, have utterly amazed me. There is a civilization who had managed to get it right, though we might balk at the word ‘Civilization’ in how they went about it.
ac you are right about Jamaica, I went there myself stayed in an all inclusive hotel and was told that we should never go out as it was too dangerous, therefore the hotel gets the benefit of the tourist trade and the local people get none. Is that the way Barbados wants things to progress. Already the crusie ships and doing their own tours, not using local taxi drivers. The good people of Barbados deserve better than to be treated so unfairly by the authorities. I myself witnessed INSIDE THE POLICE STATION complex at top official asking for his car to be filled with gas in exhange for help with a situation. These people are paid to do jobs not to extort money off people needing help. Something must be done to help them.
@Ronnie
Since the cruise ships are owned and managed by private corporations., there is nothing barbados government can do to stop them from having cruise packages which include tours of their own planning. However the taxi drivers would have to be more innovative in ways to encourage tourists to want their services.
Illegal activity should not be condone especially when it comes to government officials. I wish i knew that person who was so blatant. I would have published his name all over the blogs. Next time use your cell phone and record the incident. Then put it on one of your favourite blogs. Guess that would help to stop that kind of open practice.
The Ferry. The Ferry. When the Ferry ???
Can anybody give reason why the new Ferry through the islands has not started yet? It is because those coupled in bed with the airlines, have managed to sink the ferry project dead ?
What a shame on us. What a shame for the tourist and freight produce between islands.
Perhaps we can persuade Richard Branson of Virgin, to get a ferry service going ?
A flight to Trinidad from Barbados, cost more than to Miami.
This is what has become of air travel. I wish the old schooners were still around, and I wish the docks were full of them with their rigging and white topmasts, and their canvas ruffling in the breeze.
I have friends who are going to Cypres instead of Barbados this year. Airflights to Barbados and staying here, is just too expensive,”
The Ferry. The Ferry. When the Ferry ???
Can anybody give reason why the new Ferry through the islands has not started yet? It is because those coupled in bed with the airlines, have so feared the ferry they have managed to sink the project dead ?
What a shame on us. What a shame for the tourist and freight produce between islands.
Perhaps we can persuade Richard Branson of Virgin, to get a ferry service going ?
A flight to Trinidad from Barbados, cost more than to Miami.
This is what has become of air travel. I wish the old schooners were still around, and I wish the docks were full of them with their rigging and white topmasts, and their canvas ruffling in the breeze. They were so beautiful to sail on.
I have friends who are going to Cyprus instead of Barbados this year. Air flights to Barbados and staying here, is just too expensive,”
they are saying.
Edinburgh Napier University, using a by-waste of
Whiskey production, have come up with a Butanol 30% more powerful and efficient than other biofuels, and won’t need any changes to your fuel tank to use this product in your car.
If this is the case, why can’t we come up with a butanol by-waste from the production of our rum. Surely the two production systems, whiskey and rum, must be very similar ???? 30% more energy, is a big incentive. Who would not like to save 30% on their gasoline bills, which is what such a butanol implies ??? I.E. one liter of such butanol
gives you 30% more kilometers than you get now in your car. Wowee, wowee. Is it too good to be true ???
james Small a convicted peadophile in the uk is now living in barbados and is a serious predator , so please wherever he is take care of your children as he beat the legal system with a loophole in the uk , and is now free with a pocket full of money in barbados.
I leave this comment for those who think HUMMM!!!!!
There is at present serious speculation regarding the effect of Cell Phones and Cell tower effects on the Worlds Bee Population,,,,,,,,,,,,,You can read several theories,alarmist thoughts,true revealing evidence for and against etc,….etc,……
I recently had the pleasure of talking to one of our own Bee Keepers Mr.Rudy Gibson,,,….He is I personally think,the only person in Barbados who has any authority to speak out about any influence in Barbados regarding anything that affects the livelyhood of Bees here in Barbados.
According to him,his Bee hives in and around Bridgetown and built up areas produce about 50% less honey than those hives he has located in very sparsely populated St.Andrew where there is obviously less cell towers………..HMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!
Now there is Worldwide Concern over the (seemingly) unexplained demise of the Worlds Bee Population,,,,.,,……I think CIGARETTES,,,…….MONEY,,,,,Honest Studies that were not so Honest,,,,….MORE HUMMMM!!!!!!
@colin Beadon
Anything that is going to take money out of big oil pockets “Is too good to be true”Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Whistling frog, THE BEES
We’ve a huge wild bee nest low down in our sandbox tree. I can hear, as I walk past, the roar of the bees humming with their wingbeats to keep the hive cool now the weather is so hot.
The bees come to our birdbath and pollinate the small flowering palm trees. They don’t mind you close, just about touching them, and sometimes I’ve had to help them out of the birdbath with my hand.
I’d be sorry if anything happened to them. If we lose the bees, nature will be under duress, which will mean Mankind too.
How Societies choose to fail or survive.
The deeper I read into the book written by Jared Diamond called ‘Collapse’, the more deeply I become convinced anybody concerned with Humanity and our overall human condition, should read this book.
If you really wish to know what happened in Haiti, and Hispaniola, and why; the downfall of Easter island, the Anasazi, the Inca, why the New Guinea populations have lasted so well in their highlands, the same for the Inuits and Tikopia residents; then you need to read how, and know the reason why some societies are intelligent enough to reason their way out of problems ahead of time, and not allow themselves( despite unpredictable weather pattens or unpredictable near- country neighbors ) , to get into dire difficulties caused by faulty politics, deforestation, overuse of the land, overfishing, over use of fresh water , and over population, leading to such happenings as in Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, and parts of Eastern Europe.
There are very basic, simple and natural reasons why certain areas and countries are much more fertile than others, and why those regions can support higher populations. We need to make ourselves aware of those reasons, aware if we have politicians who fully understand the conditions in which we live despite they may have to take unpopular decisions at times, losing them votes and popularity.
There are countries, and leaders, who have had to make such decisions, and other who did not, who consequentiality spawned extreme hardship on their citizens, to the point of death and collapse of their societies.
Yes, how societies, definitely societies, choose themselves,…. to fail or survive !!!
Hi Colin,
You have hit the nail right on the head with your observation that leaders who fail to make unpopular decisions are responsible for untold hardship.
It has been a while since I read Collapse, but I believe there is a sentence in there that struck me as most powerful – when Diamond talked about how the people felt as their leader cut down the last tree on Easter Island.
I don’t have the book anymore (it was borrowed by a ‘friend’ and never returned) but if you could locate that passage and put it up here, I’m sure many of our readers would see the connection to our current state of affairs.
Thanks
Clive
Clive, I will look for that passage, but don’t remember seeing it. It is the sort of passage I would mark in pencil as being most significant, and usable when needed to press the point on deforestation.
Of course, we are not causing deforestation in Barbados in any big way, but we are responsible for causing it elsewhere, in Guyana, for instance, just like the USA took all the Trinidad teak. And the Chinese are now importing and stripping the forests in the Far East, including the Russian ones.
It all falls back on the needs caused by booming human populations. Clive, you really should read that book again now. It is a much more significant book five years later on.
Read ‘Future Shock’ again now too, if you want a double fright. Alvin Toffler didn’t get the modern world wrong when he was writing about it
thirty years ago in that book.
Just thinking………..leaders of different countries are not going to stop deforestation. They tell their people, look at all the money coming into the country…………and the people will say, we’re going to be rich. Poor fools. A good example is the deforestation of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Who got rich there ?
Notbajan.
Good leaders will recognize what it means to deforest, and what happen to the soils, the rivers, the lakes, the mountains when you do so; the problem gets far worse during drought caused by deforestation, when the soil itself dies, and the heavy rains start washing soils away and you get left with bare rocks. Good leaders would make and enforce laws to prevent that, and shoot or jail people who insist on forest stripping. Good leaders would also force the agriculture of tree farms and re-establishment, if they had any sense.
The Easter islanders cut down all their trees, till they could not even build fishingboats, When their soil washed into the sea, they starved. There are other countries, today, starving for much the same reasons; another reason being too many sheep or goats, which are particularly prone to over grazing, root digging and tree debarking of saplings, in times of drought. That is how deserts are made in many areas, and the rains fall off somewhere else.
Politicians take so much of the blame, as they should. Mainly they are just short term vote snatching addicts, who have little or no understanding of anything else, certainly no true understanding of nature, or the future for those they govern.
Not to mention the negative effects deforestation cause on animals as the food supply is destroyed and their homes and most of the animals die from starvation. Governments are ignorant of the fact that they are destroying the planets life support system or they simply just doesn’t care.
AC,
Generally governments are too booboo to care. There are exceptions, but far too few. The world has changed to one of politics, business and international corporations. All these three things destroy the natural world at every turn. It is the natural world that keeps us sane, nothing else.
Now you know why gun play, drugs and nepotism rule, and even the major religions shudder, and falter, like sailing craft in indeterminate winds.
This System ‘Earl’
If you go to RAMMB On- Line and take a look at the Barbados 2km Infrared or the Short wave, or both, you might perceive, like me, that Earl seems to want to move over us shortly. Everything on the screen, seems to be pointing to a down trend towards us, and the wind is blowing from the North East too.
Question: If you are sick with flu, or any other communicably bug( the black plague, for instance) should you fly ???
The answer is obviously no, if you are rich enough to change your flying date.
Since airlines, BA, or AA, won’t allow you to alter your flight should you be in a sick predicament (though you produce a doctor’s certificate), it implies, if you can’t afford to pay for the change to another date, that you fly irregardless, though you may infect the complete passenger list, including the stewards and pilots with bubonic plague, if that is what you have.
Airlines, about their customers or their cabin crews, obviously, don’t give one Sh,….
In the last few days I’ve written all my old girl friends who I had been passionated with years ago,
and who had refused to marry me, and whose husbands had recently died.
I wished them well, and thanked them profusely, for not marrying me. I’m not sure if that was the correct thing to do.
Would anybody care to comment at this jest ?
One of my old girlfriends wrote back:
‘ Thank God I didn’t marry you. I’d have been still stuck with you to this day, you old bastard.’
It wasn’t very loving of her, was it ?
I’d like to offer my condolences to the family of those killed in the Tudor Street store fire.
As to the perpetrators, may they rot in hell. The police must pull out all stops to catch these criminals. They cannot be allowed to get away with such a terrible deed.
Crack down on crime NOW Barbados.
So sorry to hear about the tragedy in Tudor Street. So unneccesary,but it only goes to show man’s inhumanity to man. I still cannot believe that Bajans could do this.
What dreadful death on a pleasant afternoon.
In this very recent case of violent crime, the death penalty needs being put in place. The BBC reported this crime across the world, yesterday, and here we are hoping for tourists.
It has been suggested, seriously, this crime has been done by Barbadian convicts, booted out of American jails and sent home. If so, that is one thing I won’t be thanking President Obama for.
Ah well, up goes our tax as cameras start being installed on every shopping street, and the once- safe Barbados, joins the rest of most of
the modern world.
Lets all do our best to help the police force, as much as we can.
Re: the Tudor Street crime.
Has a reward been offered by the Government or local businesses? If not, why not?
If the Government can give a house to Rihanna (!!!) then they can offer a reward to catch these thugs! They cannot and must not be allowed to get away with this wicked crime.
Here is something that is closer to my personal concerns yet it has ramifications for all of us.
Some of you maybe recall my previous letters in both newspapers a few months back on this subject, however my latest attempt a couple weeks ago, which I will share here now, has not be published – maybe because I got more specific …
************************************************
URGENT! – Where is Barbados’ Weather Doppler Radar Data?
Several weeks have gone by since my last comment on this subject and no public response from the Barbados Meteorological Office. In fact, I would have to say there seems to be a step back or a retrograde in some respect. The following makes me consider this.
Subsequent to my last comments and a short while after the Ministry of Agriculture launched their new web site – http://www.agriculture.gov.bb – I found that they had included a link to Satellite and Radar Imagery and I followed it only to find that it showed the same radar imagery provided by Martinique and Guadeloupe that has been around for many years.
I also noticed that they had a comments feed or blog available on which I asked about what was going on with our radar, in particular asking “How is it Trinidad and Guyana can come and pass us out in the field?” To which I got a reply, and I quote … (it’s on the web site)
******************************************************************************
… written by Sonia Nurse – Deputy Director (Ag), July 13, 2010
Dear Sir,
Please note that the up-dated link does include Barbados.
We were previously experiencing some technical difficulties in setting
up the link with the other radars in the eastern Caribbean.
******************************************************************************
Well, of course the French island radar link does include Barbados, it always has but just barely and it is not up-to-date as what we have and therefore found wanting. However, on both counts the response does not answer why Trinidad and Guyana (and Belize) did their own thing – internet-wise – and their radars were funded and provided under the said same arrangement as ours.
I have since responded nearly a month ago now, in essence, that I know that as per the EU agreement Météo-France was suppose to coordinate the consolidation of all these radars’ imagery on the internet, and in essence asked why is it that we are waiting on this while we are the most exposed (except Belize) when the others are not and yet did not wait on the agreed collaboration with Météo-France and have gone ahead with their own national initiative and gone public on the internet.
There has been no response to this and only after another ‘professional’ request did Ms. Nurse once again post the following “There is no direct link to Barbados’ radar at present. However you may use the following link to access the Martinique Radar”
Now take into consideration that over a year ago, according to the Barbados Advocate dated June 28, 2009 under the caption ‘Doppler Radar On-stream’, as follows:
“The Doppler weather radar at Castle Grant, St. Joseph is operational and has been generating data that is utilized at the Meteorological Office in Barbados.
Director of Meteorological Services, Chesterfield Layne, provided an update on the status of the radar to The Barbados Advocate earlier this week. He noted however, that additional components related to the dissemination of information were still being tested.
The radar is expected to improve forecasting and preparedness and is part of a network of nine radars throughout the Caribbean that will contribute to the Regional Weather Radar Warning Service and provide information to the public, Government agencies, disaster preparedness agencies, and other users.”
Most of you will note that in the past I have not mentioned what I am about to, as I did not want it thought that I was trying to intimidate our Barbados Meteorological Office but alas I think it needs to be made public, more so on this forum, and I do so reluctantly for said reason yet am left no choice if we are to have a free flow of information as other countries do.
I have operated a weather related web site – http://www.brohavwx.com – for the last 10+ years, providing ‘free of charge’ all of the satellite imagery, lightning and localized weather data which is received and processed by the equipment and software that I have invested and/or made myself in over the years.
I started in the early 1990’s with shortwave radio based (amateur) Weather Facsimile (WEFAX), adding Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) from Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) WEFAX a few years later. Just after mid-90’s I added a Lightning Detector which gives a graphic of lightning strokes around us like a radar screen. This detector type, for amateur use, has become one the most international used lightning detector in the last 15 or so years. Since then the software available for it has become quite sophisticated and of course provides internet access for this which I publish on my web site.
Since 2005 I have managed to convert my GOES WEFAX to the new digital Low-Rate Information Transmission (LRIT) system, which due to my activity in the area I got a very special conversion price. They are not many GOES LRIT ground stations and I am probably one the few and maybe the only one in this region. I am in constant contact with GOES LRIT operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the USA, to the extent that I am on the copy list for anyone sending queries regarding GOES LRIT. In addition, my ground station has been registered with the World Barbados Meteorological Organization (WMO) some years ago during a census, with an amateur status and has continued as such. All GOES and POES imagery and data is free for anyone to receive and use.
I also participate in the international Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) providing local weather data every 15 minutes to this program of which there are over 500 different user organizations of the CWOP mesonet data. I provide similar data to the Weather Underground Personal Weather Station every 5 minutes and what they call rapid fire every 15 seconds and I am not the only such station on the island that does this, but weather data from Grantley Adams is only updated every hour. All of this data I provide is free; I get no compensation for it other than the fact of knowing that I am helping in some way.
Paradoxically, because I have an active weather web site for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, and we as a nation have had no real official Barbados Meteorological web site, I have been occasionally bombarded with questions over the years about the local weather forecast from tourist about to visit the island or so forth. However, more importantly and the more pertinent questions coming from by both amateur weather peers and/or professions in the field and related fields as to why there no official web presence for direct data from our local Barbados Meteorological Office at Grantley Adams Int’l. Airport (GAIA)?
These days the questions come regarding the Barbados Radar link I provide on my web site (which is username and password protected), in the hope that it will work as expected one of these days soon, as they others do freely from Belize, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, St. Maarten, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Suriname and Curacao.
With the advent of the internet it has become unfortunately obvious to most Barbadian citizens and otherwise that our Barbados Meteorological Office simply seems to repeat what has been already forecast by the National Weather Service (NWS) or the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in the USA. Over the years I have tried to defend their position both on the front that weather forecasting is not an exact science and that, yes, the NHC in Miami is the authoritative base for all Tropical Storm and Hurricane activity in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, so our Barbados Meteorological Office cannot say much more than what is issued by the NHC/NWS.
Even our own local weather data link provided by said – http://www.agriculture.gov.bb – web site is set to go to – http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/TBPB.html – for Current Weather Conditions. TBPB means GAIA Barbados in essence. This means that we are still relying on external sources to provide or in the above case to reproduce our own data for the internet. Same goes for the satellite imagery provided – not locally provided or processed, so what happens when external links go down and we only have local internet so to speak.
Notwithstanding all of this, the salient questions still remain in everyone’s minds:
Why has the Barbados Meteorological Office been so tardy in having a comprehensive internet web site that we can be proud of, like nearly all of the other islands?
I have heard rumours of funding problems to get this data on the web but I can only think this to be a red herring, as internet site and basic cost are dirt cheap if you just want to get your (even highly invested) data out there.
So this begs the question, does our own Meteorological Office really want to share this data?
BFP, when you have examined my last contribution here and removed it from moderation status maybe you could start a new subject thread on this topic – the implications could be worth it – and this time I would gladly approve having by name associated with it. Thanks.
Hi David,
Done. What an excellent article. We were unaware of your website. We’d like to put up a sidebar link and also put you in the banner rotation. OK by you?
Marcus
Robin Williams at best, or worst.
Too bad people don’t take Robin Williams seriously. Every time the West saves a starving zone, the world population grows bigger. Every time the West finds a new drug to save millions, the world population grows bigger, every time a way is found to produce more food faster, the population grows bigger, more energy is consumed, and the best soils become overburdened by fertilizers and pesticides, and more trees are cut down and can’t grow back in time to keep the spreading world population in the timber it needs. All the billions of us are responsible for deforestation. Our homes are full of the providence of trees.
