Afra Raymond: Secret shareholders fuel corruption by public officials

Afra Raymond’s new post about the Integrity Commission of Trinidad and Tobago shows that what Bajans know is true – when Public Money meets Greed in an atmosphere of no or inadequate integrity legislation, the taxpayers always lose.

For over 30 years successive Barbados governments have promised integrity legislation, and like fools we keep voting the same crooks into office even when we know they are lying to us.

In Trinidad and Tobago, at least the people forced the passage of integrity legislation. In Barbados the politicians don’t even pretend to listen to the people.

Integrity Strategy

The Integrity Commission is continuing its efforts to revise the Integrity in Public Life Act (IPLA) to give greater effect to its anti-corruption work. I fully support those efforts.

The key challenge is to discern how Public Officials commit the corrupt acts the Commission is meant to reduce. It is therefore necessary to conduct a scrupulous examination of Commissions of Enquiry and other Inquiry (eg LifeSport) Reports & evidence; Auditor General’s Annual Reports; as well as the leading international learning on these questions.

Once the main methods of corrupt agents are discerned, it will then be necessary to consider how the existing powers of the Commission might be deployed in tackling those and if there are new powers needed…

… continue reading at Afra Raymond’s blog: Integrity Strategy

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Barbados Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite is a LIAR

It’s an old story, an old lie, but it’s still true that Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite and his DLP gang lied to get elected and then lied again to get re-elected.

They said they would put Conflict of Interest rules in place immediately upon election. They lied.

They said they would pass Integrity Legislation within 100 days of election. They lied.

They said they would pass Freedom of Information laws. They lied.

Brathwaite is a liar.

And we’re going to continue telling like it is.

Come and get us Brathwaite. YOU ARE A DAMNED LIAR.

And here’s the proof…

Barbados Attorney General admits Integrity Legislation is dead, dead, dead

The real reason greedy Bajan political elites want to dump the Westminster parliamentary system

Even the Captain of a floating wreck lives better off than the crew!

submitted by Not Michael Carrington

“Rare indeed is a Barbados Cabinet Minister without a bank account in New York, London, the Caymans or Zurich.”

Every few months we hear rumbling from our esteemed political elites that the Westminster parliamentary system is somehow “obsolete” or that it no longer fits a modern society.

Speaker of Parliament Michael Carrington recently said the Westminster system “pits Government and Opposition inexorably against each other in aggressive, contentious and oftimes seemingly unnecessary confrontation.”

Mr. Carrington has it only half right. The two parties often go at it aggressively and unnecessarily, but not because of the Westminster system – it is because they feel the need to put on a show for the electorate to create the illusion that something is happening. The politicians certainly can’t have the public judging them solely upon actual accomplishments because, well, that just wouldn’t do. This would happen no matter what political system Barbados chose.

Afra Raymond: When corrupt politicians reward their supporters with Public Property

“Given that our political parties receive financing from business-people, how will those party financiers be rewarded?  In a situation which properly controls the award of State contracts for goods, works and services, how can they be rewarded?

The answer is Public Property.”

You must visit Afra’s website and read his post None So Blind.

And while you’re at it, consider the situation in Barbados where it is not unheard of for a Minister of Government to end up living on land that was confiscated from private ownership – supposedly to be used for a public purpose. Nothing was ever done about then BLP Minister of Public Works Gline Clarke, and nothing ever will be…

“No Integrity Legislation exists in Barbados. As a result, powerful Government Ministers like Mr. Clarke do not have to declare their assets or explain how it is that, as a Member of the Cabinet that approves the expropriation of privately-owned lands, a Minister of Government comes to live upon a choice building lot that was forceably taken from an owner – using the full power of the Government.”

… from the BFP article Barbados Government Minister Gline Clarke – House and Mercedes On Expropriated Land

 

Barbados Attorney General admits Integrity Legislation is dead, dead, dead

When this article was first published in July of 2012, Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite was still lying to the people that his DLP government really intended to enact the long promised Integrity Legislation.
That was then. Today Brathwaite and the DLP don’t even bother to promise. They lied, we elected them. They lied again and we elected them again. Bajan politicians: laughing all the way to the bank… in Switzerland.

Barbados Free Press

Integrity Legislation has no chance and Adriel Brathwaite knows it!

Hey folks:

The Bajan news media isn’t carrying the real story. The Nation and the rest are repeating the government line like they rely upon the government advertising to survive…

Oh… wait… The mainstream Bajan news outlets do rely upon government advertising to survive! Do you think that impacts their editorial decisions? We think it does and that any citizen can see that our news media isn’t giving us the truth. Here at BFP we say that the Bajan news media sold their souls a long time ago and consequently the public is fed a version of the news that is less than citizens deserve.