Every new invention comes with its own huge demands on energy, and its own new problems that don’t show up right away, ( like global warming). There are so many sites on Earth today, where the quest for minerals has caused huge gaping holes in the Earth’s surface that can be see from space. The seepage from many of these mines, is destroying the lakes and rivers and aquifers we drink from. Major world rivers are becoming over- polluted and their levels are falling due to the effects caused by major human populations on or near their banks. River fish, just like sea fish, are being eaten out or dieing due to pollution of the waters caused by excessive fertilizer and pesticide run- off. Look, you can’t see a ‘Swampy’ land crab in Barbados any more, for instance, and the reefs are bereft of most of the life they had ten years ago.
As the world population doubles again in a few years time, the repercussions are going to become more staggering than they are already starting to become. And we, of the inventive West, are mainly responsible. We need to stop saving the world populations, like Robin Williams suggest, and start studying our own, many millions out of work.
No !!!! Most of the people in the world, can’t and wont ever reach First World standards. For one thing, the energy demand to accomplish such a daydream, is way beyond our ability, ever. It is certainly way out of any politicians vision of understanding.
We need to listen to Robin Williams, and, read the book by Jared Diamond called ‘Collapse’ (How societies choose to fail or survive) A No 1 International Bestseller.
The days of wine and roses, are over. The world population is far to vast, and seething, and seeping, hungry, thirsty, and growing angry, and the agricultural growing plains are baking in the hot arid rainless areas, or flooded over from glazier melt; and too many trees, plants, birds, insects and animals, are gone, …..for ever, and ever gone !
Ah, but I can plainly hear the sobbing hearts, wondering how one could pen such suggestions.
Ah, then Ah ! Perhaps somebody would be good enough to suggest how the Earth will sustain such overburden of its providence without a reduction of its human population? The suggestion would have to be based on a more profound equation than Einstein ever wrote.
Colin Leslie Beadon.
BFP Marcus,
Is there any way to lift and save any one script alone from off the pages of BFP ? I’ve tried a number of times and ways to do this from other people’s work as well as my own. Colin
Hi Collin,
What do you mean “lift one script” ? Do you mean one story?
There’s a couple of different ways.
You can “Print to PDF” with a number of programs and that gets you a copy. FireFox will save everything on a “control S” command. Put it all in a separate folder though because there’s pieces.
Aside from those two (and copy and paste) there are a number of commercial “screen capture” programmes out there. Marcus uses something different than I do (I use firefox) so I’ll ask him.
Clive
What was Davis Ellis trying to prove by asking the pm if he wanted to further elaborate on his condition ,ah mean come on respect the man he already made it clear that he had given his physician the right away to disclose his condition to the public and who better to do it ,as the PM said he is not a physician,and could he not sense that the PM seem to be a bit poignant, what was he thinking ,that was no time to show how good a journalist he is to please a really malicious ,and hypocritical public .Did he not hear how the
Pm reiterated on his question in reshuffling .I think he Ellis was a bit insensitive,the PM came to apologized for not getting back ti the nation sooner as promised and to give details as to why he was leaving again ,this was not to be one off his usual interviews ,come on PM or not he is a human being with a family ,he should have his privacy as we all should .The fact is he is very ill the whole nation already knows that ,is that not enough ? why should we push to find out his whole medical history as it relates to this illness ,people especially on the Opposition side( not the politicians) don’t really care about the PM they are just malicious .Give the Pm a break he is suffering ,emotionally ,physically and mentally now he has to deal with this too. I respect Mia Motley she has not given the PM any kind of disrespect sense this while episode unfolded .
HE IS THE PRIME MINISTER .NUFF RESPECT TO HIM AND HIS FAMILY FOR GOD’S SAKE
What Ironies of Stupidity.
Islam can burn the flag of any country with impunity, but some
Inconspicuous little pastor of a religious sect nobody has heard of, cannot burn the Koran without upsetting the complete Islamic world.
Something deeply wrong here, and some politicians of America, the President included amongst them, have send a very feeble message to the Islamic world. They have said, virtually, ‘We ‘fraid you , and go on burning our flag.’
The Islamic world forgets who comes to their aid in times of dire need, but they also forget that though citizens of some countries may not have the deep almost mad fire of religious fervour they themselves posses, the people of other countries do have the deep fire of love of their own countries, and the burning of their flags is an act just as sacrilegious, despicable, and disrespectful to them as the burning of any religious document, be it the Bible, the Koran, or the Bhagavad Gita.
@Colin Beadon
Agree with you completely. It is a sad day in america when it does not stand up for its Constitution and have allow the doers of evil to forfeit them that Right.
Hello Colin and ac
Another point is that the folks who are opposed to the Ground Zero Mosque (70% of New Yorkers if the polls are to be believed) say that they accept that the proponents of the mosque have a RIGHT under the Constitution to build a mosque, they just ask Muslims to show the same respect and sensitivity that they demand of everyone else. Especially in view of the famous Muslim “hair-trigger” sensitivity contrasted with say, the majority of the rest of the world.
Consider if you will, the reactions of everyone to the creation of “mohammed cartoons” compared with “piss christ” or other infamous anti-Christian art.
Christians generally prayed for the “artist” who created pisschrist. Muslims? Well, they handle things a little differently according to their religious values and norms.
As Sesame Street would say “One of these things is not like the other”
Certainly BFP,
‘One of these things is most certainly not like the other.’
Yet this remarkable difference raises poignant questions.
Why does the West insist democracy be provoked on the Islamic world, at vast Western expense and lives though so many people from that part of the world seem to prefer to live in, and off, the West, as far away as possible from the true heart, the birthplace, and the rulings of Islam?
If Islam really means so much to them, why are they not more like the Jews and defend what is theirs in their own countries, allowed to follow their own Islamic laws including stoning women to death and not allowing young girls to go to school, and all the rest of what the West abhors that they preach.
In actual fact, they don’t deserve democracy, and like Robin Williams has said recently, the West needs to leave them entirely to their own devices in every way. But one seriously doubts that will make them any happier. Their very belief is that happiness comes after death, not while you live.
I have enjoyed reading the life of Mohammed, but my gut feeling is distrust of his Mullahs, and what they are now tending to preach.
@Colin Beadon
The articleonSept 8th was very well thought out ,but to some who made have read it .It may seem inconsequential because the problems are not affecting them or it might seem like that. I am very concern that at the rate mankind is devouring our land and replacing it will buildings we maybe headed for a world famine as well as severe flooding . These problems are evident as we continue down the road of greed. No one is considering the severity of the problems which we have created. So much people , Somany houses and no land to grow our food on. Not to mention the destuction of forest that is to protect us from major coastal flooding . This would eventually lead to a doomsday crisis and we can only blame our selves.
I’m missing a blast from BIRD. Wha’ happen to he?
ac,
You got it. The inconsequentiality most people feel. ‘Oh, it can’t happen here. What! Here in Barbados ? Never. Never happen ! ‘
So we silently bless them, and forget what happened in Haiti and Christmas Island, the Mocha and the extremely short span- life of the Mimbres civilization for all their most beautiful pottery making.
Christmas Island was supposed to be Easter Island, (above). Christmas Island seems to be doing alright, for now. At least,… they ain’t building highrises, and pelting garbage about.
The collection of garbage seems to have completely collapsed in this country. In neighbourhood after neighbourhood one can find huge piles of smelly garbage. In some areas there has not been a collection in ten days. There is no schedule in operation, gone are the days when you could put out your garbage on a particular day, The SSA is in total shambles. Just another area of that no longer functions in this country. If this situation is not dealt with we could be facing outbreaks of disease caused by these unsanitary conditions.
The sad thing is that the government do not seem to have any answers to all the problems facing this country. Where are we going? Where is the leadership?
James Jones, Yes, Garbage everywhere!
I agree with you. Garbage all along the highways too. Seems it is more important to carve up the countryside and build houses, than collect garbage. Of course, the more houses get built in the countryside, the more garbage well shall see along the sides of the roads thrown out from transport.
It seems, many people are convinced the countryside is really a giant garbage dump. Well, true, it is fast becoming one, and there is no enforcement that will ever prevent it.
Anyone got their new Directories from LIME? Please tell me how the Treasure Hunt works?
‘ Tipping Point. ‘
Halfway through the book ‘Tipping Point’ by the author Malcolm Gladwell, we’re led into the crime raging in New York in the 1980’s. He shows how just cleaning off all the graffiti from the subway carriages, and keeping them clean, was the first step in radicaly dropping the crime.
Perhaps, if such a simple step could be enforced on our highways and byways in respect of the garbage, a new dawn of pride of our island Barbados, could really make it on par with Singapore, as a tourist attraction.
Growing cane under the bobcat. And Electricity from renewable sources.
Today, I’ve been in an implacable and pernicious mood, watching a living cane field being destroyed to make way for more housing in the countryside. It is the sort of thing that makes me feel to throw up, any time, any agricultural land on this small island, is so converted to concrete.
So I’ll change the subject, by drawing attention to the site: ‘List of countries by electricity production from renewable sources’. Google.
Yes, you won’t find Trinidad there, nor will you find Barbados, despite all the rhetoric spurted by local politicians. But St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamaica, are there, and many other islands and other places you may not have heard of: 107 in all, are included, doing their best not to find themselves subjected to oil and oil prices. Hydro, wind power, biomass, solar, geothermal, and other sources, are all included in the list of those countries intent, and producing some of their energy demand on renewable sources.
In the meantime, Barbados continues to destroy its cane-fields to build houses that will need vast amounts of new energy, electrical and other,…. at every turn.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
He looks, and speaks, like a man one could trust. And now he is concerned about the controversy over the building of the mosque near the 9/ll location in New York, and how it is upsetting so many Americans.
But some of us remember Trinidad Friday 27th 1990. Treason, Murder, Arson. Government ministers gunshot and pinned down in the parliament buildings for eight days, and the take over of the Trinidad Radio Station, the destruction, looting, trashing and burning, of many of the main stores in Port of Spain, that placed so many people out of work. All this caused by Trinidad Muslimeen. No figures have ever been given of the true count of people who lost their lives in the maelstrom, but the smell of death was everywhere.
That is what we remember, and we still have the Daily Express Magazine put out with all the photos, and the smoke over burning Port Of Spain, and the page captions like ‘Fourteen hours of sheer anarchy and Madness’. ‘Death of a city’. ‘This lunacy must never happen again’.
A whole magazine of photographs and scripts of the horror. 125 pages. Where did the Muslimeen get all the weaponry to be able to almost overun Trinidadian authority, burn Port Of Spain and police headquarters, and hold the Trinidad Army at bay ?
So you can listen to the mummers of peace from Islam across the world, if you want. But there are too many of us who won’t be taking them seriously, ever again.
Any island who is not taking very intense observation of its Islamic inhabitants, can only have itself to blame.
I wish I never had to write that, about any religion.
Colin Leslie Beadon.
Perhaps, I’m tending to breath too much hot air, into the freezing of oblivion. For that I’m sorry. My writing isn’t helping, or going anywhere. The blade has turned.
@Colin Beadon.
No ! No! colin your words of wisdom should not be taken as hot air. So much of what you say is truth that is almost hard to disagree with you. Keep speaking and most of us would keep reading and contemplating .
Project Censored releases a new book covering the top censored (by the mainstream media) stories of 2009 – 2010.
The #3 story on Project Censored’s list of 25 most censored stories of 2010:
When mankind continue on these self destructive paths along the way unloading inhumanity to its fellowman. Nature has a way of saying “enough is enough” .Like they say payback is a son of a b…..ch.
What is responsible for the destruction of a country ?
What destroyed Haiti, Somalia, Easter Island, for instance? Not an easy answer one might say, when for several weeks, one has been looking at the dreadful flooding in Pakistan.
To find truthful cause, you have to go back in time and see how the human populations of those countries were behaving, or misbehaving. Did they have rulers amongst them, who managed to gel the population along sustainable lines. Did the rulers have wisdom, in other words, or were they just out for themselves, like certain world wide businesses we see in operation today, and like certain politicians who tend to want to run governments like businesses tailored to fit their own pockets ?
There was not much wisdom shown by Easter Island rulers, or by Haitian dictators, or Somalian warlords. In fact, there was no wisdom what -so-ever. And so it was not draught, or an earthquake, or hurricanes, or flooding that destroyed those countries almost beyond redemption. Though some of those things under bad or worthless administration helped tip the problems.
And perhaps Pakistan rulers too, might be blamed for their own flooding, due to allowing deforestation of their mountains and high ground.
Or perhaps we can justly blame Mankind, for overpopulation that has probably been one of the major causes of global warming; and the West for living on a standard everybody else in the world badly wants to emulate.
But just watch the people in those flooded regions of Pakistan, recover, once the water subsides, and watch the people of Haiti, given half a chance, and if kept out of the clutches of dictators, and political misfits.
@Colin
But colin I blamed the rulers or dictators those who put themselves in charge of goverance.they close their eyes to the inevitable warning signs of nature which at some point and time would unleashed such violent force that would destroy those things that are in their way. Look at our small island Barbados. Nature in its planning had set up certain amount of acreage for agriculture , but instead we have chosen to put houses on it now with the constant rain we haveplenty flooding in and around the surrounding areas. Who then shall we blame? Nature did the planning. Man choose to do whatever pleases them.
AC. Shades of Easter Island.
Yes, governance without wisdom, or thought of the future, or what we are forcing on future generations.
I’m watching cane being stripped off dark, rich, deep, ancient topsoil, the topsoil carted off to face bare rock, for more roads and houses, in countryside where our food should be coming from, instead of being shipped in from overseas, at huge expense of energy, and local farmers wringing their hands. There will be other Easter Islands, all the fault of Man.
Yes, China rises, and they still get foreign aid.
Sunday Sept 26. Page 23. Advocate.
Why is China still getting foreign aid when there are so many other countries, islands, who don’t have one thousandth the resources China possesses?
And here, so much of the Western world, and the West Indies, are bombarded by inferior products every way we turn.
We think we are getting things cheap, but few China products, shoes, boots, tools, electrical instruments, calculators, etc, last more than a couple months or a year, when we used to buy such equipment from the rest of the world, that lasted several years, often many more
I’m damn tired of having to rebuild Chinese equipment, to try and get a couple more months out of it, if possible, using, for instance, American epoxies, or American stitching ( archery thread is the very best) to keep soles on shoes or boots, or buttons on shirts, made in China.
Don’t dare get Chinese foot ware wet, more than a couple time, and don’t ware a Chinese belt more than a couple times before the facing starts to strip off near the buckle. Two calculators marked ‘dual power’ ie, battery and solar, were found on inspection, to have false solar panels and not ever wired up.
So that is what our importers, and government, are allowing to be sold to us, in their
attempt to kiss, you know where, of a country that is still having aid poured into it by the Western world. And we are supposed to buy all the crap.
Further disgust at Chinese products !
I’d like to add, that Chinese culinary knife blades, which is all we seem to find to buy here in Barbados now, can’t be sharpened properly, and can’t hold a cutting edge. Where are all the hicory-handled black iron blades we used to get ????
I will say that Chinese stainless steel is of good quality, but it does not make good sharp culinary knives, unless you want to sharpen them every time you are about to use them.
Everything chinese must be banned internationally . The food makes people sick. The baby formula is making the babies sick. the paint is no good. When you buy their products it is like throwing money into a waste basket. Chinese products should only be sold in china .Again the comsumer is being shafted and the governments sit by and does nothing to protect us.
AC,
We must be fair. But what gets me most is that you have to really search to find products made anywhere else to choose from. We seem to be in a ‘time-warp’, stuck, with Chinese products.
My problem is that I’m one of those people who are known to fix things, so I get a lot of Chinese junk to fix, from friends and neighbors. And so much of it is real junk,…. crap, would be a better term. Badly made, badly designed crap at that.
One of america’s biggest mega stores walmart buy a lot of that junk from china and then passesit on to their uniformed customers. BWT walmart is planning to buy a big mega store in africa .
Today, a chef living near by, sent me his knives to sharpen. I picked out the Chinese ones and sent them back, telling him I’m not wasting time and reputation on sharpening those. And so it goes with crap.
Now, Chinese dragons, and girls, are lovely. But I still prefer Trinidad Chinese food, and I would have loved to sail in a Chinese junk, and to have walked on the Great Wall.
wonder who is paying for all the recent ads in the Nation with the early writings of Ellen G White?
After some considerable time I am blogging again. As usual my focus is communications and regulations/policy that have an impact on the consumer. Well, over the last month I have been researching and checking my information on “Transit Rates” which form part of the package of rates which the Fair Trading Commission decided on earlier this year following a consultation on Interconnection rates. My consultancy was the only interested party to represent consumers and business folk. My research has led me to the view that the FTC might have erred and set very high “transit rates” which serve to undermine competition and keep local mobile rates higher than they should be. I say might. But to be fair, get a copy of the coming Business Authorty which might have in an article by me or visit my Word Press blog Caritel Communications and see if you can locate the only posting.
A second issue I have with the FTC is the way it is going about a Cost Model study and the process of establishing future Interconnection rates. Essentially, LIME would be allowed to come up with a model based on guidelines provided by the FTC. Companies such as Blue, TeleBarbados and Digicel would have to live with rates approved by the FTC under this system.
This is a recipe for problems because we an anticipate LIME providing rates that it is comfortable with and with which the other parties are very uncomfortable. We have seen this scenario play out elsewhere in the Caribbean so we should be learning from other experiences. The Price Cap started out on the wrong foot and consumers are paying for it now. I hope I am wrong but fear that a similar situation is likely to occur as the FTC does not seem to be getitng the best advice or doing some fundamental research before adopting policies which hurt the consumer. And there is no meaninful discussion with the public prior to deciding which way to go.
Hallam Hope
Police and fire service on the scene in the Belle where apparently a car has washed into a gully and its female driver is trapped on the roof of the car in rushing waters
Girl rescued and out of danger
Idea for the conservation of Time, Space, and Water.
Long ago when one lived in a trailer beside Lake Maracaibo in Western Venezuela, the home, because of its limited space, had an ingenious design concerning the bathroom.
The toilet was in the middle of the small shower stall. You looked across from the toilet seat, to a big wall mirror above the vanity shelf where you kept your soap, shaving equipment, toothbrush and paste and any after- wild- night revival pills you needed, bandages, iodine, etc. All this was just within reach, if you stretched across from the toilet seat.
The position of the mirror, lightly tilted down, un-succulently though splendidly portrayed the results of your night of sin, love bites, scratches, sore this and that.
Of course, the shower head was two feet above your head as you sat, and the valves for hot and cold water, were just below the toilet paper roll within reach of your right hand. The toilet paper roll had a flappable hood over it, to prevent shower splash off your body.
Now you do appreciate just why this design was so conservative of space, time, and of water, don’t you? Don’t you? You don’t?
Well, its very early, and you’re attempting to get rid of late night drinking cobwebs bestowed upon you from what was delicately called ‘The Bar’ across the caraterra (highway) from the oil camp where, in the trailer bathroom you’re sitting, and time pressed, you have the daily, early 4.30 a.m. launch to catch for Lake Maracaibo.
If your head is quite clear enough, and you are sitting on the toilet seat (there is no space to sit elsewhere) as you should be at that time of early morn, you can accomplish the feat of shitting, showering, and shaving, all at the same time.
We have never seen a bathroom quite so useful, or quite so conservative, anywhere else in the world; and it obviously was not designed by a University- spat engineer. Only a very practical down- to- earth man, or woman, could have dreamed up an idea like that.
Ah, so the Chinese and the Moon.
So the Chinese are getting really interested in projects for the moon. Too bad they can’t come up with a project to build better and long- lasting shoes, boots, tools, belts, and all the other junk products we are forced to buy here in Barbados.
The power outage involved,…….
I have been working, all day, on a small almost new generator. Removed the faulty, ‘shorting out’ stop switch, pulled down the carb and cleaned the jets, found the fuel strainer so badly made it had holes in it that had allowed debris into the carb jets.
I don’t need to point out where it was made. Instead I will point out where it was not made. Canada, USA, Europe, Taiwan, Japan, Africa, South America, UK, Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Russia, Indian, I could go on, but most people would have guessed by now, just where it was made.
Once got working, it more or less powered a small half fridge, though it had been rated to power any size used in a regular home. 150o watts and down.
@Colin
I guess the powers that be that is those in charge of governing the Nation must be having second or third thoughts about putting so much concerte in areas which nature had reserved to store massive amounts of water in cases such as flooding which Barbados has seen over the past days.
Ah, so the Chinese and the Moon.
So the Chinese are getting really interested in projects for the moon. Too bad they can’t come up with a project to build better and long- lasting shoes, boots, tools, belts, and all the other junk products we are forced to buy here in Barbados.
@Colin
I have heard similar complaints from residents of the USA and Canada, so it is just not here in Barbados that we are forced to buy Chinese junk products. I fear you might be “misunderestimating” the Chinese. They are apparently perfecting the technique of applying to their products the concept of built in obsolescence (a concept pioneered by the US car companies), but this looks like built in obsolescence with a vengeance. However, it would ensure there is always a ready market for their goods if consumers regularly have to replace their original Chinese sourced goods that have prematurely broken down, malfunctioned or just plain disintegrated.
Since the USA’s (and the West’s in general) economic gurus and geniuses and giants of industry determined it would be more profitable for business if they didn’t insist on keeping an industrial, manufacturing base in the USA and the other high wage rate countries of the West (except perhaps that which was required to make fighter aircraft, nuclear bombs, submarines, aircraft carriers, tanks and armored personnel carriers etc.) manufacturing plants and equipment for most consumer products were shut down and sold off for scrap or shipped overseas, mainly to China, and we are now stuck with the result. It’s either buy Chinese, do without, or make it yourself. For the most part, this is true for consumers in countries like the US, UK, Canada etc. as well as Barbados.
The make-it-yourself option might work for something like a toilet seat if you have some carpentry skills, but how many people can make a cordless phone, or a microwave oven.
For more background on the forces that have been driving the trend to shift production of consumer products overseas from the USA, there is an interesting interview posted at the web site of the PBS program Frontline with sociology professor Gary Gereffi that examines the topic .
Green Monkey, and Built in Obsolescence
( great Term, B.O.)
We’re not sure who we vex with most, American politics and American business, who made good products but who have forced, between them, so many Americans on the jobless list, or local Island business and politics, who have made it mandatory that we buy Chinese imported trash.
True, you really can’t blame the Chinese, if the West is foolish enough to place itself in this enigma.
Yet here we are, a small Island, continually having to import a steady stream of the same products, over and over because of the high rate of product attrition, paying through the nose more and more, for every shipment all the way from China.
Is it no wonder our garbage piles climb steadily, and our gullies and beaches fill with discarded trash, all in the name of good business and politics,…. both here and in America ?
But China is on the move. Now they want to start buying agricultural land overseas. Why ?
Simple, because they have begun to understand the growing food shortage that exists across the world, and they can make huge profits from other people’s land, producing food, that other people are going to have to buy.
Of course, that won’t entail work for local people ( who mostly abhor getting hands dirty), but you don’t have to be too brilliant to appreciate where the labor to work that land will come from, en mas. Listen to the BBC today, 5th Oct 2010 New Zealand is already in Chinese sites for such purpose. And who can blame the Chinese for that ?
The trapped 33 Chilean Miners .
They have been trapped sixty days, two thousand feet underground. Think of that, while we hope they may all be out by this coming week end. Who can imagine their first 17 days, when they had not even been located, and had had no word, or sign, from above ground, that they were being looked for.
17 days of oblivion. Think about that. It is as though you had been buried by mistake, while you were still alive. Only a very special person could cope with something like that.
So we need follow their return, to family and life, and hope they won’t be implacably destroyed for the rest of their lives, by flurried dreams of that deep early grave. But we’ll bet you, some of them will go back to work underground.
In the bowls of the Earth and the sea, and those of us who are brave,…. or stupid.
When we were moving one of those huge offshore rigs that stand up on legs, we had to send divers down, after midnight, to check and see nothing had fallen on the mat that was attached to the legs. The mat, a huge structure of steel, sat on the ocean bed like a platform.
In the gulf of Paria, between Trinidad and venezuela, the sea bottom is deep in soft mud from the Orinoco river. A diver would go down, over 200 or 300 feet, and feel around to see if anything had dropped on the mat, so once you were jacking up the mat, such an object would not be forced by the huge hydraulic jacks and the mat, like a sandwich, into the bottom of the rig barge, and breach barge floatation.
Divers told us they were in total darkness down there on the mat, and the thick mud made then loose orientation of up or down.
The only way they could tell which direction was surface, was to feel, with a hand, the direction their air bubbles were going from the vent on their intake mouthpiece. Air bubble direction showed then which was was ‘up’.
Now you know why rig divers lose their lives, and why they are paid so much. But that is only a tiny bit of their true story, while they sit for a week or more, in decompression chambers, after a couple hours’ dive, depending of depth, and time they were down.
So those trapped miners in Chile, now soon to be back with us on planet Earth rather than trapped in her interior, entombed, are not the only ones who have to bare such daily traversity.
We hated having to send a good diver down at that hour of night. We used to stand on the edge of the rig main deck railings, looking down into the midnight black sea for their air bubbles. In those days, you didn’t have communication with them like you do today.
There are some of us who only feel we are brave when driving a vehicle at breakneck speed on roads in this small island. But that feeling of bravado breaks down, irretrievably, once we wake up on a hospital bed and discover the full horror and costs of our stupidity.
Economist Dr. James K. Galbraith spoke at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ 9th convention last month, where he brought delegates a message not often heard from economists – that there is a progressive response to the economic crisis.
Galbraith – the son of famed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith – regaled delegates with his analysis of the roots of the economic recession that has destroyed jobs, families and communities. He said the crisis wasn’t an economic crisis but a fraud perpetrated on innocent victims. (my emphasis /GM)
Video of Professor Galbraith’s address (approx 30min) at:
http://rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2010/10/features/dr-james-k-galbraith-cep-convention-2010
This world is really amazing. In today’s Advocate we have a labrador with a pacemaker .I have a family member who needs one to live but cannot afford the cost. Guess the dog’s owner has the money
@rasta
Ref;comment”iave a family member who needs onei.e ‘pacemaker” to live but cannot affoird the cost
Personnally i wish i could afford to send you the money,. Maybe some one with that kind of money or influence would read your comment and advice you on how to seek finance through other means to assist your family member.
rasta man, ya right boy !
It like all dem people racing horses and cars all aroun’ de wold, and yet people starvin in Africa and Haiti, an Bangladash wid deir home swep away, an so fort. An all dem multi billion spen’ on world Olympic stadium, and flying crickiter and footballer, and horse and racing car, golf and tennis player every which where; and people don have job or food or a bed, where rain ain’t reach dem, or the bitter cold of some nights; and dem ain’t have no protection again’st the heathen creepin out of the bush and into dem house and tackling dem wife or dem daughter, and I could add plenty more to dat .
So there is ‘nough injustice, ain’t ? But what you or I could do, but howl like banshee in the dark night, and pray to new Gods who might, for a time, at least listen, because the old Gods ain’t hearing nutting, nutting,….. nutting.
Let me tell you. Today I was watching one of our young cats playing with a very small mouse in the house. It really was a very small mouse, and she would not allow it to get too far away from her, where later, she took it out into the lawn grass.
But the mouse, who was permitted some lenient leeway, and was not being treated as though the intention was building to it becoming a sudden meal, sat back and started to think, while it washed its small face and paws in the allowed downtime.
So the next time the game picked up steam, the mouse zoomed off to one side of a plant pot, and as the kitty hurried after it, the mouse suddenly shot up into the air and executed a most perfect reverse of the few feet direction it had tried as an escape.
I watched the baffled cat, and I watched the mouse now angle across ‘Fire Cracker, and Alamanda, and make the most perfect reverse, escape few Gods have ever witnessed, or lived to tell about.
So that is the saga captured,… first hand, sure that it just shows, Gut’s and staying with s0mething long enough, can induce feelings of hope, though reservations of futility. Colin.
Offshoring production leads to a “race to the bottom” in more ways than one.
Why does a Chinese factory have to surround the factory building with nets? To prevent their workers from committing suicide by jumping to their deaths. But it also ensures the factory can continue to churn out parts for Apple’s iPhones and iPods with minimal disruption.
US Banks Fake Documents to Rush Foreclosures
Major US banks systematically faked documents in order to speed up foreclosures for hundreds of thousands of homeowners, a mounting body of evidence shows. It appears likely that federal and state laws were broken in the process.
The scandal speaks both to the dimensions of the social crisis and the criminality of the big banks. The immediate cause of the mortgage lenders’ rampant cheating on foreclosure paperwork is the tidal wave of families ruined by the economic crisis—a crisis itself set into motion by the banks’ predatory lending practices. The goal was to get people out of their homes as efficiently and ruthlessly as possible, skating over legal requirements relating to documentation.
Politicians have responded with calls for investigations and temporary suspensions of foreclosures. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and 30 other California representatives this week demanded a federal investigation into the mortgage lending industry in a letter sent to the Justice Department. Democratic Senators Al Franken of Minnesota and Robert Menendez of New Jersey on Tuesday requested an investigation from the Government Accountability Office into the role of government regulatory agencies in allowing the abuses to take place. Attorneys general in a number of states have launched investigations, and foreclosures have been temporarily stopped in a few.
snip
Notarized documents are required to transfer a property from one institution to another. But typically banks do not produce paperwork proving they have “standing” or the legal right to foreclose. Instead they supply affidavits that have been signed by a legal services firm hired by the bank or loan servicer. These signatures are, in theory, to be administered by a neutral, third party notary public, who is legally required to read and review the documents.
What has emerged, however, is that the notarization system was pervasively abused by major financial institutions. Among other practices, it has been revealed that notarizations took place at an impossible rate of thousands per month per reviewer, that they occurred even before the attested documents were actually prepared, that signatures ostensibly representing the same individual bank employee were clearly produced by more than one person, and that notarizations took place in offices far away from where documents were signed.
Additionally, courts are finding it difficult to determine what banks actually own mortgages. This uncertainty is owed to the securitization of mortgage debt, which is routinely bundled, sold, divided, and then rebundled and resold again. The result is often that multiple banks make claims on the same properties.
http://theintelhub.com/2010/10/10/us-banks-fake-documents-to-rush-foreclosures/
Obama’s friend and appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, has an idea on how to quell those annoying conspiracy theories with no merit which seem to be endlessly discussed on the internet and cause their naive and misled adherents to at best question and at worst outright distrust the actions and motives of the US government. Glenn Greenwald, a columnist/blogger at Salon.com, doesn’t think much of Sunstein’s plan and explains why:
Obama, Obama, Obama !
We championed Obama long before he became president. He is up against such odds, and yet he remains iron -fisted resolute, despite all the rotten- egg trash thrown at him daily. You can’t open email and not find agro against him. And yet he presses on, and world leaders who need to listen, embrace him, and you can see amongst them, he is popular and accepted.
But by many of his countrymen, Obama is hated and vilified, and they would do away with him, if it were that simple.
May Obama have the strength to continue, and to endure.
with the mine rescue underway. Obama in a speech to the miners and Chile was quick to point out that the rescue was being done by americans including Nasa who had built the capsule and an engineer who designed the equipment which is used in maneuvering the capsule. I guess Obama thinks this is a great day for american technology! As well as a great one for the miners!
“At the Root of the Crisis We Find the Largest Financial Swindle in World History”, Where “Counterfeit” Mortgages Were “Laundered” by the Banks
The tidal wave of evidence showing that the giant banks have engaged in fraudulent foreclosure practices is so large that the attorneys general of up to 40 states are launching investigations.
People’s homes are being taken when they didn’t even hold a mortgage, and the big banks have been using “robo signers” to forge mortgage related documents. Indeed, even president Obama has been hit by robo signers (see this and this).
Its so blatant that foreclosure mills have published price lists for forging documents, including such gems as:
“Create Missing Intervening Assignment” $35
“Cure Defective Assignment” $12.95
“Recreate Entire Collateral File” $95
In response, the big banks are saying that these are simply “procedural defects” which don’t affect their ability to foreclose. See this, this and this.
snip
Indeed, Galbraith just gave a must-watch half hour speech where he points out:
“At the root of the crisis we find the largest financial swindle in world history.”
The fraud originated in the mortgage market of the United States.
The houses were over-appraised, and the banks only hired appraisers who were willing to do that. Galbraith rhetorically asks: “For what conceivable reason would a lender accept an inflated appraisal for a house against which it was going to make a loan?”
The language used in the mortgage industry is very telling: “liar’s loans”, “ninja loans” (where the borrowers had no assets and no income), “neutron loans” (where it would destroy the people but leave the buildings), and “toxic waste”
The mortgages in the millions were counterfeits, not mortgages. They were “laundered” … the dirty paper was converted into clean paper. Securitization was used to convert the worthless paper from triple D minus junk to triple A. The commercial banks were the “fences”, they took the laundered paper and sold it on to the legitimate market. The “marks” were the pension funds, or any investing entity which trusted triple A rating or investment banks.
The police left the beat.
snip
In another essay, Denninger points out:
The issue is not “robo-signed” documents. The issue is that the robo-signed documents are an attempt to cover up for previous failures in the securitization process which have left investors worldwide holding an empty bag, and homeowners with seriously-damaged chains of title.
As Ellen Brown writes:
By most reports, it would appear that the voluntary suspension of foreclosures is underway to review simple, careless procedural errors. Errors which the conscientious banks are hastening to correct. Even Gretchen Morgenson in the New York Times characterizes the problem as “flawed paperwork.”
But those errors go far deeper than mere sloppiness. They are concealing a massive fraud.
They cannot be corrected with legitimate paperwork, and that was the reason the servicers had to hire “foreclosure mills” to fabricate the documents.
These errors involve perjury and forgery — fabricating documents that never existed and swearing to the accuracy of facts not known.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21424
ac,
The American Shramm drilling rig used to drill the hole to extract the Chilean miners, is beyond doubt the best small highly portable rig of its kind.
The American drillers who conducted the operation, likewise, were top of the line.
Anyhow, all miners are out, and breathing fresh air, and wondering at the beauty of home, and loved ones and nature, and looking into the distance of Earth, instead of waiting death in abysmal darkness.
God bless and keep them, and the Chileans who managed the operation so superbly, with very little hype through a difficult time. They all got down and did what had to be done, in a hurry, without sleep, or bitching.
LET IT DIE
by Douglas Rushkoff
March 15, 2009
With any luck, the economy will never recover.
In a perfect world, the stock market would decline another 70 or 80 percent along with the shuttering of about that fraction of our nation’s banks. Yes, unemployment would rise as hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers lost their jobs; but at least they would no longer be extracting wealth at our expense. They would need to be fed, but that would be a lot cheaper than keeping them in the luxurious conditions they’re enjoying now. Even Bernie Madoff costs us less in jail than he does on Park Avenue.
Alas, I’m not being sarcastic. If you had spent the last decade, as I have, reviewing the way a centralized economic plan ravaged the real world over the past 500 years, you would appreciate the current financial meltdown for what it is: a comeuppance. This is the sound of the other shoe dropping; it’s what happens when the chickens come home to roost; it’s justice, equilibrium reasserting itself, and ultimately a good thing.
I started writing a book three years ago through which I hoped to help people see the artificial and ultimately dehumanizing landscape of corporatism on which we conduct so much of our lives. It’s not just that I saw the downturn coming—it’s that I feared it wouldn’t come quickly or clearly enough to help us wake up from the self-destructive fantasy of an eternally expanding economic frontier. The planet, and its people, were being taxed beyond their capacity to produce. Try arguing that to a banker whose livelihood is based on perpetuating that illusion, or to people whose retirement incomes depend on just one more generation falling for the scam. It’s like arguing to Brooklyn’s latest crop of brownstone buyers that they’ve invested in real estate at the very moment the whole market is about to tank. (I did; it wasn’t pretty.)
Now that the scheme we have mistaken for the real economy is collapsing under its own weight, however, it’s a whole lot easier to make these arguments. And, if anything, it’s even more important for us to come to grips with the fact that the system in peril is not a natural one, or even one that we should be attempting to revive and restore. The thing that is dying—the corporatized model of commerce—has not, nor has it ever been, supportive of the real economy. It wasn’t meant to be. And before we start lamenting its demise or, worse, spending good money after bad to resuscitate it, we had better understand what it was for, how it nearly sucked us all dry, and why we should put it out of our misery.
SNIP
Local currencies favored local transactions, and worked against the interests of large corporations working from far away. In order to secure their own position as well as that of their chartered monopolies, monarchs began to make local currencies illegal, and force locals to instead use “coin of the realm.” These centralized currencies worked the opposite way. They were not earned into existence, they were lent into existence by a central bank. This meant any money issued to a person or business had to be paid back to the central bank, with interest.