Attorney General Adrel Brathwaite says:

“Legislatively, we have the anti-corruption legislation which is before a joint committee of Parliament. We had promised that we would have that done before the end of the year. It’s…

View original post 2,772 more words

TED Talk: The kill decision shouldn’t belong to a robot

Technology always brings unforeseen social changes

In Barbados we have zero transparency, zero accountability and the ruling political elites can do pretty well what they want. Author Daniel Suarez’s TED presentation predicts that as autonomous weapons become cheaper and more lethal, smaller governments and developing societies will have an advantage over larger, more developed societies. It seems far fetched to imagine Barbados wielding autonomous weapons and drones – but maybe not. Suarez also talks about private interests using the same weapons. Considering the Columbian and Mexican crime cartels, that’s not such an impossibility either.

The above YouTube video is brought to you by those friendly folks at Samsung. That’s right, the same folks that make your phone also make and deploy automatic killer machine guns for a very reasonable US$200,000 each. Just set ’em and forget ’em…

“This raises the very real possibility of anonymous war. This could tilt the geopolitical balance on its head, make it very difficult for a nation to turn its firepower against an attacker, and that could shift the balance in the 21st century away from defense and toward offense. It could make military action a viable option not just for small nations, but criminal organizations, private enterprise, even powerful individuals. It could create a landscape of rival warlords undermining rule of law and civil society. Now if responsibility and transparency are two of the cornerstones of representative government, autonomous robotic weapons could undermine both.

Now you might be thinking that citizens of high-tech nations would have the advantage in any robotic war, that citizens of those nations would be less vulnerable, particularly against developing nations. But I think the truth is the exact opposite. I think citizens of high-tech societies are more vulnerable to robotic weapons, and the reason can be summed up in one word: data. Data powers high-tech societies. Cell phone geolocation, telecom metadata, social media, email, text, financial transaction data, transportation data, it’s a wealth of real-time data on the movements and social interactions of people. In short, we are more visible to machines than any people in history, and this perfectly suits the targeting needs of autonomous weapons.”

Watch Daniel Suarez’s entire TED Talk here.

Thanks to an old friend for the suggestion.

Barbados Attorney General admits Integrity Legislation is dead, dead, dead

Integrity Legislation has no chance and Adriel Brathwaite knows it!

Hey folks:

The Bajan news media isn’t carrying the real story. The Nation and the rest are repeating the government line like they rely upon the government advertising to survive…

Oh… wait… The mainstream Bajan news outlets do rely upon government advertising to survive! Do you think that impacts their editorial decisions? We think it does and that any citizen can see that our news media isn’t giving us the truth. Here at BFP we say that the Bajan news media sold their souls a long time ago and consequently the public is fed a version of the news that is less than citizens deserve.

Attorney General Adrel Brathwaite says:

“Legislatively, we have the anti-corruption legislation which is before a joint committee of Parliament. We had promised that we would have that done before the end of the year. It’s my hope that we can get it within a month or two.”

… from the Nation article AG spells out crime plans

Listen, Brathwaite: that’s a lie. Your government said they would put forth the anti-corruption legislation four years ago – within 100 days of being elected.

So your statement is a big fat lie. Liar.

Now let’s talk about what happens even if your government passes the integrity legislation in the next few months: It will never be proclaimed as law before the next election because it will die in the Senate. You know this, you liar. You know this legislation will never become law. You also know the Freedom of Information legislation that you promised is rotting in its grave. The conflict of interest rules and Code of Conduct that the DLP promised to implement from day one were the first two promises to die.

Liar.

Integrity Legislation is four years and more past due. It is dead, dead, dead.

Liar.

Here’s what Brathwaite told the Nation. Please read it at their website, but we have to reprint the whole thing here because the paper has a history of deleting articles to change history. Too bad…

AG spells out crime plans

A drug court is on the cards and anti-corruption legislation may be agreed in a month or two. Just as important, says Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite, the Government is moving on legislation to boost the offshore international sector which has been hit by competition from Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and The Bahamas.

He also dealt with crime, the Police Force and complaints against lawyers in an interview with THE NATION’s North American Correspondent Tony Best in New York last week.

What are some of the things you want to get done before the next election?

Brathwaite: Legislatively, we have the anti-corruption legislation which is before a joint committee of Parliament. We had promised that we would have that done before the end of the year. It’s my hope that we can get it within a month or two.