What does that do to an economy? It bankrupts it. Think of it this way: A business borrows 1000 dollars from the bank to get started. In ten years, say, it is supposed to pay back 2000 to the bank. Where does the other 1000 come from? Some other business that has borrowed 1000 from the bank. For one business to pay back what it owes, another must go bankrupt. That, or borrow yet another 1000, and so on.
An economy based on an interest-bearing centralized currency must grow to survive, and this means extracting more, producing more and consuming more. Interest-bearing currency favors the redistribution of wealth from the periphery (the people) to the center (the corporations and their owners). Just sitting on money—capital—is the most assured way of increasing wealth. By the very mechanics of the system, the rich get richer on an absolute and relative basis.
The biggest wealth generator of all was banking itself. By lending money at interest to people and businesses who had no other way to conduct transactions or make investments, banks put themselves at the center of the extraction equation. The longer the economy survived, the more money would have to be borrowed, and the more interest earned by the bank.
Financial Meltdown
Which is pretty much how things have worked over the past 500 years to today. So what went wrong? Nothing. The system worked exactly as it was supposed to. The problem was that after America’s post WWII expansion, there was really no longer any real growth area in the economy from which to extract wealth. We were producing and consuming about as much as we could. Almost no commercial activity was occurring outside the corporate system. There was no room left to grow. Sure, outsourcing, lay-offs, and technology created some efficiencies, but wars, rising costs of health care, and exchange rates essentially offset any gains.
Making matters worse, all that capital that the wealthy had accumulated needed markets—even fake markets—in which to be invested. There was a ton of money out there—just nowhere to put it. Nothing on which to speculate.
The dot.com boom seemed to offer the promise of a new market, but it fizzled almost as quickly as it rose. So speculators turned instead to real assets, like corn, oil, even real estate. They started investing speculatively on the things that real people need to stay alive. What real people didn’t understand was that there is no way to compete against speculators. Speculators aren’t buying homes in which to live—they are buying houses to flip. Speculators aren’t buying corn to eat or oil to burn, but bushels to hoard and tankers to park off shore until prices rise. The fact that the speculative economy for cash and commodities accounts for over 95% of economic transactions, while people actually using money and consuming commodities constitute less than 5% tells us something important. Real supply and demand have almost nothing to do with prices. We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme.
Luckily for us, the banks, and the speculators depending on them, made a bad wager: they bet on our continuing capacity to provide a reality on which to base their highly leveraged schemes. We just couldn’t do it. They put us between a rock and a hard place. With George W’s help, they sold us on the notion of home ownership as a prerequisite to the American dream. And they created a number of loan products which made it look as if we could actually afford over-priced homes. The banking industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for laws making bankruptcy difficult or impossible for average people to accomplish—while simultaneously selling average people loans that they would never be able to pay back.
The banks didn’t really care, anyway, since they never meant to keep these loans. They simply provided the cash to mortgage companies, who then packaged the loans. In return for putting up the original cash, the banks also won the right to underwrite the sale of those mortgage packages to investors—investors like pension funds, retirement funds, or you and me. Get it? The banks get all the interest, but we put up all the money. Our retirement accounts and pension funds invest in the very mortgages that we can’t pay back. The bank collects any interest, playing both sides of the equation but responsible for neither.
And when the whole scheme begins to break down, what do we do? We try to bail out the very banks that created the mess, under the premise that we need these banks in order for business to come back, since only banks can lend the capital required for businesses to flourish.
Yes, It is Wrong
President Obama may be smarter than most of us, but he’s still attempting to rescue the very institutions that robbed us in the first place. He’s not a socialist, as conservatives may be arguing, but he is a corporatist. Using future tax dollars to fund government job programs is one thing. Using future tax dollars to give banks more money to lend out at interest is robbing from the poor to pay the rich to rob from the poor.
More at:
http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/03/16/let-it-die-rushkoff-on-the-economy/
Green Monkey,
Your pick of the writing done by Douglas Rushkoff, is masterful. Rushkoff has explained, simply, what so many of us who are just working people far from the corporate or financial- mayhem- creating world, have tended to suspect though never able, ourselves, to pin down tightly into figures or caste iron words.
In other words, we know we’ve been ‘Taking it to the hilt ‘ , but have not the slightest idea how to retaliate, or where to begin.
Thank you, Green Monkey, for giving us Douglas Rushkoff, and his clarity.
The war against Starvation, and Hot Air.
So today, the 15 October, is World Food Day, and the papers are full of it, and the coming shortage of food and water, including fish, already effecting millions.
And yet here in this island, we are still stripping off good agricultural land for building on, and nobody is cleaning the suck wells. You can’t hardly increase food production that way, or perhaps somebody knows how to spread a couple loaves and two small fishes ?
So Jacques Diouf, of the FAO, and David Estwick, the Barbadian minister of agriculture, can say what they want, but they badly need to put their glasses on and read the bottom lines, and look around and see what it really happening in Barbados.
For every progressive sign for agriculture that can be found, there are several signs that go the wrong way. Without agricultural land, and water, and people willing to get their hands dirty, there is just a billion tons of hot air.
‘ Oil Apocalypse’ . To read, or remain with head deep in sand ?
The 2007 book is written by Vernon Coleman, about what happens when we start running out of oil.
We, ourselves, have written copiously on the matter, and so much of the book is hardly new, or news. The Book Collapse by Jared Diamond, 2005, would be a better book to read first, not that Vernon Coleman’s book does not take you much further along the road, and include a lot of what Diamond has already warned.
We, the modern human race, need horrifying.
If you feel up to ‘Oil Apocalypse’ then broach the book. But don’t tell us you did not sleep well after reading even part of it.
For most of us, head in deep sand is a better alternative, that is what politicians do well, anyhow.
And so the woe mounts, and we find ourselves forced back, yet again, to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Ah, fill the cup;- what boots it to
repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our
Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yes
TERDAY,
Why fret about them if To-Day be
sweet !
The Death Penalty, etc.
Advocate Friday. They have decided in Guyana, the death penalty will only be used on criminals who kill police, soldiers or judges.
So it seems is does not matter if criminals shoot everybody or hack them to death at your wedding, or come into your house and do the same thing, provided you are not in the category of the trio above.
It seems in Guyana, there is different strokes for different folks, like in the old Colonial days. Those in power in Guyana seem to have forgotten who pays the tax that pays the policeman, the soldier and the judge.
Just why the tax payer in Guyana, should have to pay the violent criminal to sit comfortably in jail for the rest of his life ( a jail that will be looked over by Amnesty International, to make sure tender loving care is applied at all times) is beyond the use of words that would not involve a high stream of intense imprecation.
Even the Muslim fraternity, in Trinidad, has agreed with the use of the death penalty for any violent crime a perpetrator or his gang, uses against any individual of the citizenry in that island. Barbados, luckily for us, seems bent on following suit.
Let us pray the rule of Law, here in Barbados, does not falter on this.. Let the liberal sobbing hearts cry, forever. They will change their minds when violent crime reaches their bedrooms
one dark still night, or creeps in through their evening doors.
That law is to protect the long arm of the government and its croonies who continue to treat its citizenry as animals. God forbid if some one kill one of their family members. Then what?
The loss of Sam Lord’s castle.
Sam Lords was an icon, a highly treasured icon of Barbados, known all over the world. Typical that once a government had control over it, its days were numbered. It seems as though a part of Barbados has just sunk away into the sea, forever. We are all, every one of us who live in this island, belittled and shamed by its loss.
Once, our major tourist attraction.
The car park at Sam Lords used to be full of busses and taxis, and the little restaurants outside did a bustling trade with thirsty camera- swinging tourists who came to look over the Castle, taking photos at every step, inside and out. Sam Lords, used to be the proud, shining delight of Barbados. Now it is a burnt ruin.
We spend 84 million dollars, US, to work over our caves, yet we can’t find the wages of day and night watchmen to guard against the vandalism of our world famous National Icon, a Castle.
Shame, sick shame, shame, deep dreadful shame on us, that we have allowed such a travesty, such a tragedy; and here we had been hoping for world heritage status. How much more stupid can we become ?
Compare investment and vision in development of local people vs. hoping for tourists and natural resources. A comparison of the stories of Jamaica and Singapore. Two ex-commonwealth countries which became independent at the same time, with same size economy, but choose different paths to development. http://www.american.com/archive/2009/november/jamaica-vs-singapore/
vlc, and local resources.
The Jamaica/ Singapore site you gave, is most interesting, though the contrast not really that unexpected if you have traveled in that part of the world, and where we are.
With the loss of Sam Lords Castle as another local avenue of local resources amongst the very few others we possess, apart from sand and sun, caves perhaps, and good governance,
( although we have to question that last aspect in the view of the still smoldering hot cinders), I’ll point you, instead, to the recent book by Vernon Coleman ‘Oil Apocalypse’ .
True, Coleman is an alarmist, but with merit and knowledge on what he is writing about, ‘Oil’ in this respect.
If his book makes you wake in the night,… to sleepless ponder, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Somebody could always burn down a Barbados flag, as another divergence, God forbid. At least, we can make another flag easily enough, which, in the case of Sam Lords, we can’t, or won’t.
GOD IS STILL IN CHARGE
Let us continue to stand by the wife, children, parents and siblings of our former Prime Minister in prayer.
Our prayers and requests for God’s guidance be on the incoming Prime Minister and the leaders of this country.
GOD BLESS BARBADOS !!!!
Did You Know: The King of Madrasas Now Operates Over 100 Charter Schools in the US?
Fethullah Gulen Takes the Great Game a Step Further
The Controversial Muslim preacher has now extended his tentacles into schools in the United States, where he controls and operates more than 100 charter schools within a calculatively set up maze of dubious NGOs. Fethullah Gulen, whose organizations’ net worth is estimated to be somewhere between $22 billion and $50 billion, owns and operates over three hundred Madrasas around the world, including Pakistan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. While Gulen’s suspicious and secretive Madrasas have been shut down and or restrained in countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, based on these governments’ justified suspicions that his schools had more than just education on their agendas, his rapidly and secretively expanding charter school empire here in the US has gone quite unnoticed and unacknowledged. (What, not even Fox News has reported on this? Most mysterious. /GM)
In less than a decade Gulen’s Islamic network in the US has established over 100 publicly funded charter schools in 25 states. What makes this eyebrow raising phenomenon a very disturbing case is the fact that despite official documents and publicly available data Fethullah Gulen is going out of his way to deny his connections to these schools. The question is why? Here are a few excerpts from a USA Today article in August 2010:
The schools educate as many as 35,000 students — taken together they’d make up the largest charter school network in the USA — and have imported thousands of Turkish educators over the past decade.But the success of the schools at times has been clouded by nagging questions about what ties the schools may have to a reclusive Muslim leader in his late 60s living in exile in rural Pennsylvania.
SNIP
My regular visitors are familiar with my on and off coverage of Fethullah Gulen and his movement. Others who have not read our previous commentaries and updates on this topic can check them out here, here, and here . I can sit and write volumes on Gulen’s history and his ‘real’ operations, but I am going to limit the length of this piece and provide you with a list of significant facts and background relevant to this particular post without going into other details:
-In 1999 Gulen defected to the US shortly before his scandalous speech, where he is heard calling on his supporters to “work patiently and to creep silently into the institutions in order to seize power in the state”, became public. Turkish prosecutors demanded a ten-year sentence for Gülen for having “founded an organization that sought to destroy the secular apparatus of state and establish a theocratic state”. Mr. Gulen has not left the United States since.
-The Netherlands has taken major steps to cut funding to all Gülen associated organizations and is investigating his operations. The Turkish Fethullah Gülen movement is really an Islamic fundamentalist group, claims Rotterdam council member Anita Fähmel (Leefbaar Rotterdam) on the basis of her own study of the Turkish movement.
-The Russian government has banned all Gülen schools and the activities of the Nur sect in Russia. Over 20 Turkish followers of Gulen were deported from Russia in 2002-2004.
-In 1999 Uzbekistan closed all Gulen’s Madrasas and shortly afterward arrested eight journalists who were graduates of Gulen schools, and found them guilty of setting up an illegal religious group and of involvement in an extremist organization.
-In Turkmenistan, government authorities have placed Gulen’s schools under close scrutiny and have ordered them to scrap the history of religion from curriculums.
Okay, let’s recap and pay attention to the absurdity:
Here is a Turkish Muslim preacher who fled Turkey after his alleged intentions to replace the secular government with one based on Sharia laws were exposed. He comes to the US, settles here, and starts taking advantage of our vastly and overly used nonprofit laws to build his network of dubious NGOs. Meanwhile he continues to expand his network of Madrasas and related businesses overseas-Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans, etc.
After years of investigating him the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, due to his guardian angels in the State Department and the CIA, are prevented from bringing an indictment against him, so they try to kick him out of the US. But once again Gulen’s CIA angels step in and portray Gulen as a scholar, despite the fact that Fethullah Gulen doesn’t even have a high-school diploma and never went beyond the 5th grade. Among his angels who vouched for him were Graham Fuller, George Fidas, and Morton Abramowitz. (Fuller and Fidas have ties to the CIA & Abramowitz is a former US diplomat who was also involved in organizing support for Afghanistan mujahidin /GM)
With his proven immunity Gulen accelerates his operations in the US, and now with a minimum $20 billion worth of operations and front organization he is the largest US charter school operator. Not only that, while American teachers are finding it much harder to obtain jobs, Gulen’s network, thanks to their closeted State Department ties, have been securing US work visas for Turkish and Turkic Republic citizens over there to come and teach at their charter schools here in the US. Some very interesting documented data on Gulen-based work visas provided to the Turkic individuals overseas here.
And here comes the most important question: Why is Gulen trying so very hard to deny his intimate ties to his organizations’ US charter school empire?
Interestingly, Gulen and his entourage have been gloating about these US charter schools as their territory and a major accomplishment, but not here; not in the US. There are dozens of articles in the Turkish media such as this and this one.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/10/20/did-you-know-the-king-of-madrasas-now-operates-over-100-charter-schools-in-the-us/
In early morning, glows of a world to come.
Long before the sun’s power had ripped the Eastern Earth’s lip, we awoke, pensive, pondering, perhaps we are about to, and need to enter another 15 hundred year’s eon of Dark Ages. But this will be the time of the Moslem, most probably. The Christan did what he felt needed, and failed.
Perhaps we need to revisit the simplicity of a world of little energy use, except what we ourselves can produce by hand and leg.
True, there will be death, on a grand scale, and probably much slavery in place of machinery’s dearth with lack of oil. But the Earth will breath again,and the tiger and elephant, still survive with the bee, and the frog and lizard and the rhino. And the stream may once again flow pristine, and the stars and moon be seen. And the trees and the fish will fill their qu0tere’d regions once more, and birds will fill the air with their song. And above all, humans will reap once again, just what they themselves grow and raise, to eat.
Such a time, like a carpet, will descend upon us like it or not. It is just if we are allowed enough time for adjustment, and to regain the happiness of long- lost simplicity, found in an Eden garden where the apple grew, free of temptation, and the snake was cherished as a creature of the renovation of life, as much are the inescapable finality, and undeserved blame of all death.
@Colin
I don’t see man voluntarily going back to past times when almost everything was done manully and we had to use our brains and survival skills to live. Modern man has become fat and lazy to the point of no return needing a remote control or hand held device to do simple task. Even there very livelihood have been outsourced for others to do!
AC. Return to Eden and last of the oil.
Of course Man won’t want to hurry back to past history. Think of all the old ways of making life possible he has utterly lost, like thatching a roof with straw or coconut leaves. The last Cartwright (wheelmaker) died a few years ago in Barbados. His old shack, still just about exists bottom of the hill to district C police station. He did everything on a cart wheel, by hand alone, except smelt the actual iron for the hoop, and grow the actual wood he used to craft with. He did not have light or electricity to use power tools. He worked ever day, and nobody ever sank a song for him, except perhaps his daughter (who I know ).
So when the carts have to come back with the horses, unless we are going to pull the carts ourselves, and it may first come to that, since all the big powerful horses are no longer, and few donkey can take their place.
We’d better make sure we still have good land, to plant with our hands, or we’ll be dropping hungry like flies, and rotting in all the cars, trucks, and SUV’s that won’t be going anywhere ever gain. Those of us with bicycles, will treat them like gold, and there will be a lot of other redundancy, far too much more to write about here. But that should not stop all of us, bearing this in mind.
Heads or tails of it all.
Perhaps you’re like me, attempting to make heads or tails of a whole chain of recent events, and realizing they are really all quite natural, though, we will tend to press the threads of some of these events into some kind of service, or to some desire or making of our own imaginable kind or world view.
Disturbed by Persad-Bissessar’s Comments, writes Marc F Ramsay in the Advocate Friday 10th December.
Sickened and saddened, dismayed, bitterly disappointed, would be more like we’d have written, if a power outage had not stilled out hand until this evening.
Trinidadians, always were the most generous thoughtful people you could find anywhere
in the world. They were the best friends, and the most fun. Besides which their island still has an over abundance of energy, which they have distributed amongst other islands at reasonable cost.
But if there was one thing Trinidad has never been able to raise its head high over, it had been its politics, if not the worst politics and politions in the world, close to it.
And we had hoped Persad-Bissessar had come, at last, like a new Queen Bodecia, on her chariot, slashing away the ugly old useless regimes,
who had done little but squander the twin island wealth, when the island could and should have become,…. as close as you could get to earthly paradise.
There are those of us who worked many years, nights and days on shore and off, in her oil industry, to see Trinidad prosper, only to find squandermania and hopeless crime, water and power shortages, unusable telephones, pothole filled roads, nightly gun play, a deactivated police force that used to be one of the best, and an army that you could never depend on for much more than attempts at treason within its ranks.
Can we cry for Trinidad further now ? To what avail ? She already, partially, owns us all. And we have become like the carrion her vultures will shred.
A Sunday prayer for Barbados.
Please Lord, let us find just enough offshore oil so we won’t have to cow tow to Trinidad, or Chaves.
Bless us with just enough oil to get by on, and not cause the perfidious destruction of our island.
The Impotence of (US) Elections
By Paul Craig Roberts
In his historical novel, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa writes that things have to change in order to remain the same. That is what happened in the US congressional elections on November 2.
Jobs offshoring, which began on a large scale with the collapse of the Soviet Union, has merged the Democrats and Republicans into one party with two names. The Soviet collapse changed attitudes in socialist India and communist China and opened those countries, with their large excess supplies of labor, to Western capital.
Pushed by Wall Street and Wal-Mart, American manufacturers moved production for US markets offshore to boost profits and shareholder earnings by utilizing cheap labor. The decline of the US manufacturing work force reduced the political power of unions and the ability of unions to finance the Democratic Party. The end result was to make the Democrats dependent on the same sources of financing as Republicans.
Prior to this development, the two parties, despite their similarities, represented different interests and served as a check on one another. The Democrats represented labor and focused on providing a social safety net. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, housing subsidies, education, and civil rights were Democratic issues. Democrats were committed to a full employment policy and would accept some inflation to secure more employment.
The Republicans represented business. The Republicans focused on curtailing big government in all its manifestations from social welfare spending to regulation. The Republicans’ economic policy consisted of opposing federal budget deficits.
These differences resulted in political competition.
Today both parties are dependent for campaign finance on Wall Street, the military/security complex, AIPAC, the oil industry, agri-business, pharmaceuticals, and the insurance industry. Campaigns no longer consist of debates over issues. They are mud-slinging contests.
snip
The American situation is dire. As a result of the high speed Internet, the loss of manufacturing jobs was followed by the loss of professional service jobs, such as software engineering, that were career ladders for American university graduates. The middle class has no prospects. Already, the American labor force and income distribution mimics that of a Third World country, with income and wealth concentrated in a few hands at the top and most of the rest of the population employed in domestic services jobs. In recent years, net new job creation has been concentrated in lowly paid occupations, such as waitresses and bartenders, ambulatory health care services, and retail clerks. The population and new entrants into the workforce continue to grow more rapidly than job opportunities.
Turning this around would require more realization than exists among policymakers and a deeper crisis. Possibly, it could be done by using taxation to encourage US corporations to manufacture domestically the goods and services that they sell in US markets. However, the global corporations and Wall Street would oppose this change.
The tax revenue loss from job losses, bank bailouts, stimulus programs, and the wars have caused a three-to-four-fold jump in the US budget deficit. The deficit is now too large to be financed by the trade surpluses of China, Japan, and OPEC. Consequently, the Federal Reserve is making massive purchases of Treasury and other debt. The continuation of these purchases threatens the dollar’s value and its role as reserve currency. If the dollar is perceived as losing that role, flight from dollars will devastate the remnants of Americans’ retirement incomes and the ability of the US government to finance itself.
Yet, the destructive policies continue. There is no re-regulation of the financial industry, because the financial industry will not allow it. The unaffordable wars continue, because they serve the profits of the military/security complex and promote military officers into higher ranks with more retirement pay. Elements within the government want to send US troops into Pakistan and into Yemen. War with Iran is still on the table. And China is being demonized as the cause of US economic difficulties.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6541.shtml
Sounds a bit like Barbados where the two political parties are unable to differentiate themselves in any way that really matters.
It is interesting though, to consider whether the greatest damage to the United States came from within: Walmart probably did more to kill the American manufacturing sector than any other single entity.
Technology in Barbados banks.
I recently traveled to England and thought it would be good to carry my credit cards to use as payment options. I have BNB and Scotia card. So I loaded up my cards with vacation money. When i tried to pay at any retail store or restaurant the cashier looked and me and said “we will not be able to use your card sir.” I thought to myself this is why me. They then explain to me that most places only take cards now have electronic chips because of the fraud with the standard cards. so if you are travelling be aware that you might be only able to use ATM with Barbados credit cards.
Also I was allowed to use my friend online account and they can do all the banking without even going to the bank. pay bills, standing orders, pay rent, transfer funds to other persons no mater what bank they use.
We need to step it up in the banks and use some of th profits they make of us to make a better banking experience in Barbados
Here is the start of a story !
You are enticed to proceed with it. Any number can play, if they feel like it.
She was one of those frail -seeming highly effeminate woman, who feigned would be unable to withstand the full hammer of love and all its repercussion and complication. Yet she wasn’t. Far be it. There was an unimaginal hell, wrapped tight, in those soft sultry unforgettable limbs
Untold and unsuspected strength, can lay like a languid half submerged croc, its all- seeing eyes breaching the rivers lip, waiting, forever waiting, wanting, for one false step.
Olivia was a demoness, with a demonesses high hidden level of self indulgence few men could weather for extended time.
How beguiling she seemed, with her dark always -searching eyes, her almost childish hands, lips that had never seemed kissed except by an indulgent mother, and her skin, as black and nubile as that of a young seal pup laying on the bank of some improbably Limpopo, flowing sluggishly in the heart of the dry season, with hippo and elephant sloshing around, and fish, flipping and searching, worried about their next pool location.
Then rises Rasamunde, king of all he surveys, towering darkened bronze from the depth of the black lagoon, undefeatable, impervious to wound or sword thrust, or cries of ‘enough’ screamed in the heat of lust,….. Next writer,…….
Most submisssions to this site are usually negative in content.However I would like to give praise to a new establishment opened recently in Paynes Bay,St.James.
Its called Mr.Vics,and understand me well that I’m not their advertising agent.
I enjoy from time to time a quiet drink (usually Banks or Heneken) and an enlightening conversation whether it be highly intellectual or out of this world or plain discussion etc,,,,(sometimes argumentative but not agressive) and so on….WellMr.Vics has atmosphere there that you can easily slide into even without knowing the present clientele…..Victor Alleyne and partner Karen Davis have created something from nothing…..Vic has an experience of many years in the hospitality industry…a quiet unassuming Gentleman as anyone will soon read from his enrapting aura and personality will rapidly make you comfartably at home and will (with a memory of Quantum GB) greet you next time as though you never left.
Drink mixtures are created in such time that you think aloud AWW Magic!!!
Karen is an extremely extroverted,truly happy to greet you person who will take time out to converse and share moments even though she is presently cook,washer waiter etc,,,.
SERVICE and that is the CAPITAL thing you will get at Mr.Vics.
The food is mainly light snacks(even though the steak&kidney pie alone is a meal that two can participate in,not to mentionFish,Chicken,Samosas,,,finger foods and things to help conversation and drinks mix.
The mix of people there is what I think helps to make the atmosphere,,,,,Talkers,thinkers,contractors,landscapers,lovers(romantically set aside),vacationers,expatriots,long island comebackers,big ups ,in betweens etc,,,,etc,,,,.
Next time in St.James try Mr.Vics,YEEAAHHHH!
Dear Colin,
Unfortunately I write you supposedly hidden within my fictitional name.
I know you personally and have had in the past enjoyed dinner and mentally stimulating conversation within your humble abode.
Anyway I am one in total agreement with you concerning especially the hidden agenda of the so called Muslim God fearers of a religion absolutely Not Having any iota or Nanoconcern about my wellbeing,future,thoughts outside of theirs,religiousity,freedoms,etc,,,etc,,,.
I personally fear their future which so many countries have so sheepishly embraced and apologetically excused for whatever reason or reasons.
What a tragic sellout of the future of mankind…………… AAAAAHHHHH the Real True God ,Come Fuh Yuh Peoples SoooooN!!!!!
dimwit,
If you knew me so well, you’d have understood I never pass or relinquish my friends.
Come! Let us discourse of the world today. I remember two huge lovable Rotties.
As regards Islam. Let Islam do what it will. ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God furfils himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world. ‘ ……..
‘ For so, the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. ‘
Alfred Tennyson. ‘Death of Arther/
Investigative journalist and author Russ Baker explains the differences between George Bush’s recall of important events in his life as detailed in GWB’s newly released and much publicised, self-exculpating memoirs “Decision Points” and the facts about Bush which he (Baker) found in his own research for his own book about the Bush family, “Family of Secrets.”
Colin.
Oh no its nothing to do about passing or relinquishing…………
Its like travelling,meeting,melding,sharing,conversing,bonding and then the tangents that crossed continue their separate journeys just as a comet traversing through the universe sooner (once it is on a particular orbit) or later return to a particular space it has been. We do share a lot
By the way Colin,,,what are rotties??????
Dimwit,
I thought I had pegged you as an old friend who had two Rottweilers once, quite long enough ago.
But now I’m wracking what is left of any brain,
in the vain attempt at placing you.
There were many of us who contemplated the mystery of the world, and its millions -beyond- end of aspects. Sometimes we were on far offshore drilling rigs, or rigs stuck in deep bush, with a problem waiting for instruction or equipment, and then our minds, freed from the usual onslaught of ‘making hole’, were given a breathing space for a few hours while we waited usually in deep night.
It was at those times our minds took off on diverse paths, as the rig floodlights played down onto the surface of the sea, and attracted many kinds of fish.
One of our escapades was an investigation into evil, and if you could find it in the Universe, or on a desert Island, or did you have to have human beings around for its materialization. And if humans did not have to be involved, was evil, or the Devil, not more than a figment induced upon us by religionists who insisted we tow the line. Their line, enacting hell upon us should we transgress.
And so the talk used to go, and we’d watch the first faint grey glimmer of dawn breach the lip of the Eastern sea, and drink more coffee, smoke a few more cigarettes, before a radio message or an equipment vessel coming alongside, spured our minds back to the 24 hour slog of getting a hole drilled.
So that was how it was, which is not to say you should not look me up, and be identified. I’d like that . Colin
Of Milk and Beer
Fresh Pasteurized Milk, Phillip C Goddard Advocate 14th Nov. Page 8.
He could not have hit the nail more potently on the head when he writes the milk (and the packaging) were both changed without any consultation or public involvement.
It remind us of the Banks beer, that came out in (UHGGGG) plastic bottles, and stayed on the supermarket shelves, its price slowly dropping from utter lack of enthusiasm in its drinking.
Anybody who could drink beer from a plastic bottle, would surely have to be an alcoholic with nothing else to drink, and no pure aficion for beer of any kind.
And so the new accountants and engineers who dream up such changes, need to start burning midnight oil by leaning what people want and appreciate, and stay away from attempts at newborn- spur- of- the- moment fads, untruthfully tested or investigated. That is, of course, if they don’t wish to sink their business establishments like Titanic into an iceberg
UGHHHG…. Beer in plastic bottles. What sacrilege,… and what is next ?
Crashed Computer and Urination Blockage !!!
I’m not quite sure which is worse. A week with a crashed computer, or the inability to urinate.
One thing I can assure you , dear reader : It is much worse to have both these things befall you at the same time. And so one ought to be as selective as life might allow, since,…. there is not much one can do with his time when such a blockage takes place and one is under doctor’s orders during recovery stages, to seriously curtail any energetic activities like keeping fit, climbing ladders, clearing downed tree limbs, digging weeds, mowing, lifting grog to one’s face, or driving around watching women.
One can only do so much reading, or sleeping,…. and writing without the use of a computer, is such a thing of the past as to be decidedly irritable after fifteen minutes at the most.
If you don’t believe what I’ve written, then don’t let me wish upon you such a thing as to suffer a blockage, which is much like having been selected by fate , to bare the second coming of Buddha, not as a child but as full grown man. Until, that is,…… a catheter is inserted and the birthpain swept away.
Interesting video now available on line about how propaganda and PR specialists are used to wage “psy war” and shape public opinion while the public remains largely unaware to what extent it is being manipulated.
“A deep, richly illustrated study of the nature and history of propaganda, featuring some of the world’s most insightful critics”.
Mark Achbar; Film director; ‘Manufacturing Consent’, ‘The Corporation’
Psywar – the Real Battleground is the Mind, watch it here (1hr 39min):
http://metanoia-films.org/psywar.php
Wasn
Wasn’t manipulation started in the Garden of Eden with a snake. However man has perfected it .That is the ability to divide and conquere using lies deception and manipulation.Oh so typical of SNAKES
AC Of Snakes and Sin.
Who ever contrived the metaphor of Eden blaming the snake, did a grave injustice to all snakes. Only a human is capable of the deception and manipulation of his fellow man. We need stand up and fully understand we alone are responsible for sin. There is no such concept as sin in the animal world, or in the animal mind.
@Colin Beadon
I guess man had to blame somebody other than themselves for the mishap. As often don’t we? BTW we have never heard the snake’s response to that matter! maybe the snake has pleaded the fifth! LOL!
AC. Since The Snake, could not have been self- motivated to cause the downfall of man, and the Devil had not been invented by Man at that stage, then we are left with the Primal Being,…. the Creator of everything that Is,….. as culpable,….not so ?
Give me Buddhism, any day, if one has to be smitten. It is the only true religion, pious in every way, and willing to stand for justice;….. and the only religion that makes any sense.
Man have been lied to from the beginning. We are so mixed up and confuse that trying to find our way out is almost impossible. it is like living in a maze. How is it possible for a snake to influence a person thinking and yet we believe the story. Just like everything else created by man .Like Santa Claus . The Easter Bunny . The Toothfairy. and God knows what else. Isn’t it jolly! we are so easily manipulated .
AC,
In the Isle Of Man, way in the countryside, there is a small bridge across a small river that chuckles across rocks and flows down happily from the hills.
It is called the Fairy Bridge, and if you wish to have a great day, and you are passing over the bridge in the morning, you are supposed to say:
“Good Morning Fairies.”
That was something we never failed to say.
My brother and myself, vising our father and mother who had retired in that island, always seemed to have a great day there. Perhaps it was just good luck, or vivid imaginations, in a island filled with sheep and very green pastures, and many thickly wooded stretches. It is another island we loved, and there were places there that reminded us of Barbados, a long time ago.
@Colin Beadon.
Isn’t it amazing how a story rather true or false can have a life of its own’Have you been following the story about the Wikipedi Leaks? Now that’s a story that gives one cause to pause and think about the reaalities and dangers that we all are facing in this political hell hole on earth .
BTW I love your story. Imagination can take us to many far and wide places .I am at present imagining myself sitting in a field of daffodils, Oh so exciting. !
AC. Treason. Treason. Treason !!!
” Discourse on the Wikipedia leaks with my brother.”
He is liberal, very much so, while I tend to be convinced it is the liberalism of today, destroying the world.
My brother pointed out there may come a certain amount of good in what is spread, while I could only think of the people, soldiers included, who would come into harms way because somebody wanted to sell news.
The leaks amount to TREASON, against the part of the world you live in and call home.
Before Liberalism soft- soaped and snowed the world, people found guilty of treason used to be lined up and shot. Now they are liable to become parlimentariens, like in Trinidad. Don’t you wonder why Trinidad, for all its petroleum wealth, has become such an infernal mess ??? Have you seen the recent ever- growing crime figures there ?
Read: ‘ Lawless Trinidad ‘. Nalinlee Seelal, in Newsday.
The liberalism of everything goes, and everybody gets away with everything, and only the poor have to be propped up to pay.
Is the State of Emergency Superseding the US Constitution? Continuity of Government [COG] Planning, War and American Society
By Peter Dale Scott
This is a slightly revised, expanded, and developed text of an address to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, November 23, 2010.
In July 1987, during the Iran-Contra Hearings grilling of Oliver North, the American public got a glimpse of “highly sensitive” emergency planning North had been involved in. Ostensibly North had been handling plans for an emergency response to a nuclear attack (a legitimate concern). But press accounts alleged that the planning was for a more generalized suspension of the constitution at the president’s determination.
snip
Reagan had installed at FEMA a counterinsurgency team that he had already assembled as governor of California. The team was headed by Army Col. Louis Giuffrida, who had attracted Reagan’s attention by a paper he had written while at the US Army War College, advocating the forcible warrantless detention of millions of black Americans in concentration camps. Reagan first installed Giuffrida as head of the California National Guard, and called on him “to design Operation Cable Splicer. … martial law plans to legitimize the arrest and detention of anti-Vietnam war activists and other political dissidents.”3 These plans were refined with the assistance of British counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson, who had used massive detention and deportations to deal with the 1950s Communist insurgency in what is now Malaysia.
At the time few people (including myself) attached much importance to the Chardy story about COG. Chardy himself suggested that Reagan’s Attorney General, William French Smith, had intervened to stop the COG plan from being presented to the President, and in 1985 Giuffrida was forced out of office for having spent government money to build a private residence. But COG planning not only continued, it expanded.
snip
[b]The Implementation of COG on 9/11[/b]
Clearly 9/11 met the conditions for the implementation of COG measures, and we know for certain that COG plans were implemented on that day in 2001, before the last plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. The 9/11 Report confirms this twice, on pages 38 and 326.10 It was under the auspices of COG that Bush stayed out of Washington on that day, and other government leaders like Paul Wolfowitz were swiftly evacuated to Site R, inside a hollowed out mountain near Camp David.11
But the implementation of COG went beyond short-term responses, to the installation of what Professor Shirley Anne Warshaw calls a ninety-day alternative “shadow government” outside Washington.
Cheney jumped into action in his bunker beneath the east Wing to ensure continuity in government. He immediately began to create his shadow government by ordering one hundred mid-level executive officials to move to specially designated underground bunkers and stay there twenty-four hours a day. They would not be rotated out, he informed them, for ninety days, since there was evidence, he hinted, that the terrorist organization al-Qa’ida, which had masterminded the attack, had nuclear weapons. The shadow government, as a result, needed to be ready to take over the government from the bunkers.12
These ninety days saw the swift implementation of the key features attributed to COG planning by Gelbspan and Chardy in the 1980s: warrantless detentions, warrantless deportations, and the warrantless eavesdropping that is their logical counterpart. The clearest example was the administration’s Project Endgame—a ten-year plan, initiated in September 2001, to expand detention camps, at a cost of $400 million in Fiscal Year 2007 alone.13 This implemented the central feature of the massive detention exercise, Rex 84, conducted by Louis Giuffrida and Oliver North in 1984.14
There was also a flurry of other rapid moves to restructure America’s external and domestic structures. Before discussing these, I should acknowledge the obvious: that enhanced measures to deal with terrorism are needed, and for some of them we should be grateful. We should acknowledge also, however, that the most significant achievements against terrorism have been the result of traditional intelligence and police work. As for the War on Terror, the most prominent achievement of Cheney’s ninety days, as many experts have asserted, it has created far more terrorists than it has disposed of.
snip
We should not forget that the Patriot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax letters were mailed to two crucial Democratic Senators – Senators Daschle and Leahy – who had initially questioned the bill. After the anthrax letters, however, they withdrew their initial opposition.19 Someone – we still do not know who – must have planned those anthrax letters well in advance. We should not forget either that some government experts initially blamed the attacks on Iraq. Much later, referring to Fort Detrick, Salon reporter Glenn Greenwald pointed out that “the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.”20
It is generally agreed that, of the three men in National Command Authority on 9/11, Cheney was the ideologue most committed to restoring the power of a presidency that had been weakened by Watergate.21 Cheney had already declared in his Iran-Contra Minority Report of 1987 his belief that “the Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit him to exceed the law.”22 And as Vice-President Cheney, along with Cheney’s assistant David Addington and Cheney’s appointee John Yoo, established the legal apparatus for declaring that the President had the prerogative power to “deploy military forces preemptively,” and that “the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements against torture ‘do not protect members of the al Qaeda organization.”23
More at: http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3448
The Brilliant new flying hovercraft.
Just Google the following. ‘The New Zealand Flying Hovercraft.’
The Engineer is Rudy Heeman. He says he can make them for about $13000 US. So they are far less expensive than a new car, a yacht, large power boat, or most power driven aircraft of any sort. They are of course landable on water or up on shore.
This first model is limited on passengers, but then so is a jet ski, just two up, pilot and passenger. However this new craft flies with apparent great stability on short but wide removable wings. It will be interesting to see where such a craft goes from here, and when we might see one in Barbados.
African Politics.
Sadly things don’t seem to change much in African Politics. Few leaders relinquish their holds when voted out of power, not,…. that that does not go on elsewhere in the world. But in Africa they have Thabo, and he only makes the African situation worse everywhere he goes to ( so called) mediate.
The reason for Thabo’s inability to get anything settled, is because nobody can depend on him to play anything else but the ‘Old Boy’ trick. For Thabo, the ‘Old Boy’ is worth a lot more than the will of the people who walked miles and miles and stood in line to vote the ‘Old Boy’ out.
And that is how it goes in Southern African politics.
The New Slaves.
It is quite simple to understand West Indian Politics and Business.
Take, for instance, the attempt to start the Ferry service from Trinidad up to the islands, which would greatly reduce traveling and transport cost, besides encouraging the long- touted Integration. Then there is the blockage on the new airline which would allow us to fly much cheaper to Trinidad ( for instance) than it allows us to fly to Miami.
LIAT’s Boss has recently puffed up his chest at the fact that LIAT is the only carrier remaining in our islands, and that all other have gone through. He failed to point out that we, the public, for years, have been blistered with the tax saddle for keeping LIAT in the air, like we were for so many years saddled with keeping BWIA in the air too.
Both these airlines flew with full aircraft, with low fuels cost (thanks to Trinidad), but always lost millions and had to be bailed out by you and me, the tax payers, the reasons being very simple because governments in our islands had first choice on who flew for very little, or free..
And so, slavery, has taken on a new perspective, where politicians and multinational companies, live high, and don’t in any way make life easier for anybody else, except place them in the high bondage of taxation to pay for company and politician excesses.
Now somebody let me know where I’m wrong.
Politics in Haiti seems to have taken a turn for the worse. But who cares anyway. That is the ongoing saga. People suffer while the politicians live high on the hog
Anarchy and Haiti.
Haiti, is a warning and credible example of a country fallen deep into anarchy.
Anarchy implies there is a certain amount of bigwig organization that gives that organization the best time of their lives. Obviously they would hardly want to change their status quo.
Hemingway pointed out, a long time ago, that ordinance makers and sellers, certain politicians and whores, did very well in time of war (which is really not that far off from utter anarchy). To that you could add, today, aid organizations and food and water selling companies, medical organizations, and both hard and soft drug peddlers.
Sadly, very sadly, it is doubtful another hundred years would change much in Haiti. She is like Madusa, paralyzing all who look on her, and there is no power such as Perseus, with the knowledge how to subdue and curtail her.
The Chinese. Oh,…. what a let down!
The Chinese I knew as friends growing up in Trinidad, I’d always thought of as most venerated. With those I met here and there, the rest of my life, in various places around the world, I’d never found anything to make me change my mind,…..until,…… that is,…… recently.
I’ve have now become thunderously fed up with their products, and have begun to find , for all their good deeds, that the Chinese are basically extremely childish, once they don’t get their own way.
So much fuss over a Nobel, given to one of their own citizens whose only fault is to attempt to build a better China.
What really does most of the world, deep down in world hearts, think of China now. Shame on those countries who voted not to attend the Nobel prize giving, because they found themselves jammed with shut mouths, in Chinese pockets.
The gathering darkness spreading across the world, is not only caused by global warming.
Strange things are happening
It should be brought to the attention of the people of Barbados a “thief” at the QEH. Circulating at the institution is a story surrounding the secretary of the CEO Dexter James. The story states that the secretary was dismissed for stealing $36000.00. Apparently a catering company is involved and it is alledged that the owner of said company brought the discrepancy(impropriety) to the attention of the administration. The scam involved the gross inflation of the invoiced charges for catering. Incidentally all of the payment requisitions were signed by Dexter James, he allegedly authorized all payments. The fraud squad was called in( a female officer), what transpires hereafter is quite interesting. The Fraud Squad officer is nowhere to be found. The Secretary was dismissed and given the opportunity to REPAY. DEXTER JAMES states that she forged his signature. THe Fraud Squad should be able to tell us this! Why are they off the scene. Deja Vu! Is Dexter James’ sordid past(Tobago and Anguilla)following him to these ? Pristine shores. More info on James see http://www.trinidad.gov Hansard.
Guy DePeiza,
Are you sure you have the correct site address ? Google didn’t find it.
It can be found on the Govt of T and T website. His dismissal was ordered by Parliment. The Board of QEH is fully aware of this man’s past What is he doing here?
Click to access G%20199.pdf
I’ve been sent this explanation: The reason we are going through such economic upheaval and recession. Ireland, in this case, is just being used as a humorous lynch pin.
For those who don’t understand economics today.
Subject: Economics in Ireland as we understand it in 2010
The best explanation so far!!!
Mary is the proprietor of a bar in Dublin . She realises that
virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronise her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around about Mary’s “drink now, pay later” marketing
strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Mary’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Dublin .
By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Mary gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Mary’s gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Mary’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to
make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into
DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk
manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Mary’s bar. He so informs Mary.
Mary then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being
unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts.
Since, Mary cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into
bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.
The suppliers of Mary’s bar had granted her generous payment
extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their
respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion
euro no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in
Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Mary’s bar.
Now, do you understand economics in 2010?
The Fatherland Protection Racket
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
By now all reasonable people in the world know that the Bush administration (with almost no opposition from Democrats) used 9/11 as a pretense to invade and occupy an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that posed no threat to America. Even President Bush has admitted in a press conference that there were never any WMDs in Iraq. But the war has been very profitable for some, as war always is, as it has drained American taxpayers of hundreds of billions of dollars. It has also ballooned the warfare state, the military-industrial complex, and the conservative anti-civil liberties lobby. (On the day of this writing the talking heads on the FOX War Channel were all but dancing in the streets of Manhattan in celebration of a bill passed by the U.S. Senate the previous evening that would allow for the suspension of habeas corpus. Can mass burn-the-Constitution rallies, perhaps organized by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, be far behind?)
But the state’s use of this illegitimate war to aggrandize itself goes much, much farther than this. Those Americans who are still concerned about the state’s ability to plunder us into poverty and strip us of personal liberties are extremely fortunate that Professor James Bennett of George Mason University has stepped up to explain exactly how this is happening with his new book, Homeland Security Scams (Transaction Publishers, 2006).
Read this book and the crassness, dishonesty, and plain chutzpah of the state in using the “war on terror” as an excuse to pick your pocket will boggle your mind. The average reader will also be shocked at the remarkable blueprint for fascism that has been mapped out for us by our rulers in the post-9/11 world.
Indeed, the very name “Homeland Security” has an obvious echo of “fatherland,” as Professor Bennett ominously points out. “Americans have never used the world ‘homeland’ to describe their country” anywhere and at any time. The very word is un-American and reeks of fascism.
Continued at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo110.html
@Colin
Who say the poor is good for nothing. Seems like we always bailout therich.
is there a polygraph in barbados? and can the public pay to access it.
AC. Depression, impoverishment, and global warming.
The poor also drive SUVs these days. They have been allowed to learn how to accept all the loans they won’t be able to pay back.
So comes the dawn of the next deep depression.
One can notice, driving along the road that allows you to look down into the airport parking area in Barbados, that now, 90% of the vehicles are new, and SUVs. The size of a vehicle has a lot to do with its consumption. That is very basic science, probably too basic for us to fully appreciate.
So Barbados does not intend to add its two cents in attempt to do its part in cutting back on global warming, no matter what the politicians spout. The cutting back, as far as Barbados is concerned, is the responsibility of the large continental countries alone.
And so it goes !
Money purchases much, but is valueless
Love purchases nothing and is priceless
Money comes and goes with the wind
Love never dies and lingers in the ethers for eternity
Money rots and returns to dust in a short time
Love survives lifetimes through memories and legend
This must surely be reality unsurpassed
Lighting the way for our lives
Showing what life really is here and hereafter
Opening our souls to eternity
Peaqce
Oye Rumple, hace mucho tiempo, por fin.
Mientras que la plata, en realidad no tiene ningun valor, que considera ?
Have a great Christmas, pues !
BPF
What I wrote on Dec 11th about the Chinese and my new feelings about them.
I sent a slightly changed version to a local Newspaper, which it has refused to print. I’d like to submit this never version here again.
—– Original Message —–
From: cdbeadon
To: letters@barbadosadvocate.com
Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 12:21 PM
Subject: Chinese let down.
The Chinese. Oh,…What a let down !
The Chinese I knew as friends growing up in Trinidad, I’d always thought of as most venerated. With those I met here and there, the rest of my life, in various places around the world, I’d never found anything to make me change my mind,…until,… that is,… recently.
I have now become thunderously fed up with Chinese products, and have begun to find, for all their good deeds, that the Chinese are basically extremely childish, once they don’t get their own way.
So much fuss over a Peace Nobel, given to one of their own peaceful, jailed, citizens, whose only fault (in his own eyes, and those of the Nobel committee) was his attempt to help build a better fairer China.
What really does most of the world, deep down in world hearts, think of China now ? Can civilized nations just brush this off with no further thought ?
Shame on those few countries who voted not to attend the prize giving, finding themselves jammed with shut mouths, by Chinese pockets.
The gathering darkness spreading across the Earth, is not only caused by global warming.
Sincerely, CLB.
Hi Colin, on the silver….nice and sparkly…or are you referring of a deeper meaning here?
On China, one phrase that revisits the current scenario, even more brutal…’Tianenman Square’.
That butcher parade did not stop the ‘moral’ west from doing business….would anything?
I wonder if the history books will be written to ‘accomodate’, will Tianenmen Square be referred to as a violent uprising?
A serious inditement on the ‘moral majority’ of the world….’do as we say, but not as we do…’
But then, without China, how would the large corporations flood the world with cheap goods?
Mankind is moral…as long as it suits. And even now, yours and mine IP addresses are being tracked for writing dissent with international policies. LOL
Colin, you have a great Christmas also.
Rumple,
Like I wrote: The gathering darkness spreading across the world, is not all the result of global warming.
Strange thing. My forefathers, centuries ago, where Christian word- spreaders in China. They didn’t do China much good, even then.
The toss-up is between China and India, for the new world order. I think I’d prefer not,….. the dragon’s tails.
Back to Cuba, with love.
Now that Barbados had suddenly become warmer towards Cuba again, for which we’ll raise a hearty megaton of cheers, we’re hoping Direct TV will crank up a Cuban channel.
Direct TV’s competitor, who we won’t name, knocked off a highly entertaining (in all the arts ) Cuban channel a couple years ago, much to our disgust and horror, when Cuba has been so gracious with its free eyesight assistance to half- blind Barbadians.
Talk about Bajan gratitude !!!! The less said the better.
Learn how we are manipulated and propagandized by the corporate media.
Journalist and war correspondent John Pilger’s documentary “The War You Don’t See” explains how and is now available for viewing on line:
Watch it here in 7 Youtube episodes:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMediaCorruption#g/c/768F3DA0D12B82A4
Civilization, Haywire !
We need to think of another word for Civilization. The reason being Civilization has become so deeply involved with itself, it has now just about utterly enslaved us with all its new dictums, rules, laws, which often, for instance, disallows justice against criminals of any sort, so that we end up living behind bared windows and doors, or in gated communities, or large- dog- filled homes or other means of self preservation we won’t bother to name in their plenitude.
We, of the simple living people, are the new slaves, facing walls of restriction at every turn, right down to the behavioral correction of our own children, or where we might be permitted to smoke.
The truth of the matter we all thought that when the shackles of chains were broken and we all sang cum bah yah. we were free . However truth is stranger than fiction. The new reality is that we are no more Free than we were hundreds of years ago. Mankind has submitted ourselves freely to becoming economic slaves. Sometimes I wonder!
AC,
Great addition to ‘Civilization Haywire’. That is what we have become, economic slaves to misguided political whim and multinational organizations including banking systems.
Long gone and lost, the village school, the blacksmith, small grocery and butchers shop, long gone the small market gardener, village bicycle shop and post office, with its cat purring on the desktop to meet you.
Only a few village churches remain with welcoming open doors and inner pale light, and no children play in the empty derelict play park, or now it is Christmas almost upon us, come to our doors singing carols.
!@Colin
Yes in our haste to be wealthy. We have destroyed the familyunit . The family no longer exist as a cohesive unit. Unable to function as as a whole, but as individuals. ending in hate and chaos. No one understanding each other. Prefereing rather to be selfish and distant. I thought our noew found freedom was to make our life before. Oh boy was I wrog!
!@Colin
Yes in our haste to be wealthy. We have destroyed the familyunit . The family no longer exist as a cohesive unit. Unable to function as as a whole, but as individuals. ending in hate and chaos. No one understanding each other. Prefereing rather to be selfish and distant. I thought our noew found freedom was to make our life before. Oh boy was I wrog!
correction before should be better in above comment
correction before should be better in above comment
The birth if Christ, 500 years, about, before Mahammed.
Browsing Bill Bryson’s A short History of Nearly Everything, again,
( How many times we’ve reread it now ? ).
‘ To read even elementary particle physics nowadays you must now find your way through thickets such as this: ‘ The charged pion and antipion decay respectively into a muon plus antineutrino and an antimuon plus neutrino with an average lifetime decay of 2.603 X 10 to the 8th second, the neutral pion decays into two photons with an average lifetime of about 0.8X 10 to the 16 seconds, and the muon and antimuon decay respectively into ‘,….. I’m sure you understand.
Don’t make joke at all this. It is where our ability to use skype derives from, and our ability to look at a very young unborn child.
Instead, like me this rainy Christmas eve, watch a rose shed her petals, so slowly, each weighted by raindrops, one by one, one by one on the concrete walk in the rain. And lets hope raining will let up a bit for tomorrow, the big day of Christ’s birth.
why do people celebrate jesus birthday ?I never read where Jesus himself ever celebrate his birthday! Maybe he had a good reason not to make mention of it. Who de hell ever thought of this.!To think they even had the nerve to give Jesus and SantaClaus the same billing is genius. People (notme) out there buying gifts ! but for who! Jesus once wore a crown of thorns. Now he wears a frown on “His Birthday” What birthday. Gimme a break!
Oh God. Nearly six Christmas morning. It’s still raining and a wet kitty has come in to get dried. He’s in a bad mood as he rubs his wet hide against my legs, insistently, for the drying ritual. Better dry him or he’ll resort to teeth and claw, we never had a red cat who could be so loving, and yet so bad tempered nearly at the same time. I better attend to him or else, like Sparrow said, I’fraid I’fraid pussy bite me.
Now we know what yah tinking, but it’s Christmas morn, sun ain’t yet reach up to day. So hush yah mout’ and have a great day, rain or hail, an’ don’t christen de road wid nobody blood.
Hi Colin,
Season’s Greetings, hope you had a good day and best wishes for you in 2011, Health and Happiness.
Peace
Rumple,
How gracious of you. Lo mismo a tu. Hope we’ll see more of you filtering through BFP, this coming year when you are so badly needed.
Looking up at clouds, drifting bye, laying on a porch chaise lounge , a dog one side, backed by a kitty on the other, thinking about recent news from a world gone half mad in so many respects, one is forced to attempt to think about the real meaning of life, and if one should ask if we are wrong to think life has any meaning at all, ….that we might be able with our limited Earth – bound minds, to comprehend.
Thou and I, Rumple, who question the very Gods, like Khayyam did : Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits— and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire !
Do we have a right to do this, or ought we accept the cards we’ve been played, and think ourselves lucky while we drown in the pain of
Earth’s burden, and the distress of others ?
2011: A Brave New Dystopia
By Chris Hedges
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.
We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.
Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.
Continued at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/2011_a_brave_new_dystopia_20101227/
Presidents in Africa: With teachers to learn from.
Well he has a good teacher, doesn’t he ? I mean, Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, deciding he won’t give up power. Such people don’t give one hoot what the rest of the world thinks, including the rest of Africa, or who they hurt, kill, and what they destroy when a war starts in the attempt to topple them.
Such people don’t want to hear about the quantity of votes against them, or who else won. All they are sure about is that they are going to sit tight, and hope that their favoured part of the army, that part they have lavished and spoiled with booty and showered with gifts for some many years, will want to continue living high on the hog, and so, do the fighting to maintain status quo,…. for ever, if possible.
After all,… like I said on the first line. Laurent Gbagbo has a good teacher, a perfect example. He can stay in power though badly beaten, and to hell with the politics, the democracy, and ‘toot mool’ with everybody else. If Mugabe can do it, who is Laurent Gbagbo in Ivory Coast ? Besides, there are far enough vultures afterwards, to take care of the dead.
Video: 300 Year Old Food Forest in Vietnam
This is what I think of as a paradise on earth — a 300 year old food forest in Vietnam. 28 generations have shared in developing this spectacularly lush environment that not only feeds the family, but provides all the medicinal herbs and plants they need.
Imagine growing up in an environment where you just need to walk outside the door and there is all the sustenance you will ever need — literally provided by your ancestors!
This is an inspiring story that we can be thinking about as we take steps to convert our backyards, front yards and even windowsills into food producing spaces. Can we begin to think about 28 generations from now? What could be more meaningful and important than that?
http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/permaculture/300-year-old-food-forest-in-vietnam.html
@Colin
Not to forget the dismantling of the family. A word “Independence” was turn on its head to perform a grievious act . Now the family no longer exist . In its place is division which also helps with corporate greed. Yes the more division the more we are subject to those who think they know what is best for yes. Therefore we are not only “Independent” but “dependent” on them in the way we think and structure our lives.
Happy New Year Colin!
Green Monkey, The Food Forest Vietnam.
That is a true paradise on Earth. How have they managed to keep it that way so well, and so long, keeping the loggers out, and the ( itching- palm) developers ?
Your script by Chris Hedges, is superb. How do we turn back the clock? Our very natures are now set and en-snarled in the new order, though it seems leading to,… oblivion. Give me another snort of,…. snow. We can’t look behind, or back.
AC,
Certainly, a Forthcoming New Year to you too. AC.
Did you check out the site Green Monkey has prompted.? A Brave New Dystopia, by Chris Hedges. I went to Google and drank deep of it. Chris Hedges sums up the why, of the modern world problems, so superbly, though he leaks, nor offers, alternatives.
Perhaps, like me, and you, he senses modern mankind has become too set to modern mankind’s modernity and way of life, to turn back a single hair. Dystopia, the opposite of Utopia. You won’t find the word in Roget’s Thesaurus.
@Colin
There is also an interesting video on “the future of food ” and “the story of bottled water” on the link suggested by Green Monkey.
AC, The Decisions are ours to make.
Yes, bottled water is expensive nonsense for most of us. True, there are situations that take place across the world, where bottled water saves lives by the millions, and that is how and when it should be used.
The future of our food, is another long story, a rather doleful one. Barbados, for instance, will have an almighty problem, when energy and food get too expensive to import. We have consumed so much of our agricultural land, and are consuming so much more daily, piece by piece, that already the island would be hard pressed should food importation come to a grinding halt through,…. war, for instance. There are numerous other reasons too. There is not enough land, now, to sustain and feed the island population.
There are the new modified grains, vegetables and farm animals. Pigs, recently on the BBC. The new pig needs far less feed to gain the same weight. It is truly amazing. Its ‘heap’ is not nearly as large or as smelly. Looking at the new and old pig, you cannot tell the difference, nor can you tell on the weighing scale. So there is some good news there.
You still have to be able to feed pigs; and as for modified grains and vegetables, you have to be able to plough , plant and reap, and store them. All that requires agricultural land and energy on a grand scale, and unless everybody gets dirt under their nails, there will be a great weight lose amongst us all, as we start to grow hungry. Such times are not so far off as we may think. Our growing grocery bills plainly scream this story.
Sadly, very few will bow their heads to the soil, just as the plastic from bottle waters will continue to fill our drains and gullies. The decisions are ours to make. Do we want to sit down and make them , …..in time ????
@colin
Apparently the old FairchildStreet Market is to be demolishedwhich is good news. The bad news is that the building has asbestos in the material. Now I wonder if the government of Barbados whose job is it to protect the public is going to ask John Q public worker to demolished the building with all the hazourds he or she will encounter and no protective equipment
Global food shortages.
Yesterday5th January, the BBC was hot into the growing world food shortage, much of which has been caused by drastic flooding or drought of huge areas of land, thousands of square miles. Most of us are not aware of it, though we see supermarket costs raising steadily. Food shortages and raising energy costs, go hand in hand.
We need to pull ourselves together. We need to alter many of our priorities. We need to listen to our farmers, stop desecrating good agricultural land, stop building houses few people locally can afford, clamp down on the steady importation or vehicles that are driving up our demand for thousands of more barrels of energy products monthly, and making islanders waste so much time in Traffic jams.
We just don’t understand how many hours people waste in traffic jams. 500 people in a traffic jam that causes a half hour delay for each, amounts to ten days lost. Now work out how much fuel is wasted, daily, daily, daily, in Barbados traffic jams by the end of a month. Or By the end of a year. And we talk about stopping pollution ? We ain’t talking sense. That’s for sure.
@ Colin Beadon
Colin I agree with everything you suggest, unfortunately trying to redirect our economies onto a more sustainable path like you suggest is much like trying to turn a heavily laden super-tanker around to head 180 degreees in the opposite direction. Once it has up a head of steam and built up momentum heading north, it is a long, slow process to bring the bow around to head south, and if the only people suggesting a change in direction is necessary are a few lowly ratings and deck swabbers while the Captain and officers in charge on the bridge are all for maintaining the current course, the process of initiating a turn is not very likely to even get started.
Meanwhile, here is some more food for thought describing how the co-opted, lamestream media often functions as an unofficial,propaganda arm of the government.
Media as a Branch of Government
The toppling of Saddam’s statue as metaphor
by Justin Raimondo, January 05, 2011
SNIP
As for whose idea it was to bring down the statue, Maass traces it to a lowly sergeant who, out of the blue, came up with the bright idea all by his lonesome, but there are several holes in Maass’s story.
To begin with, long shots of the square show the area around the statue completely blocked off by US tanks, and yet, according to Maass’s own account, “a handful of Iraqis had slipped into the square” – at precisely the moment the sergeant asked permission to take the statue down.
Who were these Iraqis? Reading Maass, one would simply assume they were random residents of Baghdad, curiosity seekers out on a lark, but a look at these photos disabuses us of this notion. They were members of the Iraqi National Congress – those now-infamous “heroes in error” – who had played a key role in the “weapons of mass destruction” deception and were being groomed by the neocons to take power in post-Saddam Iraq. Along with their leader, the wanted embezzler and suspected Iranian agent Ahmed Chalabi, 700 INC “fighters” were flown into Nasiriyah by the Pentagon a few days before, and were whisked to Baghdad, where they arrived just in time for their Big Media Moment.
In short, these Iraqis were on the American payroll – and simply doing their job.
That the English-speaking media were also doing their job – which is, as we all know, to parrot the line their governments were putting out – comes as no surprise. As Glenn Greenwald has noted, the links between our government and the “mainstream” media have become so intimate that one can can fairly speak of an informal “merger.” Yet we ought not to disappear the governmental aspect of this untoward symbiosis. We need to ask: how is it that practically the entire membership of the Iraqi National Congress wound up in that square, on that day, while ordinary Iraqis were being blocked by US tanks?
I have no doubt that both aspects of the Government-Media Complex were acting in perfect tandem on that occasion, and certainly Maass emphasizes this in his piece. That some journalists on the scene who saw what was happening, and protested to their editors that the statue-toppling imagery projected the wrong story, were told to shut up and fix their cameras on the fallen idol will shock the naïve, and amuse the realists among us. Mainstream media organizations didn’t need to wait for orders from Washington: they did it all on their own. Yet we don’t need to read a WikiLeaked cable detailing the mechanics of the deception to understand how the occupiers set the stage for a successful bit of performance art.
SNIP
When William Randolph Hearst sent his “journalists” to Cuba, just before the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, he instructed them: “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” Nothing has changed in the interim, except that the government-media partnership has gotten tighter. This marriage was going along swimmingly, until that harlot known as the worldwide web threatened to come between the happy couple.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/01/04/media-as-a-branch-of-government/
Green Monkey, Change is directed by the Captain
Change has to be started from the ships Captain. But the Captain is the major part of the problem. If the Captain can’t see the coming collision, and does not know how to pull the telegraphs to instruct the engineers to reverse props,…. then everything fall down.
The more one thinks about such badly needed change, the more one feels the hopelessness. Perhaps we should turn off the TV and the radio, and stop reading the newspapers. Put plugs in our ears, clap hands over our mouths and a blindfold over our eyes, or seek the oblivion of drugs, or booze. We’re really small mice, thou and I, and nobody is worrying or listening anyhow. Even the face of God, is looking like Allah.
Its a shame how corporate greed has sabotaged our best interest with no end in sight! The masses that is you and me are at their mercy for just about everything. These people tricked all of us into believing that they were going to make things better. Today we haven’t given up just about everything freely to corporation. The land which used to feed us has become theirs for them to do whatsoever they please. No wonder our roads are flooded at the drop of a drizzle of rain. Now we have become their economic Slaves and we can’t do a dam thing about it! Maybe Civil War is the answer!
AC
Check out this new book by Ian Morris.
‘Why the West Rules–for now.
His average star rating on the book, by reviews, is four, so many being five.
If you go to Omnivoracious in Amazon’s books you can see a podcast from the author. For me, it seems it will be a most heartening book. See what you think,… please do. Morris points out that so much of the true West’s strength comes from the position of Western Geography. I can understand that, and hope he details that further in the book, as I read a similar suggestion a few years ago. Geologic position and temperance of climate, etc.
@Colin
I did listen a couple of times and can concur with most of what he said, I am very much interested in reading more on topic. Like realtors always say Location! location! location!
As a part time student at UWI, I am wondering if those that make the decisions have ever consulted the part time students about what was to transpire. To force UWI part timers to finish in 4 years is laughable at best. Most of UWI’s courses are day courses, which means that students who are part time and have day jobs are unable to attend. Secondly, there are some courses that are not offered every year for a myriad of reasons. What happens if a course (or courses) you need in order to graduate are not offered in your 4th year? What happens then? I think that there needs to be some consultation with part time students currently at UWI to get a feel for what the situation is for them. If I am not mistaken, currently just over half of UWI’s student body is part time, whereas the majority of courses still are mostly daytime while part timers are at work. Can those in authority make it possible for most things that are offered in the day to be offered in the evenings as well? Can there be put in place measures so that that there are even less courses that skip a year? All of these are things that must be explored before we start limiting time for degrees to be completed.
Australian flooding.
If we look at a world map that includes Australia and all the islands of the West Indies, we can see, with brief inspection, the flooding in Australia is much greater than all the total land mass of the West Indian Islands plus Cuba, placed together.
Do we have enough room in our minds to place thought for the huge hardship the people of Australia will now face ? Can you imagine just one of our Islands utterly flooded where everything you knew and cherished, has been swept away?
To fully grasp such happenings, like the Haiti earthquake, the floods of Bangladesh, and now this huge area greater than the size of France and Germany, exceeds the ability of our complexity horizon. It is like trying to visualize the distance of a light year, or the 93 million mile distance to the Sun. Our minds reach the walls of their limits, long before appreciations of such size can be fully assimilated.
So we get left with little else but prayer, and to act in any way we can muster, to help; For any attempt to fully grasp and get anything done about the scale of such predicament, requires a million more minds than just one.
Do you want to recapture your awe ?
Every so often the shenanigans of Man on Earth, become too much of a burden. You have to find a worthwhile escape that does not involve self flagellation, or the futile belief that drugs, or suicide, or unlimited money, will bring you Nirvana.
We literally lift off. We go up into the Universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field does us quite nicely. Looking at the photos from that great unimaginable distance that Hubble has been able to capture, renews our awe of life and the extent of the Universe’s 47 billion light years, like nothing else we find able to do.
Perhaps a prayer, or a sip of good Barbados rum, does you just as well ? And why not ? To each his own, (her included). We never said we didn’t resort to those things too.
From the Upanishads:
Mind alone is, to men, the cause of bondage or liberation;—lost in the enjoyment it leads to bondage, emptied of the personal it leads to liberation.
Panchadasi.
Attend to this, the essence of all Spirituality , and attending, digest it well. Desire alone is bondage,….. its destruction is liberation.
Yogavasishtha.
In this world, Oh child of Raghus! every one can always compass everything through well-directed personal effort.
Yogavasishtha
These three short scripts come from the book: Spirit of the Upanishads. By Yogi Ramacharaka.
India will be a great power soon. We need to understand the Indian mind and its deep and ancient spirituality.
Owen Arthur should be ashamed after trying to promote himself as the CSME champion: See Owen Arthur at his best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfOunKGvWpM
CSME forever!!!!!
wouldn’t it be nice if we all could escape into that unreachable world just alone for a moment in time where no one can reach us!
I have been thinking really hard about The Giant Deparment Store and its impact on the small business person. Walmart has all but drove them to extinction! Some one told me recently that Walmart was also involved in Tax Filing in the U>S>A> couldn’t help but feel sorry for the small business person in that line of work. Walmart the Greedy Satan! needs to be stop!
I’m with Professor Lindzen, CLB.
Who are you hitching your wagon to?
← NCDC’s Dr. Tom Peterson respondsAfter the Noachian floods in 1861, California experienced a punishing drought →
Richard Lindzen: A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
Posted on January 17, 2011 by Anthony Watts
Via the GWPF, an essay by Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.
For warming since 1979, there is a further problem. The dominant role of cumulus convection in the tropics requires that temperature approximately follow what is called a moist adiabatic profile. This requires that warming in the tropical upper troposphere be 2-3 times greater than at the surface. Indeed, all models do show this, but the data doesn’t and this means that something is wrong with the data. It is well known that above about 2 km altitude, the tropical temperatures are pretty homogeneous in the horizontal so that sampling is not a problem. Below two km (roughly the height of what is referred to as the trade wind inversion), there is much more horizontal variability, and, therefore, there is a profound sampling problem. Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem resides in the surface data, and that the actual trend at the surface is about 60% too large. Even the claimed trend is larger than what models would have projected but for the inclusion of an arbitrary fudge factor due to aerosol cooling. The discrepancy was reported by Lindzen (2007) and by Douglass et al (2007). Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.
It turns out that there is a much more fundamental and unambiguous check of the role of feedbacks in enhancing greenhouse warming that also shows that all models are greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity. Here, it must be noted that the greenhouse effect operates by inhibiting the cooling of the climate by reducing net outgoing radiation. However, the contribution of increasing CO2 alone does not, in fact, lead to much warming (approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2).
The larger predictions from climate models are due to the fact that, within these models, the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever CO2 does. This is referred to as a positive feedback. It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming. All climate models show such changes when forced by observed surface temperatures. Satellite observations of the earth’s radiation budget allow us to determine whether such a reduction does, in fact, accompany increases in surface temperature in nature. As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative — strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man. This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no statistically significant net global warming for the last fourteen years. Modelers defend this situation, as we have already noted, by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming (viz Schwartz et al, 2010), and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC’s iconic attribution (Smith et al, 2007). Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past fourteen years is acknowledged. It should be noted that, more recently, German modelers have moved the date for ‘resumption’ up to 2015 (Keenlyside et al, 2008).
Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980′s, global cooling in the 1970′s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance). And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.
With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
Straight Talk,
I’m very glad to hear from you. Your script raises as many questions at it does its best to answer. I’m convinced the problem Earth faces is much more than anything else, one of zooming population. Perhaps at this point population growth has not really had much impact on anything to do with climate change, but it has certainly had a lot to do with the grand misery many unfortunate people are facing, who find themselves living on flood planes, or in high mountain valleys in various countries, since last last year and unto 2011. The flooding has far from finished yet, and the glaziers are still melting, and the snow is still falling and the rivers and lakes are flooding their banks, and dams are bursting with dire consequences. It most certainly has not finished yet.
The growing scarcity of food due to the flooding, is going to be the major problem in many countries, though true 75 % of those of us who live in much of the West, or under the spell of the West, could easily survive happily and with much better health, by dropping off 20% or more, of our own body weight.
You, ST, are very much Gungho business as usual, much,… more business if possible, dig up all the coal, and drill up all the oil, more cars and other transport on the roads, more aircraft and shipping at any cost, use up as many trees and tin mines, iron ore, and the whole list of precious mettles we can find, run the rivers dry with irrigation; don’t worry about all the problems this whole industrial world will throw up in our faces, don’t worry about the stripping of the seas and the countrysides, to keep all this human ambition going flat out, etc, etc, etc.
Don’t listen to those who talk about the rapidly dwindling fish stocks, or even those who are without food with the population at over 6 billion. Concentrate on production, at any cost, foul the rivers, lakes and seas with plastics, oil, and fertilizers. All this is what,… in actuality, Man’s progress means, and the progress is just starting, just starting, just starting. If you thought the West had been through an industrial revolution, Man, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
It does not really matter if Man is responsible for Global warming or freezing. Which either way it goes, man will attempt to sort it out. But what he can’t sort out is his greed and lust, and his religious zeal, and the shortages that will lead to dreadful wars as the energy becomes too short, or two expensive, and there are far too many mouths to feed.
And religions and Isms of every kind, in their desire for dominance, will clash,… like colliding galaxies, as if there were not enough serious problems on Earth needing serious facing already. And then some idiot will let go the first one, in one almighty boom,….. spelling the start of oblivion.
Straight Talk, Today on the BBC and the WMO
I guess you must have heard The World Meteorological Organization’s findings on climate change to-day, 20 Jan 2011 . We are going through global warming, which has resulted in the mayhem we see across much of Australia , Russia, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, cities below Andian and Himalayan mountain peaks in Southern America, India and Bangladesh.
You can dispute whether these effects are man induced or just a swing in the slow- changing patterns of the Earth, but these temperatures are higher than previous temperatures ever recorded by man.
Should we, who are burning fuels at an ever faster rate ( though we may be burning them more economically, but this does not lessen the ever-growing consumption and demand) not heed this higher temperature,
really ? Obliterate it from our minds ? Bury out heads in the ever- heating sand ?
Well, another few years will tell how intelligent mankind really thinks he has been, and whether he was correct, or had made a big ‘ OUT’ in his calculations, like he has done in world banking procedures.
Just like the weather, there is a certain aspect that forever remains above the level of our intelligence horizon. It is called,…. CHAOS. And we suddenly find ourselves wondering how things went to dreadfully wrong.
The Guppy Tank world, and Anthropogenics.
For ten years I’ve studied my Guppy fish tank. It is just 8 inches by 8 inches. It sits where it can catch some morning and evening sun. It has a floating non-rooting fern in it. The tank has water- living snails that keep the glass clean, live in the fern and clean up after the Guppies. Quite often I have to remove some of the fern, or it gets too dense. Sunlight and fish excretion seem to be all the fern needs for keeping the water clean and for constant growth.
There is a water circulating and straining system, but I don’t use it. The tank is a self sustaining world, I’ve found, provided I keep to a set of self-evolved rules.
Too much fish feeding will speed up fish breeding, dirty the water consequentially, and lead to a die-off of fish.. If I don’t fish feed, there will be a slow die off, and the bigger fish will eat the smaller ones. When the number of the fish drops to four or five, feeding does not become necessary, and the snails, the weed and the fish, become a true ecosystem.
At the stage of a balanced ecosystem, the tank is not very exciting for me. I just have to make sure the cats don’t drink out too much of the water from the top of the tank.
So after several days, or a couple weeks, human that I am, I can’t help but add a few more fish and start a moderate feeding.
But then I soon see slithers of glass-like young Guppies less than an eight of an inch. So then I’m in the catch- 22 position, and have to remember to feed daily again. The Guppies remind me anyhow, by swarming the side of the tank when they see me. They become impertinent on being fed, besides, the guppy food makes them show off their varied colours in the sun.
In the ways of Man and his anthropogenic, one can learn a lot by watching simple Guppies.
The Onset of Catabolic Collapse
by John Michael Greer
SNIP
Let’s start with some basics, for the sake of those of my readers who haven’t waded their way through the fine print of the paper. The central idea of catabolic collapse is that human societies pretty consistently tend to produce more stuff than they can afford to maintain. What we are pleased to call “primitive societies” – that is, societies that are well enough adapted to their environments that they get by comfortably without huge masses of cumbersome and expensive infrastructure – usually do so in a fairly small way, and very often evolve traditional ways of getting rid of excess goods at regular intervals so that the cost of maintaining it doesn’t become a burden. As societies expand and start to depend on complex infrastructure to support the daily activities of their inhabitants, though, it becomes harder and less popular to do this, and so the maintenance needs of the infrastructure and the rest of the society’s stuff gradually build up until they reach a level that can’t be covered by the resources on hand.
It’s what happens next that’s crucial to the theory. The only reliable way to solve a crisis that’s caused by rising maintenance costs is to cut those costs, and the most effective way of cutting maintenance needs is to tip some fraction of the stuff that would otherwise have to be maintained into the nearest available dumpster. That’s rarely popular, and many complex societies resist it as long as they possibly can, but once it happens the usual result is at least a temporary resolution of the crisis. Now of course the normal human response to the end of a crisis is the resumption of business as usual, which in the case of a complex society generally amounts to amassing more stuff. Thus the normal rhythm of history in complex societies cycles back and forth between building up, or anabolism, and breaking down, or catabolism. Societies that have been around a while – China comes to mind – have cycled up and down through this process dozens of times, with periods of prosperity and major infrastructure projects alternating with periods of impoverishment and infrastructure breakdown.
A more dramatic version of the same process happens when a society is meeting its maintenance costs with nonrenewable resources. If the resource is abundant enough – for example, the income from a global empire, or half a billion years of ancient sunlight stored underground in the form of fossil fuels – and the rate at which it’s extracted can be increased over time, at least for a while, a society can heap up unimaginable amounts of stuff without worrying about the maintenance costs. The problem, of course, is that neither imperial expansion nor fossil fuel drawdown can keep on going indefinitely on a finite planet. Sooner or later you run into the limits of growth; at that point the costs of keeping wealth flowing in from your empire or your oil fields begin a ragged but unstoppable increase, while the return on that investment begins an equally ragged and equally unstoppable decline; the gap between your maintenance needs and available resources spins out of control, until your society no longer has enough resources on hand even to provide for its own survival, and it goes under.
That’s catabolic collapse. It’s not quite as straightforward as it sounds, because each burst of catabolism on the way down does lower maintenance costs significantly, and can also free up resources for other uses. The usual result is the stairstep sequence of decline that’s traced by the history of so many declining civilizations—half a century of crisis and disintegration, say, followed by several decades of relative stability and partial recovery, and then a return to crisis; rinse and repeat, and you’ve got the process that turned the Forum of imperial Rome into an early medieval sheep pasture.
It’s easy enough to track catabolic collapse at work in retrospect, when you can glance over a couple of centuries of decline in an evening with one of Michael Grant’s excellent histories of Rome in one hand and a glass of decent bourbon in the other. Catching it in process, though, can be a much more challenging task, because it happens on a scale considerably larger than a human lifespan. In its early stages, the signal is hard to tease out from ordinary economic and political fluctuations; later on, it’s all too easy to believe that any given period of stabilization has solved the problem, at least until the next wave of crises rolls in; late in the game, as crisis piles on top of crisis and cracks are opening up everywhere, your society’s glory days are so far in the past that it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of the fact that calamity isn’t the normal shape of things.
Still, the attempt is worth making, and I propose to make it here. In fact, I’d like to suggest that it’s possible at this point to provide a fairly exact date for the onset of catabolic collapse here in the United States of America.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/01/onset-of-catabolic-collapse.html
Green Monkey. The Onset Of Collapse
Just so. That is how it is. Societies run out of energy in various ways. You can’t point out the possibilities of this— nobody wants to listen or hear.
So then slowly comes ‘ crunch’ time, and while everybody is then trying to figure out how to prevent it, the first thing is a mass die off due to obvious reasons and causes.
Once the society drops much of its mass, if it is lucky it rejuvenates, or finds a bifurcation point, and climbs steadily into different new heights, which eventually lead back to overindulgence and opulence, that at some stage, sadly, ultimately, lead back to another crash.
The strange things is that nobody is interested in learning the history from this cycling, if indeed there is anything to learn. The cycling seems like part of the written status quo of nature, written on iron railway tracks which allow no turn off left or right,…. though we’re convinced we handle the controls.
” Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote,
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read. ” O Khayyam.
BFP … May I ask WHY no comment from you on the matter of the appointment of Marston Gibson as the next Chief Justice of Barbados?
Its a VERY dangerous precedent being set if the present Government changes the law to accommodate Mr. Gibson. You were and have been ALL over David Simmons yet his was WITHIN the law of Barbados.
Are we to believe that there are no others out there who can do the job within our present laws, or is this just like what you and others made out the David Simmons case to be … a DLP appointment and the fact that they are willing to change the law, and the said Marston Gibson has no issue with this as the potential CJ (as in, if I were him I would decline) point to more serious potential collusion (DLP-wise) than in the case of Simmons (BLP-wise)?
Serious area we are in now. I would think that between you guys at BFP and Keltruth, the warning bells should be ringing off their bases, or was all of that just a personal thing and not to apply to the general case?
Hello David,
Doan worry man. We have it right here and the comments from Leslie Haynes and the “anonymous” government official who originally said it would be done, and we’ve also related that to the DLP and BLP changing the Constitution on a whim for Cricket World Cup, which is all about the same subject: rule of law means nothing. Both parties bend the law, break the law or change the law to suit their purpose. It is always for some special purpose and never about where we should take this society. It is about using the law as a weapon and if it doesn’t suit then “might is right” and a majority government can act like a dictator: just change the law because you can and now it’s legal and they can say, “Nothing wrong here folks!”
The law is written the way it is so that our Chief Justice will apply Commonwealth Laws and interpretations instead of some other law and interpretations like, for instance, American law. The position of Chief Justice is arguably one of the most powerful positions in Barbados or any society, and should not be occupied by a person who has been serving under different rules and living in a different society for the vast majority of his adult and professional life.
That’s what we’re going to say and a bit more, but we’ve been busy. Also have a couple of other half-written articles just about ready with some big stories: one about Mia and another about the connection between the child sex trade, internet porn and Barbados. Hold onto your hats for that one!
BFP: “… BLP changing the Constitution on a whim for Cricket World Cup”
I doubt this is as significant as this – the actual top job in the judiciary – sorry not in the same arena – this sort has double, triple or more effect on the rule of law … trumps all other misdemeanours.
I mean, if Gibson gets the job of Chief Justice of our Supreme Court via a Change of Law, which otherwise he would be barred – hmm, there must be an oxymoron in this somewhere – anyway, he would be the pinnacle of precedents all by himself, so there we go, setting new precedents everyday would be the way forward … to hell with jurisprudence, et al. … quid pro quo … ipso facto …
Hey, Chavez, come for a visit, we making the way for you …
BFP: Just really took in your last paragraph as you were going on and on about trying to make 2 +2 =5 so I jumped over and made my comments, however, I must say important as Mia and others issues are, even if from the stand-pipe position, sorry gathering, this is not something that should be taken lightly.
Hi David,
I concur that this issue of choosing a CJ is important for the long term, but it’s all part of the same disrespect for the rule of law ’bout hey. In 2007 the parties changed the Constitution with no notice and no public input to allow foreign armed troops on our soil and give them authority over citizens – with zero concern about chain of command. That’s why we ended up with foreign troops in Barbados accountable to no Barbadian chain of command. Serious business that.
I’m not sure the government even changed the Constitution back. That’s interesting and I never thought of that until now. I wonder if the Constitution was changed back after CWC or if the government forgot about it.
HOW ABOUT: David, how about taking a couple of hours and putting together an article for BFP on the Chief Justice issue? We promise we’ll print it exactly how you write it and you are definitely up on the subject.
Watching the growing and possible wide-spreading chaos.
The success (or luck) of the few, have forced the majority of Mankind into believing they too, can live in such opulence, as princes and film stars, golf players and footballers, bank executives and drug dealers, those who have worked many more hours than most, and those who have won huge amounts at the tables, or through lottery, or inheritance.
The Medias, the Internet, and the Cell phone, have sprayed out this possible opulence, suggesting it is within reach of all, suggesting it is deserved, by everybody.
And so we witness the mayhem such possible dreams can cause, and men lose their minds as these new desires obliterate their reason, though some will make the high life, just a very few percent. And there is no apparent justification, in who will be those who deserve to do so.
What does Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Egypt, have in common ?
They all three have heads of state who suffer from the malady of power, and refuse to be voted out, or disposed no matter how their populations suffer, or how loudly their populations
shout for freedom, or how many get shot, murdered or raped, when the chaos starts.
Never mind, all three countries have vultures who will live well off the carnage that ensues when heads of state care only about themselves.
Unfortunately, those high- flying birds do not differentiate between the good, the bad, or the ugly, and some do not wait to start on you until you are dead. Badly wounded,…. is just as justifiable a cause for the feast to begin.
You’ll be asked by this correspondent to forgive this gruesome missal, but statesmen who won’t step down when they are no longer needed or wanted in African countries, are probably, more than possibly, the main reasons for African starvation, penury, and the continuation of misery.
Suddenly rising shortages
I’ve just found the life work of the world’s leading environmentalist
Lester Russel Brown. Go to Wikipedia and look him up, and take your time to read what he has been saying, specifically about water, food, population growth, energy, pollution,……..
I’m glad to find somebody so well known, so saturated in awards and degrees, who thinks like I do about the Earth, without myself carrying any such valor, or needing any such fame.
His main concerns are below.
The following have been consistent themes in Brown’s work over the years:[8]
Population control
Immigration reduction (to achieve U.S. population stabilization)
Global warming
Protection of world’s croplands
Soil erosion
Deforestation
Water resources depletion
Melting glaciers
Decreasing groundwaters
Energy depletion
Peak oil
Energy conservation and sustainability
Renewable energy
Garbage reduction and recycling.
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Breakdown of Law and Order.
Chaos. Absolute Chaos in Cairo. I hope we are all watching it. This can happen anywhere in the world once law an order breaks down. We have seen it twice in Port Of Spain. The capital’s shopping centers trashed and burned, the Police headquarters too.
Trinidadians could not even rely on their army.
We remember their Colonel, standing on a field, attempting to call his armed deserters down from the hills in 1970.
Trinidad has been through such confusion twice, and all her wealth from oil and gas, didn’t help preserve her island stability, one little bit, and nobody,…. with anything resembling a brain,…needs to ask why.
@COLINBeadon
Except in this case the political stakes are high for america and Israel> Not to mention the high price of oil in the coming days and weeks
You got it AC. Wrong element gets control of Egypt, and they might close the Panama canal except to their friends, or make it very much more expensive for most shipping. Then you’ll see what happens to the price of oil.
Oh well. Suez Canal, I meant above. It’s difficult to keep sane with half the world seemingly going mad.
Will the flood of tourism out of North Africa, turn West to the Indies ?
Perhaps some good of it, may come our way ?
Does the whole world need to know this?
Does the whole of Barbados, and the World, really need to know the BSTU deems the term ‘Child- Friendly’ ‘unnecessary as an applied description of certain schools in Barbados’ ? Does the whole world really need to know this, written as a newspaper front page headline, 9th February 2011?
Ah well, ah well, it possibly prevents us from further use of such idiosyncrasy, like: Food that is health-friendly, cars that are driver- friendly, aircraft that are safe-friendly, churches that a God –friendly, air that is lung- friendly, even politicians who are economically-friendly ( should politicians of this calibre actually exist).
Don’t forget doctors who are body-friendly, and pork that is hunger-friendly, toilet paper that is wiper-friendly, dogs that are human-friendly, on, on, and on. I’m sure I have forgotten many more, like cushions that are user-friendly, cell phones that are old- age-friendly, cricket balls that are wicket- friendly, etc.
Wellit is about time we as a race become “People Friendly. However not in this life.
AC, Allowing ‘Drive Friendly’ .
In parts of Texas, you see signs on the sides of the roads, requesting you to ‘Drive Friendly’ . I always liked that sign, and found it was as though Barbadians didn’t need to be told that, ….as they knew it already.
However, we are starting to see drivers in this island, who could do with remembering,…. ‘ Friendly Is,…. As Friendly Does’. So ‘Drive Friendly’ would not be a bad sign to start seeing here now. If we managed to keep ‘Drive Friendly’ in mind, it might save lives, limbs, wrecks, and high insurance costs ????
A Rudderless Egyptian Ship .
The Egyptian people are speaking clearly. They know they deserve a better life, and a complete change. The modern electronic world has spilled all the beans to them, and shown the freedom democratic countries possess.
Yet they seem to feel it is a simple overnight transition to run a country with no leaders or politicians as though it is just as simple to operate a space ship. You just walk in, crank up the engines and next thing you’re walking on the Moon, or Mars., and everything goes ahead like eating a good pudding and souse, and you come back to Earth without the slightest hitch, never having had any ground control.
Well maybe the Egyptian people know something that nobody in the rest of the world knows. What more can the rest of the world do but wish them luck ?
@colin
yeh the egyptian people for sure knows who they don”t want at the head of that rudder.the ruder is to be control only by the muslims themselves. america be damned
The Bombing of Dresden and Germans with short memories!
Huh, there’s a small percentage of the German left wing, trying to make out the two day bombing of Dresden by British and American air forces in 1945, is a war crime. How short certain German memories must be.
I was five in 1940, when the Germans, using 348 bombers and 617 fighter aircraft, started, on the 7th September, to bomb and shoot up London. They blasted London for 57 consecutive days and nights. My Grandmother was bombed out from her small one room flat, three times. I remember watching the dogfights and the searchlights in the countryside in the night skies from Kent, and hearing the far away dull thud of the bombs dropping on London and other ports, and the night and day drone of war aircraft, going or coming, sometimes smoke pouring out of engines, wings and tail fins half shot away.
Some things like that, you never forget, and some Germans seem to have short memories, those who have forgotten who started the second world war.
Eating the African Snail. Peckham Market. London.
If you Google up: Tim Hayward, Eating the African Snail, you can see the complete operation.
Very basically, you need the snail, and you need alum to help clean it.
From this clip, it seems we in Barbados, are as quite often usual, a little behind times. Everything needed to catch, prepare and cook the snail, is readily available right here in Barbados. Maybe we just need a good African Cheff in the island, to entice us to start trying snail ?
Ok, so no Bajan eatin snail ! But if Peckham market at Stella’s African Store, are importing African snails to London, then who is we,
nah ? We have more and more African snails here, these days, and very possibly they are safer as a meat, than those out of Africa ?
Anyhow, I’ve eaten snails in rich garlic sauce, even here in Barbados restaurants. It would take a few brave people locally, to try it out,…. and soon, like the big blue ‘ swampy’ crab that nobody here ate till the Trinidadians showed us how to deal with them, we’d probably soon find ourselves hard pressed to find an African snail. Meanwhile, we are poisoning them, and possibly the frogs too, by the hundreds.
Yes. Frogs and toads, eat snails, certainly young snails.
AC, The Scream for True Freedom.
I’m not certain the force behind the Middle East demonstrations are Islamic driven. Sure, radical elements would be there, trying to make the most of the utter confusion.
If anything, the modern electronic West, has reached throughout the Middle East, deep into every classroom, street corner, and home, and so the young students, those who have not been already educated in Western style universities, are seeing how the modern world lives, sleeps, eats, spends its time, and takes its fun.
Why, I’d ask, would deprived students, with little chance of finding good jobs, or making a worthwhile life, want to live under the strict, radical structures, and in most cases, hungry destitution, of Islamic cleric
control, that got them into those predicaments in the first place ?
Certainly there will be some students who can do no better, who will be snared into the clerical trap of nihilism, and 72 virgins, etc. But too many of the faces you see in the thronging masses, just want freedom,…. away from dictatorial life- serving heads of state, or cleric of stone- pelting sharia- type administration.
Far too many of those people want the freedom of true justice, free will, laws that give equal rights, and security systems that don’t shoot bullets at them, or beat them blue with batons behind closed cell doors,… and much worse.
Whether democracy is really just what the milling, prepared- to -die masses — in reality need— or could learn to appreciate, is another question time alone— might or might not be able to answer.
Hi Colin ,
”doctors who are body-friendly’…some are and some are not…Lol
@Colin
However my question being would muslimsform of democracy be inclusive of women.or do the women stll have to walk two or so steps behind the men.
. As you know western democracy as of now been inclusive of women rights and is still pressing forward openly to protect those rights for women. The Muslim world has not spoken about those rights for women. Istead has hidden their real agenda behind a veilof secrecy while attaching the word democracy to its hidden agenda.No should be guessing at this point.
AC
Muhammad. The life of the prophet.
To find out what Islam should really be all about, one needs to lounge back to the actual life of Muhammad, and learn what his teachings were .
Karen Armstrong’s book ,’ Muhammad’, is probably the best book you could find on the prophet. His teachings have been twisted and tainted by certain cleric of that faith, who have their own agendas.
Such twisting and tainting is quite common practice in major religions, and they all suffer from it in some way or another; and much blood gets spilled in consequence.
You will be surprised, reading that book, how close the life and teachings of Muhammad, mirrored the life of Christ, though 500 odd years separated them.
@Colin
No i would not be surprised by Muhammed ‘s teachingsand the importance of doing god to one another. However politics and religion has merged into what we see now is a deadly combination putting worldpeace on a deadly collision course. What do you think Muhammed would be saying now if he was alive?
AC,
Huhammead would probably be, by himself, trudging East into the desert for another 40 days session of enlightenment. As to whether he would be murmuring ‘Allah Akbar’ under his breath, would have to remain undetermined.
And Jesus would be pleading for fellowman to love thy neighbour as you love thyself while all the bombs are deing dropped around him.In this cazy and confused world we live in man is hellbent on selfdestruction. At this point and time we are in self denial.
AC
Whether we like it or not, we have to face change. Nothing endures, not even suns or giant stars, not even Gods— as we thought we knew them.
Your English translation is kind of funny.
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“Deadly Floods in Haiti Blamed on Deforestation, Poverty. Wanda explained the track invites our mutual relatives, grandfathers and ancestors to join us at this occasion. By 2033 they intend to have over 20 humans living in the colony.
I am goin to barbados in june n a friend asked me to get the recipe of cohobblepot soup. Can u help at all?